ON THIS DAY
OCTOBER 17, 1946
THE proprietor of the Grosvenor Court Hotel, who slapped the face of one of his chambermaids, yesterday had his action endorsed by the Margate Recorder. Reginald Arthur Alltoft’s counsel told the court the maid was shouting and screaming in a dispute with another maid. Alltoft slapped her face, not with hostile intent, but as a method of First Aid for hysterical people.
OCTOBER 17, 1967
THE Queen’s bedroom may have been bugged by a Russian spy as she stayed at a hotel near Bonn two years ago. A waiter at the hotel, 41-year-old Martin Marggraf, was one of five suspected Soviet spies arrested in West Germany. He used to fix micro-bug radio transmitters in State visitors’ rooms.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
MARGOT KIDDER, 69. The Canadian-born actress is best known for playing Lois Lane in the Superman films (pictured). In the Nineties, she had what she described as ‘the biggest nervous breakdown in history’. Thinking her husband was trying to kill her, she lived on the streets, cut off her hair and ripped out several teeth to change her dental records.
PETER STRINGFELLOW, 77. The owner of Britain’s best-known lap-dancing club says he has made ‘too many mistakes to call myself a businessman, but I’m one of the best nightclub owners the world’s ever seen’. He started out running dances at a church hall in Sheffield and within a year had booked The Beatles for £65.
BORN ON THIS DAY
JERRY SIEGEL (1914-96). The American cartoonist created Superman, a character that came to him one sleepless night in 1934. He and co-creator Joe Shuster sold their creation to DC Comics for $130 and lost a series of lawsuits to try to recover their rights. Siegel once said: ‘I can’t stand to look at a Superman comic book.’
MONTGOMERY CLIFT (1920-66). The American star of From Here to Eternity and A Place In The Sun (in which he co-starred with Elizabeth Taylor, pictured) was one of Hollywood’s first Method actors. The bachelor objected to being called a loner, saying: ‘The reason I don’t go to nightclubs is because that is where you find the really lonely.’
ON OCTOBER 17…
IN 1933, Albert Einstein moved to the U.S. to escape from Nazi Germany.
IN 1956, the Queen opened the world’s first commercial nuclear power station, Calder Hall at Sellafield.
IN 2000, four people died in the Hatfield rail crash when a cracked rail caused a highspeed passenger train to derail.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION Hoveller (coined 1769) A) A light carriage, pulled by two horses. B) Someone prematurely aged through drink and a dissolute life. C) A boatman who goes out to wrecks with a view to plundering them. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Ballpark figure: Meaning an estimate, it derives from the American game of baseball, for which a ballpark is a stadium specifically built for the sport.