Erwin Rommel seriously injured in car attack (1944), and Finland's Constitution is enacted, confirming its form of government (1919). Born on this day: Angela Merkel, Donald Sutherland and James Cagney. Died: Adam Smith, Sinan and Henri Poincaré.
32 events, 53 births and 54 deaths on this date.
Rommel was badly hurt when an attack struck the car he was travelling in, while he was commanding German forces opposing the Allied invasion of Normandy. He was later implicated in the plot to assassinate Hitler.
Winkelmann · CC BY-SA 3.0 deOn this day the Constitution of Finland came into force, formally settling the country's system of government as a republic. The date is now marked in Finland as the Day of Democracy, Kansanvallan päivä.
Spain formally handed its Florida territory to the United States, which then took control of it as an American possession. The transfer marked a major step in the growth of American territory along the southeastern coast of the continent.
Indonesia formally absorbed East Timor, months after its invasion, turning the former Portuguese colony into a province. The move was never recognised by the United Nations and led to decades of occupation and resistance until independence in 2002.
Twelve residents of Scillium, near Kasserine in modern Tunisia, were executed simply for being Christians. It is the earliest known record of Christianity anywhere in that part of North Africa.
Vega, the brightest star in Lyra and the fifth brightest in the night sky, lies about 25 light-years away. On this day its image was captured on a photograph, the first time a star other than the Sun had been recorded this way.
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Angela Merkel was born in Hamburg in 1954 and later became the first woman to lead Germany as chancellor, serving from 2005 to 2021. She was also the first former East German to hold the post, having trained as a quantum chemist before entering politics.
Armin Linnartz · CC BY-SA 3.0 de
Canadian actor whose six-decade career ran from The Dirty Dozen and M*A*S*H to President Snow in The Hunger Games. He won a Primetime Emmy for Citizen X and was later given an Academy Honorary Award.
Festival TV Monte-Carlo · CC BY-SA 3.0
James Cagney was an American actor and dancer, famous for playing hard-edged gangsters in films like The Public Enemy and White Heat. He also won an Academy Award for playing the songwriter George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy.
Warner Bros. Studio (work for hire) · Public domain
Scottish economist whose 1776 book The Wealth of Nations is usually counted as the foundation of modern economics. He also wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and he died in Edinburgh on this day in 1790.
Etching created by Cadell and Davies (1811), John Horsburgh (1828) or R.C. Bell (1872). · Public domain
Mimar Sinan was the chief architect and engineer to three Ottoman sultans, overseeing more than 300 major structures. His masterpiece, the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne, still stands as a high point of Ottoman design.
Veritas-tr · Public domain
French mathematician who founded algebraic topology and, while studying the three-body problem, uncovered the first chaotic deterministic system, laying groundwork for modern chaos theory. He is often called the last universalist, excelling in nearly every field of mathematics of his day.
Manuel (artist) (designer) · Public domain
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