Remember A Day | A nude beauty pageant, long-lost siblings reunited and an escaped elephant: headlines from four decades ago
A journey back through time to look at significant news and events reported by the South China Morning Post from this week in history
China setting up “the world’s largest restaurant” to serve Peking duck and a San Francisco man suing his girlfriend for standing him up on a date made the headlines four decades ago this week.
July 23, 1978
● It was an exciting day for an elderly Hong Kong woman who met her 59-year-old brother for the first time. Ng Lau Kam-fung, 79, was left behind in Guangdong when her parents emigrated to Canada in 1919. Her brother and two younger sisters were born there. Ng moved to Hong Kong in 1958.
● A 19-year-old American girl from Florida won what was billed as the world’s most “revealing and honest” beauty contest, held in Ontario. Judy Portinga donned her winner’s crown, which was the most clothing she had worn since taking part in the Miss Nude World beauty pageant. Twenty women, most of whom were from the US, paraded nude in front of a 3,000-strong audience at a nudist camp 65km west of Toronto.
