Johann Sebastian Bach is born in Eisenach (1685), and Jack Dorsey sends the first message on Twitter (2006). Born on this day: Jair Bolsonaro, Joseph Fourier and Gary Oldman. Died: Chinua Achebe, Nicolas Louis de Lacaille and Nadar.
32 events, 62 births and 62 deaths on this date.
The youngest child of a city musician, Johann Sebastian Bach was born into a family that had already produced several composers. He went on to write the Brandenburg Concertos, the Goldberg Variations and the St Matthew Passion, and is often ranked among the finest composers ever.
Elias Gottlob Haussmann · Public domainDorsey was one of four founders of a service that capped each post at 140 characters, a limit that became its trademark. The platform grew into one of the world's most visited social networks and was later renamed X.
Carter declared that American athletes would stay away from the Moscow Games, protesting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The move cooled relations between the superpowers and left many athletes who had trained for years without a chance to compete.
Department of Defense. Department of the Navy. Naval Photographic Center · Public domain
Bismarck took charge of the newly unified German Empire, a state he had largely forged through three short wars against Denmark, Austria and France. He would guide it as chancellor for nearly two decades, earning the nickname Iron Chancellor.
André Bockmann · Public domain
John Paul II became the first pope to visit Israel in an official capacity, touring holy sites in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth. The trip was a landmark step in the Catholic Church's efforts to improve relations with Judaism.
Unknown author Unknown author · CC BY 3.0 pl
Fourier started the study of Fourier series, a way of splitting complicated periodic functions into simple sine waves, which grew into Fourier analysis. He applied the idea to heat flow and vibrations, and he was also credited with discovering the greenhouse effect.
Julien-Léopold Boilly · Public domain
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Jair Bolsonaro is a Brazilian former army officer who spent decades as a conservative congressman before becoming president in 2019. He is best known for hard-line conservatism and a presidency criticised over COVID-19 and Amazon deforestation.
US Embassy Brasília · Public domain
French mathematician and physicist who began the study of Fourier series, a method for breaking complex waves into simple sine waves. The method later became central to analysing heat flow and vibrations, and the Fourier transform bears his name.
Julien-Léopold Boilly · Public domain
British actor and filmmaker known for intense, transformative roles, from Sid Vicious and Lee Harvey Oswald to Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, which won him an Academy Award. He is still acting today.
Gage Skidmore · CC BY-SA 3.0
Chinua Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart, a 1958 novel about Igbo life meeting colonial rule, which is still widely taught around the world. He argued that African writers should tell their own stories, and defended English to reach wider readers.
Stuart C. Shapiro · CC BY 3.0
A French astronomer who charted the southern sky from the Cape of Good Hope between 1750 and 1754, cataloguing over 10,000 stars. He also named fourteen of the eighty-eight modern constellations, many after scientific instruments.
Melle Le Jeuneux · Public domain
Nadar was a French photographer and balloonist who made the first aerial photographs, taken in 1858. His portraits of famous sitters fill major national collections, and his son Paul kept the studio running after he died.
Nadar · Public domain
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