ON THIS DAY

April 6, 2021

APRIL 6, 1971

A GALAxy of famous Frenchwomen yesterday demanded legal abortion. And to back their claim they admitted in print: ‘I’m one of the million women a year who have been through it.’ They included writers Simone de Beauvoir, Francoise Sagan and Marguerite Duras, and actresses Catherine Deneuve and Jeanne Moreau.

APRIL 6, 1981

BUCkS FIzz, the pop group named after a champagne drink, were still bubbling yesterday over their Eurovision Song Contest victory in Dublin with Making your Mind Up. They were making their minds up how to spend the £ 500,000 that their success is likely to bring them this year.

PAUL RUDD, 52. The U.S. actor starred in sitcom Friends and played Ant-Man in a series of Marvel blockbusters (a percentage of profits saw him becoming one of the 100 highest-paid celebrities in 2019). Rudd, whose parents are second cousins from London, grew up on British culture. He read comics including The Beano and The Dandy and idolised 1980s rocker Adam Ant: ‘I used to ask my mum to try and shave my head on the sides to give me a receding hairline because Adam Ant had one.’ MyLEENE kLASS, 43. The Norfolk-born TV presenter, who plays the violin, piano and harp, shot to fame as one-fifth of TV band Hear’Say. She said fellow Popstars contestants turned up with suitcases packed with clothes and make-up. ‘Mine were full of astronomy books and classical CDs.’

BORN ON THIS DAY

ANITA PALLENBERG (1942-2017). The Italian-born German actress and ‘It Girl’, who starred opposite Jane Fonda in Barbarella, slept with at least three of the Rolling Stones, and ‘in her practical German way she had their Chelsea pad soundproofed so as not to disturb the neighbours’. Seven years before her death, keith Richards reflected that she had gone from being a heroin addict to ‘a marvellous granny’. RAPHAEL (1483-1520). The Italian painter is ‘the artist who most completely expresses the ideals of the High Renaissance’ and ‘one of the brightest beacons of European art,’ according to the Oxford Dictionary Of Art. He was so acclaimed that in 1912, a year after the Mona Lisa was stolen, the Louvre hung a portrait by Raphael in its place.

ON APRIL 6…

IN 1199, Richard I (Richard the Lionheart) died, after being fatally wounded by a crossbow bolt while besieging the castle of Chalus in central France.

IN 1962, Soviet newspaper Pravda warned against the danger of dance craze The Twist, saying it led to riots.

WORD WIZARDRY

GUESS THE DEFINITION: Welt (c1400)

A) The leather edge to clothing or a shoe. B) A belt. C) A brawl. Answer below

PHRASE EXPLAINED Sisyphean task: A laborious and never-ending task. In Greek mythology, Sisyphus, king of Corinth, was punished by being made to roll a huge stone up a steep hill in the Underworld only for it to keep rolling down again, meaning he had to repeat the exercise for eternity.

QUOTE FOR TODAY

TheRe is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.

Bill Clinton, 42nd U.S. President

TO ERR is human. To arrrrrr is a pirate. Guess The Definition answer: A.