ON THIS DAY
March 17, 2021
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE MARCH 17, 1950
Men going home along the bypass ducked as the plane came in to land at Hatfield yesterday evening. The de Havilland Comet, the world’s first jet-engine airliner, had set off from Hatfield after breakfast, reached Rome in less than two hours, and came back in two hours, 57 seconds.
MARCH 17, 1951 PRINCESS Margaret confided yesterday to Mr Ronald neame, producer of The Magic Box for the Festival of Britain, that her favourite film star was Gregory Peck. ‘He is exceptionally good looking,’ she said. ‘And it’s not often that you get someone so good looking who’s also a good actor.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
CARRIE SYMONDS, 33. Boris Johnson’s fiancée and mother of his son Wilfred became the youngest partner of a prime minister in 173 years, and is one half of downing street’s first unmarried couple. The former Conservative Party director of communications (pictured) is the daughter of Matthew symonds, one of the founders of the independent newspaper.
KURT RUSSELL, 70. The u.s. actor made his film debut at 11 in elvis Presley’s it Happened At The World’s Fair. Actress Goldie Hawn has been his partner for 38 years (his chat-up line was: ‘Man, you’ve got a great figure.’) in 2017, they received the rare honour of being awarded stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame together.
BORN ON THIS DAY
MARGARET BONDFIELD (1873-1953). The labour politician from somerset became Britain’s first female cabinet minister when appointed Minister of labour in 1929. she dropped out of national politics months later after losing her seat in the election. A blue plaque in her home town of Chard says: ‘shop worker, Christian, socialist, trades unionist, she devoted her life to improving the lot of the downtrodden.’
BRIGITTE HELM (1908-96). The actress from Berlin (b. schittenhelm) played both the virginal Maria and the robot in Fritz lang’s 1927 classic Metropolis. Her mother had sent a photo of Helm, then 18, to the director lang, who gave her the lead female role in what was then the most expensive German film ever made. she refused to give interviews. When a film historian asked her son to organise one, he replied: ‘if i arrange that, she’ll disinherit me.’
ON MARCH 17…
IN 1951, dennis the Menace (right) made his debut in the Beano, in edition no. 452. Gnasher came along in 1968. IN 2003, Robin Cook, leader of the Commons and former foreign secretary, resigned from Tony Blair’s government over the decision ‘to commit Britain now to military action in iraq without international agreement or domestic support’.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: dray (coined mid14th century) A) A brewer’s cart. B) Tawny, yellow tinged with red. C) A lean deer not fit to hunt. Answer below. PHRASE EXPLAINED — Heath Robinson affair: describes any unnecessarily complex and implausible contrivance or machine made in an amateur fashion; it’s named after W. Heath Robinson (1872-1944), an illustrator of the most complicated contraptions.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
The future ain’t what it used to be Yogi Berra, U.S. baseball player (1925-2015)
JOKE OF THE DAY
Why is the letter A like a flower? Because a B comes after it.
Guess The Definition answer: A