Born on this Day 9th April
1893 Sir Victor Gollancz
1900 Allen Jenkins
1909 Sir Robert Helpmann
1926 Hugh Hefner
1928 Tom Lehrer
1932 Carl Perkins
1933 John-Paul Belmondo
1937 Valerie Singleton
1941 Hannah Gordon
1954 Dennis Quaid
1957 Severiano Ballesteros
1971 Jacques Villeneuve

Died on this Day
1988 Brook Benton
1990 Darrel Glenn
2001 Nyree Dawn Porter

Music
1984 Irene Cara’s hit ‘Flashdance…What A Feeling’, won the Academy Award for best film song.

1988 The Pet Shop Boys scored their 4th No.1 with ‘Heart’, equalling the record for duo’s held jointly by the Everley Brothers and Wham!.

1993 It was claimed that pop stars Bobby Brown and wife Whitney Houston were keeping their love lives alive by making kinky phone calls.

Sport
1990 Nick Faldo became only the second player to win the US Masters tournament twice in succession, after beating Ray Floyd in a sudden-death play-off.

1997 After two lady golfers were reported to have both scored a hole-in-one on the same hole at the Trentham golf course in Stoke-On-Trent, local news reporters were astounded to see one of the ladies score another in the same hole while they were being interviewed. The estimated odds of the frst two holes was 500,000-1, but they went up to 15,000.000-1 with the third shot.

People & Showbiz
1963 Winston Churchill was awarded honarary American citizenship by President Kennedy.

1989 The village of Hansbury in Hereford and Worcester, which was the inspiration for the Radio 4 series ‘The Archers’ was under threat by developers who wanted to build 1,500 homes on the site.

General Events
1961 150 people were thought to have died in a fire which swept through the British liner Dara in the Persian Gulf.

1969 Concorde 002, the first British Concorde, made its maiden flight from Bristol to Fairford in Gloucestershire..

1969 Sikh bus crews in Wolverhampton won a two year battle to be allowed to wear turbans to work..

1983 Celebrated explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, who had completed a 3 year 52,000 mile trans-global expedition which took in both poles, revealed that he was living on just £50 a week.

1984 William McFall from Balsall hEath, Birmingham, was accused of murder after becoming so annoyed at the noise made by a nearby party that he fired a shot into a crowded room.

1989 The Science Museum announced that the site for the National Museum of Food and Farming, the first of its kind, was to be at Stoneleigh, Warwickshire.

1993 30 women were being questioned by detectives after an Essex hynotherapist was accused of sexually assaulting and filming almost 40 of his patients.

1995 A piece of wing fell from a Jumbo jet approaching Gatwick airport. An engineer flying as a passenger had given the crew a drawing showing that it was loose two hours before it came off. The panel landed in a field near Newdigate in Surrey, narrowly missing houses and farm buildings. The pilot brought the aircrart under control and made a safe touchdown.

1995 The Family Policies Studies Centre forecast that 20% of women born in the 60s,70s and 80s will be childless.The cost to women in lost earnings is thought to be a factor, as is the feeling that couples may decide that they cannot afford a family because of the lack of support given to people with children.