Sharapova’s shorts shrift
QUESTION Other than Nancy Richey in the Sixties, has any top female tennis player worn shorts rather than a skirt or a dress?
ROMANIAN star Simona Halep wore shorts when she was knocked out of the Wimbledon quarterfinals this month by Britain’s Johanna Konta.
Russian Maria Sharapova caused a stir in 2008 when she wore a pair of shorts. The tuxedo-style top and shorts weren’t a hit with her fellow Russian opponent, Alla Kudryavtseva, who, having knocked out Sharapova in the second round, said: ‘I was pleased to beat her – I didn’t like her outfit.’ In 2011, Venus Williams wore a gold belted zip-up onesie that looked like a pair of shorts.
The most memorable Wimbledon costume of all time, however, must go to Anne White, who caused a stir when she wore a tight-fitting white Spandex catsuit with leg warmers in 1985. Emma Barrington, Bray, Berks.
QUESTION What contribution to medicine in the US was made by Johns Hopkins? His name arises from time to time in medical dramas.
JOHNS HOPKINS was born on May 19, 1795, in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, one of 11 children of Quaker tobacco planter Samuel Hopkins (1759-1814) and his wife Hannah (nee Janney).
Hopkins left school at the age of 12 to work in the family fields after his parents, in accordance with their Quaker conscience, emancipated their slaves.
At the age of 17, Hopkins went to live with his uncle in Baltimore to learn the wholesale grocery business. After they quarrelled in 1819 when his uncle refused to allow farmers to pay for goods in whiskey, Hopkins went into business with three of his brothers.
Hopkins Brothers prospered, delivering goods throughout the mid-Eastern seaboard of the US. The firm accepted payment in whiskey, which it sold on as Hopkins’ Best. Johns Hopkins devoted himself to the business, never travelling, not marrying and seldom spending money on personal pleasures.
He amassed a fortune by investing wisely in Baltimore real estate and businesses. He was also a director of several banks and a major investor in insurance com- panies, warehouses and steamship lines.
Six years before his death, Hopkins organised two corporations, one for a hospital and one for a university, and his will divided $7million between them.
He died on December 24, 1873, leaving a remarkable legacy. His bequest was used to found the Johns Hopkins Coloured Children Orphan Asylum in 1875; the Johns Hopkins University in 1876; the Johns Hopkins Press, the longest continuously operating academic press in America, in 1878; the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in 1889; the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1893 (admitting women on an equal footing with men); and the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in 1916.
Sixteen Nobel laureates are associated with the School of Medicine and the hospital was ranked top in the US every year from 1991 to 2011. Its pioneering research facilities are renowned, so it’s small wonder that its name crops up in TV dramas.
Penny Hall, Oxford.
QUESTION Do the Lidl and Aldi supermarket chains have any family connections?
IT has long been suggested that Lidl was started by a member of the family that owns Aldi and that this breakaway was the result of a family feud, but this isn’t the case. But Aldi is far older than Lidl, dating back to 1913. The Lidl company dates back to 1930, but it didn’t go into the supermarket business until 1977.
Aldi was started in June 1913, when Karl Albrecht’s wife began trading with a small shop in a suburb of Essen in Germany. The Albrechts had two children, Karl Jr, born in 1920 and Theo, born in 1922. Those two children went on to control what became the worldwide Aldi chain.
Karl and Theo took over their mother’s shop in 1946, just after the end of the Second World War, and started their discount supermarket chain. By 1954, they had a total of 50 branches.
In 1960, the two brothers had a row over whether or not cigarettes should be sold at tills and, as a result, the Aldi chain was split into two parts. Karl Albrecht became head of Aldi Sud, which controls Aldi in Ireland, while his brother Theo headed up Aldi Nord.
The following year, 1961, the term Aldi was introduced for all the shops, an abbreviation of Albrecht Discount. The two Aldi operations have long been legally and financially separate.
Aldi Sud set up in Ireland in 1999, a year ahead of Lidl, and by 2017 had 124 retail outlets in the Republic; it doesn’t trade in Northern Ireland.
Lidl has entirely different family origins in Germany. The company dates back to 1930, when Josef Schwarz became a partner in a fruit wholesaling company that included the name of another partner, a man called Lidl, in its title. Under the influence of Josef Schwarz, the company developed into a general food wholesaler, but its operations were destroyed in the Second World War.
After the war, the company was revived and began reconstructing itself, billing itself as the Schwarz Gruppe. In the early 1970s, Josef Schwarz’s son, Dieter, began developing discount stores copying the Aldi format.
He didn’t want to use the trading name of Schwarz Markt as this means black market in German. He wanted to use instead the name of his father’s former business partner, Herr Lidl, but for legal reasons he couldn’t. He then discovered a retired school teacher called Ludwig Lidl and bought the rights to his name from him.
The first Lidl discount store opened in 1973. These days, Lidl, like Aldi, is a truly global organisation. It has more than 10,000 stores in every EU country bar Latvia, has opened in the US, and plans to start a chain in Australia.
Here in Ireland, as of 2017, it had 190 stores across the island.
Aldi also has more than 10,000 stores worldwide, including outlets in 14 EU countries, in Switzerland, in the US and in Australia.
Here in the Republic, the number of its stores is more than 60 behind Lidl’s all-Ireland total. Joe Hyland, Carrick-on-Shannon.
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