ON THIS DAY

FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE

September 21, 1973 THE standard-bearer of Women’s Lib, Billie Jean King, beat the professional chauvinist Bobby riggs in front of a 30,000 crowd in the Houston aerodrome, Texas, early today. Bobby, 55, a former Wimbledon champion, had challenged the women’s champion to a £40,000-winner-takes-all contest.

September 21, 2001 John Prescott will not face charges for punching a countryside protester on the chin during the run-up to the general Election, it was decided yesterday. The 63-year-old Deputy Prime Minister was acting in self-defence, said the Crown Prosecution Service. He landed a jab on farm worker Craig Evans and grappled him to the ground after being hit by an egg.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Shirley Conran, 88. The journalistturned-novelist launched the Daily Mail’s Femail section in 1968 and wrote bestsellers Lace and Superwoman. Conran, who said ‘Life is too short to stuff a mushroom’, was the second of four wives of Sir Terence Conran, who died earlier this month. Shirley gave a woman she suspected of being Terence’s lover a bar of roger & gallet perfumed soap so she could detect the smell on her husband.

Shinzo Abe, 66. The longest-serving prime minister in Japanese history stood down last week because of a relapse of his ulcerative colitis. His father was foreign minister and his grandfather was PM in the late 1950s. abe was a star of the 2016 rio olympics’ closing ceremony, when he emerged as nintendo’s Super Mario.

BORN ON THIS DAY

Larry Hagman (1931-2012). The Texan actor shot to fame as J.r. Ewing in Dallas. By the mid-1980s, the show was the most popular in the world. He also starred on film in 1976’s The Eagle Has Landed and 1978’s Superman. Hagman practised zen meditation and refused to speak on Sundays.

KEITH Harris (19472015). The ventriloquist from Hampshire was overshadowed by his puppet, a nappy-wearing green duckling called orville. Harris first appeared on stage in his father’s act when he was nine: ‘I would get on dad’s knee and be the ventriloquist doll.’ He was dyslexic and lost £7million because he couldn’t read his contracts. ON SEPTEMBER 21…

IN 1985, Madonna secured her first Uk no.1 album, with Like a virgin.

IN 1998, recordings of President Bill Clinton’s grand jury testimony in the Monica Lewinsky scandal were broadcast. WORD WIZARDRY

GUESS THE DEFINITION: behoof (c 1000) a) To burn the down off seabirds after plucking the feathers. B) use, advantage, benefit. C) To unshoe. answer below

PHRASE EXPLAINED

Wouldn’t harm a fly: a phrase — coined in the late 1700s — used to describe someone who is good-natured; they wouldn’t hurt anyone or anything.

QUOTE FOR TODAY

I and the public know what all schoolchildren learn, those to whom evil is done do evil in return.

W.H. Auden, poet (1907-1973)

JOKE OF THE DAY

I’ve always had a useless photographic memory … It never developed.

Guess the definition answer: B

Compiled by ETAN SMALLMAN and ADAM JACOT DE BOINOD