Anniversaries

Births: Cardinal Jules Mazarin (Giulio Mazarini), statesman, 1602; Jakob Stainer (Steiner), violin-maker, 1621; John Gibson Lockhart, editor, novelist and critic, 1794; John Frederick Lewis, painter, 1805; John Henry Anderson, stage magician, 1814; Joseph Arthur, Comte de Gobineau, diplomat and writer, 1816; Jervis McEntee, landscape painter, 1828; James Abbott McNeill Whistler, painter and writer, 1834; Emmeline Pankhurst, social reformer and suffragist, 1858; Owen Wister, novelist, 1860; Gustav Klimt, art nouveau painter, 1862; Paul Walden, chemist, 1863; Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell, traveller and archaeologist, 1868; Gerald Finzi, composer, 1901; Woody Guthrie, folk singer, 1912.

Deaths: Philip II Augustus, King of France, 1223; Pelham Humfrey, composer, 1674; Francisco Antonio Gabriel Miranda, Venezuelan nationalist leader, 1816; Madame de Stael (Anne-Louise Germaine Necker), Baronne de Stael, writer, 1817; Augustine-Jean Fresnel, physicist, 1827; Edward Calvert, artist and wood-engraver, 1883; Alfred Krupp, industrialist, 1887; Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger, Boer leader, 1904; Sir William Henry Perkin, chemist and inventor of aniline dyes, 1907; Albert von Keller, painter, 1920; Sir Apirana Turupa Ngata, Maori leader, 1950; Jacinto Benavente y Martnez, playwright and poet, 1954; Faisal II, King of Iraq, assassinated 1958; Grock (Karl Adrien Wettach), clown, 1959; Adlai Ewing Stevenson, statesman, 1965; Konstantin Georgiyevich Paustovsky, writer and journalist, 1968.

On this day: the Grand Council of Nimes ended, 1096; the Bastille in Paris was stormed, 1789; the Oxford Movement was launched, 1833; Commodore Perry of the United States was received in Yokohama by the Lord of Toda, 1853; the first ascent of the Matterhorn was made, by Edward Whymper 1865; dynamite was first demonstrated by Alfred Nobel, 1867; the Cunard steamship Etruria reached Queenstown (Cobh), Ireland after sailing from New York in 6 days, 4 hours and 50 minutes, 1888; the first BBC television play, The Man With a Flower in His Mouth, was transmitted, 1930; a Bill was passed in the House of Commons to legalise abortion in the United Kingdom, 1967.

Today is Bastille Day (Fete Nationale) in France and the Feast Day of St Camillus de Lellis, St Deusdedit of Canterbury, St Marcellinus or Marchelm and St Ulric of Zell.