EVENTS: In 1931 Delhi became the capital of India; in 1949 Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman opened in New York at the Morosco Theatre; in 1964, the Great St Bernard Tunnel under the Alps between Switzerland and Italy was opened to traffic.
BIRTHS: Charles Lamb, essayist and author, with his sister Mary, of Tales from Shakespeare (1807), born in London, 1775; Samuel Plimsoll, inventor of the Plimsoll line for ships, born in Bristol, Gloucestershire, 1824; Boris Pasternak, writer, born in Moscow, 1890; Bertolt Brecht, dramatist and theatre director, born in Augsburg, Germany, 1898; Dr Alex Comfort, physician who wrote The Joy of Sex, born in London, 1920.
DEATHS: Alexander Pushkin, Russian writer fatally wounded in a duel, died in St Petersburg, 1837; Sir Joseph Lister (1st Baron Lister), surgeon and pioneer of antiseptic surgery, died in Walmer, Kent, 1912; Edgar Wallace, British-born writer of more than 170 popular novels, died in Hollywood, California, 1932; Pope Pius XI, pontiff from 1922 to 1939, died in Rome, 1939; Mel Calman, Times pocket cartoonist, died in London, 1994.