On This Day

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Important events of history that took place in India and elsewhere on today’s date.

19 August

🇮🇳 In India

1666 Shivaji escaped from Aurangzeb's captivity by hiding in a fruit basket in Agra.

1757 The first one rupee coin of the East India Company was made in the Calcutta mint.

1907 Hazari Prasad Dwivedi, essayist, novelist, critic, thinker and researcher was born.

1949 Bhubaneshwar became the capital of Odisha.

1950 Sudha Murty, Indian author and teacher, and head of Infosys Foundation was born.

1999 Angered by India's draft nuclear policy, the G8 announced a ban on all kinds of aid.

🌎 Elsewhere

1692 Five women are hanged in Salem, Massachusetts after being convicted of the crime of witchcraft. Fourteen more people are executed that year and 150 others are imprisoned.

1887 Dmitri Mendeleev makes a solo ascent by balloon to an altitude of 11,500 feet (3.5 km) above Klin, Russia to observe an eclipse.

1900 Start of first and only Olympic cricket match in Paris; Great Britain beats France by 158 runs.

1919 After nearly 100 years of British control, Afghanistan declares itself independent.

1934 90% of Germans voted to combine the roles of the chancellor and president, making Adolf Hitler Fuhrer.

2020 Apple becomes the 1st US company to be valued at $2 trillion, just 2 years after it reached $1 trillion valuation.

⭐ Significance

World Photography Day, a day to celebrate the art and craft of photography and the passion that people have for this genre. The inception of this day dates back to 1837 when Frenchmen Joseph Nicephore Niepce and Louis Daguerre invented the "daguerreotype" which was the world’s first-ever photographic process. Two years later on January 9, 1939, the daguerreotype was officially endorsed by the French Academy of Sciences. Seven months later on August 19, 1839, the French government is believed to have purchased the patent for the device. They declared the invention of the daguerreotype as a gift to the world making it freely available to all and the day began to be marked as World Photography Day later on.

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