May 11, 2022 ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE MAY 11, 1945
RuSSIAN troops, after a week’s search through the ruins of the Reich Chancellery’s underground fort in Berlin, have found four bodies, each of which could be that of Hitler. They had been burned, but the Russians are beginning to believe that no body that can be definitely identified as that of Hitler will ever be found now.
MAY 11, 1993
A FORMER SAS officer has climbed Everest alone and without oxygen. His energy sapped by high winds, and with temperatures plunging to minus 35c, Harry Taylor reached the 29,028 ft summit.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
JEREMY PAxMAN, 72. The Leeds-born university Challenge presenter said since leaving Newsnight — which he hosted for 25 years — he rarely watches the news: ‘Life’s too short. I mean, who has made life worse for themselves by not hearing the bloviations of some minister?’
JuDITH WEIR, 68. The Cambridge-born composer (right), is the first female Master of the Queen’s Music, a position established in 1625. upon appointment, she said: ‘Listening is also a skill, and I intend to uphold our rights to quietness, even silence, where appropriate.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
LISE VILLAMEuR (1905-2004). The Mauritian-born spy was one of the first two female agents to be parachuted into France by Britain’s Special Operations Executive in World War II. She established a resistance network, was awarded an MBE, and became a BBC newsreader for the French service. ANTONY HEWISH (19242021). The radio astronomer from Cornwall (right) was awarded the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics, together with fellow radio astronomer Martin Ryle, ‘for their pioneering research into radio astrophysics’. Hewish was given the honour particularly ‘for his decisive role in the discovery of pulsars’ — dense stars that are the size of a large city but contain more mass than the sun.
ON MAY 11…
IN 1969, the Monty Python comedy troupe was formed. IN 2001, Douglas Adams, English author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, died of a heart attack, aged 49.
WORD WIZARDRY GUESS THE DEFINITION: corbel (c1400)
A) Bracket of brick or stone; a short, horizontal timber supporting a girder. B) Spur fixed to a fighting cockerel’s heel. C) Leather strap to bind a hawk’s wing.
Answer below.
PHRASE EXPLAINED Cry stinking fish:
meaning to belittle one’s own efforts; to speak unfavourably of what one has to offer to others. Here, ‘to cry’ means ‘to offer for sale in the street’ and attract customers with shouts and praise. By crying ‘stinking fish’ a person would be unlikely to achieve this.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
The world is divided into people who do things and people who get the credit. Try, if you can, to belong to the first class. There’s far less competition.
Dwight Morrow, U.S. lawyer and diplomat (1873-1931)
JOKE OF THE DAY
I TOLD my wife that she needs to start embracing her mistakes… So she hugged me.
Guess The Definition answer: A.
Compiled by ETAN SMALLMAN and ADAM JACOT DE BOINOD