Anniversaries

Births: James Edward Stuart, the Old Pretender, 1688; Gustave Courbet, painter, 1819; Sir Edwin Arnold, poet, 1832; Nikolaus August Otto, inventor of the four-stroke internal combustion engine, 1832; Andre Derain, painter, 1880; Robert Still, composer, 1910; Sir Terence Mervyn Rattigan, playwright, 1911; Judy Garland (Frances Ethel Gumm), singer and actress, 1922; Ian Robert Maxwell (Jan Ludvik Hoch), printer and publisher, 1923.

Deaths: Frederick I, Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor, 1190; George I, King, 1727; Andre-Marie Ampere, physicist, 1836; Frederick Yeates Hurlstone, painter, 1869; Cecil Gordon Lawson, landscape painter, 1882; Antonio Gaudi y Cornet, architect, 1926; Frederick Theodore Albert Delius, composer, 1934; Spencer Tracy, actor, 1967; Henry, Duke of Gloucester, 1974.

On this day: the first of the witches of Salem was hanged in Massachusetts, 1692; the first Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race was rowed, and won by Oxford, 1829; the Crystal Palace at Sydenham near London was officially opened, 1854; 'Alcoholics Anonymous' was founded in the US, 1938; Italy declared war on Britain and France, 1940; the Battle of Narvik ended, 1940; Italy became a republic, 1946; an earthquake in northern Afghanistan (lasting eight days) caused over 2,000 deaths, 1956.

Today is the Feast Day of St Bardo, St Bogumilus or Theophilus, St Getulius and his Companions, St Ithamar and St Landericus or Landry of Paris.