100 candles
Some of those who are due to be celebrating hundredth birthdays in 2012:
3 February Mary Carlisle, US actress who starred alongside Bing Crosby in Doctor Rhythm
8 April Alois Brunner, assistant to Adolf Eichmann, never brought to justice and still believed to be living under the name Dr Georg Fischer in Damascus
28 April Kaneto Shindo, Japanese film director best known for making films about the bombing of his home city, Hiroshima
4 July Said Akl, Lebanese poet and nationalist
1 October Kathleen Ollerenshaw, mathematician who overcame deafness to become head of mathematics at Manchester University and education adviser to Mrs Thatcher
17 December Ted Short, former education secretary and deputy leader of the Labour party
Titanic connection
1912 has a strong association with the sinking of the Titanic, the 100th anniversary of which falls on the night of 14/15 April. What would the lost passengers have found going on in the America of 1912 had they arrived?
—New Mexico and Arizona had just become respectively the 47th and 48th states of the US.
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