Feb 11 in History

660BC — Mythical date (Japan’s National Foundation Day) of the ascension of the country’s first emperor, Jimmu Tenno. According to Japanese mythology, he is a descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu, through her grandson Ninigi, as well as of the storm god Susanoo.

1847 — Thomas Alva Edison is born in Milan, Ohio. He invents at least 1 300 items, most famously the electric light bulb.

1868 — Léon Foucault, 48, French physicist, dies. He is best known for demonstrating the effect of Earth’s rotation, using the Foucault pendulum . 1898 — Leo Szilard, physicist, is born in Budapest, Hungary. He conceives the nuclear chain reaction in 1933, patents the idea of a nuclear reactor with Enrico Fermi in 1934, and in late 1939 writes the letter for Albert Einstein’s signature that results in the atomic bomb-building Manhattan Project. 1917 — Sidney Sheldon, the seventh bestselling fiction writer of all time, is born in Chicago.

1919 — Eva Gabor, actress, is born in Budapest, Hungary.

1934 — (Dame) Mary Quant, fashion designer, is born in London, the daughter of Welsh teachers. 1936 — Burt Reynolds, actor, is born in Lansing, Michigan.

1979 — Followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seize power in Iran.

1991 — Oscar Nitzchke, 90, German architect (UN headquarters in New York), dies in Paris.

1999 — Six denim-wearing Italian female politicians protest in front of parliament against an appeals court ruling that rape is impossible if the victim is wearing jeans.

2000 — Roger Vadim, 72, French film director, dies in Paris. His consorts read like the who’s who in movies. Wives: Brigitte Bardot, Annette Stroyberg, Jane Fonda, Catherine Schneider and Marie-Christine Barrault. Partners included Catherine Deneuve, Cindy Pickett and fiancée Ann Biderman. He told a story of how he lost his virginity at 16, to an older girl, outdoors one night in Normandy. What amazed him most was that what Ernest Hemingway had written came true: “the earth moved under him”. Somewhat later he realised that Allied ships were bombarding the coast in preparation for the D-day invasion.

2006 — Peter Benchley, 65, “Jaws” author, dies in Princeton, New Jersey.

2006 — (to February 15) Tokelau, an island country with a population of about 1 500, votes to remain a territory of New Zealand rather than become a self-governing state.