King posthumously awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977), and Pakistan joins the International Monetary Fund and World Bank (1950). Born on this day: John Quincy Adams, Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Prokhorov and Robert the Bruce. Died: Milan Kundera, Pär Lagerkvist and Laurence Olivier.
30 events, 56 births and 48 deaths on this date.
Nine years after his assassination, the civil rights leader was honoured with the nation's highest civilian award. King led the Montgomery bus boycott and delivered the 'I Have a Dream' speech, and the honour recognised his nonviolent campaign against segregation.
Associated Press · Public domainPakistan became a member of the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, giving the young state access to international finance and lending. Membership tied the newly independent country into the global system that was rebuilding economies after the Second World War.
English explorer Martin Frobisher, searching for a northern route to Asia, sighted Greenland and mistook it for Frisland, an island that existed only on old maps. The slip shows how loosely the far north was still charted.
Under the Jay Treaty, British forces withdrew and American authority took over the Detroit settlement, a frontier post that had been held by Britain since the Revolutionary War. The handover settled a long dispute over the Great Lakes border region.
Mathematical calculations suggest that Pluto slipped inside Neptune's orbit on this day, the last such crossing before 1979. Pluto is the best-known dwarf planet, a small round world that has not cleared its neighbourhood, reclassified in 2006.
Eunuch admiral Zheng He led the first of seven expeditions for the Yongle Emperor, a fleet of huge treasure ships. The voyages crossed the Indian Ocean and reached as far as Arabia.
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John Quincy Adams was the son of a president and went on to hold the office himself, from 1825 to 1829. He later returned to Congress, where he served as a member of the House of Representatives until his death.
jklamo Cleaned and enhanced by Julielangford · Public domain
Soviet physicist who shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics with Charles Townes and Nikolay Basov for work that led to the maser and the laser. His research on quantum electronics helped turn those ideas into working devices.
Nobel foundation · Public domain
Robert the Bruce took the Scottish crown in 1306, after his part in a rival's murder, and spent years winning the kingdom's independence from England. Today many Scots see him as a champion of their nation's freedom.
S.A.Farabi · CC BY-SA 4.0
Czech-born novelist whose book The Unbearable Lightness of Being became his best-known work. His books were banned by Czechoslovakia's Communist government, and he spent his later years in France.
Elisa Cabot · CC BY-SA 3.0
Swedish writer whose work explored good and evil through figures like Barabbas, the man freed instead of Jesus. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1951 for his poetry, plays and novels.
Ateljé Uggla · Public domain
Olivier was the English actor and director who helped build the Old Vic into a leading company and founded Britain's National Theatre. He also starred in films such as Rebecca and Wuthering Heights, and was made a life peer.
Allan warren · CC BY-SA 3.0
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