On this day

1600: Charles I was born at Dunfermline Palace in Scotland.

1828: Franz Schubert, Austrian composer, died in Vienna of typhus, aged 31.

1863: Abraham Lincoln made his famous Gettysburg address, with his freedom cry: “Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”

1939: Baseball legend Joe DiMaggio married “Freshies” actress Dorothy Arnold in San Francisco.

1942: The Russians counter-attacked at Stalingrad and surrounded the German army. 1979: Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordered the release of 13 ‘hostages’ held in the US embassy in Tehran.

1984: More than 500 people died and 1,000 buildings were destroyed in an explosion at a chemicals factory in Mexico City.

1988: Christina Onassis, daughter of Greek shipping magnate Aristotle, died from a pulmonary edema, aged just 37.

ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: Archaeologists said they had found a fresco in an ancient Pompeii bedroom depicting a sensual scene of a goddess and swan.