Anniversaries

Births: Sir Francis Bacon, statesman and lawyer, 1561; George Gordon

Byron, sixth Baron Byron, poet, 1788. Deaths: Charles Kean, actor-manager,

1868; Queen Victoria, 1901; Walter Richard Sickert, painter, 1942. On

this day: the Falkland Islands were ceded to Britain by Spain, 1771; Ramsay

MacDonald, the first Labour prime minister, took office, 1924. Today is

the Feast Day of St Anastasius the Persian, St Berhtwald of Ramsbury,

St Blesilla, St Dominic of Sora, St Vincent Pallotti and St Vincent of

Saragossa.