Anniversaries

Births: Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca), scholar, lyric poet and humanist, 1304; Thomas Lovell Beddoes, playwright and poet, 1803; Sir Richard Owen, palaeontologist and biologist, 1804; John Sterling, writer, 1806; Sir John Charles Walsham Reith, first Baron Reith, first director- general of the BBC, 1889; Dame Cicely Veronica Wedgwood, historian, 1910.

Deaths: Professor John Playfair, mathematician and geologist, 1819; Caroline Anne Southey (Bowles), poet and wife of Robert Southey, 1854; Sir Richard Wallace, founder of the Wallace Collection, 1890; Jean Ingelow, poet, 1897; Andrew Lang, scholar, writer and fairytale editor, 1912; Guglielmo Marconi, inventor, 1937; Iain Norman Macleod, statesman, 1970.

On this day: Euston Station, London, opened, 1837; the XIth Olympic Games opened in Berlin, 1936; at a meeting in Rastenburg, Germany, Colonel von Stauffenburg attempted to assassinate Hitler by planting a bomb, 1944; in Indo-China, an armistice was signed under which Vietnam was divided into North and South, 1954; the space probe Viking 1 separated its Lander, which made a soft landing on Mars, 1975; 10 soldiers were killed after IRA bombs exploded in Hyde Park and Regent's Park, London, 1982.

Today is the Feast Day of St Ansegisus, St Aurelius of Carthage, St Elias of Jerusalem, St Flavian of Antioch, St Gregory Lopez, St Joseph Barsabas the Just, St Margaret of Antioch, St Wilgefortis or Liberata and St Wulmar.