Parliament makes Plymouth its first incorporated town (1439), and Austria proclaims itself a democratic republic (1918). Born on this day: Sun Yat-sen, Hassan Rouhani and Grace Kelly. Died: Stan Lee, Canute (I) and Koshiba Masatoshi.
31 events, 58 births and 69 deaths on this date.
Parliament's grant made Plymouth the first town it incorporated, giving the port the status of a borough. The settlement had been known as Sutton, and it took the Plymouth name with the new charter.
Derek Harper · CC BY-SA 2.0Vienna's provisional national assembly declared Austria a democratic republic, ending centuries of Habsburg imperial rule. The move came as defeat in the First World War broke apart Austria-Hungary, leaving a much smaller German-speaking state behind.
NASA's probe swept past Saturn, studying its weather, magnetic fields and rings. Mission planners picked Titan, Saturn's largest moon, over Pluto, and its thick atmosphere made it the richer target.
NASA/JPL · Public domain
Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov travelled to Berlin to test whether Moscow might join the Axis alliance. The visit showed how strained the Nazi-Soviet pact had become, though the talks ended without agreement.
G. Weil for TASS · Public domain
Zoe, later a formidable figure in Byzantine politics, took the throne beside her husband Romanos III Argyros, who had come to power by marrying into the imperial family. Her marriage gave him the legitimacy he needed to rule Constantinople.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who would later help lead the American women's rights movement, is born on this day. She went on to write the Declaration of Sentiments for the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, the first gathering devoted solely to women's rights.
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain
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Sun Yat-sen led the 1911 revolution that overthrew the Qing dynasty and then briefly headed the new Republic of China. A former physician, he spent years in exile plotting uprisings before his death in 1925.
上海波尔照相馆 · Public domain
Hassan Rouhani is an Iranian cleric and former diplomat who led Iran as president from 2013 to 2021. He is remembered for negotiating the nuclear deal with world powers and for pushing for greater personal freedoms at home.
عکاس: مهدی قربانی · CC BY 4.0
She was an American actress who won an Academy Award for The Country Girl before retiring at 26 to become Princess of Monaco. As princess, she backed children's causes and local craftspeople, founding a foundation to help them.
Hans Peters for Anefo · CC0
Stan Lee, the American comic book writer and editor, died aged 95. He helped create Spider-Man, the X-Men, Iron Man and the Fantastic Four, and turned Marvel into a major force in comics and film.
US Embassy Tokyo · Public domain
Cnut, a Danish prince, won England's throne in 1016 and later added Denmark and Norway, forming the North Sea Empire. He sought to bind Danes and English together through shared wealth and custom.
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain
Koshiba was a Japanese physicist who helped found neutrino astronomy, building detectors that caught neutrinos from the Sun and earning a share of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics. He was 94.
内閣官房内閣広報室 · CC BY 4.0
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