DATELINE

January 14

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.