ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1895 John Ford, American film director; 1901 Clark Gable, American film actor; 1915 Sir Stanley Matthews, footballer; 1918 Dame Muriel Spark, novelist (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie); 1931 Boris Yeltsin, president, Russian Federation 1991-99; 1942 Terry Jones, British comic actor and writer (Monty Python).

Deaths: 1650 René Descartes, philosopher; 1851 Mary Wollstonecroft Shelley, novelist (Frankenstein); 1940 John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir, author; 1944 Piet Mondrian, artist; 1966 Joseph ‘Buster’ Keaton, silent film comedian; 2004 Ally Mcleod, football manager; 2014 Maximilian Schell, Austrian-born Swiss actor and director; 2017 Desmond Carrington, radio presenter; 2017; Sir Ken Morrison CBE, supermarket magnate.