Anniversaries

Anniversaries

Births: Edouard Daladier, statesman, 1884; Richard Allen Boone, film actor, 1916; Sammy Cahn (Samuel Cohen), lyricist, 1914. Deaths: Sir Thomas Picton, soldier, at Waterloo, 1815; William Combe, adventurer and poet, creator of "Dr Syntax", 1823; William Cobbett, writer and politician, 1835; George Grote, historian, 1871; Samuel Butler, author, 1902; Roald Amundsen, explorer, lost in the Arctic 1928; Douglas Robert Jardine, cricketer, 1958; Ethel Barrymore (Blythe), actress, 1959; Bruce Marshall, novelist, 1987. On this day: the English were defeated by the French under Joan of Arc at the Battle of Patay, 1429; John Hampden, parliamentarian, was mortally wounded at the Battle of Chalgrove Field, 1643; war broke out between Britain and the United States, 1812; the Duke of Wellington, allied with von Blucher, defeated the French under Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, 1815; Waterloo Bridge over the Thames in London opened, 1817; Adolf Hitler's book Mein Kampf was published, 1925; a US air force plane crashed near Tokyo, with the loss of 129 lives, 1953; a Trident-1 of British European Airways crashed after take-off at London, killing all 118 people aboard, 1972; a watercolour by Joseph William Turner was sold at auction for pounds 340,000, 1976. Today is the Feast Day of St Amandus of Bordeaux, St Elizabeth of Schonau, Saints Gregory, Demetrius and Calogerus and Saints Mark and Marcellian.