ON THIS DAY

1644: Sir Thomas Fairfax was victorious at the Battle of Selby in the English Civil War. 1689: William III and Mary II were crowned joint monarchs. 1713: Gibraltar and Newfoundland were ceded to Britain in the Treaty of Utrecht. 1814: Napoleon was forced to abdicate and banished to the island of Elba. 1914: George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion opened in London with Mrs Patrick Campbell as Eliza Doolittle and Sir Herbert Tree as Professor Higgins. 1929: Popeye made his first appearance as a supporting character in a cartoon strip in Hearst’s New York newspapers. 1951: President Truman relieved war hero General Douglas MacArthur of his command in the Far East in a row over Korea. 1961: Bob Dylan made his first public appearance in Greenwich Village, New York. 1983: Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi won eight Oscars. BIRTHDAYS: Joel Grey, actor, 84; Jill Gascoine, actress, 79; Peter Riegert, actor, 69; Jeremy Clarkson, television motoring expert, 56; Lisa Stansfield, singer, 50; Cerys Matthews, singer, 47; Jennifer Esposito, actress, 43; Ian Bell, cricketer, 34; Joss Stone, singer, 29. QUOTES OF THE DAY: “I want to be 80. Life becomes more interesting the older you get. I am sure by the time I am 80, I will be able to do absolutely anything” – Joanna Lumley, 69. “All I’ll say about sex is I don’t need that bloody blue pill” – actor Brian Blessed, 79, has no time for Viagra. “A useless language” – Jeremy Paxman on French. “There’s a lot of old-fashioned misogyny on the hard left; you’ve only got to look at the comments about me during the leadership campaign. I was called a bitch, a whore, a see-you-next- Tuesday, as they say on Towie. All because my political views weren’t the same as theirs” – Labour MP Liz Kendall. “We need immigrants. Who is going to vacuum our living rooms and clean up after us?” - Ivana Trump, Donald Trump’s ex-wife. “Each ‘appointment’ costs £0.00” - David Furness, the British National Party’s London mayor candidate, who cuts his own hair. “All they are trying to do is scare the pants off everybody about leaving, but it is crazy” - former Tory chancellor Lord Lawson attacks the stay-inthe-EU lobby. “Male critics, many of whom have been at Oxford for so long they’re growing ivy up the back of their legs and who clearly graduated in advanced smugness, too often dismiss these topics as frivolous” - writer Kathy Lette on stereotypes of female authors.