DECEMBER 21.
73. Festival of St. Thomas, the Christian apostle, whose counsels penetrated into India. He was killed by the Bramins, and buried at Meliapour, about ten miles from Madras.
1375. Giovanni Boccaccio, an eminent Italian writer, died; whose Decameron has been translated into all the European languages, although great pains were taken to suppress it.
1641. Maximilian de Bethune, duke de Sully, died; celebrated as the prime minister of Henry IV, and the most able and incorruptible statesman that France ever had. After the murder of the king he went into retirement, where he wrote his Memoirs, a minute history of his own times.
1667. Milton's widow disposed of her entire interest in the Paradise Lost for eight pounds; so that the sublimest poetical building in the world produced for its architect and his family, the sum of eighty dollars; ten pounds having been paid to the author in his life time!
1667. Sentence was executed upon many of those Scottish covenanters who had rebelled, it is supposed under persecution.
1670. The maiming of sir John Coventry for reflecting on the moral character of Charles II, which caused the Coventry act.
1705. Catharine, of Portugal, died; queen of Charles II, of England, by whom she was treated unkindly.
1706. Tumultuous meetings in Edinburgh, occurred on account of signing the articles of union with England.
1719. First No. of the Boston Gazette issued by William Brooker.
1741. Bernard de Montfaucon, a very learned French Benedictine, died; famous for his knowledge of ecclesiastic and pagan antiquities.
1774. Thomas Broughton, a learned English divine, died; author of the Bibliotheca Historica Sacra, and one of the original writers for the Biographia Britannica.
1775. An act of parliament confiscating all American vessels found floating on the water, and for impressing the crews of American vessels into the British navy, without distinction of persons.
1777. There were at this time 300 American officers and 900 privates confined as prisoners of war in New York by the British. They were mostly confined in sugar houses and the most loathsome jails. In Philadelphia there were 500 privates and 50 officers. They were generally stripped of what clothing they had when taken, and were sometimes confined several days with scarcely any food in order to induce them to enlist to save their lives. Frequent instances occurred of persons thus perishing from hunger.
1780. James Harris died; an English gentleman of uncommon abilities and learning, whose writings have been greatly admired.
1782. Francis Philip de Reyrac, a French ecclesiastic, died; a learned and amiable character.
1791. Arnauld de Barquin, a French miscellaneous writer died; whose works are known in our language. His Children's Friend was honored with the prize of the French academy, as the most useful book issued in 1784.
1807. The Danish islands of St. Thomas and St. Johns, in the West Indies, surrendered to the British.
1811. Peter Parker, the British admiral, died, aged 89.
1815. William Vincent, a learned English divine, died. As an author he is principally known by his commentary on Arrian's voyages of Nearchus.
1815. Lavalette, one of Bonaparte's ministers, escaped from prison in the disguise of his wife's dress, she having been permitted to visit him.
1831. Trial of the French ministers for high treason. The excitement was so great that a strong guard was required to save them from the popular violence. Above 70,000 men were under arms at one time. Their sentence was imprisonment for life, with the additional penalty of civil death on Polignac.
1832. William Bray, an eminent English antiquary, died, aged 97.
1833. John P. Hungerford died; an officer in the revolutionary war, and afterwards a member of congress from Virginia.
1835. John Sinclair, an eminent British Statesman, died, aged 82. He was also a very voluminous author, and was distinguished for his patriotism and philanthropy. During a public life of upwards of fifty years, there is scarcely any topic in
the whole range of political, statistical or medical science, to which he did not turn his inquiring mind.
1840. Frank Hall Standish, an English author, died at Cadiz, aged 42. He wrote biography, travels, sketches and poems.
1845. The battle of Punjaub, between the English forces and the Sikh army, was fought, which issued in the defeat of the Sikhs, and the annexation of a large portion of their territory to that of the English.
1848. The Asiatic cholera broke out with great violence among the United States troops at port Lavaca, Texas.