May 31, 2023 ON THIS DAY

FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE

MAY 31, 1948 UNITY MITFORD, one-time friend of Hitler, has died in Oban after being ferried from the lonely Atlantic island of Inch Kenneth, where she had been holidaying. Miss Mitford, 33, was in poor health since her repatriation from Germany in 1940 with a bullet wound to her head.

MAY 31, 1974

THE Queen acquired a surprising new subject yesterday — Rachele Mussolini, the granddaughter of the Italian dictator, Benito. Her father, Il Duce’s 47-year-old son Romano, is delighted by the arrival at a Wimbledon maternity hospital.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

BROOKE SHIELDS, 58. Having appeared in a soap advert aged 11 months, the U.S. model and actress posed nude for a Playboy publication aged ten, and two years later played a prostituted child in the film Pretty Baby. Her first husband was tennis star Andre Agassi. After she spoke of taking antidepressants to deal with postnatal depression, Tom Cruise criticised her on TV. She hit back, saying he should ‘stick to fighting aliens’.

COLIN FARRELL, 47. The Dublin-born actor, who won a raft of awards for his role in last year’s The Banshees Of Inisherin, claimed his weekly drink and drug consumption was once ‘20 Es, four grams of coke, six of speed, half an ounce of hash, three bottles of Jack Daniel’s, 12 bottles of red wine, 60 pints and 40 fags a day’ — before going into rehab.

BORN ON THIS DAY

DENHOLM ELLIOTT (1922-1992). When the English actor left RADA he became an RAF gunner. He honed his acting skills in a German POW camp after his plane crashed into the sea in 1942. He said: ‘I’m often given parts that aren’t as big as they are colourful, but people remember them. When it’s a supporting or minor role, you learn to make the most of what you’re given. I can make two lines seem like Hamlet.’

WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892). The U.S. poet hailed as the father of free verse also wrote (under a pseudonym) a guide to ‘manly health’, which was rediscovered in 2016. It told fellow American males how to obtain a ‘nobler physique’, advocating a brisk leap out of bed in the mornings and not exhausting oneself ‘continually among women’.

ON MAY 31 . . .

IN 1669, because of the ‘ill condition of my eyes’, English diarist Samuel Pepys was forced to write his final entry. IN 2009, Irish-born entertainer and, in his own words, ‘comic in a frock’ Danny La Rue died, aged 81.

WORD WIZARDRY

GUESS THE DEFINITION Hab nab (1580) A) Half-hearted. B) At random, at the mercy of chance. C) Ill-balanced, shaky.

Answer below

PHRASE EXPLAINED Like fury:

Meaning with great effort or energy. The phrase comes from the 19th century, while the idea of ‘fury’ referring to things acting with irrepressible force is from the 16th century.

QUOTE FOR TODAY

The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end. Benjamin Disraeli, British statesman (1804-1881)

JOKE OF THE DAY

HOW did the bread court his sweetheart? With lots of flours. Guess The Definition answer: B.