BORN ON THIS DAY

ABRAHAM LINCoLN ( 1809- 1865). Although pictures of the 16th U.S. President always show him with a beard, he had facial hair only in the last five years of his life, after receiving a letter from an 11-year-old girl advising him to ‘let your whiskers grow’. Many descendants of slaves later took Lincoln as their surname in honour of the President who abolished slavery in the U.S. MARIE LLoYD (1870-1922). The ‘Queen of the Music Hall’ was known for innuendoladen songs, including She’d Never Had Her Ticket Punched Before. T.S. Eliot was a fan, writing: ‘No other comedian succeeded so well in giving expression to the life of that audience, in raising it to a kind of art.’