1721 Brandenburg, Music: Johann Sebastian Bach dedicated his Concertos to Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt, a patron.
1882 Berlin, Science: Robert Koch discovered and described the bacterium tubercle bacillus which causes tuberculosis (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) as shown below. The anti-Vaxxers hope to bring it back, it seems. Those who do not know the past repeat it, again and again.
1927 Buenos Aires, Sports: José Capablanca won a 33-day chess tournament. Against the top six players in the world, according to Chessmetrics, in a quadruple round-robin Capablanca was undefeated. His speciality was speed in a game noted for its slow pace. His book ‘Chess’ remains in print. He is pictured below playing an exhibition match against one hundred players. He won all but one, which one stalemated.
1947 New York City, Politics: At the urging of his son Nelson, John D. Rockefeller Jr donated an East River site to the United Nations for its headquarters. Bin addition, below a Rockefeller scion handed over a cheque for $US 8,500,000 to the United Nations to start the project. That equates to just under $100 million today.
1955 New York City, Theatre: Tennessee Williams’s play ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ opened with daring themes of homosexuality, adultery, and mendacity. It ran on Broadway for more than two years. A graduate of the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop, Williams read and wrote all of his life. He went to Iowa to get as far away from his family as possible.
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