Events: In 1601 John Lancaster led the first East India Company voyage from London; in 1689 William III and Mary acceded; in 1692 the MacDonalds were massacred by the Campbells at Glencoe; in 1832 cholera first appeared in London; in 1917 the Dutch spy Mata Hari was arrested by the French; in 1945 Dresden was devastated as hundreds of RAF bombers attacked the city with high explosives and incendiaries; in 1959 the Barbie doll went on sale; in 1960 France exploded its first atomic bomb.
Births: Sir Joseph Banks, naturalist, born in London, 1743; Lord Randolph Churchill, statesman, born in Blenheim Palace, 1849; Feodor Chaliapin, singer and actor, born in Kazan, Russia, Eleanor Farjeon, poet and playwright who wrote the words of the hymn Morning has Broken, later popularised in a new song by Cat Stevens, born in London, 1881.
Deaths: Benvenuto Cellini, sculptor and goldsmith accused of murder and of stealing gems from a tiara owned by the Pope, died in Florence, 1571; Cotton Mather, Puritan and writer, died in Boston, Massachusetts, 1728; Richard Wagner, composer, died in Venice, 1883; Georges Rouault, Expressionist painter who said: “For me, painting is a way to forget life. It is a cry in the night, a strangled laugh”, died in Paris, 1958; Dame Christabel Pankhurst, suffragette and founder, with her mother Emmeline and sister Sylvia, of the Women’s Social and Political Union in Manchester, died in Los Angeles, 1958;