Anniversaries

Births: Pope Leo X, 1475; Carl Friedrich Zelter, conductor and composer, 1758; Sir David Brewster, physicist, and inventor of the kaleidoscope, 1781; Louis-Hector Berlioz, composer, 1803; Louis- Charles Alfred de Musset, playwright and poet, 1810; Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch, bacteriologist, 1843; Fiorello Henry La Guardia, mayor of New York City, 1882; Victor McLaglen, actor, 1883; Gilbert Roland (Luis Antonio Damaso de Alonso), actor, 1905.

Deaths: Llewelyn ab Gruff-ydd, last native Prince of Wales, killed in battle 1282; Michael VIII Palaeologus, Byzantine emperor, 1282; Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Conde, soldier, 1686; Sir Roger l'Estrange, journalist and translator of Aesop's Fables, 1704; Charles XII, King of Sweden, killed 1718; Edmund Curll, bookseller and scurrilous pamphleteer, 1747; Colley Cibber, playwright and actor, 1757; Jean-Francois Casimir Delavigne, playwright and poet, 1843; Richard Doyle, artist, 1883; John Loughborough Pearson, architect, 1897; Matthias Hohner, musical instrument maker, 1902; Menelek II, Emperor of Abyssinia (Ethiopia), 1913; Emilie Albertina Olive Schreiner, novelist, 1920; Emile-Charles Marie Wauters, painter, 1933; John William Mackail, scholar, 1945; Sir Douglas James Jardine, soldier and diplomat, 1946; Egbert Roscoe (Ed) Murrow, journalist and broadcaster, 1965.

On this day: James II fled from England, 1688; Indiana became the 19th of the United States, 1816; the first motor show opened in the Champs- Elysees, Paris, 1894; the British, led by Lord Methuen, were repulsed by the Boers under Piet Cronje at the Battle of Magersfontein, Orange Free State, 1899; public buildings were burnt in Dublin, the damage being estimated at pounds 3m, 1920; the Statute of Westminster came into effect, 1931; King George VI acceded to the throne, 1936; the Fascist Grand Council in Rome decided to withdraw Italy from membership of the League of Nations, 1937; Germany and Italy declared war on the US, and the US Congress adopted a resolution recognising the state of war, 1941; the new Waterloo Bridge was opened, 1945; the UN refused to admit Spain to the organisation, and recommended that member countries should break diplomatic relations with that country, 1946; the prototype of Concorde was shown for the first time at Toulouse, 1968.

Today is the Feast Day of St Barsabas, St Damasus I, Pope, St Daniel the Stylite and Saints Fuscianus, Victoricus and Gentianus.