Princess Alice gave up her titles of Princess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and Duchess of Saxony, but her brother Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, who held a commission in the German Army, did not and was stripped of his British titles instead. Alice stayed, a Princess of Great Britain and Ireland and a Royal Highness in her own right, as granddaughter of Queen Victoria in the male line. From June 1917 until her death, she was styled Her Royal Highness Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone.
The Earl was appointed Governor-General of the Union of South Africa and served from 1924-31: Princess Alice accompanied him and was the Vicereine during that period. Lord and Lady Athlone had a coastal beach house constructed at Muizenberg, which still stands today and is one of South Africa's national monuments. The Cape Town Suburb of Athlone was named in honour of the Governor-General and it and the beach house are the only physical reminder of the Athlones' residence at the Cape.
On the sudden death of the very popular John Buchan in 1940 Canada was without a Governor General in time of war. For a long time Canadian governments had intended appointing only Canadians as governors general — Australia had long since done so with the appointment of Sir Isaac Isaacs as its governor general. But wartime did not seem the right time for such a move. As the Royal Family had got a lot of public support during the Royal Tour of 1939, Lord Athlone seemed a very good candidate. He was Queen Mary's brother (and thus the King's uncle) and a former governor general of another of His Majesty's Dominions and Mackenzie King advised the King to appoint him.
Princess Alice accompanied her husband to Canada where he was Governor General from 1940–1946.
It does not appear that the Athlones left any lasting mark in Canada, or indeed conducted any public works, delivered any speeches or performed any works of lasting value, though photos of the Earl with Roosevelt, Churchill and Mackenzie King on the ramparts of the Citadel during the Quebec Conference were amply published at the time.
At the end of World War II, the American Military Government in Bavaria, under the command of General George S. Patton, arrested and imprisoned Alice's brother, Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, (who was a member of the Reichstag from 1937 to 1945), because of his Nazi sympathies. Alice, came to Germany with her husband to plead with for his release. They would not yield, and in 1946, he was sentenced by a de-nazification court, heavily fined and almost bankrupted.
In her lifetime, Princess Alice carried out many Royal duties. Apart from her normal duties as Vicereine of South Africa and then Canada, she attended the Coronations of four monarchs: Edward VII, George V, George VI, and Elizabeth II. She was also the Colonel-in-Chief of two British Army units and one Rhodesian Army unit. During the Second World War, she was Honorary Air Commandant of the Royal Canadian Air Force Women's Division. In 1950, she became the first Chancellor of the University of the West Indies (then the University College of the West Indies). From the 1930s-60s she was Chair of the Council (governing body) of Royal Holloway College, University of London.
The Earl of Athlone died in 1957 at Kensington Palace in London. Princess Alice lived on there until 1981, when she died at age 97 years and 313 days. At her death, she was the longest-lived British Princess of the Blood Royal and the last surviving grandchild of Queen Victoria.
Her funeral took place in St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle, attended by all members of the Royal Family. She is buried alongside her husband and son in the private British Royal Burial Grounds at Frogmore, directly behind the mausoleum of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, in Windsor Great Park. Her daughter and son-in-law are also buried close by.
She lived through six reigns:- Victoria (grandmother), Edward VII (uncle), George V (cousin and brother-in-law), Edward VIII (nephew), George VI (nephew) and Elizabeth II (grand-niece).
As a granddaughter of Queen Victoria in the male line, Princess Alice was entitled to use the Royal Arms, with a 5-point label as a difference, the central point bearing a cross gules, the others hearts gules.
Until George V's warrant of 1917, her arms, like all those of Prince Albert's British royal descendants, bore an inescutcheon for Saxony.
André Theuriet
Claude Adhémar André Theuriet (8 October 1833, Marly-le-Roi - 23 April 1907) French poet and novelist, was born at Marly-le-Roi (Seine et Oise).
Theuriet studied law in Paris and became a civil servant. He retired as a civil servant in 1886, almost 20 years after his first published book was issued. The was the "Chemin des bois", a collection of poems, many of which had already appeared in the "Revue des Deux Mondes".
Theuriet received in 1890 the from the French Academy, and was made a member of the Academy in 1896.
An omelette of truffles & asparagus has been named after him.
Oliver Smithies
Oliver Smithies (23 June 1925 – 10 January 2017) was a British-American geneticist and Nobel laureate,
He invented gel electrophoresis in 1955, which is now one of the basic techniques of biochemistry and molecular biology.
Much later, he worked on the technique of homologous recombination of transgenic DNA with genomic DNA. This is the most reliable method of altering animal genomes at present, and the technique behind gene targeting and knockout mice.
Martin Evans and Mario Capecchi were also working on this idea, and they were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2007.
Danica McKellar
Danica Mae McKellar (born January 3, 1975) is an American actress and mathematician. She is best known for playing Winnie Cooper in "The Wonder Years". She also starred in several television movies.
She is also a "New York Times" bestselling author. She wrote four popular non-fiction books: "Math Doesn't Suck", "Kiss My Math", "Hot X: Algebra Exposed" and "Girls Get Curves: Geometry Takes Shape". The books are meant to encourage middle-school and high-school girls to have confidence and succeed in mathematics.
She married composer Mike Verta on March 22, 2009, in La Jolla, California. The couple had dated since 2001. They had their first child on September 7, 2010, a boy they named Draco. McKellar filed for divorce from Verta in June 2012.
Sleepwalking
Sleepwalking, or somnambulism, is a disorder belonging to the parasomnia family of sleeping problems.
People with this disorder leave bed, without waking up, and walk around. In certain cases, people do things they also do in everyday life. According to research done, sleepwalking seems to be a problem related to the mechanism of waking up.
The activities can be as simple as sitting up in bed, walking to the bathroom, and cleaning. Sometimes they are dangerous; examples include cooking, driving, extremely violent gesture or grabbing at hallucinated objects, or even homicide.
Generally, sleepwalking cases consist of simple, repeated behaviours; occasionally there are reports of people performing complex behaviours while asleep, but the legitimacy of these claims is often disputed. In 2004, sleep medicine experts in Australia claimed to have successfully treated a woman who claimed to have sex with strangers in her sleep. In December 2008, reports were published of a woman who sent semi-coherent emails while sleepwalking, including one inviting a friend around for dinner and drinks. Sleepwalkers often have little or no memory of the what they do, because they are not truly conscious. Their eyes are open, but their expression is dim and glazed over. Sleepwalking may last as little as 30 seconds or as long as thirty minutes.