Anniversaries

Births: Pope Paul V, 1552; Francisco Gomez de Quevado y Villegas, poet and satirist, 1580; Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet, mathematician and philosopher, 1743; Samuel Prout, water-colour painter, 1783; Giuseppe Saverio Raffaele Mercadante, composer, 1795; Edward William Lane, translator of The Thousand and One Nights, 1801; Halfdan Kjerulf, composer, 1818; William Carlos Williams, poet, 1883; Charles Tomlinson Griffes, composer, 1884; Sir Francis Charles Chichester, yachtsman and aviator, 1901; Sir Frederick Ashton, choreographer, 1906; Dolores Costello, actress, 1906.

Deaths: Pedro Menendez de Aviles, soldier and navigator, 1574; Philip IV, King of Spain, 1665; Francesco Xaviero Geminiani, composer, 1762; Tobias George Smollett, novelist, 1771; Alfred Victor, Comte de Vigny, poet, 1863; Walter Savage Landor, author, 1864; William Henry Fox Talbot, photographic pioneer, 1877; Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet- le-Duc, Gothic architect, 1879; Ethel Mary Dell (Mrs GT Savage), romantic novelist, 1939; Ruth Benedict, anthropologist, 1948; Count Folke Bernadotte, diplomat, assassinated 1948; Dame Lilian Braithwaite, actress, 1948; Friedrich Adolf Paneth, chemist, 1958; Katherine Anne Porter, novelist, 1980; Richard Basehart, actor, 1984.

On this day: Edinburgh was occupied by the Jacobites under the Young Pretender, 1745; the Constitution of the United States of America was signed, 1787; an eccentric announced in a San Francisco newspaper that he had became Norton I, Emperor of America, 1859; the indecisive Battle of Antietam (American Civil War) was fought, 1862; the Mont Cenis railway tunnel, Switzerland, opened, 1871; the Commonwealth of Australia was proclaimed as a federal union of six colonies, 1900; the operetta Viktoria and Her Hussar was performed in London for the first time, 1931; the first long- playing records were demonstrated in New York, but the venture failed, 1931; Poland was invaded by the USSR, 1939; the 1st British Airborne Division landed at Arnhem, Netherlands, 1944; the first meeting took place of the North Atlantic Treaty Council, 1949; Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, North and South Korea, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia were admitted to the United Nations, 1991.

Today is the Feast Day of St Columba of Cordova, St Francis of Camporosso, St Hildegard, St Lambert of Maastricht, St Peter Arbues, St Robert Bellarmine, St Satyrus of Milan, Saints Socrates and Stephen and St Theodora.