Birthdays |
| 1844 | Gerald Hopkins, English poet |
| 1866 | Beatrix Potter, English author |
| 1887 | Marcel Duchamp, French artist |
| 1901 | Rudy Valee, American singer |
| 1936 | Garfield Sobers, West Indian cricketer |
| 1938 | Ian McCaskill, Weatherman |
Events |
| 1655 | Cyrano de Bergerac, the French poet & soldier, died |
| 1750 | Johann Sebastain Bach, the composer, died |
| 1851 | The first ever photograph of a total eclipse of the Sun was made |
| 1858 | Fingerprints were first used as a means of identification |
| 1914 | The first World War began when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia |
| 1959 | Postcodes were introduced in Britain |
| 1972 | British dockers began a national dock strike |
| 1976 | China was struck by an earthquake, killing an estimated 800,000 people |
| 1976 | Britain broke off diplomatic links wih Uganda |
