Louis XIII, future king of France, is born (1601), and Horsburgh Lighthouse inaugurated on Pedra Branca, Singapore (1851). Born on this day: Avril Lavigne, Gwyneth Paltrow and Grazia Deledda. Died: Edgar Degas, Maggie Smith and Hassan Nasrallah.
31 events, 72 births and 62 deaths on this date.
Born heir to the French and Navarrese crowns, he was king before his ninth birthday, after his father Henry IV was assassinated. As an adult he ruled alongside Cardinal Richelieu, who helped found the Académie française and curbed the nobility's private power.
School of Philippe de Champaigne · Public domainThe East India Company opened a lighthouse on a rocky outcrop off Singapore to guide ships through busy sea lanes. Pedra Branca later became the centre of a long territorial dispute between Singapore and Malaysia.
The People's Republic's flag, with one large and four small gold stars, was chosen unanimously by the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. Its red stands for the Communist Revolution, and it first flew over Tiananmen Square when the republic was proclaimed.
Paul III gave formal papal approval to the Jesuits, the Society of Jesus, in a document that set the order on an official footing. Among the new religious orders he recognised during his pontificate, it would become one of the Catholic Church's most influential.
Software developer Richard Stallman publicly set out his plan for GNU, a Unix-like operating system meant to be free for anyone to use, study and change. It became the first major free software project and helped shape the wider free software movement.
Champollion told the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres in Paris that he had cracked the Rosetta Stone's script, showing that hieroglyphs recorded spoken sounds rather than only mystical symbols. The announcement opened the way to reading ancient Egyptian texts directly.
Léon Cogniet · Public domain
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Avril Lavigne is a Canadian singer-songwriter who became a global pop star in the early 2000s by bringing punk-tinged energy to teen pop. Her debut, Let Go, is the biggest-selling record from a Canadian act this century, with hits like Complicated and Sk8er Boi.
Raph_PH · CC BY 2.0
American actress known for Shakespeare in Love, which won her the Academy Award for Best Actress, and for playing Pepper Potts in the Marvel films. She also founded the lifestyle brand Goop.
Georges Biard · CC BY-SA 3.0
Deledda was an Italian novelist who wrote about the harsh, rural life of her native Sardinia. In 1926 she became the first Italian woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Nobel Foundation · Public domain
The French artist was one of the founders of Impressionism, though he preferred the label realist. He is best known for his images of ballet dancers, which make up over half his work, alongside racehorses and portraits.
Edgar Degas · Public domain
Maggie Smith was a British actress known for her sharp wit on stage and screen, across eight decades. She won two Academy Awards and is remembered as Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter films and Violet Crawley in Downton Abbey.
N/A studio · Public domain
Hassan Nasrallah led Hezbollah for more than three decades, guiding the Lebanese Shia militia and political party through wars with Israel and the Syrian civil war. He was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Beirut in 2024.
Unknown author Unknown author · CC BY 4.0
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