23 JANUARY 1556: An earthquake in Shensi Province, China, killed approximately 830,000 people. 1571: Queen Elizabeth I opened the Royal Exchange, London, founded by the financier Sir Thomas Gresham as a bankers’ meeting house. 1752: Birth of Italian composer, pianist and piano manufacturer Muzio Clementi. 1806: Death of William Pitt ‘The Younger’, the youngest British Prime Minister. He was 46. There is controversy over his last words. Some say they were ‘Oh, my country! how I love my country!’. Others claim he said ‘Oh, my country! how I leave my country!’; or ‘My country! oh, my country!’; or ‘I think I could eat one of Bellamy’s veal pies.’ 1832: Birth of Edouard Manet, French painter who was one of the forerunners of the Impressionist movement. 1878: Birth of English composer Rutland Boughton. 1898: Birth of Russian film producer Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein. 1899: Birth of Humphrey Bogart, film star. 1910: Birth of Belgian jazz guitar virtuoso Django Reinhardt. 1919: Bob Paisley, player and manager of Liverpool FC born 1938: 16 oil companies were convicted in the US under the Anti-Trust laws for price fixing. Among them were Standard Oil, Shell, and Continental Oil. 1943: The British captured Tripoli. The Germans retreated, and the Eighth Army crossed into Tunisia in pursuit. 1960: Professor Picard descended a record 35,800 feet into the Pacific Ocean in the bathyscaphe Trieste. 1963: At 7.30 pm in Beirut, the American Eleanor Philby was waiting for her husband Kim, the Middle East correspondent for two London journals, to collect her. Instead, he was on his way to Moscow - ‘the most damaging double agent in British history’. 1964: The Sun newspaper first appeared. 1968: Several crew of the US ‘spyship’ Pueblo were killed and wounded when North Korean patrol boats boarded. The Pueblo was claimed to be within territorial waters. 1985: PC George Hammond was viciously stabbed while on the beat in London, and it took 120 pints of blood to save his life. Yet he never fully recovered, and two years later he committed suicide. 1989: Legislation came into force which allowed garages to display fuel prices by litre only, not by the gallon. (In the UK?) --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.317 / Virus Database: 176 - Release Date: 21/01/02