Princess Charlotte looks delighted with a cuddly toy dog in a photo taken by her mother, the Duchess of Cambridge. It’s one of two images of the 6-month-old princess released Sunday by Kensington Palace. The pictures of Charlotte in a Liberty print dress and pink cardigan were taken earlier this month at Anmer Hall, Prince William and Kate’s country home in eastern England. The photos were released to thank well-wishers for all the “warm messages about Princess Charlotte” the family has received. Princess Charlotte Elizabeth Diana was born May 2 and is fourth in line to the British throne after her grandfather Prince Charles; her father, Prince William; and her 2-year-old brother, Prince George.
The New Jersey city where Frank Sinatra was born is finding the centennial of his birth to be a very good year. Throughout 2015, Hoboken has remembered its native son, who died in 1998 at age 82, with outdoor screenings of his movies, a “Sinatra Idol” competition and concerts that will be capped by a centennial birthday bash on Dec. 12 at the Stevens Institute of Technology, which awarded the high school dropout an honorary degree in 1985. The Hoboken Historical Museum has seen a 300 percent jump in visitors since opening a Sinatra exhibit in early August and has hired extra staff, Director Robert Foster said. “Whenever we do something on Sinatra, people come out of the woodwork,” Foster said. “We enjoy the fans because they are so loyal and he means so much to them.” Greta Wilson, who was born and raised in Hoboken, said Sinatra is “always the first thing” people ask her about when they learn where she is from. “They always wanted to know if I had seen him in a store or a movie theater or some other place in town, and if he was like a regular person or if he acted like a stuck-up movie star,” she said. A plaque marks the former building at 415 Monroe St. where Sinatra was born in 1915 to middle-class parents. Some Hoboken residents felt Sinatra had forgotten them, reflected in the reception he got when he rode on a float in a 1947 parade and was pelted with tomatoes, according to biographer Ed Shirak. Sinatra later called Hoboken a sewer. The icy relationship began to thaw in 1979 when the city changed River Road to Sinatra Drive. A park and the city’s main post office would also bear his name. Wilson, 68, who now lives on Long Beach Island, said she thought Sinatra was a great representative for Hoboken. “People unfamiliar with Hoboken seem to think of it as a dumpy small Jersey town, filled with people who really want to live in New York City,” she said. “Frank helped put Hoboken on the map, and people still come there to this day just see ‘his town’ and learn more about him. Hoboken owes Sinatra a lot.”