Anniversaries

Births: Henry Glapthorne, playwright, 1610; Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, philosopher, 1804; Giulia Grisi, soprano, 1811; Henri-Joseph Harpignies, painter, 1819; Gerard Manley Hopkins, poet, 1844; Helen Beatrix Potter, author and illustrator, 1866; Marcel Duchamp, painter, 1887; Marie Lohr, actress, 1890; Clarence Malcolm Boden Lowry, novelist, 1909.

Deaths: Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, Chancellor to King Henry VIII, executed 1540; Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, poet and soldier, 1655; Antonio Lucio Vivaldi, priest, composer and violinist, 1741; Johann Sebastian Bach, composer, 1750; Georges Couthon, revolutionary, executed 1794; Louis-Antoine- Leon-Florelle de Richebourg de St Just, revolutionary leader, executed 1794; Giuseppe Sarti, composer, 1802; Nathan Mayer Rothschild, banker, 1836; Mortimer Collins, poet and novelist, 1876; Sir Moses Haim Montefiore, philanthropist, 1885; Vyacheslav Konstantinovich Plehve, Russian Minister of the Interior, assassinated 1904; William James Mayo, surgeon and co-founder of the Mayor Clinic, 1939; Otto Hahn, nuclear physicist, 1944; Margot Asquith, writer, 1945.

On this day: the Roman emperor Maximus was defeated near Aquileia by the Byzantine emperor Theodosius I, 388; the Walcheren Expedition under the Earl of Chatham and Sir Richard Strachan, set out, 1809; under Arthur Wellesley the British defeated the French at the Battle of Talavera, 1809; Peru declared its independence from Spain, 1821; the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in the US, 1868; Austria Hungary declared war on Serbia, 1914; the ninth Olympic Games opened in Amsterdam, 1928; a B-25 bomber crashed into the tower of the Empire State Building, New York, setting the building ablaze and killing 13, 1945; Edward Heath became leader of the Conservative Party, 1965; an earthquake took place in the Tangshan area of China, with more than 800,000 deaths, 1976.

Today is the Feast Day of St Botvid, Saints Nazarius and Celsus and St Samson of Dol.