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On this Day - Saturday, 21 November 2009
Feast Days
FEAST day of St Geasius, pope, and St Albert of Louvain.On This Day Over The Years
FEAST day of St Geasius, pope, and St Albert of Louvain.1695 Henry Purcell, English composer, died of tuberculosis, aged 36.
It is said that a friend asked him if he had made his peace with God.
He replied: ‘‘We’ve never quarrelled.
’’1783 Man’s first free-flight was made by Jean de Rosier and the Marquis d’Arlandes in the Montgolfier brothers’ hot air balloon.
They rose 500ft above Paris and, after 25 minutes, landed a few miles south.
1843 Thomas Hancock patented vulcanised rubber.
1888 Harpo Marx, the Marx Brother who never spoke on screen, was born in New York.
1910 Count Leo Tolstoy, author of War And Peace and Anna Karenina, died in virtual poverty at Astopovo.
He had made his fortune over to his wife - and then quarrelled with her.
1918 The German battle fleet surrendered to the Allies at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys.
1934 Cole Porter’s Anything Goes opened in New York and made a star of Ethel Merman.
1936 The first television gardening programme was broadcast by the BBC - In Your Garden with Mr Middleton.
1953 The discovery of The Piltdown Man skull by Charles Dawson in Sussex in 1912 was finally revealed as a hoax.
1974 IRA bombs in two Birmingham public houses killed 17 people and left a further 120 injured.
