Events: In 1709 the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, was rescued after being marooned for four years on an island off Chile; in 1901 the state funeral of Queen Victoria took place in Windsor; in 1943 the Battle of Stalingrad ended with German forces surrendering after five months of fighting; in 1972 the British Embassy in Dublin was burnt down by demonstrators protesting over the killings of Bloody Sunday in Londonderry; in 1977 the Pompidou Centre of art and culture opened its doors in Paris.
Births: Lodovico Ferrari, mathematician, born in Bologna, Papal States, 1522; Nell Gwyn, actress and mistress of King Charles II, born in London, 1650; Hannah More, bluestocking writer and anti-slavery campaigner, born in Stapleton, Gloucestershire, 1745; Henry Havelock Ellis, physician and author of a seven-part study of human sexual behaviour, born in Croydon, Surrey, 1859; Fritz Kreisler, violinist to whom Elgar’s violin concerto is dedicated, born in Vienna, 1875; James Joyce, novelist, born in Dublin, 1882; Jascha Heifetz, violinist who made his public debut at the age of six, born in Vilna, Lithuania, 1901.
Deaths: Baldassare Castiglione, Italian writer and diplomat in the service of the Duke of Urbino, died in Toledo, Spain, 1529; Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, composer, died in Rome, 1594; Dmitry Mendeleyev, chemist whose periodic table allowed him to predict the existence and atomic weights of elements not yet discovered, died in St Petersburg, 1907; John L. Sullivan, bare-knuckle fighter, died in Abington, Massachusetts, 1918; Sir Owen Seaman, editor of Punch 1906 -32, died in London, 1936; Boris Karloff, actor typecast in sinister horror-film roles, died in Midhurst, Sussex, 1969; Sid Vicious, British-born Sex Pistols guitarist, died in New York, 1979; Alistair Maclean, Scottish-born author of thriller novels, died in Munich, Germany, 1987; Gene Kelly, dancer and choreographer who starred in Singin’ in the Rain (1952), died in Beverly Hills, California, 1996.
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Tomorrow
Events: In 1877 “The Celebrated Chop Waltz”, better known as “Chopsticks”, irritating music for the piano by 16-year-old Euphemia Alten, was registered at the British Museum; in 1919 President Woodrow Wilson attended the first meeting of the League of Nations in Paris; in 1954 the Queen visited Australia, the first reigning monarch to do so; in 1960 Harold Macmillan made his historic “The wind of change is blowing through this continent” speech to the South African Parliament, in Cape Town; in 1969 Yassir Arafat was appointed chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Births: Felix Mendelssohn, composer who paid 10 visits to Britain and whose 4th Symphony (his “Scottish”) was dedicated to Queen Victoria, born in Hamburg, 1809; Elisha Kane, physician and Arctic explorer, born in Philadelphia, 1820; Elizabeth Blackwell, physician and co-founder of the London School of Medicine for Women, born in Bristol, 1821; Robert Cecil (3rd Marquess of Salisbury), Prime Minister 1885-86, 1886-92 and 1895-1902, born at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, 1830; Hugh Montague Trenchard (1st Viscount Trenchard), the man chiefly responsible for the establishment of the RAF in 1918, who became the first British air marshal, and was later to found the police college at Hendon while commissioner of the Metropolitan Police (1931-35), born in Taunton, Somerset, 1873; Gertrude Stein, novelist and critic whose Paris home became a focus for writers such as Ernest Hemingway and Ford Madox Ford, born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, 1874; Alvar Aalto, architect and designer responsible for the hall of residence (1947-48) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the town hall at S?yn?tsalo (1949-52), and the Helsinki Hall of Culture (1958), born in Kuortane, Finland, 1898; Luigi Dallapiccola, composer and leading exponent of serialism in Italy, born in Pisino, Istria, Austrian Empire, 1904.
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Deaths: Germain Pilon, sculptor, died in Paris, 1590; Richard (Beau) Nash, dandy who developed Bath into the most fashionable spa town in England, died there, 1761; Sir Henry Maine, jurist and historian, died in Cannes, 1888; Sir Morell Mackenzie, physician, died in London, 1892; Edward Pickering, astronomer who introduced the use of the meridian photometer to measure the magnitude of stars and established the first great photometric catalogue, the “Harvard Photometry”, in 1884, died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1919; Woodrow Wilson, 28th American President 1913-21, Nobel Peace laureate 1919, died in Washington, 1924; Oliver Heaviside, physicist who in 1902 predicted the existence of the ionosphere, or Heaviside layer, died in Torquay, Devon, 1925; Buddy Holly, singer and songwriter, died in an air crash, near Mason City, Iowa, 1959 .