Anniversaries

TODAY: Births: Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, playwright, 1818; Edward VII, King, 1841; Dr Herbert Thomas Kalmus, inventor of Technicolor, 1881; Jean- Omer Marie-Gabriel Monnet, political economist, 1888. Deaths: William Camden, antiquarian and historian, 1623; Guillaume Apollinaire (Wilhelm Apollinaris Kostrowitsky), poet, 1918; James Ramsay MacDonald, statesman, 1937; Arthur Neville Chamberlain, statesman, 1940; Chaim Weizmann, first president of Israel, 1952; Dylan Marlais Thomas, poet, 1953; General Charles de Gaulle, statesman, 1970. On this day: the New York Symphony Orchestra gave its first concert, 1858; flogging in the British Army was abolished, 1859; the first woman mayor, Mrs Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, was elected at Aldeburgh, 1908; the Japanese took Shanghai, 1937; the death penalty for murder was abolished in Britain, 1965; Edward Brooke, of Massachusetts, was elected as the first black member of the US Senate, 1966. Today is the Feast Day of St Benignus or Benen, St Theodore the Recruit and St Vitonus or Vanne; and Lord Mayor's Day.

TOMORROW: Births: Martin Luther, Protestant reformer, 1483; Paracelsus (Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim), physician, 1493; William Hogarth, painter and engraver, 1697; Oliver Goldsmith, playwright, 1728; Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, poet and playwright, 1759; Claude Rains, actor, 1889; Richard Burton (Richard Walter Jenkins), actor, 1925. Deaths: Jean-Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud, poet, 1891; Mustapha Kemal Ataturk, statesman, 1938; Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, Soviet political leader, 1982. On this day: Christopher Columbus discovered Antigua on his second voyage, 1493; the Huguenots were defeated at the Battle of St Denis, 1567; Alois Senefelder patented the lithographic printing process, 1798; Sir Henry Morton Stanley met Livingstone at Ujiji, Tanganyika, 1871; an airmail service began between London and Paris, 1919. Tomorrow is Remembrance Sunday and the Feast Day of St Aedh MacBricc, St Andrew Avellino, St Justus of Canterbury, St Leo the Great and St Theoctista.