1252. Blanche, (of Castile,) queen of France, died. She married Lewis VIII of France, after whose death she was regent of the kingdom during the minority of her son, and governed with spirit and ability.
1521. Leo X (John de Medicis), pope, died. He was the patron of learning and learned men; but is to be remembered as the cause of the reformation, in attempting to raise money by an unlimited sale of indulgencies.
1581. Edmund Camprian executed. He was a learned English writer, who became a Roman catholic, and was hanged with three others for aiding the cause of the pope, and drawn and quartered.
1640. Michael Vasconcellos, a Portuguese statesman devoted to the interests of Spain, was murdered during a political convulsion, and his body treated with ignominy.
1640. Portugal, of which Philip II of Spain had made himself master in 1580, became an independent kingdom by a revolution, which placed John, duke of Braganza, on the throne.
1666. James Ware died, a celebrated antiquary and historian, of Ireland.
1722. Anna Louisa Karschin, a German poetess, born. She was deprived of almost every literary advantage by the peculiar circumstances under which she was placed, until she attracted the attention of some influential persons, who published some of her poems. She acquired the title of the German Sappho, and died in October, 1791.
1723. Susannah Centlivre, author of several English dramas, died. She was born in Ireland, and becoming an orphan at an early age, set out for London on foot. Her adventures were romantic. Several of her dramas still keep possession of the stage.
1750. A wager was decided at Malden, England, that five men could be buttoned within the waistcoat of a person who had died a short time previous, without breaking a stitch or straining a button. Upon trial, the five persons were buttoned into the waistcoat, and two more with them. The person who wore it died at the age of twenty-nine, and weighed at the time of his death 646 pounds, and notwithstanding his corpulency, he was remarkably agile. There is a print representing the ludicrous appearance of the seven persons buttoned up in the vest.
1775. General Montgomery, having sent several small detachments into the country to strengthen his interest with the Canadians, proceeded with the residue to Point aux Trembles, where he joined Arnold and marched directly upon Quebec.