Antonie van Leeuwenhoek describes 'animalcules' in a letter (1683), and India formally recognises Israel (1950). Born on this day: Narendra Modi, Bernhard Riemann and Jimmie Johnson. Died: Karl Popper, Abdelaziz Bouteflika and St. Hildegard.
31 events, 73 births and 59 deaths on this date.
Dutch draper turned self-taught microscopist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek reported seeing tiny living creatures in pond water. His letters to the Royal Society in London, which printed many of them, introduced the microbial world to a wider scientific audience.
Rijksmuseum · CC0India became the first non-Arab state in the region to grant the newly founded Israel formal recognition. The move marked a notable early diplomatic step for the young Jewish state, which had been declared only two years earlier.
Three new nations were admitted to the UN on the same day, widening its membership well beyond its founding countries. Bangladesh had won independence from Pakistan only three years earlier, after a bitter war.
German submarine U-29 torpedoed the aircraft carrier HMS Courageous off south-west Ireland, the first Royal Navy warship lost in the war. Around 500 men died, and the sinking showed how exposed large ships were to submarine attack early in the conflict.
Fed up with the country's legal system and politics, Joshua Norton sent letters to San Francisco papers declaring himself Emperor Norton. It was the start of a self-styled reign that made him a familiar local character.
By 1985, the disease had been known in America for four years when the president spoke about it in public. It was the first time Ronald Reagan acknowledged AIDS, the condition HIV can lead to without treatment.
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Narendra Modi is an Indian politician who has been prime minister since 2014, leading the Bharatiya Janata Party to a parliamentary majority. Before national office he was chief minister of Gujarat, a post that brought both praise for economic growth and sharp criticism over the 2002 violence.
Prime Minister's Office · GODL-India
Riemann was a German mathematician whose work on the Riemann integral, Riemann surfaces and the Riemann hypothesis reshaped analysis and number theory. His differential geometry later provided the mathematical groundwork for Einstein's general relativity.
Public domain
American stock car driver who won seven NASCAR Cup championships, five of them in a row, a record-equalling haul. He is widely regarded as one of the sport's finest drivers, and he also dabbled in acting.
File:Jimmie Johnson Carvana Chip Ganassi Racing Driver 2021.png : Jimmie Johnson Oval Test derivative work: F1fans · CC BY 3.0
Austrian-British philosopher who argued that scientific theories can never be proven, only falsified, and who defended the open society against totalitarian thought. He founded the philosophy department at the London School of Economics.
Franz Barta · No restrictions
Bouteflika was Algeria's president from 1999 until mass protests forced him to resign in 2019, making him the country's longest-serving head of state. Earlier he had been a guerrilla fighter in the independence war and a long-serving foreign minister.
Unknown author Unknown author and Vikoula5 · CC BY-SA 3.0
Hildegard of Bingen was a German abbess who wrote on theology, medicine and natural history, and composed hymns and chants that survive in greater number than those of any other medieval composer. Her music and her invented language, Lingua Ignota, still draw listeners and scholars today.
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain
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