ON THIS DAY
May 18, 2020
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
MAY 18, 1916 ROYAL assent was given yesterday to the Summer Time Bill. Daylight saving is now the law of the land. It comes into force on Saturday night, when you must put your clock forward an hour just before going to bed. On Sunday, you will do everything as usual at the time by the clock.
MAY 18, 1978 THe body of Charlie Chaplin was dug up in a muddy cornfield yesterday. The spot was near a Swiss village 14 miles from the cemetery where the body was stolen 11 weeks ago. A Pole and a Bulgarian are in jail at Lausanne facing charges of having abducted the body. The men were arrested after they had called the Chaplin family lawyer asking for a ransom.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
ADWOA ABOAH, 28. The Londonborn model has appeared on the covers of U.S. and British Vogue and was last year made into a Barbie doll (right). She signed her first modelling contract at 16 but said that, as a teenager, she thought she looked ‘hideous’. Her name is Ghanaian and means ‘Monday’s child’. Her maternal great-grandfather was Anthony Lowther, Viscount Lowther, the son of the 6th earl of Lonsdale.
TOYAH WILLCOX, 62. The 5ft-tall punk rock star from Birmingham had hits with It’s A Mystery and Thunder In The Mountains. She said punk ‘woke up a sleepy world, pointed the finger at corruptions, unjust practices and hypocrisy, allowing a generation to pick up their guitars and sing. Punk is the voice that shouts the loudest from the silence of inertia.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
HEDLEY VERITY (1905-1943). The Yorkshire sportsman, who played in 40 Tests and took 1,956 first-class wickets, was killed in action in Italy during World War II. When the england team travelled to Australia for the 1954-55 Ashes series, their ship stopped in Italy so they could pay their respects to Verity, laying a Yorkshire scarf at his grave.
FRED PERRY (1909-1995). The tennis star (right) from Stockport won three consecutive Wimbledons in the 1930s. Perry, who married four times, dated Marlene Dietrich and Jean Harlow, and one U.S. columnist wrote: ‘Women fell for him like ninepins and when he went to Hollywood, male film stars went and sulked in Nevada.’
ON MAY 18 . . .
IN 1948, a train crash near Wath-on-Dearne, Yorkshire, killed eight people and injured more than 50.
IN 1953, American Jackie Cochran became the first woman to break the sound barrier, in a flight over California.