Anniversaries

Births: Cardinal Jules Mazarin (Giulio Mazarini), statesman, 1602; Jakob Stainer (Steiner), violin-maker, 1621; Sir Robert Strange, line engraver, 1721; John Gibson Lockhart, editor, novelist and critic, 1794; Johannes Peter Muller, physiologist, 1801; John Frederick Lewis, painter, 1805; Joseph Arthur, Comte de Gobineau, diplomat and author, 1816; Jervis McEntee, painter, 1828; James Abbott McNeill Whistler, painter and writer, 1834; Emmeline Pankhurst, social reformer and suffragist, 1858; Owen Wister, novelist, 1860; Gustav Klimt, painter, 1862; Paul Walden, chemist, 1863; Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell, traveller and archaeologist, 1868; Gerald Finzi, composer, 1901; Woody Guthrie, folk singer, 1912.

Deaths: Philip II Augustus, King of France, 1223; Pelham Humfrey, composer, 1674; Francisco Antonio Gabriel Miranda, Venezuelan nationalist leader, 1816; Madame de Stael (Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker), Baronne de Stael, writer, 1817; Augustine-Jean Fresnel, physicist, 1827; Edward Calvert, artist and wood-engraver, 1883; Alfred Krupp, industrialist, 1887; Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger, Boer leader, 1904; Sir William Henry Perkin, chemist and inventor of aniline dyes, 1907; Albert von Keller, painter, 1920; Sir Apirana Turupa Ngata, Maori leader, 1950; Jacinto Benavente y Martinez, playwright and poet, 1954; Faisal II, King of Iraq, assassinated 1958; Grock (Karl Adrien Wettach), clown, 1959; Adlai Ewing Stevenson, statesman, 1965; Konstantin Georgiyevich Paustovsky, writer and journalist, 1968.

On this day: the Grand Council of Nimes ended, 1096; the Bastille in Paris was stormed during the French Revolution, 1789; the Oxford Movement was launched after a sermon by John Keble, 1833; the Battle of Waitzen, between Russians and Hungarians started, 1849; Commodore Perry of the US was received in Yokohama by the Lord of Toda, 1853; the first ascent of the Matterhorn was made by Edward Whymper, 1865; dynamite was first demonstrated by Alfred Nobel, 1867; the Cunard steamship Etruria reached Queenstown (Cobh), Ireland, after sailing from New York in six days, four hours and 50 minutes, 1888; 442 lives were lost after the Messageries Maritime SS Djemnah was torpedoed in the Mediterranean, 1918; the first BBC television play was transmitted, A Man With a Flower in his Mouth 1930.

Today is Bastille Day in France and the Feast Day of St Camillus de Lellis, St Deusdedit of Canterbury, St Marcellinus or Marchelm, St Ulric of Zell.