Anniversaries

Births: Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni, composer, 1671; Thomas Pennant, traveller and naturalist, 1726; Charles Augustin de Coulomb, physicist, 1736; Harriet Beecher Stowe, novelist, 1811; Alexander John Ellis (Sharpe), philologist and mathematician, 1814; Prince Aritomo Yamagata, Japanese military leader and prime minister, 1838; Bernard Bosanquet, philosopher, 1848; Robert Marion La Follette, political leader, 1855; Karl Landsteiner, pathologist, 1868; Count John McCormack, tenor, 1884; Sam Wanamaker (Samuel Watenmaker), actor, director and producer, 1919; Ernesto Guevara de la Serna (Che), revolutionary, 1928.

Deaths: Sir Henry Vane, parliamentarian, executed 1662; Benedict Arnold, soldier and traitor, 1801; Thomas Wakley, surgeon and founder of the Lancet, 1862; Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky, playwright, 1886; Edward FitzGerald, poet and translator of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 1883; Marie-Francois-Sadi Carnot, French president, assassinated by anarchists 1894; Walter Weedon Grossmith, comedian and author, 1919; Jerome Klapka Jerome, writer, 1927; Emmeline Pankhurst (nee Goulden), women's rights campaigner, 1928; Gilbert Keith Chesterton, author, 1936; Maxim Gorky (Alexei Maximovich Pyeshkov), author, 1936; John Logie Baird, television pioneer, 1946; Jorge Luis Borges, author, 1986; Alan Jay Lerner, lyricist and playwright, 1986.

On this day: King Charles I's troops were defeated by Cromwell's army at the Battle of Naseby, 1645; at Dunkirk, the English and French decisively beat off the Spanish in the Battle of the Dunes, 1658; the Stars and Stripes flag was adopted by the Continental Congress in America, 1777; the Austrians were defeated by Napoleon's forces at the Battle of Marengo, 1800; the French defeated the Russians at the Battle of Friedland, 1807; Henley Regatta was held for the first time, 1839; the world's first motor-race was run in Paris, 1895; the Hawaiian Islands were set up as a Territory of the United States, 1900; Alcock and Whitten Brown began the first non-stop transatlantic flight from Newfoundland, 1919; the 'Black Bottom' dance was introduced in George White's Scandals at the Apollo Theatre, New York, 1926; the first London performance of the musical show Anything Goes was staged, 1935; the German army entered and occupied Paris, 1940; the state of Vietnam was set up with strong opposition from the Communists, 1949; the world's first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, was launched in the United States, 1952; the withdrawal of French forces from Morocco was announced, 1958; the Vatican announced that the Index of Prohibited Books was abolished, 1966; a ceasefire was agreed in the Falklands, 1982.

Today is the Feast Day of St Dogmael, St Methodius the Confessor and Saints Valerius and Rufinus.