Anniversaries

Births: John Opie, artist, 1761; Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, educationist, 1804; David Edward Hughes, inventor of the microphone and teleprinter, 1831; Richard Tauber (Ernst Seiffert), tenor and conductor, 1892; Herbert Ernest Bates, novelist, 1905; Henry Fonda, actor, 1905; Woody (Woodrow Charles) Herman, jazz clarinettist and bandleader, 1913; Liberace (Wladsiu Valentino), pianist and entertainer, 1919.

Deaths: Charles Perrault, author and fairy-tale writer, 1703; Button Gwinnett, American revolutionary leader, from wounds during a duel 1777; Edward Augustus Freeman, historian, 1892; Sir Edmund William Gosse, poet and author, 1928; Max Brand (Frederick Schiller Faust), author, 1944; Sir William Newzam Prior Nicholson, painter and engraver, 1949; Randolph Turpin, boxer, shot dead in his home 1966; Michael Abdul Malik, Black Power leader, hanged for murder in Trinidad 1975; Irwin Shaw, author, 1984.

On this day: in France, the Senate and Tribune proclaimed Napoleon emperor, 1804; the Kentucky Derby was first run, Louisville, Kentucky, 1875; remains of Neanderthal man were found in Jersey, 1911; the White Star liner Majestic, the largest vessel to date, completed her first voyage from Southampton to New York in five and a half days, 1922; the first Academy Awards ceremony was held (best actor, Emil Jannings; best actress, Janet Gaynor), Hollywood 1929; the first British air hostess, Daphne Kearley, flew in an Avro 642 from Croydon to Le Bourget, France. 1936: