ANNIVERSARIES
EVENTS: In 1348 Edward III established the senior order of British chivalry, the Order of the Garter; in 1853 Verdi’s Il trovatore was performed for the first time, at the Apollo Theatre in Rome; in 1903 the commercial viability of wireless telegraphy was finally established when Marconi facilitated the sending of reciprocal greetings between President Theodore Roosevelt in Washington and King Edward VII in London; in 1966 Mrs Indira Gandhi became India’s first woman Prime Minister.
BIRTHS: James Watt, manufacturer of mathematical instruments who designed the steam engine that largely powered the Industrial Revolution, born in Greenock, Renfrewshire, 1736; Johann Bode, astronomer who popularised Johann Titius’s discovery of a numerical relationship describing the distance of the planets from the sun, a theory that is called Bode’s law or the Titius-Bode law, born in Hamburg, 1747; Auguste Comte, philosopher and founder of Positivism, born in Montpellier, France, 1798; Edgar Allan Poe, writer, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 1809; Sir Henry Bessemer, inventor of a steel production process that reduced the alloy’s price to a fifth of its former cost, born in Charlton, Hertfordshire, 1813; Paul Cézanne, painter, born in Aix-en-Provence, 1839; Augustine Birrell, politician and writer, born in Wavertree, Lancashire, 1850; Lilian Harvey, British actress who starred in German films of the 1920s and 1930s, born in Hornsey, London, 1906; Janis Joplin, rock singer, born in Texas, 1943.
DEATHS: Abbas I (the Great), Shah of Persia (1588-1628) who established his capital at Esfahan with extensive building works, and extended Persian terriory by defeating the Uzbeks and Ottomans, died in Mazandaran, Persia, 1629; Hans Sachs, prolific poet, dramatist, songwriter and mastersinger, who became a leading character in a number of operas, including Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, died in Nuremberg, 1576; Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, social philosopher and activist who greatly influenced the development of socialism and anarchism with pamphlets including What is Property?, died in Paris, 1865; Bettino Craxi, Italian Prime Minister 1983-87, died in Tunis, 2000; Hedy Lamarr, Hollywood screen beauty, died in Orlando, Florida, 2000.