Important events in history
on February 18 ^th

Events

2021
1. Perseverance, a Mars rover designed to explore Jezero crater on Mars, as part of NASA's Mars 2020 mission, lands successfully.
  1. Perseverance (rover)
    
    Perseverance, nicknamed Percy, is a car-sized Mars rover designed to explore the Jezero crater on Mars as part of NASA's Mars 2020 mission. It was manufactured by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and launched on July 30, 2020, at 11:50 UTC. Confirmation that the rover successfully landed on Mars was received on February 18, 2021, at 20:55 UTC. As of 2 December 2022, Perseverance has been active on Mars for 635 sols since its landing. Following the rover's arrival, NASA named the landing site Octavia E. Butler Landing.
  2. Mars rover
    
    A Mars rover is a motor vehicle designed to travel on the surface of Mars. Rovers have several advantages over stationary landers: they examine more territory, they can be directed to interesting features, they can place themselves in sunny positions to weather winter months, and they can advance the knowledge of how to perform very remote robotic vehicle control. They serve a different purpose than orbital spacecraft like Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. A more recent development is the Mars helicopter.
  3. Space exploration
    
    Space exploration is the use of astronomy and space technology to explore outer space. While the exploration of space is carried out mainly by astronomers with telescopes, its physical exploration though is conducted both by uncrewed robotic space probes and human spaceflight. Space exploration, like its classical form astronomy, is one of the main sources for space science.
  4. Jezero (crater)
    
    Jezero is a crater on Mars in the Syrtis Major quadrangle, about 45.0 km (28.0 mi) in diameter. Thought to have once been flooded with water, the crater contains a fan-delta deposit rich in clays. The lake in the crater was present when valley networks were forming on Mars. Besides having a delta, the crater shows point bars and inverted channels. From a study of the delta and channels, it was concluded that the lake inside the crater probably formed during a period in which there was continual surface runoff.
  5. Mars
    
    Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, being larger than only Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere, and has a crust primarily composed of elements similar to Earth's crust, as well as a core made of iron and nickel. Mars has surface features such as impact craters, valleys, dunes, and polar ice caps. It has two small and irregularly shaped moons: Phobos and Deimos.
  6. NASA
    
    The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
  7. Mars 2020
    
    Mars 2020 is a Mars rover mission forming part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program that includes the rover Perseverance, the small robotic, coaxial helicopter Ingenuity, and associated delivery vehicles. Mars 2020 was launched from Earth on an Atlas V launch vehicle at 11:50:01 UTC on 30 July 2020, and confirmation of touch down in the Martian crater Jezero was received at 20:55 UTC on 18 February 2021. On 5 March 2021, NASA named the landing site of the rover Octavia E. Butler Landing. As of 2 December 2022, Perseverance and Ingenuity have been on Mars for 635 sols.
2014
1. At least 76 people are killed and hundreds are injured in clashes between riot police and demonstrators in Kyiv, Ukraine.
  1. Revolution of Dignity
    
    The Revolution of Dignity also known as the Maidan Revolution or the Ukrainian Revolution, took place in Ukraine in February 2014 at the end of the Euromaidan protests, when deadly clashes between protesters and the security forces in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv culminated in the ousting of elected President Viktor Yanukovych, the overthrow of the Ukrainian government, and the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian War.
  2. Kyiv
    
    Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the seventh-most populous city in Europe.
2013
1. Eight gunmen stole approximately US$50,000,000 worth of diamonds from a Swiss-bound aircraft at Brussels Airport, Belgium.
  1. Brussels Airport diamond heist
    
    On 18 February 2013, eight masked gunmen in two cars with police markings stole approximately US$50,000,000 worth of diamonds from a Swiss-bound Fokker 100 operated by Helvetic Airways on the apron at Brussels Airport, Belgium, just before 20:00 CET. The heist was accomplished without a shot being fired.
  2. Brussels Airport
    
    Brussels Airport is an international airport 6.5 NM northeast of Brussels, the capital of Belgium. In 2019, more than 26 million passengers arrived or departed at Brussels Airport, making it the 24th busiest airport in Europe. It is located in the municipality of Zaventem in the Province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is home to around 260 companies, together directly employing 20,000 people and serves as the home base for Brussels Airlines and TUI fly Belgium.
2. Armed robbers steal a haul of diamonds worth $50 million during a raid at Brussels Airport in Belgium.
  1. Brussels Airport diamond heist
    
    On 18 February 2013, eight masked gunmen in two cars with police markings stole approximately US$50,000,000 worth of diamonds from a Swiss-bound Fokker 100 operated by Helvetic Airways on the apron at Brussels Airport, Belgium, just before 20:00 CET. The heist was accomplished without a shot being fired.
  2. Brussels Airport
    
    Brussels Airport is an international airport 6.5 NM northeast of Brussels, the capital of Belgium. In 2019, more than 26 million passengers arrived or departed at Brussels Airport, making it the 24th busiest airport in Europe. It is located in the municipality of Zaventem in the Province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is home to around 260 companies, together directly employing 20,000 people and serves as the home base for Brussels Airlines and TUI fly Belgium.
  3. Belgium
    
    Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to the southwest, and the North Sea to the northwest. It covers an area of 30,528 km2 (11,787 sq mi) and has a population of more than 11.5 million, making it the 22nd most densely populated country in the world and the 6th most densely populated country in Europe, with a density of 376 per square kilometre (970/sq mi). The capital and largest city is Brussels; other major cities are Antwerp, Ghent, Charleroi, Liège, Bruges, Namur, and Leuven.
2010
1. In a coup d'état, military rebels attacked the presidential palace in Niamey, Niger, and replaced President Mamadou Tandja with a ruling junta, the Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy.
  1. 2010 Nigerien coup d'état
    
    A coup d'état occurred in Niger on 18 February 2010. Soldiers attacked the presidential palace in Niamey under weapons fire at midday and captured President Mamadou Tandja, who was chairing a government meeting at the time. Later in the day, the rebels announced on television the formation of the Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy (CSRD), headed by chef d'escadron Salou Djibo.
  2. Niamey
    
    Niamey is the capital and largest city of Niger. Niamey lies on the Niger River, primarily situated on the east bank. Niamey's population was counted as 1,026,848 as of the 2012 census. As of 2017, population projections show the capital district growing at a slower rate than the country as a whole, which has the world's highest fertility rate. The city is located in a pearl millet growing region, while manufacturing industries include bricks, ceramic goods, cement, and weaving.
  3. Mamadou Tandja
    
    Mamadou Tandja was a Nigerien politician who was President of Niger from 1999 to 2010. He was President of the National Movement for the Development Society (MNSD) from 1991 to 1999 and unsuccessfully ran as the MNSD's presidential candidate in 1993 and 1996 before being elected to his first term in 1999. While serving as President of Niger, he was also Chairman of the Economic Community of West African States from 2005 to 2007.
  4. Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy
    
    The Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy, led by Salou Djibo, was a military junta that staged a coup in Niger on 18 February 2010, deposing President Mamadou Tandja in response to Tandja's attempts to remain in office after his term was over. The CSRD stated that its objective is to make Niger an example of "democracy and good governance."
2. WikiLeaks published the first of hundreds of thousands of classified documents disclosed by Chelsea Manning.
  1. WikiLeaks
    
    WikiLeaks is an international non-profit organisation that publishes news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous sources. Its website stated in 2015 that it had released online 10 million documents since beginning in 2006 in Iceland. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its founder and director and is currently fighting extradition to the United States over his work with WikiLeaks. Since September 2018, Kristinn Hrafnsson has served as its editor-in-chief.
  2. Classified information
    
    Classified information is material that a government body deems to be sensitive information that must be protected. Access is restricted by law or regulation to particular groups of people with the necessary security clearance and need to know, and mishandling of the material can incur criminal penalties.
  3. Chelsea Manning
    
    Chelsea Elizabeth Manning is an American activist and whistleblower. She is a former United States Army soldier who was convicted by court-martial in July 2013 of violations of the Espionage Act and other offenses, after disclosing to WikiLeaks nearly 750,000 classified, or unclassified but sensitive, military and diplomatic documents. She was imprisoned from 2010 until 2017 when her sentence was commuted. A trans woman, Manning stated in 2013 that she had a female gender identity since childhood and wanted to be known as Chelsea Manning.
3. WikiLeaks publishes the first of hundreds of thousands of classified documents disclosed by the soldier now known as Chelsea Manning.
  1. WikiLeaks
    
    WikiLeaks is an international non-profit organisation that publishes news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous sources. Its website stated in 2015 that it had released online 10 million documents since beginning in 2006 in Iceland. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its founder and director and is currently fighting extradition to the United States over his work with WikiLeaks. Since September 2018, Kristinn Hrafnsson has served as its editor-in-chief.
  2. Classified information
    
    Classified information is material that a government body deems to be sensitive information that must be protected. Access is restricted by law or regulation to particular groups of people with the necessary security clearance and need to know, and mishandling of the material can incur criminal penalties.
  3. Chelsea Manning
    
    Chelsea Elizabeth Manning is an American activist and whistleblower. She is a former United States Army soldier who was convicted by court-martial in July 2013 of violations of the Espionage Act and other offenses, after disclosing to WikiLeaks nearly 750,000 classified, or unclassified but sensitive, military and diplomatic documents. She was imprisoned from 2010 until 2017 when her sentence was commuted. A trans woman, Manning stated in 2013 that she had a female gender identity since childhood and wanted to be known as Chelsea Manning.
2007
1. Terrorist bombs exploded on a Samjhauta Express train in Panipat, India, killing 68 people.
  1. 2007 Samjhauta Express bombings
    
    The 2007 Samjhauta Express bombing was a terrorist attack that occurred around midnight on 18 February 2007 on the Samjhauta Express, a twice-weekly train service connecting Delhi, India, and Lahore, Pakistan. Bombs were set off in two carriages, both filled with passengers, just after the train passed Diwana near the Indian city of Panipat, 80 kilometres (50 mi) north of New Delhi. 70 people were killed in the ensuing fire and dozens more were injured. Of the 70 fatalities, most were Pakistani civilians. The victims also included some Indian civilians and three railway policemen.
  2. Samjhauta Express
    
    The Samjhauta Express was a bi-weekly train — Thursday and Monday — that runs between Delhi and Attari in India and Lahore in Pakistan. The word Samjhauta means "agreement", "accord" and "compromise" in both Hindi and Urdu.
  3. Panipat
    
    Panipat is a historic city in Haryana, India. It is 95 km north of Delhi and 169 km south of Chandigarh on NH-1. The three major battles fought in 1526, 1556 and 1761 took place near the city. The city is famous in India as the "City of Weavers" and "Textile City". It is also known as the "cast-off capital" due to being "the global centre for recycling textiles". Panipat is included in the list of Critically Polluted Industrial area in India. The Comprehensive Environment Pollution Index (CEPI) of the city is 71.91 as against 88.50 of Ankaleshwar (Gujarat). The fatal field of Panipat is the site of three battles that changed the course of India history, resulting in the creation and confirmation of the Mughal Empire, as well as the decisive defeat of the Maratha Confederacy in North India.
2004
1. Up to 295 people, including nearly 200 rescue workers, die near Nishapur, Iran, when a runaway freight train carrying sulfur, petrol and fertilizer catches fire and explodes.
  1. Nishapur
    
    Nishapur or officially Romanized as Neyshabur is the second-largest city of Razavi Khorasan Province in the Northeast of Iran. Nishapur is situated in a fertile plain at the foot of Binalud Mountain Range and has been the historic capital of the Western Quarter of Greater Khorasan, the historic capital of the 9th-century Tahirid dynasty, the initial capital of the 11th-century Seljuk Empire, and is currently the capital city of Nishapur County and a historic Silk Road city of cultural and economic importance in Iran and the region of Greater Khorasan.
  2. Sulfur
    
    Sulfur (or sulphur in British English) is a chemical element with the symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with a chemical formula S8. Elemental sulfur is a bright yellow, crystalline solid at room temperature.
  3. Gasoline
    
    Gasoline or petrol is a transparent, petroleum-derived flammable liquid that is used primarily as a fuel in most spark-ignited internal combustion engines. It consists mostly of organic compounds obtained by the fractional distillation of petroleum, enhanced with a variety of additives. On average, U.S. refineries produce, from a barrel of crude oil, about 19 to 20 gallons of gasoline; 11 to 13 gallons of distillate fuel ; and 3 to 4 gallons of jet fuel. The product ratio depends on the processing in an oil refinery and the crude oil assay. A barrel of oil is defined as holding 42 US gallons, which is about 159 liters or 35 imperial gallons.
  4. Fertilizer
    
    A fertilizer or fertiliser is any material of natural or synthetic origin that is applied to soil or to plant tissues to supply plant nutrients. Fertilizers may be distinct from liming materials or other non-nutrient soil amendments. Many sources of fertilizer exist, both natural and industrially produced. For most modern agricultural practices, fertilization focuses on three main macro nutrients: nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) with occasional addition of supplements like rock dust for micronutrients. Farmers apply these fertilizers in a variety of ways: through dry or pelletized or liquid application processes, using large agricultural equipment or hand-tool methods.
  5. Nishapur train disaster
    
    The Neishapur train disaster was a large explosion in the village of Khayyam near Nishapur in Iran, on 18 February 2004. Nearly 300 people were killed and the entire village destroyed when runaway train wagons crashed into the community in the middle of the night and exploded, resulting in Iran's deadliest rail disaster. It is still unexplained how the parked train had come loose and was able to travel such a long distance with no driver or guard.
2003
1. 192 people die when an arsonist sets fire to a subway train in Daegu, South Korea.
  1. Daegu subway fire
    
    The Daegu subway fire occurred on February 18, 2003, when an arsonist set fire to a train; 192 people died and 151 others were injured at the Jungangno station of the Daegu Metropolitan Subway in Daegu, South Korea. The fire had spread across two trains within minutes. It remains the deadliest deliberate loss of life in a single incident in South Korean peacetime history, succeeding the previous record set by a 1982 mass shooting.
2001
1. American FBI agent Robert Hanssen was arrested for having spied for the KGB and GRU over a 22-year period.
  1. Federal Bureau of Investigation
    
    The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, the FBI is also a member of the U.S. Intelligence Community and reports to both the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence. A leading U.S. counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and criminal investigative organization, the FBI has jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crimes.
  2. Robert Hanssen
    
    Robert Philip Hanssen is an American former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) double agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services against the United States from 1979 to 2001. His espionage was described by the Department of Justice as "possibly the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history." Hanssen is currently serving 15 consecutive life sentences without parole at ADX Florence, a federal supermax prison near Florence, Colorado.
  3. KGB
    
    The KGB was the main security agency for the Soviet Union from 13 March 1954 until 3 December 1991. As a direct successor of preceding agencies such as the Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKGB, NKVD and MGB, it was attached to the Council of Ministers. It was the chief government agency of "union-republican jurisdiction", carrying out internal security, foreign intelligence, counter-intelligence and secret-police functions. Similar agencies operated in each of the republics of the Soviet Union aside from the Russian SFSR, with many associated ministries, state committees and state commissions.
  4. GRU
    
    The Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, formerly the Main Intelligence Directorate, and still commonly known by its previous abbreviation GRU, is the foreign military intelligence agency of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. The GRU controls the military intelligence service and maintains its own special forces units.
2. Inter-ethnic violence between the Dayak and the Madurese broke out in Sampit, Indonesia, ultimately causing more than 500 deaths and the displacement of 100,000 Madurese from their homes.
  1. Sampit conflict
    
    The Sampit conflict was an outbreak of inter-ethnic violence in Indonesia, beginning in February 2001 and lasting through the year. The conflict started in the town of Sampit, Central Kalimantan, and spread throughout the province, including the capital Palangkaraya. The conflict took place between the indigenous Dayak people and the migrant Madurese people from the island of Madura off Java.
  2. Dayak people
    
    The Dayak or Dyak or Dayuh are one of the native groups of Borneo. It is a loose term for over 200 riverine and hill-dwelling ethnic groups, located principally in the central and southern interior of Borneo, each with its own dialect, customs, laws, territory, and culture, although common distinguishing traits are readily identifiable. Dayak languages are categorised as part of the Austronesian languages. The Dayak were animist in belief; however, since the 19th century there has been mass conversion to Christianity as well as Islam due to the spreading of Abrahamic religions.
  3. Madurese people
    
    The Madurese are an ethnic group originally from the island of Madura now found in many parts of Indonesia, where they are the third-largest ethnic group by population. Common to most Madurese throughout the archipelago is the Islamic religion and the use of the Madurese language.
  4. Sampit
    
    Sampit is a city located in East Kotawaringin Regency, Central Kalimantan. Previously a timber port town, it has grown to be a medium-sized city with a population of 166,773 according to Statistics Indonesia in 2019, with the economy having since divested from timber products. However, the city is not an autonomous city and not an administrative division by despite having a sizeable population and urban built-up. The city consists of 11 subdistricts from Baamang district, Seranau district, and Mentawa Baru Ketapang district. The total area of the city is 751.45 square kilometers.
3. FBI agent Robert Hanssen is arrested for spying for the Soviet Union. He is ultimately convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.
  1. Federal Bureau of Investigation
    
    The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, the FBI is also a member of the U.S. Intelligence Community and reports to both the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence. A leading U.S. counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and criminal investigative organization, the FBI has jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crimes.
  2. Robert Hanssen
    
    Robert Philip Hanssen is an American former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) double agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services against the United States from 1979 to 2001. His espionage was described by the Department of Justice as "possibly the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history." Hanssen is currently serving 15 consecutive life sentences without parole at ADX Florence, a federal supermax prison near Florence, Colorado.
  3. Soviet Union
    
    The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national republics; in practice, both its government and its economy were highly centralized until its final years. It was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with the city of Moscow serving as its capital as well as that of its largest and most populous republic: the Russian SFSR. Other major cities included Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Tashkent, Alma-Ata, and Novosibirsk. It was the largest country in the world, covering over 22,402,200 square kilometres (8,649,500 sq mi) and spanning eleven time zones.
4. Sampit conflict: Inter-ethnic violence between Dayaks and Madurese breaks out in Sampit, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, ultimately resulting in more than 500 deaths and 100,000 Madurese displaced from their homes.
  1. Sampit conflict
    
    The Sampit conflict was an outbreak of inter-ethnic violence in Indonesia, beginning in February 2001 and lasting through the year. The conflict started in the town of Sampit, Central Kalimantan, and spread throughout the province, including the capital Palangkaraya. The conflict took place between the indigenous Dayak people and the migrant Madurese people from the island of Madura off Java.
  2. Dayak people
    
    The Dayak or Dyak or Dayuh are one of the native groups of Borneo. It is a loose term for over 200 riverine and hill-dwelling ethnic groups, located principally in the central and southern interior of Borneo, each with its own dialect, customs, laws, territory, and culture, although common distinguishing traits are readily identifiable. Dayak languages are categorised as part of the Austronesian languages. The Dayak were animist in belief; however, since the 19th century there has been mass conversion to Christianity as well as Islam due to the spreading of Abrahamic religions.
  3. Madura Island
    
    Madura Island is an Indonesian island off the northeastern coast of Java. The island comprises an area of approximately 4,441.95 square kilometres (1,715.05 sq mi). Administratively, Madura is part of the province of East Java. It is separated from Java by the narrow Madura Strait. The administered area has a density of 744 people per km2 while main island has a somewhat higher figure of 826 per km2 in 2020.
  4. Sampit
    
    Sampit is a city located in East Kotawaringin Regency, Central Kalimantan. Previously a timber port town, it has grown to be a medium-sized city with a population of 166,773 according to Statistics Indonesia in 2019, with the economy having since divested from timber products. However, the city is not an autonomous city and not an administrative division by despite having a sizeable population and urban built-up. The city consists of 11 subdistricts from Baamang district, Seranau district, and Mentawa Baru Ketapang district. The total area of the city is 751.45 square kilometers.
  5. Central Kalimantan
    
    Central Kalimantan is a province of Indonesia. It is one of five provinces in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo. Its provincial capital is Palangka Raya and in 2010 its population was over 2.2 million, while the 2015 Intermediate Census showed a rise to 2.49 million and the 2020 Census showed a total of 2.67 million.
  6. Indonesia
    
    Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guinea. Indonesia is the world's largest archipelagic state and the 14th-largest country by area, at 1,904,569 square kilometres. With over 275 million people, Indonesia is the world's fourth-most populous country and the most populous Muslim-majority country. Java, the world's most populous island, is home to more than half of the country's population.
1991
1. The IRA explodes bombs in the early morning at Paddington station and Victoria station in London.
  1. Provisional Irish Republican Army
    
    The Irish Republican Army, also known as the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and informally as the Provos, was an Irish republican paramilitary organisation that sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, facilitate Irish reunification and bring about an independent, socialist republic encompassing all of Ireland. It was the most active republican paramilitary group during the Troubles. It saw itself as the army of the all-island Irish Republic and as the sole legitimate successor to the original IRA from the Irish War of Independence. It was designated a terrorist organisation in the United Kingdom and an unlawful organisation in the Republic of Ireland, both of whose authority it rejected.
  2. Bombings of Paddington and Victoria stations
    
    On 18 February 1991 two Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombs exploded at London mainline stations, one at Victoria station and the other at Paddington station, killing one person and injuring 38 other people at Victoria station. It was the IRA's second major attack in London in February 1991 after the Downing Street mortar attack eleven days earlier which was an attempt to assassinate the British War cabinet and the British prime minister John Major. It was also the first IRA attack against a civilian target in England since the 1983 Harrods bombing, marking a strategic change in their bombing campaign in England.
  3. London Paddington station
    
    Paddington, also known as London Paddington, is a Central London railway terminus and London Underground station complex, located on Praed Street in the Paddington area. The site has been the London terminus of services provided by the Great Western Railway and its successors since 1838. Much of the main line station dates from 1854 and was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
  4. London Victoria station
    
    Victoria station, also known as London Victoria, is a central London railway terminus and connected London Underground station in Victoria, in the City of Westminster, managed by Network Rail. Named after the nearby Victoria Street, the main line station is a terminus of the Brighton Main Line to Gatwick Airport and Brighton and the Chatham Main Line to Ramsgate and Dover via Chatham. From the main lines, trains can connect to the Catford Loop Line, the Dartford Loop Line, and the Oxted line to East Grinstead and Uckfield. Southern operates most commuter and regional services to south London, Sussex and parts of east Surrey, while Southeastern operates trains to south-east London and Kent, alongside limited services operated by Thameslink. Gatwick Express trains run direct to Gatwick. The Underground station is on the Circle and District lines between Sloane Square and St James's Park, and the Victoria line between Pimlico and Green Park. The area around the station is an important interchange for other forms of transport: a local bus station is in the forecourt and Victoria Coach Station is nearby.
1983
1. Thirteen people die and one is seriously injured in the Wah Mee massacre in Seattle. It is said to be the largest robbery-motivated mass-murder in U.S. history.
  1. Wah Mee massacre
    
    The Wah Mee massacre was a multiple homicide that occurred during the night of February 18–19, 1983, in which Kwan Fai "Willie" Mak, Wai Chiu "Tony" Ng, and Keung Kin "Benjamin" Ng bound, robbed, and shot fourteen people in the Wah Mee gambling club at the Louisa Hotel in Chinatown-International District, Seattle. Thirteen of their victims died, but Wai Chin, a dealer at the Wah Mee, survived to testify against the three in the separate high-profile trials held in 1983 and 1985. It is the deadliest mass murder in Washington state history.
  2. Seattle
    
    Seattle is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The Seattle metropolitan area's population is 4.02 million, making it the 15th-largest in the United States. Its growth rate of 21.1% between 2010 and 2020 makes it one of the nation's fastest-growing large cities.
1979
1. Richard Petty wins a then-record sixth Daytona 500 after leaders Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough crash on the final lap of the first NASCAR race televised live flag-to-flag.
  1. Richard Petty
    
    Richard Lee Petty, nicknamed "The King", is an American former stock car racing driver who raced from 1958 to 1992 in the former NASCAR Grand National and Winston Cup Series, most notably driving the No. 43 Plymouth/Pontiac for Petty Enterprises. He was the first driver to win the Cup Series championship seven times, while also winning a record 200 races during his career. This included winning the Daytona 500 a record seven times and winning a record 27 races in one season (1967). Statistically, he is the most accomplished driver in the history of the sport, and is one of the most respected figures in motorsports as a whole. Petty remains very active in the sport as both a NASCAR team owner in the Cup Series, and owner of Petty's Garage in Level Cross, North Carolina.
  2. 1979 Daytona 500
    
    The 1979 Daytona 500, the 21st annual event, was the second race of the 1979 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season. It was held on February 18, 1979. Sports pundits consider the 1979 Daytona 500 to be the most important race in stock car history.
  3. Daytona 500
    
    The Daytona 500 is a 500-mile-long (805 km) NASCAR Cup Series motor race held annually at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida. It is the first of two Cup races held every year at Daytona, the second being the Coke Zero Sugar 400, and one of three held in Florida, with the annual fall showdown Dixie Vodka 400 being held at Homestead south of Miami. From 1988 to 2019, it was one of the four restrictor plate races on the Cup schedule. The inaugural Daytona 500 was held in 1959 coinciding with the opening of the speedway and since 1982, it has been the season-opening race of the Cup series.
  4. Donnie Allison
    
    Donnie Allison is an American former driver on the NASCAR Grand National/Winston Cup circuit, who won ten times during his racing career, which spanned from 1966 to 1988. He is part of the "Alabama Gang", and is the brother of 1983 champion Bobby Allison and uncle of Davey Allison and Clifford Allison. He was inducted in the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2009.
  5. Cale Yarborough
    
    William Caleb "Cale" Yarborough is an American former NASCAR Winston Cup Series driver and owner, businessman, and farmer. He is one of only two drivers in NASCAR history to win three consecutive championships, winning in 1976, 1977, and 1978. He was one of the preeminent stock car drivers from the 1960s to the 1980s and also competed in IndyCar events. His fame was such that a special model of the Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II was named after him.
  6. NASCAR
    
    The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC (NASCAR) is an American auto racing sanctioning and operating company that is best known for stock car racing. The privately owned company was founded by Bill France Sr. in 1948, and his son, Jim France, has been the CEO since August 2018. The company is headquartered in Daytona Beach, Florida. Each year, NASCAR sanctions over 1,500 races at over 100 tracks in 48 US states as well as in Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Europe.
1977
1. NASA's first Space Shuttle, Enterprise, made its first test flight on top of the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (both pictured).
  1. Space Shuttle program
    
    The Space Shuttle program was the fourth human spaceflight program carried out by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which accomplished routine transportation for Earth-to-orbit crew and cargo from 1981 to 2011. Its official name, Space Transportation System (STS), was taken from a 1969 plan for a system of reusable spacecraft of which it was the only item funded for development. It flew 135 missions and carried 355 astronauts from 16 countries, many on multiple trips.
  2. Space Shuttle Enterprise
    
    Space Shuttle Enterprise was the first orbiter of the Space Shuttle system. Rolled out on September 17, 1976, it was built for NASA as part of the Space Shuttle program to perform atmospheric test flights after being launched from a modified Boeing 747. It was constructed without engines or a functional heat shield. As a result, it was not capable of spaceflight.
  3. Shuttle Carrier Aircraft
    
    The Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) are two extensively modified Boeing 747 airliners that NASA used to transport Space Shuttle orbiters. One (N905NA) is a 747–100 model, while the other (N911NA) is a short range 747-100SR.
2. A thousand armed soldiers raid Kalakuta Republic, the commune of Nigerian singer Fela Kuti, leading to the death of Funmilayo Anikulapo Kuti.
  1. Kalakuta Republic
    
    Kalakuta Republic was the name musician and political activist Fela Kuti gave to the communal compound that housed his family, band members, and recording studio. Located at 14 Agege Motor Road, Idi-Oro, Mushin, Lagos, Nigeria, it had a free health clinic, and recording facility. Fela declared it independent from the state ruled by the military junta after he returned from the United States in 1970. The compound burned to the ground on February 18, 1977 after an assault by a thousand armed soldiers.
  2. Fela Kuti
    
    Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti, also known as Abami Eda, was a Nigerian musician, bandleader, composer, political activist, and Pan-Africanist. He is regarded as the pioneer of Afrobeat, a Nigerian music genre that combines West African music with American funk and jazz. At the height of his popularity, he was referred to as one of Africa's most "challenging and charismatic music performers". AllMusic described him as a musical and sociopolitical voice of international significance.
  3. Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti
    
    Chief Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, MON, also known as Funmilayo Anikulapo-Kuti, was a Nigerian educator, political campaigner, suffragist, and women's rights activist.
3. The Space Shuttle Enterprise test vehicle is carried on its maiden "flight" on top of a Boeing 747.
  1. Space Shuttle Enterprise
    
    Space Shuttle Enterprise was the first orbiter of the Space Shuttle system. Rolled out on September 17, 1976, it was built for NASA as part of the Space Shuttle program to perform atmospheric test flights after being launched from a modified Boeing 747. It was constructed without engines or a functional heat shield. As a result, it was not capable of spaceflight.
  2. Boeing 747
    
    The Boeing 747 is a large, long-range wide-body airliner designed and manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes in the United States. After introducing the 707 in October 1958, Pan Am wanted a jet 2+1⁄2 times its size, to reduce its seat cost by 30% to democratize air travel. In 1965, Joe Sutter left the 737 development program to design the 747, the first twin-aisle airliner. In April 1966, Pan Am ordered 25 Boeing 747-100 aircraft and in late 1966, Pratt & Whitney agreed to develop its JT9D engine, a high-bypass turbofan. On September 30, 1968, the first 747 was rolled out of the custom-built Everett Plant, the world's largest building by volume. The first flight took place on February 9, 1969, and the 747 was certified in December of that year. It entered service with Pan Am on January 22, 1970. The 747 was the first airplane dubbed "Jumbo Jet", the first wide-body airliner.
1972
1. The California Supreme Court in the case of People v. Anderson, (6 Cal.3d 628) invalidates the state's death penalty and commutes the sentences of all death row inmates to life imprisonment.
  1. Supreme Court of California
    
    The Supreme Court of California is the highest and final court of appeals in the courts of the U.S. state of California. It is headquartered in San Francisco at the Earl Warren Building, but it regularly holds sessions in Los Angeles and Sacramento. Its decisions are binding on all other California state courts. Since 1850, the court has issued many influential decisions in a variety of areas including torts, property, civil and constitutional rights, and criminal law.
  2. People v. Anderson
    
    The People of the State of California v. Robert Page Anderson, 493 P.2d 880, 6 Cal. 3d 628, was a landmark case in the state of California that outlawed capital punishment for nine months, until the passage of a constitutional amendment reinstating it, Proposition 17.
  3. Capital punishment
    
    Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is a state-sanctioned practice of killing a person as a punishment for a crime. The sentence ordering that an offender is to be punished in such a manner is known as a death sentence, and the act of carrying out the sentence is known as an execution. A prisoner who has been sentenced to death and awaits execution is condemned and is commonly referred to as being "on death row".
  4. Death row
    
    Death row, also known as condemned row, is a place in a prison that houses inmates awaiting execution after being convicted of a capital crime and sentenced to death. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting execution, even in places where no special facility or separate unit for condemned inmates exists. In the United States, after an individual is found guilty of a capital offense in states where execution is a legal penalty, the judge will give the jury the option of imposing a death sentence or life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. It is then up to the jury to decide whether to give the death sentence; this usually has to be a unanimous decision. If the jury agrees on death, the defendant will remain on death row during appeal and habeas corpus procedures, which may continue for several decades.
1970
1. The Chicago Seven are found not guilty of conspiring to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
  1. Chicago Seven
    
    The Chicago Seven, originally the Chicago Eight and also known as the Conspiracy Eight or Conspiracy Seven, were seven defendants—Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, John Froines, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Lee Weiner—charged by the United States federal government with conspiracy, crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot, and other charges related to anti-Vietnam War and 1960s counterculture protests in Chicago, Illinois, during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The Chicago Eight became the Chicago Seven after the case against co-defendant Bobby Seale was declared a mistrial.
  2. 1968 Democratic National Convention
    
    The 1968 Democratic National Convention was held August 26–29 at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Earlier that year incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson had announced he would not seek reelection, thus making the purpose of the convention to select a new presidential nominee for the Democratic Party. The keynote speaker was Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii. Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine were nominated for president and vice president, respectively. The most contentious issues of the convention were the continuing American military involvement in the Vietnam War and voting reform, particularly expanding the right to vote for draft-age soldiers who were unable to vote as the voting age was 21. The convention also marked a turning point where previously idle groups such as youth and minorities became more involved in politics and voting.
1965
1. The Gambia becomes independent from the United Kingdom.
  1. The Gambia
    
    The Gambia, officially the Republic of The Gambia, is a country in West Africa. It is the smallest country within mainland Africa and is surrounded by Senegal, except for its western coast on the Atlantic Ocean. The Gambia is situated on both sides of the lower reaches of the Gambia River, the nation's namesake, which flows through the centre of the Gambia and empties into the Atlantic Ocean, thus the long shape of the country. It has an area of 10,689 square kilometres (4,127 sq mi) with a population of 1,857,181 as of the April 2013 census. Banjul is the Gambian capital and the country's largest metropolitan area, while the largest cities are Serekunda and Brikama.
1957
1. Kenyan rebel leader Dedan Kimathi is executed by the British colonial government.
  1. Kenya
    
    Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa. At 580,367 square kilometres (224,081 sq mi), Kenya is the world's 48th largest country by area. With a population of more than 47.6 million in the 2019 census, Kenya is the 29th most populous country in the world. Kenya's capital and largest city is Nairobi, while its oldest, currently second largest city, and first capital is the coastal city of Mombasa. Kisumu City is the third-largest city and also an inland port on Lake Victoria. Other important urban centres include Nakuru and Eldoret. As of 2020, Kenya is the third-largest economy in sub-Saharan Africa after Nigeria and South Africa. Kenya is bordered by South Sudan to the northwest, Ethiopia to the north, Somalia to the east, Uganda to the west, Tanzania to the south, and the Indian Ocean to the southeast. Its geography, climate and population vary widely, ranging from cold snow-capped mountaintops with vast surrounding forests, wildlife and fertile agricultural regions to temperate climates in western and rift valley counties and dry less fertile arid and semi-arid areas and absolute deserts.
  2. Dedan Kimathi
    
    Dedan Kimathi Waciuri, born Kimathi wa Waciuri in what was then British Kenya, was the senior military and spiritual leader of the Mau Mau Uprising. Widely regarded as a revolutionary leader, he led the armed military struggle against the British colonial regime in Kenya in the 1950s until his capture in 1956 and execution in 1957. Kimathi is credited with leading efforts to create formal military structures within the Mau Mau, and convening a war council in 1953. He, along with Musa Mwariama and Muthoni Kirima, was one of three Field Marshals.
2. Walter James Bolton becomes the last person legally executed in New Zealand.
  1. Walter James Bolton
    
    Walter James Bolton was a New Zealand farmer who was found guilty of poisoning his wife. He is known as the last person to be executed in New Zealand before the abolition of capital punishment.
  2. Capital punishment in New Zealand
    
    Capital punishment in New Zealand – the process of sentencing convicted offenders to death for the most serious crimes and carrying out that sentence, as ordered by a legal system – first appeared in a codified form when New Zealand became a British colony in 1840. It was first carried out with a public hanging in Victoria St, Auckland in 1842, while the last execution occurred in 1957 at Mount Eden Prison, also in Auckland. In total, 85 people have been executed in New Zealand.
1955
1. Operation Teapot: Teapot test shot "Wasp" is successfully detonated at the Nevada Test Site with a yield of 1.2 kilotons. Wasp is the first of fourteen shots in the Teapot series.
  1. Operation Teapot
    
    Operation Teapot was a series of 14 nuclear test explosions conducted at the Nevada Test Site in the first half of 1955. It was preceded by Operation Castle, and followed by Operation Wigwam. Wigwam was, administratively, a part of Teapot, but it is usually treated as a class of its own. The aims of the operation were to establish military tactics for ground forces on a nuclear battlefield and to improve the nuclear weapons used for strategic delivery.
  2. Nevada Test Site
    
    The Nevada National Security Site, known as the Nevada Test Site (NTS) until 2010, is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) reservation located in southeastern Nye County, Nevada, about 65 miles (105 km) northwest of the city of Las Vegas. Formerly known as the Nevada Proving Grounds, the site was established in 1951 for the testing of nuclear devices. It covers approximately 1,360 square miles (3,500 km2) of desert and mountainous terrain. Nuclear weapons testing at the site began with a 1-kiloton-of-TNT (4.2 TJ) bomb dropped on Frenchman Flat on January 27, 1951. Over the subsequent four decades, over 1,000 nuclear explosions were detonated at the site. Many of the iconic images of the nuclear era come from the site.
  3. Effects of nuclear explosions
    
    The effects of a nuclear explosion on its immediate vicinity are typically much more destructive and multifaceted than those caused by conventional explosives. In most cases, the energy released from a nuclear weapon detonated within the lower atmosphere can be approximately divided into four basic categories:the blast itself: 50% of total energy thermal radiation: 30–50% of total energy ionizing radiation: 5% of total energy residual radiation: 5–10% of total energy with the mass of the explosion.
1954
1. The first Church of Scientology is established in Los Angeles.
  1. Church of Scientology
    
    The Church of Scientology is a group of interconnected corporate entities and other organizations devoted to the practice, administration and dissemination of Scientology, which is variously defined as a cult, a business, or a new religious movement. The movement has been the subject of a number of controversies, and the Church of Scientology has been described by government inquiries, international parliamentary bodies, scholars, law lords, and numerous superior court judgements as both a dangerous cult and a manipulative profit-making business. In 1979, several executives of the organization were convicted and imprisoned for multiple offenses by a U.S. Federal Court. The Church of Scientology itself was convicted of fraud by a French court in 2009, a decision upheld by the supreme Court of Cassation in 2013. The German government classifies Scientology as an anti-constitutional sect. In France, it has been classified as a dangerous cult. In some countries, it has managed to attain legal recognition as a religion.
  2. Los Angeles
    
    Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world's most populous megacities. Los Angeles is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Southern California. With a population of roughly 3.9 million as of 2020, Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic and cultural diversity, Hollywood film industry, and sprawling metropolitan area. The city of Los Angeles lies in a basin in Southern California adjacent to the Pacific Ocean extending through the Santa Monica Mountains and into the San Fernando Valley. It covers about 469 square miles (1,210 km2), and is the seat of Los Angeles County, which is the most populous county in the United States with an estimated 9.86 million as of 2022.
1947
1. First Indochina War: The French gain complete control of Hanoi after forcing the Viet Minh to withdraw to mountains.
  1. First Indochina War
    
    The First Indochina War began in French Indochina from 19 December 1946 to 20 July 1954 between France and Việt Minh, and their respective allies. Việt Minh was led by Võ Nguyên Giáp and Hồ Chí Minh. Most of the fighting took place in Tonkin in Northern Vietnam, although the conflict engulfed the entire country and also extended into the neighboring French Indochina protectorates of Laos and Cambodia.
  2. Battle of Hanoi (1946)
    
    On December 19, 1946, Viet Minh soldiers detonated explosives in Hanoi, and the ensuing battle, known as the Battle of Hanoi marked the opening salvo of the First Indochina War.
  3. Hanoi
    
    Hanoi is the capital city of Vietnam. It covers an area of 3,359.82 km2 (1,297.2 sq mi). The second largest city in Vietnam consists of 12 urban districts, one district-leveled town and 17 rural districts. Located within the Red River Delta, Hanoi is the cultural and political centre of Vietnam.
  4. Viet Minh
    
    The Việt Minh was a national independence coalition formed at Pác Bó by Hồ Chí Minh on 19 May 1941. Also known as the Việt Minh Front, it was created by the Indochinese Communist Party as a national united front to achieve the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
1946
1. President Harry S. Truman signed the Rescission Act, annulling benefits payable to Filipino troops who fought for the U.S. during World War II.
  1. Harry S. Truman
    
    Harry S. Truman was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin Roosevelt and as a United States senator from Missouri from 1935 to January 1945. Assuming the presidency after Roosevelt's death, Truman implemented the Marshall Plan to rebuild the economy of Western Europe and established both the Truman Doctrine and NATO to contain the expansion of Soviet communism. He proposed numerous liberal domestic reforms, but few were enacted by the Conservative Coalition which dominated the Congress.
  2. Rescission Act of 1946
    
    The Rescission Act of 1946 is a law of the United States reducing (rescinding) the amounts of certain funds already designated for specific government programs, much of it for the U.S. military, after World War II concluded and as American military and public works spending diminished.
2. Sailors of the Royal Indian Navy mutiny in Bombay harbour, from where the action spreads throughout the Provinces of British India, involving 78 ships, twenty shore establishments and 20,000 sailors
  1. Royal Indian Navy mutiny
    
    The Royal Indian Navy mutiny or revolt, also called the 1946 Naval Uprising, was an insurrection of Indian naval ratings, soldiers, police personnel and civilians against the British government in India. From the initial flashpoint in Bombay, the revolt spread and found support throughout British India, from Karachi to Calcutta, and ultimately came to involve over 20,000 sailors in 78 ships and shore establishments.
  2. Mumbai
    
    Mumbai is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the de facto financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second-most populous city in India after Delhi and the eighth-most populous city in the world with a population of roughly 20 million ). As per the Indian government population census of 2011, Mumbai was the most populous city in India with an estimated city proper population of 12.5 million (1.25 crore) living under the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. Mumbai is the centre of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, the sixth most populous metropolitan area in the world with a population of over 23 million. Mumbai lies on the Konkan coast on the west coast of India and has a deep natural harbour. In 2008, Mumbai was named an alpha world city. It has the highest number of millionaires and billionaires among all cities in India.
  3. Presidencies and provinces of British India
    
    The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one form or another, they existed between 1612 and 1947, conventionally divided into three historical periods:Between 1612 and 1757 the East India Company set up factories in several locations, mostly in coastal India, with the consent of the Mughal emperors, Maratha Empire or local rulers. Its rivals were the merchant trading companies of Portugal, Denmark, the Netherlands, and France. By the mid-18th century, three presidency towns: Madras, Bombay and Calcutta, had grown in size. During the period of Company rule in India (1757–1858), the company gradually acquired sovereignty over large parts of India, now called "presidencies". However, it also increasingly came under British government oversight, in effect sharing sovereignty with the Crown. At the same time, it gradually lost its mercantile privileges. Following the Indian Rebellion of 1857 the company's remaining powers were transferred to the Crown. Under the British Raj (1858–1947), administrative boundaries were extended to include a few other British-administered regions, such as Upper Burma. Increasingly, however, the unwieldy presidencies were broken up into "provinces".
1943
1. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, delivered a speech calling for a "total war" to motivate the German people as the tide of World War II turned against Germany.
  1. Joseph Goebbels
    
    Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German Nazi politician who was the Gauleiter of Berlin, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, and then Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 1945. He was one of Adolf Hitler's closest and most devoted acolytes, known for his skills in public speaking and his deeply virulent antisemitism, which was evident in his publicly voiced views. He advocated progressively harsher discrimination, including the extermination of the Jews in the Holocaust.
  2. Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
    
    The Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, also known simply as the Ministry of Propaganda, controlled the content of the press, literature, visual arts, film, theater, music and radio in Nazi Germany.
  3. Sportpalast speech
    
    The Sportpalast speech or Total War speech was a speech delivered by German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels at the Berlin Sportpalast to a large, carefully selected audience on 18 February 1943, as the tide of World War II was turning against Nazi Germany and its Axis allies. The speech is particularly notable as Goebbels almost mentions the Holocaust, when he begins saying "Ausrotten", but quickly changes it to Ausschaltung. This was the same word Heinrich Himmler used on 18 December 1941, when he recorded the outcome of his discussion with Adolf Hitler on the Final Solution, wherein he wrote "als Partisanen auszurotten".
2. World War II: The Nazis arrest the members of the White Rose movement.
  1. Nazism
    
    Nazism, the common name in English for National Socialism, is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Nazi Germany. During Hitler's rise to power in 1930s Europe, it was frequently referred to as Hitlerism. The later related term "neo-Nazism" is applied to other far-right groups with similar ideas which formed after the Second World War.
  2. White Rose
    
    The White Rose was a non-violent, intellectual resistance group in Nazi Germany which was led by five students at the University of Munich: Willi Graf, Kurt Huber, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Hans Scholl and Sophie Scholl. The group conducted an anonymous leaflet and graffiti campaign that called for active opposition to the Nazi regime. Their activities started in Munich on 27 June 1942; they ended with the arrest of the core group by the Gestapo on 18 February 1943. They, as well as other members and supporters of the group who carried on distributing the pamphlets, faced show trials by the Nazi People's Court ; many of them were sentenced to death or imprisonment.
3. World War II: Joseph Goebbels delivers his Sportpalast speech.
  1. Joseph Goebbels
    
    Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German Nazi politician who was the Gauleiter of Berlin, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, and then Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 1945. He was one of Adolf Hitler's closest and most devoted acolytes, known for his skills in public speaking and his deeply virulent antisemitism, which was evident in his publicly voiced views. He advocated progressively harsher discrimination, including the extermination of the Jews in the Holocaust.
  2. Sportpalast speech
    
    The Sportpalast speech or Total War speech was a speech delivered by German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels at the Berlin Sportpalast to a large, carefully selected audience on 18 February 1943, as the tide of World War II was turning against Nazi Germany and its Axis allies. The speech is particularly notable as Goebbels almost mentions the Holocaust, when he begins saying "Ausrotten", but quickly changes it to Ausschaltung. This was the same word Heinrich Himmler used on 18 December 1941, when he recorded the outcome of his discussion with Adolf Hitler on the Final Solution, wherein he wrote "als Partisanen auszurotten".
1942
1. World War II: The Imperial Japanese Army began the systematic extermination of perceived hostile elements among Chinese Singaporeans.
  1. World War II
    
    World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries.
  2. Imperial Japanese Army
    
    The Imperial Japanese Army was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor of Japan as supreme commander of the army and the Imperial Japanese Navy. Later an Inspectorate General of Aviation became the third agency with oversight of the army. During wartime or national emergencies, the nominal command functions of the emperor would be centralized in an Imperial General Headquarters (IGHQ), an ad hoc body consisting of the chief and vice chief of the Army General Staff, the Minister of the Army, the chief and vice chief of the Naval General Staff, the Inspector General of Aviation, and the Inspector General of Military Training.
  3. Sook Ching
    
    Sook Ching was a mass killing that occurred from 18 February to 4 March 1942 in Singapore after it fell to the Japanese. It was a systematic purge and massacre of 'anti-Japanese' elements in Singapore, with the Singaporean Chinese particularly targeted by the Japanese military during the occupation. However, Japanese soldiers engaged in indiscriminate killing, and did not try to identify who was 'anti-Japanese.' Singapore was a crucial strategic point in World War II. From 8 February to 15 February, the Japanese had fought for control of the city. The combined British and Commonwealth forces surrendered in a stunning defeat to the outnumbered Japanese on 15 February which led to its fall. The loss of Singapore was and still is Britain's largest surrender in history.
  4. Chinese Singaporeans
    
    Chinese Singaporeans are Singaporeans of Chinese descent. Chinese Singaporeans constitute 75.9% of the Singaporean citizen population according to the official census, making them the largest ethnic group among them.
2. World War II: The Imperial Japanese Army begins the systematic extermination of perceived hostile elements among the Chinese in Singapore.
  1. World War II
    
    World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries.
  2. Imperial Japanese Army
    
    The Imperial Japanese Army was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor of Japan as supreme commander of the army and the Imperial Japanese Navy. Later an Inspectorate General of Aviation became the third agency with oversight of the army. During wartime or national emergencies, the nominal command functions of the emperor would be centralized in an Imperial General Headquarters (IGHQ), an ad hoc body consisting of the chief and vice chief of the Army General Staff, the Minister of the Army, the chief and vice chief of the Naval General Staff, the Inspector General of Aviation, and the Inspector General of Military Training.
  3. Sook Ching
    
    Sook Ching was a mass killing that occurred from 18 February to 4 March 1942 in Singapore after it fell to the Japanese. It was a systematic purge and massacre of 'anti-Japanese' elements in Singapore, with the Singaporean Chinese particularly targeted by the Japanese military during the occupation. However, Japanese soldiers engaged in indiscriminate killing, and did not try to identify who was 'anti-Japanese.' Singapore was a crucial strategic point in World War II. From 8 February to 15 February, the Japanese had fought for control of the city. The combined British and Commonwealth forces surrendered in a stunning defeat to the outnumbered Japanese on 15 February which led to its fall. The loss of Singapore was and still is Britain's largest surrender in history.
  4. Chinese nationals in Singapore
    
    Chinese nationals in Singapore refers to Chinese people who are of Chinese nationality residing in Singapore. According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the community had a population of 451,481 in 2019, with 52,516 originating from Hong Kong and 18,820 from Macau, the 2 special administrative regions of China. The community of Chinese nationals are the 2nd largest foreign community in Singapore, constituting 18% of the country's foreign-born population.
1938
1. Second Sino-Japanese War: During the Nanking Massacre, the Nanking Safety Zone International Committee is renamed "Nanking International Rescue Committee", and the safety zone in place for refugees falls apart.
  1. Second Sino-Japanese War
    
    The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Theater of the Second World War. The beginning of the war is conventionally dated to the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on 7 July 1937, when a dispute between Japanese and Chinese troops in Peking escalated into a full-scale invasion. Some Chinese historians believe that the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 18 September 1931 marks the start of the war. This full-scale war between the Chinese and the Empire of Japan is often regarded as the beginning of World War II in Asia.
  2. Nanjing Massacre
    
    The Nanjing Massacre or the Rape of Nanjing was the mass murder of Chinese civilians in Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, immediately after the Battle of Nanking in the Second Sino-Japanese War, by the Imperial Japanese Army. Beginning on December 13, 1937, the massacre lasted six weeks. The perpetrators also committed other war crimes such as mass rape, looting, and arson. The massacre was one of the worst atrocities committed during World War II.
  3. Nanjing
    
    Nanjing, alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the third largest city in the East China region. The city has 11 districts, an administrative area of 6,600 km2 (2,500 sq mi), and a total recorded population of 9,314,685 as of 2020.
1932
1. The Empire of Japan creates the independent state of Manzhouguo (the obsolete Chinese name for Manchuria) free from the Republic of China and installed former Chinese Emperor Aisin Gioro Puyi as Chief Executive of the State.
  1. Empire of Japan
    
    The Empire of Japan, also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was a historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II 1947 constitution and subsequent formation of modern Japan. It encompassed the Japanese archipelago and several colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories.
  2. Manchukuo
    
    Manchukuo, officially the State of Manchuria prior to 1934 and the Empire of (Great) Manchuria after 1934, was a puppet state of the Empire of Japan in Manchuria from 1932 until 1945. It was founded as a republic in 1932 after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and in 1934 it became a constitutional monarchy under the de facto control of Japan. It had limited international recognition.
  3. Manchuria
    
    Manchuria is an exonym for a historical and geographic region in Northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day Northeast China and parts of the Russian Far East. Its meaning may vary depending on the context:Historical polities and geographical regions usually referred to as Manchuria: The Later Jin (1616–1636), the Manchu-led dynasty which renamed itself from "Jin" to "Qing", and the ethnicity from "Jurchen" to "Manchu" in 1636 the subsequent duration of the Qing dynasty prior to its conquest of China proper (1644) the northeastern region of Qing dynasty China, the homeland of Manchus, known as "Guandong" or "Guanwai" during the Qing dynasty The region of Northeast Asia that served as the historical homeland of the Jurchens and later their descendants Manchus Qing control of Dauria was contested in 1643 when Russians entered; the ensuing Sino-Russian border conflicts ended when Russia agreed to withdraw in the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk controlled in whole by Qing Dynasty China until the Amur Annexation of Outer Manchuria by Russia in 1858-1860 controlled as a whole by the Russian Empire after the Russian invasion of Manchuria in 1900 until the Russo-Japanese War and the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905, which required Russian withdrawal. controlled by Qing China again, and reorganised in 1907 under the Viceroy of the Three Northeast Provinces controlled by the Republic of China (1912–1949) after the 1911 revolution controlled by the Fengtian clique lead by Zhang Zuolin from 1917-1928, until the military Northern Expedition and the Northeast Flag Replacement brought it under control the Republic of China (1912–1949) again controlled by Imperial Japan as the puppet state of Manchukuo, often translated as "Manchuria", (1932–1945). Formed after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, it included the entire Northeast China, the northern fringes of present-day Hebei Province, and the eastern part of Inner Mongolia. briefly entirely controlled by the USSR after the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in 1945, but then divided with China Modern Northeast China, specifically the three provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning, but broadly also including the eastern Inner Mongolian prefectures of Hulunbuir, Hinggan, Tongliao, and Chifeng, and sometimes Xilin Gol Areas of the modern Russian Federation also known as "Outer Northeast China" or "Outer Manchuria". The two areas involved are Priamurye between the Amur River and the Stanovoy Range to the north, and Primorye which runs down the coast from the Amur mouth to the Korean border, including the island of Sakhalin
  4. Republic of China (1912–1949)
    
    The Republic of China (ROC), between 1912 and 1949, was a sovereign state recognised as the official designation of China when it was based on Mainland China, prior to the relocation of its central government to Taiwan as a result of the Chinese Civil War. At a population of 541 million in 1949, it was the world's most populous country. Covering 11.4 million square kilometres, it consisted of 35 provinces, 1 special administrative region, 2 regions, 12 special municipalities, 14 leagues, and 4 special banners. The People's Republic of China (PRC), which rules mainland China today, considers ROC as a country that ceased to exist since 1949; thus, the history of ROC before 1949 is often referred to as Republican Era of China. The ROC, now based in Taiwan, today considers itself a continuation of the country, thus calling the period of its mainland governance as the Mainland Period of the Republic of China in Taiwan.
  5. Emperor of China
    
    Huangdi, translated into English as Emperor, was the superlative title held by monarchs of China who ruled various imperial regimes in Chinese history. In traditional Chinese political theory, the emperor was considered the Son of Heaven and the autocrat of all under Heaven. Under the Han dynasty, Confucianism replaced Legalism as the official political theory and succession in most cases theoretically followed agnatic primogeniture. The lineage of emperors descended from a paternal family line constituted a dynasty.
  6. Puyi
    
    Aisin-Gioro Puyi, courtesy name Yaozhi (曜之), was the last emperor of China as the eleventh and final Qing dynasty monarch. He became emperor at the age of two in 1908, but was forced to abdicate on 12 February 1912 during the Xinhai Revolution. His era name as Qing emperor, Xuantong, means "proclamation of unity". He was later installed as the Emperor Kangde (康德) of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo during World War II.
1930
1. While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto.
  1. January
    
    January is the first month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars and is also the first of seven months to have a length of 31 days. The first day of the month is known as New Year's Day. It is, on average, the coldest month of the year within most of the Northern Hemisphere and the warmest month of the year within most of the Southern Hemisphere. In the Southern hemisphere, January is the seasonal equivalent of July in the Northern hemisphere and vice versa.
  2. Clyde Tombaugh
    
    Clyde William Tombaugh was an American astronomer. He discovered Pluto in 1930, the first object to be discovered in what would later be identified as the Kuiper belt. At the time of discovery, Pluto was considered a planet, but was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006. Tombaugh also discovered many asteroids, and called for the serious scientific research of unidentified flying objects.
  3. Pluto
    
    Pluto is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume, by a small margin, but is slightly less massive than Eris. Like other Kuiper belt objects, Pluto is made primarily of ice and rock and is much smaller than the inner planets. Compared to Earth's moon, Pluto has only one sixth its mass and one third its volume.
2. Elm Farm Ollie becomes the first cow to fly in a fixed-wing aircraft and also the first cow to be milked in an aircraft.
  1. Elm Farm Ollie
    
    Elm Farm Ollie was the first cow to fly in an airplane, doing so on 18 February 1930, as part of the International Air Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. On the same trip, which covered 72 miles in a Ford Trimotor airplane from Bismarck, Missouri, to St. Louis, she also became the first cow milked in flight. This was done ostensibly to allow scientists to observe midair effects on animals, as well as for publicity purposes. A St. Louis newspaper trumpeted her mission as being "to blaze a trail for the transportation of livestock by air."
  2. Cattle
    
    Cattle are large, domesticated, cloven-hooved, herbivores. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus Bos. Adult females are referred to as cows and adult males are referred to as bulls.
  3. Fixed-wing aircraft
    
    A fixed-wing aircraft is a heavier-than-air flying machine, such as an airplane, which is capable of flight using wings that generate lift caused by the aircraft's forward airspeed and the shape of the wings. Fixed-wing aircraft are distinct from rotary-wing aircraft, and ornithopters. The wings of a fixed-wing aircraft are not necessarily rigid; kites, hang gliders, variable-sweep wing aircraft and airplanes that use wing morphing are all examples of fixed-wing aircraft.
1915
1. U-boat Campaign: The Imperial German Navy institutes unrestricted submarine warfare in the waters around Great Britain and Ireland.
  1. U-boat campaign
    
    The U-boat Campaign from 1914 to 1918 was the World War I naval campaign fought by German U-boats against the trade routes of the Allies. It took place largely in the seas around the British Isles and in the Mediterranean. The German Empire relied on imports for food and domestic food production and the United Kingdom relied heavily on imports to feed its population, and both required raw materials to supply their war industry; the powers aimed, therefore, to blockade one another. The British had the Royal Navy which was superior in numbers and could operate on most of the world's oceans because of the British Empire, whereas the Imperial German Navy surface fleet was mainly restricted to the German Bight, and used commerce raiders and unrestricted submarine warfare to operate elsewhere.
1911
1. The first official flight with airmail takes place from Allahabad, United Provinces, British India (now India), when Henri Pequet, a 23-year-old pilot, delivers 6,500 letters to Naini, about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) away.
  1. Airmail
    
    Airmail is a mail transport service branded and sold on the basis of at least one leg of its journey being by air. Airmail items typically arrive more quickly than surface mail, and usually cost more to send. Airmail may be the only option for sending mail to some destinations, such as overseas, if the mail cannot wait the time it would take to arrive by ship, sometimes weeks. The Universal Postal Union adopted comprehensive rules for airmail at its 1929 Postal Union Congress in London. Since the official language of the Universal Postal Union is French, airmail items worldwide are often marked Par avion, literally: "by airplane".
  2. Allahabad
    
    Allahabad, officially known as Prayagraj, also known as Ilahabad, is a metropolis in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It is the administrative headquarters of the Allahabad district—the most populous district in the state and 13th most populous district in India—and the Allahabad division. The city is the judicial capital of Uttar Pradesh with the Allahabad High Court being the highest judicial body in the state. As of 2011, Allahabad is the seventh most populous city in the state, thirteenth in Northern India and thirty-sixth in India, with an estimated population of 1.53 million in the city. In 2011 it was ranked the world's 40th fastest-growing city. Allahabad, in 2016, was also ranked the third most liveable urban agglomeration in the state and sixteenth in the country. Hindi is the most widely spoken language in the city.
  3. United Provinces of Agra and Oudh
    
    The United Provinces of Agra and Oudh was a province of India under the British Raj, which existed from 1902 to 1921; the official name was shortened by the Government of India Act 1935 to United Provinces (UP), by which the province had been commonly known, and by which name it was also a province of independent India until 1950.
  4. Presidencies and provinces of British India
    
    The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one form or another, they existed between 1612 and 1947, conventionally divided into three historical periods:Between 1612 and 1757 the East India Company set up factories in several locations, mostly in coastal India, with the consent of the Mughal emperors, Maratha Empire or local rulers. Its rivals were the merchant trading companies of Portugal, Denmark, the Netherlands, and France. By the mid-18th century, three presidency towns: Madras, Bombay and Calcutta, had grown in size. During the period of Company rule in India (1757–1858), the company gradually acquired sovereignty over large parts of India, now called "presidencies". However, it also increasingly came under British government oversight, in effect sharing sovereignty with the Crown. At the same time, it gradually lost its mercantile privileges. Following the Indian Rebellion of 1857 the company's remaining powers were transferred to the Crown. Under the British Raj (1858–1947), administrative boundaries were extended to include a few other British-administered regions, such as Upper Burma. Increasingly, however, the unwieldy presidencies were broken up into "provinces".
  5. Henri Pequet
    
    Henri Pequet was a pilot in the first official airmail flight on February 18, 1911. The 23-year-old Frenchman, in India for an airshow, delivered about 6,500 letters when he flew from an Allahabad polo field to Naini, about 10 kilometers away. He flew a Humber-Sommer biplane with about fifty horsepower (37 kW), and made the journey in thirteen minutes.
  6. Naini
    
    Naini is a satellite neighborhood and a twin city of Prayagraj in Prayagraj district, Uttar Pradesh, India. By the 1950s Naini was established as the chief industrial area of the city.
1906
1. Édouard de Laveleye forms the Belgian Olympic Committee in Brussels.
  1. Édouard de Laveleye
    
    Baron Édouard-Émile-Albert de Laveleye was a Belgian mining engineer, financier and writer. He was son of Émile de Laveleye (1822-1892), a famed economist.
  2. Belgian Olympic and Interfederal Committee
    
    The Belgian Olympic and Interfederal Committee, abbreviated BOIC or COIB, is the National Olympic Committee for Belgium. The administrative seat is located in Brussels.
  3. Brussels
    
    Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, is a region of Belgium comprising 19 municipalities, including the City of Brussels, which is the capital of Belgium. The Brussels-Capital Region is located in the central portion of the country and is a part of both the French Community of Belgium and the Flemish Community, but is separate from the Flemish Region and the Walloon Region. Brussels is the most densely populated region in Belgium, and although it has the highest GDP per capita, it has the lowest available income per household. It covers 162 km2 (63 sq mi), a relatively small area compared to the two other regions, and has a population of over 1.2 million. The five times larger metropolitan area of Brussels comprises over 2.5 million people, which makes it the largest in Belgium. It is also part of a large conurbation extending towards Ghent, Antwerp, Leuven and Walloon Brabant, home to over 5 million people.
1900
1. Second Boer War: Imperial forces suffer their worst single-day loss of life on Bloody Sunday, the first day of the Battle of Paardeberg.
  1. Second Boer War
    
    The Second Boer War, also known as the Boer War, the Anglo–Boer War, or the South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer Republics over the Empire's influence in Southern Africa from 1899 to 1902. Following the discovery of gold deposits in the Boer republics, there was a large influx of "foreigners", mostly British from the Cape Colony. They were not permitted to have a vote, and were regarded as "unwelcome visitors", invaders, and they protested to the British authorities in the Cape. Negotiations failed and, in the opening stages of the war, the Boers launched successful attacks against British outposts before being pushed back by imperial reinforcements. Though the British swiftly occupied the Boer republics, numerous Boers refused to accept defeat and engaged in guerrilla warfare. Eventually, British scorched earth policies, and the poor conditions suffered in concentration camps by Boer women and children who had been displaced by these policies, brought the remaining Boer guerillas to the negotiating table, ending the war.
  2. Bloody Sunday (1900)
    
    Bloody Sunday of February 18, 1900, was a day of high Imperial casualties in the Second Boer War.
  3. Battle of Paardeberg
    
    The Battle of Paardeberg or Perdeberg was a major battle during the Second Anglo-Boer War. It was fought near Paardeberg Drift on the banks of the Modder River in the Orange Free State near Kimberley.
1885
1. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is published in the United States.
  1. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
    
    Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or as it is known in more recent editions, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is a novel by American author Mark Twain, which was first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885.
  2. Mark Twain
    
    Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced", and William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature". His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the latter of which has often been called the "Great American Novel". Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.
1878
1. Competition between two American merchants in Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory, turned into a range war when a member of one faction was murdered by the other.
  1. Lincoln County, New Mexico
    
    Lincoln County is a county in the U.S. state of New Mexico. As of the 2010 census, the population was 20,497. Its county seat is Carrizozo, while its largest community is Ruidoso.
  2. Lincoln County War
    
    The Lincoln County War was an Old West conflict between rival factions which began in 1878 in Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory, the predecessor of the state of New Mexico, and continued until 1881. The feud became famous because of the participation of William H. Bonney. Other notable participants included Sheriff William J. Brady, cattle rancher John Chisum, lawyer and businessman Alexander McSween, James Dolan and Lawrence Murphy.
  3. Range war
    
    A range war or range conflict is a type of usually violent conflict, most commonly in the 19th and early 20th centuries in the American West. The subject of these conflicts was control of "open range", or range land freely used for cattle grazing, which gave the conflict its name. Typically they were disputes over water rights or grazing rights and cattle ownership.
2. John Tunstall is murdered by outlaw Jesse Evans, sparking the Lincoln County War in Lincoln County, New Mexico.
  1. John Tunstall
    
    John Henry Tunstall was an English-born rancher and merchant in Lincoln County, New Mexico, United States. He competed with the Irish Catholic merchants, lawmen, and politicians who ran the town of Lincoln and the county. Tunstall, who hoped to unseat the Irish and make a fortune as the County's new boss, was the first man killed in the Lincoln County War, an economic and political conflict that resulted in armed warfare between rival gangs of cowboys and the ranchers, lawmen, and politicians who issued the orders.
  2. Outlaw
    
    An outlaw, in its original and legal meaning, is a person declared as outside the protection of the law. In pre-modern societies, all legal protection was withdrawn from the criminal, so that anyone was legally empowered to persecute or kill them. Outlawry was thus one of the harshest penalties in the legal system. In early Germanic law, the death penalty is conspicuously absent, and outlawing is the most extreme punishment, presumably amounting to a death sentence in practice. The concept is known from Roman law, as the status of homo sacer, and persisted throughout the Middle Ages.
  3. Jesse Evans
    
    Jesse Evans was an American outlaw and gunman of the Old West, and leader of the Jesse Evans Gang. He received some attention due to his disappearance in 1882, after which he was never seen or heard from again, and is now presumably deceased.
  4. Lincoln County War
    
    The Lincoln County War was an Old West conflict between rival factions which began in 1878 in Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory, the predecessor of the state of New Mexico, and continued until 1881. The feud became famous because of the participation of William H. Bonney. Other notable participants included Sheriff William J. Brady, cattle rancher John Chisum, lawyer and businessman Alexander McSween, James Dolan and Lawrence Murphy.
  5. Lincoln County, New Mexico
    
    Lincoln County is a county in the U.S. state of New Mexico. As of the 2010 census, the population was 20,497. Its county seat is Carrizozo, while its largest community is Ruidoso.
1873
1. Vasil Levski, a national hero of Bulgaria, was executed in Sofia by the Ottoman authorities for his efforts to establish an independent Bulgarian republic.
  1. Vasil Levski
    
    Vasil Levski, born Vasil Ivanov Kunchev, was a Bulgarian revolutionary who is, today, a national hero of Bulgaria. Dubbed the Apostle of Freedom, Levski ideologised and strategised a revolutionary movement to liberate Bulgaria from Ottoman rule. Levski founded the Internal Revolutionary Organisation, and sought to foment a nationwide uprising through a network of secret regional committees.
  2. Sofia
    
    Sofia is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria. It is situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain in the western parts of the country. The city is built west of the Iskar river, and has many mineral springs, such as the Sofia Central Mineral Baths. It has a humid continental climate. Being in the centre of the Balkans, it is midway between the Black Sea and the Adriatic Sea, and closest to the Aegean Sea.
  3. Ottoman Empire
    
    The Ottoman Empire, also known as the Turkish Empire, was an empire that controlled much of Southeast Europe, Western Asia, and Northern Africa between the 14th and early 20th centuries. It was founded at the end of the 13th century in northwestern Anatolia in the town of Söğüt by the Turkoman tribal leader Osman I. After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe and, with the conquest of the Balkans, the Ottoman beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed the Conqueror.
2. Bulgarian revolutionary leader Vasil Levski is executed by hanging in Sofia by the Ottoman authorities.
  1. Bulgaria
    
    Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, and the Black Sea to the east. Bulgaria covers a territory of 110,994 square kilometres (42,855 sq mi), and is the sixteenth-largest country in Europe. Sofia is the nation's capital and largest city; other major cities are Plovdiv, Varna and Burgas.
  2. Vasil Levski
    
    Vasil Levski, born Vasil Ivanov Kunchev, was a Bulgarian revolutionary who is, today, a national hero of Bulgaria. Dubbed the Apostle of Freedom, Levski ideologised and strategised a revolutionary movement to liberate Bulgaria from Ottoman rule. Levski founded the Internal Revolutionary Organisation, and sought to foment a nationwide uprising through a network of secret regional committees.
  3. Hanging
    
    Hanging is the suspension of a person by a noose or ligature around the neck. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain "hanging". Hanging has been a common method of capital punishment since medieval times, and is the primary execution method in numerous countries and regions. The first known account of execution by hanging was in Homer's Odyssey. In this specialised meaning of the common word hang, the past and past participle is hanged instead of hung.
  4. Sofia
    
    Sofia is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria. It is situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain in the western parts of the country. The city is built west of the Iskar river, and has many mineral springs, such as the Sofia Central Mineral Baths. It has a humid continental climate. Being in the centre of the Balkans, it is midway between the Black Sea and the Adriatic Sea, and closest to the Aegean Sea.
  5. Ottoman Empire
    
    The Ottoman Empire, also known as the Turkish Empire, was an empire that controlled much of Southeast Europe, Western Asia, and Northern Africa between the 14th and early 20th centuries. It was founded at the end of the 13th century in northwestern Anatolia in the town of Söğüt by the Turkoman tribal leader Osman I. After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe and, with the conquest of the Balkans, the Ottoman beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed the Conqueror.
1861
1. In Montgomery, Alabama, Jefferson Davis is inaugurated as the provisional President of the Confederate States of America.
  1. Montgomery, Alabama
    
    Montgomery is the capital city of the U.S. state of Alabama and the county seat of Montgomery County. Named for Richard Montgomery, it stands beside the Alabama River, on the coastal Plain of the Gulf of Mexico. In the 2020 Census, Montgomery's population was 200,603. It is the second most populous city in Alabama, after Huntsville, and is the 119th most populous in the United States. The Montgomery Metropolitan Statistical Area's population in 2020 was 386,047; it is the fourth largest in the state and 142nd among United States metropolitan areas.
  2. Jefferson Davis
    
    Jefferson F. Davis was an American politician who was the president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865. He represented Mississippi in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives as a member of the Democratic Party before the American Civil War. He had previously served as the United States Secretary of War from 1853 to 1857 under President Franklin Pierce.
  3. Confederate States of America
    
    The Confederate States of America (CSA), commonly referred to as the Confederate States, the Confederacy, or "the South", was an unrecognized breakaway republic in North America that existed from February 8, 1861, to May 9, 1865. The Confederacy comprised U.S. states that declared secession and warred against the United States during the American Civil War. Eleven U.S. states, nicknamed Dixie, declared secession and formed the main part of the CSA. They were South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Kentucky, and Missouri also had declarations of secession and full representation in the Confederate Congress during their Union army occupation.
2. With Italian unification almost complete, Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont, Savoy and Sardinia assumes the title of King of Italy.
  1. Unification of Italy
    
    The unification of Italy, also known as the Risorgimento, was the 19th-century political and social movement that resulted in the consolidation of different states of the Italian Peninsula into a single state in 1861, the Kingdom of Italy. Inspired by the rebellions in the 1820s and 1830s against the outcome of the Congress of Vienna, the unification process was precipitated by the Revolutions of 1848, and reached completion in 1871 after the Capture of Rome and its designation as the capital of the Kingdom of Italy.
  2. Victor Emmanuel II
    
    Victor Emmanuel II was King of Sardinia from 1849 until 17 March 1861, when he assumed the title of King of Italy and became the first king of an independent, united Italy since the 6th century, a title he held until his death in 1878. Borrowing from the old Latin title Pater Patriae of the Roman emperors, the Italians gave him the epithet of Father of the Fatherland.
  3. Piedmont
    
    Piedmont is a region of Northwest Italy, one of the 20 regions of the country. It borders the Liguria region to the south, the Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna regions to the east and the Aosta Valley region to the northwest; it also borders Switzerland to the northeast and France to the west. It has an area of 25,402 km2 (9,808 sq mi) making it the second largest region of Italy after Sicily and a population of 4,269,714 as of 31 January 2021. The capital of Piedmont is Turin.
  4. Savoy
    
    Savoy is a cultural-historical region in the Western Alps.
  5. Sardinia
    
    Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, and one of the 20 regions of Italy. It is located west of the Italian Peninsula, north of Tunisia and immediately south of the French island of Corsica.
  6. King of Italy
    
    King of Italy was the title given to the ruler of the Kingdom of Italy after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The first to take the title was Odoacer, a barbarian military leader, in the late 5th century, followed by the Ostrogothic kings up to the mid-6th century. With the Frankish conquest of Italy in the 8th century, the Carolingians assumed the title, which was maintained by subsequent Holy Roman Emperors throughout the Middle Ages. The last Emperor to claim the title was Charles V in the 16th century. During this period, the holders of the title were crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy.
1814
1. War of the Sixth Coalition: French troops led by Napoleon forced the Army of Bohemia to retreat after it advanced dangerously close to Paris (depicted).
  1. War of the Sixth Coalition
    
    In the War of the Sixth Coalition, sometimes known in Germany as the Wars of Liberation, a coalition of Austria, Prussia, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Sweden, and a number of German States defeated France and drove Napoleon into exile on Elba. After the disastrous French invasion of Russia of 1812 in which they had been forced to support France, Prussia and Austria joined Russia, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Portugal, and the rebels in Spain who were already at war with France.
  2. Napoleon
    
    Napoleon Bonaparte, later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led successful campaigns during the Revolutionary Wars. He was the de facto leader of the French Republic as First Consul from 1799 to 1804, then Emperor of the French from 1804 until 1814 and again in 1815. Napoleon's political and cultural legacy endures to this day, as a highly celebrated and controversial leader. He initiated many liberal reforms that have persisted in society, and is considered one of the greatest military commanders in history, but between three and six million civilians and soldiers perished in what became known as the Napoleonic Wars.
  3. Battle of Montereau
    
    The Battle of Montereau was fought during the War of the Sixth Coalition between an Imperial French army led by Emperor Napoleon and a corps of Austrians and Württembergers commanded by Crown Prince Frederick William of Württemberg. While Napoleon's army mauled an Allied army under Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, the main Allied army commanded by Karl Philipp, Prince of Schwarzenberg, advanced to a position dangerously close to Paris. Gathering up his outnumbered forces, Napoleon rushed his soldiers south to deal with Schwarzenberg. Hearing of the approach of the French emperor, the Allied commander ordered a withdrawal, but 17 February saw his rear guards overrun or brushed aside.
2. Napoleonic Wars: The Battle of Montereau.
  1. Napoleonic Wars
    
    The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of French domination over most of continental Europe. The wars stemmed from the unresolved disputes associated with the French Revolution and the French Revolutionary Wars consisting of the War of the First Coalition (1792–1797) and the War of the Second Coalition (1798–1802). The Napoleonic Wars are often described as five conflicts, each termed after the coalition that fought Napoleon: the Third Coalition (1803–1806), the Fourth (1806–1807), the Fifth (1809), the Sixth (1813–1814), and the Seventh (1815) plus the Peninsular War (1807–1814) and the French invasion of Russia (1812).
  2. Battle of Montereau
    
    The Battle of Montereau was fought during the War of the Sixth Coalition between an Imperial French army led by Emperor Napoleon and a corps of Austrians and Württembergers commanded by Crown Prince Frederick William of Württemberg. While Napoleon's army mauled an Allied army under Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, the main Allied army commanded by Karl Philipp, Prince of Schwarzenberg, advanced to a position dangerously close to Paris. Gathering up his outnumbered forces, Napoleon rushed his soldiers south to deal with Schwarzenberg. Hearing of the approach of the French emperor, the Allied commander ordered a withdrawal, but 17 February saw his rear guards overrun or brushed aside.
1797
1. French Revolutionary Wars: Sir Ralph Abercromby and a fleet of 18 British warships invade Trinidad.
  1. French Revolutionary Wars
    
    The French Revolutionary Wars were a series of sweeping military conflicts lasting from 1792 until 1802 and resulting from the French Revolution. They pitted France against Britain, Austria, Prussia, Russia, and several other monarchies. They are divided in two periods: the War of the First Coalition (1792–97) and the War of the Second Coalition (1798–1802). Initially confined to Europe, the fighting gradually assumed a global dimension. After a decade of constant warfare and aggressive diplomacy, France had conquered territories in the Italian Peninsula, the Low Countries and the Rhineland in Europe and abandoned Louisiana in North America. French success in these conflicts ensured the spread of revolutionary principles over much of Europe.
  2. Ralph Abercromby
    
    Lieutenant General Sir Ralph Abercromby was a British soldier and politician. He rose to the rank of lieutenant-general in the British Army, was appointed Governor of Trinidad, served as Commander-in-Chief, Ireland, and was noted for his services during the French Revolutionary Wars, ultimately in the Egyptian campaign. His strategies are ranked amongst the most daring and brilliant exploits of the British army.
  3. Kingdom of Great Britain
    
    The Kingdom of Great Britain was a sovereign country in Western Europe from 1 May 1707 to the end of 31 December 1800. The state was created by the 1706 Treaty of Union and ratified by the Acts of Union 1707, which united the kingdoms of England and Scotland to form a single kingdom encompassing the whole island of Great Britain and its outlying islands, with the exception of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. The unitary state was governed by a single parliament at the Palace of Westminster, but distinct legal systems – English law and Scots law – remained in use.
  4. Invasion of Trinidad (1797)
    
    On 18 February 1797, a fleet of 18 British warships under the command of Sir Ralph Abercromby invaded and took the Island of Trinidad. Within a few days the last Spanish Governor, Don José María Chacón surrendered the island to Abercromby.
  5. Trinidad
    
    Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies 11 km (6.8 mi) off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmost island in the West Indies. With an area of 4,768 km2 (1,841 sq mi), it is also the fifth largest in the West Indies.
1791
1. Congress passes a law admitting the state of Vermont to the Union, effective 4 March, after that state had existed for 14 years as a de facto independent largely unrecognized state.
  1. Admission to the Union
    
    Admission to the Union is provided by the Admissions Clause of the United States Constitution in Article IV, Section 3, Clause 1, which authorizes the United States Congress to admit new states into the Union beyond the thirteen states that already existed when the Constitution came into effect. The Constitution went into effect on June 21, 1788 in the nine states that had ratified it, and the U.S. federal government began operations under it on March 4, 1789, when it was in effect in 11 out of the 13 states. Since then, 37 states have been admitted into the Union. Each new state has been admitted on an equal footing with those already in existence.
  2. Vermont
    
    Vermont is a state in the northeast New England region of the United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the north. Admitted to the union in 1791 as the 14th state, it is the only state in New England not bordered by the Atlantic Ocean. According to the 2020 U.S. census, the state has a population of 643,503, ranking it the second least-populated in the U.S. after Wyoming. It is also the nation's sixth-smallest state in area. The state's capital Montpelier is the least-populous state capital in the U.S., while its most-populous city, Burlington, is the least-populous to be a state's largest.
  3. Vermont Republic
    
    The Vermont Republic, officially known at the time as the State of Vermont, was an independent state in New England that existed from January 15, 1777, to March 4, 1791. The state was founded in January 1777, when delegates from 28 towns met and declared independence from the jurisdictions and land claims of the British colonies of Quebec, New Hampshire, and New York. The republic remained in existence for the next fourteen years, albeit without diplomatic recognition from any foreign power. On March 4, 1791, it was admitted into the United States as the State of Vermont, with the constitution and laws of the independent state continuing in effect after admission.
1781
1. Fourth Anglo-Dutch War: A British expedition against Dutch colonial outposts on the Gold Coast of Africa landed in Elmina in present-day Ghana.
  1. Fourth Anglo-Dutch War
    
    The Fourth Anglo-Dutch War was a conflict between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Dutch Republic. The war, contemporary with the War of American Independence (1775-1783), broke out over British and Dutch disagreements on the legality and conduct of Dutch trade with Britain's enemies in that war.
  2. Shirley's Gold Coast expedition
    
    In 1781, Great Britain declared war on the Dutch Republic, opening the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War. As part of its offensive strategy, the British organized an expedition against Dutch colonial outposts on the Gold Coast of Africa. Captain Thomas Shirley led the expedition, commanding HMS Leander and several transports carrying two small regiments of independently raised troops under the command of Captain Kenneth Mackenzie of the 78th Foot.
  3. Dutch Gold Coast
    
    The Dutch Gold Coast or Dutch Guinea, officially Dutch possessions on the Coast of Guinea was a portion of contemporary Ghana that was gradually colonized by the Dutch, beginning in 1612. The Dutch began trading in the area around 1598, joining the Portuguese which had a trading post there since the late 1400s. Eventually, the Dutch Gold Coast became the most important Dutch colony in West Africa after Fort Elmina was captured from the Portuguese in 1637, but fell into disarray after the abolition of the slave trade in the early 19th century. On 6 April 1872, the Dutch Gold Coast was, in accordance with the Anglo-Dutch Treaties of 1870–71, ceded to the United Kingdom.
  4. Elmina
    
    Elmina, also known as Edina by the local Fante, is a town and the capital of the Komenda/Edina/Eguafo/Abirem District on the south coast of Ghana in the Central Region, situated on a bay on the Atlantic Ocean, 12 kilometres west of Cape Coast. Elmina was the first European settlement in West Africa and it has a population of 33,576 people.
2. Fourth Anglo-Dutch War: Captain Thomas Shirley opens his expedition against Dutch colonial outposts on the Gold Coast of Africa (present-day Ghana).
  1. Fourth Anglo-Dutch War
    
    The Fourth Anglo-Dutch War was a conflict between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Dutch Republic. The war, contemporary with the War of American Independence (1775-1783), broke out over British and Dutch disagreements on the legality and conduct of Dutch trade with Britain's enemies in that war.
  2. Shirley's Gold Coast expedition
    
    In 1781, Great Britain declared war on the Dutch Republic, opening the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War. As part of its offensive strategy, the British organized an expedition against Dutch colonial outposts on the Gold Coast of Africa. Captain Thomas Shirley led the expedition, commanding HMS Leander and several transports carrying two small regiments of independently raised troops under the command of Captain Kenneth Mackenzie of the 78th Foot.
  3. Dutch Gold Coast
    
    The Dutch Gold Coast or Dutch Guinea, officially Dutch possessions on the Coast of Guinea was a portion of contemporary Ghana that was gradually colonized by the Dutch, beginning in 1612. The Dutch began trading in the area around 1598, joining the Portuguese which had a trading post there since the late 1400s. Eventually, the Dutch Gold Coast became the most important Dutch colony in West Africa after Fort Elmina was captured from the Portuguese in 1637, but fell into disarray after the abolition of the slave trade in the early 19th century. On 6 April 1872, the Dutch Gold Coast was, in accordance with the Anglo-Dutch Treaties of 1870–71, ceded to the United Kingdom.
  4. Gold Coast (British colony)
    
    The Gold Coast was a British Crown colony on the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa from 1821 until its independence in 1957 as Ghana. The term Gold Coast is also often used to describe all of the four separate jurisdictions that were under the administration of the Governor of the Gold Coast. These were the Gold Coast itself, Ashanti, the Northern Territories Protectorate and the British Togoland trust territory.
  5. Ghana
    
    Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and Togo in the east. Ghana covers an area of 238,535 km2 (92,099 sq mi), spanning diverse biomes that range from coastal savannas to tropical rainforests. With nearly 31 million inhabitants, Ghana is the second-most populous country in West Africa, after Nigeria. The capital and largest city is Accra; other major cities are Kumasi, Tamale, and Sekondi-Takoradi.
1766
1. Malagasy captives on the VOC slave ship Meermin began a mutiny that led to the ship's destruction on Cape Agulhas in present-day South Africa and the recapture of the instigators.
  1. Malagasy people
    
    The Malagasy are an Austronesian ethnic group native to the island country of Madagascar.
  2. Dutch East India Company
    
    The United East India Company was a chartered company established on the 20th March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies into the first joint-stock company in the world, granting it a 21-year monopoly to carry out trade activities in Asia. Shares in the company could be bought by any resident of the United Provinces and then subsequently bought and sold in open-air secondary markets. It is sometimes considered to have been the first multinational corporation. It was a powerful company, possessing quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, and establish colonies. They are also known for their international slave trade.
  3. Meermin
    
    Meermin was an 18th-century Dutch cargo ship of the hoeker type, one of many built and owned by the Dutch East India Company. She was laid down in 1759 and fitted out as a slave ship before her maiden voyage in 1761, and her career was cut short by a mutiny of her cargo of Malagasy people. They had been sold to Dutch East India Company officials on Madagascar, to be used as company slaves in its Cape Colony in southern Africa. Half her crew and almost 30 Malagasy lost their lives in the mutiny; the mutineers deliberately allowed the ship to drift aground off Struisbaai, now in South Africa, in March 1766, and she broke up in situ. As of 2013, archaeologists are searching for the Meermin's remains.
  4. Meermin slave mutiny
    
    A slave mutiny on Meermin, one of the Dutch East India Company's fleet of slave ships, took place in February 1766 and lasted for three weeks. Her final voyage was cut short by the mutiny of the Malagasy captives onboard, who had been sold to Dutch East India Company officials on Madagascar to be enslaved by the company in its Cape Colony in southern Africa. During the mutiny half the ship's crew and almost 30 Malagasy captives lost their lives.
  5. Cape Agulhas
    
    Cape Agulhas is a rocky headland in Western Cape, South Africa. It is the geographic southern tip of the African continent and the beginning of the dividing line between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans according to the International Hydrographic Organization.
1735
1. The ballad opera called Flora, or Hob in the Well went down in history as the first opera of any kind to be produced in North America (Charleston, S.C.)
1637
1. Eighty Years' War: Off the coast of Cornwall, a Spanish fleet intercepted an Anglo-Dutch merchant convoy of forty-four vessels escorted by six men-of-war, destroying or capturing twenty ships.
  1. Eighty Years' War
    
    The Eighty Years' War or Dutch Revolt (c.1566/1568–1648) was an armed conflict in the Habsburg Netherlands between disparate groups of rebels and the Spanish government. The causes of the war included the Reformation, centralisation, taxation, and the rights and privileges of the nobility and cities. After the initial stages, Philip II of Spain, the sovereign of the Netherlands, deployed his armies and regained control over most of the rebel-held territories. However, widespread mutinies in the Spanish army caused a general uprising. Under the leadership of the exiled William the Silent, the Catholic- and Protestant-dominated provinces sought to establish religious peace while jointly opposing the king's regime with the Pacification of Ghent, but the general rebellion failed to sustain itself. Despite Governor of Spanish Netherlands and General for Spain, the Duke of Parma's steady military and diplomatic successes, the Union of Utrecht continued their resistance, proclaiming their independence through the 1581 Act of Abjuration, and establishing the Protestant-dominated Dutch Republic in 1588. In the Ten Years thereafter, the Republic made remarkable conquests in the north and east against a struggling Spanish Empire, and received diplomatic recognition from France and England in 1596. The Dutch colonial empire emerged, which began with Dutch attacks on Portugal's overseas territories.
  2. Cornwall
    
    Cornwall is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, with the River Tamar forming the border between them. Cornwall forms the westernmost part of the South West Peninsula of the island of Great Britain. The southwesternmost point is Land's End and the southernmost Lizard Point. Cornwall has a population of 568,210 and an area of 3,563 km2 (1,376 sq mi). The county has been administered since 2009 by the unitary authority, Cornwall Council. The ceremonial county of Cornwall also includes the Isles of Scilly, which are administered separately. The administrative centre of Cornwall is Truro, its only city.
  3. Battle off Lizard Point
    
    The Battle off Lizard Point was a naval action which took place on 18 February 1637 off the coast of Cornwall, England, during the Eighty Years' War. The Spanish admiral Miguel de Horna, commander of the Armada of Flanders, intercepted an important Anglo-Dutch merchant convoy of 44 vessels escorted by six warships, destroying or capturing 20 of them, and returned safely to his base in Dunkirk.
  4. Man-of-war
    
    The man-of-war was a Royal Navy expression for a powerful warship or frigate from the 16th to the 19th century. Although the term never acquired a specific meaning, it was usually reserved for a ship armed with cannon and propelled primarily by sails, as opposed to a galley which is propelled primarily by oars.
2. Eighty Years' War: Off the coast of Cornwall, England, a Spanish fleet intercepts an important Anglo-Dutch merchant convoy of 44 vessels escorted by six warships, destroying or capturing 20 of them.
  1. Eighty Years' War
    
    The Eighty Years' War or Dutch Revolt (c.1566/1568–1648) was an armed conflict in the Habsburg Netherlands between disparate groups of rebels and the Spanish government. The causes of the war included the Reformation, centralisation, taxation, and the rights and privileges of the nobility and cities. After the initial stages, Philip II of Spain, the sovereign of the Netherlands, deployed his armies and regained control over most of the rebel-held territories. However, widespread mutinies in the Spanish army caused a general uprising. Under the leadership of the exiled William the Silent, the Catholic- and Protestant-dominated provinces sought to establish religious peace while jointly opposing the king's regime with the Pacification of Ghent, but the general rebellion failed to sustain itself. Despite Governor of Spanish Netherlands and General for Spain, the Duke of Parma's steady military and diplomatic successes, the Union of Utrecht continued their resistance, proclaiming their independence through the 1581 Act of Abjuration, and establishing the Protestant-dominated Dutch Republic in 1588. In the Ten Years thereafter, the Republic made remarkable conquests in the north and east against a struggling Spanish Empire, and received diplomatic recognition from France and England in 1596. The Dutch colonial empire emerged, which began with Dutch attacks on Portugal's overseas territories.
  2. Cornwall
    
    Cornwall is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, with the River Tamar forming the border between them. Cornwall forms the westernmost part of the South West Peninsula of the island of Great Britain. The southwesternmost point is Land's End and the southernmost Lizard Point. Cornwall has a population of 568,210 and an area of 3,563 km2 (1,376 sq mi). The county has been administered since 2009 by the unitary authority, Cornwall Council. The ceremonial county of Cornwall also includes the Isles of Scilly, which are administered separately. The administrative centre of Cornwall is Truro, its only city.
  3. Spanish Empire
    
    The Spanish Empire, also known as the Hispanic Monarchy or the Catholic Monarchy was a colonial empire governed by Spain and its predecessor states between 1492 and 1976. One of the largest empires in history, it was, in conjunction with the Portuguese Empire, the first to usher the European Age of Discovery and achieve a global scale, controlling vast portions of the Americas, territories in Western Europe, Africa, and various islands in Oceania and Asia. It was one of the most powerful empires of the early modern period, becoming the first empire known as "the empire on which the sun never sets", and reached its maximum extent in the 18th century.
  4. Battle off Lizard Point
    
    The Battle off Lizard Point was a naval action which took place on 18 February 1637 off the coast of Cornwall, England, during the Eighty Years' War. The Spanish admiral Miguel de Horna, commander of the Armada of Flanders, intercepted an important Anglo-Dutch merchant convoy of 44 vessels escorted by six warships, destroying or capturing 20 of them, and returned safely to his base in Dunkirk.
  5. Kingdom of England
    
    The Kingdom of England was a sovereign state on the island of Great Britain from 12 July 927, when it emerged from various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, until 1 May 1707, when it united with Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain.
  6. Dutch Republic
    
    The United Provinces of the Netherlands, also known as the (Seven) United Provinces, officially as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, and commonly referred to in historiography as the Dutch Republic, was a federal republic that existed from 1579, during the Dutch Revolt, to 1795. It was a predecessor state of the Netherlands and the first fully independent Dutch nation state.
1478
1. George, Duke of Clarence, convicted of treason against his older brother Edward IV of England, is executed in private at the Tower of London.
  1. George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence
    
    George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, was the 6th son of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily Neville, and the brother of English kings Edward IV and Richard III. He played an important role in the dynastic struggle between rival factions of the Plantagenets now known as the Wars of the Roses.
  2. Treason
    
    Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplomats, or its secret services for a hostile and foreign power, or attempting to kill its head of state. A person who commits treason is known in law as a traitor.
  3. Edward IV of England
    
    Edward IV was King of England from 4 March 1461 to 3 October 1470, then again from 11 April 1471 until his death in 1483. He was a central figure in the Wars of the Roses, a series of civil wars in England fought between the Yorkist and Lancastrian factions between 1455 and 1487.
  4. Capital punishment
    
    Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is a state-sanctioned practice of killing a person as a punishment for a crime. The sentence ordering that an offender is to be punished in such a manner is known as a death sentence, and the act of carrying out the sentence is known as an execution. A prisoner who has been sentenced to death and awaits execution is condemned and is commonly referred to as being "on death row".
  5. Tower of London
    
    The Tower of London, officially His Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London, is a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, which is separated from the eastern edge of the square mile of the City of London by the open space known as Tower Hill. It was founded towards the end of 1066 as part of the Norman Conquest. The White Tower, which gives the entire castle its name, was built by William the Conqueror in 1078 and was a resented symbol of oppression, inflicted upon London by the new Norman ruling class. The castle was also used as a prison from 1100 until 1952, although that was not its primary purpose. A grand palace early in its history, it served as a royal residence. As a whole, the Tower is a complex of several buildings set within two concentric rings of defensive walls and a moat. There were several phases of expansion, mainly under kings Richard I, Henry III, and Edward I in the 12th and 13th centuries. The general layout established by the late 13th century remains despite later activity on the site.
1332
1. Amda Seyon I, Emperor of Ethiopia begins his campaigns in the southern Muslim provinces.
  1. Amda Seyon I
    
    Amda Seyon I, throne name Gebre Mesqel was Emperor of Ethiopia from 1314 to 1344 and a member of the Solomonic dynasty.
  2. Emperor of Ethiopia
    
    The emperor of Ethiopia, also known as the Atse, was the hereditary ruler of the Ethiopian Empire, from at least the 13th century until the abolition of the monarchy in 1975. The emperor was the head of state and head of government, with ultimate executive, judicial and legislative power in that country. A National Geographic article from 1965 called imperial Ethiopia "nominally a constitutional monarchy; in fact [it was] a benevolent autocracy".
  3. Muslims
    
    Muslims are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abraham as it was revealed to Muhammad, the main Islamic prophet. The majority of Muslims also follow the teachings and practices of Muhammad (sunnah) as recorded in traditional accounts (hadith).
1268
1. The Battle of Wesenberg took place between Novgorodian and Pskovian forces against the Livonian Order and its allies, ending with Russian forces retreating from Danish Estonia.
  1. Battle of Wesenberg (1268)
    
    The Battle of Wesenberg, Rakvere or Rakovor was a battle fought on 18 February 1268 between the combined forces of Danish Duchy of Estonia, Bishopric of Dorpat, Livonian branch of the Teutonic Knights, and local Estonian militia on one side and the forces of Novgorod and Pskov, led by Dmitry of Pereslavl, on the other. Medieval accounts of the battle vary with both sides claiming victory, however the Livonian victory being more plausible as Novgorodian-Pskovian forces retreated out of Danish Estonia, with Livonian Knights launching a retaliatory attack on Izborsk and Pskov soon afterward, in June 1269.
  2. Novgorod Republic
    
    The Novgorod Republic was a medieval state that existed from the 12th to 15th centuries, stretching from the Gulf of Finland in the west to the northern Ural Mountains in the east, including the city of Novgorod and the Lake Ladoga regions of modern Russia. The Republic prospered as the easternmost trading post of the Hanseatic League and its Slavic, Baltic and Finnic people were much influenced by the culture of the Viking-Varangians and Byzantine people.
  3. Pskov Republic
    
    Pskov, known at various times as the Principality of Pskov or the Pskov Republic, was a medieval state on the south shore of Lake Pskov. Originally a principality and then a part of the Novgorod Republic, Pskov became an independent republic in 1348. Its territory was roughly equivalent to the modern Pskov Oblast of Russia. The capital city was Pskov.
  4. Livonian Order
    
    The Livonian Order was an autonomous branch of the Teutonic Order, formed in 1237. From 1435 to 1561 it was a member of the Livonian Confederation.
  5. Duchy of Estonia (1219–1346)
    
    The Duchy of Estonia, also known as Danish Estonia, was a direct dominion of the King of Denmark from 1219 until 1346 when it was sold to the Teutonic Order and became part of the Ordensstaat.
2. The Battle of Wesenberg is fought between the Livonian Order and Dovmont of Pskov.
  1. Battle of Wesenberg (1268)
    
    The Battle of Wesenberg, Rakvere or Rakovor was a battle fought on 18 February 1268 between the combined forces of Danish Duchy of Estonia, Bishopric of Dorpat, Livonian branch of the Teutonic Knights, and local Estonian militia on one side and the forces of Novgorod and Pskov, led by Dmitry of Pereslavl, on the other. Medieval accounts of the battle vary with both sides claiming victory, however the Livonian victory being more plausible as Novgorodian-Pskovian forces retreated out of Danish Estonia, with Livonian Knights launching a retaliatory attack on Izborsk and Pskov soon afterward, in June 1269.
  2. Livonian Order
    
    The Livonian Order was an autonomous branch of the Teutonic Order, formed in 1237. From 1435 to 1561 it was a member of the Livonian Confederation.
  3. Daumantas of Pskov
    
    Daumantas or Dovmont, was a Lithuanian prince best remembered as a military leader of the Principality of Pskov between 1266 and 1299. During his term in office, Pskov became de facto independent from Novgorod.
  4. Pskov
    
    Pskov is a city in northwestern Russia and the administrative center of Pskov Oblast, located about 20 kilometers (12 mi) east of the Estonian border, on the Velikaya River. Population: 193,082 (2021 Census); 203,279 (2010 Census); 202,780 (2002 Census); 203,789 (1989 Census).
1229
1. The Sixth Crusade: Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, signs a ten-year truce with al-Kamil, regaining Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem with neither military engagements nor support from the papacy.
  1. Sixth Crusade
    
    The Sixth Crusade (1228–1229), also known as the Crusade of Frederick II, was a military expedition to recapture Jerusalem and the rest of the Holy Land. It began seven years after the failure of the Fifth Crusade and involved very little actual fighting. The diplomatic maneuvering of the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily, Frederick II, resulted in the Kingdom of Jerusalem regaining some control over Jerusalem for much of the ensuing fifteen years as well as over other areas of the Holy Land.
  2. Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor
    
    Frederick II was King of Sicily from 1198, King of Germany from 1212, King of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor from 1220 and King of Jerusalem from 1225. He was the son of emperor Henry VI of the Hohenstaufen dynasty and Queen Constance of Sicily of the Hauteville dynasty.
  3. Ceasefire
    
    A ceasefire, also spelled cease fire, is a temporary stoppage of a war in which each side agrees with the other to suspend aggressive actions. Ceasefires may be between state actors or involve non-state actors.
  4. Al-Kamil
    
    Al-Kamil was a Muslim ruler and the fourth Ayyubid sultan of Egypt. During his tenure as sultan, the Ayyubids defeated the Fifth Crusade. He was known to the Frankish crusaders as Meledin, a name by which he is still referred to in some older western sources. As a result of the Sixth Crusade, he ceded West Jerusalem to the Christians and is known to have met with Saint Francis.
  5. Jerusalem
    
    Jerusalem is a city in Western Asia. Situated on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea, it is one of the oldest cities in the world and is considered to be a holy city for the three major Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Both Israelis and Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capital, as Israel maintains its primary governmental institutions there and the State of Palestine ultimately foresees it as its seat of power. Because of this dispute, neither claim is widely recognized internationally.
  6. Nazareth
    
    Nazareth is the largest city in the Northern District of Israel. Nazareth is known as "the Arab capital of Israel". In 2019 its population was 77,445. The inhabitants are predominantly Arab citizens of Israel, of whom 69% are Muslim and 30.9% Christian.
  7. Bethlehem
    
    Bethlehem is a city in the central West Bank, Palestine, about 10 km south of Jerusalem. Its population is approximately 25,000, and it is the capital of the Bethlehem Governorate of the State of Palestine. The economy is primarily tourist-driven, peaking during the Christmas season, when Christians make pilgrimage to the Church of the Nativity. The important holy site of Rachel's Tomb is at the northern entrance of Bethlehem, though not freely accessible to the city's own inhabitants and in general Palestinians living in the West Bank due to the Israeli West Bank barrier.
  8. Pope
    
    The pope, also known as supreme pontiff, Roman pontiff or sovereign pontiff, is the bishop of Rome, head of the worldwide Catholic Church, and has also served as the head of state or sovereign of the Papal States and later the Vatican City State since the eighth century. From a Catholic viewpoint, the primacy of the bishop of Rome is largely derived from his role as the apostolic successor to Saint Peter, to whom primacy was conferred by Jesus, who gave Peter the Keys of Heaven and the powers of "binding and loosing", naming him as the "rock" upon which the Church would be built. The current pope is Francis, who was elected on 13 March 2013.

Births & Deaths

2020
1. Flavio Bucci, Italian actor and voice actor (b. 1947) deaths
  1. Flavio Bucci
    
    Flavio Bucci was an Italian actor, voice actor and film producer.
2019
1. Alessandro Mendini, Italian designer and architect (b. 1931) deaths
  1. Alessandro Mendini
    
    Alessandro Mendini was an Italian designer and architect. He played an important part in the development of Italian, Postmodern, and Radical design. He also worked, aside from his artistic career, for Casabella, Modo and Domus magazines.
2015
1. Elchanan Heilprin, Czechoslovakian-born English rabbi (b. 1920 or 1922) deaths
  1. Elchanan Heilprin
    
    Elchanan Halpern was the Rabbi of the Golders Green neighbourhood of London and President of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations. He was also known as the Av Beit Din of Radomishl after the town of his maternal grandfather, Rabbi Shmuel Engel, Rav of Radomishl.
2014
1. Mavis Gallant, Canadian-French author and playwright (b. 1922) deaths
  1. Mavis Gallant
    
    Mavis Leslie de Trafford Gallant,, née Young, was a Canadian writer who spent much of her life and career in France. Best known as a short story writer, she also published novels, plays and essays.
2. Maria Franziska von Trapp, Austrian-American singer (b. 1914) deaths
  1. Maria Franziska von Trapp
    
    Maria Agatha Franziska Gobertina von Trapp was the second-oldest daughter of Georg von Trapp and his first wife, Agathe Whitehead von Trapp. She was a member of the Trapp Family Singers, whose lives inspired the musical and film The Sound of Music. She was portrayed by Heather Menzies as the character "Louisa". She died at age 99, and was the last surviving sibling portrayed in the film.
2001
1. Balthus, Polish-Swiss painter and illustrator (b. 1908) deaths
  1. Balthus
    
    Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, known as Balthus, was a Polish-French modern artist. He is known for his erotically charged images of pubescent girls, but also for the refined, dreamlike quality of his imagery.
2. Dale Earnhardt, American racer and NASCAR seven times champion (b. 1951) deaths
  1. Dale Earnhardt
    
    Ralph Dale Earnhardt Sr. was an American professional stock car driver and team owner, who raced from 1975 to 2001 in the former NASCAR Winston Cup Series, most notably driving the No. 3 Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing. His aggressive driving style earned him the nicknames "The Intimidator", "The Man in Black", and "Ironhead". He is regarded as one of the greatest drivers in NASCAR history.
1991
1. Sebastian Neumann, German footballer births
  1. Sebastian Neumann
    
    Sebastian Neumann is a German retired footballer, who played as a defender.
1990
1. Monica Aksamit, American Olympic saber fencer births
  1. Monica Aksamit
    
    Monica Aksamit is an American Olympic saber fencer. She represented the United States at the 2016 Summer Olympics, earning a bronze medal in the Women's Saber Team competition. She won a gold medal with Team USA at the 2019 Pan American Games. In 2022, she was a contestant on Fox’s dating and relationship reality television series revival, Joe Millionaire: For Richer or Poorer.
1983
1. Jermaine Jenas, English international footballer births
  1. Jermaine Jenas
    
    Jermaine Anthony Jenas is an English television presenter, football pundit and former professional footballer. He played as a central midfielder for English club sides Nottingham Forest, Newcastle United, Tottenham Hotspur, Aston Villa and Queens Park Rangers, scoring a career total of 39 goals from 341 league appearances. He also appeared 21 times for the senior England national football team, scoring one goal.
1982
1. Christian Tiffert, German footballer births
  1. Christian Tiffert
    
    Christian Tiffert is a German football manager and a former midfielder. He is the manager of Chemnitzer FC.
2. Ngaio Marsh, New Zealand author (b. 1895) deaths
  1. Ngaio Marsh
    
    Dame Edith Ngaio Marsh was a New Zealand mystery writer and theatre director. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1966.
1981
1. Jack Northrop, American engineer and businessman, founded the Northrop Corporation (b. 1895) deaths
  1. Jack Northrop
    
    John Knudsen Northrop was an American aircraft industrialist and designer who founded the Northrop Corporation in 1939.
  2. Northrop Corporation
    
    Northrop Corporation was an American aircraft manufacturer from its formation in 1939 until its 1994 merger with Grumman to form Northrop Grumman. The company is known for its development of the flying wing design, most successfully the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber.
1977
1. Andy Devine, American actor (b. 1905) deaths
  1. Andy Devine
    
    Andrew Vabre Devine was an American character actor known for his distinctive raspy, crackly voice and roles in Western films, including his role as Cookie, the sidekick of Roy Rogers in 10 feature films. He also appeared alongside John Wayne in films such as Stagecoach (1939), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and How the West Was Won. He is also remembered as Jingles on the TV series The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok from 1951 to 1958, as Danny McGuire in A Star Is Born (1937), and as the voice of Friar Tuck in the Disney Animation Studio film Robin Hood (1973).
1975
1. Gary Neville, English international footballer births
  1. Gary Neville
    
    Gary Alexander Neville is an English football pundit and former player. He is also a co-owner of English Football League club Salford City. After retiring from football in 2011, Neville went into punditry and was a commentator for Sky Sports, until he took over the head coach position at Valencia in 2015. After being sacked by the club in 2016, he returned to his position as a pundit for Sky Sports later that year. He was also assistant manager for the England national team from 2012 to 2016.
1974
1. Carrie Ann Baade, American painter and academic births
  1. Carrie Ann Baade
    
    Carrie Ann Baade is an American painter whose work has been described by Curator of Contemporary Art Margaret Winslow as "autobiographical parables combin(ing) fragments of Renaissance and Baroque religious paintings, resulting in surreal landscapes inhabited by exotic flora, fauna, and figures." The context and the compositional building blocks of her work are fragments of historical masterpieces, which Baade reinterprets using her original feminist and autobiographical perspective. She currently lives in Tallahassee, Florida, where she is a professor in the Department of Art at Florida State University
2. Radek Černý, Czech international footballer births
  1. Radek Černý
    
    Radek Černý is a Czech former footballer who played as a goalkeeper. He played principally for Slavia Prague in the Czech First League between its inception in 1993 and 2005, when he moved to England. Černý spent eight years in England with Tottenham Hotspur and Queens Park Rangers before returning to his former club Slavia in 2013, where he played one season before his retirement. Černý enjoyed a brief international career, making three appearances for the Czech Republic between 2000 and 2002.
3. Julia Butterfly Hill, American environmentalist and author births
  1. Julia Butterfly Hill
    
    Julia Lorraine Hill is an American environmental activist and tax redirection advocate. She is best known for having lived in a 180-foot (55 m)-tall, roughly 1500-year-old California redwood tree for 738 days between December 10, 1997 and December 18, 1999. Hill lived in the tree, affectionately known as Luna, to prevent Pacific Lumber Company loggers from cutting it down. She is the author of the 2000 book The Legacy of Luna and co-author of One Makes the Difference.
4. Leilani Maaja Münter, American environmental activist and former professional race car driver births
  1. Leilani Munter
    
    Leilani Maaja Münter is an American former professional stock car racing driver and environmental activist. She last competed in the ARCA Menards Series, and previously drove in the Firestone Indy Lights, the development league of IndyCar.
1971
1. Thomas Bjørn, Danish golfer births
  1. Thomas Bjørn
    
    Thomas Bjørn is a professional golfer from Denmark who plays on the European Tour. He is the most successful Danish golfer to have played the game having won fifteen tournaments worldwide on the European Tour. In 1997 he also became the first Dane to qualify for a European Ryder Cup team. He captained the winning European side at the 2018 Ryder Cup.
1970
1. James H. Fowler, American political scientist and author births
  1. James H. Fowler
    
    James H. Fowler is an American social scientist specializing in social networks, cooperation, political participation, and genopolitics. He is currently Professor of Medical Genetics in the School of Medicine and Professor of Political Science in the Division of Social Science at the University of California, San Diego. He was named a 2010 Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.
1969
1. Dragiša Cvetković, Serbian lawyer and politician, 17th Prime Minister of Yugoslavia (b. 1893) deaths
  1. Dragiša Cvetković
    
    Dragiša Cvetković was a Yugoslav politician active in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. He served as the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia from 1939 to 1941. He developed the federalization of Yugoslavia through the creation of the Banovina of Croatia via the Cvetković–Maček Agreement with Croat leader Vladko Maček. He signed the Yugoslav accession to the Tripartite Pact on 25 March 1941. Two days later, on 27 March, a group of officers carried out a military coup, and arrested Dragiša Cvetković and other ministers. German authorities arrested him on two occasions and took him to Banjica concentration camp. He fled on 4 September 1944 for Bulgaria. He spent the rest of his life in Paris.
  2. Prime Minister of Yugoslavia
    
    The prime minister of Yugoslavia was the head of government of the Yugoslav state, from the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918 until the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1992.
1968
1. Molly Ringwald, American actress births
  1. Molly Ringwald
    
    Molly Kathleen Ringwald is an American actress, singer, dancer, and author. She was cast in her first major role as Molly in the NBC sitcom The Facts of Life (1979–80) after a casting director saw her playing an orphan in a stage production of the musical Annie. She and several other members of the original Facts of Life cast were let go when the show was reworked by the network. She subsequently made her motion-picture debut as Miranda in the independent film Tempest (1982), which earned her a Golden Globe nomination for New Star of the Year.
1967
1. Roberto Baggio, Italian international footballer births
  1. Roberto Baggio
    
    Roberto Baggio is an Italian former professional footballer who mainly played as a second striker, or as an attacking midfielder, although he was capable of playing in several offensive positions. He is the former president of the technical sector of the Italian Football Federation. A technically gifted creative playmaker and set piece specialist, renowned for his curling free-kicks, dribbling skills, and goalscoring, Baggio is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time. In 1999, he came fourth in the FIFA Player of the Century internet poll, and was chosen on the FIFA World Cup Dream Team in 2002. In 1993, he was named FIFA World Player of the Year and won the Ballon d'Or. In 2004, he was named by Pelé in the FIFA 100, a list of the world's greatest living players.
2. Colin Jackson, Welsh sprinter and hurdler births
  1. Colin Jackson
    
    Colin Ray Jackson, is a Welsh former sprint and hurdling athlete who specialised in the 110 metres hurdles. During a career in which he represented Great Britain and Wales, he won an Olympic silver medal, became world champion twice, World indoor champion once, was undefeated at the European Championships for 12 years and was twice Commonwealth champion. His world record of 12.91 seconds for the 110 m hurdles stood for over 10 years and his 60 metres hurdles world record stood for nearly 27 years.
3. J. Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist and academic (b. 1904) deaths
  1. J. Robert Oppenheimer
    
    J. Robert Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist. A professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is often credited as the "father of the atomic bomb" for his role in the Manhattan Project – the World War II undertaking that developed the first nuclear weapons. Oppenheimer was among those who observed the Trinity test in New Mexico, where the first atomic bomb was successfully detonated on July 16, 1945. He later remarked that the explosion brought to mind words from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." In August 1945, the weapons were used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
1960
1. Greta Scacchi, Italian-Australian actress births
  1. Greta Scacchi
    
    Greta Scacchi, OMRI is an Italian-Australian actress. She holds dual Italian and Australian citizenship. She is best known for her roles in the films White Mischief (1987), Presumed Innocent (1990), The Player (1992), Emma (1996), and Looking for Alibrandi (2000).
2. Gertrude Vanderbilt, American stage actress (b. c. 1885) deaths
  1. Gertrude Vanderbilt (actress)
    
    Gertrude Vanderbilt, also known as Gertie Vanderbilt, was an American stage actress and Vaudeville performer.
1957
1. Marita Koch, German sprinter births
  1. Marita Koch
    
    Marita Koch is a German former sprint track and field athlete. During her career she collected 16 world records in outdoor sprints as well as 14 world records in indoor events. Her record of 47.60 in the 400 metres, set on 6 October 1985, still stands.
1956
1. Gustave Charpentier, French composer (b. 1860) deaths
  1. Gustave Charpentier
    
    Gustave Charpentier was a French composer, best known for his opera Louise.
1955
1. Lisa See, American writer and novelist births
  1. Lisa See
    
    Lisa See is an American writer and novelist. Her books include On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family (1995), a detailed account of See's family history, and the novels Flower Net (1997), The Interior (1999), Dragon Bones (2003), Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2005), Peony in Love (2007) and Shanghai Girls (2009), which made it to the 2010 New York Times bestseller list. Both Shanghai Girls and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan received honorable mentions from the Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature.
1954
1. Charlie Fowler, American mountaineer, author, and photographer (d. 2006) births
  1. Charlie Fowler
    
    Charlie Fowler was an American mountain climber, writer, and photographer. He was one of North America's most experienced mountain climbers, and successfully climbed many of the world's highest peaks. Along with his climbing partner, Christine Boskoff, he went missing in southwestern China sometime between November 11 and November 14, 2006. His body was found on a Ge'nyen Mountain on December 27, 2006, and was officially identified a day later.
2. John Travolta, American actor, singer and producer births
  1. John Travolta
    
    John Joseph Travolta is an American actor. He came to public attention during the 1970s, appearing on the television sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979) and starring in the box office successes Carrie (1976), Saturday Night Fever (1977), Grease (1978), and Urban Cowboy (1980). His acting career declined throughout the 1980s, but he enjoyed a resurgence in the 1990s with his role in Pulp Fiction (1994), and went on to star in films including Get Shorty (1995), Broken Arrow (1996), Phenomenon (1996), Face/Off (1997), A Civil Action (1998), Primary Colors (1998), Hairspray (2007), and Bolt (2008).
1952
1. Randy Crawford, American jazz and R&B singer births
  1. Randy Crawford
    
    Veronica "Randy" Crawford is an American jazz and R&B singer. She has been more successful in Europe than in the United States, where she has not entered the Billboard Hot 100 as a solo artist. However, she has appeared on the Hot 100 singles chart twice. The first time was in 1979 as a guest vocalist on The Crusaders' top-40 hit "Street Life". She also dueted with Rick Springfield on the song "Taxi Dancing", which hit number 59 as the B-side of Springfield's hit "Bop Til You Drop". She has had five top-20 hits in the UK, including her 1980 number-two hit, "One Day I'll Fly Away", as well as six UK top-10 albums. Despite her American nationality, she won Best British Female Solo Artist in recognition of her popularity in the UK at the 1982 Brit Awards. In the late 2000s, she received her first two Grammy Award nominations.
2. Juice Newton, American singer-songwriter and guitarist births
  1. Juice Newton
    
    Judith Kay "Juice" Newton is an American pop and country singer, songwriter, and musician. Newton has received five Grammy Award nominations in the Pop and Country Best Female Vocalist categories – winning once in 1983 – as well as an ACM Award for Top New Female Artist and two consecutive Billboard Female Album Artist of the Year awards. Newton's other awards include a People's Choice Award for "Best Female Vocalist" and the Australian Music Media's "Number One International Country Artist".
1951
1. Queen Komal of Nepal births
  1. Queen Komal of Nepal
    
    Queen Komal of Nepal is the wife of former King Gyanendra of Nepal. She was the last Queen consort of Nepal before the monarchy was abolished on 28 May 2008.
2. Isabel Preysler, Filipino-Spanish journalist births
  1. Isabel Preysler
    
    María Isabel Preysler Arrastía is a Spanish-Filipina socialite and television host. She is the mother of singers Enrique Iglesias, Julio Iglesias Jr., journalist Chábeli Iglesias, Tamara Falcó y Preysler, 6th Marchioness of Griñón, and Ana Boyer Preysler.
1950
1. Nana Amba Eyiaba I, Ghanaian queen mother and advocate births
  1. Nana Amba Eyiaba I
    
    Nana Amba Eyiaba I, known non-formally as Eunice Amba Amoah, is a Ghanaian queen mother from the Effutu Municipal District of Central Region, Ghana. She is the former Director of Education for Central Region. From 2004 to 2010, Eyiaba was appointed by President John Kufuor to serve as a member of the national Electoral Commission of Ghana, co-organizing and supervising the parliamentary and presidential elections of 2004 and 2008.
2. John Hughes, American director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2009) births
  1. John Hughes (filmmaker)
    
    John Wilden Hughes Jr. was an American filmmaker. Hughes began his career in 1970 as an author of humorous essays and stories for the National Lampoon magazine. He went on to Hollywood to write, produce and sometimes direct some of the most successful live-action comedy films of the 1980s and 1990s such as National Lampoon's Vacation; Mr. Mom; Sixteen Candles; Weird Science; The Breakfast Club; Ferris Bueller's Day Off; Pretty in Pink; Some Kind of Wonderful; Planes, Trains and Automobiles; She's Having a Baby; Uncle Buck; Home Alone; Dutch; Beethoven ; Dennis the Menace; and Baby's Day Out.
1946
1. Michael Buerk, English journalist births
  1. Michael Buerk
    
    Michael Duncan Buerk is a British journalist and newsreader. He presented BBC News from 1973 to 2002 and has been the host of BBC Radio 4's The Moral Maze since 1990. He was also the presenter of BBC One's docudrama 999 from 1992 to 2003. From 2017, Buerk also presented the TV series Royal Recipes which ran for two seasons.
1940
1. Fabrizio De André, Italian singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1999) births
  1. Fabrizio De André
    
    Fabrizio Cristiano De André was an Italian singer-songwriter, the most prominent cantautore of his time. His 40-year career reflects his interests in concept albums, literature, poetry, political protest, and French music. Because of the great success of his music in Italy and its impact in the Italian collective memory, a number of public places as roads, squares, schools in Italy are entitled to Fabrizio De André.
2. Prue Leith, English restaurateur and journalist births
  1. Prue Leith
    
    Dame Prudence Margaret Leith, is a South African restaurateur, chef, caterer, television presenter/broadcaster, journalist, cookery writer and novelist. She is Chancellor of Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh. She was a judge on BBC Two's Great British Menu for eleven years, before joining The Great British Bake Off in March 2017, replacing Mary Berry, when the television programme moved to Channel 4.
1939
1. Claude Ake, Nigerian political scientist and academic (d. 1996) births
  1. Claude Ake
    
    Claude Ake was a Nigerian political scientist from Omoku, in Rivers State, Nigeria. Ake was considered "one of Africa's foremost political philosophers." He specialised in political economy, political theory, and development studies and is well known for his research on development and democracy in Africa. He was professor of political economy and dean of the University of Port Harcourt's Faculty of Social Sciences for some years in the 1970s and 1980s after having taught at Columbia University, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1966. He held various academic positions at institutions around the world, including at Yale University, University of Nairobi (Kenya), University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and University of Port Harcourt (Nigeria). He was active in Nigerian politics, a critic of corruption and authoritarian rule in Africa. His permanent home was in Port Harcourt.
1938
1. David King Udall, American missionary and politician (b. 1851) deaths
  1. David King Udall
    
    David King Udall, Sr. was a representative to the Arizona Territorial Legislature and the founder of the Udall political family.
1934
1. Audre Lorde, American writer and activist (d. 1992) births
  1. Audre Lorde
    
    Audre Lorde was an American writer, womanist, radical feminist, professor, and civil rights activist. She was a self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," who "dedicated both her life and her creative talent to confronting and addressing injustices of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia."
1933
1. Yoko Ono, Japanese-American multimedia artist and musician births
  1. Yoko Ono
    
    Yoko Ono is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking.
2. Bobby Robson, English international footballer and international manager (d. 2009) births
  1. Bobby Robson
    
    Sir Robert William Robson was an English footballer and football manager. His career included periods playing for and later managing the England national team and being a UEFA Cup-winning manager at Ipswich Town.
3. Mary Ure, Scottish-English actress (d. 1975) births
  1. Mary Ure
    
    Eileen Mary Ure was a British stage and film actress. She was the second Scottish-born actress to be nominated for an Academy Award, for her role in the 1960 film Sons and Lovers.
4. James J. Corbett, American boxer and actor (b. 1866) deaths
  1. James J. Corbett
    
    James John "Jim" Corbett was an American professional boxer and a World Heavyweight Champion, best known as the only man who ever defeated the great John L. Sullivan Despite a career spanning only 20 bouts, Corbett faced the best competition his era had to offer, squaring off with a total of nine fighters who would later be enshrined alongside him in the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Corbett introduced a truly scientific approach to boxing, in which technique triumphed over brute force. He pioneered the daily boxing training routine and regimen, which was adopted by other boxers elsewhere and has survived to modern days almost intact. A "big-money fighter," Corbett was one of the first athletes whose showmanship in and out of the ring was just as good as his boxing abilities. He was also arguably the first sports sex symbol of the modern era after the worldwide airing of his championship prizefight against Robert Fitzsimmons popularized boxing immensely among the female audience. He did so in an era in which prizefighting was illegal in 21 states and was still considered among the most infamous crimes against morality.
1932
1. Miloš Forman, Czech-American actor, director, and screenwriter (d. 2018) births
  1. Miloš Forman
    
    Jan Tomáš "Miloš" Forman was a Czech and American film director, screenwriter, actor, and professor who rose to fame in his native Czechoslovakia before emigrating to the United States in 1968.
1931
1. Johnny Hart, American cartoonist, co-created The Wizard of Id (d. 2007) births
  1. Johnny Hart
    
    John Lewis Hart was an American cartoonist noted as the creator of the comic strips B.C. and The Wizard of Id. Brant Parker co-produced and illustrated The Wizard of Id. Hart was recognized with several awards, including the Swedish Adamson Award and five from the National Cartoonists Society. In his later years, he was known for incorporating Christian themes and messages into his strips. Hart was referred to by Chuck Colson in a Breakpoint column as "the most widely read Christian of our time," over C. S. Lewis, Frank E. Peretti, and Billy Graham.
  2. The Wizard of Id
    
    The Wizard of Id is a daily newspaper comic strip created by American cartoonists Brant Parker and Johnny Hart. Beginning November 16, 1964, the strip follows the antics of a large cast of characters in a shabby medieval kingdom called "Id". The title is a play on The Wizard of Oz, combined with the Freudian psychological term id, which represents the instinctive and primal part of the human psyche.
2. Toni Morrison, American novelist and editor, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2019). births
  1. Toni Morrison
    
    Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987); she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
  2. Nobel Prize in Literature
    
    The Nobel Prize in Literature is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, "in the field of literature, produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction". Though individual works are sometimes cited as being particularly noteworthy, the award is based on an author's body of work as a whole. The Swedish Academy decides who, if anyone, will receive the prize. The academy announces the name of the laureate in early October. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895. Literature is traditionally the final award presented at the Nobel Prize ceremony. On some occasions the award has been postponed to the following year, most recently in 2018 as of May 2022.
1929
1. Len Deighton, English historian and author births
  1. Len Deighton
    
    Leonard Cyril Deighton is a British author. His publications have included cookery books, history and military history, but he is best known for his spy novels.
2. André Mathieu, Canadian pianist and composer (d. 1968) births
  1. André Mathieu
    
    André Mathieu was a Canadian pianist and composer.
1927
1. Fazal Mahmood, Pakistani cricketer (d. 2005) births
  1. Fazal Mahmood
    
    Fazal Mahmood PP, HI was a Pakistani international cricketer. He played in 34 Test matches and took 139 wickets at a bowling average of 24.70. The first Pakistani to pass 100 wickets, he reached the landmark in his 22nd match.
1926
1. Wallace Berman, American painter and illustrator (d. 1976) births
  1. Wallace Berman
    
    Wallace "Wally" Berman was an American experimental filmmaker, assemblage, and collage artist and a crucial figure in the history of post-war California art.
1925
1. George Kennedy, American actor (d. 2016) births
  1. George Kennedy
    
    George Harris Kennedy Jr. was an American actor who appeared in more than 100 film and television productions. He played "Dragline" opposite Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke (1967), winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the role and being nominated for the corresponding Golden Globe. He received a second Golden Globe nomination for portraying Joe Patroni in Airport (1970).
1922
1. Eric Gairy, Grenadan politician, 1st Prime Minister of Grenada (d. 1997) births
  1. Eric Gairy
    
    Sir Eric Matthew Gairy PC was the first Prime Minister of Grenada, serving from his country's independence in 1974 until his overthrow in a coup by Maurice Bishop in 1979. Gairy also served as head of government in pre-independence Grenada as Chief Minister from 1961 to 1962, and as Premier from 1967 to 1974.
  2. List of heads of government of Grenada
    
    This is a list of heads of government of Grenada, from the establishment of the office of Chief Minister in 1960 to the present day.
2. Helen Gurley Brown, American journalist and author (d. 2012) births
  1. Helen Gurley Brown
    
    Helen Gurley Brown was an American author, publisher, and businesswoman. She was the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine for 32 years.
3. Connie Wisniewski, American baseball player (d. 1995) births
  1. Connie Wisniewski
    
    Constance Wisniewski (Wiśniewski) was a starting pitcher and outfielder who played from 1944 through 1952 in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Listed at 5' 8", 147 lb., she batted left-handed and threw right-handed.
1921
1. Mary Amdur, American toxicologist and public health researcher (d. 1998) births
  1. Mary Amdur
    
    Mary Ochsenhirt Amdur was an American toxicologist and public health researcher who worked primarily on pollution. She was charged with studying the effects of the 1948 Donora smog, specifically looking into the effects of inhaling sulfuric acid by experimenting on guinea pigs. Her findings on the respiratory effects related to sulfuric acid led to her being threatened, her funding being pulled, and her losing her job at the Harvard School of Public Health in 1953. Undeterred, she carried on her research in a different role at Harvard, and subsequently at MIT and New York University. Despite the early controversy related to her work, it was used in the creation of standards in air pollution, and towards the end of her life she received numerous awards and accolades.
  2. Public health
    
    Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals". Analyzing the determinants of health of a population and the threats it faces is the basis for public health. The public can be as small as a handful of people or as large as a village or an entire city; in the case of a pandemic it may encompass several continents. The concept of health takes into account physical, psychological, and social well-being.
2. Oscar Feltsman, Ukrainian-Russian pianist and composer (d. 2013) births
  1. Oscar Feltsman
    
    Oscar Borisovich Feltsman was a Ukrainian-born composer of Lithuanian Jewish descent. He was the father of Vladimir Feltsman.
1920
1. Rolande Falcinelli, French organist, pianist, composer, and pedagogue (d. 2006) births
  1. Rolande Falcinelli
    
    Rolande Roberte Ginabat-Falcinelli was a French organist, pianist, composer, and music educator.
1919
1. Jack Palance, American boxer and actor (d. 2006) births
  1. Jack Palance
    
    Jack Palance was an American actor. Known for playing tough guys and villains, he was nominated for three Academy Awards, all for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, receiving nominations for his roles in Sudden Fear (1952) and Shane (1953) and winning almost 40 years later for his role in City Slickers (1991).
1915
1. Phyllis Calvert, English actress (d. 2002) births
  1. Phyllis Calvert
    
    Phyllis Hannah Murray-Hill, known professionally as Phyllis Calvert, was an English film, stage and television actress. She was one of the leading stars of the Gainsborough melodramas of the 1940s such as The Man in Grey (1943) and was one of the most popular movie stars in Britain in the 1940s. She continued her acting career for another 50 years.
2. Frank James, American soldier and criminal (b. 1843) deaths
  1. Frank James
    
    Alexander Franklin James was a Confederate soldier and guerrilla; in the post-Civil War period, he was an outlaw. The older brother of outlaw Jesse James, Frank was also part of the James–Younger Gang.
1914
1. Pee Wee King, American singer-songwriter and fiddler (d. 2000) births
  1. Pee Wee King
    
    Julius Frank Anthony Kuczynski, known professionally as Pee Wee King, was an American country music songwriter and recording artist best known for co-writing "Tennessee Waltz".
1910
1. Lucy Stanton, American activist (b. 1831) deaths
  1. Lucy Stanton (abolitionist)
    
    Lucy Stanton Day Sessions was an American abolitionist and feminist figure, notable for being the first African-American woman to complete a four-year course of a study at a college or university. She completed a Ladies Literary Course from Oberlin College in 1850.
1909
1. Wallace Stegner, American novelist, short story writer, and essayist (d. 1993) births
  1. Wallace Stegner
    
    Wallace Earle Stegner was an American novelist, short story writer, environmentalist, and historian, often called "The Dean of Western Writers". He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 and the U.S. National Book Award in 1977.
1906
1. Hans Asperger, Austrian pediatrician and academic (d. 1980) births
  1. Hans Asperger
    
    Johann Friedrich Karl Asperger was an Austrian physician. Noted for his early studies on atypical neurology, specifically in children, he is the namesake of the autism spectrum disorder Asperger syndrome (AS). He wrote more than 300 publications on psychological disorders that posthumously acquired international renown in the 1980s. His diagnosis of autism, which he termed "autistic psychopathy", also garnered controversy. In the 2010s, further controversy arose over Asperger's referral of children to the German Nazi Am Spiegelgrund clinic responsible for the murder of disabled patients.
1903
1. Nikolai Podgorny, Ukrainian engineer and politician (d. 1983) births
  1. Nikolai Podgorny
    
    Nikolai Viktorovich Podgorny was a Soviet statesman who served as the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the head of state of the Soviet Union, from 1965 to 1977.
1902
1. Charles Lewis Tiffany, American businessman, founded Tiffany & Co. (b. 1812) deaths
  1. Charles Lewis Tiffany
    
    Charles Lewis Tiffany was an American businessman and jeweler who founded New York City's Tiffany & Co. in 1837. Known for his jewelry expertise, Tiffany created the country's first retail catalog and introduced the English standard of sterling silver in imported jewelry in 1851.
  2. Tiffany & Co.
    
    Tiffany & Co. is a high-end luxury jewelry and specialty retailer, headquartered on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. It sells jewelry, sterling silver, porcelain, crystal, stationery, fragrances, water bottles, watches, personal accessories, and leather goods. Tiffany is known for its luxury goods, particularly its diamond and sterling silver jewelry. These goods are sold at Tiffany stores, online, and corporate merchandising. Its name and branding are licensed to Coty for fragrances and to Luxottica for eyewear.
1899
1. Arthur Bryant, English historian and journalist (d. 1985) births
  1. Arthur Bryant
    
    Sir Arthur Wynne Morgan Bryant, was an English historian, columnist for The Illustrated London News and man of affairs. His books included studies of Samuel Pepys, accounts of English eighteenth- and nineteenth-century history, and a life of George V. Whilst his scholarly reputation has declined somewhat since his death, he continues to be read and to be the subject of detailed historical studies. He moved in high government circles, where his works were influential, being the favourite historian of three prime ministers: Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee, and Harold Wilson.
1898
1. Luis Muñoz Marín, Puerto Rican poet and politician, 1st Governor of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (d. 1980) births
  1. Luis Muñoz Marín
    
    José Luis Alberto Muñoz Marín was a Puerto Rican journalist, politician, statesman and was the first elected governor of Puerto Rico, regarded as the "Architect of the Puerto Rico Commonwealth."
  2. Governor of Puerto Rico
    
    The governor of Puerto Rico is the head of government of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and commander-in-chief of the Puerto Rico National Guard.
1896
1. Li Linsi, Chinese educator and diplomat (d. 1970) births
  1. Li Linsi
    
    Li Linsi ; birth name Li Jiaxiang (厉家祥), was a modern Chinese educator, diplomat and scholar, who has been recognized as one of the key figures in modern Chinese cultural and diplomatic history. Hailed as China's Mahatma Gandhi, Li was the leader of China's nonviolent resistance against Japanese aggression. His military research contributed greatly to China's anti-Japanese war. He was known for his efforts to save hundreds of Jews fleeing to Shanghai during World War II. A diplomatic consultant to Chiang Kai-shek, Li was a key facilitator of the China-Germany relationship during the 1930s, and a major proponent of China's League of Nations diplomacy. He was a co-founder of some of China's most influential organizations, including the China branch of the United Nations and China Institute of World Cultural Cooperation at the League of Nations. Being reputed as a human bridge connecting Chinese and European cultures, Li made a great contribution to helping the West comprehend ancient Chinese philosophies, and introduced many Western progressive thoughts to China. A descendant of Jiang Ziya, the Chinese legendary founding prime minister during the Zhou Dynasty, Li was the fourth great-grandson of Li E, a leader of the Qing Dynasty poetry. His eldest son is Li Shengjiao, a noted Chinese diplomat and jurist. Li died in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution.
1893
1. Maksim Haretski, Belarusian prose writer, journalist and activist (d. 1938) births
  1. Maksim Haretski
    
    Maksim Harecki was a Belarusian prose writer, journalist, activist of the Belarusian national-democratic renewal, folklorist, lexicographer, professor. Maksim Harecki was also known by his pen-names Maksim Biełarus, M.B. Biełarus, M.H., A. Mścisłaŭski, Dzied Kuźma, Maciej Myška, Mizeryjus Monus. In his works he often appeared as Kuźma Batura, Liavon Zaduma.
2. Serranus Clinton Hastings, American lawyer and politician, 1st Chief Justice of California (b. 1814) deaths
  1. Serranus Clinton Hastings
    
    Serranus Clinton Hastings was an American politician, rancher and lawyer in California. He studied law as a young man and moved to the Iowa District in 1837 to open a law office. Iowa became a territory a year later, and he was elected a member of the House of Representatives of the Iowa Territorial General Assembly. When the territory became the state of Iowa in 1846, he won an election to represent the state in the United States House of Representatives. After his term ended, he became Chief Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court.
  2. Supreme Court of California
    
    The Supreme Court of California is the highest and final court of appeals in the courts of the U.S. state of California. It is headquartered in San Francisco at the Earl Warren Building, but it regularly holds sessions in Los Angeles and Sacramento. Its decisions are binding on all other California state courts. Since 1850, the court has issued many influential decisions in a variety of areas including torts, property, civil and constitutional rights, and criminal law.
1892
1. Wendell Willkie, American captain, lawyer, and politician (d. 1944) births
  1. Wendell Willkie
    
    Wendell Lewis Willkie was an American lawyer, corporate executive and the 1940 Republican nominee for President. Willkie appealed to many convention delegates as the Republican field's only interventionist: although the U.S. remained neutral prior to Pearl Harbor, he favored greater U.S. involvement in World War II to support Britain and other Allies. His Democratic opponent, incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt, won the 1940 election with about 55% of the popular vote and took the electoral college vote by a wide margin.
1890
1. Edward Arnold, American actor (d. 1956) births
  1. Edward Arnold (actor)
    
    Günther Edward Arnold Schneider was an American actor of the stage and screen.
2. Adolphe Menjou, American actor (d. 1963) births
  1. Adolphe Menjou
    
    Adolphe Jean Menjou was an American actor. His career spanned both silent films and talkies. He appeared in such films as Charlie Chaplin's A Woman of Paris, where he played the lead role; Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory with Kirk Douglas; Ernst Lubitsch's The Marriage Circle; The Sheik with Rudolph Valentino; Morocco with Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper; and A Star Is Born with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March, and was nominated for an Academy Award for The Front Page in 1931.
1885
1. Henri Laurens, French sculptor and illustrator (d. 1954) births
  1. Henri Laurens
    
    Henri Laurens was a French sculptor and illustrator.
1883
1. Nikos Kazantzakis, Greek philosopher, author, and playwright (d. 1957) births
  1. Nikos Kazantzakis
    
    Nikos Kazantzakis was a Greek writer. Widely considered a giant of modern Greek literature, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in nine different years.
1880
1. Nikolay Zinin, Russian organic chemist (b. 1812) deaths
  1. Nikolay Zinin
    
    Nikolay Nikolaevich Zinin was a Russian organic chemist.
1873
1. Vasil Levski, Bulgarian activist, founded the Internal Revolutionary Organization (b. 1837) deaths
  1. Vasil Levski
    
    Vasil Levski, born Vasil Ivanov Kunchev, was a Bulgarian revolutionary who is, today, a national hero of Bulgaria. Dubbed the Apostle of Freedom, Levski ideologised and strategised a revolutionary movement to liberate Bulgaria from Ottoman rule. Levski founded the Internal Revolutionary Organisation, and sought to foment a nationwide uprising through a network of secret regional committees.
  2. Internal Revolutionary Organization
    
    The Internal Revolutionary Organisation or IRO was a Bulgarian revolutionary organisation founded and built up by Bulgarian revolutionary Vasil Levski in the period between 1869 and 1871. The organisation represented a network of regional revolutionary committees which were governed by a Central Committee in the town of Lovech. The foundation of IRO reflected Levski's ideas that the centre of revolutionary activity be transferred from the Bulgarian emigrant circles in Romania to Bulgaria proper. In 1871, Levski prepared the Charter of the organisation in the spirit of his own political views: liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottomans through a nationwide revolution and establishment of the country as a democratic republic with guarantees for the equality of all of its citizens regardless of their ethnicity or religion.
1871
1. Harry Brearley, English inventor (d. 1948) births
  1. Harry Brearley
    
    Harry Brearley was an English metallurgist, credited with the invention of "rustless steel". Based in Sheffield, his invention brought affordable cutlery to the masses, and saw an expansion of the city's traditional cutlery trade.
1870
1. William Laurel Harris, American painter and author (d. 1924) births
  1. William Laurel Harris
    
    William Laurel Harris was an American muralist, educator, editor, and arts organizer.
1867
1. Hedwig Courths-Mahler, German writer (d. 1950) births
  1. Hedwig Courths-Mahler
    
    Hedwig Courths-Mahler, née Ernestine Friederike Elisabeth Mahler was a German writer of formula fiction romantic novels. She used the pseudonyms Relham, H. Brand, Gonda Haack, Rose Bernd.
1862
1. Charles M. Schwab, American businessman, co-founded Bethlehem Steel (d. 1939) births
  1. Charles M. Schwab
    
    Charles Michael Schwab was an American steel magnate. Under his leadership, Bethlehem Steel became the second-largest steel maker in the United States, and one of the most important heavy manufacturers in the world.
  2. Bethlehem Steel
    
    The Bethlehem Steel Corporation was an American steelmaking company headquartered in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. For most of the 20th century, it was one of the world's largest steel producing and shipbuilding companies. At the height of its success and productivity, the company was a symbol of American manufacturing leadership in the world, and its decline and ultimate liquidation in the late 20th century is similarly cited as an example of America's diminished manufacturing leadership. From its founding in 1857 through its 2003 dissolution, Bethlehem Steel's headquarters and primary steel mill manufacturing facilities were based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in the Lehigh Valley region of the United States.
1860
1. Anders Zorn, Swedish artist (d. 1920) births
  1. Anders Zorn
    
    Anders Leonard Zorn was a Swedish painter. He attained international success as a painter, sculptor, and etching artist. Among Zorn's portrait subjects include King Oscar II of Sweden and three American Presidents: Grover Cleveland, William H. Taft, and Theodore Roosevelt. At the end of his life, he established the Swedish literary Bellman Prize in 1920.
1855
1. Jean Jules Jusserand, French historian, author, and diplomat, French Ambassador to the United States (d. 1932) births
  1. Jean Jules Jusserand
    
    Jean Adrien Antoine Jules Jusserand was a French author and diplomat. He was the French Ambassador to the United States 1903-1925 and played a major diplomatic role during World War I.
  2. List of ambassadors of France to the United States
    
    The French ambassador to the United States is the diplomatic representation of the French Republic to the United States. They reside in Washington, D.C. The current ambassador is Philippe Étienne.
1851
1. Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi, German mathematician and academic (b. 1804) deaths
  1. Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi
    
    Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi was a German mathematician who made fundamental contributions to elliptic functions, dynamics, differential equations, determinants, and number theory. His name is occasionally written as Carolus Gustavus Iacobus Iacobi in his Latin books, and his first name is sometimes given as Karl.
1850
1. George Henschel, German-English singer-songwriter, pianist, and conductor (d. 1934) births
  1. George Henschel
    
    Sir Isidor George Henschel was a German-born British baritone, pianist, conductor, and composer. His first wife Lillian was also a singer. He was the first conductor of both the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.
1849
1. Alexander Kielland, Norwegian author, playwright, and politician (d. 1906) births
  1. Alexander Kielland
    
    Alexander Lange Kielland was a Norwegian realistic writer of the 19th century. He is one of the so-called "The Four Greats" of Norwegian literature, along with Henrik Ibsen, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and Jonas Lie.
1848
1. Louis Comfort Tiffany, American stained glass artist (d. 1933) births
  1. Louis Comfort Tiffany
    
    Louis Comfort Tiffany was an American artist and designer who worked in the decorative arts and is best known for his work in stained glass. He is the American artist most associated with the Art Nouveau and Aesthetic movements. He was affiliated with a prestigious collaborative of designers known as the Associated Artists, which included Lockwood de Forest, Candace Wheeler, and Samuel Colman. Tiffany designed stained glass windows and lamps, glass mosaics, blown glass, ceramics, jewellery, enamels, and metalwork. He was the first design director at his family company, Tiffany & Co., founded by his father Charles Lewis Tiffany.
  2. Stained glass
    
    Stained glass is coloured glass as a material or works created from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant religious buildings. Although traditionally made in flat panels and used as windows, the creations of modern stained glass artists also include three-dimensional structures and sculpture. Modern vernacular usage has often extended the term "stained glass" to include domestic lead light and objets d'art created from foil glasswork exemplified in the famous lamps of Louis Comfort Tiffany.
1846
1. Wilson Barrett, English actor, playwright, and manager (d. 1904) births
  1. Wilson Barrett
    
    Wilson Barrett was an English manager, actor, and playwright. With his company, Barrett is credited with attracting the largest crowds of English theatregoers ever because of his success with melodrama, an instance being his production of The Silver King (1882) at the Princess's Theatre of London. The historical tragedy The Sign of the Cross (1895) was Barrett's most successful play, both in England and in the United States.
1838
1. Ernst Mach, Austrian physicist and philosopher (d. 1916) births
  1. Ernst Mach
    
    Ernst Waldfried Josef Wenzel Mach was a Moravian-born Austrian physicist and philosopher, who contributed to the physics of shock waves. The ratio of one's speed to that of sound is named the Mach number in his honour. As a philosopher of science, he was a major influence on logical positivism and American pragmatism. Through his criticism of Newton's theories of space and time, he foreshadowed Einstein's theory of relativity.
1836
1. Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Indian mystic and yogi (d. 1886) births
  1. Ramakrishna
    
    Ramakrishna Paramahansa, also spelled Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyaya, was an Indian Hindu mystic and religious leader; who after adhering to various religious practices from the Hindu traditions of Bhakti yoga, Tantra, and Advaita Vedanta, as well as from Islam and Christianity, proclaimed the world's various religions as "so many paths to reach one and the same goal", thus validating the essential unity of religions. Ramakrishna's followers came to regard him as an avatara, or divine incarnation, as did some of the prominent Hindu scholars of his day.
1818
1. John O'Shanassy, Irish-Australian politician, 2nd Premier of Victoria (d. 1883) births
  1. John O'Shanassy
    
    Sir John O'Shanassy, KCMG, was an Irish-Australian politician who served as the 2nd Premier of Victoria. O'Shanassy was born near Thurles in County Tipperary, Ireland, the son of a surveyor, and came to the Port Phillip District in 1839. He went into business in Melbourne as a draper, and by 1846 he was rich enough to be elected to the Melbourne City Council and to become the founding chairman of the Colonial Bank of Australasia. By the 1850s he was a major landowner and one of the wealthiest men in the colony. He also became a recognised leader of the large Irish Catholic community.
  2. Premier of Victoria
    
    The premier of Victoria is the head of government in the Australian state of Victoria. The premier is appointed by the governor of Victoria, and is the leader of the political party able to secure a majority in the Victorian Legislative Assembly.
1817
1. Lewis Armistead, American general (d. 1863) births
  1. Lewis Armistead
    
    Lewis Addison Armistead was a career United States Army officer who became a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. On July 3, 1863, as part of Pickett's Charge during the Battle of Gettysburg, Armistead led his brigade to the farthest point reached by Confederate forces during the charge, a point now referred to as the high-water mark of the Confederacy. However, he and his men were overwhelmed, and he was wounded and captured by Union troops. He died in a field hospital two days later.
1814
1. Samuel Fenton Cary, American lawyer and politician (d. 1900) births
  1. Samuel Fenton Cary
    
    Samuel Fenton Cary was an American politician who was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio and significant temperance movement leader in the 19th century. Cary became well known nationally as a prohibitionist author and lecturer.
1803
1. Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim, German poet and educator (b. 1719) deaths
  1. Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim
    
    Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim was a German poet, commonly associated with the Enlightenment movement.
1788
1. John Whitehurst, English geologist and clockmaker (b. 1713) deaths
  1. John Whitehurst
    
    John Whitehurst FRS, born in Cheshire, England, was a clockmaker and scientist, and made significant early contributions to geology. He was an influential member of the Lunar Society.
1780
1. Kristijonas Donelaitis, Lithuanian pastor and poet (b. 1714) deaths
  1. Kristijonas Donelaitis
    
    Kristijonas Donelaitis was a Prussian Lithuanian poet and Lutheran pastor. He lived and worked in Lithuania Minor, a territory in the Kingdom of Prussia, that had a sizable Lithuanian-speaking minority. He wrote the first classic Lithuanian language poem, The Seasons, which became one of the principal works of Lithuanian poetry. The poem, a classic work of Lithuanian literature, depicts everyday life of Lithuanian peasants, their struggle with serfdom, and the annual cycle of life.
1778
1. Joseph Marie Terray, French economist and politician, Controller-General of Finances (b. 1715) deaths
  1. Joseph Marie Terray
    
    Abbot Joseph Marie Terray was a Controller-General of Finances during the reign of Louis XV of France, an agent of fiscal reform.
  2. Controller-General of Finances
    
    The Controller-General or Comptroller-General of Finances was the name of the minister in charge of finances in France from 1661 to 1791. It replaced the former position of Superintendent of Finances, which was abolished with the downfall of Nicolas Fouquet. It did not hold any real political power until 1665, when First Minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who had acted upon financial matters since Fouquet's embezzlement charge, was appointed to the office.
1772
1. Count Johann Hartwig Ernst von Bernstorff, Danish politician (b. 1712) deaths
  1. Count Johann Hartwig Ernst von Bernstorff
    
    Count Johann Hartwig Ernst von Bernstorff was a German-Danish statesman and a member of the Bernstorff noble family of Mecklenburg. He was the son of Joachim Engelke Freiherr von Bernstorff, chamberlain to the Elector of Hanover.
1754
1. Emanuel Granberg, Finnish church painter (d. 1797) births
  1. Emanuel Granberg
    
    Emanuel Granberg (1754–1797) was a Finnish painter.
1748
1. Otto Ferdinand von Abensberg und Traun, Austrian field marshal (b. 1677) deaths
  1. Otto Ferdinand von Abensperg und Traun
    
    Otto Ferdinand Graf von Abensperg und Traun, was an Austrian Generalfeldmarschall. The current spelling of the name, and the spelling used in his time, is mostly Abensperg.
1745
1. Alessandro Volta, Italian physicist, invented the battery (d. 1827) births
  1. Alessandro Volta
    
    Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta was an Italian physicist, chemist and lay Catholic who was a pioneer of electricity and power who is credited as the inventor of the electric battery and the discoverer of methane. He invented the voltaic pile in 1799, and reported the results of his experiments in 1800 in a two-part letter to the president of the Royal Society. With this invention Volta proved that electricity could be generated chemically and debunked the prevalent theory that electricity was generated solely by living beings. Volta's invention sparked a great amount of scientific excitement and led others to conduct similar experiments, which eventually led to the development of the field of electrochemistry.
  2. Electric battery
    
    An electric battery is a source of electric power consisting of one or more electrochemical cells with external connections for powering electrical devices.
1743
1. Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici, Italian noble (b. 1667) deaths
  1. Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici
    
    Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici was an Italian noblewoman who was the last lineal descendant of the main branch of the House of Medici. A patron of the arts, she bequeathed the Medicis' large art collection, including the contents of the Uffizi, Palazzo Pitti and the Medicean villas, which she inherited upon her brother Gian Gastone's death in 1737, and her Palatine treasures to the Tuscan state, on the condition that no part of it could be removed from "the Capital of the grand ducal State....[and from] the succession of His Serene Grand Duke."
1732
1. Johann Christian Kittel, German organist and composer (d. 1809) births
  1. Johann Christian Kittel
    
    Johann Christian Kittel was a German organist, composer, and teacher. He was one of the last students of Johann Sebastian Bach. His students included Michael Gotthard Fischer, Karl Gottlieb Umbreit, Johann Wilhelm Hässler and Christian Heinrich Rinck. See: List of music students by teacher: K to M#Johann Christian Kittel.
1712
1. Louis, Dauphin of France, (b. 1682) deaths
  1. Louis, Duke of Burgundy
    
    Louis, Duke of Burgundy, was the eldest son of Louis, Grand Dauphin, and Dauphine Maria Anna and grandson of the reigning King Louis XIV of France. He was known as the "Petit Dauphin" to distinguish him from his father, who died in April 1711, when the former became the official Dauphin of France. He never reigned, as he died in 1712 while his grandfather was still on the throne. Upon the death of Louis XIV in 1715, the Duke of Burgundy's son became Louis XV.
1695
1. William Phips, governor of Massachusetts (b. 1650) deaths
  1. William Phips
    
    Sir William Phips was born in Maine in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and was of humble origin, uneducated, and fatherless from a young age but rapidly advanced from shepherd boy, to shipwright, ship's captain, and treasure hunter, the first New England native to be knighted, and the first royally appointed governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Phips was famous in his lifetime for recovering a large treasure from a sunken Spanish galleon but is perhaps best remembered today for establishing the court associated with the infamous Salem Witch Trials, which he grew unhappy with and forced to prematurely disband after five months.
1683
1. Nicolaes Pieterszoon Berchem, Dutch painter (b. 1620) deaths
  1. Nicolaes Pieterszoon Berchem
    
    Nicolaes Pieterszoon Berchem was a highly esteemed and prolific Dutch Golden Age painter of pastoral landscapes, populated with mythological or biblical figures, but also of a number of allegories and genre pieces.
1658
1. Charles-Irénée Castel de Saint-Pierre, French philosopher and author (d. 1743) births
  1. Charles-Irénée Castel de Saint-Pierre
    
    Charles-Irénée Castel, abbé de Saint-Pierre was a French author whose ideas were novel for his times. His proposal of an international organisation to maintain peace was perhaps the first in history, with the possible exceptions of George of Poděbrady's Tractatus (1462–1464) and Émeric Crucé. He influenced Rousseau and Kant.
2. John Villiers, 1st Viscount Purbeck, English courtier (b. c. 1591) deaths
  1. John Villiers, 1st Viscount Purbeck
    
    John Villiers was an English courtier from the Villiers family. The eldest son of Sir George Villiers and Mary Beaumont, later Countess of Buckingham, he was the brother of King James I's favourite, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham.
1654
1. Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac, French author (b. 1594) deaths
  1. Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac
    
    Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac was a French author, best known for his epistolary essays, which were widely circulated and read in his day. He was one of the founding members of Académie française.
1642
1. Marie Champmeslé, French actress (d. 1698) births
  1. Marie Champmeslé
    
    Marie Champmeslé was a French stage actress.
1632
1. Giovanni Battista Vitali, Italian violinist and composer (d. 1692) births
  1. Giovanni Battista Vitali
    
    Giovanni Battista Vitali was an Italian composer and violone player.
1626
1. Francesco Redi, Italian physician (d. 1697) births
  1. Francesco Redi
    
    Francesco Redi was an Italian physician, naturalist, biologist, and poet. He is referred to as the "founder of experimental biology", and as the "father of modern parasitology". He was the first person to challenge the theory of spontaneous generation by demonstrating that maggots come from eggs of flies.
1609
1. Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, English historian and politician, Chancellor of the Exchequer (d. 1674) births
  1. Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon
    
    Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, was an English statesman, lawyer, diplomat and historian who served as chief advisor to Charles I during the First English Civil War, and Lord Chancellor to Charles II from 1660 to 1667.
  2. Chancellor of the Exchequer
    
    The chancellor of the Exchequer, often abbreviated to chancellor, is a senior minister of the Crown within the Government of the United Kingdom, and head of His Majesty's Treasury. As one of the four Great Offices of State, the Chancellor is a high-ranking member of the British Cabinet and is third in the ministerial ranking, behind the prime minister and the deputy prime minister.
1602
1. Per Brahe the Younger, Swedish soldier and politician, Governor-General of Finland (d. 1680) births
  1. Per Brahe the Younger
    
    Count Per Brahe the Younger was a Swedish soldier, statesman, and author. He served as Privy Councillor from 1630, Lord High Steward from 1640, as well as Governor-General of Finland in 1637–1640 and 1648–1654.
  2. Governor-General of Finland
    
    The governor-general of Finland was the military commander and the highest administrator of Finland sporadically under Swedish rule in the 17th and 18th centuries and continuously in the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland between 1809 and 1917.
2. Michelangelo Cerquozzi, Italian painter (d. 1660) births
  1. Michelangelo Cerquozzi
    
    Michelangelo Cerquozzi, known as Michelangelo delle Battaglie was an Italian Baroque painter known for his genre scenes, battle pictures, small religious and mythological works and still lifes. His genre scenes were influenced by the work of the Flemish and Dutch genre artists referred to as the Bamboccianti active in Rome who created small cabinet paintings and prints of the everyday life of the lower classes in Rome and its countryside. One of the leading battle painters active in Italy in the first half of the 17th century, Michelangelo Cerquozzi earned the nickname 'Michelangelo delle Battaglie'.
1589
1. Henry Vane the Elder, English politician (d. 1655) births
  1. Henry Vane the Elder
    
    Sir Henry Vane, the elder was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1614 and 1654. He served King Charles in many posts including secretary of state, but on the outbreak of the English Civil War joined the Parliamentary cause. He was the third cousin of Francis Fane, 1st Earl of Westmorland.
2. Maarten Gerritsz Vries, Dutch explorer (d. 1646) births
  1. Maarten Gerritsz Vries
    
    Maarten Gerritszoon Vries, or Fries, also referred to as de Vries, was a 17th-century Dutch cartographer and explorer, the first Western European to leave an account of his visit to Ezo, Sakhalin, Kuril Islands and the Sea of Okhotsk.
1564
1. Michelangelo, Italian sculptor and painter (b. 1475) deaths
  1. Michelangelo
    
    Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, known as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspired by models from classical antiquity and had a lasting influence on Western art. Michelangelo's creative abilities and mastery in a range of artistic arenas define him as an archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and elder contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci. Given the sheer volume of surviving correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences, Michelangelo is one of the best-documented artists of the 16th century. He was lauded by contemporary biographers as the most accomplished artist of his era.
1559
1. Isaac Casaubon, Swiss philologist and scholar (d. 1614) births
  1. Isaac Casaubon
    
    Isaac Casaubon was a classical scholar and philologist, first in France and then later in England.
1547
1. Bahāʾ al-dīn al-ʿĀmilī, founder of Isfahan School of Islamic Philosophy (d. 1621) births
  1. Baha' al-din al-'Amili
    
    Bahāʾ al‐Dīn Muḥammad ibn Ḥusayn al‐ʿĀmilī was a Levantine Arab Shia Islamic scholar, philosopher, architect, mathematician, astronomer, and poet who lived in the late 16th and early 17th centuries in Safavid Iran. He was born in Baalbek, Ottoman Syria but immigrated in his childhood to Safavid Iran with the rest of his family. He was one of the earliest astronomers in the Islamic world to suggest the possibility of the Earth's movement prior to the spread of the Copernican theory. He is considered one of the main co-founders of Isfahan School of Islamic Philosophy. In later years he became one of the teachers of Mulla Sadra.
1546
1. Martin Luther, German priest and theologian, leader of the Protestant Reformation (b. 1483) deaths
  1. Martin Luther
    
    Martin Luther was a German priest, theologian, author, hymnwriter, and professor. A former Augustinian friar, he is best known as the seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation and the namesake of Lutheranism.
  2. Reformation
    
    The Reformation was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in particular to papal authority, arising from what were perceived to be errors, abuses, and discrepancies by the Catholic Church. The Reformation was the start of Protestantism and the split of the Western Church into Protestantism and what is now the Roman Catholic Church. It is also considered to be one of the events that signified the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the early modern period in Europe.
1543
1. Charles III, Duke of Lorraine (d. 1608) births
  1. Charles III, Duke of Lorraine
    
    Charles III, known as the Great, was Duke of Lorraine from 1545 until his death.
1535
1. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, German magician, astrologer, and theologian (b. 1486) deaths
  1. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa
    
    Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim was a German polymath, physician, legal scholar, soldier, theologian, and occult writer. Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy published in 1533 drew heavily upon Kabbalah, Hermeticism, and neo-Platonism. His book was widely influential among occultists of the early modern period, and was condemned as heretical by the inquisitor of Cologne.
1530
1. Uesugi Kenshin, Japanese daimyō (d. 1578) births
  1. Uesugi Kenshin
    
    Nagao Kagetora , later known as Uesugi Kenshin was Japanese daimyō. He was born in Nagao clan, and after adoption into the Uesugi clan, ruled Echigo Province in the Sengoku period of Japan. He was one of the most powerful daimyō of the Sengoku period. Known as the "Dragon of Echigo", while chiefly remembered for his prowess on the battlefield as a military genius, Kenshin is also regarded as an extremely skillful administrator who fostered the growth of local industries and trade and his rule saw a marked rise in the standard of living of Echigo.
1516
1. Mary I of England (d. 1558) births
  1. Mary I of England
    
    Mary I, also known as Mary Tudor, and as "Bloody Mary" by her Protestant opponents, was Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 until her death in 1558. She is best known for her vigorous attempt to reverse the English Reformation, which had begun during the reign of her father, Henry VIII. Her attempt to restore to the Church the property confiscated in the previous two reigns was largely thwarted by Parliament, but during her five-year reign, Mary had over 280 religious dissenters burned at the stake in the Marian persecutions.
1502
1. Hedwig Jagiellon, duchess of Bavaria (b. 1457) deaths
  1. Hedwig Jagiellon, Duchess of Bavaria
    
    Hedwig Jagiellon, baptized as "Hedwigis", was a Polish princess and member of the Jagiellonian dynasty, as well as Duchess of Bavaria by marriage.
1486
1. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Indian monk and saint (d. 1534) births
  1. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu
    
    Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was a 15th-century Indian saint who is considered to be the combined avatar of Radha and Krishna by his disciples and various scriptures. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's mode of worshipping Krishna with ecstatic song and dance had a profound effect on Vaishnavism in Bengal. He was also the chief proponent of the Vedantic philosophy of Achintya Bheda Abheda Tattva. Mahaprabhu founded Gaudiya Vaishnavism. He expounded Bhakti yoga and popularized the chanting of the Hare Krishna Maha-mantra. He composed the Shikshashtakam.
1478
1. George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, English nobleman (b. 1449) deaths
  1. George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence
    
    George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, was the 6th son of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily Neville, and the brother of English kings Edward IV and Richard III. He played an important role in the dynastic struggle between rival factions of the Plantagenets now known as the Wars of the Roses.
1455
1. Fra Angelico, Italian priest and painter (b. 1395) deaths
  1. Fra Angelico
    
    Fra Angelico was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance, described by Vasari in his Lives of the Artists as having "a rare and perfect talent". He earned his reputation primarily for the series of frescoes he made for his own friary, San Marco, in Florence.
1397
1. Enguerrand VII, French nobleman (b. 1340) deaths
  1. Enguerrand VII de Coucy
    
    Enguerrand VII de Coucy,, also known as Ingelram de Coucy and Ingelram de Couci, was a medieval French nobleman and the last Lord of Coucy. He became a son-in-law of King Edward III of England following his marriage to the king's daughter, Isabella of England, and the couple was subsequently granted several English estates, among them the title Earl of Bedford. Coucy fought in the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396 as part of a failed crusade against the Ottoman Empire, but was taken prisoner and contracted the bubonic plague. He died in captivity the following year at Bursa.
1379
1. Albert II, duke of Mecklenburg (b. 1318) deaths
  1. Albert II, Duke of Mecklenburg
    
    Albert II, Duke of Mecklenburg was a feudal lord in Northern Germany on the shores of the Baltic Sea. He reigned as the head of the House of Mecklenburg. His princely seat was located in Schwerin beginning in the 1350s.
1372
1. Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, Egyptian jurist and scholar (d. 1448) births
  1. Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani
    
    Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī or Ibn Ḥajar, was a classic Islamic scholar and polymath "whose life work constitutes the final summation of the science of Hadith." He authored some 150 works on hadith, history, biography, tafsir, poetry, and Shafi'i jurisprudence, the most valued of which being his commentary of Sahih al-Bukhari, titled Fath al-Bari.
1294
1. Kublai Khan, Mongol emperor (b. 1215) deaths
  1. Kublai Khan
    
    Kublai, also known by his temple name as the Emperor Shizu of Yuan and his regnal name Setsen Khan, was the founder of the Yuan dynasty of China and the fifth khagan-emperor of the Mongol Empire from 1260 to 1294, although after the division of the empire this was a nominal position. He proclaimed the empire's dynastic name "Great Yuan" in 1271, and ruled Yuan China until his death in 1294.
1225
1. Hugh Bigod, 3rd Earl of Norfolk, Norman nobleman deaths
  1. Hugh Bigod, 3rd Earl of Norfolk
    
    Hugh Bigod was a member of the powerful early Norman Bigod family and was for a short time the 3rd Earl of Norfolk.
1218
1. Berthold V, duke of Zähringen (b. 1160) deaths
  1. Berthold V, Duke of Zähringen
    
    Berthold V, Duke of Zähringen, also known as Bertold V or Berchtold V, was Duke of Zähringen from 1186 until his death. He was the son of Berthold IV and Heilwig of Frohburg.
1201
1. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Persian scientist and writer (d. 1274) births
  1. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi
    
    Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Tūsī, better known as Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, was a Persian polymath, architect, philosopher, physician, scientist, and theologian. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi was a well published author, writing on subjects of math, engineering, prose, and mysticism. Additionally, al-Tusi made several scientific advancements. In astronomy, al-Tusi created very accurate tables of planetary motion, an updated planetary model, and critiques of Ptolemaic astronomy. He also made strides in logic, mathematics but especially trigonometry, biology, and chemistry. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi left behind a great legacy as well. Tusi is widely regarded as one of the greatest scientists of medieval Islam, since he is often considered the creator of trigonometry as a mathematical discipline in its own right. The Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) considered Tusi to be the greatest of the later Persian scholars. There is also reason to believe that he may have influenced Copernican heliocentrism. Nasir proposed that humans are related to animals and that some animals have a limited level of awareness while humans have a superior level of awareness amongst animals. He also framed a very basic evolutionary theory.
1139
1. Yaropolk II, Grand Prince of Kiev (b. 1082) deaths
  1. Yaropolk II of Kiev
    
    Yaropolk II Vladimirovich Monomakh, Prince of Pereiaslav (1114–1132), of Kiev (1132–1139), son of Vladimir II Monomakh and Gytha of Wessex. He fought in several campaigns against the Cumans, once in 1103 and again in 1116.
999
1. Gregory V, pope of the Catholic Church (b. 972) deaths
  1. AD 999
    
    Year 999 (CMXCIX) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar.
  2. Pope Gregory V
    
    Pope Gregory V, born Bruno of Carinthia, was the bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from 3 May 996 to his death. A member of the Salian dynasty, he was made pope by his cousin, Emperor Otto III.
901
1. Thābit ibn Qurra, Arab astronomer and physician (b. 826) deaths
  1. Thābit ibn Qurra
    
    Thābit ibn Qurra ; 826 or 836 – February 19, 901, was a mathematician, physician, astronomer, and translator who lived in Baghdad in the second half of the ninth century during the time of the Abbasid Caliphate.
814
1. Angilbert, Frankish monk and diplomat (b. 760) deaths
  1. Angilbert
    
    Angilbert was a noble Frankish poet who was educated under Alcuin and served Charlemagne as a secretary, diplomat, and son-in-law. He is venerated as a pre-Congregation saint and is still honored on the day of his death, 18 February.
675
1. Colmán, bishop of Lindisfarne deaths
  1. Colmán of Lindisfarne
    
    Colmán of Lindisfarne also known as Saint Colmán was Bishop of Lindisfarne from 661 until 664.

Holidays

Christian feast day: Bernadette Soubirous (France)
1. Bernadette Soubirous
  
  Bernadette Soubirous, also known as Saint Bernadette of Lourdes, was the firstborn daughter of a miller from Lourdes, in the department of Hautes-Pyrénées in France, and is best known for experiencing Marian apparitions of a "young lady" who asked for a chapel to be built at the nearby cave-grotto at Massabielle. These apparitions occurred between 11 February and 16 July 1858, and the woman who appeared to her identified herself as the "Immaculate Conception."
Christian feast day: Colmán of Lindisfarne
1. Colmán of Lindisfarne
  
  Colmán of Lindisfarne also known as Saint Colmán was Bishop of Lindisfarne from 661 until 664.
Christian feast day: Flavian of Constantinople
1. Flavian of Constantinople
  
  Flavian, sometimes Flavian I, was Archbishop of Constantinople from 446 to 449. He is venerated as a saint by the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church.
Christian feast day: Geltrude Comensoli
1. Geltrude Comensoli
  
  Geltrude Caterina Comensoli, also known as Mother Geltrude is the Patron of Youth, Val Camonica and Relic Custodians. She was the founder of the Institute of the Sacramentine Sisters.
Christian feast day: Simeon of Jerusalem (Western Christianity)
1. Simeon of Jerusalem
  
  Simeon of Jerusalem was a Jewish Christian leader and according to most Christian traditions the second Bishop of Jerusalem, succeeding James, brother of Jesus. Simeon is sometimes identified with Simon, brother of Jesus, and has also been identified with the Apostle Simon the Zealot.
2. Western Christianity
  
  Western Christianity is one of two sub-divisions of Christianity. Western Christianity is composed of the Latin Church and Western Protestantism, together with their offshoots such as the Old Catholic Church, Independent Catholicism and Restorationism.
Christian feast day: February 18 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
1. February 18 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
  
  February 17 - Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar - February 19
Dialect Day (Amami Islands, Japan)
1. Ryukyuan languages
  
  The Ryukyuan languages , also Lewchewan or Luchuan, are the indigenous languages of the Ryukyu Islands, the southernmost part of the Japanese archipelago. Along with the Japanese language and the Hachijō language, they make up the Japonic language family.
2. Amami Islands
  
  The Amami Islands is an archipelago in the Satsunan Islands, which is part of the Ryukyu Islands, and is southwest of Kyushu. Administratively, the group belongs to Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. The Geospatial Information Authority of Japan and the Japan Coast Guard agreed on February 15, 2010, to use the name of Amami-guntō (奄美群島) for the Amami Islands. Prior to that, Amami-shotō (奄美諸島) was also used. The name of Amami is probably cognate with Amamikyu (阿摩美久), the goddess of creation in the Ryukyuan creation myth.
3. Japan
  
  Japan is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north toward the East China Sea, Philippine Sea, and Taiwan in the south. Japan is a part of the Ring of Fire, and spans an archipelago of 6852 islands covering 377,975 square kilometers (145,937 sq mi); the five main islands are Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa. Tokyo is the nation's capital and largest city, followed by Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kobe, and Kyoto.
Independence Day, celebrates the independence of the Gambia from the United Kingdom in 1965
1. Public holidays in the Gambia
  
  This is a list of public holidays in the Gambia.
2. The Gambia
  
  The Gambia, officially the Republic of The Gambia, is a country in West Africa. It is the smallest country within mainland Africa and is surrounded by Senegal, except for its western coast on the Atlantic Ocean. The Gambia is situated on both sides of the lower reaches of the Gambia River, the nation's namesake, which flows through the centre of the Gambia and empties into the Atlantic Ocean, thus the long shape of the country. It has an area of 10,689 square kilometres (4,127 sq mi) with a population of 1,857,181 as of the April 2013 census. Banjul is the Gambian capital and the country's largest metropolitan area, while the largest cities are Serekunda and Brikama.
Kurdish Students Union Day (Iraqi Kurdistan)
1. Public holidays in Iraq
  
  This is a list of public holidays in Iraq.
2. Iraqi Kurdistan
  
  Iraqi Kurdistan or Southern Kurdistan refers to the Kurdish-populated part of northern Iraq. It is considered one of the four parts of "Kurdistan" in Western Asia, which also includes parts of southeastern Turkey, northern Syria, and northwestern Iran. Much of the geographical and cultural region of Iraqi Kurdistan is part of the Kurdistan Region (KRI), an autonomous region recognized by the Constitution of Iraq. As with the rest of Kurdistan, and unlike most of the rest of Iraq, the region is inland and mountainous.
National Democracy Day, celebrates the 1951 overthrow of the Rana dynasty (Nepal)
1. Public holidays in Nepal
  
  Public offices and most private businesses in Nepal operate six days a week and only close on Saturdays. International organizations have their own rules and are normally closed on Saturdays and Sundays. Government holidays for the upcoming year are published in Nepal Gazette. Nepal celebrates a number of religious and non-religious holidays. On most of these holidays, most government offices and private institutions are closed, although is not mandatory for privately owned businesses to close and international organizations may operate their own calendar.
2. Rana dynasty
  
  Rana dynasty is a Chhetri dynasty that imposed totalitarianism in the Kingdom of Nepal from 1846 until 1951, reducing the Shah monarch to a figurehead and making Prime Minister and other government positions held by the Ranas hereditary. They claimed Kshatriya status themselves. Rana dynasty is historically known for the iron-fisted rule. This changed after the Revolution of 1951 with the promulgation of a new constitution, when power shifted back to the monarchy of King Tribhuvan.
3. Nepal
  
  Nepal, formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mainly situated in the Himalayas, but also includes parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain, bordering the Tibet Autonomous Region of China to the north, and India in the south, east, and west, while it is narrowly separated from Bangladesh by the Siliguri Corridor, and from Bhutan by the Indian state of Sikkim. Nepal has a diverse geography, including fertile plains, subalpine forested hills, and eight of the world's ten tallest mountains, including Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth. Nepal is a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious and multi-cultural state, with Nepali as the official language. Kathmandu is the nation's capital and the largest city.
Wife's Day (Konudagur) (Iceland)
1. Man's Day and Woman's Day (Iceland)
  
  Man's Day and Woman's Day are traditional celebration days in Iceland, which were traditionally determined according to the old Icelandic calendar.
2. Iceland
  
  Iceland is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which is home to over 65% of the population. Iceland is the biggest part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge that rises above sea level, and its central volcanic plateau is erupting almost constantly. The interior consists of a plateau characterised by sand and lava fields, mountains, and glaciers, and many glacial rivers flow to the sea through the lowlands. Iceland is warmed by the Gulf Stream and has a temperate climate, despite a high latitude just outside the Arctic Circle. Its high latitude and marine influence keep summers chilly, and most of its islands have a polar climate.

Important events in history on February 18 th

Events

Perseverance (rover)

Mars rover

Space exploration

Jezero (crater)

Mars

NASA

Mars 2020

Revolution of Dignity

Kyiv

Brussels Airport diamond heist

Brussels Airport

Brussels Airport diamond heist

Brussels Airport

Belgium

2010 Nigerien coup d'état

Niamey

Mamadou Tandja

Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy

WikiLeaks

Classified information

Chelsea Manning

WikiLeaks

Classified information

Chelsea Manning

2007 Samjhauta Express bombings

Samjhauta Express

Panipat

Nishapur

Sulfur

Gasoline

Fertilizer

Nishapur train disaster

Daegu subway fire

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Robert Hanssen

KGB

GRU

Sampit conflict

Dayak people

Madurese people

Sampit

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Robert Hanssen

Soviet Union

Sampit conflict

Dayak people

Madura Island

Sampit

Central Kalimantan

Indonesia

Provisional Irish Republican Army

Bombings of Paddington and Victoria stations

London Paddington station

London Victoria station

Wah Mee massacre

Seattle

Richard Petty

1979 Daytona 500

Daytona 500

Donnie Allison

Cale Yarborough

NASCAR

Space Shuttle program

Space Shuttle Enterprise

Shuttle Carrier Aircraft

Kalakuta Republic

Fela Kuti

Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti

Space Shuttle Enterprise

Boeing 747

Supreme Court of California

People v. Anderson

Capital punishment

Death row

Chicago Seven

1968 Democratic National Convention

The Gambia

Kenya

Important events in history
on February 18 ^th