Anniversaries

Births: William Roy, military engineer and surveyor, 1726; Sir Thomas Lawrence, portrait painter, 1769; Baron Francois-Pascal-Simon Gerard, painter, 1770; Johann Friedrich Herbart, philosopher, 1776; Franz Adam, painter, 1815; Thomas Henry Huxley, biologist and natural historian, 1825; John Hanning Speke, discoverer of the source of the Nile, 1827; Thomas Wilmer Dewing, figure painter, 1851; Alice Liddell, the original of Alice in Wonderland, 1852; Alexandre Nikolaievich Benois, painter and theatrical designer, 1870; Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst, artist and feminist, 1882; Cardinal Francis Joseph Spellman, Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York, 1889; Israel Moses Sieff, Baron Sieff, president of Marks and Spencer, 1889; Sir Archibald Hector McIndoe, plastic surgeon, 1900; Matyas Seiber, composer, 1905; Audrey Hepburn (Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston), actress, 1929.

Deaths: William Froude, engineer and naval architect, 1879; Carl von Ossietzky, pacifist journalist and Nobel prizewinner, in a Nazi concentration camp 1938; Sir Francis Osbert Sacheverell Sitwell, author, 1969; Josip Broz Tito, president of Yugoslavia, 1980; Diana Dors (Fluck), actress, 1984.

On this day: the Cunard shipping line was founded by Sir Samuel Cunard, of Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1839; the Maoris rebelled against the British in New Zealand, 1863; the Daily Mail was first published, price one halfpenny, 1896; work on excavating the Panama Canal began, 1904; the General Strike in Britain began, 1926; the first president of the Irish Republic was elected, Douglas Hyde, a Protestant, 1938; Mrs Margaret Thatcher became Britain's first woman prime minister, 1979.

Today is the Feast Day of St Augustine Webster, St Cyriacus or Judas Quiriacus, St Florian of Lorch, St Gothard or Godehard, St John Houghton, St Pelagia of Tarsus, St Robert Lawrence, St Richard Reynolds and St Venerius of Milan.