TODAY
EVENTS: In 1861 Tsar Alexander II abolished serfdom in Russia; in 1878 the patent for Thomas Edison’s phonograph (the original gramophone) was issued; in 1897 the Women’s Institute was founded by Mrs Hoodless in Ontario, Canada (introduced to Britain during the First World War); in 1945 30,000 US Marines landed on the island of Iwo Jima (midway between Saipan and Tokyo), whose eventual capture would create an essential forward air base in the war against Japan; in 1985 the BBC televised the first episode of EastEnders.
BIRTHS: Nicolaus Copernicus, astronomer, born in Torun, Poland, 1473; David Garrick, actor, manager and friend of Samuel Johnson, born in Hereford, 1717; Daniel Solander, botanist who worked at the British Museum before travelling with Cook on his first voyage to the Pacific, born in Pitea, Sweden, 1733; Luigi Boccherini, cellist and composer, born in Lucca, Italy, 1743; Sir Roderick Murchison, geologist who established the Silurian, Devonian and Permian periods, born in Tarradale, Ross-shire, 1792; Carson McCullers, novelist, born in Columbus, Georgia, US, 1917; Lee Marvin, actor, born in New York, 1924.
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DEATHS: Elizabeth Carter, poet and translator of Epictetus, died in London, 1806; Blondin (Jean-Francois Gravelet), acrobat and tightrope walker, died in London, 1897; André Gide, writer and Nobel laureate (1947), died in Paris, 1951; Derek Jarman, film director, died in London, 1994.
TOMORROW
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EVENTS: In 1811 Austria declared itself bankrupt; in 1816 the opening night of Rossini’s opera The Barber of Seville was a fiasco, with one performer singing an aria with a bleeding nose after tripping on a trapdoor, and a cat attacking another during the finale to the first act; in 1947 Viscount Mountbatten of Burma was appointed last Viceroy of India; in 1965 John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, with Nasa keen to emulate the greater successes of recent Soviet spaceflight.
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BIRTHS: Thomas Osborne (Duke of Leeds), statesman and leader of the Tories who was imprisoned twice on charges of bribery, was born on this day in London, 1632; Karl Czerny, pianist and composer who, at the age of ten, was a pupil of Beethoven and later a tutor of Liszt, born in Vienna, 1791; Adam Black, publisher of Encyclopaedia Britannica from 1826, born in Edinburgh, 1784; Dame Marie Rambert, founder of the dance company bearing her name, born in Warsaw, 1888.
DEATHS: James I of Scotland, reigned 1406-37, murdered, Perth, 1437; Aurangzeb, last Mogul Emperor of India 1658-1707, died on this day in Ahmednagar, 1707; Andreas Hofer, Tyrolese patriot, executed at Mantua, 1810; Robert Peary, Arctic explorer whose claim to have been the first man to reach the North Pole remains questionable, died in Washington, 1920; Percy Grainger, arranger of folk music, died in White Plains, New York, 1961.