ON THIS DAY

FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE

MAY 29, 1953 UNCONFiRMED reports say that the British Everest expedition has been abandoned. But they are not borne out by hard news. [it was an error based on intercepted radio reports; Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay conquered Everest hours later]. MAY 29, 1959 PROSPECTS are splendid for man to fly into space and come back safely. That is tonight’s verdict on the spectacularly successful monkey ride. Two monkeys, Able and Baker, were rocketed on a 15-minute, 1,500-mile flight beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. They soared 300 miles high before diving down to become the first survivors of a true space flight.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

NANETTE NEWMAN, 85. The English actress (right) starred in The Stepford Wives, but is perhaps best known for her Fairy Liquid adverts. She was married to film director Bryan Forbes for 58 years, and when he died in 2013, the family filled his wicker coffin with mementos. Nanette revealed her eldest daughter Sarah put in a packet of cigarettes, adding: ‘She said her father would have loved it because he wasn’t allowed to smoke for so many years.’ PETER HiGGS, 90. The particle physicist from Newcastle won the Nobel prize in physics in 2013 for predicting the existence of the ‘God particle’ — now known as the Higgs boson — in a 1964 paper. He does not own a mobile phone or use email, and only heard the good news when a woman stopped her car to congratulate him.

BORN ON THIS DAY

G.K. CHESTERTON (1874-1936). The critic, poet and novelist, who wrote more than 4,000 newspaper essays, is best known for his Father Brown detective stories. According to the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton, he was an ‘absent-minded, overgrown elf of a man’ who ‘laughed at his own jokes and amused children at birthday parties by catching buns in his mouth’. BOB HOPE (1903-2003). The London-born U.S. comedian (right), the fifth of seven brothers, who died aged 100, counted ten U.S. presidents among his friends and golfing partners. He said: ‘i’m half-British, half-American. My passport has an eagle with a tea bag in its beak.’

ON MAY 29…

In 1884, Oscar Wilde married Constance Lloyd in Paddington, London. She wore a yellow dress and carried a bouquet of lilies.

In 1954, Diane Leather, a 21-year-old chemist at Birmingham University, became the first woman to run a mile in under five minutes.

In 2009, music producer Phil Spector was jailed for at least 19 years for the 2003 murder of Hollywood actress Lana Clarkson.