October 9 birthdays & history

Famous people born on October 9

• 1940John Lennon, English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer
• 1966David Cameron, English politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
• 1892Ivo Andrić, Yugoslav novelist, poet, and short story writer, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1879Max von Laue, German physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1852Hermann Emil Fischer, German chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1835Camille Saint-Saëns, French composer and conductor
• 1950Jody Williams, American academic and activist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1964Guillermo del Toro, Mexican-American director, producer, and screenwriter
• 1859Alfred Dreyfus, French colonel
• 1874Nicholas Roerich, Russian archaeologist and painter

What happened on October 9

• 1676Antonie van Leeuwenhoek wrote a letter to the Royal Society describing "animalcules" – the first known description of protozoa.
• 1804Hobart, capital of Tasmania, is founded.
• 1820Guayaquil declares independence from Spain.
• 1825Restauration arrives in New York Harbor from Norway, the first organized immigration from Norway to the United States.
• 1834Opening of the Dublin and Kingstown Railway, the first public railway on the island of Ireland.
• 1874The Universal Postal Union, then known as the General Postal Union, was established with the signing of the Treaty of Bern to unify disparate postal services and regulations so that international mail could be exchanged easily.
• 1888The Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., at the time the world's tallest building, officially opened to the general public.
• 1900The Cook Islands become a territory of the United Kingdom.
• 1936Boulder Dam (later Hoover Dam) begins to generate electricity and transmit it to Los Angeles.
• 1942Australia's Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1942 receives royal assent.
• 1962Nick Holonyak, an engineer for General Electric, gave the first public demonstration of a light-emitting diode.
• 1986The Phantom of the Opera, a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and currently the longest-running Broadway show in history, opened in London's West End.

Also observed on October 9

• Hangul Day (South Korea)
• Independence Day, celebrates the independence of Uganda from United Kingdom in 1962. (Uganda)
• Independence of Guayaquil from Spain in 1820 (Ecuador)
• Leif Erikson Day (United States, Iceland and Norway)
• National Nanotechnology Day (United States)
• Takayama Autumn Festival (Takayama, Japan)