ON THIS DAY
THE BBC fooled television audiences across the country with a spoof Panorama report about spaghetti being grown on bushes by Swiss farmers.
The April Fools Day hoax was narrated by broadcaster Richard Dimbleby and was so convincing that some viewers contacted the BBC to ask where they could buy a spaghetti bush. COLLEGE dropouts Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computers, Inc. They started out building the Apple 1 in the garage of Jobs’ parents house in Cupertino, California, and sold them without a monitor, keyboard or casing at first. By 1980 sales totalled $117m and Apple went public in December that year, instantly creating more millionaires than any company in history. THE Blue Angel premiered in Germany and turned the then unknown Marlene Dietrich into an international star.
She played sultry nightclub dancer Lola Lola and famously sang Falling In Love Again (Can’t Help It).
The film was banned in Nazi Germany, but a print of the English language version was discovered in a German film archive and restored and screened in 2009 after being feared lost for many years. THIS Morning TV presenter Phillip Schofield was born in Oldham and moved to Cornwall with his family when he was two. He later emigrated to New Zealand with them when he was 19.
Upon his return to Britain he presented children’s BBC slot From the Broom Cupboard and Saturday morning show Going Live with Sarah Greene before joining breakfast show This Morning in 2002. MOTOWN star Marvin Gaye was shot by his father the day before his 45th birthday.
The Heard It Through The Grapevine and Sexual Healing singer had moved back into his parents’ house before his death and the shooting happened during a domestic row.
His father, a church minister, claimed he had acted in self-defence, but was later convicted of involuntary manslaughter. THE Danish West Indies were formally transferred to America.
The USA government paid Denmark £16 million for the Caribbean territories, which included St Croix, St John, and St. Thomas.
They were renamed United States Virgin Islands and are now popular with tourists. A RARE German coding machine from the Second World War was stolen from the Bletchley Park Museum in Buckinghamshire.
The thief carried out the cipher machine, worth more than £100,000, when the museum was open to the public.
The theft came a week before a new security system was to be installed in the building. The missing machine was sent in the post to TV presenter Jeremy Paxman several months later.