IT HAPPENED TODAY
1167:
King John (John Lackland) was born in Oxford.
1491:
Ignatius Loyola, who founded the Jesuits, was born in Loyola in northern Spain.
1524:
Vasco da Gama, Portuguese navigator who found the sea route from Europe to the East, died on his second voyage after landing in India.
1809:
American folk hero Kit Carson was born in Kentucky.
1818:
A mouse put the organ out of order at St Nicholas Church, Oberndorf, Austria. Franz Xaver Gruber rescued the Christmas music for Midnight Mass by writing a carol for guitar and choir. It was called Stille Nacht (Silent Night). Gruber wrote the tune, but Josef Mohr wrote the lyrics for Silent Night.
1828:
The trial of William Burke (above) began in Edinburgh. The other body-snatcher, William Hare, had turned King’s evidence and was not brought to trial. Sentenced to death, Burke was hanged on January 28, 1829.
1871:
Verdi’s opera Aida had its world premiere in Cairo.
1904:
The London Coliseum opened in St Martin’s Lane, with the first revolving stage in Britain.
1978:
ABBA’s Bjorn Ulvaeus and Agnetha Faltskog (above) are granted a divorce. The group’s other couple, Benny Anderson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, who had just married three months earlier, would split in 1981.
ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR:
Lava and ash were spewing from a new fracture on Italy’s Mount Etna, amid an unusually high level of seismic activity at the Sicilian volcano.
BIRTHDAYS:
Mary Higgins Clark, writer, 92; Carol Vorderman (above), TV mathematician and presenter, 59; Ed Miliband, former leader of the Labour Party, 50; Ricky Martin, pop singer, 48; Stephenie Meyer, novelist, 46; Ryan Seacrest, American TV presenter and host, 45.