EVENTS: Bonnie Prince Charlie, grandson of England’s exiled James II, believed his aspirations to the Crown were close to being realised on this day in 1745 when George II’s troops failed to stand up to fierce Highlanders at the Battle of Prestonpans. The English, having refused to obey orders to charge, fled in confusion; 1,600 prisoners were taken. The victory meant more recruits flocked to the Stuart cause and the Jacobites were able to advance as far south as Derby. Legend has it that the battle itself only took ten minutes.
In 1915 Stonehenge and the surrounding 30 acres of land sold at auction for £6,600 to Mr C.H. Chubb who later presented it to the nation; in 1937 J. R. R. Tolkien publishes The Hobbit; in 1949 England suffered their first home defeat by a foreign football team with the Republic of Ireland winning 2-0; in 1993 President Yeltsin of Russia suspended parliament and scrapped the constitution, thus triggering a constitutional crisis.
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BIRTHS: During the American Revolution John Loudon McAdam made his fortune in New York as an “agent of prizes” (an official form of dealing in stolen goods), but in 1783 he returned to his native Scotland and turned his hand to revolutionising road construction, which had changed little since Roman times. Rather than relying on heavy, carefully laid foundations he made roads slightly convex with tightly packed layers of small stone to ensure rainwater rapidly drained off and did not penetrate the foundations. Modern road surfaces are still largely dependent on this discovery of McAdam, who was born today in Ayr, 1756.
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Frederick III, last Holy Roman Emperor crowned in Rome, Innsbruck, Austria 1415; John Home, dramatist, Leith, 1722; 1756; H.G. Wells, novelist famous for his works of science fiction, Bromley, 1866; Gustav Holst, composer of The Planets, Cheltenham, 1874; Sir Allen Lane, founder of Penguin Books (1936), Bristol, 1902; Kwame Nkrumah, Prime Minister of Ghana 1957-60, President 1960-66, Nkrofal, 1909.
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DEATHS: Montague Burton, “The Tailor of Taste”, died this day in Leeds, 1952, leaving behind 600 shops and 14 factories and having clothed a quarter of the men in Britain. A Russian Jew emigrating from Lithuania in 1900, he found he could not afford to go to university and so instead borrowed £100 from a relative to set up a menswear shop in Chesterfield. By the 1920s he was a household name.
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Virgil, Roman poet, Brindisium, 19BC; Edward II reputed to have been murdered by his wife, Isabella and her lover, Mortimer, Berkeley Castle, Gloucestershire, 1327; Sir Walter Scott, historical novelist, Abbotsford, Borders, 1832; Arthur Schopenhauer, known as the “philosopher of pessimism”, died in Frankfurt, 1860; Haakon VII, King of Norway 1905-57, Oslo, 1957; Henri de Montherlant, novelist and dramatist, Paris, 1972; Dorothy Lamour, American film actress, 1996.