ON THIS DAY
September 22, 2021
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE SEPTEMBER 22, 1965
BILL and Ben, the Flower Pot Men, are threatened by a BBC plan to give a completely new look to children’s TV programme Watch With Mother. The move to introduce fresh make-believe characters could also mean the death of Andy Pandy and The Wooden Tops.
SEPTEMBER 22, 1998
AMERICANS were yesterday forced to endure one of the most degrading spectacles in their country’s history. For over four hours, in an extraordinary trial by television, they watched President Clinton undergo the humiliation of having the most embarrassing secrets of his private life exposed under relentless questioning from Kenneth Starr’s investigators.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
FAy WELDON, 90. Born Franklin Birkinshaw in Birmingham, the author of feminist books including The Life And Loves Of A SheDevil also wrote the first episode of TV’s Upstairs, Downstairs. When she appeared on the BBC’s Desert Island Discs, she asked for her luxury item to be a shotgun. TOM FELTON, 34. The Surrey-born actor made his name as villain Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films after unsuccessfully auditioning to play Potter himself and Ron Weasley. Now estimated to be worth more than £20 million, he went on to star in Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, and got to utter Charlton Heston’s famous line from the 1968 film: ‘Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!’
BORN ON THIS DAY
HANS SCHOLL (1918-43). The German activist quit the Hitler youth to co-found the White Rose resistance movement that opposed the Nazis. He secretly printed and distributed pamphlets condemning the murder of thousands of Jews. He was caught by Munich University’s caretaker as he and sister Sophie entered the building with a suitcase filled with 2,000 leaflets, which they threw from the atrium. Both were handed to the Gestapo and executed by guillotine four days later. MICHAEL FARADAy (17911867). The London-born chemist and physicist was a pioneer of electrochemistry and discovered electromagnetic induction, the principle behind the electric transformer and generator. The former bookbinder’s apprentice coined the words ‘electrode’, ‘cathode’ and ‘ion’, and gave his name to the farad, the unit of electrical capacitance.
ON SEPTEMBER 22…
IN 1888, the first issue of the National Geographic magazine was published. IN 1994, the first episode of sitcom Friends was broadcast in the U.S.
WORD WIZARDRY GUESS THE DEFINITION: Puttee (c. 1870s)
A) Large toy marble. B) A long strip of cloth wound spirally round the leg from ankle to knee. C) Breast pocket in a jacket.
Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Hooked on: meaning to be caught, to become addicted to a person, object or activity; directly from the sport of angling.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
Fashion is in ceaseless pursuit of things that are about to look familiar and in uneasy flight from things that have just become a bore.
Kennedy Fraser, U.S. essayist
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHY did the sandwich go to the dentist? Because its filling fell out. Guess The Definition answer: B.