Bach premieres church cantata BWV 183 in Leipzig (1725), and Ecuador becomes an independent state, separating from Gran Colombia (1830). Born on this day: Pius IX, Maria Theresa and Sir Ronald Ross. Died: Alice Munro, José Mujica and Doris Day.
28 events, 71 births and 55 deaths on this date.
Bach premiered this church cantata in Leipzig, where he was music director for the city's churches. He had committed himself to writing a fresh cycle of cantatas each year.
Elias Gottlob Haussmann · Public domainEcuador left the union of Gran Colombia and became a sovereign state in its own right. The break ended a federation that had joined it with present-day Colombia and Venezuela since 1819, and Quito became its capital.
Queen Victoria issued a declaration that treated the Confederacy as a belligerent, meaning a party at war rather than mere rebels. It kept Britain out of the fighting, though it was resented in Washington.
A gunman shot Pope John Paul II in St Peter's Square, wounding him, but he survived the attack. The shooting, which happened in front of a large crowd, raised fears for the pope's safety across the Catholic world.
Unknown author Unknown author · CC BY 3.0 pl
Florentine navigator Amerigo Vespucci, who had already sailed for Spain, now headed west for Portugal. He claimed the coast he reached was part of a fourth continent, an idea that inspired mapmaker Martin Waldseemüller to label the new lands America.
Public domain
Julian of Norwich, an English mystic, recovered from a near-fatal illness marked by a run of intense visions of Christ. She later wrote them down, producing the first known book in English by a woman.
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Pius IX led the Catholic Church for nearly 32 years, the longest verified papal reign in history. He convened the First Vatican Council, which defined papal infallibility, and after Rome passed to the Kingdom of Italy in 1870 he refused to leave Vatican City.
Public domain
Maria Theresa ruled the Habsburg monarchy for forty years, the only woman to hold its throne in her own right. She fought off rivals in the War of the Austrian Succession, though she lost Silesia, and reformed the state's administration and army.
Martin van Meytens · Public domain
Ross showed that mosquitoes spread malaria, finding the parasite inside one in 1897 while serving in India. That work earned him the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain
Canadian short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Her stories, often set in rural Ontario, move back and forth in time with a precise, unfussy style.
MacDowell · CC BY-SA 3.0
A former Tupamaro guerrilla who was tortured and jailed for 14 years, Mujica later became Uruguay's president from 2010 to 2015. He became known as the world's poorest president, giving away about 90 percent of his salary to help the poor and small businesses.
Palácio do Planalto from Brasilia, Brasil · CC BY 2.0
Doris Day was an American singer and film star whose bright, girl-next-door screen persona made her one of the most successful actresses of the 1950s and 1960s. Her hits included Que Sera, Sera, and she later won a long-running television sitcom of her own.
Los Angeles Times · CC BY 4.0
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