Events: In 1660 a meeting of 12 scholars, including Christopher Wren, decided to set up a “College for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning”, which became the Royal Society; in 1919 Nancy, Viscountess Astor, won a by-election in Plymouth, becoming the first woman MP to sit in the House of Commons; in 1943 Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin met in Tehran to discuss their combined strategy for defeating the Germans.
Births: William Blake, poet, engraver and painter, born in London, 1757; Friedrich Engels, co-author (with Karl Marx) of the Communist Manifesto, born in Barmen, Prussia, 1820; Nancy Mitford, novelist and biographer, born in London, 1904.
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Deaths: Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Baroque sculptor, painter and architect, died in Rome, 1680; Matsuo Basho, haiku poet, died in Osaka, Japan, 1694; Enrico Fermi, Italian-born physicist who won a Nobel Prize in 1938 for his work on radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation, died in Chicago, 1954; Enid Blyton, children’s writer, died in London, 1968.