ANNIVERSARIES

Anniversaries

Births: St Teresa of Avila, Carmelite nun, 1515; William Henry Hunt, water-colour painter, 1790; Joseph William Bazalgette, engineer, 1819; Antoine-Edouard Batiste, organist and composer, 1820; Mehmed Emin Pasha (Eduard Schnitzer), traveller, 1840; Maxim Gorki (Alexei Maximovich Peshkov), novelist, 1868; Dame Flora Robson, actress, 1902. Deaths: Publius Helvius Pertinax, Roman emperor, murdered 193; Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky, composer, 1881; Virginia Woolf (Adeline Virginia Stephen), author and critic, 1941; Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninov, composer, 1943; Dwight David Eisenhower, general and statesman, 1969; Marc Chagall, painter, 1985; Eugne Ionesco, author and playwright, 1994. On this day: the Act of Union with England was passed by the Irish Parliament, 1800; Britain declared war on Russia (the Crimean War), 1854; electric lighting was installed in the Houses of Parliament, 1878; the last German V2 rocket fell on Britain, 1945; the pirate radio station "Radio Caroline" began to transmit from a ship in the North Sea, 1964; an accident occurred at the nuclear reactor on Three Mile Island, near Middletown, Pennsylvania, and radioactive gases escaped, 1979. Today is the Feast Day of St Guntramnus or Gontran and St Tutilo.