EVENTS: In 1963 martial law was declared in South Vietnam; in 1983 the Philippines’ opposition leader, Benigno Aquino Jr, was shot dead minutes after returning home from exile; in 1986 more than 1,700 people were killed by a cloud of lethal gas that escaped from the volcanic Lake Nyos in Cameroon, West Africa.
BIRTHS: Jean-Baptiste Greuze, painter, born in Tournus, France, 1725; William IV, reigned 1830-37, born in Buckingham Palace, London, 1765; August Bournonville, dancer and choreographer, born in Copenhagen, 1805; Aubrey Beardsley, artist and illustrator, born in Brighton, 1872; Omar Ramsden, artist and goldsmith, born in Sheffield, 1878; Count Basie, jazz pianist and bandleader, born in Red Bank, New Jersey, 1904; Christopher Robin Milne, bookseller around whose childhood his father wrote the Winnie the Pooh stories, born in London, 1920.
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DEATHS: Richard Crashaw, English poet, died in Loreto, Papal States, 1649; Selwyn Image, illustrator, designer and Professor of Fine Arts at Oxford, died in London, 1930; Constant Lambert, composer, conductor and first musical director of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, died in London, 1951; Sir Jacob Epstein, American-born British sculptor, died in London, 1959; Sobhuza II, King of Swaziland 1921-82, died near Mbabane, 1982.