Anniversaries

Births: Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni, composer, 1671; Thomas Pennant, traveller and naturalist, 1726; Harriet Beecher Stowe, novelist, 1811; Alexander John Ellis (Sharpe), philologist and mathematician, 1814; Prince Aritomo Yamagata, Japanese military leader and prime minister, 1838; Karl Landsteiner, pathologist, 1868; Count John McCormack, tenor, 1884; Burl Ives (Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives), actor and singer, 1909; Sam Wanamaker (Samuel Watenmaker), actor, director and producer, 1919; Ernesto Guevara de la Serna (Che), revolutionary, 1928.

Deaths: Orlando de Lassus, composer, 1594; Sir Henry Vane, parliamentarian, executed 1662; Charles-Antoine Coypel, painter, 1752; Count Giacomo Leopardi, poet and philosopher, 1837; Thomas Wakley, surgeon and founder of the Lancet, 1862; Aleksandr Nikolayevich Ostrovsky, playwright, 1886; Edward FitzGerald, poet and translator of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 1883; Marie-Francois-Sadi Carnot, French president, assassinated by anarchists 1894; Walter Weedon Grossmith, comedian and writer, 1919; Jerome Klapka Jerome, writer, 1927; Emmeline Pankhurst (nee Goulden), women's rights champion, 1928; Gilbert Keith Chesterton, writer, 1936; Maxim Gorky (Alexei Maximovich Pyeshkov), writer, 1936; John Logie Baird, television pioneer, 1946; Jorge Luis Borges, writer, 1986; Alan Jay Lerner, lyricist and playwright, 1986; Henry (Enrico) Mancini, film music composer, 1994.

On this day: King Charles I's troops were defeated by Cromwell's army at the Battle of Naseby, 1645; at Dunkirk, the English and French decisively beat off the Spanish in the Battle of the Dunes, 1658; King William III landed at Carrickfergus in Ireland, 1690; the Stars and Stripes flag was adopted by the Continental Congress in America, 1777; Henley Regatta was held for the first time, 1839; the world's first motor-race was run in Paris, 1895; Alcock and Whitten Brown began the first non-stop trans-Atlantic flight from Newfoundland, 1919; the German army entered and occupied Paris, 1940; the withdrawal of French forces from Morocco was announced, 1958; the Vatican announced that the Index of Prohibited Books was abolished, 1966; a cease-fire was agreed in the Falklands, 1982.

Today is the Feast Day of St Dogmael, St Methodius the Confessor and Saints Valerius and Rufinus.