In 1349, Jewish residents of Basel were rounded up and set on fire by residents who blamed them for the Black Death. Lord Nelson's funeral took place on this date in 1809. The French Academy of Sciences announced the Daguerreotype process of photography in 1839. Russian workers marched on the Winter Palace in 1905, resulting in a massacre by tsarist troops.
Born today: Karel Capek (1890-1938), Gracie Fields (1898-1979), Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), Susanna York (1939), Joan Baez (1941), Jimmy Page (1944), Imelda Staunton (1956) and Joely Richardson (1965).
It is Republic Day in the vowel-deficient Republika Srpska.
