Anniversaries

Births: Erasmus Bartholin, physicist, 1625; James Gillray, caricaturist, 1756; Queen Adelaide, consort of William IV, 1792; Arthur Lasenby Liberty, retailer, 1843; Annie Oakley (Phoebe Anne Oakley Mozee (Moses)), crack shot, 1860; John Logie Baird, television pioneer, 1888; Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, film director, 1899; Felix Wankel, engineer, 1902; Sir Basil Urwin Spence, architect, 1907; Archbishop Makarios III (Michael Christodolou Mouskos), president of Cyprus, 1913.

Deaths: Gerard David (Gheeraert Davit), painter, 1523; Jeremy Taylor, theologian, 1667; Sir John Everett Millais, painter, 1896; Domenico Morelli, painter, 1901; Florence Nightingale, nursing pioneer, 1910; Jules-Emile-Frederic Massenet, composer, 1912; HG Wells, novelist, 1946; Henry Williamson, novelist, 1977.

On this day: Cortes, leading his Spanish troops, took Tenochtitlan (Mexico City), 1521; the French armies were defeated at Blenheim by the Austrians and English, 1704; the frontier between East and West Germany was closed after the East Germans sealed the border, 1961; the last hangings in Britain took place when two men were executed for murder in Liverpool and Manchester, 1964; the last US troops left Vietnam, 1972.

Today is the Feast Day of St Benildus, St Cassian of Imola, St Hippolytus of Rome, St Maximus the Confessor, St Narses Klaietus, St Pontian, pope, St Radegund, queen, St Simplician of Milan, St Wigbert.