Ulysses S. Grant, later 18th U.S. president, is born (1822), and Togo becomes independent from France (1960). Born on this day: Ulysses S. Grant, Mary Wollstonecraft and Willem-Alexander, king of the Netherlands. Died: Ferdinand Magellan, Kwame Nkrumah and Antonio Gramsci.
33 events, 67 births and 62 deaths on this date.
Born Hiram Ulysses Grant in Ohio, he would secure Union victory in the Civil War before serving two terms as president. He graduated from West Point in 1843 and later took on the Ku Klux Klan as president.
Henry Ulke · Public domainTogo, a small West African territory once run by Germany as Togoland, shook off French administration on this day. Germany held it before the First World War, after which France took charge, and the country has been a sovereign state ever since.
Conquistadors Nikolaus Federmann and Sebastián de Belalcázar formally made the settlement a city, one that would become Colombia's capital. Its high Andean plateau location, around 2,640 metres up, makes it one of the world's highest capitals.
Early in the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln allowed military authorities to hold civilians without the usual court hearing. The move, which he later defended as necessary to keep Maryland and the capital secure, sparked fierce legal debate over presidential power.
Commander Tariq ibn Ziyad landed his troops at Gibraltar, the opening move in the Islamic conquest of Hispania. The landing marked the start of what became Al-Andalus, the Muslim-ruled territory on the peninsula.
Blind and short of money, Milton sold his epic for ten pounds, enough to get it entered for publication. The poem, on the fall of humankind, went on to be counted among the greatest works in English.
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Ulysses S. Grant commanded the Union Army to victory in the American Civil War, then served as the 18th president of the United States. Born in Ohio, he first made his name with victories in the western theatre.
Henry Ulke · Public domain
Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer whose 1792 treatise on women's rights argued that women seemed inferior only because they lacked education. Feminists still cite her work as an influence, and her daughter Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein.
John Opie · Public domain
Willem-Alexander has reigned as King of the Netherlands since 2013, when his mother Beatrix stepped down. Before the throne he served in the Royal Netherlands Navy, studied history at Leiden and chaired advisory boards on water.
Sander Perquin · CC BY 4.0
Portuguese navigator who sailed for Spain and was killed in a skirmish in the Philippines, though his expedition went on to complete the first voyage around the world. He never saw the return journey himself.
Unknown artist Unknown artist · Public domain
Kwame Nkrumah led the Gold Coast to independence from Britain in 1957, serving as Ghana's first prime minister and then its president. A socialist and Pan-Africanist, he helped found the Organisation of African Unity and wanted the continent united under one leadership.
USSR Post · Public domain
Gramsci was an Italian Marxist thinker and founder of the Italian Communist Party, jailed by Mussolini's regime in 1926. Behind bars he filled more than thirty notebooks, and his ideas on cultural hegemony still shape political debate.
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain
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