Anniversaries

Births: Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, playwright, 1818; Edward VII, King of England, 1841; Dr Herbert Thomas Kalmus, inventor of Technicolor, 1881; Anthony Asquith, film director and producer, 1902.

Deaths: William Camden, antiquarian and historian, 1623; Paul Sandby, water-colour painter, 1809; James Ramsay MacDonald, statesman, 1937; Arthur Neville Chamberlain, statesman, 1940; Dylan Marlais Thomas, poet, 1953; General Charles de Gaulle, statesman, 1970.

On this day: Moses Montefiore was the first Jew to be knighted in England, 1837; flogging in the British Army was abolished, 1859; the Cullinan diamond was presented to King Edward VII on his 66th birthday, 1907; the first woman mayor, Mrs Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, was elected at Aldeburgh, 1908; the death penalty for murder was abolished in Britain, 1965.

Today is the Feast Day of St Benignus or Benen, St Theodore the Recruit and St Vitonus or Vanne.