Events: In 1708 the English and Allies, led by Marlborough and Prince Eugene, defeated the French at the Battle of Oudenarde; in 1776 Captain James Cook sailed from Plymouth on his last voyage to try to locate the Northwest Passage;in 1818, John Keats visited Robert Burns’s birthplace in Alloway, Ayrshire, and composed his sonnet, Written in the Cottage Where Burns Was Born; in 1897 the scientist Saloman Andree and two fellow Swedes left Spitsbergen by balloon in a doomed attempt at Arctic exploration by air; in 1975 Chinese archaeologists announced the uncovering of a “Terracotta Army” near the ancient capital of Xian.
Births: Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland 1306-29, born in Turnberry, Ayrshire, 1274; Don Luis de G?ngora y Argote, poet, born in C?rdoba, Spain, 1561; Thomas Bowdler, self-appointed Shakespearean censor, born near Bath, Somerset, 1754; John Quincy Adams, sixth American President 1825-29, born in Braintree, Massachusetts, 1767; E. B. White, children’s writer known for Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web, born in Mount Vernon, New York, 1899; Yul Brynner, actor, born in Sakhalin, off Siberia, 1915.
Advertisement
Deaths: Germain Sommeiller, the engineer responsible for the eight-mile tunnel through the Alps under Mont Cenis, 1857-70, died in Saint Jeoire, Haute Savoie, 1871; Alfred Dreyfus, French army officer and victim of anti-Semitism, died in Paris, 1935; George Gershwin, composer, died in Hollywood, 1937; Par Lagerkvist, playwright, novelist and poet (Nobel laureate 1951), died in Stockholm, Sweden, 1974; Barbara Wootton (Baroness Wootton of Abinger), sociologist, died in 1988; Laurence Olivier (Baron Olivier), actor and first director of the National Theatre, died in Steyning, West Sussex, in 1989.