EVENTS: On this day in 1215, at Runnymede, an assembly of barons demanded that King John accede to a document setting out his duties and the rights and liberties of his subjects. The result was Magna Carta, entertainingly described 715 years later in Sellar and Yeatman’s 1066 and All That as providing “that no one was to be put to death, save for some reason (except the Common People)” and “that everything should be of the same weight and measure throughout the Realm (except the Common People)”.
In 1825 the Lord Mayor of London laid the foundation stone of a new London Bridge; in 1844 Charles Goodyear patented vulcanised rubber; in 1896 a 110ft wave struck Sanriku, Japan, sweeping more than 170 miles of coastline and killing thousands; in 1989 the Queen appointed Ronald Reagan an honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath.
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BIRTHS: “Let clowns get wealth, and heirs,” wrote the poet and playwright Thomas Randolph in his “Ode to Master Anthony Stafford”:
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When he died, aged 29, he left six plays, too, among them Aristippus, or, The Joviall Philosopher (1630) and The Jealous Lovers (1632). He was born near Daventry, Northamptonshire, on this day in 1605.
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Edward the Black Prince, eldest son of Edward III, born in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, 1330; Sidney Godolphin (1st Earl of Godolphin), statesman, baptised in Breage, Cornwall, 1645; Hablot K. Browne, the illustrator known as Phiz, born in London, 1815; Edvard Grieg, composer, born in Bergen, Norway, 1843; Ion Antonescu, Romanian general and fascist dictator 1940-44, born in Pitesti, 1882; Harry Langdon, silent film comedian, born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, 1884; Yuri Andropov, head of the KGB 1967-82 and General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party 1982-84, born in Nagutskaya, Russia, 1914.
DEATHS: According to the 11th US President, James K. Polk (1845-49), there is a “great art” to that occupational hazard of presidents, prime ministers and monarchs, serial hand-shaking. “When I observed a strong man approaching,” said Polk, “I generally took advantage of him by being a little quicker than he was and seizing him by the tips of his fingers, giving him a hearty shake, and thus preventing him from getting a full grip upon me.” Polk died in Nashville, Tennessee, on this day in 1849.
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Wat Tyler, leader of the Peasants’ Revolt, was killed in London, 1381; Thomas Campbell, poet, died in Boulogne, France, 1844; Carl Wernicke, neurologist who related nerve disorders to specific areas of the brain and was known for his descriptions of aphasias, died in Thuringia, Germany, 1905; Percy Fender, Surrey and England cricketer, died in Exeter, 1985.