Anniversaries

Births: Prince Henry the Navigator, sponsor of voyages, 1394; Antonio Lucio Vivaldi, composer and violinist, 1678; Charles Dibdin, playwright and songwriter, 1745; Count Casimir Pulaski, soldier, 1748; Sir Henry Raeburn, portrait painter, 1756; Robert Lindley, cellist and composer, 1776; Charles Oberthur, harpist and composer, 1819; Samuel Colman, landscape painter, 1832; Thomas Rickman, architect, 1841; Thomas Sturge Moore, poet and wood-engraver, 1870; Fritz Graebner, ethnologist, 1877.

Deaths: Saladin, Sultan of Egypt and Syria, 1193; Sir Thomas Malory, writer of Morte d'Arthur, 1470; Bernard Gilpin, clergyman, known as the 'Apostle of the North', 1583; Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, playwright and novelist, 1852; William Willett, builder, and promoter of 'daylight saving time', 1915; Antonin Artaud, actor, playwright and stage director, 1948; Sir Charles Scott Sherrington, neurologist, 1952; (Cuthbert) Dale Collins, journalist and novelist, 1956; William Carlos Williams, physician and poet, 1963; Richard Thomas Church, poet and novelist, 1972.

On this day: Pennsylvania was granted by charter to William Penn, 1681; the first meeting of Congress was held in New York, 1789; Vermont became the 14th of the United States, 1791; the Royal National Lifeboat Institution was founded, 1824; Chicago was chartered as a city, 1837; the New York Daily Graphic, the first illustrated daily newspaper, appeared, 1873; the first electric tramcars ran at Leytonstone, London, 1882; the Forth Bridge was officially opened, 1890; Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated as 28th US president, 1913; the Comintern (Communist International) was formed, 1919; the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that the Social Credit plan of the Albertan prime minister was unconstitutional, 1938; British commandos raided the German-occupied, Lofoten Islands off Norway, 1941; German radio declared that Dresden had been 'wiped off the map of Europe' by Allied bombing, 1945; the US nuclear submarine Nautilus travelled under the North Polar icecap, 1958; North Sea gas was first piped ashore near Durham, 1967; the French submarine Eurydice sank off the coast of Toulon, when the vessel's entire crew of 57 were lost, 1970; Edward Heath resigned and Harold Wilson became prime minister, forming a Labour government, 1974.

Today is the Feast Day of St Adrian and his Companions, St Casimir of Poland and St Peter of Cava.