Also in October 1893…
3rd: Months of conflict between the French Third Republic and the Kingdom of Siam end with the signing of the Franco-siamese Treaty. Under its terms, the territories of Luang Phrabang, Vientiane and Champasak are united under a French protectorate, creating what will become present-day Laos. 5th: Four leading physicians – William H Welch, William Stewart Halsted, William Osler and Howard Kelly – found the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. Situated on the same campus as the Johns Hopkins Hospital, it will go on to become one of the most influential teaching and research medical facilities in the world.
15th: Composer Charles Gounod suffers a stroke at his home near Paris, while working on a Requiem in memory of his grandson. He dies three days later at the age of 75.
The composer Ambroise Thomas and future French president Raymond Poincaré are among the pallbearers at his funeral at Paris’s L’église de la Madeleine, where the music is conducted by Gabriel Fauré.
16th: Patty Hill, principal of a kindergarten in Louisville, Kentucky, and her sister Mildred J Hill, a songwriter and pianist, copyright their book Song Stories for the Kindergarten. Within it is a song called ‘Good morning to all’, whose tune will later become globally famous when used to accompany the words ‘Happy Birthday to you’.
17th: In celebration of the recently agreed Franco-russian Alliance, Russian soldiers and sailors are rapturously received when invited to take part in a triumphal procession in Paris. The Press Association reports that ‘during their passage through the streets, they received continuous ovations of the most frenzied and ridiculous character from the inhabitants, who seemed for the time being to have taken leave of their senses’.