Stirling hero off the track
QUESTION
Did Stirling Moss save three women from drowning in Las Vegas?
STIRLING Moss did save a number of people, with a little help from his friends. On July 3, 1975, a summer monsoon triggered a flash flood in the Las Vegas valley. A torrent swept down Flamingo Wash, a major flood channel, into Caesars Palace car park on the Strip.
A blocked culvert saw waters reach 20ft deep, flooding hundreds of cars. Some vehicles were recovered miles from where they had been parked. Rushing water brought down telephone poles, sewage plants were overwhelmed and fetid water was expelled through manhole covers.
Morris Keston, a London tailor, was staying at Caesars Palace. He was friends with British F1 driver Stirling Moss, who was in LA, testing the new Cadillac Seville for a motor magazine.
Keston had mentioned this to Frank Sinatra, who was playing at Caesars Palace. Sinatra was a fan of Moss, and the night before the flood he asked Keston to invite him over. Moss duly showed up with his then girlfriend Sue Randall. Sinatra performed with Moss and Keston as guests of honour.
On taking his final bow, Sinatra had the spotlight fixed on Moss and introduced him to the audience as ‘probably the greatest driver there has ever been’, much to his embarrassment.
The next day, when the flood hit, the party were standing on the steps of Caesars Palace when Sue Randall was almost washed away. Moss grabbed her arm and dragged her to safety.
Moss, Keston and another friend, the boxing promoter Mickey Duff, saw half a dozen cars with people stuck inside. They waded in waisthigh water to pull them out. The British press proclaimed them The Three Heroes of Las Vegas.
Keston was a well-loved figure in North London, known as the first Spurs superfan who never missed a game. He died in 2019, aged 87.
Moss, the best driver never to win an F1 championship, died on April 12 this year, aged 90.
Duff was born Monek Prager in Poland in 1929. His family fled the Nazis and came to London where he became a boxer and later promoter for the likes of Frank Bruno and Joe Calzaghe. He died in 2014, aged 84.
Brian Cullen, Dukinfield, Cheshire. QUESTION
From where do we get the phrase harbinger of doom?
THIS ominous phrase comes to us from the word harbour, via a member of the UK Royal Household and the imagination of William Shakespeare.
Harbour is derived from the Teutonic heri and beorg, meaning shelter for a host. Early forms in English were herberwe and harborow.
The French auberge, an inn, derived through heberger, is the same word for a place of refuge or shelter. Safe harbour thus became an asylum for criminals and particularly a place of shelter for ships.
Harbour was enlarged to include any place where travellers could be lodged or entertained, to the person who provided lodgings and the harbinger, one who goes on before a party to secure lodgings.
From the 13th century, large royal itineraries had the right to quarter soldiers, servants and agents wherever they wished to rest. The Knight Harbinger oversaw the process for the Royal Household. Sir Henry Rycroft was the last Knight Harbinger from 1816 until his death in 1846. Like all other trades and crafts of the Middle Ages, the Harbourers had their own guild and patron saint. In AD313, St Julian ‘le Herberger’ was martyred at Antinopolis, Egypt, where he had piously received and cared for sick people in his lodgings.
A harbinger appears in The Man Of Law’s Tale in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: ‘The fame anon through toun is born, How Alla kyng shal comen on pilgrymage, By herbergeours that wenten hym biforn’ (The news through all the town was carried,/How King Alla would come on pilgrimage,/By harbingers that went before him). Shakespeare used the term in portentous fashion in his poem The Phoenix And The Turtle: ‘But thou shrieking harbinger, Foul precurrer of the fiend, Augur of the fever’s end, To this troop come thou not near!’
By the 18th century, the term was almost always used in this way. The phrase harbinger of doom can be found in Richard Coeur De Lion: An Historical Romance, a 1786 operetta.
Richard The Lionheart says: ‘He had scarcely spoken, when the wind, which had lulled for some time, again blew with violence; a dark and fiery red illumined the horizon, and all seemed to portend the dread simoom, the fearful harbinger of doom and death.’
Esther Louis, Oxford. QUESTION
Is it true that in some Asian countries, babies are considered to be one year old at birth?
IN SOUTH Korea, everyone has the same birthday. The country uses the East Asian age system that originated in China and is also used in Tibet and Japan.
Under the system, you are born at the age of one, and on New Year’s Day a year is added to your age. So, if a baby is born on December 31, they turn two the very next day! North Koreans abandoned this system in 1980.
Laura Marsh, Shrewsbury, Shropshire.
MY SON lives in Taiwan and our granddaughter was born in December. According to local custom, she is one year and five months old.
Marie Garner, Wigan, Lancs. QUESTION
What is the origin of the three legs on the Isle of Man crest?
FURTHER to the earlier answer, I have a book, The Romance Of Heraldry, dated 1929, that states the fact the arms of man are legs is a heraldic paradox. It adds that looking at the island, you will appreciate the saying: ‘The Isle of Man kneels to England, kicks at Scotland and spurns Ireland!’
John Hockey, Edlesborough, Bucks.
YEARS ago, while working for a brewery, we were producing an advertising leaflet for the Isle of Man but could not decipher the Latin motto on the sample sketch.
An elderly gentleman in accounts had been a classics scholar and told us ‘Quocunque Jeceris Stabit’ translated as: ‘Wherever you throw it, it will stand.’
Keith Sandars, Medbourne, Leics.
IS THERE a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Irish Daily Mail, Embassy House, Herbert Park Lane, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. You can also fax them to 0044 1952 510906 or you can email them to charles.legge@dailymail.ie. A selection will be published but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence.