The very first celebrity to endorse a beauty product REVEALED

QUESTION Who was the very first celebrity to endorse a beauty product?

British potter and entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood used celebrity, in the form of royalty, to advertise his chinaware. In 1765, Wedgwood produced a cream-coloured tea set for King George III's wife, Queen Charlotte, which led to his appointment as Potter To Her Majesty. He began marketing his creamware as Queen's Ware, signalling its elegance and aspirational qualities.

Wedgwood capitalised and began advertising in London newspapers, naming specific pieces for individual members of the nobility, such as his Duchess of Devonshire flowerpots.

Modern celebrity endorsement begins with the Channel Islands-born actress Lillie Langtry. 'The Jersey Lily' was famous for her stage performances and her scandalous affairs, including one with Edward VII, then Prince of Wales. 

She was hired by advertising pioneer Thomas J. Barratt in 1882 to promote Pears Soap. Here, not only was her image used but she also added her signature and endorsement: 'Since using Pears Soap for the hands and complexion I have discarded all others.' 

Langtry is said to have been paid £132 for her endorsement — exactly what she weighed in pounds — and later allowed her name to be used on face powders and skin balms.

Advertisers quickly caught on and sought celebrity endorsement from the likes of actresses Sarah Bernhardt and Lillian Russell and the singer Adelina Patti.

Gillian Allen, Chelmsford, Essex.

QUESTION Why was Thomas Hardy's heart buried separately from his body?

The novelist and poet Thomas Hardy wished to be buried in his home town of Stinsford, Dorset, close to his parents and beneath the tombstone of his beloved first wife, Emma.

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His burial plans caused his friend J. M. Barrie, of Peter Pan fame, some amusement: 'One day Hardy took me... to see the place where he's to be buried, and the next day he took me to see the place where he would like next best to be buried. Usually, he says he is to be buried between his wives; but sometimes, so many inches nearer the first; sometimes, so many inches nearer to the second.'

Within hours of his death on January 11, 1928, museum curator Sydney Cockerell and Barrie himself determined that he should be laid in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.

His poor wife Florence was forced to agree to a grisly compromise: his ashes were to be buried in the Abbey and his heart was to be buried in St Michael's graveyard in Stinsford.

On January 16, 1928, there took place simultaneously two funerals. The Dorset funeral was a quiet affair attended by his brother Henry. The Westminster Abbey affair was a national event attended by his sister Kate. Crowds waited outside in the rain to file past the open grave. Hardy's pallbearers included the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, and the Leader of the Opposition, Ramsay MacDonald, as well as his most famous contemporaries, George Bernard Shaw, Barrie, Edmund Gosse, A. E. Housman and Rudyard Kipling.

George Cowan, Diss, Norfolk.

QUESTION What is the Dunning-Kruger effect?

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias where individuals with low ability tend to overestimate their competence, while those with high ability underestimate theirs. It was named by psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger, who described the effect in a 1999 study entitled Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognising One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.

Their experiments were inspired by McArthur Wheeler, who in 1995 robbed a bank in America in broad daylight. He was surprised to be arrested, as he firmly believed that covering his face in lemon juice would make him invisible to the CCTV cameras. Dunning and Kruger conducted a series of studies based not only on his incompetence but also his lack of awareness. They asked a number of participants to perform various tasks and then estimate how well they did.

Those who scored well tended to place their peers higher, and those who scored poorly rated their peers lower.

It appeared that skilled students who found the tasks easy assumed that everyone had better scores than they actually had; whereas unskilled students, who found the tests hard, assumed the opposite.

The Dunning-Kruger effect has entered popular culture, such as in talent shows, where the participants can't believe it when they suffer rejection.

Mrs E. L. Foley, Reading, Berks.