Anniversaries

Births: Fra Bartolomeo di Pagholo, (Baccio della Porta), painter, 1472; Raphael Sanzio, painter, 1483; St Teresa of Avila, Carmelite nun, 1515; George I, King, 1660; Thomas Clarkson, abolitionist, 1760; Joseph Weigl, composer, 1766; William Henry Hunt, water-colour painter, 1790; George Richmond, painter, 1809; Alexandre Herculano de Carvalho e Araujo, poet and historian, 1810; Sir Joseph William Bazalgette, engineer, 1819; Antoine- Edouard Batiste, organist and composer, 1820; Mehmed Emin Pasha (Eduard Schnitzer), traveller, 1840; Aristide Briand, statesman, 1862; Maxim Gorki (Alexei Maximovich Peshkov), novelist, 1868; Josef Willem Mengelberg, pianist, conductor and composer, 1871; Paul Samuel Whiteman, bandleader, 1891; Dame Flora Robson, actress, 1902; John Langstraw Austin, philosopher, 1911.

Deaths: Publius Helvius Pertinax, Roman emperor, murdered 193; Waldemar II, King of Denmark, 1241; Juan Fernandez de Navarrete, ('El Mudo'), painter, 1579; Peg (Margaret) Woffington, actress, 1760; William Thornton, architect, 1828; Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky, composer, 1881; Albert Pinkham Ryder, artist, 1917; Virginia Woolf (Adeline Virginia Stephen), author and critic, 1941; Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninov, composer, 1943; Stephen Butler Leacock, humorist and author, 1944; Christopher Darlington Morley, novelist and playwright, 1957; William Christopher Handy, blues composer, 1958; Dwight David Eisenhower, general and statesman, 1969; Dorothy Fields, lyricist, 1974; Marc Chagall, painter, 1985.

On this day: the Act of Union with England was passed by the Irish Parliament, 1800; Britain declared war on Russia (the Crimean War), 1854; electric lighting was installed in the Houses of Parliament, 1878; a disastrous storm and tidal wave swept New Zealand, 1888; the marriage took place in Hollywood of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, 1920; after the dissolution of the Hungarian parliament, Admiral Miklos Horthy became dictator, 1920; the name of Constantinople was changed to Istanbul, and that of Angora to Ankara, 1930; after Madrid surrendered to General Franco, the Spanish Civil War ended, 1939; the Battle of Cape Matapan, Greece, was successfully fought by the British Navy against the Italians, 1941; British commandos raided the French naval port of St Nazaire, 1942; the last German V2 rocket fell on Britain, 1945; the first London performance of the musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying was staged, 1963; the pirate radio station 'Radio Caroline' began to transmit from a ship in the North Sea, 1964; an earthquake in Chile caused a reservoir to burst, resulting in 428 deaths, 1965; in Turkey, a severe earthquake resulted in the loss of more than 1,000 lives, 1970; during the civil war in East Pakistan, Sheikh Mujibur was captured and over 7,000 people killed, 1971; an accident occurred at the nuclear reactor on Three Mile Island, near Middletown, Pennsylvania, when radioactive gases escaped, 1979;

Today is the Feast Day of St Guntramnus or Gontran and St Tutilo.