ON THIS day

■1813: Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi was born in Le Roncole.

■ ■1877: Motoring pioneer William Morris, 1st Viscount Nuffield, was born in Worcester.

■ ■1881: The Savoy Theatre, the first public building to be lit by electricity, opened with a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience.

■ ■1886: The dinner jacket made its first appearance in public when it was worn by its creator at a ball at the Tuxedo Park Country Club, New York.

■1903: Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst formed the Women’s Social and Political Union to fight for female emancipation in Britain.

■1935: Gershwin’s Porgy And Bess opened in New York. The opera was a financial failure though an artistic triumph.

■1957: A major radiation leak was detected at the Windscale nuclear plant in Cumbria, after an accident three days earlier.

■ ■1961: A volcano erupted on the South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha and the whole population was brought to Britain.

■1972: Sir John Betjeman was appointed Poet Laureate.

■ ■1975: After divorce in the early 1970s, followed by several reconciliations and separations, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor remarried in a remote village in Botswana. They divorced again the following year.

■ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: A ticket-holder came forward to claim a record £170m EuroMillions jackpot prize.

■BIRTHDAYS:

Murray

Walker, former motor racing commentator,

97; Judith

Chalmers, TV presenter, 85;

Charles

Dance, actor,

74, right; Chris

Tarrant, broadcaster,

74; Midge Ure, rock singer, 67; Fiona Fullerton, actress, 64; Martin Kemp, actor/musician, 59; Tony Adams, former footballer and manager, 54; Sir Matthew Pinsent, Olympic gold medal rower, 50.