534 years ago today
Alhambra Decree Takes Effect: Jews Expelled from Spain
On July 31, 1492, the deadline of the Alhambra Decree took effect, forcing the final expulsion of the Jewish community from Spain. Issued by Ferdinand and Isabella in March of that year — the same monarchs who had just dispatched Christopher Columbus — the decree gave Jews four months to convert to Christianity or leave, stripping them of everything they could not carry. Between 130,000 and 800,000 people were expelled in what became one of the defining catastrophes of Sephardic Jewish history. The exiles scattered across the Ottoman Empire, North Africa, and the Netherlands, carrying their distinctive Ladino language and culture with them. Spain formally revoked the decree only in 1968, and extended citizenship to the descendants of expelled Jews in 2015.
J. K. Rowling
British author of the Harry Potter series
Rowling conceived the idea for Harry Potter on a delayed train from Manchester to London in 1990 and wrote the first book as a single mother on welfare in Edinburgh cafés. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was published in 1997 after being rejected by twelve publishers; the series went on to sell over 500 million copies, becoming the bestselling book series in history.
Milton Friedman
American economist, Nobel laureate
Friedman's advocacy for free markets, monetarism, and the natural rate of unemployment reshaped economic thinking and public policy across the world. His ideas underpinned the Reagan and Thatcher revolutions of the 1980s, and his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom remains one of the most influential works in modern economics. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1976.
Franz Liszt
Hungarian pianist and composer
Liszt was the greatest piano virtuoso of the 19th century and arguably of all time, inspiring the term "Lisztomania" to describe the hysterical devotion of his audiences — a phenomenon that prefigured modern celebrity culture. He invented the symphonic poem form and his harmonic innovations directly influenced Wagner and pointed toward modern music.
Wesley Snipes
American actor
Snipes came to international attention in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever and White Men Can't Jump before embodying the vampire hunter Blade in the Marvel film series that began in 1998 — a franchise that many credit with demonstrating the commercial viability of superhero films a decade before the MCU.
Peter Benenson
English lawyer, founder of Amnesty International
Benenson founded Amnesty International in 1961 after reading about two Portuguese students imprisoned for raising a toast to freedom. The organisation grew from a single newspaper appeal into the world's largest human rights organisation, with millions of members in over 150 countries.
Columbus Discovers Trinidad
On his third voyage to the New World, Christopher Columbus became the first European to sight and land on the island of Trinidad, which he named for the three peaks he saw on its southern coast.
First U.S. Patent Issued
President George Washington signed the first patent issued under the new U.S. patent system, awarded to Samuel Hopkins of Vermont for an improved method of making potash and pearl ash — compounds used in glassmaking and baking.
Battle of Passchendaele Begins
The Third Battle of Ypres, better known as Passchendaele, opened in Flanders, Belgium. The campaign lasted three and a half months of grinding attritional warfare in seas of mud, ultimately gaining a few miles of territory at a cost of approximately 325,000 Allied casualties.
Nazi Party Wins 38% in German Elections
The National Socialist German Workers' Party won 37.4% of the vote in the German federal election, making it by far the largest party in the Reichstag, a breakthrough that put Hitler on the path to power six months later.
Göring Orders Preparation of the Final Solution
Hermann Göring signed a directive ordering SS General Reinhard Heydrich to prepare a comprehensive plan for the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question," the bureaucratic order that set in motion the machinery of the Holocaust.
Ranger 7 Sends First Close-Up Moon Photos
NASA's Ranger 7 spacecraft transmitted the first close-up photographs of the lunar surface, sending back 4,308 images before crashing into the Moon — images that were 1,000 times sharper than anything achievable from Earth and crucial for planning the Apollo landings.
Black Tot Day: Royal Navy's Last Rum Ration
The Royal Navy issued its final daily rum ration — a tradition dating back to 1655 — after Parliament decided the practice was no longer compatible with operating modern machinery and weapons. Sailors mourned the occasion as "Black Tot Day."
U.S. and Soviet Union Sign START I Treaty
Presidents George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in Moscow, the first binding agreement to reduce strategic nuclear warheads and delivery systems between the two superpowers, a landmark achievement as the Cold War drew to a close.
Fidel Castro Transfers Power to Raúl
Citing emergency intestinal surgery, Fidel Castro temporarily transferred power to his brother Raúl — the first time in 47 years he had relinquished control of Cuba. The transfer would become permanent in 2008.
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Start a conversation →Franz Liszt
Hungarian pianist and composer
Liszt died of pneumonia in Bayreuth during the Wagner Festival, aged 74. He had spent his final decades as an abbé in the Catholic Church, composing increasingly austere and harmonically advanced works that anticipated 20th-century music by decades.
Andrew Johnson
17th President of the United States
The only U.S. president to have been impeached and acquitted before Bill Clinton, Johnson succeeded Lincoln and oversaw a controversial Reconstruction policy that left the civil rights of formerly enslaved people largely unprotected. He died of a stroke in Tennessee.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
French pilot and author of The Little Prince
Saint-Exupéry disappeared on a reconnaissance mission over the Mediterranean during WWII and was never found. He had written The Little Prince — one of the most translated books in history — the previous year, drawing on his long career as a pioneering airmail pilot.
Ignatius of Loyola
Spanish priest, founder of the Jesuits
Ignatius founded the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in 1540, creating the order that became the intellectual spearhead of the Counter-Reformation and established hundreds of schools, universities, and missions worldwide. He was canonised in 1622 and is the patron saint of soldiers.
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