Anniversaries

Births: Giambattista Bodoni, printer and typographer, 1740; Jacques Pierre Joseph Rode, violinist and composer, 1774; Sir Francis Galton, anthropologist and geneticist, 1822; Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov, novelist, 1831; Ernst Heinrich Haeckel, naturalist, 1834; Henry Brooks Adams, historian, 1838; Hugo Marie de Vries, botanist, 1848; Sir William Gurney Benham, editor and newspaper proprietor, 1859; George Macaulay Trevelyan, historian, 1876; Robert Joseph Flaherty, film-maker, 1884; Louis Calhern, actor, 1895; Katherine Cornell, actress, 1898; Sir Geraint Evans, operatic baritone, 1922.

Deaths: Alfonso III, King of Portugal, 1279; Henry Deane, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1503; Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, painter, 1823; Lionel Lukin, lifeboat inventor, 1834; Henry Walter Bates, explorer and naturalist, 1892; Giosue Carducci, poet, 1907; James Harvey Robinson, historian, 1936; Sir Isaac Leslie Hore-Belisha, first Baron, statesman, 1957; Henry Cabot Lodge, statesman, 1985. On this day: Spain was invaded by France, 1808; the Athenaeum Club, London, was founded, 1824; the Confederate forces surrendered Fort Grant to General Ulysses S. Grant, 1862; a fire broke out at Windsor Castle, causing limited damage, 1865; the fortress of Belfort capitulated to the Germans, 1871; the Fianna Fail party, led by Eamon de Valera, won the Irish general election, 1932; the 'Popular Front' won the general election in Spain, 1936; US forces took Bataan, in the Philippines, 1945; Fidel Castro became prime minister of Cuba, 1959; the US nuclear submarine Triton set off on an underwater round-the-world trip, 1960.

Today is the Feast Day of Saints Elias, Jeremy and their Companions, St Gilbert of Sempringham, St Juliana of Cumae and St Onesimus the Slave.