Anniversaries

Births: Edward Bird, painter, 1772; Henry Hugh Pierson (Pearson), composer, 1815; Aleksandr Nikolayevich Ostrovsky, playwright, 1823; James Louis Garvin, newspaper editor, 1868; Bobby Moore, footballer, 1941.

Deaths: Niccolo Amati, violin-maker, 1684; William Kent, landscape gardener and architect, 1748; Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd US president, 1945; Sir Archibald Hector McIndoe, plastic surgeon, 1960; Josephine Baker, singer, 1975; Joe Louis, heavyweight boxer, 1981; Desmond Bagley, novelist, 1983; Alan Stewart Paton, politician and author, 1988.

On this day: the armies of the Fourth Crusade captured Constantinople (Istanbul), 1204; the Union Jack (Union Flag) was first adopted in England, 1606; the Tatler was first published, 1709; the British settlers defeated the Zulus under Dingaan at the Battle of Tugela, 1838; the American Civil War began at the siege of Fort Sumter, South Carolina, 1861; the first London production of The Belle of New York was presented, 1898; President Harding declared that the US could have no part in the League of Nations, 1921; the first successful east-to-west transatlantic flights by Captain Hermann Kohl, Baron von Huenefeld and Commandant Fitzmaurice began, 1928; the first manned space flight was made by the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, 1961; the Columbia Space Shuttle went into space, completing its mission two days later, 1981.

Today is the Feast Day of St Alferius, St Julius I, pope, St Sabas the Goth and Others and St Zeno of Verona.