Pauline Fowler is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, portrayed by Wendy Richard. Pauline was created by scriptwriter Tony Holland and producer Julia Smith as one of EastEnders' original characters, making her debut in the soap's first episode in 1985, and remaining for twenty-one years and ten months, making her the second longest-running original character. Her storylines focus on drudgery, money worries and family troubles. She is portrayed as a stoic, opinionated battle-axe – a family-orientated woman who alienates her kin due to overbearing interference. Her marriage to the downtrodden Arthur was central to the character for the first eleven years of the programme, culminating with his screen death in 1996. She was used for comedic purposes in scenes with her launderette colleague Dot Branning, and scriptwriters included many feuds in her narrative, most notably with her daughter-in-law, Sonia, and Den Watts, a family friend who got her daughter Michelle pregnant at 16. The character was killed off in a "whodunit" murder storyline, with Richard making her final appearance in 2006.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Fowler

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

364:

Following the death of the Roman Emperor Jovian, officers of the army at Nicaea in Bithynia selected Flavius Valentinianus to succeed him. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentinian_I

1815:

Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from Elba, an island off the coast of Italy where he had been exiled after the signing of the Treaty of Fontainebleau one year earlier. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_I_of_France

1935:

With the aid of a radio station in Daventry, England and two receiving antennas, Scottish engineer and inventor Robert Watson-Watt first demonstrated the use of radar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Watson-Watt

1936:

Over 1400 troops of the Imperial Japanese Army staged a coup d'etat in Japan, occupying Tokyo, and killing Finance Minister Takahashi Korekiyo and several other leading politicians. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_26_Incident

1995:

Barings Bank, the oldest merchant bank in London, collapsed after its head derivatives trader in Singapore, Nick Leeson, lost £827 million while making unauthorized speculative trades on futures contracts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barings_Bank

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

tedious (adj): Boring, monotonous, time consuming, wearisome http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tedious

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

The need of the immaterial is the most deeply rooted of all needs. One must have bread; but before bread, one must have the ideal. --Victor Hugo http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Victor_Hugo