Anniversaries
Anniversaries
Births: Dr Joseph Priestley, scientist and clergyman, 1733; Charles Grey, Second Earl, former prime minister, 1764; Daniel Lambert, fat man who weighed over 52 stones (728 lb or 330 kg), 1770; Karl Friedrich Schinkel, architect and painter, 1781; Percival Lowell, astronomer, 1855; Hugo Wolf, composer, 1860; Ramon Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole, novelist, 1884; Henry Hathaway, film director, 1898; George Seferis (Giorgos Stylianou Seferiades), Greek poet and diplomat, 1900. Deaths: Tsar Alexander II of Russia, assassinated, 1881; Benjamin Harrison, 23rd President of the US, 1901; Major Frederick George Jackson, Arctic explorer, 1938; Thomas (Tom) Mann, trade union leader, 1941; Angela Brazil, girls' school-story writer, 1947; Winston Churchill, novelist, 1947; John Middleton Murry, author, 1957; Robert Cecil Romer Maugham, Second Viscount (Robin Maugham), novelist, 1981. On this day: the Yorkists defeated the Lancastrians at the Battle of Stamford, 1470; the French Huguenots were defeated at the Battle of Jarnac, 1569; as predicted by Halley in 1682, Halley's Comet came to its perihelion, 1758; the planet Uranus was discovered by Sir William Herschel, 1781; Standard time was established in the US, 1884; General Roberts captured Bloemfontein, South Africa, 1900; Austria was declared to be part of the German Reich (the Anschluss), and was renamed "Ostmark", 1938. Today is the Feast Day of St Ansovinus, St Euphrasia or Eupraxia, St Gerald of Mayo, St Heldrad, St Mochoemoc, St Nicephorus of Constantinople and Saints Roderic and Salomon.
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