On This Day

[Raistlin]

Births

1387 King Henry V of England

1893 Alexander Korda, British film director and producer

1924 Lauren Bacall, US actress

1925 Charles Haughey, Irish politician

1926 B B King, US blues singer

1927 Peter Falk, US actor

1951 Andy Irvine, British rugby footballer

Deaths

1498 Tomás de Torquemada, Spanish Inquisitor-General

1736 Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit, German physicist

1824 Louis XVIII, King of France

1955 Leo Amery, British statesman and journalist

1974 Walter Greenwood, English novelist

1977 Maria Callas, US opera singer

Events

1847 Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon became the first building in Britain to be purchased for preservation.

1859 David Livingstone discovered Lake Nyasa (now Lake Malawi) in Africa.

1906 The US Buick and Oldsmobile car manufacturers merged to become General Motors.

1941 The Shah of Iran, Reza Khan Pahlavi, abdicated.

1963 Malaysia became independent and a mob of over 100,000 burned down the British Embassy.

1969 Biba, considered London's trendiest store in the 'swinging 60s', opened on Kensington High Street.

1976 The Episcopal Church in the USA approved the ordination of women to the priesthood.

1987 For the first time in South Africa, Othello was performed with a black actor, John Khani, playing the Moor.

1991 All Iran-Contra charges against US Marine Lt Col Oliver North were dropped.

1992 British Chancellor of Exchequer, Norman Lamont, increased the base rate from 10% to 12%, then to 15% in an attempt to defend the pound against speculative selling; sterling was withdrawn from the ERM and allowed to 'float'.

[Raistlin]

Births

1580 Francisco Gomez de Quevado y Villegas, Spanish poet and satirist

1883 William Carlos Williams, US poet

1906 Frederick Ashton, British choreographer

1929 Stirling Moss, English racing driver

1931 Anne Bancroft, US actress

1934 Maureen Connolly, US tennis player

Deaths

1665 Philip IV, King of Spain

1771 Tobias George Smollett, Scottish novelist

1877 William Henry Fox Talbot, English photographic pioneer

1948 Count Folke Bernadotte, Swedish diplomat, assassinated

1985 Laura Ashley, Welsh designer and fabric retailer

1994 Karl Popper, Austrian philosopher of science

1997 Richard Bernard ('Red') Skelton, US comedian

Events

1787 The Constitution of the United States of America was signed.

1862 General McClellan repulsed General Lee's invasion of the North at Antietam, ending one of the decisive battles in the American Civil War.

1900 Commonwealth of Australia, a federation of six colonies, was proclaimed.

1908 Orville Wright, was killed when the plane crashed, becoming the first passenger to die in an air crash.

1931 The first long-playing record was demonstrated in New York by RCA-Victor, but the venture failed because of the high price of the players.

1939 Poland was invaded by the USSR.

1944 The British airborne invasion of Arnhem, Holland began as part of 'Operation Market Garden'.

1961 Police made 1,314 arrests during sit-down demonstrations by CND members in Trafalgar Square, London.

1991 Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, North and South Korea, the Marshall Islands, and Micronesia were admitted to the United Nations.

1996 The civil trial of O J Simpson, who had been acquitted in 1995 of criminal charges relating to the fatal stabbing in 1994 of his ex-wife and a friend of hers, opened in Santa Monica, CA.

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[Raistlin]

Events

324 Emperor Constantine defeats Licinius at Chrysopolis, becoming the sole Emperor of the entire Roman empire.

1740 George Anson set out on his voyage around the world.

1851 The New York Times was first published.

1879 The famous illuminations in Blackpool, England were switched on for the first time.

1810 The Chilean revolt against Spanish rule began.

1914 The Irish Home Rule Bill went into effect.

1918 The Battle of Megiddo, in Palestine, began.

1927 CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System, was inaugurated in the USA.

1931 Japan seized Manchuria and set up a puppet state called Manchukuo - it was returned to China in 1945 after World War II.

1934 The USSR was admitted to the League of Nations.

1939 William Joyce, whose upper-class accent earned him the nickname Lord Haw-Haw, made his first Nazi propaganda broadcast from Germany to the UK.

1981 France abolished execution by guillotine.

1991 The Yugoslav navy began a blockade of seven port cities on the Adriatic coast in Dalmatia.

1997 US geneticist Bert Vogelstein and colleagues demonstrated how the p53 gene, activated by the presence of carcinogens, induces cells to commit suicide. It is perhaps the human body's most effective way of combating cancer.

Births

1709 Dr Samuel Johnson, English writer and lexicographer

1819 Jean Bernard Léon Foucault, French physicist

1905 Greta Garbo, Swedish film actress

1914 jack Cardiff, British film director

1939 Frankie Avalon, US singer and actor

1949 Peter Shilton, English footballer

Deaths

96 Domitian, Roman Emperor.

783 Leonhard Euler, Swiss mathematician

1830 William Hazlitt, British essayist and critic

1961 Dag Hammarskjöld, Swedish UN secretary-general

1964 Sean O'Casey, Irish dramatist

1967 John Douglas Cockcroft, English nuclear physicist

1970 Jimi Hendrix, US rock guitarist

1997 Jimmy Witherspoon, US blues singer

[Raistlin]

Events

1356 Led by Edward, the Black Prince, the English defeated the French at the Battle of Poitiers in the Hundred Years' War.

1783 The Montgolfier brothers sent up the first balloon with live creatures aboard; passengers included a sheep, a rooster, and a duck.

1876 The US inventor Melville Bissell patented the first carpet sweeper.

1893 New Zealand became the first country to grant its female citizens the right to vote.

1945 William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) was sentenced to hang for treason.

1960 A new dance craze began when Chubby Checker's 'The Twist' entered the US charts.

1960 The new traffic wardens issued the first 344 parking tickets in London.

1983 The Caribbean islands of St Kitts-Nevis achieved independence from Britain.

1989 The New York Supreme Court reversed an earlier decision to award the America's Cup to New Zealand, allowing the San Diego Yacht Club to retain the award.

1994 US troops invaded Haiti, encountering no resistance; on the 26th the USA lifted sanctions.

1996 IBM announced that from Jan 1997 it would provide health-care coverage and other benefits to the partners of US homosexual and lesbian employees.

Births

1802 Lajos Kossuth, Hungarian statesman

1839 George Cadbury, English chocolate manufacturer and social reformer

1911 William Golding, English novelist

1948 Jeremy Irons, English actor

1948 Rosemary Casals, US tennis player

1949 Twiggy (Lesley Hornby), English model and actress

Deaths

1812 Meyer Amschel Rothschild, German banker

1881 James Garfield, 20th US president

1905 Thomas John Barnardo, British philanthropist

1963 David Low, British cartoonist

1968 Chester Carlson, US inventor of the xerography photocopying process

1988 Roy Kinnear, English comedy actor

1995 Rudolf Peierls, German-born British physicist

[Raistlin]

Births

356BC Alexander the Great

1851 Henry Arthur Jones, British dramatist

1878 Upton Sinclair, US novelist

1885 Jelly Roll Morton, US pianist and composer

1927 John Dankworth, English bandleader and jazzman

1934 Sophia Loren, Italian film actress

Deaths

1803 Robert Emmet, Irish nationalist, executed

1863 Jakob Karl Grimm, German philologist

1933 Annie Besant, British socialist and feminist activist

1957 Jean Sibelius, Finnish composer

1971 George Seferis, Greek poet-diplomat

1994 Jule Styne, English-born US composer of songs

Events

451 Huns under Attila at Châlon-sur-Marne.

1519 Ferdinand Magellan, with a fleet of five small ships, sailed from Seville on his expedition around the world.

1854 Crimean War; the first six Victoria Crosses to be awarded to the British Army were won at this battle.

1928 The Fascist Party took over the supreme legislative body in Rome, replacing the Chamber of Deputies.

1961 Argentinian Antonio Abertondo started the first successful non-stop swim across the Channel and back, completed in 43 hr 5 min.

1966 The liner Queen Elizabeth II (QE2) was launched at Clydebank, Scotland.

1984 The US embassy in Beirut was attacked by a suicide bomber; explosives within a lorry were set off, killing 40 people.

1996 More than eight lbs/3.6 kg of heroin were discovered on Colombian President Samper's official jet, 12 hours before he was scheduled to fly to New York City to address the UN General Assembly on Colombia's strategy in the war against drugs.

1997 The English pop star Elton John released the single 'Candle in the Wind '97'' as a tribute to Princess Diana. It became the best-selling single of all time.

[Raistlin]

Births

1452 Savonarola, Italian political reformer and martyr

1756 John Loudon McAdam, Scottish engineer

1849 Edmund William Gosse, English author

1866 H G Wells, English writer

1931 Larry Hagman, US actor

1948 Stephen King, US novelist

Deaths

19BC Virgil, Roman poet

1327 King Edward II of England, murdered

1832 Sir Walter Scott, Scottish novelist

1860 Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher

1957 Haakon VII, King of Norway

1973 William Plomer, South African author

1974 Walter Brennan, US film actor

Events

1529 The Turkish army under Suleiman the Magnificent was defeated at Vienna.

1745 Bonnie Prince Charles and his Jacobite army defeated the English at the Battle of Prestonpans in Scotland.

1784 The Pennsylvania Packet and General Advertiser, the first successful US daily newspaper, was published.

1915 Stonehenge was sold at auction to Mr C H Chubb for £6,600. Mr Chubb presented it to the nation three years later.

1917 Latvia proclaimed its independence.

1938 The Anglo-French plan to cede Sudetenland to Germany was accepted by the Czech cabinet.

1949 In soccer, the Republic of Ireland beat England 2-0 at Goodison Park - England's first home defeat by a foreign football team.

1974 Over 8,000 people were killed by floods caused by hurricanes in Honduras.

1989 Hurricane Hugo struck the US coastal states of Georgia and South Carolina, causing widespread damage and loss of life.

1993 Boris Yeltsin suspended the Russian parliament and called elections; the Supreme Soviet defied this action, swearing in Alexandr Rutskoi as president.

1996 US President Clinton signed into law the Defense of Marriage Act, denying federal recognition to same-sex marriages and federal benefits to partners in such marriages.

1997 The right-wing Solidarity Electoral Alliance won legislative elections in Poland.

[Raistlin]

Events

1735 Sir Robert Walpole became the first prime minister to occupy 10 Downing Street.

1792 France was declared a Republic.

1862 US President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, ordering the freeing of slaves.

1869 Wagner's opera Das Rheingold was first performed in Munich.

1914 Three British cruisers, Aboukir, Hogue, and Cressy, were torpedoed and sunk by German U-boats.

1955 Argentinian leader Juan Perón was deposed in a military coup.

1955 Independent TV began operating; Britain's first commercial and first woman newsreader were transmitted.

1972 Idi Amin gave the 8,000 Asians in Uganda 48 hours to leave the country.

1980 The Solidarity movement in Poland was created, with Lech Walesa as its elected leader.

1985 A severe earthquake hit Mexico, killing 2,000 people.

1989 An IRA bomb attack on the Royal Marines School of music killed ten and injured twelve of the bandsmen.

1991 Armenia declared independence.

1996 A cancer patient became the first man to die legally under a new euthanasia law in Australia's Northern Territory.

Births

1515 Anne of Cleves, 4th wife of Henry VIII of England

1791 Michael Faraday, English chemist and physicist

1880 Christabel Pankhurst, English suffragette

1885 Erich von Stroheim, Austrian actor and film director

1902 John Houseman, US actor and producer

1931 Fay Weldon, British author

1961 Catherine Oxenberg, US film actress

Deaths

1776 Nathan Hale, American revolutionary patriot, hanged

1985 Axel Springer, German publisher

1987 Jaco Pastorius, US bass guitarist

1987 Louis Kentner, English pianist

1989 Irving Berlin, US composer

1997 Bryan Ingham, English painter and sculptor

[Bizarra]

Notice to the other reader of this Topic

Today has been postponed, if not cancelled

Please apply for refund yesterday :o :D

Today would have been just another day ........one more yesterday, one less tomorrow.

[Raistlin]

Births

63BC Augustus, 1st Roman Emperor

1713 Ferdinand VI, King of Spain

1920 Mickey Rooney, US film actor

1926 John Coltrane, US saxophonist

1930 Ray Charles, US singer

1943 Julio Iglesias, Spanish singer

1949 Bruce Springsteen, US rock singer

1951 Jeff Squire, British rugby footballer

Deaths 1666 Nicholas François Mansart, French architect

1870 Prosper Merimée, French novelist

1889 Wilkie Collins, English novelist

1939 Sigmund Freud, Austrian psychoanalyst

1973 Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet

1987 Bob Fosse, US director

Events

480BC The Persians were defeated by the Greeks at the Battle of Salamis.

1779 In the American War of Independence, a French and American fleet commanded by John Paul Jones, captured the British ship Serapis in the Battle of Flamborough Head.

1803 Arthur Wellesley (later Duke of Wellington) defeated Scindia and the Rajah of Berar at Assaye in India.

1846 German astronomer Johann Galle discovered the planet Neptune.

1848 Chewing gum was first commercially produced in the USA by John Curtis in his home, and was called 'State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum'.

1912 Cohen Collects a Debt, the first of US film producer Mack Sennet's silent Keystone Cops films, was released.

1940 The George Cross and the George Medal for civilian acts of courage were instituted.

1952 Rocky Marciano defeated Jersey Joe Walcott (both of USA), to win the world heavyweight boxing title.

1973 Juan Perón was re-elected president of Argentina; he had been ousted in 1955.

1974 The world's first Ceefax teletext service was begun by the BBC.

1996 London police raided several suspected IRA hideouts across the city, seizing around 10 tons of homemade explosives and killing one suspected IRA member.

1997 Turkish troops conducted large-scale attacks on the bases of the Workers' Party of Kurdistan (PKK, a Kurdish guerrilla organization) in northern Iraq.

[Raistlin]

Births

1501 Geronimo Cardano, Italian physician and mathematician

1717 Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, English writer

1896 F Scott Fitzgerald, US novelist

1898 Howard Walter Florey, pathologist

1932 Svetlana Beriosova, British ballerina

1942 Gerry Marsden, English rock musician

Deaths

768 Pépin III (the Short), King of the Franks

1143 Pope Innocent II

1541 Paracelsus, Swiss physician, alchemist, and scientist

1983 Isobel Baillie, Scottish oratorio singer

Events

1776 The St Leger horse race was run for the first time at Doncaster.

1852 French engineer Henri Giffaud made the first flight in a dirigible balloon, from Paris to Trappe.

1930 English dramatist Noël Coward's Private Lives was first staged in London.

1953 The Robe, the first Cinemascope film, premiered in Hollywood.

1960 The first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise, was launched at Newport, Virginia.

1975 British mountaineers Dougal Haston and Doug Scott became the first to reach Mt Everest's summit via the south-west face.

1980 The Iraqis blew up the Abadan oil refinery, turning the Iran - Iraq conflict into a full scale war.

1991 The Shi'ite Muslim Revolutionary Justice Organization freed British hostage jack mann, kidnapped in May 1989.

1995 Israel and the PLO reached an agreement on the pivotal second stage of interim Palestinian autonomy, setting terms for an Israeli military pullback from Palestinian villages in the West Bank and the transfer of administrative authority.

1996 US President Clinton and the foreign ministers of the UK, China, France and Russia signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty at UN headquarters in New York City.

[Raistlin]

Events

1066 England's King Harold II defeated the King of Norway, Harald Hardrada, at the Battle of Stamford Bridge.

1513 Vasco Balboa, Spanish explorer, became the first European to sight the Pacific Ocean after crossing the Darien isthmus.

1818 The first blood transfusion using human blood, as opposed to earlier attempts with animal blood, took place at Guy's Hospital in London.

1888 London's Royal Court Theatre, in Sloane Square, opened.

1909 The French battleship Liberté exploded in Toulon harbour, killing 226 people.

1915 The Battle of Loos, in World War I, began; it would continue into Oct.

1954 François Duvalier ('Papa' Doc) was elected president of Haiti.

1956 Transatlantic telephone service was inaugurated.

1972 Norway voted against joining the EC in a referendum.

1988 In USA, Barbara Harris, a divorcee, was elected as first woman bishop in the Anglican communion, to serve as suffragan Bishop of Massachusetts.

1991 Peace accord was signed in El Salvador to end 11-year civil war.

Births

1683 Jean Philippe Rameau, French composer

1897 William Faulkner, US novelist

1903 Mark Rothko, US painter

1906 Dmitri Shostakovich, Russian composer

1927 Colin Davis, British conductor

1944 Michael Douglas, US actor

1952 Christopher Reeve, US film actor

Deaths

1680 Samuel Butler, English writer

1849 Johann Strauss the Elder, Austrian composer

1960 Emily Post, US writer

1970 Erich Maria Remarque, German novelist

1984 Walter Pidgeon, US film actor.

[Raistlin]

Births

1791 Théodore Géricault, French painter

1849 Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, Russian physiologist

1888 T S Eliot, US-born British poet and playwright

1898 George Gershwin, US composer

1943 Ian Chappell, Australian cricketer

1945 Bryan Ferry, English rock singer

1948 Olivia Newton-John, English singer

Deaths

1820 Daniel Boone, US frontiersman

1915 James Keir Hardie, Scottish Labour Party pioneer

1945 Béla Bartók, Hungarian composer

1990 Alberto Moravia, Italian writer

Events

1687 The Parthenon in Athens was severely damaged by mortar bombs fired by the Venetian army as it besieged the Turkish-held Acropolis.

1887 German-born US Emile Berliner patented the first gramophone.

1907 New Zealand became a Dominion.

1934 The liner Queen Mary was launched at Clydebank, Scotland, by Queen Mary.

1953 Sugar rationing in Britain came to an end.

1955 Frozen Birdseye fish fingers first went on sale in Britain.

1961 Bob Dylan made his debut in New York's Greenwich Village, at Gerdie's Folk City.

1983 Alan Bond's Australia II won the America's Cup, the first non-US winner for 132 years.

1984 Britain agreed to transfer full sovereignty of Hong Kong to China in 1997.

1988 Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was stripped of his gold medal in the 100 metres at the Seoul Olympics after failing a drugs test.

1996 US astronaut Shannon W Lucid returned to Earth after 188 days in space on the Russian space station Mir, setting records for the longest space stay by a woman and the longest stay by a US astronaut.

1997 An A300 B-4 Airbus crashed at Medan in southern Sumatra, killing 234 people, due to smog from forest fires.

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[Raistlin]

Events

1662 England's Charles II sold Dunkirk to Louis XIV of France for 2.5 million livres.

1901 In Paris, a 'getaway car' was used for the first time, when thieves robbed a shop and sped away.

1904 The first section of New York city's subway system was opened.

1917 US troops entered the war in France.

1936 Mrs Wallis Simpson was granted a divorce from her second husband, leaving her free to marry Britain's King Edward VIII.

1971 The Republic of Congo changed its name to the Republic of Zaire.

1979 St Vincent and Grenadines gained independence.

1986 The City of London experienced 'Big Bang' day, due to the deregulation of the money market.

1997 The Dow Jones index made its biggest drop in history-554 points-triggering the first ever automatic trading cut-off.

Births

1728 Captain James Cook, English naval explorer

1782 Niccoló Paganini, Italian violinist and composer

1858 Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US president

1905 Dylan Thomas, Welsh poet

1923 Roy Lichtenstein, US painter

1932 Sylvia Plath, US poet

1939 John Cleese, English actor and comedian

Deaths

1505 Ivan III (the Great), Tsar of Russia

1804 George Morland, English painter

1968 Lise Meitner, Austrian nuclear physicist

1969 Eric Maschwitz, English lyricist

1977 James M Cain, US novelist

[bothwell_buyer]

Status Quo re-released its hit "We're in the army now" almost 25 years since its first release... with proceeds going to Help for Heroes

[Raistlin]

Births

1573 Caravaggio, Italian painter

1803 Prosper Merimée, French writer

1841 Georges Clemenceau, French politician

1916 Peter Finch, British film actor

1917 Michael Soames, English dancer

1924 Marcello Mastroianni, Italian actor

1934 Brigitte Bardot, French film actress

Deaths

1530 Andrea del Sarto, Italian painter

1891 Herman Melville, US novelist

1895 Louis Pasteur, French chemist

1973 W H Auden, English poet

1992 William Douglas-Home, British playwright

1970 Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egyptian president

Events

490BC The Greeks defeated the Persians at the Battle of Marathon.

1745 At the Drury Lane Theatre, London, God Save the King, the national anthem, was sung for the first time.

1794 Britain, Russia, and Austria formed the Alliance of St Petersburg against France.

1864 Karl Marx proposed the formation of an International Working Men's Association.

1865 Elizabeth Garrett Anderson became the first qualified woman physician in Britain.

1894 Simon Marks and Tom Spencer opened their Penny Bazaar in Manchester, the first of what would become a nation-wide chain of stores.

1939 The Polish army surrendered; Germany and the USSR concluded a treaty partitioning Poland.

1978 Pope John Paul I, pope for only 33 days, was found dead.

1994 Car ferry Estonia sank in the Baltic off Finland, with the estimated loss of 900 lives.

1997 Europe's golfers retained the Ryder Cup, defeating the USA 141/2-131/2 at Valderrama, in southern Spain..

[Bizarra]

......................... Groundhog day

Too early in the morning.........or haven't been to bed yet? :fishyface: :lol2:

[Raistlin]

I only see one post

[Bizarra]

I only see one post

Now! <_< What about today's? :) I'm all agog

[Raistlin]

Events

1399 The first English monarch to abdicate, Richard II, was replaced by Bolingbroke who ascended the throne as Henry IV.

1829 The first regular police force in London was inaugurated; the officers became known as 'bobbies' after Robert Peel, the home secretary who founded the modern police force.

1911 Italy declared war on Turkey over possession of Tripoli, in Libya.

1916 John D Rockefeller became the world's first billionaire during the share boom in the USA.

1938 The Munich Agreement between Germany and France, Italy and Britain was signed.

1944 In World War II, Soviet troops entered Yugoslavia.

1950 The first automatic telephone answering machine was tested by the US Bell Telephone Company.

1965 The USSR admitted to supplying arms to North Vietnam.

1991 Haiti's first freely elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was ousted in a military coup.

Births

1547 Miguel de Cervantes, Spanish playwright and novelist

1758 Horatio Nelson, Viscount, English admiral

1901 Enrico Fermi, US physicist

1935 Jerry Lee Lewis, US singer and pianist

1943 Lech Walesa, Polish leader

1956 Sebastian Coe, English athlete

Deaths

1902 Émile Zola, French novelist

1910 Winslow Homer, US painter

1913 Rudolf Diesel, German engineer

1927 Willem Einthoven, Dutch physiologist

1935 Winifred Holtby, English novelist

1959 Bruce Bairnsfather, British cartoonist

1967 Carson McCullers, US author

1997 Roy Lichtenstein, US artist

[Raistlin]

Births

1788 Lord Raglan, British field-marshal

1908 David Fyodorovich Oistrakh, Russian violinist

1923 Deborah Kerr, British actress

1924 Angie Dickinson, US actress

1931 Truman Capote, US author

1937 Johnny Mathis, US singer

Deaths

1772 James Brindley, British canal engineer

1943 Richard Austin Freeman, British crime writer

1955 James Dean, US film actor

1985 Simone Signoret, French film actress

1989 Virgil Thomson, US composer

Events

1791 Mozart's Magic Flute took place in Vienna.

1888 jack the Ripper murdered two more women - Liz Stride, found behind 40 Berner Street, and Kate Eddowes in Mitre Square, both in London's East End.

1902 Rayon, or artificial silk, was patented.

1928 Alexander Fleming announced his discovery of penicillin.

1935 George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess was first performed in Boston.

1939 The USSR and Germany agreed on the partition of Poland.

1952 Cinerama, invented by Fred Waller, was first exhibited in New York.

1967 In Britain, BBC's national pop station, Radio One, went on the air.

1987 Keith Best, MP, was sentenced to four months in prison for trying to obtain British Telecom shares by deception.

1997 An FBI/CIA investigation into the explosion aboard TWA Flight 800 in June 1996 concluded it was caused by a build-up of pressure in a fuel tank.

[Raistlin]

Births

1207 Henry III, King of England

1865 Paul Dukas, French composer

1904 Vladimir Horowitz, US pianist

1920 Walter Matthau, US film actor

1924 Jimmy Carter, 39th US president

1933 Richard Harris, British actor

1935 Julie Andrews, English actress and singer

Deaths

1684 Pierre Corneille, French dramatist

1708 John Blow, British composer

1873 Edwin Landseer, English painter

1911 Wilhelm Dilthey, German philosopher

1972 Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey, English anthropologist

1979 Roy Harris, US composer

Events

331BC Alexander the Great defeated Darius III at Arbela

1163 Archbishop Becket refused Henry's demand for the punishment of clergy in secular courts.

1795 Belgium became part of the French Republic.

1843 The News of the World, Britain's most popular Sunday newspaper, was first published.

1908 The first Model T, produced in Detroit, Michigan, was introduced by Henry Ford.

1918 The Arab forces of Emir Faisal, with British officer T E Lawrence, captured Damascus from the Turks.

1936 General Francisco Franco took office as head of Spain's Nationalist government.

1938 Munich Agreement.

1949 The People's Republic of China was proclaimed, with Mao Zedong as its chairman.

1958 The official start of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA),

1971 Disneyworld, the world's largest amusement resort, was opened in Florida.

1982 Helmut Kohl became federal chancellor of West Germany, succeeding Helmut Schmidt.

1988 Mikhail Gorbachev was elected president of USSR by Supreme Soviet.

[Raistlin]

Events

1187 Saladin, the Muslim sultan, captured Jerusalem after its 88-year occupation by the Franks.

1608 The first telescope was demonstrated by the Dutch lens maker, Hans Lipperschey.

1836 Charles Darwin returned from his five-year survey of South American waters aboard the HMS Beagle.

1870 Rome became the capital of the newly unified Italy.

1901 The British Royal Navy's first submarine, built by Vickers, was launched at Barrow.

1909 The first rugby football match was played at Twickenham, between Harlequins and Richmond.

1942 The British cruiser Curacao sank with the loss of 338 lives, after colliding with the liner Queen Mary off the coast of Donegal.

1983 Neil Kinnock was elected leader of Britain's Labour Party.

1985 US film star Rock Hudson became the first celebrity to die of AIDS.

1990 German Democratic Republic ceased to exist at midnight.

1996 A Peruvian jetliner, on its way from Lima, Peru to Santiago, Chile, crashed into the Pacific Ocean, killing all 70 people on board.

1996 Former Bulgarian premier Andrei Lukanov was shot and killed by an unidentified gunman.

1997 UK scientists Moira Bruce and, independently, John Collinge and their colleagues showed that the new variant form of the brain-wasting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is the same disease as BSE or 'mad-cow disease' in cows.

Births

1814 Mikhail Yurevich Lermontov, Russian poet

1847 Paul von Hindenburg, German field marshal and politician

1852 William Ramsay, Scottish chemist

1869 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Indian leader

1904 Graham Greene, English novelist

1951 Sting, English rock singer

Deaths

1803 Samuel Adams, US statesman

1920 Max Bruch, German composer

1958 Marie Stopes, Scottish birth-control campaigner

1968 Marcel Duchamp, French painter

1985 Rock Hudson, US film actor

1987 Peter Medawar, British immunologist

[Raistlin]

Births

1867 Pierre Bonnard, French painter

1897 Louis Aragon, French poet

1911 Michael Hordern, English actor

1916 James Herriot, Scottish author

1925 Gore Vidal, US author

1941 Chubby Checker, US rock singer

Deaths

1226 St Francis, Italian founder of the Franciscan order

1896 William Morris, English designer, socialist, and poet

1967 Woody Guthrie, US singer and composer

1967 Malcolm Sargent, British conductor

1987 Jean Anouilh, French dramatist

1997 A L Rowse, British historian

Events

1811 The first women's county cricket match began at Newington, between Hampshire and Surrey.

1888 Gilbert and Sullivan's Yeomen of the Guard was performed for the first time, at London's Savoy Theatre.

1906 SOS was established as an international distress signal, replacing the call sign CQD.

1929 The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was renamed Yugoslavia.

1952 The first British atomic bomb was detonated on the Monte Bello Islands, off W Australia.

1956 The Bolshoi Ballet performed in Britain, at Covent Garden, for the first time.

1972 The USA and USSR signed final SALT accords limiting submarine-carried and land-based missiles.

1981 IRA hunger-strike at Maze prison ended after 10 deaths.

1990 East and West Germany were officially reunified, with Berlin as the capital.

1997 The US Attorney General Janet Reno ordered the Justice Department to investigate allegations of illegal campaign financing involving Vice President Al Gore.

[Raistlin]

Events

1582 Pope Gregory XIII launches the Gregorian calendar, replacing the Julian calendar.

1853 Turkey declared war on Russia to start the Crimean War.

1905 Orville Wright became the first to fly an aircraft for over 33 minutes.

1910 Portugal was proclaimed a republic when King Manuel II was driven from the country by a revolution.

1911 Britain's first public escalator was switched on, at London's Earl's Court underground station.

1957 The USSR's Sputnik I, the first space satellite, was launched.

1958 BOAC (now British Airways) began operating the first transatlantic passenger jet service.

1965 Pope Paul VI visited New York to address the UN, becoming the first pope to visit the USA.

1983 A world record speed of 663.5 mph was achieved by Richard Noble in his jet-powered car Thrust II, in Nevada.

1993 Rebels holding out in a Moscow parliament building surrendered after fire broke out.

1995 French troops landed in the Comoros Islands, and archipelago in the Indian Ocean, and overturned a six-day coup led by the 66-year old former French mercenary Bod Denard.

1996 Princess Stephanie of Monaco was granted a divorce from her husband of 14 months, Daniel Ducruet, after the publication of photographs showing him with another woman.

Births

1720 Giambattista Piranesi, Italian architect

1814 Jean François Millet, French painter

1892 Engelbert Dollfuss, Austrian statesman

1892 Buster Keaton, US comedian

1924 Charlton Heston, US film actor

1931 Terence Conran, British designer

Deaths

1497 Benozzo Gozzoli, Italian painter

1669 Rembrandt, Dutch painter

1821 John Rennie, Scottish civil engineer

1948 Arthur Whitten Brown, pioneer aviator

1970 Janis Joplin, US singer

[Raistlin]

Births

1713 Denis Diderot, French philosopher

1830 Chester Alan Arthur, 21st US president

1919 Donald Pleasence, English actor

1923 Glynis Johns, British actress

1936 Vaclav Havel, Czech dramatist and president

1954 Bob Geldof, Irish musician

Deaths

1285 Philip III ('the Bold'), King of France

1524 Joachim Patinir, Dutch painter

1880 Jacques Offenbach, French composer

1934 Jean Vigo, French film director

1985 Nelson Riddle, US composer and arranger

1997 Otto Ernst Remer, German Nazi security chief

Events

1796 Spain declared war on Britain, during the Revolutionary Wars.

1880 The earliest 'ball pen', with its own ink supply and retractable tip, was patented by Alonzo T Cross.

1908 Bulgaria declared its independence from Turkey.

1911 Italian troops occupied Tripoli, in Libya, during its war with Turkey.

1914 The first air battle took place between French and German aircraft during World War I; both sides suffered losses.

1930 The British airship R101, the world's largest dirigible at that time, crashed in France en route to India; the British air minister was among the 48 killed.

1936 The Jarrow march, of unemployed shipyard workers, started its southward journey to London.

1967 The first majority verdict by a jury in Britain was taken, in Brighton.

1970 Gamal Nasser as president of Egypt.

1974 IRA bombs killed 5 and injured 65 in two public houses in Guildford, Surrey, England.

1983 The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Lech Walesa.

1993 Papal encyclical Veritatis splendor (The Splendour of Truth) was published; it condemned relative moral judgements and affirmed Catholic moral teaching.