Events: In 1844 the YMCA (the Young Men's Christian Association) was founded in London; in 1907 Persil, the first household detergent, was launched in Düsseldorf, Germany; in 1944, just after midnight, three Horsa gliders carrying British forces landed near Pegasus Bridge over the Caen Canal in Normandy, which was taken in the first exchange of fire of D-Day; in 1949 George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was published; in 1962 the Beatles first met their future producer George Martin at an Abbey Road audition; in 1984 the Indian army, opposing militant Sikh separatists, opened fire in the Golden Temple in Amritsar, killing hundreds of people.

Births: Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, Spanish painter whose “Rokeby Venus” has been in the National Gallery, London, since 1906, born in Seville, 1599; Pierre Corneille, considered the founder of classical French tragedy, born in Rouen, France, 1606; Nathan Hale, soldier of the American Revolution who was executed by the British, born in Coventry, Connecticut, 1755; Alexander Pushkin, author of Eugene Onegin (1831), born in Moscow, 1799; James Steele MacKaye, dramatist, actor, theatre manager and inventor, born in Buffalo, New York, 1842; Karl Ferdinand Braun, physicist who shared a 1909 Nobel Prize with Marconi for his development of wireless telegraphy, born in Fulda, Germany, 1850; William Ralph Inge, Dean of St Paul's 1911-34, dubbed the "gloomy dean", born in Crayke, Yorkshire, 1860; Robert Falcon Scott, Antarctic explorer, born in Devonport, Devonshire, 1868; Sir Denison Ross, orientalist, born in London, 1871; Thomas Mann, novelist, born in Lübeck , Germany, 1875; William Cosgrave, President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State 1922-32, born in Dublin, 1880; Dame Ninette de Valois, dancer, cheoreographer and founder of the company that became the Royal Ballet, born in Blessington, County Wicklow, 1898; Jan Struther, author of “Mrs Miniver” (1939), born in London, 1901; Ahmed Sukarno, President of Indonesia 1949-66, born in Surabaya, Eastern Java, 1901; Sir Isaiah Berlin, political theorist, born in Riga, Latvia, 1909 .

Deaths: Marcus Licinius Crassus, politician who in 60BC was a member of the First Triumvirate in Rome with Caesar and Pompey, was killed at the Battle of Carrhae in Parthia, 53BC; George Anson (Baron Anson), admiral who circumnavigated the globe (1740-44), died in Moor Park, Hertfordshire, 1762; Patrick Henry, American Revolutionary statesman who famously said "give me liberty, or give me death", died in Red Hill, Charlotte County, Virginia, 1799; Henry Grattan, Irish-born Westminster MP and advocate of Irish independence, died in London, 1820; Jeremy Bentham, utilitarian philosopher, died in London, 1832; Count Camillo di Cavour, one of the major architects of Italian reunification, died in Turin, Italy, 1861; Sir John Macdonald, first Prime Minister of Canada 1867-73 and 1878-91, died in Ottawa, Ontario, 1891; Louis Chevrolet, Swiss-born racing driver who founded the Chevrolet car company, died in Detroit, Michigan, 1941; ; Gerhart Hauptmann, dramatist, poet, novelist and Nobel laureate (1912), died in Agnetendorf, Germany, 1946; Louis Lumière , motion-picture pioneer who, with his brother Auguste, invented the cinématographe, died in Bandol, France, 1948; Hiram Bingham, archaeologist who in 1911 discovered and correctly identified the lost Inca city of Machu Picchu in the Peruvian Andes, died in Washington, DC, 1956; Carl Gustav Jung, psychologist, died near Zürich , Switzerland, 1961; Robert Kennedy, American Attorney-General 1961-64, died, the victim of an assassin, in Los Angeles, California, 1968; John Paul Getty, American oil magnate, died near Guildford, Surrey, 1976; Jack Haley, actor who played the Tin Man in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, died in Los Angeles, California, 1979; James E. Casey, founder in 1907 of the delivery company that became United Parcel Service, died in Seattle, Washington, 1983.