1952

LIFE was busy for Mrs Doreen Gorsky, Liberal candidate for Swindon at the forthcoming General Election and president of the Women's Liberal Federation. She was also in the midst of organising the new Married Women's Council and helping to arrange London's first festival of Italian cinema. Mrs Gorsky lived in Bayswater, was married to a doctor and had four children.

IT was discovered that signposts along the Swindon to Malmesbury road didn't agree with one another over the distance between the two communities. Near the Somerford junction, for example, the distances on the signs added up to a total of 16 miles, while a sign near Brinkworth shaved half a mile from that total. At Coped Hall, meanwhile, a signpost said there were 10 miles to Malmesbury and five to Swindon.

1962

ACCLAIMED Swindonian silk screen artist Douglas Mazonowicz, 41, was about to head for the French Pyrenees and Northern Spain to examine prehistoric cave paintings. His full-scale reproductions of such images, which he began creating a decade earlier, had earned plenty of favourable attention from critics. The artist credited his former teacher at Clarence Street School, Mr J Maisey, with encouraging him to pursue his vocation. Mr Maisey went on to become head of Walcot East Junior School. Douglas Mazonowicz went on to further success and died in New York, aged 80.

SINGER Carole Jackson, 17, of Penhill Drive, was to make her television debut early the following month. We said: "Carole, who wings with the Billy Morgan Dance Band - the resident band at the Moonrakers, Swindon, is travelling to Bristol on April14 to pre-record her part in the fourth of a new series of musical shows which starts tomorrow."

1972

SWINDON Workers Educational Association announced a series of four lectures about the discovery and excavation of Tutankhamen's tomb. They were to be delivered by archaeologist Bryn Walters, and participants would also go on a field trip to London, where a travelling exhibition devoted to Tutankhamen was being held.

SWINDON couple Menia and Frederick Priestley celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. When they met, a year before their wedding, Mr Priestley, 87, was working for the stores department of the GWR and Mrs Priestley, 85, worked in the cafe at Swindon Station.

THE WORLD

1581: Queen Elizabeth I knighted Francis Drake on his ship Golden Hind at

Deptford after he completed his circumnavigation of the world.

1915: Blues singer Muddy Waters was born in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, as

McKinley Morganfield.

1949: Eleven countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington.

1958: The first protest march by CND left Hyde Park, London, for Aldermaston, Berkshire.

1964: The Beatles held the first five places in the US singles chart with Can't

Buy Me Love, Twist And Shout, She Loves You, I Want To Hold Your Hand and

Please, Please Me.

1968: Martin Luther King, civil rights leader, was shot dead in Memphis,

Tennessee, by James Earl Ray.

1981: Bob Champion, who had conquered cancer, won the Grand National on

Aldaniti, who had recovered from tendon problems and a broken hock.

1988: The TV soap opera Crossroads ended after 24 years with episode 4,510.

2010: 114 miners trapped in a flooded mine for more than a week in Shanxi,

China, were rescued.

2017: A 59.6 carat diamond, known as the Pink Star, sold for $71.2 million at a Sotheby's auction in Hong Kong, setting

a new world record for any diamond or jewel.

BIRTHDAYS

Craig T Nelson, actor, 74; Dave Hill, rock guitarist (Slade), 72;

David E Kelley, producer and screenwriter, 62; Jonathan Agnew, cricket

correspondent, 58; Robert Downey Jr, actor, 53; Karren Brady,

businesswoman/author, 49; David Blaine, illusionist, 45; Lemar, singer, 40.