Anniversaries

Births: John Flaxman, sculptor, 1755; Catherine Maria Fanshawe, painter and poet, 1765; Alexander Wilson, ornithologist, 1766; Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, founder of Singapore, at sea, off Port Morant, Jamaica 1781; Sir William Jackson Hooker, botanist, 1785; Nicholas I, Tsar of Russia, 1796; Karl Engel, musicologist, 1818; Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, 1832; Elisabeth Lutyens, composer, 1906.

Deaths: Henry II, King, 1189; Jan Huss, religious reformer, burnt at the stake, 1415; St Thomas More, executed 1535; Edward VI, King, 1553; John Davies, poet and writing master, 1618; Michael Bruce, poet, 1767; John Marshall, statesman, 1835; Henry-Rene Albert-Guy de Maupassant, writer, 1893; Odilon Redon, painter and engraver, 1916; Edward Goodrich Acheson, chemist, 1931; Kenneth Grahame, children's writer, 1932; Aneurin Bevan, statesman, 1960; William Harrison Faulkner, novelist, 1962; Daniel Louis Armstrong, jazz musician, 1971; Otto Klemperer, conductor, 1973; Thorley Walters, actor, 1991; Roy Rogers (Leonard Franklyn Slye), cowboy actor, 1998.

On this day: the Treaty of Edinburgh was signed between England, France and Scotland, 1560; at the Battle of Sedgemoor, the last to be fought on English soil, the troops of James II defeated the Duke of Monmouth, 1685; Pope Pius VII was taken prisoner by the French after he had excommunicated Napoleon, 1809; Queensland, Australia, was separated from New South Wales as a colony in its own right, 1859; Louis Pasteur successfully treated a subject with his anti-rabies vaccine, 1885; the Duke of York (later King George V) married Princess Victoria Mary of Teck, 1893; Brooklands motor racing circuit was opened, 1907; the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was formally constituted, 1923; the first all-talking feature film, The Lights of New York, was shown, New York 1928; the Big Top tent at Barnum and Ringling's circus at Hartford, Connecticut caught fire, killing 107 people, 1944; London's last tram ran, 1952; civil war erupted in Nigeria, when fighting broke out between federal troops and men from the province of Biafra, 1967.

Today is the Feast Day of St Dominica, St Goar, St Godeleva, St Mary Goretti, St Modwenna, St Romulus of Fiesole, St Sex