Three greats of the cinema were born today but not in the same year. Sydney Greenstreet (1879) was a marvellous heavy (literally!) in noir films like The Maltese Falcon. Marlene Dietrich (1901) was a fine-boned German actress who smouldered magnificently in The Blue Angel and Destry Rides Again. And then there was Gerard Depardieu ...
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The world was changed forever today in 1831 when HMS Beagle set sail from Devonport on a five year scientific expedition. On board was young Charles Darwin who would take one look at the wrinkly old critters on the Galapagos Islands and know at once that the Old Testament was just a story about Jewish folk. He immediately went into print (28 years later) with his book Origin of Species.
