UK’s crowning glory or a fix?
QUESTION Why were there allegations that the Miss World beauty contest in 1965 was fixed? The Miss World pageant, created by eric Morley in 1951, was hosted in London until 1988. It was held at the Lyceum Theatre between 1951 and 1968, and at the Royal Albert hall from 1969 to 1988.
The controversy arose because British entrants won the British-based contest three times in the early-Sixties — Rosemarie Frankland in 1961, Ann Sidney in 1964 and Lesley Langley in 1965.
Alfred Patricelli, the promoter of Miss USA, told the Press: ‘This looks really bad, with three British girls having won in five years. The chances against this happening are enormous.’
however, there’s good evidence no chicanery was involved. eric Morley usually insisted that leisure group Mecca act as the sole agent for the winner during her reign, but Langley already had one.
Morley said: ‘I wasn’t too worried when I heard that Lesley had an agent because I didn’t think she would win Miss World.’ Morley would have had to have been involved if there had been a fix. But he even told Langley she ‘wasn’t right for it’.
eventually, Morley was forced to reveal the scores, showing that five of the nine judges voted for Langley. Four of the nine were British and two, actor Stanley Baker and the Marchioness of Tavistock, as well as French actress Martine Carol, voted for her. Morley and actor Peter Sellers voted against her, as did American singer Johnny Mathis, who voted for Miss USA.
Langley later denied the accusation: ‘eric Morley and I didn’t get on at all. he didn’t like the fact that I already had an agent.
‘There were three Miss UKs in five years, but there’s no way it was fixed, because if anything, he would have tried to fix it for me not to win.’
Jeannette Tanner, Lincoln.
QUESTION Does the planet Mars have an official flag? TheRe is no official flag for Mars. Article II of the Outer Space Treaty states ‘outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, are not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.’ But several unofficial flags have been created, and the most widely accepted design is that drawn up for Nasa’s haughton-Mars Project. Sited on Devon Island, it uses the harsh climate of the Canadian high Arctic to mimic conditions crew members would encounter on Mars and other planets.
In 1998, NASA scientist Pascal Lee created a tricolour flag running from left to right red, green, and blue for the project.
The colours were derived from the stages of Mars’s transformation from desert planet to life depicted in Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars — the epic science fiction trilogy written by Kim Stanley Robinson.
Red stands for the current desert, green for a second-stage with vegetation, and blue for the fully terraformed blue planet Mars. The colours are also the primary components of the spectrum, symbolising unity in diversity, as well as light itself and thus reason and enlightenment.
The flag was first displayed and flown at the haughton-Mars Project research station in summer 1999, and a version of it was carried into space by astronaut John M. Grunsfeld on Discovery mission STS-103 in 1999. It is widely used by The Mars Society and The Planetary Society.
Paul Smith, Dagenham, Essex.
QUESTION Before Muhammad founded Islam, to which religion did he belong? What was the religion of the majority of people who very quickly converted to Islam in the area around Mecca and Medina? MUhAMMAD was born in AD570 in Mecca, in what is now Saudi Arabia. According to The Spirit Of Islam, written in 1891 by Syed Ameer Ali, in AD595, the same year he met his first wife Khadija, Muhammad founded the Hilf-ul-Fuzul (League of the Fuzul) to ‘protect Meccan or stranger, free or slave’ from oppression. The strong moral code implied not only hints at some religious belief but has echoes of Galatians 3:28, where St Paul says that there is ‘neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free’ in Christ.
There was a large Jewish presence in Arabia at the time of Muhammad, mostly around Medina, with some traditions placing Jewish immigration from the fifth century BC, by people who had refused ezra’s call to return to Israel from Babylon (ezra 1:1-4) and settled in Arabia instead.
Paganism was also present, with each tribe having its own god. That Christianity was also present in Arabia, including doctrines that were being rejected by the mainstream church of that time, seems certain from an analysis of Jesus as represented in the Koran.
he is said to be not divine but rather subservient to God (17:111), may or may not have been the issue of a virgin birth (3:59/21:91), performed miracles to show he had come to confirm what was in the Jewish scriptures ( 3: 49- 50), was not crucified, although many thought he was, and was then taken up to heaven (4:157158) and will return as a judge (3:55).
Ali states that a friend of pre-Islam Muhammad, Zair, was one of four men who had abandoned paganism in their search for the ‘true faith’, and it is likely they would have spoken to Jews and Christians in this search. Zair in particular was an influence on Muhammad before his meditations in a cave on Mount hira that would change the course of history.
So Islam was born into — and from — a land of richly diverse religion but now bans any public expression of faith other than its own.
Gerry Dorrian, Cambridge.
QUESTION There are several River Dees in Britain. Do their names share the same origin? FURTheR to an earlier answer, the reference to an english river Dee should refer to the Welsh river Dee or Afon Dyfrdwy.
This river Dee starts as a tiny stream in the mountains to the west of Bala, Gwynedd. It’s joined by the Afon Lliw and the Afon Twrch before entering Llyn Tegid — Bala Lake. It’s 70 miles long and flows through england for about 20 miles but for some of this part, it’s the Wales/england boundary.
The Dee estuary is five miles wide at its mouth where it flows into the Irish Sea/ Liverpool Bay where, again, the boundary between Wales and england is through the centre of the estuary.
L. Ellis, Flint, Wales.