ON THIS DAY

● 1875: Dr Albert Schweitzer, missionary surgeon, organist and Nobel Prize winner (1952), was born in Alsace.

● 1878: Queen Victoria was given a demonstration of Alexander Graham Bell’s new invention, the telephone.

● 1898: Lewis Carroll, author of Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, died.

● 1900: Puccini’s opera Tosca was premiered in Rome, despite a bomb scare by the composer’s envious contemporaries.

● 1904: Photographer and stage designer Sir Cecil Beaton was born in London.

● 1953: Marshal Tito was elected president of Yugoslavia.

● 1957: Actor Humphrey Bogart died. His wife Lauren Bacall placed a gold whistle in his coffin with the inscription: “If you need anything, just whistle” - a line from their first film together, To Have And Have Not.

● 1989: British Muslims held public burnings of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses.

● 1997: The trial began of footballers John Fashanu, Bruce Grobbelaar and Hans Segers for allegedly being bribed by a Far Eastern gambling ring to throw matches. All three were later acquitted.

● LAST YEAR: Surfers are three times more likely to have antibiotic resistant E. coli in their guts than non-surfers, a study revealed.

● BIRTHDAYS: Jack Jones, singer, 81; Trevor Nunn, theatre director, 79; Faye Dunaway, actress, 78; Carl Weathers, actor, 71; Steven Soderbergh, film director, 56; Emily Watson, actress, 52; LL Cool J, actor and rap star, 51.