|
1 Aug. |
10BC |
Claudius I,
Roman emperor who invaded Britain in AD 43 and made it a
province of Rome. |
|
2 Aug. |
1891 |
Sir Arthur
Bliss, London-born composer and Master of the Queens Music from
1953: his work includes film scores and music for ballet. |
|
3 Aug. |
1867 |
Stanley
Baldwin, British statesman and Conservative Prime Minister three
times between 1923 and 1937. |
|
4 Aug. |
1792 |
Percy
Bysshe Shelley, poet and radical, eloped with 16-year-old Harriot Westbrook in 1811 and in 1814 with Mary Godwin (see 30
Aug below), whom he married in 1816. |
|
5 Aug. |
1853 |
Edward John
Eyre, Yorkshire-born explorer, colonial administrator and
Governor of Jamaica and explorer: Lake Eyre and the Eyre
Peninsula in South Australia are named after him. |
|
6 Aug. |
1881 |
Alexander Fleming,
Scottish bacteriologist who discovered penicillin whilst working
at St. Mary's Hospital, London in 1928. |
Shelley |
|
7 Aug.
|
1903
|
Louis Leakey,
palaeontologist who uncovered evidence of man's early evolution,
including a 1,750,000 year-old skull. |
|
8 Aug.
|
1953
|
Nigel Mansell, Formula
1 and Indycar racing world champion. |
|
9 Aug. |
1757 |
Thomas
Telford, Scottish civil engineer: his networks of roads, canals
and bridges formed the backbone to the world's first industrial
economy, most spectacular perhaps his iron suspension bridge
over the Menai Straits. |
|
10 Aug. |
1782 |
Charles
James Napier, army general who captured the Indian province of Sind and announced such in a one-worded telegram to the British
authorities 'Peccavi' - I have sinned. |
|
11 Aug. |
1897 |
Enid Blyton,
London-born author of over 600 children's books, including 'Noddy',
the 'Famous Five' and the 'Secret Seven'. |
|
12 Aug.
|
1762 |
George IV,
King of Great Britain and Ireland. His extravagances and the
scandal surrounding his marriage to Caroline of Brunswick made
him an unpopular monarch. |
|
13 Aug.
|
1888 |
John Baird,
Scottish electrical engineer and pioneer of the television. In
1929 his mechanically scanned 30-line apparatus was used by the
BBC for its first television programmes. |
Virginia Dare
|
|
14 Aug.
|
1867 |
John Galsworthy, Surrey born
novelist, Nobel Prize winner and playwright who wrote The
Forsyte Saga. |
|
15 Aug.
|
1888 |
T E Lawrence, English soldier and
writer, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, who recorded his
exploits against the Turks in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. |
|
16 Aug.
|
1902 |
Georgette Heyer, London
born popular writer of historical and detective novels. |
|
17 Aug.
|
1920 |
Maureen
O'Hara, Dublin-born actress who moved to Hollywood and starred
in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Black Swan and The
Quiet Man. |
|
18 Aug.
|
1587 |
Virginia
Dare, American colonist, the first child of English parents to
be born in the New World. |
|
19 Aug.
|
1646 |
John
Flamsteed, first Astronomer Royal of England, he was responsible
for equipping the Royal Observatory in Greenwich and producing
the great star catalogues Historia Coelestis Britannica
and Atlas Coelestis. |
|
20 Aug.
|
1906 |
Bunny
Austin, British tennis player and four-times winner of the Davis
Cup. |
|
21 Aug.
|
1765 |
King
William IV of Great Britain and Ireland, also known as 'the
sailor king' as he joined the Royal Navy at 13. William was well
known for his affairs and had 10 illegitimate children by
actress Dorothea Jordan. |
|
22 Aug.
|
1957 |
Steve
Davis, snooker world champion, the first player to earn £1
million from the game. |
|
23 Aug.
|
1947 |
Willy
Russell, Liverpool playwright whose works include Educating
Rita and Shirley Valentine. |
|
24 Aug.
|
1724 |
George
Stubbs, Liverpool-born self-taught animal painter, reckoned by
many to be the greatest of all horse painters. |
|
25 Aug.
|
1819 |
Allan
Pinkerton, Glasgow-born founder of the famous US Pinkerton
National Detective Agency. |
|
26 Aug.
|
1676 |
Sir Robert
Walpole, Whig politician and the first 'prime minister',
restored financial stability after the South Sea Bubble, was
forced into the War of Jenkins's Ear with Spain. |
|
27 Aug.
|
1910 |
Mother
Teresa of Calcutta, Albanian-born missionary dedicated to the
care of the poor and sick, particularly in India. |
|
28 Aug.
|
1919 |
Sir Godfrey
Hounsfield, Nottinghamshire inventor of the EMI -
computer-assisted tomography (CAT scanner), which allows
detailed X-ray slices of the human body to be produced. |
|
29 Aug.
|
1632 |
John Locke,
Somerset-born and Oxford educated philosopher, - 'all knowledge
is founded on and ultimately derives from sense...or sensation'. |
|
30 Aug.
|
1797 |
Mary
Wollstonecraft Shelley, London-born writer, she eloped with
Percy Bysshe Shelley and married him in 1816, author of
Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. |
|
31 Aug.
|
1913 |
Sir Bernard
Lovell, astronomer, developed airborne radar systems in WWII,
responsible for the construction of 250-ft diameter radio
telescope at Jodrell Bank near Manchester. |