Madison introduces proposed amendments to the Constitution in Congress (1789), and New Zealand legislates a nuclear-free zone across the country (1987). Born on this day: Frank Lloyd Wright, Tim Berners-Lee and Suharto. Died: Muhammad, Andrew Jackson and Thomas Paine.
27 events, 60 births and 67 deaths on this date.
James Madison presented a list of twelve changes to the US Constitution to Congress, which became the basis of the Bill of Rights. Ten of them were ratified by the states in 1791, protecting freedoms such as speech and religion.
John Vanderlyn · Public domainParliament passed a law declaring the whole country off-limits to nuclear weapons and related activity, a stance that strained its alliance with the United States. The Act also set out wider rules on disarmament and arms control.
New South Wales removed criminal penalties for same-sex relations, so such relationships in the state were no longer illegal. The change was a significant step in Australia's gay rights history.
Some 194 people from Pitcairn, descended from the Bounty mutineers and their Tahitian companions, reached Norfolk Island and began a new community there. It marked the island's third settlement, a fresh start away from Pitcairn's small, isolated home.
Attila, ruler of the Huns, pushed his army into Italy, laying waste to the north as he advanced towards Rome. He was known as the Scourge of God, and his campaigns left a lasting fear of the Huns across the Roman world.
Julio Strozza · Public domain
Secker & Warburg released Orwell's final completed novel, a bleak vision of a future state run by Big Brother, where surveillance and rewritten history keep citizens in line. Its vocabulary, including Orwellian, doublethink and Newspeak, passed into everyday English.
Michael Kennard · Public domain
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Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect who designed more than a thousand buildings and developed organic architecture, which fitted homes and offices to their surroundings. He is remembered for Fallingwater, a house built over a waterfall in Pennsylvania, and for leading the Prairie School style.
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain
Tim Berners-Lee is a British computer scientist who invented the World Wide Web, along with HTML, URLs and HTTP. He was knighted in 2004 and later won the Turing Award for his work.
Web Summit · CC BY 2.0
Suharto led Indonesia for more than three decades, first as acting president from 1967 and then as president until 1998. His rule combined rapid economic growth with a harsh authoritarian state and the violent occupation of East Timor.
State Secretariat of the Republic of Indonesia · Public domain
Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was an Arab religious and political leader from Mecca. Muslims regard him as the final prophet of God, and his teachings, together with the Quran, form the basis of Islamic belief.
derivative work: Snitty ( talk ) Maome.jpg : Unknown · Public domain
Andrew Jackson was a frontier lawyer and army general whose victory at the Battle of New Orleans made him a national hero. He later spent two terms as president, into the late 1830s, and his outlook gave rise to Jacksonian democracy.
Ralph Eleaser Whiteside Earl · Public domain
Thomas Paine was an English-born writer whose pamphlets Common Sense and The American Crisis rallied colonists towards independence from Britain. Remembered as a radical voice for human rights and the French Revolution, he died in New York in 1809.
Auguste Millière / After George Romney / After William Sharp · Public domain
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