ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE FEBRUaRy 20, 1974
THE 15-year-old star of controversial film The Exorcist, Linda Blair, was nominated yesterday for an Oscar as best supporting actress. There were ten nominations for The Exorcist, including best picture. The film, which tells of a girl possessed by the Devil, has caused cinemagoers to faint.
FEBRUaRy 20, 2008
FIDEL CASTRO announced his retirement yesterday after nearly 50 years as Cuba’s Communist dictator — prompting speculation that he was close to death. His decision ends an era in which the 81-yearold Leftist icon survived more than 600 alleged CIA-backed assassination attempts and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war with the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
RIHAnnA, 35. The singer and actress, born Robyn Rihanna Fenty in Barbados, has had nine UK chart-toppers and is worth $1.4 billion, according to Forbes — thanks largely to her cosmetics line Fenty Beauty. She headlined the Super Bowl show this month, becoming the first woman to do so while pregnant.
MIKE LEIgH, 80. The Oscar-nominated director and playwright from Salford made his name with Secrets & Lies, Vera Drake and Abigail’s Party, which starred his thenwife Alison Steadman. Known for casting men with a beards, the filmmaker declared: ‘I do think shaving is a time-wasting, filthy, irrelevant and resource-wasting habit.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
ZOE gAIL (1920-2020). The South Africanborn British-American actress turned the lights back on in the West End on April 2, 1949 — at the invitation of Winston Churchill — almost a decade after World War II had darkened them. Her husband-to-be was writer Hubert gregg, who penned the song Maybe It’s Because I’m A Londoner.
IVAnA TRUMP (1949-2022). The Czechborn model, skiing instructor and socialite was the first wife of the man she called ‘the Donald’, and mother to three of his children, but they divorced in 1992. On decorating Trump Tower in new York, she said: ‘If something could be leafed in gold or upholstered with damask, it was.’
ON FEBRUARY 20…
IN 1988, Kylie Minogue was enjoying her first of seven UK number Ones with I Should Be So Lucky. IN 1877, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake had its premiere in Moscow.
WORD WIZARDRY GUESS THE DEFINITION: Ballyhoo (1830s)
A) A small cavity in a rock. B) Blatant advertising or publicity. C) An incipient roaring. answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED Lead someone by the nose: Meaning to control someone completely, most commonly by deception. It alludes to an animal being lead by its owner by a nose ring. The expression is used in Shakespeare’s Othello.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament. George Santayana, Spanish-born U.S. philosopher (1863-1952)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHY did the window and doughnut get on so well? They were both glazed. Guess The Definition answer: B.