Happy Anniversary: Top week for bananas

HERE are some things to celebrate in the forthcoming seven days, a bad week for formal greetings, but good for bananas:

5 April:

1895: Oscar Wilde arrested on charges arising from his friendship with Lord Alfred Douglas.

1910: Kissing banned on French railways because it might cause delays.

6 April:

1928: Handshaking banned in Rome on grounds of hygiene.

1984: Zola Budd granted British citizenship.

It is also believed to be the feast day of St Elstan (or Elfstan), a monk and community cook at Abingdon, trained by St Ethelwold, on whose orders he plunged his hand into boiling water. It emerged unscathed. He died in 981.

7 April:

1832: James Thompson sells his wife in Carlisle, after reducing the asking price from 50 shillings to 20 shillings and a Newfoundland dog.

1943: The hallucinogenic drug LSD is first synthesized.

8 April:

1986: Clint Eastwood elected as Mayor of Carmel, California.

9 April:

1747: Lord Lovat becomes the last person to be beheaded in England. It was a method of execution restricted exclusively to noblemen.

10 April:

1633: Bananas first appear on sale in Britain.

1849: Walter Hunt, of New York, patents the safety pin.

1988: China records the first case of a dog being frightened to death by television violence. The animal was startled by a scene in a German film, and ran wildly around the room until it died of a heart attack.

11 April:

1855: London's first pillar boxes are installed; they are green.

1929: Popeye first appears in a cartoon strip.

1930: New York scientists predict that a man will land on the moon by the year 2050.

1939: Glasgow bans playing darts in pubs because it is too dangerous.

1980: Dr Canaan Banana becomes the first president of Zimbabwe.