In 1790 Dr Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proposed the guillotine to the newly formed National Assembly of Paris as a “humane” method of execution; in 1793 King Louis XVI of France was executed (by guillotine) for treason; in 1911 the first Monte Carlo car rally began; in 1954 the first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, was launched; in 1976 Concorde made its inaugural flight from London to Bahrain.

BIRTHS: It took just ten years, from opening his own salon in 1947 to his death in 1957, for the fashion designer Christian Dior to create a business whose name still resounds. First came Dior’s New Look, with its rounded shoulders, cinched waist, and full skirt, and then he introduced his H, A and Y lines. With the British designer John Galliano now at the helm, the cheapest price for a Dior outfit has to be that worn by the Christian Dior Barbie doll, retailing at about £55. Dior was born in Granville, Normandy, on this day in 1905.

John Fremont, explorer, born in Savannah, Georgia, 1813; Horace Wells, who initiated the use of nitrous oxide, “laughing gas”, as a dental anaesthetic, born in Hartford, Connnecticut, 1815; Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Confederate general in the American Civil War, born in Clarksburg, Virginia, 1824; Sophia Jex-Blake, pioneer of medical education for women, born in Hastings, Sussex, 1840.

DEATHS: At the Charleston Festival last May, the historian David Starkey offered a comparison of his approach to that of the early-20th-century biographer and essayist Lytton Strachey. Both had dominant mothers, a Cambridge education, poor eyesight and an amusing maliciousness in conversation. Also, Strachey was, as Starkey is, besotted with Queen Elizabeth I. Strachey published his luridly Freudian study, Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History, in 1928. He died in Hungerford, Berkshire, on this day in 1932.

Henry Howard (Earl of Surrey), poet and courtier, executed in London, 1547; John Moore, physician and writer, died in London, 1802; Ludwig Achim von Arnim, poet, died in Dahme, Germany, 1831; Henry Hallam, historian, died in London, 1859; Alexander Herzen, socialist, died in Paris, 1870; Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Bolshevik revolutionary, died in Gorky, 1924; George Moore, novelist, died in London, 1933; George Orwell (Eric Blair), novelist, died in London, 1950; Cecil B. de Mille, film producer, died in Hollywood, 1959; “Colonel” Tom Parker, Elvis Presley’s manager, died in Las Vegas, 1997.