Edward Jenner gives the first smallpox vaccination (1796), and Japanese submarine sinks Australian hospital ship Centaur off Queensland (1943). Born on this day: Mark Zuckerberg, George Lucas and Cate Blanchett. Died: Frank Sinatra, Emma Goldman and Rita Hayworth.
28 events, 57 births and 74 deaths on this date.
Edward Jenner used material from cowpox, a milder cattle disease, to protect a patient against smallpox, which killed about a tenth of people worldwide. The method gave the world its first vaccine, and the words vaccine and vaccination grew from his term for cowpox.
Cjc13 · CC BY-SA 3.0Edward Jenner and VaccinesHear the story in ChunksThe Centaur was clearly marked as a hospital ship, yet a Japanese submarine torpedoed it without warning in daylight off Queensland. Of the 332 people aboard, 268 died, many of them nurses and medical staff.
Peruvian girl Lina Medina, aged five years and seven months, gave birth in Lima and remains the youngest confirmed mother on record. The birth is still the benchmark cited whenever her case comes up.
On this day in 1870, Nelson College met the Nelson Rugby Football Club in what is recorded as the first rugby match in New Zealand. It marked the arrival of a game born at English public schools in the early empire's sporting circles.
Some seven thousand brewery employees in the city stopped work, launching what became known as the Milwaukee brewery strike. Beer was among the city's defining industries, so the walkout hit at its heart.
The Soviet Union and seven allies signed a mutual defence treaty in Warsaw, creating a military counterweight to NATO. It became the Eastern Bloc's main military alliance until it dissolved in 1991.
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Mark Zuckerberg is an American programmer who launched Facebook while at Harvard in 2004. By 23 he had become a billionaire through his own company, and he still leads the business, now called Meta Platforms.
Anthony Quintano from Westminster, United States · CC BY 2.0
George Lucas is an American filmmaker who created Star Wars and Indiana Jones, and founded Industrial Light & Magic and THX. He remained largely independent of the studio system while shaping the modern blockbuster.
nicolas genin · CC BY-SA 2.0
Australian actor and producer known for playing Queen Elizabeth I in Elizabeth and for two Best Actress and Supporting Actress Oscars. She has also worked extensively on stage, and co-led the Sydney Theatre Company with her husband, Andrew Upton.
Harald Krichel · CC BY-SA 4.0
Frank Sinatra, the Hoboken-born singer nicknamed Ol' Blue Eyes, was remembered for his smooth swing-era recordings and albums with Nelson Riddle. He also won an Oscar for From Here to Eternity, and he died at 82.
Columbia Pictures Corporation · Public domain
Russian-born anarchist who lectured, edited the journal Mother Earth and campaigned against state repression and for women's rights. She was deported from the United States to Soviet Russia in 1919 and later wrote about her disillusionment with the Bolsheviks.
Takuma Kajiwara · Public domain
Rita Hayworth was a 1940s Hollywood star, best known for playing the femme fatale in Gilda and as a pin-up for GIs in the Second World War. Her later public struggle with Alzheimer's disease helped draw funding to research into it.
Columbia Pictures; photographer not identified · Public domain
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