Anniversaries

Births: John Campbell, military historian, 170; John Fothergill, physician, 1712; Karl Ferdinand von Graefe, pioneer in plastic surgery, 1787; Sir William Hamilton, metaphysicist, 1788; Oliver Wendell Holmes Jnr, judge, 1841; Kenneth Grahame, author, 1859; Otto Hahn, physicist and chemist, 1879.

Deaths: Sir William Chambers, architect, 1796; Louis-Hector Berlioz, composer, 1869; Count Ferdinand Adolf August Heinrich von Zeppelin, soldier and inventor, 1917; Sir Thomas Beecham Bt, conductor, 1961; Tad Dameron , jazz pianist and composer, 1965; Richard Austen Butler, Baron Butler of Saffron Walden, statesman, 1982; Alan Tindal Lennox-Boyd, first Viscount Boyd of Merton, statesman, killed in an accident 1983; Sir William Turner Walton, composer, 1983.

On this day: Queen Anne acceded to the British throne, 1702; the "February" Revolution (Old Style date) began in Russia at Petrograd, 1917; President Woodrow Wilson ordered the arming of US merchant ships, 1917; French troops occupied the Ruhr after Germany failed to pay reparations, 1921; Mahatma Gandhi started a civil disobedience campaign in India, 1930; a coal strike began in Britain, 1944; the first London production of the musical show Kiss Me, Kate was presented, 1945; the United States landed 3,500 marines in South Vietnam, 1965; in Dublin, the Nelson Column was destroyed by an IRA bomb, 1966.

Today is the Feast Day of St Duthac, St Felix of Dunwich, St Humphrey or Hunfrid, St John of God, St Julian of Toledo, Saints Philemon and Apollonius, St Pontius of Carthage, St Senan of Scattery, St Stephen of Obazine and St Veremund.