Roosevelt closes the Works Progress Administration (1943), and China adopts its current constitution (1982). Born on this day: Francisco Franco, Rainer Maria Rilke and JAY-Z. Died: Omar Khayyam, Thomas Hobbes and Hannah Arendt.
30 events, 64 births and 59 deaths on this date.
With wartime industry hiring widely, Roosevelt shut down the Works Progress Administration, the New Deal agency that had created public jobs in the Depression. Unemployment had fallen so far that the agency was no longer needed in the United States at war.
Leon Perskie · CC BY 2.0On this day in 1982, China's National People's Congress adopted the constitution still in force today. It replaced earlier versions and set out the framework for the country's reform era under the Communist Party.
Oliver Hudson Kelley, a farmer from Minnesota, set up a fraternal society for rural families that became known as the Grange. It gave farmers a shared voice and a social network, and it grew into one of the largest farm organisations in America.
North Carolina's legislature approved the 13th Amendment, which banned slavery nationwide, and Georgia followed two days later. Within two weeks, enslaved people across the country were legally free.
The US sent troops to Somalia to deliver humanitarian aid and help restore order amid the country's civil war. The deployment marked a major American commitment to a conflict that had left many civilians facing famine.
David Valdez · Public domain
Wilson set out for the talks that would shape the peace, carrying his plan for a League of Nations. He had led the United States through the war, and he saw the League as a way to prevent another war.
Harris & Ewing, photographer · Public domain
For the full day, download Chunks today. Every date, the stories behind them, and a new day each morning. Free to start.
Spanish general who led the Nationalist rising against the Second Republic and then governed Spain as its dictator for almost four decades. He stayed in power until he died in 1975, and the period that followed is known as Francoist Spain.
Unknown author Unknown author · CC0
Rilke was an Austrian poet who wrote in German and some French, remembered for the Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. His novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge and his Letters to a Young Poet are also widely read.
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain
Born Shawn Carter, the New York rapper built his name on sharp wordplay and a rags-to-riches story, then grew into a businessman with a record-breaking catalogue. Reasonable Doubt, his 1996 debut, is still widely regarded as a landmark of East Coast hip-hop.
Photo Courtesy of NYS Senate Media Services · CC BY 2.0
Persian polymath who solved cubic equations geometrically and helped design the Jalali calendar, still the basis of the Persian calendar. He is also known for quatrains that reached English readers through Edward FitzGerald's 1859 translation.
The original uploader was Atilin at French Wikipedia . · CC BY-SA 3.0
English philosopher whose 1651 book Leviathan argued that people need an absolute sovereign to escape constant conflict, and helped found modern political philosophy. He was also a polymath, writing on geometry, optics, history and ethics.
John Michael Wright · Public domain
German-American political theorist whose analysis of how ordinary people take part in totalitarian systems made her one of the century's most influential thinkers. She is also remembered for her writing on the trial of Adolf Eichmann and her coinage of a phrase about evil that still gets quoted.
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain
Download on iOS
Download on Android