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The legendary Charlie Chaplin died on Christmas Day 1977
1978: Charlie Chaplin's stolen body found
England have
The coffin containing the body of Charlie Chaplin - missing since his grave
was robbed 11 weeks ago - has been found.
It was dug up from a field about a mile away from the Chaplin home in
Corsier near Lausanne, Switzerland.
The legendary comedian died on Christmas Day last year, aged 88. He was
buried two days later in the village of Corsier in the hills above Lake
Geneva.
"Charlie would have thought it ridiculous." Lady Oona Chaplin said.
Swiss police have arrested two men - a Pole aged 24 and a Bulgarian aged 38
- and say they have confessed to stealing the coffin 10 weeks ago and reburying
it.
Names of the accused have not been released, but police say they are both
motor mechanics.
They were traced after police kept a watch on 200 phone kiosks and tapped
the Chaplins' phone after the famiy received ransom demands of ?00,000 for
return of the body after it went missing in March.
Sir Charles' 51-year-old widow, Lady Oona Chaplin, refused to pay up
saying: "Charlie would have thought it ridiculous." In further calls the
kidnappers made threats to harm her two youngest children.
Hollywood rumours
The family kept silent about the ransom demands and various rumours
circulated about the missing coffin.
One Hollywood report suggested it had been dug up because Sir Charles was a
Jew buried in a gentile cemetery.
Lady Chaplin, daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill inherited about ?2m
after the death of her husband.
The couple and their eight children have been living in Lausanne since
1952.
A spokesman for the Chaplins said: "The family is very happy and relieved
that this ordeal is over."
Superintendent Gabriel Cettou, the head of the Geneva police, said the two
men would be charged with attempted extortion and disturbing the peace of the
dead.
Nikita Khrushchev demanded an apology from the Americans
1960: East-West summit in tatters after spy plane row
Artificially 1969:
The
The much-heralded Big Four summit in Paris has failed before it even
started.
It follows three days of bitter recrimination over a US spy plane shot down
two weeks ago by the Russians.
Any hope of East-West rapprochement was doomed from the start as heads of
state - President Eisenhower, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, General de Gaulle
and Harold Macmillan - never got beyond preliminary procedural meetings.
The U2 spy plane was shot down on 1 May by a Russian missile after it lost
height owing to engine trouble.
The civilian pilot, Gary Powers, was able to bale out of the aircraft and
was arrested in Sverdlovsk in the USSR.
State Department denial
When the Soviet Union announced it had shot the plane down, the US State
Department at first denied it was a spy plane, saying it was simply an aircraft
that had gone astray.
But when Mr Khrushchev produced photos taken by the pilot of military
installations, President Eisenhower was forced to admit he had authorised the
flight because he needed to prevent another Pearl Harbor.
When leaders gathered in Paris for the summit two days ago, after months of
planning by Soviet and French officials, Mr Khrushchev demanded an apology
before discussions could begin.
He also said the USA should promise never to violate Soviet airspace again
and should punish all those responsible for the incident.
President Eisenhower rejected the demands, leaving the hoped-for peace
summit in tatters.
De Gaulle's invitation
General de Gaulle had tried to revive the talks by inviting all the
delegates to another conference at the Elysee Palace to discuss the
situation.
All agreed but President Eisenhower insisted he would not discuss the spy
plane incident.
When told of the invitation, Mr Khrushchev was on a trip outside Paris. He
returned to the French capital and told a press conference the Soviet Union was
ready to take part only if the USA met his demands of a public condemnation of
the U2 incident.
So ended the summit that never was.
Both sides are now blaming each other for the failure of the
conference.
Vocabulary:
ransom: 赎金
ordeal:a difficult or painful experience (痛苦的经验，折磨)
rapprochement: a reestablishing of cordial relationships,as between
countries(和解，恢复友好关系) |
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发表于 2016-7-9 23:36:59