Newton publishes the Principia Mathematica (1687), and Buenos Aires militias repel British forces during the Second English Invasion (1807). Born on this day: Georges Pompidou, Clara Zetkin and Jean Cocteau. Died: Walter Gropius, Yoichiro Nambu and Nicéphore Niépce.
31 events, 66 births and 58 deaths on this date.
Isaac Newton released his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, setting out the laws of motion and universal gravitation. Its ideas governed physics for over two centuries, until Einstein's relativity refined them.
Godfrey Kneller · Public domainLocal militias in Buenos Aires drove back the British troops who had landed during the Second English Invasion. The victory helped the city's defenders gain confidence and fuelled the push for independence from Spain.
Presley cut "That's All Right" in Memphis with guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, a rough country-blues take that helped shape rockabilly. It was the start of a career that made him rock and roll's best-known singer.
RCA Records · Public domain
The German Empire brought the Cameroon coast under its control, adding an African territory to its colonial holdings. It was one of the empire's late bids for overseas land, giving Berlin a West African foothold in the scramble for Africa.
Hours after North Korea reportedly fired a volley of ballistic missiles, the UN Security Council called an emergency session to address the launches. The meeting underlined how the council, which can adopt binding resolutions, responds to threats to international peace.
An American claim on this small Pacific atoll, roughly halfway between North America and Asia, was made today. Decades later its naval air base proved vital during the Battle of Midway in 1942.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service · Public domain
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Georges Pompidou was born on this day. He served as Prime Minister under Charles de Gaulle before becoming President of France, and he is remembered for the Centre Pompidou, the arts centre he initiated.
Farabola · Public domain
Clara Zetkin was a German Marxist and women's rights campaigner who led the socialist women's movement and later sat in the Reichstag for the Communist Party. She is remembered for championing International Women's Day and for fighting for women's suffrage and equal rights.
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain
Jean Cocteau was a French poet, playwright and film director who moved easily between novels, stage plays and cinema. He is remembered for films such as Beauty and the Beast and Orpheus, and for insisting that every form he worked in was a kind of poetry.
Agence de presse Meurisse · Public domain
Gropius founded the Bauhaus school in Weimar, where he helped shape modern design teaching. After fleeing Germany in the 1930s, he spent his later years teaching architecture at Harvard.
Public domain
Yoichiro Nambu was a Japanese-American physicist whose work on spontaneous symmetry breaking reshaped particle physics. He shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics for that discovery, which helps explain how particles acquire mass.
Betsy Devine · CC BY-SA 3.0
Niépce was a French inventor who made some of the earliest photographs, including the oldest surviving picture of a real-world scene taken with a camera. He also helped build the Pyréolophore, an early internal combustion engine.
Léonard François Berger · Public domain
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