30 JANUARY Royal Oak Day Support for Charles I Wear a sprig of oak 1649: The executioner Richard Brandon beheaded Charles I at Whitehall. 1775: Birth of Walter Savage Landor, English poet. Landor was caricatured as ‘Boythorn’ in Dickens’ Bleak House. 1776: A House of Correction was ordered to be built for Liverpool. 1790: The first purpose-built lifeboat, The Original, was launched on the River Tyne at South Shields. 1815: Birth of Sir William Jenner, Physician in Ordinary to Queen Victoria, who discovered the difference between typhus and typhoid fever. 1858: Charles Hallé founded the celebrated Hallé Orchestra in Manchester. Charles Hallé remained its principal conductor, proprietor and performer until his death in 1895. 1882: Birth of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, lawyer, US Democrat statesman and 32nd President. He took the US out of the Depression with his ‘New Deal’. He helped Britain with aid in the years before the US joined the Second World War, but did not live to finish his record fourth term of office. 1889: Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria and his mistress, the beautiful 17-year-old Baroness Mary Vetsera, were found dead in the bedroom of the royal hunting lodge at Mayerling. It is not known whether it was a double suicide or murder. 1913: Birth of Percy Thrower, English gardener and broadcaster who did a great deal to popularize gardening in Britain after World War II. 1927: Birth of Olof Sven Joachim Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden, who was later assassinated. 1927: Bootle Warehousing Company, Pacific Road, Bootle, burnt out. 1933: The President of Germany, von Hindenburg, appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor. 1937: Birth of English actress Vanessa Redgrave, daughter of the actor Sir Michael Redgrave. 1945: The Duke of Gloucester was appointed Governor General of Australia, the first member of the British royal family to take that position. 1948: The Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi was shot dead in Delhi by a Hindu fanatic. 1958: The 23-year-old Yves Saint Laurent held his first major Paris show, and was hailed as Dior’s successor. 1965: State funeral in London of Sir Winston Churchill, former Prime Minister of England. It was the biggest state funeral of its kind since the burial of the Duke of Wellington in 1852. 1972: ‘Bloody Sunday’ in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. British paratroopers, believing they were under fire from Catholic protesters on a banned march which had become a violent riot, opened fire, killing 13 people. 1973: Gordon Liddy and James McCord were convicted of spying on the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate building. McCord later revealed to Judge Sirica that top White House officials were also involved in the scandal. 1976: Muriel Naughton became the first woman jockey to compete under National Hunt rules when she rode her own horse in an amateur riders’ chase at Ayr. 1989: In Luxor in upper Egypt, near the foundations of the Temple, archaeologists discovered five life-sized black granite figures, Pharaonic statues dating back to 1470 BC. --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.319 / Virus Database: 178 - Release Date: 28/01/02