1517 Martin Luther posted the 95 theses on the door of Wittenberg Castle Church. The Reformation was ignited. Erik Erikson’s psycho-biography ‘Young Man Luther’ (1958) is none too flattery. I read it in graduate school.
1587 Leiden University opened its doors after its founding in 1575. I was affiliated with it for a semester to use the library while at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies.
1913 The first trans-continental road for automobiles — the Lincoln Highway — was dedicated, passing through Kearney Nebraska, where there is a monument over I-80 we have visited.
1941 Mount Rushmore monument completed after 14 years of work. We have been there but James Mason was nowhere to be seen, but there were plenty of cornfields nearby. With Doane Robinson, Gutzon Børglum conceived and executed the monument. His Danish parents lived in Nebraska. A Trump tower will overshadow it in the near future.
1984 Indira Gandhi (no relation to Mohandas Gandhi) was murdered by her Sikh bodyguards. Because of disturbances among Sikhs, they had been re-assigned to other duties but she countermanded that order with this result. Her father was Jawaharlal Nehru an acolyte of the Mahatma and she knew him from her childhood.
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