THE LIST

SUNDERED: Henry VIII from Catherine of Aragon (1527), Anne Boleyn (1536), Anne of Cleves (1540), and Catharine Howard (1542); England from Rome (1532); monks from their monasteries (1535); Charles I from his head (1649); George III from his sense s and consequently from royal duties (1811); fools (quickly) from their money; the Empire from Britain; John Lennon from the Beatles; Simon from Garfunkel; Cher from Sonny; Tina from Ike; Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston and Tim Holt from any thoughts of s haringthe treasure of the Sierra Madre; the large Ronnie from the small Ronnie; Czech from Slovakia; Clause IV from the Labour Party; Andrew from Camilla Parker Bowles; Maurice Saatchi from Saatchi & Saatchi.

TODAY is the feast day of Saint Ita, who ranks second only to St Brigid among Ireland's women saints. Her chief claim to fame is to have taught, as a child, the future St Brendan the Navigator, who in the sixth century crossed the sea in a skin boat and discovered the "Isles of the Blessed", possibly America. Ita was born a princess in what is now County Waterford. When the first suitor asked for her hand in marriage, she decided she wished to be a nun and convinced her father of her vocation by long fasting and prayer. Moving to Co Limerick, she founded a nunnery dedicated to teaching young boys, among them several destined for sainthood. She lived an ascetic life punctuated by periods of solitude and hardship, but lived to an old age, dying in about AD570.

15 January, 1815: Emma, Lady Hamilton (above), the great love of Admiral Lord Nelson's life, died. She met Nelson in 1793 in Naples, where her husband, Sir William Hamilton, was ambassador. She had already achieved notoriety as the mother of three illegitimate children, and for her "attitudes" - psuedo Classical Greek dances performed in revealing gowns. In 1801, still married to Hamilton, she bore Nelson a daughter, Horatia. Nelson, killed at Trafalgar in 1805, left Emma as his bequest "to the Nation".But with the naval hero dead she was shunned by society, arrested for debt in 1813, and died a pauper in exile.

1912: The British National Health Insurance Act came into effect.

1919: Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht, Spartacist revolutionaries, were assassinated in Berlin.