George Washington posthumously promoted to General of the Armies (1976), and Peers and clergy restrict English royal authority with the Ordinances of 1311 (1311). Born on this day: Amitabh Bachchan, Eleanor Roosevelt and François Mauriac. Died: James Prescott Joule, Huldrych Zwingli and Jean Cocteau.
29 events, 72 births and 56 deaths on this date.
Congress honoured Washington sixty-odd years after his death by naming him General of the Armies, a rank that placed him above every other American officer. It was a formal recognition of his leadership of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.
Gilbert Stuart · Public domainBarons and churchmen forced Edward II to accept limits on his power, including a council of nobles to advise him. The Ordinances were an early attempt to bind an English king to a written set of rules.
The former king and his wife, Wallis Simpson, arrived at Berlin's Friedrichstraße station, beginning a tour of Nazi Germany. Officials greeted them with Nazi salutes, and they dined with senior figures from the state.
Attributed to Angelo Laviosa / Formerly attributed to Vincenzo Laviosa · Public domain
The US regulator approved CBS's colour television method, which relied on rapidly changing coloured fields, as the first system cleared for broadcasting. The network's colour demonstrations that year were held in New York's former Tiffany building.
Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council in St Peter's Basilica, the Catholic Church's first general council in nearly a century. Its decisions allowed local languages into Mass, which had long been said almost entirely in Latin.
Lothar Wolleh · CC BY-SA 3.0
Kathryn Sullivan left the Challenger shuttle for open space, breaking new ground for American women who flew in orbit. Her spacewalk showed that women could carry out demanding work outside a spacecraft.
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Indian actor, playback singer and producer whose long run of hits in the 1970s and 1980s earned him the nickname the Angry Young Man. François Truffaut called him a one-man industry.
Soumik from Mumbai, India · CC BY-SA 2.0
Eleanor Roosevelt was an American diplomat and activist who reshaped the role of First Lady and later helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Her travels and advocacy made her one of the most influential women of her era.
FDR Presidential Library & Museum · CC BY 2.0
French novelist whose stories of Catholic guilt, family pressure and provincial Bordeaux earned him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1952. He also wrote sharp journalism and criticism, and sat in the Académie française from 1933.
Studio Harcourt · Public domain
English physicist who showed that heat and mechanical work are linked, helping establish that energy is never lost, only converted. Named after him is the joule, the standard measure of energy used in science worldwide.
Public domain
Swiss theologian who led the Reformation in Zurich, preaching through the Bible and reshaping worship there. He died in 1531 fighting at the Battle of Kappel, a war between Reformed and Catholic cantons.
Hans Asper · Public domain
Jean Cocteau was a French poet, playwright and film director who moved easily between painting, novels and cinema. He is remembered for films such as Beauty and the Beast and Orpheus, and for insisting that all his varied work was poetry.
Agence de presse Meurisse · Public domain
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