Anniversaries

Anniversaries

Births: Robert de Sorbon, founder of the Sorbonne, 1201; Charles-Camille Saint-Saens, composer, 1835; Emil Hermann Fischer, organic chemist, 1852; Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, Russian leader, 1888; Alastair Sim, actor, 1900; Jacques Tati (Tatischeff), actor and film director, 1908; John Winston Lennon, composer, singer and Beatle, 1940. Deaths: Robert Grosseteste, theologian, 1253; Claude Perrault, physician and architect, 1688; Sir Richard Blackmore, physician, poet and writer, 1729; Joseph Farwell Glidden, inventor of barbed wire, 1906; Ernesto ''Che'' Guevara, South American Marxist revolutionary, captured and shot 1967; Andre Maurois (Emile Salomon Wilhelm Herzog), writer, 1967; Oskar Schindler, businessman and humanitarian, 1974; Lord Home of the Hirsel (Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home), former prime minister, 1995. On this day: Louis XII, King of France, married Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII, 1514; Yale College, in the United States, received its charter, 1701; Captain Cook went ashore in New Zealand, 1769; the first Luddite riots began in Manchester against the introduction of machinery for spinning cotton, 1779; Hobart, Tasmania, was founded, 1804; the first petrol-driven motor bus began operating in London, 1899; in Britain, the Labour government fell, 1924; King Alexander of Yugoslavia and Louis Barthou, French foreign minister, were assassinated in Marseilles by a Croatian terrorist 1934; the first London production of the musical show Porgy and Bess was presented, 1952; Uganda became independent, 1962; the breathalyser test came into force in Britain, 1967. Today is the Feast Day of Saints Andronicus and Athanasia, St Demetrius of Alexandria, St Denis or Dionysius of Paris, St Dionysius the Areopagite, Saints Eleutherius and Rusticus, St Ghislain or Gislenus, St Louis Bertran, St John Leonardi, St Publia and St Savin.