Martin Luther King Jr. leads a rally for the Chicago Freedom Movement (1966), and The Bahamas becomes independent from Britain (1973). Born on this day: Nikola Tesla, Marcel Proust and Mahathir bin Mohamad. Died: Hadrian, Omar Sharif and Louis Daguerre.
31 events, 70 births and 59 deaths on this date.
King addressed a rally backing the Chicago Freedom Movement, a campaign against housing discrimination and segregation in the northern United States. It showed that the struggle he led in the South had reached cities far from it.
Associated Press · Public domainAfter more than three centuries under British rule, the Bahamas became a sovereign nation on this day in 1973. Its Caribbean islands, once a haven for pirates and a base for plantation owners, now govern themselves.
Wyoming entered the Union on this day, bringing the count to forty-four. Its mix of Rocky Mountain ranges and high eastern plains is also home to Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks.
Proust was born into a wealthy Paris family, son of a leading pathologist. He wrote In Search of Lost Time, a seven-volume novel of about 1.25 million words now seen as one of the century's most influential books.
Otto Wegener · Public domain
Jackson rejected a bill to renew the charter of the Second Bank of the United States, which he saw as favouring wealthy eastern elites over ordinary Americans. The veto became a central issue in his re-election campaign that year.
Ralph Eleaser Whiteside Earl · Public domain
Yeltsin won the first direct presidential election in Russian history, becoming the country's first popularly chosen head of state. He had earlier turned against Gorbachev's cautious reforms, and the win gave him the authority to later help dismantle the Soviet Union.
Presidential Press and Information Office · CC BY 4.0
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Nikola Tesla was an inventor and engineer whose work on alternating current helped shape the electricity supply systems still in use today. Born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he later moved to the United States, where his AC induction motor patents were licensed to Westinghouse.
Napoleon Sarony · Public domain
Marcel Proust was a French novelist and critic, remembered above all for À la recherche du temps perdu, a seven-volume novel of memory and society. Born in Paris to a wealthy family, he wrote much of it while largely confined to his bed by asthma.
Otto Wegener · Public domain
Malaysia's longest-serving prime minister, counted across two spells totalling 24 years. A former physician and author, he is best known for steering the country's economic growth and infrastructure in the 1980s and 1990s.
kremlin.ru · CC BY 4.0
Roman emperor from 117 to 138, Hadrian is remembered for ordering the wall across northern Britain that bears his name. He also rebuilt the Pantheon in Rome and spent much of his reign travelling to nearly every province of the empire.
Marie-Lan Nguyen · Public domain
He was an Egyptian actor who became a major Hollywood name, starring in Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago. Away from the screen he was also a bridge player of elite standing and a devoted horse racing fan.
Photographer-Gene Weber, Seattle · Public domain
Daguerre was a French painter and chemist who developed the daguerreotype, an early photographic process that produced a sharp image on a silver-coated copper plate. He is often counted among the fathers of photography.
Jean-Baptiste Sabatier-Blot · Public domain
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