Flavour of the month: September – Beyoncé, Gaddafi and Dr. Seuss

This month’s dose of trivia and anecdote sees a Yorkshireman insulting an England cricketer, the young Beyoncé training her voice in an unusual way, and Keith Floyd taking revenge on a table of diners who’d made one of his waitresses cry…

All three female Prime Ministers of the UK have had the same initials, albeit one of them with the order reversed

1 September 1969 – Muammar Gaddafi seizes power in Libya. He subsequently abolished all military ranks above his own one of Colonel, because he was fearful of people launching a coup against him.
2 September 1666 – The Great Fire of London breaks out. It famously started in a baker’s shop on Pudding Lane, which might lead you to assume that the lane was named after the shop. Not so: the lane, which slopes sharply down towards the Thames, was in effect an open sewer, and the ‘puddings’ were… well, let’s just say they’d emerged from people’s bodies.
4 September 1981 – birth of Beyoncé. As a child she was made by her father to run a mile each morning while singing, to develop her ability to sing and dance at the same time.
5 September 2022 – Liz Truss becomes leader of the Conservative party. Because her real first name is Mary, all three female prime ministers of the UK have had the same initials, albeit one of them with the order reversed.
7 September 1630 – Boston, Massachusetts is founded. In 1815, the Massachusetts Spy newspaper was responsible for the first printed use of a phrase you’d think must surely have originated in Britain: ‘I kept a stiff upper lip…’
8 September 1952 – birth of Geoff Miller. The Derbyshire cricketer never had an easy relationship with the crowds at neighbouring Yorkshire. But playing at Headingley for England against the West Indies, he was sure he’d won them over by dismissing the Windies’ legendary batsman Viv Richards. At the end of the over he walked back to field on the boundary. A man stood up 30 rows back and shouted: ‘Hey Miller, you tosser! I paid twenty quid to watch Viv Richards bat today!’
9 September 2015 – Elizabeth II becomes the longest-reigning monarch of the United Kingdom. In the end, she was served by 15 prime ministers, starting with Winston Churchill and finishing with Liz Truss. Which of those 15 was the first to be younger than her? (Answer at end.)
11 September 1965 – birth of Moby. The musician, born Richard Melville Hall, got his nickname as a child because he is the great-great-great nephew of Herman Melville, the author of Moby-Dick.
12 September 1885 – Arbroath beat Bon Accord 36-0 in the first round of the Scottish FA Cup. It remains the heaviest defeat in professional football history, anywhere in the world. (A 2002 match in Madagascar that finished 149-0 was deliberately thrown by the losers, who scored deliberate own goals in protest at a refereeing decision in a previous match.) The Arbroath goalkeeper didn’t touch the ball once and spent part of the match sheltering from rain under a spectator’s umbrella.
14 September 2009 – death of Keith Floyd. The restaurateur once saw one of his waitresses enter the kitchen in tears, distraught at the way she’d been treated by a table full of rude men. ‘Come with me,’ said Floyd to his chef. The pair went out to the table, stood one at each end and carried it away, complete with half-eaten meals, leaving the astonished men sitting on their chairs. ‘Now get out of my restaurant,’ Floyd told them. The men duly obeyed.
18 September 1837 – Tiffany & Co. is founded in New York. The city’s baseball team, the Yankees, have Tiffany’s to thank for their logo. The interlocking ‘N’ and ‘Y’ was designed by the company in 1877 for the New York City Police Department Medal for Valor. The Yankees adopted it in 1909.
19 September 1952 – birth of Nile Rodgers. The guitarist wrote Le Freak after he and his Chic bandmate Bernard Edwards were turned away from a party at New York nightclub Studio 54, on New Year’s Eve 1977. The bouncer’s words as he slammed the door on them were: ‘Fuck off.’ The pair went straight home and wrote the song, the bouncer’s pleasantry forming the original lyrics. Realising this would discourage radio play, the pair changed the line to ‘freak off’, and finally ‘freak out’.
24 September 1991 – death of Dr. Seuss. How should you pronounce the children’s author’s name? If you want to copy the man himself, it’s to rhyme with ‘voice’.
26 September 1969 – release of Abbey Road. The suit worn by Paul McCartney as he makes his way over the zebra crossing on the cover was the same one he wore two years later to the High Court, when he sued his bandmates as part of their break-up.