Anniversaries

Births: Dr Thomas Willis, anatomist and physician, 1621; Samuel Foote, actor and playwright, baptised 1720; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composer, 1756; Samuel Palmer, landscape painter, 1805; David Friedrich Strauss, philosopher, theologian and biographer, 1808; Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, architect, 1814; Josef Israels, painter, 1824; Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), author, 1832; Kaiser Wilhelm II (Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albrecht), Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia, 1859; Jerome David Kern, composer, 1885.

Deaths: Gaspard de Crayer, painter, 1669; Sir William Temple, diplomat and statesman, 1699; Thomas Woolston, deist, died in prison 1733; William Tryon, colonial governor, 1788; Charles Hutton, mathematician, 1823; John James Audubon, artist and naturalist, 1851; Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi, composer, 1901; Endry Ady, poet, 1919; Emile Cohl (Courtet), film animator, 1938; Bert Lee, popular composer, 1947; Mahalia Jackson, gospel singer, 1972; Arthur Marshall, author, broadcaster and wit, 1989; Dame Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, actress, 1992.

On this day: the University of Georgia, United States, was founded, 1785; the independence of Greece was proclaimed, 1822; a patent for the electric lamp was taken out by Thomas A. Edison, 1879; the first London production of the musical show Oh, Boy] was presented as Oh, Joy], 1919; television was first demonstrated publicly by John Logie Baird, 1926; civilian women were conscripted in Germany, 1943; in Iraq, 14 men, most of them Jewish, were publicly hanged on charges of spying for Israel, 1969; a ceasefire began in Vietnam, 1973.

Today is the Feast Day of St Angela Merici, St Julian of Le Mans, St Marius or May and St Vitalian, pope.