Born in 1756 – Henry Raeburn, Scottish portrait painter.

Above: Portrait of Elizabeth Campbell, Marchesa Di Spineto, 1812

Previously: The Skating Minister

In 1861 – Alexander II of Russia signed the Edict of Emancipation, freeing more than 23 million serfs.

Above: Peasants Reading the Emancipation Manifesto, an 1873 painting by Grigory Myasoyedov.

From St. Benedict’s rule for monastic life: “Your way of acting should be different from the world’s way.”

Above: Saint Benedict delivering his rule to the monks of his order, Monastery of St. Gilles, Nimes, France, 1129.

Also: Born in 1931, Mikhail Gorbachev

In 1692, Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne and Tituba are brought before local magistrates in Salem Village, Massachusetts, beginning the Salem witch trials.

Also: Ralph Ellison, Robert Hass, and Beer Day.

Born in 1533 – Michel de Montaigne, French philosopher and author.

“Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.”

Also: In 1993, the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents raid the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.

Born in 1897 – Marian Anderson, American singer.

“When I sing, I don’t want them to see that my face is black; I don’t want them to see that my face is white – I want them to see my soul.”

Previously: Anderson

Born in 1932 – Johnny Cash, American singer-songwriter and actor.

“I have tried drugs and a little of everything else, and there is nothing in the world more soul-satisfying than having the kingdom of God building inside you and growing.”

Also: Michel Houellebecq

Born in 1917 – Anthony Burgess, English author, playwright, and critic.

“Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?”

“To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world.”

Born in 1956 – Judith Butler, American philosopher, theorist, and author.

“We act as if that being of a man or that being of a woman is actually an internal reality or something that is simply true about us, a fact about us, but actually it’s a phenomenon that is being produced all the time and reproduced all the time, so to say gender is performative is to say that nobody really is a gender from the start.”

Also, Winslow Homer: “The sun will not rise or set without my notice and thanks.”

Born in 1868 – W. E. B. Du Bois, American sociologist, historian, and activist.

“In 1956, I shall not go to the polls. I have not registered. I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no ‘two evils’ exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say.” — “Why I Won’t Vote,” The Nation, 1956.