C. V. Raman's team discovers Raman scattering of light (1928), and Egypt becomes independent from British occupation (1922). Born on this day: Linus Pauling, Michel de Montaigne and Frank O. Gehry. Died: Olof Palme, Donald A. Glaser and Henry James.
34 events, 76 births and 62 deaths on this date.
Working with his student K. S. Krishnan, Raman found that light passing through a transparent material changes its wavelength when deflected. The effect earned him the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics, making him the first Asian to receive that honour.
Nobel Foundation · Public domainBritain ended its occupation of Egypt, and the country became an independent monarchy. It closed a long chapter of foreign rule, which had included the Ottoman Empire.
Cuauhtémoc was the last ruler of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, which fell to Spanish forces in 1521. His execution, ordered by the conquistador Hernán Cortés, ended the independent line of Aztec kings that the conquest had already undermined.
A 42-nation coalition, led by the United States, drove Iraqi troops out of Kuwait, which Saddam Hussein had seized in August 1990. The ground offensive that had begun on 24 February was called off soon after, halting the fighting.
Chemist Linus Pauling, later one of only two people to win Nobel Prizes in different fields, was born on this day. He took the chemistry prize in 1954 and the peace prize in 1962 for his activism against nuclear weapons.
Nobel Foundation · Public domain
Joint American and Israeli air strikes hit targets across Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and several senior officials. The attack opened a wider war that drew in Iran's regional allies and disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
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Linus Pauling was a chemist who won two unshared Nobel Prizes, one for chemistry and one for peace. He helped explain the chemical bond and showed how the alpha helix shapes proteins, groundwork for later DNA research.
Nobel Foundation · Public domain
Montaigne was a French Renaissance writer and statesman who gave the personal essay its form, mixing anecdote, self-examination and sharp doubt. His Essais, which he kept revising, remain among the most read and copied books in Western writing.
anonymous · Public domain
Frank Gehry was a Canadian-American architect known for sculptural, undulating buildings such as the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and Walt Disney Concert Hall. He won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1989 and also designed furniture and everyday products.
City of Toronto / Jose San Juan · Attribution
Olof Palme served two stints as Swedish Prime Minister and mediated for the UN in the Iran–Iraq War. He was assassinated in 1986 during his second spell in office, and he remains one of the most polarising figures in modern Swedish history.
Bert Verhoeff for Anefo · CC BY-SA 3.0 nl
Donald Glaser was an American physicist who won the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing the bubble chamber, a device that made the tracks of subatomic particles visible. Later he turned to neurobiology, studying how the brain processes visual information.
Public domain
Henry James died in England, a year after becoming a British citizen. He is remembered for novels like The Portrait of a Lady and The Turn of the Screw, a ghost story still among the most analysed in English.
John Singer Sargent (died 1925) · Public domain
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