Anniversaries

Births: Edmund Waller, poet, 1606; William Charles Macready, actor and manager, 1793; Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, painter, 1803; Charles Kensington Salaman, pianist, conductor and composer, 1814; George Mortimer Pullman, industrialist and inventor, 1831; Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, 1847; Sir Henry Joseph Wood, founder of Promenade Concerts, 1869; Philip Edward Thomas, poet and critic, 1878; Jean Harlow (Harlean Carpenter), actress, 1911.

Deaths: Robert Hooke, physicist, 1703; William Stukeley, antiquary and physician, 1765; Robert Adam, architect, 1792; Francis Egerton, third Duke of Bridgewater, canal engineer, 1803; Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, painter and engraver, 1804; Antony Vandyke Copley Fielding, landscape painter, 1855; Sir Sidney Lee, editor, scholar and biographer, 1926; Ernest Howard Griffiths, physicist, 1932; Noel Gay (Richard Moxon Armitage), composer and pianist, 1954; Lou Costello (Louis Francis Cristillo), actor and comedian, 1959; Arthur Koestler, author, 1983; Danny Kaye (Daniel David Karminsky), actor and entertainer, 1987.

On this day: Louis-Philippe of France arrived in England after abdicating, 1848; serfdom was abolished in Russia, 1861; Bizet's opera Carmen was first performed at the Opera Comique, Paris, 1875; the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk as signed between Germany and Russia, 1918; the US Congress adopted the Star-Spangled Banner as the national anthem, 1931; the Apollo 9 spacecraft was launched from Cape Kennedy, 1969; Estonia and Latvia voted to secede from the Soviet Union, 1991.

Today is the Feast Day of St Aelred of Rievaulx, St Anselm of Nonantola, St Arthelais, St Chef, St Cunegund, empress, St Emeterius, St Gervinus, Saints Marinus and Astyrius, St Non or Nonnita and St Winwaloe or Guenole.