Mozart leaves Italy after his third and final visit (1773), and Construction begins on a 69-metre Buddha statue at Wat Paknam Bhasicharoen (2017). Born on this day: Antonio Vivaldi, Miriam Makeba and Kyriakos Mitsotakis. Died: Nikolay Gogol, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar and Jean-François Champollion.
29 events, 61 births and 59 deaths on this date.
Mozart set out from Italy for the last time, closing a run of three journeys there that had shaped his early career. The trips exposed him to Italian opera and singing, influences that later showed in his stage works.
Barbara Krafft · Public domainWork started in Bangkok on a giant seated Buddha, 69 metres tall, at a temple that is building it as a major landmark. The statue is one of the largest Buddha images in the world, and its construction shows how the teacher's image still draws large-scale devotion today.
Columbus sailed into Lisbon on the Niña after his first Atlantic crossing, bringing news of lands the Europeans had not charted. The reports stirred Portugal and Spain, who soon argued over who held rights to the new territories.
Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio · Public domain
Antonio Vivaldi was born in Venice and grew up to be one of the Baroque era's most influential composers. He is best remembered for The Four Seasons, a set of violin concertos that remains widely played around the world.
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain
In a 1966 interview, Lennon claimed the Beatles had grown more famous than Jesus Christ. The remark caused a storm of protest, especially in the American South, where records were burned and radio stations pulled their music.
Jack Mitchell · CC BY-SA 3.0
Jupiter's faint rings were spotted by Voyager 1 as it sped past the giant planet. They became the third ring system found in the Solar System, after Saturn's and Uranus's.
NASA/JPL · Public domain
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Antonio Vivaldi was an Italian violinist and composer from Venice, best known for The Four Seasons. He shaped the solo concerto into a form that later composers across Europe widely followed.
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain
South African singer and civil rights activist, nicknamed Mama Africa, whose song Pata Pata made her an international star. She campaigned against apartheid and was barred from returning home for her mother's funeral in 1960.
Paul Weinberg · CC BY-SA 3.0
Kyriakos Mitsotakis is a Greek politician who has served as prime minister since 2019, leading the centre-right New Democracy party. He comes from a political family, as the son of former prime minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis.
Yorgos Karahalis · CC BY 4.0
Russian writer of Ukrainian origin, best known for satirical and grotesque stories such as The Nose and The Overcoat, and the play The Government Inspector. His work shaped later writers including Dostoevsky and Kafka.
Otto Friedrich Theodor von Möller · Public domain
Peruvian diplomat who ran the United Nations amid the late Cold War, pushing peace efforts from the Gulf to Afghanistan. Later he served as prime minister of Peru, and he was also a member of the Club of Madrid.
Rob Bogaerts for Anefo · CC BY-SA 3.0 nl
Champollion was the French scholar who cracked the code of Egyptian hieroglyphs, using the Rosetta Stone to show that the script recorded spoken sounds as well as ideas. His work opened up the study of ancient Egyptian history and gave Egyptology its foundations.
Léon Cogniet · Public domain
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