Today

Events: In 1901 Hubert Cecil Booth, a Scot, patented a vacuum cleaner which sucked in dust and retained it by means of a filter; in 1918 Vladimir Lenin survived an assassination attempt in Moscow; in 1941 the Siege of Leningrad began; in 1976 more than 100 police officers were taken to hospital after clashes at the Notting Hill Carnival.

Births: Jacques-Louis David, Neo-Classical painter, Paris, 1748; Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein (1818), London, 1797; Raymond Massey, actor, Toronto, Ontario, 1896; John Gunther, journalist and novelist, Chicago, Illinois, 1901.

Deaths: Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, committed suicide in Alexandria, 30BC; Louis XI of France (reigned 1461-83) Plessis-les-Tours, 1483; Francis Baily, astronomer who first drew attention to the phenomenon known as “Baily’s beads”, London, 1844; Feargus O’Connor, Chartist leader, London, 1855; Gilbert Abbott a Beckett, Punch contributor, Times journalist and magistrate, Boulogne, France, 1856; Sir John Ross, Arctic explorer, London, 1856; Georges Sorel, social philosopher, Boulogne-sur-Seine, France, 1922; Sir J. J. Thomson, physicist and Nobel laureate 1906, best known for his work on the conduction of electricity by gases, Cambridge, 1940.

Tomorrow

Events: In 1888 the body of Mary Ann Polly Nichols, the first victim of Jack the Ripper, was found in London; in 1928 The Threepenny Opera by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht was first performed in Berlin; in 1936 Elizabeth Cowell became the first female television announcer, on the fledgeling BBC; in 1989 Princess Anne and her husband, Captain Mark Phillips, separated after 16 years of marriage.

Births: Charles Lever, editor and author, Dublin, 1806; Hermann von Helmholtz, scientist and philosopher, Potsdam, Germany, 1821; Maria Montessori, educator and originator of the educational system that bears her name, Chiravelle, Italy, 1870.

Deaths: Henry V, reigned 1413-22, Vincennes, France, 1422; John Bunyan, writer, preacher and author of The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), London, 1688; Charles Baudelaire, poet, translator, and literary and art critic, Paris, 1867; Rocky Marciano, former US world heavyweight boxing champion, killed in an air crash in Iowa, 1969; Henry Moore, sculptor, Hertfordshire, 1986; Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a car crash in Paris, 1997.