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.
ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR:
A bus plunged into a sinkhole on a city street in north-western China, killing at least six people with four others missing.