Gandhi starts three weeks of fasting to cleanse himself (1933), and Soviet Union announces boycott of Los Angeles Olympics (1984). Born on this day: Harry S. Truman, Henri Dunant and F.A. Hayek. Died: Paul Gauguin, Antoine Lavoisier and Gustave Flaubert.
35 events, 65 births and 71 deaths on this date.
Mahatma Gandhi began a three-week fast to purify himself, and launched a year-long campaign to improve the lives of India's untouchables, whom he called Harijans. Fasting was a tool he used for both introspection and political protest.
Elliott & Fry · Public domainThe Soviet Union said it would stay away from the Los Angeles Summer Games, citing security worries and tensions with the United States. Fourteen other countries, mostly from the Eastern Bloc, later followed suit, tearing a hole in the Olympic field.
Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler reached the top of Everest without bottled oxygen, a climb that showed people could survive the summit's thin air unaided. It challenged the belief that the highest peak on Earth was beyond what the unassisted human body could manage.
After a long global vaccination campaign, the World Health Organization declared smallpox gone from the planet, the first human disease ever wiped out deliberately. The announcement followed the last known natural case, in Somalia in 1977, and capped years of work by health teams across many countries.
Joan of Arc's arrival had brought hope to the French forces, and nine days after she reached the city, the English gave up their siege of Orléans. The victory revived French morale and set the stage for the coronation of Charles VII at Reims.
Clément de Fauquembergue · Public domain
The American-born Augustinian friar and former Bishop of Chiclayo in Peru was chosen by the conclave as head of the Catholic Church. Few had expected him, but he became the first American pope, taking the name Leo XIV.
Ricardo Stuckert · CC BY-SA 4.0
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Taking office after Franklin D. Roosevelt's death in 1945, he authorised the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and set up the Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe. Before that, he had run a Kansas City shop and served as a Missouri senator.
National Archives and Records Administration. Office of Presidential Libraries. Harry S. Truman Library. · Public domain
Swiss humanitarian who witnessed the aftermath of Solferino in 1859 and wrote A Memory of Solferino, which helped found the Red Cross. He shared the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901.
Time Life Pictures · Public domain
Austrian-born economist and philosopher whose work on how prices carry information earned him a share of the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He is also remembered for The Road to Serfdom, a 1944 book warning against central economic planning.
The original uploader was DickClarkMises at English Wikipedia . · CC BY-SA 3.0
Paul Gauguin left a career as a Paris stockbroker to paint full time, then moved to Tahiti to chase bolder colour and island subjects. His vivid, flat-toned canvases helped shape Post-Impressionism, though he was little known while he lived.
Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel · Public domain
Lavoisier was a French chemist who showed that oxygen drives combustion and that matter keeps its mass through chemical change. He was guillotined during the Revolution, largely for his role in the hated tax-farming Ferme générale.
Jacques-Louis David · Public domain
Flaubert was a French novelist who led literary realism and is remembered above all for Madame Bovary, his debut novel. He was famously devoted to the precision of his prose, and he mentored Guy de Maupassant.
Nadar · Public domain
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