Washington persuades officers to back Congress at Newburgh (1783), and Julius Caesar is assassinated on the Ides of March (44). Born on this day: Andrew Jackson, Alia Bhatt and Paul Johann Ludwig von Heyse. Died: H.P. Lovecraft, Arthur Holly Compton and Odoacer.
34 events, 59 births and 61 deaths on this date.
Facing unpaid officers who were considering defying Congress, Washington addressed them at Newburgh and asked them to accept civilian authority. His appeal calmed the unrest and averted a possible military coup against the young republic.
Gilbert Stuart · Public domainJulius Caesar, the Roman general who had held near-total power as dictator, was stabbed to death by a group of rivals. His death was meant to save the Republic, but it instead plunged Rome into further civil war.
Ángel M. Felicísimo from Mérida, España · Public domain
Maine, the northeasternmost state in the contiguous United States, was admitted to the Union on this day. It is the only state that borders just one other state, New Hampshire, and its capital is Augusta.
The Mughal emperor lifted a tax that non-Muslim subjects had been required to pay. It sat alongside his wider effort to draw Rajput rulers into court through marriage and appointments.
1605 artist · Public domain
Jackson had lost the 1824 contest, when the House of Representatives chose John Quincy Adams instead. Four years later he won the presidency, and his appeal to working Americans helped shape what became known as Jacksonian democracy.
Ralph Eleaser Whiteside Earl · Public domain
Oxford's women's crew beat Cambridge in the inaugural Women's Boat Race on the Thames, starting a contest that would become a fixture of the rowing calendar. The race was the women's counterpart to the men's event, which had been held since 1829.
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Andrew Jackson rose from frontier lawyer to become the seventh American head of state, leading the country from 1829 to 1837. He was an army general whose victory at New Orleans made him a national hero, though his policies towards Native Americans remain controversial.
Ralph Eleaser Whiteside Earl · Public domain
British actress of Indian descent, Alia Bhatt is known for playing women in tough circumstances in Hindi films. She won a National Film Award for the title role in Gangubai Kathiawadi, and Time named her among the world's most influential people.
Gabriel Hutchinson · CC BY-SA 4.0
Heyse was a German poet, playwright and translator who wrote novels, short stories and dozens of dramas. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1910, and his many short stories remain his best-known work.
Adolph von Menzel · Public domain
Lovecraft wrote weird fiction built around the Cthulhu Mythos, a shared universe of ancient cosmic beings that still shapes horror writing. Most of his stories appeared in pulp magazines such as Weird Tales, and he died in Providence at 46 with his work largely unknown outside a small circle.
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain
Compton won the 1927 Nobel Prize in Physics for the Compton effect, which showed that light behaves as particles as well as waves. During the Second World War he led much of the University of Chicago's work on the Manhattan Project, including the first nuclear reactor.
Unknown (Mondadori Publishers) · Public domain
Odoacer was a Germanic officer who deposed the child emperor Romulus Augustulus in 476 and then ruled Italy as king. He was killed in 493, after the Ostrogoth Theodoric had taken the country from him.
British Museum (photo) · CC BY-SA 4.0
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