EVENTS: In 1819 the Peterloo massacre took place at St Peter’s Field, Manchester; in 1896 the discovery of gold in Rabbit Creek, Yukon, sparked the Gold Rush; in 1921 The Times exposed as a forgery the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which had purported to be a manifesto outlining a Jewish conspiracy for world domination; in 1960 Cyprus became an independent republic.
BIRTHS: Catherine Cockburn, dramatist, born in London, 1679; Carolina Oliphant (Lady Nairne), songwriter, born in Gask, Perthshire, 1766; Arthur Cayley, mathematician, born in Richmond, Surrey, 1821; Jules Laforgue, French poet, born in Montevideo, Uruguay, 1860; T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), British adventurer, writer, archaeologist and soldier, born in Tremadoc, Caernarvonshire, 1888; Dame Mary Gilmore, Australian poet, born near Goulburn, New South Wales, 1865.
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DEATHS: Ramakrishna, Hindu religious leader, teacher and writer, died in Calcutta, India, 1886; Robert Bunsen, German chemist, died in Heidelberg, 1899; Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer, astronomer, died in Salcombe Regis, Devon, 1920; “Babe” Ruth, baseball player, died in New York, 1948; Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone with the Wind, died in Atlanta, Georgia, 1949; Louis Jouvet, actor, died in Paris, 1951; Irving Langmuir, chemist and Nobel laureate 1932, died in Falmouth, Massachusetts, 1957; Selman Waksman, Ukrainian-born biochemist, discovered streptomycin; Nobel laureate 1952, died in Hyannis, Massachusetts, 1973; Elvis Presley, “King of Rock’n’Roll”, died in Memphis, Tennessee, 1977; John George Diefenbaker, Prime Minister of Canada 1957-63, died in Ottawa, Ontario, 1979.