ON THIS DAY

October 17, 2018

OCTOBER 17, 1939

Evacuation has brought a new army of shoppers — the ones who shop by post. Women who used to declare, ‘I never buy anything without seeing it first,’ now write to the big stores, asking, ‘Send me anything you think suitable for the purpose.’

OCTOBER 17, 1961

JOAN COLLINS, darkhaired and wide- eyed, has just ended her engagement to actor Mr Warren Beatty. She has also just ended her contract with 20th-Century Fox and has come, therefore, to a crossroads. She said last night: ‘I have been in more truly awful films than anyone else in the history of motion pictures. If I can’t do good films, I’ll go and sell socks in a department store.’

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Felicity JONES, 35. One of the Star Wars actress’s first big breaks was playing Emma Grundy in The Archers, which she described as ‘bizarre’. ‘you’ll be saying lines with various people around making sound- effect noises,’ she said. ‘The oddest was a sheep giving birth: there was lots of yoghurt involved to make that squelching sound.’ SIR DAVID Butler, 94. The social scientist, who was in charge of four amphibious tanks in the Rhine Crossing in World War II, is nicknamed ‘the sultan of swing’ for coinventing the election swingometer, crafting the formula that converted a swing in voting percentages into seats in the Commons. Oxford academic Sir David, who joined Twitter aged 92, was also the first to use the word ‘psephology’ — the statistical study of elections — in print.

BORN ON THIS DAY

PETER STRINGFELLOW (1940-2018). The nightclub owner from Sheffield claimed to have slept with at least 2,000 women. He once said: ‘I can’t remember all their names and I hope they don’t remember me.’ He started out running dances at a church hall in Sheffield — one of his early bookings, for the princely sum of £65, was The Beatles. RITA Hayworth (191887). The u.S. actress, born Margarita Carmen Cansino, had five husbands, including actor/director Orson Welles. He said she was furious to discover that her photo had been stuck on an early atom bomb nicknamed Gilda — her title role in the film — that was tested at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean 1946.

ON OCTOBER 17…

IN 1860, the first Open golf tournament was played at Prestwick Club in Scotland.

IN 1968, black u.S. athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their black-gloved hands as a protest against racism as they received a gold and bronze medal in the 200m at the Mexico Olympics.