Johann Galle first observes Neptune through a telescope (1846), and Hurricane Jeanne floods and mudslides kill thousands in Haiti (2004). Born on this day: Bruce Springsteen, Ray Charles and Jaroslav Seifert. Died: Sigmund Freud, Pablo Neruda and Charles Kao.
32 events, 57 births and 64 deaths on this date.
Neptune was found not by searching the sky at random but by working out where it had to be, from wobbles in Uranus's orbit. Galle, at Berlin Observatory, pointed his telescope at the spot Le Verrier had predicted and found the planet within about a degree of it.
NASA / Voyager 2 / PDS / OPUS / Ardenau4 · CC0Hurricane Jeanne dropped heavy rain on Haiti's mountainous north, triggering floods and mudslides that buried villages, particularly around Gonaives. More than 3,000 people died, making it one of the deadliest storms in the country's recent history.
An all-white jury in Mississippi cleared Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam of the torture-murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy from Chicago. The verdict exposed how little chance Black Americans had of justice in Southern courts, and it fuelled the civil rights movement.
President Kennedy put forward Thurgood Marshall, a leading civil rights lawyer, for a seat on the federal appeals court. Southern senators opposed to desegregation delayed his confirmation for almost a year.
King Wilhelm I of Prussia named Bismarck minister president, a post he held until 1890. He went on to lead the unification of Germany and became its first chancellor.
André Bockmann · Public domain
Facing claims about a secret fund, the Republican vice-presidential candidate went on national television to defend his finances and his character. The broadcast, which drew a huge audience, became one of the first times a politician spoke directly to voters through the screen.
For the full day, download Chunks today. Every date, the stories behind them, and a new day each morning. Free to start.
Bruce Springsteen is an American rock singer, songwriter and pianist, known as 'the Boss' and for albums like Born to Run and Born in the U.S.A. He is still recording and touring with the E Street Band.
Raph_PH · CC BY 4.0
Ray Charles blended blues, jazz, gospel and rhythm and blues into soul music at Atlantic Records in the 1950s. He later crossed over into country with the album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, which reached the top of the Billboard 200.
William Morris Agency (management)/Photo by Maurice Seymour, New York. · Public domain
Czechoslovak poet, essayist and translator who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1984. The Swedish Academy praised his poetry for its freshness, sensuality and imaginative range.
Hana Hamplová · CC BY-SA 3.0
Sigmund Freud founded psychoanalysis, a talking therapy built on dreams, free association and the idea of an unconscious mind. His theories of repression, the id, ego and superego reshaped psychology, psychiatry and far beyond.
Max Halberstadt · Public domain
Chilean poet, diplomat and Communist senator, author of the love poems in Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair and winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. He died in Santiago shortly before he was due to leave Chile for exile in Mexico, and the circumstances of his death remain disputed.
Unknown ( Mondadori Publishers ) · Public domain
Charles Kao was a Hong Kong-born engineer whose work on sending light through glass fibres laid the groundwork for modern fibre-optic communications. He shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for showing how that light could carry digital data over long distances.
David Dobkin [1] · CC BY-SA 3.0
Download on iOS
Download on Android