Why so shy, girls?

What’s the matter, girls? Don’t you want to be Carnival Queen? We cannot believe that nowadays girls are growing too shy to enter for the honour of leading the Watford Whitsun Carnival and attending the dozens of dances and other events that go with this annual reign. The fact remains, however, that with only a week to go, only six entries have been received. This is fewer than ever before. But there is still ample time to enter.

[April 1, 1966]

Wife waited 25 years

For 25 years Mrs Ada Priscilla Emily Mayes, of Borehamwood, knew that her husband, Jack, was living with another woman, said the Judge in the Divorce Court on Friday. It was not, however, until the husband’s mistress died last May that she decided to take divorce proceedings. “I formed the view it may have been that she was merely being spiteful and that while her husband was living with his mistress she would not divorce him and allow him to remarry,” the Judge continued.

[April 1, 1966]

Students’ Rag disaster

Rain, bitter cold, wind and apathy turned last week’s College of Technology Rag into the most disastrous fiasco they have ever staged. And it looks as though much of the profit will be swallowed by expenses.

[April 1, 1966]

Atomic war will come

A serious warning that ‘either by accident or design’ there would be an atomic war in the near future unless we took urgent action to prevent it, was given by the Reverend Paul Oestricher at the Watford Peace Conference on Saturday.

[April 8, 1966]

Fortune smiles on young people

Young people of Watford are lucky! Geography has placed them in a position which is the envy of their contemporaries in other parts of the country. Not for them the agonising decision at too early an age, to leave the comforts of home, the roots, friends, companions and familiar scenes. All that could be desired is right on their own doorstep.

[April 8, 1966]

Traffic wardens getting ready

Watford’s new traffic wardens go into a fortnight’s special training next week in readiness to start their street duties on May 2, in their blue police-type uniforms. There will be about 20 wardens, mostly women, supervised by senior wardens. Their main function is to deal with breaches in traffic waiting regulations; not to interrogate drivers, nor impose or collect on-the-spot fines.

[April 15, 1966]

Leavesden Hospital School opened

The visit of HRH Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent, on Tuesday afternoon, to open the new £68,000 school building for its mentally sub-normal child patients marked the start of another important chapter in the long history of Leavesden Hospital.

[April 22, 1966]

Cawdells in six day switch

Cawdells’ Watford High Street store has declared UDI by deciding to start a six day trading week as from next Monday – to combat shopping chaos! Three months ago the department stores ‘Big Four’ – Clements, Trewins, Cawdells and Watford Co-Op’s Gade House – agreed to operate a five day shopping week by closing all day Monday and opening all day Wednesday. Cawdells’ “unilateral declaration of independence” came as a surprise to the other three.

[April 29, 1966]

What was happening in the world in April 1966?

• 10,000 protestors marched through the streets of Da Nang in South Vietnam, denouncing both the United States and the South Vietnamese government (April 2)

• The Soviet lunar probe Luna 10 became the first man-made object to orbit the Moon (April 3)

• So Sau Chung began a hunger strike at the entrance of the Star Ferry Terminal in Hong Kong, sparking the Hong Kong 1966 riots (April 4)

• The first congregational hearing about UFOs was convened in Washington (April 5)

• Mihir Sen became the first person to swim across the 33 mile wide Palk Strait between India and Sri Lanka (April 6)

• After an 80 day operation, the United States finally recovered a hydrogen bomb that had been lost off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean Sea (April 7)

• One of the most controversial covers of TIME Magazine was released – a black background and, in bold red letters, the question ‘Is God Dead?’ (April 8)

• Sandoz Pharmaceuticals discontinued all further American sales of LSD due to ‘unforeseen public reaction’ (April 11)

• For the first time, North Vietnam was bombed by American B-52 blames (April 12)

• The President of Iraq, Abdul Salam Arif, was killed in a helicopter crash, along with 10 of his aides (April 13)

• The three convicted assassins of Malcolm X were each sentenced to life in prison (April 14)

• A mob of 2,000 Indonesian Chinese protestors attacked the Embassy of the People’s Republic in China (April 15)

• The millennium of the founding of the nation of Poland was celebrated (April 16)

• The Prime Minister of Rhodesia, Ian Smith, announced that his nation was severing the last of its ties to the UK (April 17)

• The Cultural Revolution was officially proclaimed in the People’s Republic of China (April 18)

• The first official sporting event ever placed on AstroTurf took place at the Houston Aerodrome in Texas (April 18)

• The Sound of Music earned five Oscars at the 38th Academy Awards (April 18)

• Roberta Gibb became the first woman to run in the Boston Marathon (April 19)

• Ian Brady and Myra Hindley went on trial for the murders of three children (April 19)

• 60 people were killed when a terrorist bomb exploded in a passenger train in Lumding, India (April 20)

• For the first time, an artificial heart was installed in a human being (April 21)

• 175 people were killed when the Kelud volcano in Indonesia erupted (April 25)

• The first edition of the British newspaper Morning Star was issued (April 25)

• An attempt to assassinate the Sultan of Oman, Said bin Taimur, failed (April 26)

• The Battle of Sinoia in Rhodesia. The anniversary is now celebrated as Chimurenga Day, marking the beginning of black liberation from the white minority government (April 28)

• The body of Prince Frederick of Prussia was found in the Rhine river two weeks after he went missing (April 30)