Anniversaries

Births: Lucy Hutchinson, biographer, 1620; Thomas Paine, writer and reformer, 1737; Sir Ebenezer Howard, garden cities originator, 1850; Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, playwright, 1860; Frederick Delius, composer, 1862; Sir William Rothenstein, artist, 1872; W.C. Fields (William Claude Dukinfield), comedian, 1880. Deaths: King George III, 1820; Edward Lear, landscape painter and writer, 1888; Alfred Sisley, painter, 1899; Douglas, first Earl Haig, field marshal, 1928; Henry Louis Mencken, writer, author of The American Language, 1956; Angela Margaret Thirkell, novelist, 1961; Robert Lee Frost, poet, 1963; Alan Ladd, actor, 1964; Jimmy (James Francis) Durante, comedian, 1980. On this day: Greenwich Mean Time was adopted in Scotland, 1848; the marriage of Napoleon III and Eugenie de Montijo took place at the Tuileries, Paris, 1853; the Victoria Cross was founded, 1856; Desert Island Discs was first broadcast, 1942.

Today is the Feast Day of St Gildas the Wise, St Sabinian of Troyes and St Sulpicius "Severus".