Anniversaries

Anniversaries

Births: Charles Lamb, essayist and poet, 1775; Howard Spring, novelist, 1889; Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, novelist, 1890; Jimmy (James Francis) "Schnozzola" Durante, comedian, 1893; William Tatem Tilden, tennis champion, 1893; Maurice Harold Macmillan, first Earl of Stockton, statesman and publisher, 1894; Bertolt Brecht (Eugen Berthold Friedrich), playwright and poet, 1898; Walter Houser Brattain, physicist, an inventor of the transistor, 1902; Lon Chaney Jnr (Creighton Chaney), actor, 1906; Joyce Irene Grenfell, actress, writer and entertainer, 1910. Deaths: Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, consort of Mary, Queen of Scots, murdered 1567; Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, author, 1837; Edgar Richard Horatio Wallace, thriller writer, 1932. On this day: Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe- Coburg-Gotha, 1840; Upper and Lower Canada were united, 1841; Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffman was first performed, Paris, 1881; Lord Beaverbrook was appointed as minister in charge of propaganda, 1918; New Delhi was inaugurated as capital of India, 1931; "Pay As You Earn" income tax was introduced, 1944; peace treaties were signed in Paris - the signatories being the Soviet Union, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, France, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Finland, 1947. Today is the Feast Day of St Austreberta, St Scholastica, St Soteris, St Trumwin and St William of Maleval