Anniversaries

Times

March 15, 2003

Anniversaries

TODAY

EVENTS:

In 1649 John Milton was appointed Cromwell’s Latin secretary for foreign affairs; in 1909 the American entrepreneur Gordon Selfridge opened the first department store in London; in 1917 Nicholas II (the last Russian Tsar), abdicated.

BIRTHS:

William Lamb (2nd Viscount Melbourne), Queen Victoria’s first Prime Minister, having assumed the post first in 1834 and then again between 1835 and 1841, born in London, 1779; Emil von Behring, bacteriologist who was awarded the first Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1901 for his work in immunisation against diphtheria, born in Hansdorf, Germany, 1854.

DEATHS:

Julius Caesar, Roman general who assumed dictatorial power after his defeat of Pompey, murdered in Rome, 44BC; Sir Henry Bessemer, engineer who invented the first process of mass-producing steel cheaply, died in London, 1898; August von Wasserman, bacteriologist who developed a test to diagnose syphilis, died in Berlin, 1925; Nevil Sidgwick, chemist who made important contributions to the theory of chemical bonding, died in Oxford, 1952; Aristotle Onassis, shipping magnate, died in Paris, 1975; Dame Rebecca West, writer, died in London, 1983.

TOMORROW

EVENTS:

In 1521 the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan sighted the Philippines; in 1872, watched by 2,000 people at the Kennington Oval, the Wanderers beat the Royal Engineers 1-0 in the first FA Cup Final; in 1973 the Queen opened the new London Bridge (the old one having been sold to Lake Havasa City, Arizona).

BIRTHS:

Caroline Herschel, sister of Sir William Herschel, who progressed from assisting his research to collating her own discoveries of nebulae and star clusters, born in Hanover, Germany, 1750; Matthew Flinders, naval captain whose circumnavigations of Australia and Tasmania produced valuable maps of their coastlines, born in Donington, Lincolnshire, 1774; George Ohm, physicist after whom the unit of electrical resistance was named, born in Erlangen, Germany, 1787; Aleksandr Popov, physicist whose research into the transmission of radio waves was contemporaneous to that undertaken by Marconi, born in Turinskiye Rudniki, Russia, 1859; Lucie Rie, potter and ceramicist, born in Vienna, 1902.

DEATHS:

Giovanni Pergolesi, composer, died in Pozzuoli, Italy, 1736; Aubrey Beardsley, illustrator and writer died of tuberculosis aged only 25, in Menton, France, 1898; John James Macleod, physiologist who shared with Frederick Banting the Nobel Prize of 1923 for the discovery of insulin, having discouraged the project at its outset but subsequently providing laboratory space and assistants for the extraction of pure samples, died in Aberdeen, 1935; Sir Austen Chamberlain, Foreign Secretary 1924-29 (Nobel peace laureate 1925), died in London, 1937; Constantin Brancusi, sculptor, died in Paris, 1957.

[ Previous | Next ]