Thirty Years’ War: Bavaria, Cologne, France and Sweden sign the Truce of Ulm

The Thirty Years’ War, which lasted from 1618 to 1648, was one of the most devastating conflicts in European history. While it involved numerous actors and complex dynamics, Bavaria, Cologne, France, and Sweden were indeed key players in various stages of the war.

Bavaria: Under the leadership of Maximilian I, Duke of Bavaria, Bavaria became a prominent supporter of the Catholic cause in the conflict. Maximilian I was a strong proponent of the Counter-Reformation and sought to maintain Catholic dominance in the Holy Roman Empire. Bavaria allied itself with the Catholic Habsburgs and played a significant role in several battles against Protestant forces.

Cologne: The Archbishopric of Cologne was a significant ecclesiastical territory within the Holy Roman Empire. Its archbishop, Elector Ferdinand of Bavaria, was a staunch Catholic and ally of the Habsburgs. Cologne was drawn into the conflict due to its strategic location and religious affiliations, often aligning with the Catholic side.

France: France’s involvement in the Thirty Years’ War was complex and evolved over time. Initially, France supported the Protestant princes and states in their struggle against the Habsburgs, as it sought to weaken the power of the Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburg dynasty, which posed a threat to French interests. However, as the war progressed, France shifted its strategy and supported various factions to prevent the Habsburgs from gaining too much power. French intervention in the later stages of the war significantly impacted its outcome.

Sweden: Sweden, under King Gustavus Adolphus, emerged as a major Protestant power in the conflict. Gustavus Adolphus intervened in the war on the side of the Protestant states, aiming to protect Protestant interests and challenge the Habsburg dominance in the Holy Roman Empire. His military campaigns, particularly in northern Germany, were highly successful and altered the course of the war.

These four entities played crucial roles in different phases of the conflict, with alliances shifting and strategies evolving over the course of the Thirty Years’ War. The war itself was a complex mix of religious, political, and territorial disputes that ravaged Central Europe and resulted in immense suffering and devastation for the populations involved. The Peace of Westphalia, signed in 1648, finally brought an end to the conflict, reshaping the political landscape of Europe and establishing principles of state sovereignty and religious tolerance.

The Gold Standard Act is ratified, placing the United States currency on the gold standard.

The Gold Standard Act is a United States federal law that was enacted in 1900. It established gold as the only standard for redeeming paper money, meaning that paper currency could be redeemed for a fixed amount of gold. The law set the value of a gold dollar at $1.505632, which meant that one ounce of gold was worth $20.67.

The Gold Standard Act was intended to stabilize the value of the currency and to promote economic growth. It was also seen as a way to prevent inflation and to restore confidence in the U.S. monetary system, which had been shaken by the Panic of 1893.

The Gold Standard Act remained in effect until 1933, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order that effectively ended the gold standard. This was done in response to the economic crisis of the Great Depression, and the U.S. government’s need for increased flexibility in monetary policy.

The South African government bombs the headquarters of the African National Congress in London

A naming ceremony for the chemical element nihonium takes place in Tokyo

World War II: The Kraków Ghetto is “liquidated”.

[rdp-wiki-embed url=’https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraków_Ghetto’]

India’s first talking film, Alam Ara, is released.

When the first talkie – Ardeshir Irani’s ‘Alam Ara’ came out on March 14 1931, India was already familiar with the concept of feature films. In fact a flourishing film industry already existed post the success of ‘Raja Harishchandra’. Filmmakers were making silent films in many states, each experimenting with filmmaking, and the idea of narrating a story through ‘moving pictures’.

Yet, when ‘Alam Ara’ was released in Mumbai’s Majestic Cinema, police had to be called for crowd control. The film, not only broke the dominance of silent films, which were being made till then, but it also introduced the concept of music and playback in Indian cinema- something that continues to be the highlight of Indian films till date.

The film had lot of firsts in it. It was the first talkie to be made and release in India. It introduced the concept of music, it also gave India its first playback singer in the form of Wazir Mohammed Khan, who also acted in the film along with actors Master Vithal, Zubeida, J.Sushila and Prithviraj Kapoor.

But while ‘Alam Ara’ was the first talkie to be released, there were several other filmmakers who were at the same time making talkies in regional languages. While ‘Alam Ara’ released in March 1931, Madan Theatre’s ‘Jamai Shashti’ released in April the same year and became the first Bengali talkie.
Multilingual ‘Kalidas’ released in October in Tamil Nadu and thus paved way for many more of such films. The advent of talkies also completely put a full stop on the silent films- something that many of the pioneering filmmakers like Dadasaheb Phalke couldn’t cope with as they felt that silent films was a form of art and introduction of sound corrupted the art form.

The innitial talkies could easily be called elaborate dance dramas. The stories were narrated not merely through dialogues but elaborate songs. While ‘Alam Ara’ had seven songs, subsequent films, which released in the same year, increased the songs in the films. Madan Theatres’ film ‘Shirin Farhad’ which released in May 1931 had 18 songs. A year later when Indra Sabha released, it had 69 songs in it- which was also a Madan Theatre production. Music became an integral part of movies in India ever since and eventually the song-dance routine gave Indian cinema its unique identity.

Talkies also heralded an era of new kind of stories. The silent era mostly fell back upon mythology for scripts, but talkies experimented with new ideas, some folklore, some fairytales, love stories and social themes.

Indian cinema changed and evolved immensely post the talkies. Films had an unique blend of tradition and modernity and tried to experiment with new technical aspects. The films were recorded live, and west influenced heavily in the films that were made. The society was also slowly opening up to the idea of this new kind of entertainment. While cinema viewing was earlier restricted to a certain section of the society-namely the elite, the talkies brought the middle class as well to the theatres.

By the 1940s, the formula for a box office hit was discovered- almost all films had an elaborate routine of song and dance- something that was introduced in the last decade and something that continues to be an integral part of our cinema till date.

Jack Ruby is found to be guilty of killing Lee Harvey Oswald, the assumed assassin of John F. Kennedy.

Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub owner who killed Lee Harvey Oswald–the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy–is found guilty of the “murder with malice” of Oswald and sentenced to die in the electric chair. It was the first courtroom verdict to be televised in U.S. history.

On November 24, 1963, two days after Kennedy’s assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald was brought to the basement of the Dallas police headquarters on his way to a more secure county jail. A crowd of police and press with live television cameras rolling gathered to witness his departure. As Oswald came into the room, Jack Ruby emerged from the crowd and fatally wounded him with a single shot from a concealed .38 revolver. Ruby, who was immediately detained, claimed he was distraught over the president’s assassination. Some called him a hero, but he was nonetheless charged with first-degree murder.

Jack Ruby, originally known as Jacob Rubenstein, operated strip joints and dance halls in Dallas and had minor connections to organized crime. He also had a relationship with a number of Dallas policemen, which amounted to various favors in exchange for leniency in their monitoring of his establishments. He features prominently in Kennedy-assassination theories, and many believe he killed Oswald to keep him from revealing a larger conspiracy. In his trial, Ruby denied the allegation and pleaded innocent on the grounds that his great grief over Kennedy’s murder had caused him to suffer “psychomotor epilepsy” and shoot Oswald unconsciously. The jury found him guilty and sentenced him to die.

In October 1966, the Texas Court of Appeals reversed the decision on the grounds of improper admission of testimony and the fact that Ruby could not have received a fair trial in Dallas at the time. In January 1967, while awaiting a new trial to be held in Wichita Falls, Ruby died of lung cancer in a Dallas hospital.

The official Warren Commission report of 1964 concluded that neither Oswald nor Ruby were part of a larger conspiracy, either domestic or international, to assassinate President Kennedy. Despite its seemingly firm conclusions, the report failed to silence conspiracy theories surrounding the event, and in 1978 the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in a preliminary report that Kennedy was “probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy” that may have involved multiple shooters and organized crime. The committee’s findings, as with those of the Warren Commission, continue to be widely disputed.

World Maths Day is celebrated for the first time.

World Maths Day was celebrated for the first time.