Piłsudski entrusted with forming a national government for newly independent Poland (1918), and Kuwait's National Assembly ratifies the country's constitution (1962). Born on this day: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leonardo DiCaprio and Demi Moore. Died: Yasser Arafat, Søren Kierkegaard and F.W. de Klerk.
29 events, 69 births and 48 deaths on this date.
Poland had just regained independence after more than a century under partition, and Piłsudski was given the task of building its first national government. He would go on to dominate Polish politics for much of the next two decades.
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domainKuwait's new constitution, drafted after independence from Britain the year before, was approved by the National Assembly in 1962. It set out the framework for an elected parliament and the emirate's governing system, and it still forms the basis of Kuwaiti government today.
Hitler was taken into custody in Munich following the collapse of his attempt to seize power, the Beer Hall Putsch. The charge of treason he faced there led to a prison sentence, during which he began writing Mein Kampf.
An armistice silenced the guns after more than four years of fighting between the Allies and the Central Powers. The war claimed an estimated 15 to 22 million lives and saw major advances in weaponry, including tanks, aircraft and chemical weapons.
The colony's new law gave officials authority over Aboriginal people's wages, jobs, places of residence and children. Its child-removal powers laid the groundwork for the Stolen Generations, a painful chapter in Australian history.
Under pressure from the Anglican bishop John Atherton, the Irish House of Commons approved a statute setting penalties for buggery. The measure shows how closely church figures in Ireland were shaping criminal law in the 1630s.
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Dostoyevsky wrote Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, two of the most influential novels in world literature. Arrested in 1849 for joining a literary circle, he was sentenced to death, then spent four years in a Siberian labour camp.
Vasily Perov · Public domain
American actor and producer known for Titanic, The Revenant and a long run of films with Martin Scorsese. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for The Revenant in 2016.
Raph_PH · CC BY 4.0
Demi Moore is an American actress and producer, known for Ghost and for becoming Hollywood's top-earning actress in the mid-1990s. More recently she earned acclaim for her role in the body horror film The Substance.
Gabriel Hutchinson · CC BY-SA 4.0
Co-founder of Fatah and chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization from 1969, he became the best-known face of the Palestinian national cause. He led the Palestinian Authority until his death in 2004, after decades of armed struggle and diplomacy.
Gideon Markowiz · CC BY 4.0
Danish thinker often called the first existentialist, he wrote on faith, choice and the individual's relationship with God. He criticised the Church of Denmark for being too closely tied to the state, and he wrote much of his work under pseudonyms.
La Biblioteca Real de Dinamarca · Public domain
De Klerk was the last white-minority head of state in South Africa, and he led the dismantling of apartheid, freeing Nelson Mandela and opening the way to elections open to all. He shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with Mandela.
Walter Rutishauser, Photographer · CC BY-SA 4.0
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