Anniversaries

Births: Matteo Ricci, Jesuit missionary, 1552; Jenny Lind (Johanna Maria Lind), operatic soprano, 1820; George Westinghouse, inventor of the airbrake, 1846; Le Corbusier (Charles-Edouard Jenneret), architect and town planner, 1887.

Deaths: Charles II, the Bald, Holy Roman Emperor, 877; William Tyndale, Bible translator, strangled and burnt at the stake 1536; Charles Stewart Parnell, political leader, 1891; William Henry Smith, newsagent, bookseller and statesman, 1891; Alfred, first Baron Tennyson, poet, 1892; Ford Madox Brown, painter, 1893; George Louis Palmella du Maurier, novelist and artist, 1896; Mohammed Anwar El-Sadat, president of Egypt, 1981; Denholm Mitchell Elliott, actor, 1992.

On this day: Captain Cook landed in New Zealand, 1769; the Rainhill trials of railway locomotives began, 1829; the Mormons in Utah renounced bigamy, 1890; Manchester University was opened, 1903; Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1908; 243 lives were lost when the US freighter Ticonderoga was sunk by a German U-boat, 1918; Chiang Kai-shek became president of China, 1928.

Today is the Feast Day of St Bruno, St Faith of Agen, St Mary Frances of Naples and St Nicetas of Constantinople.