LOSE YOURSELF IN 1976
AU REVOIR, AGATHA
There was, at least, no mystery surrounding the death of Dame Agatha Christie on 12 January 1976, at the age of 85; she died of natural causes at home in Cholsey, Oxfordshire, in circumstances that wouldn’t have challenged her two most famous sleuth creations, Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple. Her literary career, which began in 1920 with The Mysterious Affair at Styles, saw her pen 66 detective novels, 14 short story collections, six romance books and the world’s longest-running play, The Mousetrap. This opened in London on 25 November 1952 and has been going ever since.
With book sales of over two billion, she is the best-selling novelist of all time – only the Bible and the works of Shakespeare have shifted more copies, and they’ve been around for quite a bit longer. She’s also a perennial favourite choice for period dramas on British TV, in between bouts of Jane Austen, of course.
TO BOLDLY GO
The future began on 17 September 1976 when the first space shuttle was unveiled by NASA. Strictly speaking,
Enterprise wasn’t a true spacecraft, having been built without engines or a heat shield, to be launched from the back of a Boeing 747 for test flights within the Earth’s atmosphere. However, that didn’t stop the USA being inspired by the first glimpse of an exciting new era of space travel.
When it was announced that the craft was going to be named
Constitution, fans of Star Trek bombarded American president, Gerald Ford, with requests to name it after the USS Enterprise instead. After receiving ‘hundreds of thousands of letters’, the president agreed and Star
Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry, and much of the cast attended its naming.
Enterprise is now on display at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City.