the-french-artist/wikipedia_20220301.simple_sentence_split huggingface dataset:
In many universities, courses about matrices (usually called linear algebra) are taught very early, sometimes even in the first year of studies.
Matrices are also very common in computer science, engineering, physics, economics, and statistics.
Definitions and notations
The horizontal lines in a matrix are called rows and the vertical lines are called columns.
A matrix with m rows and n columns is called an m-by-n matrix (or m×n matrix) and m and n are called its dimensions.
The places in the matrix where the numbers are is called entries.
The entry of a matrix A that lies in the row number i and column number j is called the i,j entry of A. This is written as A[i,j] or ai,j.
We write  to define an m × n matrix A, with each entry in the matrix called ai,j for all 1 ≤ i ≤ m and 1 ≤ j ≤ n.
is a 4×3 matrix.
This matrix has m=4 rows, and n=3 columns.
The element A[2,3] or a2,3 is 7.
The sum of two matrices is the matrix, which (i,j)-th entry is equal to the sum of the (i,j)-th entries of two matrices:
The two matrices have the same dimensions.
Here,  is true (and is true in general for matrices of equal dimensions).
Two matrices can be multiplied with each other even if they have different dimensions, as long as the number of columns in the first matrix is equal to the number of rows in the second matrix.
The result of the multiplication, called the product, is another matrix with the same number of rows as the first matrix and the same number of columns as the second matrix.
The multiplication of matrices is not commutative, which means that in general, .
The multiplication of matrices is associative, which means that .
Square matrix
Every square dimension set of a matrix has a special counterpart called the "identity matrix", represented by the symbol .
The identity matrix has nothing but zeroes except on the main diagonal, where there are all ones.
is an identity matrix.
There is exactly one identity matrix for each square dimension set.
An identity matrix is special because when multiplying any matrix by the identity matrix, the result is always the original matrix with no change.
An inverse matrix is a matrix that, when multiplied by another matrix, equals the identity matrix.
is the inverse of
The formula for the inverse of a 2x2 matrix,  is:
Where  is the determinant of the matrix.
In a 2x2 matrix, the determinant is equal to:
One column matrix
The determinant takes a square matrix and calculates a simple number, a scalar.
To understand what this number means, take each column of the matrix and draw it as a vector.
The parallelogram drawn by those vectors has an area, which is the determinant.
For all 2x2 matrices, the formula is very simple:
Properties of determinants
There are three rules that all determinants follow.
The determinant of an identity matrix is 1
If two rows or two columns of the matrix are exchanged, then the determinant is multiplied by -1.
Mathematicians call this alternating.
If all the numbers in one row or column are multiplied by another number n, then the determinant is multiplied by n. Also, if a matrix M has a column v that is the sum of two column matrices  and , then the determinant of M is the sum of the determinants of M with  in place of v and M with  in place of v. These two conditions are called multi-linearity.
MacTutor: Matrices and determinants
Matrices and Linear Algebra on the Earliest Uses Pages
Earliest Uses of Symbols for Matrices and Vectors
Online Calculus Courses
The Hawaiian Islands
The Hawaiian language
Native Hawaiians, the Polynesian Hawaiian people (a kanaka ‘oiwi or kanaka māoli)
having to do with the U.S. state of Hawaii
The British Isles are an archipelago (a group of islands) in north-western Europe.
They have a long geographical and geological history.
The first people were in Britain by 800,000 years ago (Happisburgh footprints).
The biggest islands are called Great Britain and Ireland, followed by the Isle of Man.
Great Britain, the biggest island, is home to three countries.
These are England, Wales and Scotland.
The island of Ireland is divided into Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Great Britain is the biggest island of Europe and Ireland is the third biggest.
Some people include the Channel Islands of Jersey, Guernsey, Sark in the term "British Isles", but they are a lot closer to France than to Great Britain.
In politics, they are British islands but in geology they are French islands.
The writings of the Roman cartographer Ptolemy used the name "Great Britain" for the larger island in the 2nd century AD.
He used the name "Megale Britannia" or "Great Britain" () to show the difference between this island and Ireland.
Mandarin is one of five major regional languages of China.
It spreads wider than any other regional variety, from the whole northern part of China to Yunnan Province in the southwest corner of China.
In that big area there are many regional differences in vocabulary, so somebody who moves from Beijing to Yunnan could not understand people there who were speaking their own dialect, Yunnanhua.
The problem is bigger than for a person in Great Britain or the United States to go to Australia.
Therefore, starting in the 1920s, the Chinese government set up a national language based on the Beijing dialect and on the most widely understood words and pronunciations.
Mandarin is a standard language.
It is nobody's native language, but a good average between various language forms and a common language everyone can understand and communicate with.
Although it is based on the Beijing dialect, it is not the same as Beijing dialect.
Schools use a dialect called Standard Mandarin, Putonghua (普通话/普通話) meaning "common (spoken) language" or Hanyu (汉语/漢語) meaning "language of the Han".
In places such as Malaysia, it is known as Huayu (华语/華語).
In Taiwan, it is known as Guoyu (国语/國語) meaning "national language."
There are some minor differences in these standards.
Mandarin is spoken by over 800 million people around the world, more than any other language.
Most people emigrating from the Greater China region now speak Mandarin, while in past centuries most spoke Cantonese or Taishanese, another local Chinese dialect.
Standard Mandarin is one of the six official languages at the United Nations.
The others are English, French, Spanish, Russian and Arabic.
Mandarin is written with Chinese characters called Hànzì (漢字 or 汉字) which literally means "Han characters".
Each Hànzì has its own pronunciation and meaning.
An ordinary dictionary will contain about 10,000 characters.
Spoken Mandarin uses very many compound words, words that combine meanings the way English does in such terms as "machine gun," "fire truck," "playground," etc.
The Hanzi are ideograms: one character means one idea.
The various concepts are derived from the ideograms by combining them.
Mandarin can be also written phonetically (that is: written as it is spoken) with the Latin alphabet as you really cannot see the spelling from Hanzi characters.
That is called transliteration.
The most popular transliteration system is called Pinyin.
Some Chinese characters were originally fairly concrete pictures of the things they represent.
As time went on, people chose to write simpler versions that are easier to write but do not look so much like the real thing, just as people sometimes draw stick men rather than drawing people with real-looking bodies, arms, legs, etc.
Most characters, however, are made by combining pictures, using one to give a general meaning, and the other to represent a sound.
For instance, "媽 mā" (mom) is made by adding 女 (nǚ, human female) to 馬 (mǎ, horse).
The "ma" part is only there to represent the sound.
火車 huǒ chē (lit.
fire vehicle) locomotive, train
大人 dà rén (lit.
big person) adult
打開 dǎ kāi (lit.
strike open) open up (door, window, envelope, etc.)
In Spoken Mandarin, most words are character compounds because over time Mandarin lost many sounds that existed in earlier forms of Chinese.
Due to the loss of sounds, many Chinese words ended up becoming homophones, thus more characters were added to words to tell them apart.
For example, the Chinese title of the poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den 施氏食狮史 is pronounced "Shī Shì Shí Shī Shǐ", and every character in the poem is pronounced with the same syllable, but with different tones.
In older forms of Chinese, one could have been to tell apart the different characters making up the title, as they could have sounded noticeably different from each other.
Difference between Mandarin (Beijing Accent) and Beijing Dialect
Mandarin is defined and designed based on Beijing accent.
In China, there are over 600,000 dialects and more accents although they all use Chinese language and characters, but their pronunciation and some expressions are totally different.
China must find a standard pronunciation to allow all people to understand each other and communicate.
Beijing has been the capital city of China for more than 1,000 years, so China defined Beijing Accent as standard Mandarin.
Beijing also has some local dialects that are not included by Mandarin or standard Chinese language yet.
But with Beijing being the capital city as well as the political, economic, cultural and education center of China, more and more new Beijing dialects have been or will be accepted as Mandarin or standard Chinese language.
The other dialects, such as Shanghainese, Cantonese, Hakka etc.,
have few opportunities to be included into Mandarin or standard Chinese language or be accepted by the whole of China.
The following samples are some Beijing dialects which are not yet accepted as standard Mandarin.
倍儿: bèi'ér means 'very much'; 拌蒜: bànsuàn means 'stagger'; 不吝: bùlìn means 'do not worry about'; 撮: cuò means 'eat'; 出溜: chūliū means 'slip'; 大老爷儿们儿: dàlǎoyérmenr means 'men, males';
The following samples are some Beijing dialects which have been already accepted as Mandarin in recent years.
二把刀: èrbǎdāo means 'not very skillful'; 哥们儿: gēmenr means 'good male friends'; 抠门儿: kōuménr means 'parsimony'; 打小儿: dǎxiǎo'ér means 'since childhood'
你好 nǐ hǎo －hello
你好吗？nǐ hǎo ma?－How are you?
我 wǒ－me, I
你 nǐ －you
您 nín －you (Used only when out of respect)
Standard Chinese (language)
General Introduction of  Mandarin Language
Pinyin Annotator  Automatically adds phonetic symbols (pinyin) on top of Chinese characters.
Learn Mandarin 11 Free Mandarin learning lessons
Mandarin Pinyin In order to learn standard Chinese, one must learn its phonetic system first.
Yellow Bridge An online resource for students of the Chinese language
Zhongwen Red Free set of systematic lessons for Mandarin Chinese.
Mandarin Language -Citizendium
Algeria ( or ), officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a former French colony and the largest country in Africa.
It is part of the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa.
Algiers is the capital.
It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea in the north, Tunisia in the northeast, Libya in the east, Niger in the southeast, Mauritania and Mali in the southwest, Western Sahara in the west and Morocco in the northwest.
It is also the largest country in the Arab world.
People have lived in Algeria for thousands of years, which can be seen in the cave paintings at Tassili National Park that date to around 7000BC.
By 600 BC, Phoenicians were in Hippo Regius (now called Annaba), Rusicade (now Skikda), and Tipasa in the central coastal part of the country.
The Romans would annex (take over) the region by the conclusion of the Punic Wars in 146BC, with what is now modern-day Algeria staying in Roman hands till the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century and the region being taken over by the Germanic Vandals.
Algeria would become part of the Islamic world when the first Muslim Arabs came to Algeria in the mid-7th century, resulting in many people converting to the new religion of Islam.
In the 11th century, the Arab tribes of Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym were living between Tunisia and eastern Algeria (Constantois).
The famous mathematician, Fibonacci (1170—1250) lived in Algeria as a teenager.
This is where he learned the Hindu–Arabic numeral system.
Algeria was made part of the Ottoman Empire in 1517.
Enslavement of black people was practiced there as it was throughout the empire.
In the 1500s and 1700s, the Spanish Empire ruled a lot of Algeria.
France colonised Algeria starting in 1830.
In 1954, the National Liberation Front (Front de Libération Nationale or FLN) wanted freedom from France.
They fought a war.
It became independent from France on July 5, 1962.
The Algerian Civil War started in 1991.
It ended in 2002.
The government stopped the state of emergency on 24 February 2011.
A large part of southern Algeria is the Sahara Desert.
The Aures and Nememcha mountain ranges are in the north.
The highest point is Mount Tahat (3,003 m).
The official languages of the country are Arabic as a first language and Berber as a second language.
Many people speak French, too.
French is considered a lingua franca in Algeria - common language between members of the population.
Algeria's population is about 45 million people.
There are over 40 cities with more than 100,000 people.
The Council of the Nation (Upper Chamber)
The People's National Assembly (Lower Chamber)
1 Adrar
2 Chlef
3 Laghouat
4 Oum el Bouaghi
5 Batna
6 Bejaia
7 Biskra
8 Bechar
9 Blida
10 Bouira
11 Tamanghasset
12 Tebessa
13 Tlemcen
14 Tiaret
15 Tizi Ouzou
16 Algiers
17 Djelfa
18 Jijel
19 Setif
20 Saïda
21 Skikda
22 Sidi Bel Abbes
23 Annaba
24 Guelma
25 Constantine
26 Medea
27 Mostaganem
28 M'Sila
29 Mascara
30 Ouargla
31 Oran
32 El Bayadh
33 Illizi
34 Bordj Bou Arréridj
35 Boumerdès
36 El Tarf
37 Tindouf
38 Tissemsilt
39 El Oued
40 Khenchela
41 Souk Ahras
42 Tipasa
43 Mila
44 Ain Defla
45 Naama
46 Ain Temouchent
47 Ghardaia
48 Relizane
There are several UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Algeria including Al Qal'a of Beni Hammad, the first capital of the Hammadid empire; Tipasa, a Phoenician and later Roman town; and Djémila and Timgad, both Roman ruins; M'Zab Valley, a limestone valley containing a large urbanized oasis; also the Casbah of Algiers is an important citadel.
The only natural World Heritage Sites is the Tassili n'Ajjer, a mountain range.
1962 establishments in Africa
Plymouth is a city and unitary authority in Devon, South West England.
It is on the south coast.
It has a large port at Devonport used by the Royal Navy.
Nearly 250,000 people live in Plymouth and it is the largest place in Devon.
West of Plymouth is the mouth of the River Tamar which is called the Hamoaze.
Plymouth means mouth of the River Plym.
The Roman Catholic Bishop of Plymouth has his cathedral here.
Plymouth was badly affected by German bombing during the Second World War, when many buildings were destroyed.
The Plymouth Fathers and the Plymouth Brethren were both named after Plymouth.
Plymouth is linked to Saltash in Cornwall by two bridges across the River Tamar: the Royal Albert Bridge (built in 1859) carries the railway line to Penzance and the Tamar Bridge the A38 main road.
On Plymouth Hoe is the third lighthouse, which used to stand on the Eddystone Rock in the English Channel.
Unitary authorities in Devon
Plymouth, Devon, an English city and the first to bear the name
Places in the United States named after Plymouth, England.
Plymouth, Illinois
Plymouth, Massachusetts, the first city in New England
Plymouth, Michigan
Plymouth, New Hampshire
Plymouth, New York
Plymouth, Ohio
Plymouth Township, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania
Plymouth Township, Michigan
Plymouth, Montserrat - destroyed Montserrat capital
New Plymouth, Idaho, United States of America
Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Plymouth Argyle F.C. - soccer football club from Plymouth, England.
Plymouth Brethren - a religious group
Plymouth Gin
Plymouth Locomotive Works
Plymouth is a made-for-TV movie about a Moon base
George Washington (February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799) was the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797.
Before he became president, he was the commander in chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.
Washington's mother was Mary Washington and his father was Augustine Washington.
They owned a farm with slaves in Virginia.
Before the Revolutionary War
Washington became a farmer like his father.
His farm was called Mount Vernon.
He also worked as a surveyor, measuring land.
Washington always wanted to be a soldier and was active in the colonial militia of Virginia.
He was sent several times to the "forks of the Ohio River", now called Pittsburgh.
His job was to get rid of the French who were trying to take control of the Ohio River Valley.
He failed and many of his men were killed.
The fight opened the French and Indian War, bringing Britain into the Seven Years' War.
In 1758 he was elected to the Virginia legislature.
In 1759, Washington married a widow named Martha Custis.
Washington was a delegate to the First Continental Congress, which was created by the Thirteen Colonies to respond to various laws passed by the British government.
The Second Continental Congress chose him to be the commanding general of the Continental Army.
Washington led the army from 1775 until the end of the war in 1783.
After losing the big Battle of Long Island, and being chased across New Jersey, Washington led his troops back across the Delaware River on Christmas Day, 1776, in a surprise attack on Hessian mercenaries at the small Battle of Princeton and Trenton, New Jersey.
The British had more troops and more supplies than Washington, however, Washington kept his troops together and won these small battles.
Overall, Washington did not win many battles, but he never let the British destroy his army.
With the help of the French army and navy, Washington made a British army surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, as the final major battle of the Revolutionary War.
The war officially ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1783.
When the Revolutionary War ended, Washington was considered a national hero.
He was offered a government position that would have been considered a dictatorship over the colonies, but in a surprising move, Washington refused, left the army, and returned to Mount Vernon.
He wanted the colonies to have a strong government but did not wish to head that government, nor did he want the colonies to be run by a tyrant.
Washington was one of the men who said the country needed a new constitution.
The Constitutional Convention met in 1787, with Washington presiding.
The delegates wrote the Constitution of the United States, and all the states ratified it and joined the new government.
In 1789, Washington was elected president without any competition, making him the first President of the United States.
While Washington did not belong to any political party, he agreed with certain Federalist Party policies, such as the country should have a standing army and a national bank.
He was re-elected to a second term.
After his second term, Washington decided not to run for reelection, despite his popularity remaining high.
His decision, to stop at 2 terms, set a precedent that every president followed until Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940.
In Washington's farewell address in 1796, he warned the country not to divide into political parties and not to get involved in wars outside of the United States.
Washington's non-intervention foreign policy was supported by most Americans for over one hundred years.
His advice to avoid political parties was completely ignored, as parties were already active.
Washington went back home to Mount Vernon (Virginia) after his second term ended in 1797.
He died two years later, on December 14, 1799, in Mount Vernon, at the age of 67, from pneumonia.
From his marriage, George Washington owned a substantial amount of farm land, where he grew tobacco, wheat, and vegetables.
Washington also owned more than 100 slaves, who were freed upon his death.
He did not have much money in cash and had to borrow money while he was president.
At his death, Washington's estate was worth over $500,000.
False teeth
It is a common misconception that George Washington had wooden teeth, as false teeth.
He did, however, try many different ways to replace his teeth, including having teeth carved from elk's teeth or ivory.
Ivory and bone both have hairline fractures in them, which normally cannot be seen, but started to darken due to Washington's use of wine.
The darkened, thin fractures in the bone made the lines look like the grain in a piece of wood.
George Washington's teeth started falling out when he was about 22 years old, and he had only one tooth left by the time he became president.
It was difficult for him to talk or to eat.
At one time, he had false teeth with a special hole so the one tooth he still had could poke through.
He tried to keep them smelling clean by soaking them in wine, but instead they became mushy and black.
In 1796, a dentist had to pull out George Washington's last tooth, and he kept his tooth in a gold locket attached to his watch chain.
When the time came for the president to have his portrait painted, cotton was pushed under his lips to make him look as if he had teeth.
The cotton made his mouth puff out, as is seen on the picture on the US $1 bill.
George Washington -Citizendium
Books to read
Pamela Hill Nettleton and Jeff Yesh.
George Washington: Farmer, Soldier, President (2003) for grades 1-5
Laurence Santrey.
George Washington, Young Leader (1982) * T. M. Usel.
George Washington (Read & Discover Photo-Illustrated Biographies) (1996)
Washington's White House biography
1732 births
1799 deaths
American deists
American esotericists
American generals
American revolutionaries
Businesspeople from Virginia
Chancellors of the College of William & Mary
Episcopalians
Military people from Virginia
Politicians from Virginia
18th-century American politicians
1281 – Martin IV becomes Pope.
1288 – Nicholas IV becomes Pope.
1371 - Robert II of Scotland becomes King, starting the Stuart Dynasty.
1494 – King Charles VIII of France enters Naples to claim the city's throne.
1632 – Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems is published.
1651 - St. Peter's Flood: A storm surge floods the Frisian coast in present-day Germany and the Netherlands, killing about 15,000 people.
1744 – The Battle of Toulon begins.
1784 - William Herschel discovers the spiral galaxy NGC 3521.
1797 - The last invasion of the Great Britain begins when a force of 4,000 French troops lands in Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, Wales.
They surrender two days later.
1819 – By the Adams–Onís Treaty, Spain sold Florida to the United States for five million U.S. dollars.
1847 – Mexican-American War: The Battle of Buena Vista – 5,000 American troops drive off 15,000 Mexican.
1848 - The French Revolution of 1848 begins, later leading to the creation of the French Second Republic.
1855 – The Pennsylvania State University is founded.
1856 – The Republican Party opens its first national meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
1857 - The Bavarian Weisswurst sausage is allegedly invented in Munich.
1862 - Jefferson Davis is inaugurated as President of the Confederate States of America in Richmond, Virginia.
1865 – Tennessee adopts a new constitution that abolishes slavery.
1872 - The Prohibition Party holds its first national convention in Columbus, Ohio, with James Black as its nominee for President of the United States.
1876 – Johns Hopkins University is founded in Baltimore, Maryland.
1879 – In Utica, New York, Frank Woolworth opens the first of many of 5 and 10-cent Woolworth stores.
1889 – President Grover Cleveland signs a bill admitting North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Washington as U.S. states.
1890 - The Walmut Grove Dam breaks in Arizona, causing a flood that kills between 50 and 150 people.
1899 - Filipino forces led by General Antonio Luna launch counter-attacks for the first time, against American forces in the Philippine-American War, though fail to retake Manila.
1901 - A Pacific mail steamer sinks in Golden Gate Harbor, killing 128 people.
1904 – UK recognises the South Orkney Islands as part of Argentina, in 1908 claims them again.
1915 – Germany institutes unrestricted submarine warfare.
1920 – In Emeryville, California, the first dog race track to employ an imitation rabbit opens.
1923 – The United States begins the first transcontinental air mail route.
1923 – Barcelona (Catalonia): Albert Einstein visits the city, invited by the scientist Esteban Terradas i Illa, as part of the monografics course of High Studies and Exchange organized by the Mancomunitat de Catalunya and conducted by Rafael de Campalans.
1924 – Calvin Coolidge becomes the first President of the United States to deliver a radio broadcast from the White House.
1940 - Then-four-year-old Tenzin Gyatso is enthroned as the 14th Dalai Lama.
1942 – World War II: President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders General Douglas MacArthur out of the Philippines as American defense collapses.
1943 – Members of White Rose are executed in Nazi Germany.
1944 - World War II: American aircraft mistakenly bomb the Dutch cities of Nijmegen, Arnhem, Enschede and Deventer, killing 800 in Nijmegen alone.
1948 - The Communist Revolution begins in Czechoslovakia.
1949 – Grady the Cow, a 1,200-pound cow gets stuck inside a silo on a farm in Yukon, Oklahoma and garners national media attention.
1956 – Elvis Presley enters the music charts for the first time, with "Heartbreak Hotel".
1957 - South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem survives a Communist shooting assassination attempt in Ban Me Thuot.
1958 – Egypt and Syria join to form the United Arab Republic.
1959 – Lee Petty wins the first Daytona 500.
1960 - A mining accident in Zwickau, East Germany kills 123 people.
1969 – Barbara Jo Rubin wins a United States thoroughbred horse race making history as the first woman to do so.
1972 - The Official IRA detonates a car bomb in Aldershot Barracks, killing 7 people.
1973 – Cold War: Following President Richard Nixon's visit to China, the United States and the People's Republic of China agree to establish liaison offices.
1974 - The Organisation of the Islamic Conference summit begins in Lahore, Pakistan and Bangladesh is recognized by Islamabad Officials.
1979 – Independence of Saint Lucia from the United Kingdom.
1980 – The United States men's ice hockey team defeats the Soviet Union team at the 1980 Winter Olympic Games in an upset dubbed the "Miracle on Ice".
1986 - The People Power Revolution in the Philippines begins.
1987 - The first Airbus A320 lifts off.
1994 – Aldrich Ames and his wife are charged by the United States Department of Justice with spying for the Soviet Union.
1997 – In Roslin, Scotland, scientists announce that an adult sheep named Dolly had been successfully cloned.
2002 – A MH-47E Chinook helicopter crashes into the ocean near the Philippines, killing all 10 aboard.
2004 – Ralph Nader announces his intention to run as an independent candidate for President of the United States.
2005 - An earthquake in Sarand, Iran, kills 420 people.
2006 - The Al-Askari Shrine in Samarra, Iraq, a Shi'ite Holy Site, is badly damaged in a bomb attack.
2009 - Slumdog Millionaire is the most successful movie at the 81st Academy Awards.
2011 – 2011 Canterbury earthquake: A magnitude 6.3 earthquake hits Christchurch, New Zealand, causing major damage and more than 180 deaths.
Among the collapsed buildings is the spire of Christchurch cathedral.
2012 - A train crash in Buenos Aires, Argentina, kills 51 people.
2014 - Matteo Renzi is sworn in as Prime Minister of Italy, making him the youngest holder of this office, at age 39.
2014 - In Ukraine, parliament votes to remove President Viktor Yanukovych from power and to install a caretaker government.
Yanukovych is reported to have fled to Eastern Ukraine, while former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is released from prison.
2015 - A ferry capsizes in Bangladesh, killing at least 70 people.
2015 - The 87th Academy Awards are held.
Among the winners are Julianne Moore (Best Actress) and Eddie Redmayne (Best Actor), for playing Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything.
2017 - Scientists announce the discovery of seven planets of similar size to Earth orbiting around the dwarf star "TRAPPIST-1".
Up to 1850
1300 BC - Ramesses II, Egyptian pharaoh (d. 1213 BC)
1403 – King Charles VII of France (d. 1461)
1440 - Ladislaus the Posthumous, King of Hungary and Bohemia (d. 1470)
1500 - Rodolfo Pio da Carpi, Italian cardinal (d. 1564)
1514 - Tahmasp I, Persian shah (d. 1576)
1631 - Peder Syv, Danish philologist, folklorist and priest (d. 1702)
1645 – Johann Ambrosius Bach, German composer (d. 1695)
1645 - Johann Christoph Bach, German musician (d. 1693)
1705 - Peter Arbedi, Swedish naturalist (d. 1735)
1732 – George Washington, first President of the United States (d. 1799)
1756 - Georg Friedrich von Martens, German diplomat (d. 1821)
1761 - Erik Tulindberg, Finnish composer (d. 1814)
1778 - Rembrandt Peale, American painter (d. 1860)
1785 - Jean Peltier, French physicist (d. 1845)
1788 – Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher (d. 1860)
1796 - Alexis Bachelot, French missionary (d. 1837)
1796 - Adolphe Quetelet, Belgian mathematician (d. 1874)
1806 - Jozef Kremer, Polish philosopher (d. 1875)
1817 - Carl Wilhelm Borchardt, German mathematician (d. 1880)
1819 - James Russell Lowell, American poet (d. 1891)
1823 - Robert B. Ogilvie, Governor of Illinois (d. 1888)
1824 - Pierre Janssen, French astronomer (d. 1907)
1836 - Mahesh Chandra Nyayratna Bhattacharyya, Indian Sanskrit scholar and social reformer (d. 1906)
1840 - August Bebel, German political activist (d. 1913)
1847 - Duchess Sophie Charlotte of Bavaria (d. 1897)
1849 - Nikolay Yakovlevich Sonin, Russian mathematician (d. 1915)
1851  1900
1857 – Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, German physicist (d. 1894)
1857 – Robert Baden-Powell, British founder of the Scout movement (d. 1941)
1864 - Jakob Jakobsen, Faroese linguist (d. 1918)
1878 - Walter Ritz, Swiss physicist (d. 1909)
1879 - Johannes Nicolaus Bronsted, Danish physical chemist (d. 1947)
1880 - Eric Lemming, Swedish athlete (d. 1930)
1881 - Joseph B. Ely, 52nd Governor of Massachusetts (d. 1956)
1882 – Eric Gill, British sculptor (d. 1940)
1883 - Marguerite Clark, American actress (d. 1940)
1887 - Savielly Tartakower, Polish chess player (d. 1956)
1888 - Owen Brewster, Governor of Maine (d. 1961)
1889 – Olave Baden-Powell, British co-founder of the Girl Guides (d. 1977)
1890 - Beatriz Michelena, Latin American movie actor (d. 1942)
1891 - Vlas Chubar, Soviet politician (d. 1937)
1892 – Edna St. Vincent Millay, American poet (d. 1950)
1895 - Victor Raul Haya del Torre, Peruvian politician (d. 1979)
1897 - Karol Swierczewski, Polish general (d. 1947)
1898 - Thillaiaadi Valliammai, South African activist (d. 1914)
1899 - George O'Hara, American actor (d. 1966)
1900 – Luis Buñuel, Spanish movie producer (d. 1983)
1900 - James Sisnett, Barbadian supercentenarian (d. 2013)
1903 – Frank Plumpton Ramsey, British mathematician (d. 1930)
1906 - Donald S. Russell, 107th Governor of South Carolina (d. 1998)
1907 - Georg Braun, Austrian footballer (d. 1963)
1907 - Sheldon Leonard, American actor (d. 1997)
1907 - Robert Young, American actor (d. 1998)
1908 - Romulo Betancourt, President of Venezuela (d. 1981)
1913 - Buddy Tate, American jazz musician (d. 2001)
1914 – Renato Dulbecco, Italian virologist (d. 2012)
1917 - Jane Bowles, American writer and playwright (d. 1973)
1918 - Sid Abel, Canadian ice hockey player (d. 2000)
1918 – Robert Wadlow, tallest person in history (d. 1940)
1918 - Don Pardo, American television and radio announcer (d. 2014)
1921 - Giulietta Masina, Italian actress (d. 1994)
1921 - Sune Andersson, Swedish footballer (d. 2002)
1921 - Wayne C. Booth, American literary critic (d. 2005)
1921 - Jean-Bédel Bokassa, leader of the Central African Republic (d. 1996)
1921 - David Greene, British director (d. 2003)
1922 - Joe Wilder, American jazz trumpeter (d. 2014)
1923 - Bleddyn Williams, Welsh rugby player (d. 2009)
1925 - Kenneth Williams, English actor (d. 1988)
1925 - Cyril Leonoff, Canadian civil engineer and historian (d. 2016)
1925 - Gerald Stern, American poet
1927 – Florencio Campomanes, Filipino chess player and official (d. 2010)
1927 - Gus Douglass, American politician (d. 2015)
1928 – Bruce Forsyth, British entertainer (d. 2017)
1928 - Paul Dooley, American actor
1929 - James Hong, American actor, director, producer and screenwriter
1930 - Giuliano Montaldo, Italian movie director
1930 - Bill Mitchell, Canadian ice hockey player (d. 2014)
1930 - Marni Nixon, American singer (d. 2016)
1932 – Ted Kennedy, United States Senator from Massachusetts (d. 2009)
1933 – Sheila Hancock, British actress
1933 - Katharine, Duchess of Kent
1934 - Sparky Anderson, American baseball player and manager (d. 2010)
1936 - J. Michael Bishop, American biologist
1940 - Judy Cornwell, English actress
1940 - Billy Name, American photographer and filmmaker (d. 2016)
1940 - Chet Walker, American basketball player
1941 - Hipolito Mejia, former President of the Dominican Republic
1942 - Christine Keeler, English model and showgirl (d. 2017)
1943 – Horst Koehler, former President of Germany
1944 - Robert Kardashian, American lawyer (d. 2003)
1944 - Jonathan Demme, American movie producer and screenwriter (d. 2017)
1944 - Tom Okker, Dutch tennis player
1945 - Leslie Charleson, English actress
1946 - Kresten Bjerre, Danish footballer (d. 2014)
1947 - Maurizio De Angelis, Italian singer
1949 - Olga Morozova, Russian tennis player
1949 – Niki Lauda, Austrian racing driver
1950 – Julie Walters, British actress
1950 - Julius Erving, American basketball player
1950 - Miou-Miou, French actress
1951 - Ellen Greene, American singer and actress
1952 - Bill Frist, United States Senator
1952 - Bernard Silverman, English minister, statistician and academic
1953 - Nigel Planer, English actor
1955 - David Axelrod, American political advisor
1956 - Philip Kerr, British author (d. 2018)
1958 - Dave Spitz, American musician
1959 – Kyle MacLachlan, American actor
1961 - Akira Takahashi, Japanese guitarist
1962 – Steve Irwin, Australian wildlife expert and TV personality (d. 2006)
1963 – Vijay Singh, Fijian golfer
1963 - Andrew Adonis, Baron Adonis, British politician
1963 - Devon Malcolm, English cricketer
1964 - Gigi Fernandez, Puerto Rican tennis player
1965 - Chris Dudley, American basketball player
1965 - Pat Lafontaine, American ice hockey player
1965 - Kieren Fallon, Irish jockey
1968 - Shawn Graham, Canadian politician, 31st Premier of New Brunswick
1968 - Jayson Williams, American basketball player
1969 – Brian Laudrup, Danish footballer
1969 – Marc Wilmots, Belgian footballer
1969 - Clinton Kelly, American television personality
1972 – Claudia Pechstein, German speed skater
1973 - Philippe Gaumont, French cyclist (d. 2013)
1973 - Claus Lundekvam, Norwegian footballer
1973 – Juninho Paulista, Brazilian footballer
1973 – Archil Arveladze, Georgian footballer
1973 - Shota Arveladze, Georgian footballer
1974 – Chris Moyles, British radio presenter
1974 – Markus Schopp, Austrian footballer
1974 – James Blunt, British singer
1975 – Drew Barrymore, American actress
1977 – Hakan Yakin, Swiss footballer
1978 – Jenny Frost, British singer (Atomic Kitten), TV presenter (Snog Marry Avoid?)
and model
1979 – Brett Emerton, Australian footballer
1979 - Lee Na-young, South Korean actress
1980 - Jeanette Biedermann, German singer and actress
1983 - Shaun Tait, Australian cricketer
1983 - Ragna Ingolfsdottir, Icelandic badminton player
1984 - Tommy Bowe, Irish rugby player
1984 - Branislav Ivanovic, Serbian footballer
1985 – Hameur Bouazza, Algerian footballer
1985 - Ross Hutchins, British tennis player
1985 - Larissa Riquelme, Paraguayan model
1986 - Rajon Rondo, American basketball player
1987 - Han Hyo-joo, South Korean actress and model
1987 - Sergio Romero, Argentine footballer
1987 - Enzo Pérez, Argentine footballer
1988 - Efrain Juarez, Mexican footballer
1988 - Ximena Navarrete, Mexican model and actress
1989 - Anna Sundstrand, Swedish singer
1991 - Robin Stjernberg, Swedish singer
556 - Maximilianus of Ravenna, Italian bishop (b. 499)
606 - Pope Sabinian
965 - Otto, Duke of Burgundy (b. 944)
1071 - Arnulf III, Count of Flanders (b. 1055)
1111 - Roger Borsa, King of Sicily
1371 – King David II of Scotland (b. 1324)
1512 – Amerigo Vespucci, Italian explorer (b. 1451)
1627 - Olivier van Noort, Dutch navigator (b. 1558)
1674 - Jean Chapelain, French writer (b. 1595)
1690 - Charles Le Brun, French painter (b. 1619)
1727 - Francesco Gasparini, Italian composer (b. 1661)
1731 - Frederik Ruysch, Dutch physician and anatomist (b. 1638)
1732 - Francis Atterbury, English bishop and man of letters (b. 1663)
1750 - Pietro Filippo Scarlatti, Italian composer (b. 1679)
1797 - Karl Friedrich Hieronymus Freiherr von Munchhausen, German officer and adventurer (b. 1720)
1799 - Heshen, Chinese official (b. 1750)
1816 – Adam Ferguson, Scottish philosopher (b. 1723)
1819 - Thomas Johnson, Governor of Maryland (b. 1752)
1875 – Charles Lyell, British geologist (b. 1797)
1875 – Jean-Baptiste Corot, French painter (b. 1796)
1890 – John Jacob Astor III, American businessman (b. 1822)
1897 - Charles Blondin, French tightrope walker (b. 1824)
1898 - Haungseon Daewongun, Korean king (b. 1820)
1903 - Hugo Wolf, Austrian composer (b. 1860)
1913 – Francisco I. Madero, President of Mexico (b. 1873)
1914 - Thillaiaadi Valliammai, South African activist (b. 1898)
1919 – Perito Moreno, Argentine geographer and explorer (b. 1852)
1921 - Salim Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah, Emir of Kuwait (b. 1864)
1923 - Théophile Delcasse, French statesman (b. 1852)
1927 - Judson Harmon, Governor of Ohio (b. 1846)
1930 - William Jeremiah Tuttle, American freestyle swimmer and water polo (b. 1882)
1934 - Willem Kes, Dutch conductor (b. 1856)
1939 – Antonio Machado, Spanish writer (b. 1875)
1942 – Stefan Zweig, Austrian writer (b. 1881)
1943 - White Rose Resistance Activists executed:
Christoph Probst, German resistance activist (b. 1919)
Hans Scholl, German resistance activist (b. 1918)
Sophie Scholl, German resistance activist (b. 1921)
1944 – Kasturba Gandhi, wife of Mahatma Gandhi (b. 1869)
1945 - Osip Brik, Russian author and critic (b. 1888)
1958 - Abul Kalam Azad, Indian independence movement leader (b. 1888)
1961 - Nick LaRocca, American jazz musician (b. 1889)
1970 - Edward Selzer, American movie producer (b. 1893)
1973 - Jean-Jacques Bertrand, Premier of Quebec (b. 1916)
1973 - Winthrop Rockefeller, American politician, 37th Governor of Arkansas (b. 1912)
1974 - Samuel Byck, American attempted assassin of Richard Nixon (b. 1930)
1976 - Florence Ballard, American singer (b. 1943)
1980 – Oskar Kokoschka, Austrian painter (b. 1886)
1985 – Efrem Zimbalist, American violinist and composer (b. 1889)
1987 – Andy Warhol, American artist, director, and writer (b. 1928)
1989 - Moises da Costa Amaral, East Timorese politician (b. 1938)
1994 – Papa John Creach, American musician (b. 1917)
1995 – Ed Flanders, American actor (b. 1934)
1998 - Donald S. Russell, 107th Governor of South Carolina (b. 1906)
1998 - Abraham A. Ribicoff, 80th Governor of Connecticut (b. 1910)
2002 - Roden Cutler, 32nd Governor of New South Wales (b. 1916)
2002 – Chuck Jones, American cartoonist (b. 1912)
2002 – Jonas Savimbi, Angolan politician and rebel leader (b. 1934)
2002 - Daniel Pearl, American journalist (b. 1963)
2004 - Roqué Maspoli, Uruguayan footballer (b. 1917)
2005 – Simone Simon, French actress (b. 1910)
2012 – Marie Colvin, American journalist (b. 1956)
2012 – Rémi Ochlik, French photojournalist (b. 1983)
2013 - Hasse Jeppson, Swedish footballer (b. 1925)
2013 - Wolfgang Sawallisch, German pianist and conductor (b. 1923)
2014 - Charlotte Dawson, New Zealand-born Australian television personality (b. 1966)
2014 - Leo Vroman, Dutch-American hematologist, poet and illustrator (b. 1915)
2015 - Kim Kyung-roul, South Korean billiards player (b. 1980)
2016 - Wesley A. Clark, American computer engineer (b. 1927)
2016 - Sonny James, American country singer-songwriter (b. 1929)
2016 - Hans Reffert, German musician (b. 1946)
2016 - Douglas Slocombe, English cinematographer (b. 1913)
2016 - Yochanan Sofer, Hungarian-Israeli rabbi (b. 1922)
2016 - Cara McCollum, American journalist and beauty queen (b. 1992)
2016 - Cristiana Corsi, Italian taekwondo martial artist (b. 1976)
2016 - Yolande Fox, American beauty queen, singer and activist (b. 1928)
2017 - Frank Delaney, Irish author (b. 1942)
2017 - Ricardo Dominguez, Mexican boxer (b. 1985)
2017 - Eni Faleomavaega, American Samoan politician (b. 1943)
2017 - Aleksei Petrenko, Russian actor (b. 1938)
2017 - Ed Garvey, American lawyer and politician (b. 1940)
2017 - John McCormack, Canadian ice hockey player (b. 1925)
2018 - Nanette Fabray, American actress and dancer (b. 1920)
2018 - Forges, Spanish cartoonist (b. 1942)
2018 - Richard E. Taylor, Canadian physicist (b. 1929)
Independence Day (Saint Lucia)
World Thinking Day (Girl Scouts)
Founder's Day (Scout Movement)
Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809  – April 15, 1865) was an American politician.
He was the 16th president of the United States.
He was president from 1861 to 1865, during the American Civil War.
Just five days after most of the Confederate forces had surrendered and the war was ending, John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln.
Lincoln was the first president of the United States to be assassinated.
Lincoln has been remembered as the "Great Emancipator" because he worked to end slavery in the United States.
Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in Hodgenville, Kentucky, United States.
His parents were Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks.
Abraham had one brother and one sister.
His brother died in childhood.
They grew up in a small log cabin, with just one room inside.
Although slavery was legal in Kentucky at that time, Lincoln's father, who was a religious Baptist, refused to own any slaves.
When Lincoln was seven years old, his family moved to Indiana.
Later they moved to Illinois.
In his childhood he helped his father on the farm, but when he was 22 years old he left home and moved to New Salem, Illinois, where he worked in a general store.
Later, he said that he had gone to school for just one year, but that was enough to learn how to read, write, and do simple math.
In 1842, he married Mary Todd.
They had four children, but three of them died when they were very young.
Abraham Lincoln was sometimes called Abe Lincoln or "Honest Abe" because of a legend stating that he ran miles to give a customer the right amount of change.
The nickname "Honest Abe" came from a time when he started a business that failed.
Instead of running away like many people would have, he stayed and worked to pay his debt.
Early political career
Lincoln started his political career in 1832 when he ran for the IGA Illinois General Assembly, but he lost the election.
He served as a captain in the Illinois militia during the Black Hawk War, a war with Native American tribes.
When he moved to Springfield in 1837, he began to work as a lawyer.
Soon, he became one of the most highly respected lawyers in Illinois.
In 1841, he won a court case (Bailey v. Cromwell).
He represented a black woman who claimed she had already been freed and could not be sold as a slave.
In 1847, he lost a case (Matson v. Rutherford) representing a slave owner (Robert Matson) claiming the return of fugitive slaves.
After he moved to Illinois, he worked as a shopkeeper and postmaster.
He rode the circuit of courts for many years.
When he was 21, he worked on a flatboat that carried freight.
He joined the Independent Spy Corp. At first, he was a member of the Whig Party.
He later became a Republican.
Lincoln ran for senate against Stephen A. Douglas.
Douglas won.
In 1846, Lincoln joined the Whig Party and was elected to one term in the House of Representatives.
After that, he ignored his political career and instead worked as a lawyer.
In 1854, in reaction to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Lincoln became involved in politics again.
He joined the Republican Party, which had recently been formed in opposition to the expansion of slavery.
In 1858, he wanted to become senator; although this was unsuccessful, the debates drew national attention to him.
Lincoln was chosen as a candidate for the elections in 1860 for different reasons.
Among these reasons was that his views on slavery were less extreme than those of other people who wanted to be candidates.
Lincoln was from what was then one of the Western states and had a bigger chance of winning the election there.
Other candidates that were older or more experienced than him had enemies inside the party.
Lincoln's family was poor, which added to the Republican position of free labor, the opposite of slave labor.
Lincoln won the election in 1860 and was made the 16th President of the United States.
He won with almost no votes in the South.
For the first time, a president had won the election because of the large support he got from the states in the North.
During his presidency Lincoln became well-known because of his large stovepipe hat.
He used his tall hat to store papers and documents when he was traveling.
After Lincoln's election in 1860, seven States (South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Texas and Louisiana) formed the Confederate States of America.
When the United States refused to surrender Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, the Confederates attacked the fort, beginning the American Civil War.
Later, four more states (Arkansas, Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina) joined the Confederacy for a total of eleven.
In his whole period as President, he had to rebuild the Union with military force and many bloody battles.
He also had to stop the "border states", like Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland, from leaving the Union and joining the Confederacy.
Lincoln was not a general, and had only been in the army for a short time during the Black Hawk War.
However, he still took a major role in the war, often spending days and days in the War Department.
His plan was to cut off the South by surrounding it with ships, control the Mississippi River, and take Richmond, the Confederate capital.
He often clashed with generals in the field, especially George B. McClellan, and fired generals who lost battles or were not aggressive enough.
Eventually, he made Ulysses S. Grant the top general in the army.
With the Emancipation Proclamation begun on January 1, 1863, Lincoln ordered the freedom of all slaves in those states still in rebellion during the American Civil War.
It did not actually immediately free all those slaves however, since those areas were still controlled by the rebelling states of the Confederacy.
Only a small number of slaves already behind Union lines were immediately freed.
As the Union army advanced, nearly all four million slaves were effectively freed.
Some former slaves joined the Union army after 1862.
The Proclamation also did not free slaves in the slave states that had remained loyal to the Union (the federal government of the US).
Neither did it apply to areas where Union forces had already regained control, as in Tennessee.
Until the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865, only the states had power to end slavery within their own borders, so Lincoln issued the proclamation as a war measure.
The Proclamation made freeing the slaves a Union goal for the war, and put an end to movements in European nations (especially in Great Britain and France) that would have recognized the Confederacy as an independent nation.
Lincoln then sponsored a constitutional amendment to free all slaves.
The Thirteenth Amendment, making slavery illegal everywhere in the United States, was passed late in 1865, eight months after Lincoln was assassinated.
Lincoln made a famous speech after the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 called the Gettysburg Address.
The battle was very important, and many soldiers from both sides died.
The speech was given at the new cemetery for the dead soldiers.
It is one of the most famous speeches in American history.
Second term and assassination
Lincoln was re-elected president by a small number of votes in 1864 and re-inaugurated on March 4, 1865.
Soon afterward, it appeared likely that the Union would win the Civil War.
Lincoln wanted to make it easy for states that had rebelled to restore self-government.
On April 9, 1865, the leading Confederate general, Robert E. Lee, surrendered his armies.
On April 11, 1865, Lincoln gave a speech in which he promoted voting rights for black American citizens.
During the day on April 14, 1865, Lincoln signed the law that created the secret service, the US President's security force.