Events: In 1522, after the death of Magellan who had begun the expedition, Juan Sebastián del Cano completed the first circumnavigation of the world; in 1666 the Great Fire of London was extinguished; in 1879 the first public telephone exchange in Britain opened; in 1901 William McKinley, the 25th American president (1897-1901), was shot in Buffalo, New York, leading to his death eight days later; in 1940 King Carol II of Romania abdicated; in 1948 test pilot John Douglas Derry became the first Briton to break the sound barrier; in 1968 Swaziland gained its independence from Britain.
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Births: Marie-Joseph, Marquis de Lafayette, military leader and statesman, born in Chavaniac, France, 1757; John Dalton, chemist and physicist, born in Eaglesfield, Cumberland, 1766; John James Macleod, physiologist who, with Frederick Grant Banting, won a Nobel prize in 1923 for their discovery of insulin, born near Dunkeld, Perthshire, 1876; Sir Edward Appleton, physicist and Nobel laureate 1947, born in Bradford, Yorkshire, 1892.
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Deaths: Jean-Baptiste Colbert, statesman, died in Paris, 1683;
George Alexander Stevens, dramatist and songwriter, died in Baldock, Hertfordshire, 1784; Arthur Rackham, artist and illustrator, died in Limpsfield, Surrey, 1939; Kay Kendall, actress best known for her role in Genevieve (1953), died in London, 1959.