London: British Library

In 1942 Laurence Housman also deposited an essay entitled " A. E. Housman's ' De Amicitia '" in the British Library, with the proviso that it was not to be published for 25 years.

Remounted page, British Library Cotton Vitellius A. XV

The earliest known owner of the Beowulf manuscript is the 16th-century scholar Laurence Nowell, after whom the manuscript is named, though its official designation is British Library, Cotton Vitellius A. XV because it was one of Robert Bruce Cotton's holdings in the Cotton Library in the middle of the 17th century.

The poem appears in what is today called the Beowulf manuscript or Nowell Codex ( British Library MS Cotton Vitellius A. xv ), along with other works.

Until 1997, when the British Library ( previously centred on the Round Reading Room ) moved to a new site, the British Museum was unique in that it housed both a national museum of antiquities and a national library in the same building.

They were joined in 1757 by the Royal Library, assembled by various British monarchs.

Together these four " foundation collections " included many of the most treasured books now in the British Library including the Lindisfarne Gospels and the sole surviving copy of Beowulf.

The books remained here until the British Library moved to St Pancras in 1998.

Under his supervision, the British Museum Library ( now the British Library ) quintupled in size and became a well-organised institution worthy of being called a national library, the largest library in the world after the National Library of Paris.

In the same year the Act of Parliament establishing the British Library was passed, separating the collection of manuscripts and printed books from the British Museum.

The Government suggested a site at St Pancras for the new British Library but the books did not leave the museum until 1997.

The departure of the British Library to a new site at St Pancras, finally achieved in 1998, provided the space needed for the books.

Today it no longer houses collections of natural history, and the books and manuscripts it once held now form part of the independent British Library.

The original 1753 collection has grown to over thirteen million objects at the British Museum, 70 million at the Natural History Museum and 150 million at the British Library.

The Reading Room closed in 1997 when the national library ( the British Library ) moved to a new building at St Pancras.

* Albert Austin ( 1881 – 1953 ), British / American actor

* Alfred Austin ( 1835 – 1913 ), British poet

* Bunny Austin ( 1906 – 2000 ), British tennis player

* Herbert Austin ( 1866 – 1941 ), British founder of the Austin Motor Company

* Hubert Austin ( 1845 – 1915 ), British architect

* J. L. Austin ( 1911 – 1960 ), British philosopher

* Armstrong Whitworth Atlas, a British military aeroplane manufactured ( 1927 – 1933 )

British Medical Journal, Jan. 3, 1959, 1 ( 5113 ): 1 – 6.

* 1812 – British forces under the command of the Duke of Wellington assault the fortress of Badajoz.

* 1930 – Gandhi raises a lump of mud and salt and declares, " With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire.

* 1965 – The British Government announces the cancellation of the TSR-2 aircraft project.

* 1849 – John William Waterhouse, British painter ( d. 1917 )

* 1864 – William Bate Hardy, British biochemist ( d. 1934 )

* 1917 – Leonora Carrington, British surrealist painter ( d. 2011 )

* 1933 – Roy Goode, British lawyer

* 1947 – Mike Worboys, British mathematician

* 1967 – Jonathan Firth, British actor

* 1978 – Myleene Klass, British singer, pianist, and model ( Hear ’ Say )

* 1979 – Lord Frederick Windsor, British financial analyst

* 1990 – Francesca Halsall, British swimmer

* 1642 – Irish Confederate Wars: A Confederate Irish militia is routed in the Battle of Kilrush when it attempts to halt the progress of the British Army.

* 1912 – The British passenger liner sinks in the North Atlantic at 2: 20 a. m., two hours and forty minutes after hitting an iceberg.

* 1943 – World War II: Operation Mincemeat: The submarine surfaces in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Spain to deposit a dead man planted with false invasion plans and dressed as a British military intelligence officer.

* 1639 – Madras ( now Chennai ), India, is founded by the British East India Company on a sliver of land bought from local Nayak rulers.

* 1711 – Ships from British Admiral Hovenden Walker's Quebec Expedition founders on rocks at the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River.