Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Austrian composer
I pay no attention whatever to anybody’s praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.
The Apollo 1 spaceship caught fire during a launch rehearsal, killing all three astronauts and destroying the command module. All manned Apollo flights were suspended for 20 months. The first successful Apollo launch was the Apollo 7, which was manned by the backup crew for the Apollo 1.
Paul Newman, American actor
If you’re playing a poker game and you look around the table and can’t tell who the sucker is, it’s you.
The Constitution of India comes into effect, becoming the foundation for all law in the new Republic of India. Article 395 of the Constitution repealed all prior Acts of the British Parliament, and severed all legal authority of the United Kingdom from the new nation.
Virginia Woolf, English novelist
Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.
The first transcontinental telephone call was placed, when Alexander Graham Bell called from New York to his assistant Thomas Watson in San Francisco. Mayors of both cities and President Woodrow Wilson were all present to take a turn on the telephone conversation.
William Congreve, English playwright
Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing.
The Macintosh personal computer was sold for the first time in the United States. This was Apple Computers entrance into the market dominated by the Commodore 64, and their first version (later called the “Macintosh 128k” to distinguish it from subsequent Macintosh models) found its core user base in education and desktop publishing.
Stendahl – French writer
All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.
Zhu Yuanzhang is crowned the Hongwu Emperor, beginning three centuries of Ming dynasty rule over China, defeating the Yuan Dynasty and driving the Mongols back to Central Asia.
August Strindberg, Swedish poet
Happiness consumes itself like a flame. It cannot burn for ever, it must go out, and the presentiment of its end destroys it at its very peak.
The Convention Parliament met in England to determine whether James II and VII (Second James King of England, Seventh James King of Scots, also King of Ireland) had vacated his thrones when he fled to France. The last Roman Catholic ruler of England, he was replaced by his daughter Mary and her husband and co-regent Prince William.
Stonewall Jackson, American general
Never take counsel of your fears.
Senator Jefferson Davis from Mississippi delivered his farewell address as he resigned from the United States Senate. Davis later went on to become the President of the Confederacy, leading the opposition against Abraham Lincoln in the Civil War.
Federico Fellini, Italian film director
Experience is what you get while looking for something else.
Hong Kong Island was ceded to Great Britain in the First Opium War. The island was only populated by a few thousand people at the time, and was formally ceded to the United Kingdom in perpetuity in the Treaty of Nanking.
James Watt, Scottish inventor
A lie can run around the world before the truth can get it’s boots on.
Electric service is turned on in Roselle, New Jersey, using overhead wires designed by Thomas Edison. This marked the first time standardized incandescent light bulbs were used for public illumination.
Daniel Webster, American orator
There is nothing so powerful as truth, and often nothing so strange.
Captain James Cook became the first European explorer to reach the Hawaiian Islands. He named them the ‘Sandwich Islands,’ in honor of the 4th Earl of Sandwich, John Montagu, one of his sponsors as the First Lord of the Admiralty. On his third visit to the islands in 1779 Cook was killed in a confrontation with the islanders.
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