Week Ahead: Captain Tom fundraising, 35 years since Chernobyl, Supermoon and Duke and Duchess of Cambridge anniversary

Captain Tom challenge

The Captain Tom 100 fundraising challenge begins in the coming week.

People are being encouraged to choose a challenge based around the number 100 to complete between Friday April 30, which would have been Captain Sit Tom Moore’s 101st birthday, and Bank Holiday Monday on May 3.

The challenges will raise money for The Captain Tom Foundation or a charity of the person’s choice.

He was a Keighley-born war veteran who raised the spirits of a nation still stunned by the coronavirus pandemic when he embarked, aged 99, on 100 laps of his garden to help the NHS in the run-up to his own centenary.

His determination captured the public imagination and within weeks he had raised tens of millions of pounds.

The Queen’s first official engagement in person after the first lockdown lifted was to knight Sir Tom in a ceremony at Windsor Castle.

The Yorkshire Post’s very own cartoonist Graeme Bandeira sent Sir Tom portrait to mark his 100th birthday.

However he died aged 100 in February, an event which led to a huge outpouring of tributes.

Disaster anniversary

The 35th Anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster (1986) in Ukraine will be marked tomorrow.

It is believed the nuclear plant reactor explosion may have killed thousands since after sending a radioactive cloud across Europe.

The largest nuclear accident in history was the result of a flawed reactor design that was operated with inadequately trained personnel, says the World Nuclear Organisation.

According to the organisation, the resulting steam explosion and fires released at least five per cent of the radioactive reactor core into the environment, with the deposition of radioactive materials in many parts of Europe.

Thirty-one people died as an immediate result of Chernobyl while, according to the official toll, while the BBC reports that the UN estimates that only 50 deaths can be directly attributed to the disaster. In 2005, it predicted a further 4,000 might eventually die as a result of the radiation exposure.

The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation has concluded that, apart from more than 6,000 thyroid cancers, “there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure 20 years after the accident.” Around 350,000 people were evacuated as a result of the accident.

The disaster has since come back into public consciousness following a critically-acclaimed and award-winning Sky and HBO mini-series, which starred the late Paul Ritter.

Supermoon spectacular

A Supermoon is due to be seen in the skies between tomorrow and Tuesday.

It is known as the Pink Moon, NASA says that it also goes by other names including the Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon, and among some coastal tribes around North America, the Fish Moon

Royal milestone

A cheerier anniversary is that of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding.

On Thursday it will be 10 years since Kate became a member of the royal family and the happy couple shared a kiss on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.

It also happens to be the anniversary of the birth of Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas Johnson, the son of Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds.

Wilfred was born at University College Hospital, London, at 9am on April 29, last year.