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The Seaforth News, 1956-04-05, Page 2Hood d Royal Hoasse When the Duke of Edinburgh was a 16 -year-old schoolboy at Gordonstoun, in Scotland; he was summoned one day to the headmaster's study and gently told of the death of his 26 -year - Old sister Princess Cecilia. She had been acknowledged the most beautiful of all his four sisters. And her tragic death in a 'plane crash was almost the last chapter in per- haps the strangest haunting of 111 luck ever inscribed in the dark books fo fate. Can anyone truly he born un- lucky? Let's turn back the pages to 1843 when, only a few hours before Queen Victoria's Second daughter was born, re- latives called on the Queen to commiserate with her about a death in the family. Amid this atmosphere of mourning little Princess Alice, the Duke of Edinburgh's great - grandmoth- or, entered the world. From the first Queen Victoria seems to have had a foreboding of what was in store for her daughter. The Prince Consort noticed that "poor, dear, little Alice" was always in trouble. "I shall not let her marry," the Queen noted in her journal, "as long as I can reasonably delay doing so." But Princess Alice was only 17 when, at the customary Windsor house party held for the Ascot races, she met hand- some Prince Louis of Hesse, nephew and heir of the reign- ing Grand Duke. Within a few months he pro- posed. Yet scarcely was the en- gagement announced than the Queen's mother died and the court was plunged into rimm- ing. The wedding had to be de- ferred. And arrangements were no sooner resumed than the Prince Consort himself was suddenly seized with his fatal Illness — and the Queen, on realizing she was a widow, gave that single fearful scream that has passed into history. Alice was married at last in ND EARLY PICKIN' Smart apples In Wenatchee, Wash., believe that an apple a day — until May — is good advance pub- ikity for the 37th annual Washington State Apple Blos- som Festival. They've picked their fairest blossom well ahead art time as Apple Blossom Queen. She's Jolly Ann Sachs, lig-year-old high school senior. an atmosphere of tears mopped up by black - edged handker- chiefs. It was scarcely a happy day. And with these threaten- ing omens the train of malig- nant events was set in motion. Within three years her coun- try was plunged into the Aus- tro -Prussian war, her husband was torn f r o m her side for military duties and Alice watched her newly adopted peo- ple in flight. The resulting peace left her so poor that she had to patch and mend her chil- dren's clothes herself. But worse was in store. Alice was devoted to her children, especially her two boys, Ernst and 2 -year-old Fritty. One dread May morning, as they were playing near a window, little Fr i t t y overbalanced — and plunged to his der t h in the courtyard below. Her grief knew no bounds. Affected by the shock, young Ernst would often awake from sleep, screaming. "Why can't we all die together?" the heart- broken little boy would moan. During one of these spells of distress, when he was ill with diphtheria, the Princess took him in her arms to comfort him and so fatally contracted the fever herself. It is small wonder, in fact, if all Europe whispered of the hoodoo on the great House of Hesse. As the years passed, the trend of misfortune seemed to develop ever deeper under- tones. Then one of Alice's daught- ers, Alix, married the Tsar of Russia. It was at her corona- tion that hundreds of people were killed and thousands in- jured in a ghastly crowd stam- pede. As the last Tsarina she was murdered by the Bolshevik revolutionaries in h a t grim cellar at Ekaterinburg. Another daughter, Elizabeth, married the Grand Duke Serge. When he was assassinated in 1905 she entered a convent as if to escape the curse — only to share her sister's fate when the revolutionaries hurled her to her doom down the shaft of a disused mine thirteen years later. Only Alice's eldest daughter escaped this appaling sequence. Marrying a cousin, she founded the present Mountbatten line and we knew her as the Dow- ager Marchioness of Milford Haven. In happier vein, it was from her home in Kensington Palace that the Duke of Edin- burgh left for his marriage in Westminster Abbey,. But the curse saga of ill luck traces through the orphaned Ernst who, so innumerable were family tragedies, became Grand Duke when only 23. His marri- age was bitterly unhappy. "I will never try to arrange a mar- riage again," said Queen Vic- toria, and ultimately the affair ended in the scandal of divorce. A daughter had been born but she died so suddenly, during a visit to Hesse of the Tsar, that rumour -mongers feared she had been a victim by mistake in a poison plot. Grand Duke Ernst married again and this time found a measure of happiness with his new wife, Princess Eleanore, and their two fine sons, George and Louis. Yet as if to defy him there came the first world war and the collapse of Germany, reducing the familiar world he had known to ruins. It can be argued that others are involved in wars, that soon - JUST LIKE OLD TIMES—Chit-chat of the general store post etfice makes a halfway comeback with installation of this stamp• vending machine at the Federal Building Post Office in Detroit, Mich: When money is deposited, user dials number and denomi- nation of stamps required. Out come the stamps and a polite, tape-recorded "thank you". Seasonal messages, such as "mail eorly for Christmas," may also be recorded from time to time as a reminder to customers. OUT OF THIS WORLD—Flashbulbs popped almost as fast as he rocket sled traveled when screen actress Cathy Marlowe pop- ped up recently at Holloman Air Development Center, N.M. The blonde bombshell was at the outer space experimental center for the premier of "On the Threshold of Space", in which she has a part. She stole the show, even from Lt. Col. John Paul Stapp, holder of the world's groundspeed record. Strapped in a rocket sled, she's shown above with Stapp, who traveled 632 m.p.h. in a similar sled. er or later deaths occur in ev- ery family. But the Hesse hor- ror was still to reach its ter- rible denouement. The Duke of Edinburgh's sis- ter, lovely Princess Cecilia, mar- ried young Prince George and came to live with the family in the quiet little palace at Wolfs- garten. Soon the young couple were raising their own family, two boys and a girl. The young PrinceLouis, who had been working in England, wrote home that he, too, was to marry. His choice was the pretty daughter of Lord Ged- des. And once again the evil destiny of the Hesse family took a dreadful course. Amid the wedding prepara- tions, the Grand Duke Ernst died, To be sure, he was now nearly 70 and had endured a long illness. But defiantly Prin- cess Eleanore decided that this time a funeral should not im- pede a wedding. She had chartered a 'plane in order to fly to London for the ceremony. With a farewell wave Princess Cecilia, Prince George and their children all climbed aboard. The plane crashed in flames. There were no survivors. For Ernst who as a small boy had whimpered, "Why can't we all die together?" the ghastly wish was at last fulfiilled. With this culminating tragedy the hoo- doo seemed at last to lose its strength ... save for one final flare-up. The Duke of Edinburgh's youngest sister, Princess' So- phie, had married a kinsman, Prince Christopher of Hesse. To the dismay of her family he joined the S.S., rose high on Himmler's staff — and he, too, was killed in an air crash. in 1943. Fortunately, Princess Sophie has since remarried and found happiness. For Prince Louis, too, there has been no grim se- quel. From Princess Alice's birth in 1843 to 1943, the Hesse hoo- doo had ghoulishly blanketed four generations. Coincidence or curse? How can this century of sinister mis. forutne be explained? IUJN ON TIIE BANK Dizzy Dean always fancied himself as a hitter. Pitching for Houston one day, he clouted a homer in the third inning. As inning after inning went by, the run loomed bigger and bigger. In the seventh inning, Dizzy suddenly lost control and walked three men in a row. The Houston manager promptly yanked him. ' Instead of going to the show- ers, Dizzy ran out to the scoreboard and removed the marker indicating the one run. He tucked it into his hip pocket and started heading for the clubhouse. The manager came dashing after him with blood in his eye. "What's the idea, Dean?" he bellowed. "Darn it, skip," replied Dean, "if you ain't gonna let me pitch, I ain't gonna let you have my run." TOPKNOT — So brimful of style is this hat that there's no room allowance for a crown. Hair is worn in a chignon to hold the cocktail number in place. It's a Paris creation, fashioned of vel- vet and styled by Laud Sinko. STUDY IN BROWN Inasmuch as Yogi Berra's favorite literature is comics, he was always in awe of his ex - roommate, Bobby Brown. Bobby now a full-fledged doctor, al- ways carried something "heavy" With him. One evening Yogi saw Bobby poring Over a fat text on ana- tomy. Yogi didn't say anything until he saw Bobby close the thick volume, then he brightly asked, "Hey, Bobby, how did it come out?" Costly Feathers Off on his 53th trip to the Far East recently was Mr. Wil- fred Frost, London Zoo's 78 - year -old collector, who sailed for Western New Guinea in search of the world's lovelist birds — the magnificently plu- med birds of paradise. There are 50 different species of these rare birds which de- rive their name from the an- cient belief that they original- ly came from "paradise." Why? Because they always fly high above the forest trees with their legs hidden. They are never seen to land. • Before laws were passed pro- hibiting the sale of birds of paradise feathers for millin- ery purposes, rich women wore them in their hats. In Paris $1,250 was once paid for a single bird of paradise feather. Queer native legends still linger about birds of paradise— that they have .no wings, but float on the air supported by their trailing plumes, that they live on dew and that the fe- male bird lays her eggs in a hollow on the back of the male. Male birds of paradise have a beauty unsurpassed by any- thing in nature. Their plumage is tinted with all the hues o1 the rainbow. To see a bird of paradise flit through a forest glade, like a flash of multi -col oured light, makes the sp-rtat- or almast brlist.e he has stray- ed into some eel sfial re.Jin. HOW COLOUR CAN AFFECT YOUR LIFE "Cover the red paint on your bridge and people will stop jumsuggested of to Bristol it," architect Trades Council 'recently • when the number of people who had jumped off the famous 185 - foot -high Clifton Suspension Bridge was being discussed. klis theory was based on the fact that red is tile most excit- ing colour and might affect someone who was highly strung. The red is red oxide to pro- tect the bridge, and the sugges- tion was that if white oxide were used the average of four people a year who have jump- ed from the bridge in the last half -century would drop. His suggestion hasbeen ap- proved. But Clifton Suspension will not be the first bridge to have its colour changed to dis- courage people from jumping off it, Blackfriars Bridge, London, once had the worst reputation amongst Thames bridges for people throwing themselves in- to the river. Someone suggest- ed it was due to ironwork be- ing painted brown. The brown was eliminated in favour of green and the number of sui- cides fell by one-third. - Colour rules our thoughts, moods and health more than we realize. Airline operators know that if they introduced browns and yellows into the interior decoration of their air- craft they would get a rise in the number of cases of air -sick- ness. When before the war deep escalators were being intro- duced into London Tubes, some passengers complained that looking down made them ner- vous. By accident, the plain white roof of one of the great sloping tunnels became damp. The colouring immediately removed the "looking over a cliff" ef- fect. Learning from this, the underground designers tinted the tunnels, and there were no more complaints. Colour can even alter the weight of a box -- or seem to. In one factory men complained that boxes they had to lift were too heavy. The boxes were black. The colour was changed to pale green. The weight was unchanged, but there were no more complaints about strained backs. All factories 'now are "colour - conscious," knowing that col - Ours can affect the mood, ef fi- cency, and warmth of the workers. A shoe factory was producing a lot of fautly work. Instead of blaming the care- lessness of the workers, the manager looked at the ma- chines and realised that work- ers were sewing black shoes with black thread on black ma- chines. The machines were painted green and buff. The number of mistakes immediately dropped and output increased. In another factory there were always complaints that it was cold. The engineers knew it wasn't cold, because the tem- perature was automatically con- trolled. But the walls were blue. When they were repaint- ed a deep pink, everyone said: "Thank goodness they've heat- ed the place up a bit." The Temperature Was Exactly The Same! Blues in pastel colours are especially restful and relaxing. A restaurant owner was wor- ried about the time customers lingered over their meals, be- cause he needed a quick turn- over to make a profit. "Redeco- rate in reds and yellows," said a colour expert. People started to eat -up and go or reerder, and the turnover increased fif- ty per cent. Another cafe ended custom- ers' complaints that it was al- ways chilly, not by ordering more heat, but by changing the light blue decorations for some with orange predominating in the colour scheme. The right colour makes you buy. A chain store found bacon sales increased by half when the slices were under Red light. It made them look more appe- tising. Pale Blue light makes fish look fresh, and a Golden Yellow light gives fruit an ap- petising "bloom." . In food, red is the colour of appetite. It is not only the to- mato taste, but also the tomato colour that makes tomato sauces and dishes so popular. Lobster flesh is white, but the red sheIi , makes it taste twice as good. Colours of iced cakes affect their popularity, even though they all taste the same. A large scale experiment with 21 dif- ferent c o lour combinations 1 showed that yellow and mauve decorations sold cakes fastest, with white icing and red deco- rations second. Lime green with scarlet was third. Picking the right colours increased cake sales by one-eighth. Ask ten people to name a colour—not their favourite col- our, but just "a colour," and seven will say red., It is the colour that atracts most wo- men, the colour that stimulates. An American football couch claimed that his team won, more matches after he changed the colour of the rooms where they changed and rested at half-time, He had one done in red for "pep talks," and one in blue for rest. You can make use of colour in your own life. A girl was very fond of a man who sem. felt was very fond of her, but he wouldn't come to the point. She was told by a colour ex- pert: "Wear a white dress next time he takes you out" She Did, And He Proposed. White makes a woman look more "helpless' and desirable. But a blonde who wears red will never get married, accord- ing to this expert. She will at- tract the "playboys" like flies, but scare the serious man. Another colour expert says he has saved marriages by changing the decorations in the home. A "moody" wife became a different woman when her grey -green walls with brown woodwork. were changed to peach with ivory wodwork. A girl whose emotional outbursts ,,. threatened her marriage was changed when the glaring de- corations her husband had cho- sen for the home were changed to quiet tones of blue and green. If you are apt to "See Red" make sure your decorations don't encourage it. If you get "The Blues," avoiding blues and greens may help. Careful thinking before decorating may change your life. ^,� 3.15 46;79'$CEY "S'or the last time—I don't even know HOW to chuck wood:" FUND HONORS SUZAN BALL -- National co-chairman of the newly organized, permanent Suzan Ball Memorial Fund are screen stars Dick Powell and June Allyson, shown above in Los Angeles examining the certificate naming them to the post. The Fund's objectives are to raise money for cancer research and alleviate the suffering of cancer victims. Suzan Ball, popu- lar motion picture actress, died of cancer last year. A goal of one million dollars in 1956 has been set for the drive, which will start soon. c1