Clare Hollingworth, the British journalist who scooped the world with news of the outbreak of World War II, celebrated her 105th birthday in Hong Kong yesterday. On August 31, 1939, the then 27-year-old Hollingworth had been working as a journalist for less than a week when London's Daily Telegraph sent her to Poland to report on worsening tensions in Europe. On September 1 - From Outbreak: 1939: The World Goes to War, by Terry Charman Hollingworth went on to report on conflicts in Palestine, Algeria, Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, China, Aden and Vietnam. She would "happily go anywhere with just a toothbrush and a typewriter". Hollingworth was born in Knighton outside Leicester, home of the Imperial typewriter, but she generally used a Hermes Baby. Hollingworth with her second husband, Geoffrey Hoare. In the months before she joined the Telegraph, to July 1939, Hollingworth earned the nickname the "Scarlet Pimpernel" by helping 3500 political and Jewish refugees to escape the Nazis, facilitating their evacuation from Katowice to Britain. General Bernard Law Montgomery imposed a ban on British female correspondents on the front lines in Egypt in 1942, so Hollingworth became briefly accredited to TIME.