Anniversaries

Anniversaries

Births: Edward I, King, 1239; Pedro Caldern de la Barca, playwright, 1600; John Wesley, evangelist, 1703; Charles-Francois Gounod, composer, 1818; Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky, composer, 1882; Martin Bormann, Nazi leader, 1900; Dean Martin (Dino Paul Crocetti), singer and actor, 1917.

Deaths: Joseph Addison, essayist, 1719; Jean Audran, artist and engraver, 1756; Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, Methodist reformer, 1791; Lord William Bentinck, governor- general of India, 1839; Richard Harris Barham, author of The Ingoldsby Legends, 1845; Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, painter, 1898; Arthur Christopher Benson, scholar and writer, 1925; Dorothy Miller Richardson, novelist, 1957; John Cowper Powys, novelist and poet, 1963.

On this day: Francis Drake proclaimed English sovereignty over New Albion (now California), 1579; the Battle of Bunker Hill, beginning the American War of Independence, was fought, 1775; the Third Estate (tiers etat) or Commons, formed themselves into the French National Assembly, 1789; the Opera House, London, burned down, 1789; Maori uprisings against the British began in New Zealand, 1843; a river steamboat service on the Thames started, 1905; Latvia was occupied by the Soviet Union, 1940; the British troopship Lancastria was bombed and sunk off St Nazaire, with the loss of 2,500 lives, 1940; the British Expeditionary Force from France was finally evacuated, 1940; Iceland was proclaimed an independent republic, 1944; China reported that she had exploded a hydrogen bomb, 1967; General Leopoldo Galtieri was ousted as president of Argentina, 1982; the South African parliament repealed a law by which apartheid was ended, 1991.

Today is the Feast Day of St Adolph, St Antidius, St Avitus or Avy of Perche, St Bessarion, Saints Botulph and Adulph, St Emily de Vialar, St Gregory Barbarigo, St Herve or Herveus of Brittany, St Hypatius, St Molling, St Nectan, Saints Nicander and Marcian and St Teresa of Portugal.