French Senate names Napoleon Bonaparte emperor (1804), and Constantine promises free food to Constantinople's citizens (332). Born on this day: St. John Paul II, John Paul II and Bertrand Russell. Died: Gustav Mahler, Alphonse Laveran and Aleksandr Vasilyevich Suvorov, Count Rimniksky.
31 events, 67 births and 54 deaths on this date.
The Senate gave Napoleon the imperial title, ending the republic he had led as First Consul. He then ruled France as emperor until his first abdication in 1814, with a brief return in 1815.
Jacques-Louis David · Public domainThe French RevolutionHear the story in ChunksConstantine, who had founded the city as his capital only two years earlier, publicly promised its citizens free food. The gift came from the emperor who had built Constantinople and made it the seat of the empire.
Jean-Christophe BENOIST · CC BY 2.5
DreamWorks' comedy about a grumpy ogre who strikes a deal to rescue a princess took the first Oscar for best animated feature. Its jokes mock familiar fairy tales, mainly Disney's animated classics.
Britain's formal declaration against France opened a conflict that would stretch across Europe, North America and India. Over the next seven years it reshaped the balance of power, and France gave up its North American possessions.
Lhotse sits on the Nepal–Tibet border and is the fourth-highest mountain in the world. Swiss climbers were the first to stand on its main summit, which rises right beside Everest.
Jamie O'Shaughnessy ( talk · contribs ) · Public domain
Born in Germany, this architect co-founded the Bauhaus school in Weimar and became a leading figure of the International Style. He left Germany for England in 1934, then moved to the United States, where he taught at Harvard.
Public domain
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Born Karol Wojtyła in Wadowice, Poland, he went on to lead the Catholic Church from 1978 to 2005. He was the first non-Italian pope in over four centuries and is remembered for his long, far-reaching papacy.
Unknown author Unknown author · CC BY 3.0 pl
Born Karol Wojtyła in Wadowice, Poland, he became the first non-Italian pope in four and a half centuries. He led the Catholic Church for almost 27 years and was also a notable philosopher and theologian.
Unknown author Unknown author · CC BY 3.0 pl
Bertrand Russell was an English mathematician and philosopher who helped found analytic philosophy and wrote Principia Mathematica with Alfred North Whitehead. He also became a well-known public voice for pacifism, atheism and opposition to nuclear weapons.
Honourable Bertrand Russell.jpg : Photographer not identified derivative work: Conquistador · Public domain
Mahler was a conductor who ran the Vienna Court Opera and later led New York's Metropolitan Opera and Philharmonic. He is also remembered for symphonies that bridged nineteenth-century Romanticism and the modernism that followed.
Leonard Berlin / E. Bieber · Public domain
Laveran was a French military physician who showed that tiny protozoan parasites cause malaria and African sleeping sickness. That work earned him the 1907 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Laveran.jpg : Eugène Pirou (1841–1909) derivative work: Materialscientist ( talk ) · Public domain
Russian field marshal who never lost a major battle, famed for bold attacks and unconventional tactics. He drove the French out of much of northern Italy in 1799 before a costly Alpine retreat.
Nicolas Sébastien Frosté · Public domain
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