Vladimir Lenin born in Simbirsk (1870), and Pedro Álvares Cabral lands on the coast of Brazil (1500). Born on this day: Vladimir Lenin, Immanuel Kant and Vladimir Nabokov. Died: Miguel de Cervantes, Richard Nixon and Emilio Segrè.
30 events, 82 births and 51 deaths on this date.
Vladimir Ulyanov, later known as Lenin, was born in Simbirsk. He went on to lead the Bolsheviks through the October Revolution of 1917 and became the first head of the Soviet government.
Pavel Zhukov · Public domainPortuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral reached the Brazilian coast while sailing for Portugal, opening the way to Portuguese settlement of a territory later known for its vast Amazon basin. The landing is often cited as the start of Portugal's claim to what became the largest country in South America.
Born in Königsberg, in the Kingdom of Prussia, he would go on to reshape modern Western philosophy with his work on knowledge, morality and reason. He argued that our minds shape how we experience the world, an idea he compared to a Copernican turn.
Becker · Public domain
Amid the war with Spain, the president sought 125,000 volunteers for the National Guard to serve in Cuba. Congress also nearly doubled the regular army, to 65,000 men.
photographer · Public domain
Born in New York City, Oppenheimer went on to lead the Los Alamos Laboratory, where the first atomic bombs were developed during the Manhattan Project. He was present at the Trinity test in 1945 and was often called the father of the atomic bomb.
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain
Light sent through thin glass strands carried live voice calls, a job usually given to copper cable. Fibre loses less signal over distance and ignores electrical interference, so it can carry far more data.
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Vladimir Lenin was the Bolshevik leader who led the 1917 October Revolution and then headed the first Soviet government. His ideas, later called Leninism, shaped Marxist politics across much of the twentieth century.
Pavel Zhukov · Public domain
Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg who is remembered for arguing that our minds shape how we experience the world. He became one of the most influential thinkers of the Enlightenment and of modern Western philosophy.
Becker · Public domain
Russian-American novelist remembered for Lolita, a 1955 book that became one of the most discussed novels of the twentieth century. He also wrote the memoir Speak, Memory and was a serious lepidopterist, studying butterflies alongside his fiction.
Walter Mori (Mondadori Publishers) · Public domain
Spanish novelist, poet and playwright, remembered above all for Don Quixote, a book often called the first modern novel. He spent much of his life in poverty and obscurity, and many early works were lost.
Attributed to Juan de Jáuregui · Public domain
Richard Nixon, the 37th US president, died in New York in 1994. He is remembered as the only president to resign, forced out over the Watergate scandal in 1974.
Department of Defense. Department of the Army. Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations. U.S. Army Audiovisual Center. (ca. 1974 - 05/15/1984) · Public domain
Italian-American physicist who co-discovered technetium and astatine, two elements, and shared the 1959 Nobel Prize for finding the antiproton. He died in Lafayette, California, in 1989.
Nobel foundation · Public domain
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