The List

HOT PHRASES: Italian: caldo africano] (African heat) si bolle] (We're being boiled); Afrikaans: Here, man, dis baie warm] (God, it's hot, man]); Arabic: Yitkhini min al-har (One is suffocating from heat); German: Ach was fur eine Mordshitzer (Oh what a murderous heat); French: C'est la canicule] (It's a heatwave) OR Vive la douche (Hooray for the shower); American: Hot enough for you?; Hebrew: B'chayai, cham hajom (By my life, it's hot today); Yiddish: Oi vay iz tsu mir, heint iz tzu hais (Oh dear, it's too hot for me); Norwegian: 'Joss] For en svine hette]' (Jesus] What a pig-boiler]); Spanish: Estamos achicharrados (We are as hot as cicadas); English: Phew] What a scorcher]

TODAY is the feast day of the Blessed Agathangelo and Cassian, simultaneously stoned and hanged in Ethiopia in 1638. Frenchmen, they first tried to bring the Coptic Christians of Egypt into the Roman Catholic fold but were hindered by the scandalous example set by European Catholics living in Cairo. Despairing, they set out for Ethiopia, only to find they were preceded by Lutherans who persuaded the king to have them arrested. They were sentenced to death, and when the hanging was delayed for want of a rope Cassian said: 'But have we not ropes round our clothes?' As they swung from the belts of their habits, the crowd stoned them to death. Afterwards a miraculous light poured from their bodies.

7 August, 1485: Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, landed at Milford Haven with a small French army on his way to wrest the crown from Richard III at the battle of Bosworth Field. Henry VII was perhaps the most obscure person, with one of the weakest blood claims, ever to become king of England. His mother was the great-great-granddaughter of Edward III, through an illegitimate union of John of Gaunt, while on his father's side Henry was the grandson of Henry V's widow by her second marriage. He was brought up in Wales and before 1485, when he was 28, he had spent 14 years in impoverished exile in France. He was none the less the last hope of the Lancastrians and upon Richard's death at Bosworth he was proclaimed king.

1840: The employment of children as chimney sweeps was banned by Act of Parliament.

1914: The pounds 1 note entered circulation.

1942: US forces landed at Guadalcanal.

BIRTHDAYS:

Walter Swinburn, jockey, 33; Alexei Sayle, comedian, 42; Greg Chappell, cricketer, 46; Baroness Seear, Liberal Democrat peer, 81.

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