July 12, 2021
ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE JULY 12, 1979
SKyLAB, the doomed ghost ship of space [the U.S. space laboratory], streaked back to Earth a mass of blue and red flame yesterday and dumped most of its 80 tons of molten metal into a watery grave over the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, but up to 1,000 pieces rained across Australia.
JULY 12, 1988
A FILM is finally going to be made about the 1963 scandal, the Profumo affair, which rocked a government and a country. Ian McKellen plays John Profumo. Joanne Whalley will be Christine Keeler, the girl with whom he had the brief affair.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
ANNA FRIEL, 45. The Emmy award-winning actress from Rochdale, star of Marcella and Emmerdale, made headlines for the first lesbian kiss on a British soap, in Brookside in 1994. Friel has a house under the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles as well as a home in Windsor, opposite actor David Thewlis, her former partner and the father of her daughter Gracie.
ANNABEL CROFT, 55. The former British No1 tennis star says she has been ‘selfemployed from the age of 12, when I started winning tennis matches’ and first competed at Wimbledon, aged 15. But she quit at just 21, explaining: ‘I just got fed up with it.’ Croft became a BBC tennis commentator, and a TV presenter. Last year she credited regular yoga with making her feel ‘fitter now than I’ve ever felt in my life.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
RENE FAVALORO (1923-2000). The Argentine cardiac surgeon was a pioneer in heart-bypass surgery. He first performed the operation in 1967, described it as ‘much the way a driver might use a side road to go around a traffic jam’.
SIR ALASTAIR BURNET (1928-2012). The Baftawinning broadcaster was born in Sheffield because his cricket-mad Scottish father hoped he might one day play for yorkshire. Burnet presented ITN’s first News At Ten in 1967 — while editor of The Economist. He later edited the Daily Express. He admitted whisky was one of his great passions — but said claims he drank a bottle a day were ‘too flattering’.
ON JULY 12…
IN 1910, Charles Rolls, co-founder of RollsRoyce, became the first British pilot to die in a flying accident (aged 32). IN 1962, Ray Charles achieved his only UK No 1 single, I Can’t Stop Loving you.
WORD WIZARDRY GUESS THE DEFINITION: Opsimath (c19th)
A) A gift given at New year. B) Someone who learns late in life.
C) A harvest. Answer below.
PHRASE EXPLAINED Clutching at straws: meaning to try any unusual or extreme idea because other methods have failed; it comes from Thomas More in 1534 in reference to a drowning man grasping for anything, even a straw, to save his life.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shovelling the path before it stops snowing. Phyllis Diller, U.S. comedienne (1917-2012)
JOKE OF THE DAY
TO THE thief who stole my glasses, I will track you down… I have contacts. Guess The Definition answer: B.