On this day

AD 304: Saint Agnes was martyred – burnt at the stake at the age of 13 when she refused to marry the husband chosen by her father.

1793: Louis XVI, King of France since 1774, was guillotined after being found guilty of treason. 1846: The Daily News, the newspaper edited by Charles Dickens, was first published. 1907: Taxi cabs were officially recognised in Britain.

1911: The first Monte Carlo Rally began.

1924: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, father of the Russian Revolution, died of a brain haemorrhage at Gorki, outside Moscow.

1950: George Orwell (pen name of British author Eric Arthur Blair) died. His best-known works include Animal Farm and 1984.

1954: The USA launched the USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine. 1976: British and French Concordes made their maiden flights from London to Bahrain and Paris to Rio de Janeiro. 1991: Iraq threatened to use shot-down allied airmen as human shields against bomb attacks.

Birthdays

Ken Maginnis, Baron Maginnis of Drumglass, politician, 83; Jack Nicklaus, former golfer, 81; Placido Domingo, tenor, 80; Martin Shaw, actor, 76; Billy Ocean, singer, 71; Geena Davis, actress, 65; Nicky Butt, former footballer, 46; Emma Bunton, pictured, singer, 45; Philip Neville, former footballer, 44.

Quote of the day

“There’s a serious ethical issue ... carrying a virus is like carrying a loaded gun that can go off accidentally. We’re entitled to restrain people and check whether they have a gun, but, if they don’t have a gun, to restrain them, that’s false imprisonment” – Professor Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, says those who have proven immunity to Covid-19 should not be restrained.