Anniversaries

Births: Georg Philipp Telemann, organist and composer, 1681; Johann Strauss the Elder, composer, 1804; Victor Emmanuel II, King of Italy, 1820; Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli, astronomer, 1835; Mrs Isabella Mary Beeton (Mayson), author of household and cookery books, 1836; Sir Thomas Lauder Brunton, pharmacologist and physician, 1844; Paul Ehrlich, bacteriologist, 1854; John Lane, publisher, 1854; Vilhelm Friman Koren Bjerknes, meteorologist, 1862; Norman Houston O'Neill, composer, 1875; Albert Einstein, physicist, 1879; James Laver, writer and editor, 1899.

Deaths: Jakob van Ruysdael, painter, 1682; Field Marshal George Wade, 1748; Admiral John Byng, executed for neglect of duty 1757; Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, poet, 1803; John Jervis, Earl of St Vincent, admiral of the fleet, 1823; Karl Marx, political philosopher, 1883; William Hale White ('Mark Rutherford'), novelist, 1913; Walter Crane, painter and illustrator, 1915; Cesar Cui, composer and writer, 1918; George Eastman, photographic inventor, 1932; Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, journalist and politician, executed 1938; Klement Gottwald, Czech leader, 1953; Busby Berkeley (William Berkeley Enos), choreographer, 1976; Sir Huw Pyrs Wheldon, broadcaster and administrator, 1986.

On this day: Henry IV defeated the League at the Battle of Ivry-la-Bataille, 1590; Asiatic cholera first appeared in Ireland at Belfast, 1832; Lake Albert, Africa, was discovered and named by Sir Samuel Baker, 1864; the first production of The Mikado, by Gilbert and Sullivan, was staged at the Savoy Theatre, London, 1885; the first submarine telephone line was laid by the Monarch across the English Channel, 1891; a provisional government was set up in Russia, 1917; the German Army began a retreat to the Hindenburg Line, 1917; the first transatlantic radio broadcast was made, 1925; the New English Bible (New Testament), a new translation, was published in London, 1961.

Today is the Feast Day of St Eutychius or Eustathius of Carrhae, St Leobinus or Lubin and St Matilda. Today is also Commonwealth Day.