Napoleon annexes Westphalia into the French Empire (1810), and US drops second atomic bomb on Nagasaki (1945). Born on this day: Whitney Houston, Amedeo Avogadro and Jean Piaget. Died: Hermann Hesse, Ernst Haeckel and Hiëronymus Bosch.
30 events, 63 births and 63 deaths on this date.
Napoleon formally absorbed the Kingdom of Westphalia, a German state he had created in 1807 with his brother Jérôme as its king, into the French Empire. The move gave France direct control over northern German lands and tightened its grip on the Continental System, the blockade aimed at Britain.
Jacques-Louis David · Public domainThe French RevolutionHear the story in ChunksA US B-29 bomber dropped the plutonium bomb nicknamed Fat Man on Nagasaki, three days after Hiroshima. It was the second atomic attack in history, and Japan announced its surrender six days later.
Facing near-certain impeachment over the Watergate cover-up, Nixon stepped down, the first American president to do so. His exit ended a scandal that began with a 1972 break-in at Democratic Party headquarters in Washington.
After Charles X was forced out by the July Revolution, the Chamber of Deputies chose Louis-Philippe, a cousin from the Orléans branch, to rule as a constitutional monarch. He would reign as the so-called Citizen King until 1848.
Franz Xaver Winterhalter · Public domain
Edmonton sent the most celebrated player of his era to Los Angeles, a move that shocked hockey fans and reshaped the league. Gretzky's arrival gave the Kings a star and helped raise the sport's profile across the United States.
The original uploader was Hakandahlstrom at English Wikipedia . Later versions were uploaded by IrisKawling at en.wikipedia . · CC BY-SA 3.0
Builders started the freestanding bell tower of Pisa Cathedral, the structure now famous as the Leaning Tower. It would take roughly two centuries to finish, and its lean began to show during the building work.
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Houston was an American singer and actress whose voice earned her the nickname the Voice. Her albums sold over 220 million copies, and her 1992 film The Bodyguard produced one of the best-selling soundtracks ever made.
PH2 Mark Kettenhofen · Public domain
Italian physicist and chemist remembered for proposing that gas samples of identical volume, at matching temperature and pressure, hold identical numbers of molecules. A university teacher, he gave his name to the Avogadro constant, which counts particles in a mole.
The original uploader was Anton at German Wikipedia . · Public domain
Swiss psychologist whose studies of how children think shaped modern education and developmental psychology. He argued that children build understanding in stages, and his ideas spread widely from the 1960s onward.
Unidentified (Ensian published by University of Michigan) · Public domain
Hesse was a German-Swiss novelist and poet who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946. His novels Siddhartha, Steppenwolf and Demian, each about a search for self-knowledge, became hugely popular with readers in the 1960s, years after his death.
Unknown author Unknown author · CC BY-SA 3.0 nl
The German zoologist who spread Darwin's ideas in Germany and coined words such as ecology and phylum. His embryo-based 'Biogenetic Law' was later shown to be wrong, and his promotion of scientific racism is now widely condemned.
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain
Bosch was a Dutch painter from Brabant, famous for crowded, nightmarish visions of hell and religious themes. His strange, original style strongly influenced northern European art in the sixteenth century, and his best-known follower was Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
Attributed to Jacques Le Boucq · Public domain
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