Anniversaries

Births: Katsushika Hokusai, painter, wood-engraver and printmaker, 1760; Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet and author, 1772; George Combe, phrenologist, 1788; Alfred Bernhard Nobel, industrialist and founder of the Prizes, 1833; Sir Ernest Dunlop Swinton, an inventor of the military armed vehicle, the tank, 1868.

Deaths: Horatio, first Viscount Nelson, killed at Trafalgar 1805; Count Carl Sturghk, Austrian prime minister, assassinated 1916; Jack (Jean-Louis Lebris de) Kerouac, poet and novelist, 1969; Bob Todd, actor, 1992.

On this day: the Franco-Spanish fleet was defeated at the Battle of Trafalgar, 1805; Alberto Santos Dumont flew an airship around the Eiffel Tower, Paris, 1901; the first British nuclear submarine, HMS Dreadnought, was launched, 1960; the disaster at Aberfan, South Wales, occurred, when 140 lives were lost, 1966; Willy Brandt was elected as Chancellor of West Germany, 1969.

Today is the Feast Day of St Condedus, St Fintan or Munnu of Taghmon, St Hilarion, St John of Bridlington, St Malchus and St Tuda.