Also on this day

Highwayman Dick Turpin is identified, leading to his hanging.

Romantic poet John Keats (right) dies from tuberculosis, aged 25.

Guantanamo Bay is leased by Cuba to the United States “in perpetuity”.

“See all without looking; hear all without listening; be attentive without being servile; anticipate without being presumptuous.”

In 1888, he joined forces with famed chef Auguste Escoffier and the two were invited to London to run and cook for the illustrious Savoy Hotel. But after nearly a decade the pair left... under a cloud amid claims of fraud. It was of little matter however – Ritz already had plans for his own establishments, starting the Paris Ritz in 1898 and London’s Carlton Hotel a year later. He stole many of the Savoy’s high-profile customers, including the Prince of Wales.

Despite his success, he battled depression and suffered a nervous breakdown in 1902. He recovered sufficiently to open the landmark

Ritz Hotel in London in 1906, but his ill-health returned. He went back to Switzerland where he died in a clinic in 1918, aged 68.

He is buried in his hometown of Niederwald but his name lives on, both on his luxury hotels and in the English language – “ritzy”, used to describe something of superlative quality.

Question: Which president of the USA, whose father was the second president of the USA, died this day in 1848?

Last week I asked which invention Wallace Carothers received a patent for on February 16, 1937. The answer is NYLON.