14 Mordad 1383 | Wednesday 4 August 2004

This day in four calendars

1789 (237 years ago) France: abolition of feudalism by the National Constituent Assembly.
1796 (230 years ago) French Revolutionary Wars: Napoleon leads the French Army of Italy to victory in the Battle of Lonato.
1915 (111 years ago) World War I: The German 12th Army occupies Warsaw during the Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive and the Great Retreat of 1915.
1944 (82 years ago) The Holocaust: A tip from a Dutch informer leads the Gestapo to a sealed-off area in an Amsterdam warehouse, where they find and arrest Jewish diarist Anne Frank, her family, and four others.
1972 (54 years ago) Ugandan President Idi Amin announces that Uganda is no longer responsible for the care of British subjects of Asian origin, beginning the expulsions of Ugandan Asians.
1984 (42 years ago) The Republic of Upper Volta changes its name to Burkina Faso.
2006 (20 years ago) A massacre is carried out by Sri Lankan government forces, killing 17 employees of the French INGO Action Against Hunger (known internationally as Action Contre la Faim, or ACF).
2007 (19 years ago) NASA's Phoenix Mars lander is launched.

1792 (234 years ago) Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet and playwright (died 1822)
1805 (221 years ago) William Rowan Hamilton, Irish physicist, astronomer, and mathematician (died 1865)
1859 (167 years ago) Knut Hamsun, Norwegian novelist, poet, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1952)
1900 (126 years ago) Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, Queen Consort of King George VI of the United Kingdom, Empress Consort of India (died 2002)
1901 (125 years ago) Louis Armstrong, American trumpet player and singer (died 1971)
1960 (66 years ago) José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spanish academic and politician, 5th Prime Minister of Spain
1961 (65 years ago) Barack Obama, American lawyer and politician, 44th President of the United States, Nobel Prize laureate
1981 (45 years ago) Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, American member of British royal family, media personality and actress

1060 (966 years ago) Henry I of France,
1526 (500 years ago) Juan Sebastián Elcano, Spanish explorer and navigator (born 1476)
1875 (151 years ago) Hans Christian Andersen, Danish novelist, short story writer, and poet (born 1805)
1922 (104 years ago) Enver Pasha, Ottoman general and politician (born 1881)
1962 (64 years ago) Marilyn Monroe, American model and actress (born 1926)
1977 (49 years ago) Edgar Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian, English physiologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1889)
1997 (29 years ago) Jeanne Calment, French super-centenarian; holds records for the world's substantiated longest-lived person (born 1875)
2024 (2 years ago) Tsung-Dao Lee, Chinese-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1926)