Anniversaries

Births: James Gillray, caricaturist, 1756; Sir George Grove, engineer and editor, Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 1820; Annie Oakley (Phoebe Anne Oakley Mozee), crack shot, 1860; Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, film director, 1899; Sir Basil Urwin Spence, architect, 1907.

Deaths: Rene-Theophile-Hyacinthe Laennec, physician and inventor of the stethoscope, 1826; Sir John Everett Millais, painter, 1896; Florence Nightingale, nursing pioneer, 1910.

On this day: the frontier between East and West Germany was closed after the East Germans sealed the border, 1961; the last hangings in Britain took place when two men were executed for murder at Liverpool and Manchester, 1964; the last US troops left Vietnam, 1972.

Today is the Feast Day of St Benildus, St Cassian of Imola, St Hippolytus of Rome, St Maximus the Confessor, St Narses Klaietus, St Pontian, pope, St Radegund, queen, St Simplician of Milan and St Wigbert.