On April 27, 1737, English historian and Member of Parliament Edward Gibbon was born. His most famous work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788 and is known for the quality and irony of its prose as well as for its scientific historic accuracy, which made it a model for later historians.
On March 12, 1784, English theologian, geologist and eccentric palaeontologist William Buckland was born, who wrote the first full account of a fossil dinosaur, which he named Megalosaurus.
On March 2, 1544, English diplomat and scholar Sir Thomas Bodley was born. His greatest achievement was the re-founding of the library at Oxford that was named in his honor. Moreover, he established new ideas and practices library of which also modern libraries stil benefit today.
On February 10, 1840, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
On December 29, 1170 AD, Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, who engaged in conflict with Henry II of England over the rights and privileges of the Church, was assassinated by followers of the King in Canterbury Cathedral. The very last hours of Thomas Becket’s life are the reason why we remember him at all. If the four knights sent for his assassination had not completed their bloody work as he defied their master King Henry II to the last, Becket might have been only slightly better known than his predecessor Theobald.
On November 5, 1605, the famous Gunpowder Plot planning the assassination of King James I of England was uncovered and Guy Fawkes as one of its leaders was arrested, convicted and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
On August 31, 1888, the mutilated body of Mary Ann Nichols was found in Whitechapel, London. Her death has been attributed to the notorious unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper, who is believed to have killed and mutilated five women in the Whitechapel area of London in 1888.
J. Arrieta, und N. Qizilbash. Medicina clínica, 107 (15):
581-5(November 1996)2470<m:linebreak></m:linebreak>Comment in: Med Clin (Barc) 1997 Oct 25;109(14):563-4;<m:linebreak></m:linebreak>Metaanàlisi.