Hitler orders the Luftwaffe reinstated, breaking the Treaty of Versailles (1935), and Pakistan declares open war on the Taliban in Afghanistan (2026). Born on this day: Victor Hugo, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Johnny Cash. Died: Karl Jaspers, Otto Wallach and Fernandel.
34 events, 69 births and 62 deaths on this date.
Hitler ordered the revival of the German air force, the Luftwaffe, in open defiance of the Treaty of Versailles that had banned it. The move showed the world that the Nazi regime intended to rearm and challenge the peace settlement after the First World War.
Unknown author Unknown author · CC BY-SA 3.0 dePakistan's government announced open war against the Taliban government in Afghanistan, starting a new armed conflict between the two neighbours. The move marked a sharp escalation in long-running tensions over militants operating across their shared border.
Victor Hugo grew up to become France's best-known Romantic writer, remembered for novels such as Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. Over the decades he shifted from royalist to passionate republican, and later served as both deputy and senator.
Étienne Carjat · Public domain
Ptolemy, the second-century astronomer, placed the start of the Nabonassar Era at noon on this day, a Babylonian count of years running from King Nabonassar. Historians still use his figure to anchor the BC chronology and date events against it.
The treaty gave Japanese citizens extraterritorial rights in Korea, meaning they answered to Japanese rather than Korean law. It also ended Korea's long role as a tributary of Qing China and gave Japanese merchants access to three harbours.
A settlement the East India Company had built on Balambangan, a small island off Borneo, was wiped out by raiders. It was one of the company's trading outposts in the East Indies, far from its Indian base.
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Victor Hugo was a French novelist, poet and playwright, best known for The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Les Misérables. He also campaigned against capital punishment and slavery, and became a republican politician after starting out as a royalist.
Étienne Carjat · Public domain
Turkish politician who has led Turkey since 2014, after serving as prime minister and co-founding the Justice and Development Party. Earlier, he was Istanbul's mayor and was jailed in 1998 for reciting a poem, which led to a political ban.
PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY Official website · CC BY 4.0
Johnny Cash was an American singer-songwriter known for his deep bass-baritone voice and his songs about sorrow and redemption. He earned the nickname Man in Black from his habit of dressing entirely in black on stage.
CBS Television · Public domain
Karl Jaspers was a German-Swiss psychiatrist who turned to philosophy and became a leading figure in German existentialism, though he rejected the label. His 1913 book General Psychopathology shaped later diagnostic thinking, especially the idea of primary and secondary delusions.
Unknown (Mondadori Publishers) · Public domain
Otto Wallach was a German chemist who taught at several universities and worked out the structure of essential oils and terpenes. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1910 for his research on alicyclic compounds.
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain
Fernandel was a French comic actor and singer who rose from vaudeville, operetta and music-hall revues to become a film comedy star. His stage name came from marrying into the Manse family, and his mother-in-law jokingly called him Fernand d'elle.
André Cros · CC BY-SA 4.0
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