Pope Francis arrives in Iraq for the first papal visit to the country (2021), and Copernicus's book placed on the Index of Forbidden Books (1616). Born on this day: Rosa Luxemburg, Mo Yan and Zhou Enlai. Died: Joseph Stalin, Hugo Chávez and Alessandro Volta.
30 events, 64 births and 58 deaths on this date.
Pope Francis arrived in Iraq on a visit that made him the first pope to set foot in the country. It was a rare trip to a land scarred by war, aimed at supporting its small Christian community and interfaith dialogue.
Korea.net / Korean Culture and Information Service (Jeon Han) · CC BY-SA 2.0Church authorities placed Nicolaus Copernicus's book, which argued that the Sun, not the Earth, sat at the centre of the universe, on the Index of Forbidden Books. Copernicus had published it shortly before his death, and it helped spark the Copernican Revolution.
Voters in Parma, Tuscany, Modena and Romagna went to the polls and backed union with the Kingdom of Sardinia. The result moved forward the drive to unify Italy, which Sardinia was leading.
Viceroy Lord Irwin and Mohandas Gandhi agreed terms that paused civil disobedience in exchange for releasing political prisoners and letting Indians take part in salt production along the coast. The deal was a rare moment of negotiation between the Raj and the Indian National Congress.
Voyager 1 spotted volcanic plumes erupting on Io, a moon of Jupiter. It was the first time active volcanoes had been seen on a world other than Earth.
NASA/JPL · Public domain
Italian forces flew airships over Turkish lines to scout enemy positions, the first military use of these craft. The flights, during the war over Libya, showed that aircraft could gather intelligence from the sky.
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Rosa Luxemburg was a Polish-born Marxist theorist who became a leading voice of Germany's socialist movement. She is best known for her writings on imperialism and revolution, and for championing socialist democracy.
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain
Mo Yan is a Chinese novelist and screenwriter, best known for Red Sorghum, which was adapted into a Golden Bear-winning film. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2012 for blending folk tales, history and the present day.
Johannes Kolfhaus, Gymn. Marienthal · CC BY-SA 3.0
Zhou Enlai was one of the Chinese Communist Party's earliest leaders and a skilled diplomat who later steered China's foreign policy. As premier, he kept the state running through the Cultural Revolution while trying to shield colleagues from purges.
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain
Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death, turning a one-party state into a dictatorship. He was known for a centrally planned economy, forced collectivisation, and purges that killed huge numbers of people.
Ivan Shagin · Public domain
Hugo Chávez, a former army officer, ruled Venezuela as president from 1999 and reshaped it around his Bolivarian revolution. He died in Caracas in 2013 after a long cancer treatment that had already delayed his fourth-term inauguration.
Roberto Stuckert Filho · CC BY-SA 2.0
Alessandro Volta built the first electric battery, the voltaic pile, in 1799, showing electricity could be made from chemical reactions. The volt, the standard measure of voltage, carries his name.
Garavaglia Giovita (1790-1835) - Gaetano Bonatti (inc.) · Public domain
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