Wilson signs law bringing daylight saving time to the United States (1918), and Egypt raises its flag at Taba, ending Israeli occupation (1989). Born on this day: Bruce Willis, David Livingstone and Philip Roth. Died: Louis de Broglie, Arthur C. Clarke and William III.
31 events, 70 births and 46 deaths on this date.
President Woodrow Wilson signed the law that brought daylight saving time to the United States, moving clocks forward an hour in summer. It was passed during the First World War, when the country was fighting in Europe.
Harris & Ewing, photographer · Public domainEgypt's flag went up over the Taba border area, the last stretch of Sinai still held by Israel. The handover followed the 1979 peace treaty and closed a long dispute over a small strip of Red Sea coast.
Argentine troops came ashore on the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia, a British territory they also claimed. The landing set off the Falklands War, which broke out between Argentina and the United Kingdom weeks later.
On this day, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique and Réunion were given the status of overseas departments, making them full parts of France rather than colonies. French Guiana, a rainforest region on South America's northern coast, has remained part of France and the European Union ever since.
The Byzantine Empire and the Republic of Venice agreed new terms to an earlier treaty between them, and extended it by two years. Venice's commercial ties with Constantinople made such arrangements central to its trading power in the eastern Mediterranean.
In a televised address from the White House, George W. Bush told Americans that military action against Iraq had begun, ordering forces to strike Saddam Hussein's regime. The speech marked the start of a war that would last far longer than the initial campaign.
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Bruce Willis is an American actor best known for playing John McClane in the Die Hard films, a role that made him an action star. He first won wide attention as the lead in the television comedy-drama Moonlighting.
Gage Skidmore · CC BY-SA 3.0
The Scottish doctor and missionary spent decades exploring central Africa, mapping large stretches of unknown land. He hoped that finding the source of the Nile would give him the standing to challenge the East African slave trade.
Thomas Annan / Adam Cuerden · Public domain
Philip Roth was an American novelist whose fiction, often set in Newark, New Jersey, mixed frank autobiography with sexual humour. He won the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral and first drew attention with Goodbye, Columbus.
Nancy Crampton · Public domain
French physicist who proposed in 1924 that particles such as electrons behave like waves, an idea that became central to quantum mechanics and earned him the 1929 Nobel Prize in Physics. He also helped inspire the founding of CERN.
Agence Rol · Public domain
Arthur C. Clarke was an English science fiction writer and futurist, best known for co-writing the screenplay of 2001: A Space Odyssey. He also proposed the idea of geostationary communications satellites in 1945, long before such satellites existed.
ITU Pictures · CC BY 2.0
William III was a Dutch prince who became King of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1689, ruling jointly with his wife Mary II. He spent much of his career opposing the expansion of Louis XIV of France through a long series of military campaigns.
Godfrey Kneller · Public domain
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