In 1535 Spaniard Fray Thomas de Berlanga, the 4th Bishop of Panama, discovered the Galapagos Islands by chance on his way to Peru. In 1831 the French Foreign Legion was created by Louis Philippe, King of France, from the foreign regiments of the Kingdom of France. And in 1848 the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was ratified by the US Senate, ending the Mexican American expanding the US by annexing parts of territories that would become 3 or 4 southwestern states.
In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell performed the test successful test of a telephone. The Courriese mine disaster in France caused the deaths of 1099 coal miners, in 1906, which was the worst mining disaster in Europe – still. And in 1922 Mahatma Gandhi was convicted of sedition and sentenced to 6 years in prison but was released after just 2 years due to the need for an appendicitis operation. It would not be his last brush with occupying British authorities in India.
This date saw the birth of Tsar Alexander III of Russia (1845). American playwright, journalist, and diplomat Clare Boothe Luce (1903) noted rightwing commentator and martial arts practitioner Chuck Norris (1940), and infamous terrorist Osama bin Laden (1957) -now thankfully deceased.
Those who sadly passed on this date include American nurse and activist Harriet Tubman (1913), and American pharmacist and chemist William Scovilles (1942) who gave us the Scoville scale to compare the relative heat of spicy foods like chili peppers and the like. We also bid farewell to Zelda Fitzgerald, American author visual artist, and ballet dancer (1948 – wife of F Scott Fitzgerald), and Sea Hunt star Lloyd Bridges (1998) who taught us about scuba diving and left a legacy of actor sons Jeff and Beau.
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