Events (150 years ago today): 1869 – In Dumbarton, Scotland, the clipper Cutty Sark is launched and is one of the last clippers ever built, and the only one still surviving today.
Births (500 years ago today): 1519 – Johannes Crato von Krafftheim, German humanist and physician (d. 1585)
Births (200 years ago today): 1819 – George Eliot, English novelist and poet (d. 1880)
Births (150 years ago today): 1869 – André Gide, French novelist, essayist, and dramatist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1951)
Births (100 years ago today): 1919 – Máire Drumm, Irish politician (d. 1976)
Births (50 years ago today): 1969 – Byron Houston, American basketball player
Deaths (200 years ago today): 1819 – John Stackhouse, English botanist and phycologist (b. 1742)
Deaths (100 years ago today): 1919 – Francisco Moreno, Argentinian explorer and academic (b. 1852)