On this day in 1974 a Japanese soldier on the island of Lubang in the Philippines finally surrendered. Everybody else had given up on World War II after the Enola Gay and co dropped their bombloads on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but clearly the news hadn't reached Lubang.
God knows how traumatised this latter day Ben Gunn must have been or how he survived, but his back pay on his war pension must have been stonking!
In other news ...
Ninety eight years ago, Ms Mary Richardson went berserk in the National Gallery. Was it the cost of the delicacies in the tea rooms? The fumes given off by so much gouache and oils? N, Ms Richardson was a Suffragette and was suddenly incensed by the sight of Velasquez' Rokeby Venus. She attacked it with a meat cleaver. No doubt she would claim she did so because that sort of painting degrades women, but it seems a particularly dastardly attack because neither the Venus nor Velasquez could fight back.
I personally believe that Ms Richardson was furious because the Venus had a nicer bum than she did. But it's not my place to say so.
