EVENTS: In 1609 the English navigator and explorer Henry Hudson first entered the river later to be known as the Hudson in what became New York; in 1878 Cleopatra’s Needle was erected on the Thames Embankment in London; in 1972 an Icelandic gunboat sank two British trawlers as the “Cod War” began in earnest; in 1974 Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia was deposed by a military coup; in 1990 East and West Germany and the Second World War Allies signed a treaty to restore sovereignty to a united Germany and define its international status.
BIRTHS: Sir William Dugdale, antiquary and Garter King of Arms 1677-86, born in Shustoke, Warwickshire, 1605; John William Fletcher, clergyman, born in Nyon, Switzerland, 1729; Herbert Henry Asquith (1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith), Prime Minister 1908-16, born in Morley, Yorkshire, 1852; Maurice Chevalier, singer and actor, born in Paris, 1888; Alfred A. Knopf, publisher, born in New York, 1892; Louis MacNeice, poet and playwright, born in Belfast, 1907; Jesse Owens, athlete and winner of four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, born in Oakville, Alabama, 1913.
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DEATHS: François Couperin, composer and harpsichordist, died in Paris, 1733; Jean-Philippe Rameau, composer, died in Paris, 1764; Sir Francis Baring, banker, died in Lee, Kent, 1810; Gebhard von Blücher, field marshal, died near Kanth, Prussia, 1819; Peter Mark Roget, physician and compiler of the Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, died in West Malvern, Worcestershire, 1869; Leonid Andreyev, Russian novelist, died in Kuokkala, Finland, 1919; Robert Lowell, poet, died in New York, 1977; Steve Biko, South African civil rights leader, died in police detention in Pretoria, 1977.