EVENTS: Only 20 years and five months elapsed between Arnold Schwarzenegger becoming a US citizen on this day in 1983 and his declaration in February this year that anyone who has been a US citizen for at least 20 years should be “absolutely” free to run for president. Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California, was born in Graz, Austria, and the US Constitution provides that only citizens born in the US are eligible for the Oval Office.
In 1620 the Pilgrim Fathers set sail from Plymouth on the Mayflower; in 1861 the Post Office Savings Bank was established; in 1976 America’s Episcopalian Church approved the ordination of women priests and bishops; in 1978 an earthquake killed 25,000 people in Iran; in 1992 Britain withdrew from the European Exchange-Rate Mechanism; in 1994 John Major lifted media restrictions on Sinn Fein.
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BIRTHS: Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1916-18 before he was Prime Minister briefly in 1922-23, the Conservative Andrew Bonar Law was remembered by his Liberal rival Asquith as combining “exceptional natural fluency with a faithful and tenacious memory . . . even introducing a Budget with no other material aid than a single sheet of note-paper”. The only British Prime Minister to have been born outside the United Kingdom, Bonar Law was born in Kingston, New Brunswick, Canada, on this day in 1858.
King Henry V (reigned 1413-22), born in Monmouth, 1387; Thomas Barnes, Editor of The Times 1817-41, born in London, 1785; Alfred Noyes, poet, born in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, 1880; Nadia Boulanger, conductor and music teacher, born in Paris, 1887; Sir Alexander Korda, film director and producer, born in Pusztatúrpásztó, Hungary, 1893.
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DEATHS: The nation’s diet in the Second World War owed much to Sir George Stapledon, who in 1919 was appointed Professor of Agricultural Botany at University College, Aberystwyth, and director of the Welsh Plant Breeding Station. A pioneer of grassland science, he concentrated on breeding improved strains of grass to make millions of acres of pasture more productive. He died in Bath, Somerset, on this day in 1960.
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Tomás de Torquemada, Spanish grand inquisitor, died in Avila, Castile, 1498; John Colet, theologian, died in Sheen, Surrey, 1519; Gabriel Fahrenheit, German physicist, died in The Hague, Netherlands, 1736; Louis XVIII, King of France, died in Paris, 1824; Edward Pusey, theologian and leader of the Oxford Movement, died in Ascot, Berkshire, 1882; Edward Whymper, British mountaineer and wood engraver, died in Chamonix, France, 1911; Sir Thomas Lauder Brunton, Scottish physician, died in London, 1916; Sir James Jeans, astronomer and mathematician, died in Dorking, Surrey, 1946; Maria Callas, soprano, died in Paris, 1977; Marc Bolan, rock musician, was killed in a car crash in London, 1977.