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Deism

Deism (  or  ; derived from the Latin term deus, meaning "god")  is the philosophical position and rationalistic theology that generally rejects revelation as a source of divine knowledge and asserts that empirical reason and observation of the natural world are exclusively logical, reliable, and sufficient to determine the existence of a Supreme Being as the creator of the universe. More simply stated, Deism is the belief in the existence of God (often, but not necessarily, a God who does not intervene in the universe after creating it), solely based on rational thought without any reliance on revealed religions or religious authority. Deism emphasizes the concept of natural theology—that is, God's existence is revealed through nature.

Since the 17th century and during the Age of Enlightenment, especially in 18th-century England, France, and North America, various Western philosophers and theologians formulated a critical rejection of the several religious texts belonging to the many organized religions, and began to appeal only to truths that they felt could be established by reason as the exclusive source of divine knowledge. Such philosophers and theologians were called "Deists", and the philosophical/theological position they advocated is called "Deism".

Deism as a distinct philosophical and intellectual movement declined toward the end of the 18th century but had a revival in the early 19th century. Some of its tenets continued as part of other intellectual and spiritual movements, like Unitarianism, and Deism continues to have advocates today, including with modern variants such as Christian deism and pandeism.

Ancient history
Deistical thinking has existed since ancient times; the roots of Deism can be traced back to the philosophical tradition of Ancient Greece. The 3rd-century Christian theologian and philosopher Clement of Alexandria explicitly mentioned persons who believed that God was not involved in human affairs, and therefore led what he considered a licentious life. However, Deism did not develop as a religio-philosophical movement until after the Scientific Revolution, which began in the mid-16th century in early modern Europe.

Divinity schools in Islamic theology
In the history of Islam, one of the earliest systematic schools of Islamic theology to develop was the Muʿtazila in the mid-8th century CE. Muʿtazilite theologians emphasized the use of reason and rational thought, positing that the injunctions of God are accessible through rational thought and inquiry, and affirmed that the Quran was created (makhlūq) rather than co-eternal with God, an affirmation that would develop into one of the most contentious questions in the history of Islamic theology.

In the 9th–10th century CE, the Ashʿarī school developed as a response to the Muʿtazila, founded by the 10th-century Muslim scholar and theologian Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī. Ashʿarītes still taught the use of reason in understanding the Quran, but denied the possibility to deduce moral truths by reasoning. This position was opposed by the Māturīdī school; according to its founder, the 10th-century Muslim scholar and theologian Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī, human reason is supposed to acknowledge the existence of a creator deity (bāriʾ) solely based on rational thought and independently from divine revelation. He shared this conviction with his teacher and predecessor Abū Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān (8th century CE), whereas al-Ashʿarī never held such a view.

According to the Afghan-American philosopher Sayed Hassan Hussaini, the early schools of Islamic theology and theological beliefs among classical Muslim philosophers are characterized by "a rich color of Deism with a slight disposition toward theism".

Origins of Deism
The terms deism and theism are both derived from words meaning "god": the Latin term deus and the Ancient Greek term theós (θεός). The word déiste first appeared in French in 1563 in a theological treatise written by the Swiss Calvinist theologian named Pierre Viret, but Deism was generally unknown in the Kingdom of France until the 1690s when Pierre Bayle published his famous Dictionnaire Historique et Critique, which contained an article on Viret.

In English, the words deist and theist were originally synonymous, but by the 17th century the terms started to diverge in meaning. The term deist with its current meaning first appears in English in Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621).

Herbert of Cherbury and early English Deism

The first major statement of Deism in English is Lord Herbert of Cherbury's book De Veritate (1624). Lord Herbert, like his contemporary Descartes, searched for the foundations of knowledge. The first two-thirds of his book De Veritate (On Truth, as It Is Distinguished from Revelation, the Probable, the Possible, and the False) are devoted to an exposition of Herbert's theory of knowledge. Herbert distinguished truths from experience and distinguished reasoning about experience from innate and revealed truths. Innate truths are imprinted on our minds, as evidenced by their universal acceptance. Herbert referred to universally accepted truths as notitiae communes—Common Notions. Herbert believed there were five Common Notions that unify all religious beliefs.
 * 1) There is one Supreme God.
 * 2) God ought to be worshipped.
 * 3) Virtue and piety are the main parts of divine worship.
 * 4) We ought to be remorseful for our sins and repent.
 * 5) Divine goodness dispenses rewards and punishments, both in this life and after it.

Herbert himself had relatively few followers, and it was not until the 1680s that Herbert found a true successor in Charles Blount (1654 – 1693).

The peak of Deism (1696–1801)
The appearance of John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) marks an important turning-point and new phase in the history of English Deism. Lord Herbert's epistemology was based on the idea of "common notions" (or innate ideas). Locke's Essay was an attack on the foundation of innate ideas. After Locke, deists could no longer appeal to innate ideas as Herbert had done. Instead, deists were forced to turn to arguments based on experience and nature. Under the influence of Newton, they turned to the argument from design as the principal argument for the existence of God.

Peter Gay identifies John Toland's Christianity Not Mysterious (1696), and the "vehement response" it provoked, as the beginning of post-Lockian Deism. Among the notable figures, Gay describes Toland and Matthew Tindal as the best known; however, Gay considered them to be talented publicists rather than philosophers or scholars. He regards Conyers Middleton and Anthony Collins as contributing more to the substance of debate, in contrast with fringe writers such as Thomas Chubb and Thomas Woolston.

Other English Deists prominent during the period include William Wollaston, Charles Blount, Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, and, in the latter part, Peter Annet, Thomas Chubb, and Thomas Morgan. Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury was also influential; though not presenting himself as a Deist, he shared many of the deists' key attitudes and is now usually regarded as a Deist.

Especially noteworthy is Matthew Tindal's Christianity as Old as the Creation (1730), which became, very soon after its publication, the focal center of the Deist controversy. Because almost every argument, quotation, and issue raised for decades can be found here, the work is often termed "the Deist's Bible". Following Locke's successful attack on innate ideas, Tindal's "Bible" redefined the foundation of Deist epistemology as knowledge based on experience or human reason. This effectively widened the gap between traditional Christians and what he called "Christian Deists", since this new foundation required that "revealed" truth be validated through human reason.

Aspects of Deism in Enlightenment philosophy
Enlightenment Deism consisted of two philosophical assertions: (1) reason, along with features of the natural world, is a valid source of religious knowledge, and (2) revelation is not a valid source of religious knowledge. Different Deist philosophers expanded on these two assertions to create what Leslie Stephen later termed the "constructive" and "critical" aspects of Deism. "Constructive" assertions—assertions that deist writers felt were justified by appeals to reason and features of the natural world (or perhaps were intuitively obvious or common notions)—included:
 * God exists and created the universe.
 * God gave humans the ability to reason.

"Critical" assertions—assertions that followed from the denial of revelation as a valid source of religious knowledge—were much more numerous, and included:

 * Rejection of all books (including the Quran and the Bible) that claimed to contain divine revelation.
 * Rejection of the incomprehensible notion of the Trinity and other religious "mysteries".
 * Rejection of reports of miracles, prophecies, etc.

The origins of religion
A central premise of Deism was that the religions of their day were corruptions of an original religion that was pure, natural, simple, and rational. Humanity lost this original religion when it was subsequently corrupted by priests who manipulated it for personal gain and for the class interests of the priesthood, and encrusted it with superstitions and "mysteries"—irrational theological doctrines. Deists referred to this manipulation of religious doctrine as "priestcraft", a derogatory term. For deists, this corruption of natural religion was designed to keep laypeople baffled by "mysteries" and dependent on the priesthood for information about the requirements for salvation. This gave the priesthood a great deal of power, which the Deists believed the priesthood worked to maintain and increase. Deists saw it as their mission to strip away "priestcraft" and "mysteries". Tindal, perhaps the most prominent deist writer, claimed that this was the proper, original role of the Christian Church.

One implication of this premise was that current-day primitive societies, or societies that existed in the distant past, should have religious beliefs less infused with superstitions and closer to those of natural theology. This position became less and less plausible as thinkers such as David Hume began studying the natural history of religion and suggested that the origin of religion was not in reason but in emotions, such as the fear of the unknown.

Immortality of the soul
Different Deists had different beliefs about the immortality of the soul, about the existence of Hell and damnation to punish the wicked, and the existence of Heaven to reward the virtuous. Anthony Collins, Bolingbroke, Thomas Chubb, and Peter Annet were materialists and either denied or doubted the immortality of the soul. Benjamin Franklin believed in reincarnation or resurrection. Lord Herbert of Cherbury and William Wollaston held that souls exist, survive death, and in the afterlife are rewarded or punished by God for their behavior in life. Thomas Paine believed in the "probability" of the immortality of the soul.

Miracles and divine providence
The most natural position for Deists was to reject all forms of supernaturalism, including the miracle stories in the Bible. The problem was that the rejection of miracles also seemed to entail the rejection of divine providence (that is, God taking a hand in human affairs), something that many Deists were inclined to accept. Those who believed in a watch-maker God rejected the possibility of miracles and divine providence. They believed that God, after establishing natural laws and setting the cosmos in motion, stepped away. He did not need to keep tinkering with his creation, and the suggestion that he did was insulting. Others, however, firmly believed in divine providence, and so, were reluctantly forced to accept at least the possibility of miracles. God was, after all, all-powerful and could do whatever he wanted including temporarily suspending his own natural laws.

Freedom and necessity
Enlightenment philosophers under the influence of Newtonian science tended to view the universe as a vast machine, created and set in motion by a creator being, that continues to operate according to natural law without any divine intervention. This view naturally led to what was then called "necessitarianism" (the modern term is "determinism"): the view that everything in the universe—including human behavior—is completely, causally determined by antecedent circumstances and natural law. (See, for example, La Mettrie's L'Homme machine.) As a consequence, debates about freedom versus "necessity" were a regular feature of Enlightenment religious and philosophical discussions. Reflecting the intellectual climate of the time, there were differences among Deists about freedom and determinism. Some, such as Anthony Collins, were actually necessitarians.

David Hume
Views differ on whether David Hume was a Deist, an atheist, or something else. Like the Deists, Hume rejected revelation, and his famous essay On Miracles provided a powerful argument against belief in miracles. On the other hand, he did not believe that an appeal to Reason could provide any justification for religion. In the essay Natural History of Religion (1757), he contended that polytheism, not monotheism, was "the first and most ancient religion of mankind" and that the psychological basis of religion is not reason, but fear of the unknown. In Waring's words: "The clear reasonableness of natural religion disappeared before a semi-historical look at what can be known about uncivilized man— 'a barbarous, necessitous animal,' as Hume termed him. Natural religion, if by that term one means the actual religious beliefs and practices of uncivilized peoples, was seen to be a fabric of superstitions. Primitive man was no unspoiled philosopher, clearly seeing the truth of one God. And the history of religion was not, as the deists had implied, retrograde; the widespread phenomenon of superstition was caused less by priestly malice than by man's unreason as he confronted his experience."

Deism in the United States
The Thirteen Colonies of North America – which became the United States of America after the American Revolution in 1776 – were part of the British Empire, and Americans, as British subjects, were influenced by and participated in the intellectual life of the Kingdom of Great Britain. English Deism was an important influence on the thinking of Thomas Jefferson and the principles of religious freedom asserted in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Other Founding Fathers who were influenced to various degrees by Deism were Ethan Allen, Benjamin Franklin, Cornelius Harnett, Gouverneur Morris, Hugh Williamson, James Madison, and possibly Alexander Hamilton.

In the United States, there is a great deal of controversy over whether the Founding Fathers were Christians, Deists, or something in between. Particularly heated is the debate over the beliefs of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington.

In his Autobiography, Franklin wrote that as a young man "Some books against Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the substance of sermons preached at Boyle's lectures. It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist." Like some other Deists, Franklin believed that, "The Deity sometimes interferes by his particular Providence, and sets aside the Events which would otherwise have been produc'd in the Course of Nature, or by the Free Agency of Man," and at the Constitutional Convention stated that "the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men."

Thomas Jefferson is perhaps the Founding Father who most clearly exhibits Deistic tendencies, although he generally referred to himself as a Unitarian rather than a Deist. His excerpts of the canonical gospels (now commonly known as the Jefferson Bible) strip all supernatural and dogmatic references from the narrative on Jesus' life. Like Franklin, Jefferson believed in God's continuing activity in human affairs.

Thomas Paine is especially noteworthy both for his contributions to the cause of the American Revolution and for his writings in defense of Deism, alongside the criticism of Abrahamic religions. In The Age of Reason (1793–1794) and other writings, he advocated Deism, promoted reason and freethought, and argued against institutionalized religions in general and the Christian doctrine in particular. The Age of Reason was short, readable, and probably the only Deistic treatise that continues to be read and influential today.

The last contributor to American Deism was Elihu Palmer (1764–1806), who wrote the "Bible of American Deism", Principles of Nature, in 1801. Palmer is noteworthy for attempting to bring some organization to Deism by founding the "Deistical Society of New York" and other Deistic societies from Maine to Georgia.

Deism in France and continental Europe

France had its own tradition of religious skepticism and natural theology in the works of Montaigne, Pierre Bayle, and Montesquieu. The most famous of the French Deists was Voltaire, who was exposed to Newtonian science and English Deism during his two-year period of exile in England (1726–1728). When he returned to France, he brought both back with him, and exposed the French reading public (i.e., the aristocracy) to them, in a number of books.

French Deists also included Maximilien Robespierre and Rousseau. During the French Revolution (1789–1799), the Deistic Cult of the Supreme Being—a direct expression of Robespierre's theological views—was established briefly (just under three months) as the new state religion of France, replacing the deposed Catholic Church and the rival atheistic Cult of Reason.

There were over five hundred French Revolutionaries who were deists. These deists do not fit the stereotype of deists because they believed in miracles and often prayed to God. In fact, over seventy of them thought that God miraculously helped the French Revolution win victories over their enemies. Furthermore, over a hundred French Revolutionary deists also wrote prayers and hymns to God. Citizen Devillere was one of the many French Revolutionary deists who believed God did miracles. Devillere said, "God, who conducts our destiny, deigned to concern himself with our dangers. He commanded the spirit of victory to direct the hand of the faithful French, and in a few hours the aristocrats received the attack which we prepared, the wicked ones were destroyed and liberty was avenged."

Deism in Germany is not well documented. We know from correspondence with Voltaire that Frederick the Great was a Deist. Immanuel Kant's identification with Deism is controversial.

Decline of Enlightenment Deism
Peter Gay describes Enlightenment Deism as entering slow decline as a recognizable movement in the 1730s. A number of reasons have been suggested for this decline, including:
 * The increasing influence of naturalism and materialism.
 * The writings of David Hume and Immanuel Kant raising questions about the ability of reason to address metaphysical questions.
 * The violence of the French Revolution.
 * Christian revivalist movements, such as Pietism and Methodism (which emphasized a personal relationship with God), along with the rise of anti-rationalist and counter-Enlightenment philosophies such as that of Johann Georg Hamann.

Although Deism has declined in popularity over time, scholars believe that these ideas still have a lingering influence on modern society. One of the major activities of the Deists, biblical criticism, evolved into its own highly technical discipline. Deist rejection of revealed religion evolved into, and contributed to, 19th-century liberal British theology and the rise of Unitarianism.

Contemporary Deism
Contemporary Deism attempts to integrate classical Deism with modern philosophy and the current state of scientific knowledge. This attempt has produced a wide variety of personal beliefs under the broad classification of belief of "deism."

There are a number of subcategories of modern Deism, including monodeism (the default, standard concept of deism), pandeism, panendeism, spiritual deism, process deism, Christian deism, polydeism, scientific deism, and humanistic deism. Some deists see design in nature and purpose in the universe and in their lives. Others see God and the universe in a co-creative process. Some deists view God in classical terms as observing humanity but not directly intervening in our lives, while others see God as a subtle and persuasive spirit who created the world, and then stepped back to observe.

Recent philosophical discussions of Deism
In the 1960s, theologian Charles Hartshorne scrupulously examined and rejected both deism and pandeism (as well as pantheism) in favor of a conception of God whose characteristics included "absolute perfection in some respects, relative perfection in all others" or "AR," writing that this theory "is able consistently to embrace all that is positive in either deism or pandeism," concluding that "panentheistic doctrine contains all of deism and pandeism except their arbitrary negations."

Charles Taylor, in his 2007 book A Secular Age, showed the historical role of Deism, leading to what he calls an "exclusive humanism". This humanism invokes a moral order whose ontic commitment is wholly intra-human with no reference to transcendence. One of the special achievements of such deism-based humanism is that it discloses new, anthropocentric moral sources by which human beings are motivated and empowered to accomplish acts of mutual benefit. This is the province of a buffered, disengaged self, which is the locus of dignity, freedom, and discipline, and is endowed with a sense of human capability. According to Taylor, by the early 19th century this Deism-mediated exclusive humanism developed as an alternative to Christian faith in a personal God and an order of miracles and mystery. Some critics of Deism have accused adherents of facilitating the rise of nihilism.

Deism in Nazi Germany

In Nazi Germany, Gottgläubig (literally: "believing in God") was a Nazi religious term for a form of non-denominationalism practised by those German citizens who had officially left Christian churches but professed faith in some higher power or divine creator. Such people were called Gottgläubige ("believers in God"), and the term for the overall movement was Gottgläubigkeit ("belief in God"); the term denotes someone who still believes in a God, although without having any institutional religious affiliation. These National Socialists were not favourable towards religious institutions of their time, nor did they tolerate atheism of any type within their ranks. The 1943 Philosophical Dictionary defined Gottgläubig as: "official designation for those who profess a specific kind of piety and morality, without being bound to a church denomination, whilst however also rejecting irreligion and godlessness." The Gottgläubigkeit is considered a form of deism, and was "predominantly based on creationist and deistic views".

In the 1920 National Socialist Programme of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), Adolf Hitler first mentioned the phrase "Positive Christianity". The Nazi Party did not wish to tie itself to a particular Christian denomination, but with Christianity in general, and sought freedom of religion for all denominations "so long as they do not endanger its existence or oppose the moral senses of the Germanic race" (point 24). When Hitler and the NSDAP got into power in 1933, they sought to assert state control over the churches, on the one hand through the Reichskonkordat with the Roman Catholic Church, and the forced merger of the German Evangelical Church Confederation into the Protestant Reich Church on the other. This policy seems to have gone relatively well until late 1936, when a "gradual worsening of relations" between the Nazi Party and the churches saw the rise of Kirchenaustritt ("leaving the Church"). Although there was no top-down official directive to revoke church membership, some Nazi Party members started doing so voluntarily and put other members under pressure to follow their example. Those who left the churches were designated as Gottgläubige ("believers in God"), a term officially recognised by the Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick on 26 November 1936. He stressed that the term signified political disassociation from the churches, not an act of religious apostasy. The term "dissident", which some church leavers had used up until then, was associated with being "without belief" (glaubenslos), whilst most of them emphasized that they still believed in a God, and thus required a different word.

A census in May 1939, six years into the Nazi era, and after the annexation of the mostly Catholic Federal State of Austria and mostly Catholic German-occupied Czechoslovakia into German-occupied Europe, indicates that 54% of the population considered itself Protestant, 41% considered itself Catholic, 3.5% self-identified as Gottgläubig, and 1.5% as "atheist".

Deism in Turkey

An early April 2018 report of the Turkish Ministry of Education, titled The Youth is Sliding towards Deism, observed that an increasing number of pupils in İmam Hatip schools was repudiating Islam in favour of Deism (irreligious belief in a creator God). The report's publication generated large-scale controversy in the Turkish press and society at large, as well as amongst conservative Islamic sects, Muslim clerics, and Islamist parties in Turkey.

The progressive Muslim theologian Mustafa Öztürk noted the Deistic trend among Turkish people a year earlier, arguing that the "very archaic, dogmatic notion of religion" held by the majority of those claiming to represent Islam was causing "the new generations [to become] indifferent, even distant, to the Islamic worldview." Despite a lack of reliable statistical data, numerous anecdotes and independent surveys appear to point in this direction. Although some commentators claim that the secularization of Turkey is merely a result of Western influence or even an alleged "conspiracy", other commentators, even some pro-government ones, have come to the conclusion that "the real reason for the loss of faith in Islam is not the West but Turkey itself".

Deism in the United States
Though Deism subsided in the United States post-Enlightenment, it never died out entirely. Thomas Edison, for example, was heavily influenced by Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason. Edison defended Paine's "scientific deism", saying, "He has been called an atheist, but atheist he was not. Paine believed in a supreme intelligence, as representing the idea which other men often express by the name of deity." In 1878, Edison joined the Theosophical Society in New Jersey, but according to its founder, Helena Blavatsky, he was not a very active member. In an October 2, 1910, interview in the New York Times Magazine, Edison stated:"Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me—the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love—He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us—nature did it all—not the gods of the religions." Edison was labeled an atheist for those remarks, and although he did not allow himself to be drawn into the controversy publicly, he clarified himself in a private letter: "You have misunderstood the whole article, because you jumped to the conclusion that it denies the existence of God. There is no such denial, what you call God I call Nature, the Supreme intelligence that rules matter. All the article states is that it is doubtful in my opinion if our intelligence or soul or whatever one may call it lives hereafter as an entity or disperses back again from whence it came, scattered amongst the cells of which we are made."

He also stated, "I do not believe in the God of the theologians; but that there is a Supreme Intelligence I do not doubt."

The 2001 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) report estimated that between 1990 and 2001 the number of self-identifying Deists grew from 6,000 to 49,000, representing about 0.02% of the U.S. population at the time. The 2008 ARIS survey found, based on their stated beliefs rather than their religious identification, that 70% of Americans believe in a personal God: roughly 12% are atheists or agnostics, and 12% believe in "a deist or paganistic concept of the Divine as a higher power" rather than a personal God.

The term "ceremonial deism" was coined in 1962 and has been used since 1984 by the Supreme Court of the United States to assess exemptions from the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, thought to be expressions of cultural tradition and not earnest invocations of a deity. It has been noted that the term does not describe any school of thought within Deism itself.

Histories

 * Betts, C. J. Early Deism in France: From the so-called 'deistes' of Lyon (1564) to Voltaire's 'Lettres philosophiques' (1734) (Martinus Nijhoff, 1984)
 * Craig, William Lane. The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus During the Deist Controversy (Edwin Mellen, 1985)
 * Hazard, Paul. European thought in the eighteenth century from Montesquieu to Lessing (1954). pp 393–434.
 * Hudson, Wayne. Enlightenment and modernity: The English deists and reform (Routledge, 2015).
 * Israel, Jonathan I. Enlightenment contested: philosophy, modernity, and the emancipation of man 1670-1752 (Oxford UP, 2006).
 * Lemay, J. A. Leo, ed.Deism, Masonry, and the Enlightenment. Essays Honoring Alfred Owen Aldridge. (U of Delaware Press, 1987).
 * Lucci, Diego. Scripture and deism: The biblical criticism of the eighteenth-century British deists (Peter Lang, 2008).
 * McKee, David Rice. Simon Tyssot de Patot and the Seventeenth-Century Background of Critical Deism (Johns Hopkins Press, 1941)
 * Orr, John. English Deism: Its Roots and Its Fruits (1934)
 * Schlereth, Eric R. An Age of Infidels: The Politics of Religious Controversy in the Early United States (U of Pennsylvania Press; 2013) 295 pages; on conflicts between deists and their opponents.
 * Willey, Basil. The Eighteenth Century Background: Studies on the Idea of Nature in the Thought of the Period (1940)
 * Yoder, Timothy S. Hume on God: Irony, deism and genuine theism (Bloomsbury, 2008).
 * Yoder, Timothy S. Hume on God: Irony, deism and genuine theism (Bloomsbury, 2008).

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Dramaturge

A dramaturge or dramaturg is a literary adviser or editor in a theatre, opera, or film company who researches, selects, adapts, edits, and interprets scripts, libretti, texts, and printed programmes (or helps others with these tasks), consults authors, and does public relations work. Its modern-day function was originated by the innovations of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, an 18th-century German playwright, philosopher, and theatre theorist.

Responsibilities
One of the dramaturge's contributions is to categorize and discuss the various types of plays or operas, their interconnectedness and their styles. The responsibilities of a dramaturge vary from one theatre or opera company to the next. They might include the hiring of actors, the development of a season of plays or operas with a sense of coherence among them, assistance with and editing of new plays or operas by resident or guest playwrights or composers/librettists, the creation of programs or accompanying educational services, helping the director with rehearsals, and serving as elucidator of history or spokesperson for deceased or otherwise absent playwrights or composers. At larger theatres or opera houses, the dramaturge works on the historical and cultural research into the play or opera and its setting.

In theatre companies, a dramaturge will create a workbook for the director and actors (usually these are different) and work extensively with the director prior to the first rehearsal.

History
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was hired by the Hamburg National Theatre in 1767, to serve as the theatre's critic of plays and acting, a position which would later be named dramaturge. This position grew over time to what it is today, encompassing the wide variety of tasks seen by modern dramaturges.

Discrepancies with definition
The modern definition of dramaturge is often debated as to what specific tasks this job does, with some defining it as the bridge between the director and the actors, others defining it as one who determines the meaning of plays and shows for the actors, and others claiming that even they don't quite have a complete definition for their job. This discrepancy between dramaturges is likely due to the lack of an official historical definition, and the wide variety of tasks that dramaturges could be asked to work on, depending on the theatre, director, the show being produced, and the actors. Since Gotthold Ephraim Lessing didn't create an official definition for his own position at the Hamburg National Theatre, modern dramaturges have to infer their tasks based on what Lessing did during his career, and adapt to the current needs of modern theatre.

Recent growth in number of dramaturges
Since the year 2000, the number of dramaturges working around the world has increased, although it remains a fairly rare job to have. In 2000, 400 dramaturges were recorded as being active in the United States, with that number growing. There are various possible causes of this growth, but some dramaturges attribute the growth to the fact that dramaturgy combines two popular studies for young students: the liberal arts and theatre. Some dramaturges are worried, however, that this growth may slow down, due to a decrease in the number of modern plays being written.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Dramaturge


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Dispersion

Dispersion may refer to:

Economics and finance

 * Dispersion (finance), a measure for the statistical distribution of portfolio returns
 * Price dispersion, a variation in prices across sellers of the same item
 * Wage dispersion, the amount of variation in wages encountered in an economy
 * Dispersed knowledge, notion that any one person is unable to perceive all economic forces

Mathematics

 * Statistical dispersion, a quantifiable variation of measurements of differing members of a population
 * Index of dispersion, a normalized measure of the dispersion of a probability distribution
 * Dispersion point, a point in a topological space the removal of which leaves the space highly disconnected

Physics

 * The dependence of wave velocity on frequency or wavelength:
 * Dispersion (optics), for light waves
 * Dispersion (water waves), for water waves
 * Acoustic dispersion, for sound waves
 * Dispersion relation, the mathematical description of dispersion in a system
 * Modal dispersion, spreading of signals in multimode fibers and waveguides by a distortion mechanism
 * Polarization mode dispersion, a form of modal dispersion
 * Dielectric dispersion, the dependence of the permittivity of a dielectric material on the frequency of an applied electric field
 * Dispersion measure, the dispersion of radio signals from pulsars and fast radio bursts
 * Dispersive mass transfer, in fluid dynamics, the spreading of mass from areas of high to low concentration
 * Atmospheric dispersion modeling, mathematical simulation of how air pollutants disperse in the ambient atmosphere
 * London dispersion force, an instantaneous induced dipole-induced dipole
 * Dispersed particle resistance, a measured parameter to characterize battery active materials

Other sciences

 * Biological dispersal, the distribution of animals, spores, fruits and their seeds, etc.
 * Dispersion (chemistry), a system in which particles are dispersed in a continuous phase of a different composition
 * Dispersion (geology), a process whereby sodic soil disperses when exposed to water
 * Dispersion (materials science), the fraction of atoms of a material exposed to the surface
 * Dispersion polymerization, a polymerization process
 * Velocity dispersion, the statistical variation of velocities about the mean velocity for a group of astronomical objects

Other uses

 * , Jewish communities who lived amongst the gentiles in the first century CE
 * Dispersion (album), the second album by High Rise
 * Dispersion Technology, a scientific instrument manufacturer located in Bedford Hills, New York

title: Dispersion


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Dyson sphere

A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its solar power output. The concept is a thought experiment that attempts to imagine how a spacefaring civilization would meet its energy requirements once those requirements exceed what can be generated from the home planet's resources alone. Because only a tiny fraction of a star's energy emissions reaches the surface of any orbiting planet, building structures encircling a star would enable a civilization to harvest far more energy.

The first modern imagining of such a structure was by Olaf Stapledon in his science fiction novel Star Maker (1937). The concept was later explored by the physicist Freeman Dyson in his 1960 paper "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation". Dyson speculated that such structures would be the logical consequence of the escalating energy needs of a technological civilization and would be a necessity for its long-term survival. A signature of such spheres detected in astronomical searches would be an indicator of extraterrestrial intelligence.

Since Dyson's paper, many variant designs involving an artificial structure or series of structures to encompass a star have been proposed in exploratory engineering or described in science fiction, often under the name "Dyson sphere". Fictional depictions often describe a solid shell of matter enclosing a star – an arrangement considered by Dyson himself to be impossible.

Origins
Inspired by the 1937 science fiction novel Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon, the physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson was the first to formalize the concept of what became known as the "Dyson sphere" in his 1960 Science paper "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infra-Red Radiation". Dyson theorized that as the energy requirements of an advanced technological civilization increased, there would come a time when it would need to systematically harvest the energy from its local star on a large scale. He speculated that this could be done via a system of structures orbiting the star, designed to intercept and collect its energy. He argued that as the structure would result in the large-scale conversion of starlight into far-infrared radiation, an earth-based search for sources of infrared radiation could identify stars supporting intelligent life.

Dyson did not detail how such a system could be constructed, simply referring to it in the paper as a 'shell' or 'biosphere'. He later clarified that he did not have in mind a solid structure, saying: "A solid shell or ring surrounding a star is mechanically impossible. The form of 'biosphere' which I envisaged consists of a loose collection or swarm of objects traveling on independent orbits around the star". Such a concept has often been referred to as a Dyson swarm; however, in 2013, Dyson said that he had come to regret that the concept had been named after him.

Search for megastructures
Dyson-style energy collectors around a distant star would absorb and re-radiate energy from the star. The wavelengths of such re-radiated energy may be atypical for the star's spectral type, due to the presence of heavy elements not naturally occurring within the star. If the percentage of such atypical wavelengths were to be significant, an alien megastructure could be detected at interstellar distances. This could indicate the presence of what has been called a Type II Kardashev civilization.

SETI has looked for such infrared-heavy spectra from solar analogs, as has Fermilab. Fermilab discovered 17 potential "ambiguous" candidates, of which four were in 2006 called "amusing but still questionable". Later searches also resulted in several candidates, all of which remain unconfirmed.

On 14 October 2015, Planet Hunters' citizen scientists discovered unusual light fluctuations of the star KIC 8462852 raising press speculation that a Dyson sphere may have been discovered. However, subsequent analysis showed that the results were consistent with the presence of dust.

A further campaign found evidence of seven possible candidates for Dyson-spheres. However further investigation is required.

These candidates are:

Feasibility and science-based speculation
Although Dyson sphere systems are theoretically possible, building a stable megastructure around the Sun is currently far beyond humanity's engineering capacity. The number of craft required to obtain, transmit, and maintain a complete Dyson sphere exceeds present-day industrial capabilities. George Dvorsky has advocated the use of self-replicating robots to overcome this limitation in the relatively near term. Some have suggested that Dyson sphere habitats could be built around white dwarfs and even pulsars.

Stellar engines are hypothetical megastructures whose purpose is to extract useful energy from a star, sometimes for specific purposes. For example, Matrioshka brains have been proposed to extract energy for computation, while Shkadov thrusters would extract energy for propulsion. Some proposed stellar engine designs are based on the Dyson sphere.

From May–June 2024, speculation grew that potential signs of interstellar Dyson spheres had been discovered. The seven objects of interest, all located within 1,000 light-years of Earth, are M-dwarfs—a class of stars that are smaller and less luminous than the Sun. However, the authors of the findings were careful not to make any overblown claims. Despite this, many media outlets picked up on the story. Less fantastical alternative explanations have been made, including a proposal that the discoveries were simply dust-obscured galaxies.

In popular culture
A precursor to the concept of Dyson spheres was featured in the 1937 novel Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon, in which he described "every solar system... surrounded by a gauze of light-traps, which focused the escaping solar energy for intelligent use"; Dyson got his inspiration from this book and suggested that "Stapledon sphere" would be a more apt name for the concept. Fictional Dyson spheres are typically solid structures forming a continuous shell around the star in question, although Dyson himself considered that prospect to be mechanically implausible. They are sometimes used as the type of plot device known as a Big Dumb Object.

Dyson spheres appear as a background element in many works of fiction, including the 1964 novel The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber where aliens enclose multiple stars in this way. Dyson spheres are depicted in the 1975–1983 book series Saga of Cuckoo by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson, and one functions as the setting of Bob Shaw's 1975 novel Orbitsville and its sequels. In the 1992 episode "Relics" of the TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation, the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) finds itself trapped in an abandoned Dyson Sphere; in a 2011 interview, Dyson said that he enjoyed the episode, although he considered the sphere depicted to be "nonsense". Michael Jan Friedman who wrote the novelization observed that in the TV episode itself the Dyson sphere was effectively a MacGuffin, with "just nothing about it" in the story, and decided to flesh out the plot element in his novelization.

Other science-fiction story examples include Tony Rothman's The World Is Round, Somtow Sucharitkul's Inquisitor series, Timothy Zahn's Spinneret, James White's Federation World, Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships, and Peter F. Hamilton's Pandora's Star. Variations on the Dyson Sphere concept include a single circular band in Larry Niven's 1970 novel Ringworld, a half sphere in the 2012 novel Bowl of Heaven by Gregory Benford and Niven,  and nested spheres—also known as a Matrioshka brain—in Colin Kapp's 1980s Cageworld series and Brian Stableford's 1979–1990 Asgard trilogy.

Stableford himself observed that Dyson spheres are usually MacGuffins or largely deep in the backgrounds of stories, giving as examples Fritz Leiber's The Wanderer and Linda Nagata's Deception Well, whereas stories involving space exploration tend to employ the variants like Niven's Ringworld. He gives two reasons for this: firstly that Dyson spheres are simply too big to address, which Friedman also alluded to when pointing out that the reason that his novelization of "Relics" did not go further into the sphere was that it was only 400 pages and he had just shy of 4 weeks to write it; and secondly that, especially for hard science-fiction, Dyson spheres have certain engineering problems that complicate stories. In particular, since gravitational attraction is in equilibrium inside such a sphere (per the shell theorem), other means such as rotating the sphere have to be employed in order to keep things attached to the interior surface, which then leads to the problem of a gravity gradient that goes to zero at the rotational poles. Authors address this with various modifications of the idea such as the aforementioned Cageworld nesting, Dan Alderson's double sphere idea, and Niven's reduced Ringworld (discussed in "Bigger Than Worlds").

title: Dyson sphere


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Democide

Democide refers to "the intentional killing of an unarmed or disarmed person by government agents acting in their authoritative capacity and pursuant to government policy or high command." The term was first coined by Holocaust historian and statistics expert, R.J. Rummel in his book Death by Government, but has also been described as a better term than genocide to refer to certain types of mass killings, by renowned Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer. According to Rummel, this definition covers a wide range of deaths, including forced labor and concentration camp victims, extrajudicial summary killings, and mass deaths due to governmental acts of criminal omission and neglect, such as in deliberate famines like the Holodomor, as well as killings by de facto governments, for example, killings during a civil war. This definition covers any murder of any number of persons by any government.

Rummel created democide as an extended term to include forms of government murder not covered by genocide. According to Rummel, democide surpassed war as the leading cause of non-natural death in the 20th century.

Definition
Democide is the murder of any person or people by their government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder. Democide is not necessarily the elimination of entire cultural groups but rather groups within the country that the government feels need to be eradicated for political reasons and due to claimed future threats.

According to Rummel, genocide has three different meanings. The ordinary meaning is murder by government of people due to their national, ethnic, racial or religious group membership. The legal meaning of genocide refers to the international treaty on genocide, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This also includes nonlethal acts that in the end eliminate or greatly hinder the group. Looking back on history, one can see the different variations of democides that have occurred, but it still consists of acts of killing or mass murder. The generalized meaning of genocide is similar to the ordinary meaning but also includes government killings of political opponents or otherwise intentional murder. In order to avoid confusion over which meaning is intended, Rummel created democide for this third meaning.

In "How Many Did Communist Regimes Murder?", Rummel wrote: "First, however, I should clarify the term democide. It means for governments what murder means for an individual under municipal law. It is the premeditated killing of a person in cold blood, or causing the death of a person through reckless and wanton disregard for their life. Thus, a government incarcerating people in a prison under such deadly conditions that they die in a few years is murder by the state—democide—as would parents letting a child die from malnutrition and exposure be murder. So would government forced labor that kills a person within months or a couple of years be murder. So would government created famines that then are ignored or knowingly aggravated by government action be murder of those who starve to death. And obviously, extrajudicial executions, death by torture, government massacres, and all genocidal killing be murder. However, judicial executions for crimes that internationally would be considered capital offenses, such as for murder or treason (as long as it is clear that these are not fabricated for the purpose of executing the accused, as in communist show trials), are not democide. Nor is democide the killing of enemy soldiers in combat or of armed rebels, nor of noncombatants as a result of military action against military targets."

In his work and research, Rummel distinguished between colonial, democratic, and authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. He defined totalitarianism as follows: "There is much confusion about what is meant by totalitarian in the literature, including the denial that such systems even exist. I define a totalitarian state as one with a system of government that is unlimited constitutionally or by countervailing powers in society (such as by a church, rural gentry, labor unions, or regional powers); is not held responsible to the public by periodic secret and competitive elections; and employs its unlimited power to control all aspects of society, including the family, religion, education, business, private property, and social relationships. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union was thus totalitarian, as was Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Hitler's Germany, and U Ne Win's Burma. Totalitarianism is then a political ideology for which a totalitarian government is the agency for realizing its ends. Thus, totalitarianism characterizes such ideologies as state socialism (as in Burma), Marxism-Leninism as in former East Germany, and Nazism. Even revolutionary Moslem Iran since the overthrow of the Shah in 1978–79 has been totalitarian—here totalitarianism was married to Moslem fundamentalism. In short, totalitarianism is the ideology of absolute power. State socialism, communism, Nazism, fascism, and Moslem fundamentalism have been some of its recent raiments. Totalitarian governments have been its agency. The state, with its international legal sovereignty and independence, has been its base. As will be pointed out, mortacracy is the result."

Estimates
In his estimates, Rudolph Rummel relied mostly on historical accounts, an approach that rarely provides accuracy compared with contemporary academic opinion. In the case of Mexican democide, Rummel wrote that while "these figures amount to little more than informed guesses", he thought "there is enough evidence to at least indict these authoritarian regimes for megamurder." According to Rummel, his research showed that the death toll from democide is far greater than the death toll from war. After studying over 8,000 reports of government-caused deaths, Rummel estimated that there have been 262 million victims of democide in the last century. According to his figures, six times as many people have died from the actions of people working for governments than have died in battle. One of his main findings was that democracies have much less democide than authoritarian regimes. Rummel argued that there is a relation between political power and democide. Political mass murder grows increasingly common as political power becomes unconstrained. At the other end of the scale, where power is diffuse, checked, and balanced, political violence is a rarity. According to Rummel, "[t]he more power a regime has, the more likely people will be killed. This is a major reason for promoting freedom." Rummel argued that "concentrated political power is the most dangerous thing on earth."

Rummel's estimates, especially about Communist democide, typically included a wide range and cannot be considered determinative. Rummel calculated nearly 43 million deaths due to democide inside and outside the Soviet Union during Stalin's regime. This is much higher than an often quoted figure in the popular press of 20 million, or a 2010s scholarly figure of 9 million. Rummel responded that the 20 million estimate is based on a figure from Robert Conquest's The Great Terror and that Conquest's qualifier "almost certainly too low" is usually forgotten. For Rummell, Conquest's calculations excluded camp deaths before 1936 and after 1950, executions (1939–1953), the forced population transfer in the Soviet Union (1939–1953), the deportation within the Soviet Union of minorities (1941–1944), and those the Soviet Red Army and Cheka (the secret police) executed throughout Eastern Europe after their conquest during the 1944–1945 period. Moreover, the Holodomor that killed 5 million in 1932–1934 (according to Rummel) is also not included. According to Rummel, forced labor, executions, and concentration camps were responsible for over one million deaths in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea from 1948 to 1987. After decades of research in the state archives, most scholars say that Stalin's regime killed between 6 and 9 million, which is considerably less than originally thought, while Nazi Germany killed at least 11 million, which is in line with previous estimates.

Communist regimes
The concept of democide has been applied by Rummel to Communist regimes. In 1987, Rudolph Rummel's book Death by Government Rummel estimated that 148 million were killed by Communist governments from 1917 to 1987. The list of Communist countries with more than 1 million estimated victims included:
 * China at 76,702,000 (1949–1987),
 * the Soviet Union at 61,911,000 (1917–1987),
 * Democratic Kampuchea (1975–1979) at 2,035,000,
 * Vietnam (1945–1987) at 1,670,000,
 * Poland (1945–1987) at 1,585,000,
 * North Korea (1948–1987) at 1,563,000,
 * Yugoslavia (1945–1987) at 1,072,000.

In 1993, Rummel wrote: "Even were we to have total access to all communist archives we still would not be able to calculate precisely how many the communists murdered. Consider that even in spite of the archival statistics and detailed reports of survivors, the best experts still disagree by over 40 percent on the total number of Jews killed by the Nazis. We cannot expect near this accuracy for the victims of communism. We can, however, get a probable order of magnitude and a relative approximation of these deaths within a most likely range." In 1994, Rummel updated his estimates for Communist regimes at about 110 million people, foreign and domestic, killed by Communist democide from 1900 to 1987. Due to additional information about Mao Zedong's culpability in the Great Chinese Famine according to Mao: The Unknown Story, a 2005 book authored by Jon Halliday and Jung Chang, Rummel revised upward his total for Communist democide to about 148 million,  using their estimate of 38 million famine deaths.

Rummel's figures for Communist governments have been criticized for the methodology which he used to arrive at them, and they have also been criticized for being higher than the figures which have been given by most scholars    (for example, The Black Book of Communism estimates the number of those killed in the USSR at 20 million ).

Right-wing authoritarian, fascist, and feudal regimes
Estimates by Rummel for fascist or right-wing authoritarian regimes include: Estimates for other regime-types include:
 * Nazi Germany at 20,946,000 (1933–1945),
 * Nationalist China (1925–1949) and later Taiwan (1949–1987) at 10,214,000,
 * Empire of Japan at 5,964,000 (1900–1945).
 * the Ottoman Empire at 1,883,000 (Armenian genocide and Greek genocide),
 * Pakistan at 1,503,000 (1971 Bangladesh genocide),
 * Porfiriato in Mexico at somewhere between 600,000 and 3,000,000 and closer to 1,417,000 (1900–1920),
 * the Russian Empire at 1,066,000 (1900–1917).

Democide in Communist and Nationalist China, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union are characterized by Rummel as deka-megamurderers (128,168,000), while those in Cambodia, Japan, Pakistan, Poland, Turkey, Vietnam, and Yugoslavia are characterized as the lesser megamurderers (19,178,000), and cases in Mexico, North Korea, and feudal Russia are characterized as suspected megamurderers (4,145,000). Rummel wrote that "even though the Nazis hardly matched the democide of the Soviets and Communist Chinese", they "proportionally killed more".

Colonial regimes
In response to David Stannard's figures about what he terms "the American Holocaust", Rummel estimated that over the centuries of European colonization about 2 million to 15 million American indigenous people were victims of democide, excluding military battles and unintentional deaths in Rummel's definition. Rummel wrote that "[e]ven if these figures are remotely true, then this still make this subjugation of the Americas one of the bloodier, centuries long, democides in world history."
 * Rummel stated that his estimate for those killed by colonialism is 50,000,000 persons in the 20th century; this was revised upwards from his initial estimate of 815,000 dead.

Democratic regimes
While democratic regimes are considered by Rummel to be the least likely to commit democide and engage in wars per the democratic peace theory, Rummel wrote that Foreign policy and secret services of democratic regimes "may also carry on subversive activities in other states, support deadly coups, and actually encourage or support rebel or military forces that are involved in democidal activities. Such was done, for example, by the American CIA in the 1952 coup against Iran Prime Minister Mossadeq and the 1973 coup against Chile's democratically elected President Allende by General Pinochet. Then there was the secret support given the military in El Salvador and Guatemala although they were slaughtering thousands of presumed communist supporters, and that of the Contras in their war against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua in spite of their atrocities. Particularly reprehensible was the covert support given to the Generals in Indonesia as they murdered hundreds of thousands of communists and others after the alleged attempted communist coup in 1965, and the continued secret support given to General Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan of Pakistan even as he was involved in murdering over a million Bengalis in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)."
 * "democracies themselves are responsible for some of this democide. Detailed estimates have yet to be made, but preliminarily work suggests that some 2,000,000 foreigners have been killed in cold blood by democracies."

According to Rummel, examples of democratic democide would include "those killed in indiscriminate or civilian targeted city bombing, as of Germany and Japan in World War II. It would include the large scale massacres of Filipinos during the bloody American colonization of the Philippines at the beginning of this century, deaths in British concentration camps in South Africa during the Boer War, civilian deaths due to starvation during the British blockade of Germany in and after World War I, the rape and murder of helpless Chinese in and around Peking in 1900, the atrocities committed by Americans in Vietnam, the murder of helpless Algerians during the Algerian War by the French, and the unnatural deaths of German prisoners of war in French and American POW camps after World War II."

title: Democide


text:
December 9

Pre-1600

 * 536 – Gothic War: The Byzantine general Belisarius enters Rome unopposed; the Gothic garrison flees the capital.
 * 730 – Battle of Marj Ardabil: The Khazars annihilate an Umayyad army and kill its commander, al-Jarrah ibn Abdallah al-Hakami.
 * 1432 – The first battle between the forces of Švitrigaila and Sigismund Kęstutaitis is fought near the town of Oszmiana (Ashmyany), launching the most active phase of the Lithuanian Civil War.
 * 1531 – The Virgin of Guadalupe first appears to Juan Diego at Tepeyac, Mexico City.

1601–1900

 * 1636 – The Qing dynasty of China, led by Emperor Hong Taiji, invades Joseon.
 * 1688 – Glorious Revolution: Williamite forces defeat Jacobites at Battle of Reading, forcing James II to flee England. (Date is Old Style; the date in the New Style modern calendar is 19 December.)
 * 1775 – American Revolutionary War: British troops and Loyalists, misinformed about Patriot militia strength, lose the Battle of Great Bridge, ending British rule in Virginia.
 * 1822 – French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel, in a memoir read to the Academy of Sciences, coins the terms linear polarization, circular polarization, and elliptical polarization, and reports a direct refraction experiment verifying his theory that optical rotation is a form of birefringence.
 * 1824 – Patriot forces led by General Antonio José de Sucre defeat a Royalist army in the Battle of Ayacucho, putting an end to the Peruvian War of Independence.
 * 1835 – Texas Revolution: The Texian Army captures San Antonio following the Siege of Béxar.
 * 1851 – The first YMCA in North America is established in Montreal.
 * 1856 – The Iranian city of Bushehr surrenders to occupying British forces.
 * 1861 – American Civil War: The Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War is established by Congress.
 * 1868 – The first traffic lights are installed, outside the Palace of Westminster in London. Resembling railway signals, they use semaphore arms and are illuminated at night by red and green gas lamps.
 * 1872 – In Louisiana, P. B. S. Pinchback becomes the first African American governor of a U.S. state following the impeachment of Henry C. Warmoth.

1901–present

 * 1905 – In France, a law separating church and state is passed.
 * 1911 – A mine explosion near Briceville, Tennessee, kills 84 miners despite rescue efforts led by the United States Bureau of Mines.
 * 1917 – World War I: Field Marshal Allenby captures Jerusalem from the Ottoman Empire.
 * 1917  – World War I: The Kingdom of Romania signs the Armistice of Focșani with the Central Powers.
 * 1922 – Gabriel Narutowicz is elected the first president of Poland.
 * 1931 – The Constituent Cortes approves a constitution which establishes the Second Spanish Republic.
 * 1935 – Student protests occur in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, and are subsequently dispersed by government authorities.
 * 1935  – Walter Liggett, an American newspaper editor and muckraker, is killed in a gangland murder.
 * 1937 – Second Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Nanking: Japanese troops under the command of Lt. Gen. Yasuhiko Asaka launch an assault on the Chinese city of Nanking.
 * 1940 – World War II: Operation Compass: British and Indian troops under the command of Major-General Richard O'Connor attack Italian forces near Sidi Barrani in Egypt.
 * 1941 – World War II: China, Cuba, Guatemala, and the Philippine Commonwealth declare war on Germany and Japan.
 * 1941  – World War II: The American 19th Bombardment Group attacks Japanese ships off the coast of Vigan, Luzon.
 * 1946 – The subsequent Nuremberg trials begin with the Doctors' Trial, prosecuting physicians and officers alleged to be involved in Nazi human experimentation and mass murder under the guise of euthanasia.
 * 1946  – The Constituent Assembly of India meets for the first time to write the Constitution of India.
 * 1948 – The Genocide Convention is adopted.
 * 1950 – Cold War: Harry Gold is sentenced to 30 years in jail for helping Klaus Fuchs pass information about the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union. His testimony is later instrumental in the prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
 * 1953 – Red Scare: General Electric announces that all communist employees will be discharged from the company.
 * 1956 – Trans-Canada Air Lines Flight 810-9, a Canadair North Star, crashes near Hope, British Columbia, Canada, killing all 62 people on board.
 * 1960 – The first episode of Coronation Street, the world's longest-running television soap opera, is broadcast in the United Kingdom.
 * 1961 – Tanganyika becomes independent from Britain.
 * 1965 – Kecksburg UFO incident: A fireball is seen from Michigan to Pennsylvania; with witnesses reporting something crashing in the woods near Pittsburgh.
 * 1968 – Douglas Engelbart gave what became known as "The Mother of All Demos", publicly debuting the computer mouse, hypertext, and the bit-mapped graphical user interface using the oN-Line System (NLS).
 * 1969 – U.S. Secretary of State William P. Rogers proposes his plan for a ceasefire in the War of Attrition; Egypt and Jordan accept it over the objections of the PLO, which leads to civil war in Jordan in September 1970.
 * 1971 – Indo-Pakistani War: The Indian Air Force executes an airdrop of Indian Army units, bypassing Pakistani defences.
 * 1973 – British and Irish authorities sign the Sunningdale Agreement in an attempt to establish a power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive and a cross-border Council of Ireland.
 * 1979 – The eradication of the smallpox virus is certified, making smallpox the first of only two diseases that have been driven to extinction (with rinderpest in 2011 being the other).
 * 1987 – Israeli–Palestinian conflict: The First Intifada begins in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
 * 1992 – American troops land in Somalia for Operation Restore Hope.
 * 1996 – Gwen Jacob is acquitted of committing an indecent act, giving women the right to be topless in Ontario, Canada.
 * 2003 – A blast in the center of Moscow kills six people and wounds several more.
 * 2006 – Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Discovery is launched on STS-116 carrying the P5 truss segment of the International Space Station.
 * 2008 – Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich is arrested by federal officials for crimes including attempting to sell the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.
 * 2012 – A plane crash in Mexico kills seven people including singer Jenni Rivera.
 * 2013 – At least seven are dead and 63 are injured following a train accident near Bintaro, Indonesia.
 * 2016 – President Park Geun-hye of South Korea is impeached by the country's National Assembly in response to a major political scandal.
 * 2016  – At least 57 people are killed and a further 177 injured when two schoolgirl suicide bombers attack a market area in Madagali, Adamawa, Nigeria in the Madagali suicide bombings.
 * 2017 – The Marriage Amendment Bill receives royal assent and comes into effect, making Australia the 26th country to legalize same-sex marriage.
 * 2019 – A volcano on Whakaari / White Island, New Zealand, kills 22 people after it erupts.
 * 2021 – Fifty-five people are killed and more than 100 injured when a truck with 160 migrants from Central America overturned in Chiapas, Mexico.

Pre-1600

 * 1392 – Peter, Duke of Coimbra (d. 1449)
 * 1447 – Chenghua Emperor of China (d. 1487)
 * 1482 – Frederick II, Elector Palatine (d. 1556)
 * 1493 – Íñigo López de Mendoza, 4th Duke of the Infantado (d. 1566)
 * 1508 – Gemma Frisius, Dutch mathematician and cartographer (d. 1555)
 * 1561 – Edwin Sandys, English lawyer and politician (d. 1629)
 * 1571 – Metius, Dutch mathematician and astronomer (d. 1635)
 * 1579 – Martin de Porres, Peruvian saint (d. 1639)
 * 1594 – Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden (d. 1632)

1601–1900

 * 1608 – John Milton, English poet and philosopher (d. 1674)
 * 1610 – Baldassare Ferri, Italian singer and actor (d. 1680)
 * 1617 – Richard Lovelace, English poet (d. 1657)
 * 1652 – Augustus Quirinus Rivinus, German physician and botanist (d. 1723)
 * 1667 – William Whiston, English mathematician, historian, and theologian (d. 1752)
 * 1717 – Johann Joachim Winckelmann, German archaeologist and historian (d. 1768)
 * 1721 – Peter Pelham, English-American organist and composer (d. 1805)
 * 1728 – Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi, Italian composer (d. 1804)
 * 1742 – Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Swedish Pomeranian and German pharmaceutical chemist (d. 1786)
 * 1745 – Maddalena Laura Sirmen, Italian violinist and composer (d. 1818)
 * 1748 – Claude Louis Berthollet, French chemist and academic (d. 1822)
 * 1752 – Antoine Étienne de Tousard, French general and engineer (d. 1813)
 * 1768 – Joseph Desha, American politician (d. 1842)
 * 1787 – John Dobson, English architect, designed Eldon Square and Lilburn Tower (d. 1865)
 * 1779 – Tabitha Babbitt, American tool maker and inventor (d. 1853)
 * 1806 – Jean-Olivier Chénier, Canadian physician (d. 1838)
 * 1813 – Thomas Andrews, Irish chemist and physicist (d. 1885)
 * 1837 – Émile Waldteufel, French pianist, composer, and conductor (d. 1915)
 * 1842 – Peter Kropotkin, Russian zoologist, economist, geographer, and philosopher (d. 1921)
 * 1845 – Joel Chandler Harris, American journalist and author (d. 1908)
 * 1850 – Emma Abbott, American soprano and actress (d. 1891)
 * 1861 – Hélène Smith, French psychic and occultist (d. 1929)
 * 1867 – Gregorios Xenopoulos, Greek journalist and author (d. 1951)
 * 1868 – Fritz Haber, Polish-German chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1934)
 * 1870 – Ida S. Scudder, Indian physician and missionary (d. 1960)
 * 1870  – Francisco S. Carvajal, Mexican lawyer and politician, president 1914 (d. 1932)
 * 1871 – Joe Kelley, American baseball player and manager (d. 1943)
 * 1873 – George Blewett, Canadian philosopher, author, and academic (d. 1912)
 * 1875 – Harry Miller, American engineer (d. 1943)
 * 1876 – Berton Churchill, Canadian-American actor and singer (d. 1940)
 * 1882 – Elmer Booth, American actor (d. 1915)
 * 1882  – Joaquín Turina, Spanish-French composer, critic, and educator (d. 1949)
 * 1883 – Nikolai Luzin, Russian mathematician, theorist, and academic (d. 1950)
 * 1883  – Alexander Papagos, Greek general and politician, 152nd Prime Minister of Greece (d. 1955)
 * 1883  – Joseph Pilates, German-American fitness expert, developed Pilates (d. 1967)
 * 1886 – Clarence Birdseye, American businessman, founded Birds Eye (d. 1956)
 * 1887 – Tim Moore, American actor (d. 1958)
 * 1889 – Hannes Kolehmainen, Finnish-American runner (d. 1966)
 * 1890 – Laura Salverson, Canadian author (d. 1970)
 * 1891 – Maksim Bahdanovič, Belarusian poet and critic (d. 1917)
 * 1892 – André Randall, French actor (d. 1974)
 * 1895 – Dolores Ibárruri, Spanish activist, journalist and politician (d. 1989)
 * 1895  – Conchita Supervía, Spanish soprano and actress (d. 1936)
 * 1897 – Hermione Gingold, English actress and singer (d. 1987)
 * 1898 – Irene Greenwood, Australian radio broadcaster and feminist and peace activist (d. 1992)
 * 1898  – Emmett Kelly, American clown and actor (d. 1979)
 * 1899 – Jean de Brunhoff, French author and illustrator (d. 1937)
 * 1900 – Margaret Brundage, American illustrator, known for illustrating pulp magazine Weird Tales (d. 1976)
 * 1900  – Albert Weisbord, American activist, founded the Communist League of Struggle (d. 1977)

1901–present

 * 1901 – Jean Mermoz, French pilot and politician (d. 1936)
 * 1901  – Ödön von Horváth, Hungarian-German author and playwright (d. 1938)
 * 1902 – Margaret Hamilton, American schoolteacher, actress and voice artist (d. 1985)
 * 1904 – Robert Livingston, American actor and singer (d. 1988)
 * 1905 – Dalton Trumbo, American author, screenwriter, and blacklistee (d. 1976)
 * 1906 – Grace Hopper, American admiral and computer scientist, designed COBOL (d. 1992)
 * 1906  – Freddy Martin, American bandleader and tenor saxophonist (d. 1983)
 * 1909 – Douglas Fairbanks Jr., American captain, actor, and producer (d. 2000)
 * 1910 – Vere Bird, first Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda (d. 1999)
 * 1911 – Broderick Crawford, American actor (d. 1986)
 * 1911  – Ryūzō Sejima, Japanese colonel and businessman (d. 2007)
 * 1912 – Tip O'Neill, American lawyer and politician, 55th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives (d. 1994)
 * 1912  – Jim Turnesa, American golfer (d. 1971)
 * 1914 – Max Manus, Norwegian lieutenant (d. 1996)
 * 1914  – Frances Reid, American actress (d. 2010)
 * 1914  – Ljubica Sokić, Serbian painter and illustrator (d. 2009)
 * 1915 – Eloise Jarvis McGraw, American author (d. 2000)
 * 1915  – Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, German-Austrian soprano and actress (d. 2006)
 * 1916 – Jerome Beatty Jr., American soldier, journalist, and author (d. 2002)
 * 1916  – Kirk Douglas, American actor, singer, and producer (d. 2020)
 * 1916  – Colin McCool, Australian cricketer (d. 1986)
 * 1917 – James Jesus Angleton, American CIA agent (d. 1987)
 * 1917  – James Rainwater, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1986)
 * 1919 – V. Dakshinamoorthy, Indian singer-songwriter (d. 2013)
 * 1919  – William Lipscomb, American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2011)
 * 1920 – Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Italian economist and politician, 10th President of Italy (d. 2016)
 * 1920  – Bruno Ruffo, Italian motorcycle racer and race car driver (d. 2007)
 * 1922 – Redd Foxx, American actor (d. 1991)
 * 1925 – Roy Rubin, American basketball player and coach (d. 2013)
 * 1926 – Henry Way Kendall, American physicist, photographer, and mountaineer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1999)
 * 1926  – Jan Křesadlo, Czech-English psychologist and author (d. 1995)
 * 1926  – David Nathan, British journalist (d. 2001)
 * 1926  – Lorenzo Wright, American sprinter and coach (d. 1972)
 * 1927 – Pierre Henry, French composer (d. 2017)
 * 1928 – Joan Blos, American author and educator (d. 2017)
 * 1928  – André Milhoux, Belgian race car driver
 * 1928  – Dick Van Patten, American actor (d. 2015)
 * 1929 – John Cassavetes, American actor, director, and screenwriter (d. 1989)
 * 1929  – Bob Hawke, Australian union leader and politician, 23rd Prime Minister of Australia (d. 2019)
 * 1930 – Buck Henry, American actor, director, and screenwriter (d. 2020)
 * 1930  – Óscar Humberto Mejía Víctores, Guatemalan soldier and politician, 27th President of Guatemala (d. 2016)
 * 1931 – Cliff Hagan, American basketball player-coach
 * 1931  – William Reynolds, American actor (d. 2022)
 * 1931  – Ladislav Smoljak, Czech actor, director, and screenwriter (d. 2010)
 * 1932 – Donald Byrd, American trumpet player and academic (d. 2013)
 * 1932  – Bill Hartack, American jockey (d. 2007)
 * 1932  – Billy Edd Wheeler, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and playwright
 * 1933 – Ashleigh Brilliant, English-American author and illustrator
 * 1933  – Milt Campbell, American decathlete and football player (d. 2012)
 * 1933  – Morton Downey Jr., American actor and talk show host (d. 2001)
 * 1933  – Orville Moody, American golfer (d. 2008)
 * 1934 – Judi Dench, English actress
 * 1934  – Alan Ridout, English composer and teacher (d. 1996)
 * 1934  – Junior Wells, American blues singer-songwriter and harmonica player (d. 1998)
 * 1938 – David Houston, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1993)
 * 1938  – Deacon Jones, American football player, sportscaster, and actor (d. 2013)
 * 1938  – Dimitrios Trichopoulos, Greek epidemiologist, oncologist, and academic (d. 2014)
 * 1940 – Clancy Eccles, Jamaican singer-songwriter and producer (d. 2005)
 * 1941 – Mehmet Ali Birand, Turkish journalist and author (d. 2013)
 * 1941  – Beau Bridges, American actor, director, and producer
 * 1941  – Dan Hicks, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2016)
 * 1942 – Billy Bremner, Scottish footballer and manager (d. 1997)
 * 1942  – Dick Butkus, American football player, sportscaster, and actor (d. 2023)
 * 1942  – Germain Gagnon, Canadian ice hockey player (d. 2014)
 * 1942  – Fred Jones, Australian rugby league player (d. 2021)
 * 1942  – Joe McGinniss, American journalist and author (d. 2014)
 * 1942  – William Turnage, American conservationist (d. 2017)
 * 1943 – Pit Martin, Canadian ice hockey player (d. 2008)
 * 1943  – Joanna Trollope, English author, playwright, and director
 * 1943  – Kenny Vance, American singer-songwriter and music producer
 * 1944 – Neil Innes, English singer-songwriter (d. 2019)
 * 1944  – Ki Longfellow, American author, playwright, and producer (d. 2022)
 * 1944  – Bob O'Connor, American businessman and politician, 57th Mayor of Pittsburgh (d. 2006)
 * 1945 – Michael Nouri, American actor
 * 1946 – David Currie, Baron Currie of Marylebone, English economist and academic
 * 1946  – Dennis Dunaway, American bass player and songwriter
 * 1946  – Sonia Gandhi, Italian-Indian politician
 * 1946  – Nicholas Reade, English bishop
 * 1947 – Tom Daschle, American soldier, academic, and politician
 * 1947  – Jaak Jõerüüt, Estonian politician, 24th Estonian Minister of Defense
 * 1947  – Allan Jones, English cricketer and umpire
 * 1948 – Marleen Gorris, Dutch director and screenwriter
 * 1948  – Jonathan Sumption, English historian, author, and judge
 * 1949 – Tom Kite, American golfer and architect
 * 1950 – Joan Armatrading, Kittian-English singer-songwriter and guitarist
 * 1952 – Liaqat Baloch, Pakistani politician
 * 1952  – Michael Dorn, American actor and voice artist
 * 1953 – Cornelis de Bondt, Dutch composer and educator
 * 1953  – World B. Free, American basketball player
 * 1953  – John Malkovich, American actor and producer
 * 1954 – Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourger lawyer and politician, Prime Minister of Luxembourg
 * 1954  – Henk ten Cate, Dutch footballer and manager
 * 1955 – Otis Birdsong, American basketball player and radio host
 * 1955  – Chamras Saewataporn, Thai singer-songwriter
 * 1956 – Sylvia, American country singer-songwriter
 * 1956  – Jean-Pierre Thiollet, French journalist and author
 * 1957 – Peter O'Mara, Australian guitarist and composer
 * 1957  – Donny Osmond, American singer-songwriter, dancer, and actor
 * 1957  – Steve Taylor, American singer-songwriter and producer
 * 1959 – Susan Bullock, English soprano
 * 1959  – Mario Cantone, American comedian, actor, and writer
 * 1960 – Stefen Fangmeier, American visual effects designer and director
 * 1960  – Caroline Lucas, English activist and politician
 * 1960  – Dobroslav Paraga, Croatian politician
 * 1960  – Juan Samuel, Dominican baseball player and manager
 * 1961 – David Anthony Higgins, American actor and screenwriter
 * 1961  – Joe Lando, American actor
 * 1962 – Felicity Huffman, American actress and producer
 * 1962  – Roxanne Swentzell, Santa Clara Pueblo (Native American) ceramic sculptor
 * 1963 – Dave Hilton Jr., Canadian boxer
 * 1963  – Empress Masako, Japanese consort of Emperor Naruhito
 * 1964 – Michael Foster, American drummer
 * 1964  – Ross Harrington, Australian rugby league player
 * 1964  – Hape Kerkeling, German actor and singer
 * 1964  – Johannes B. Kerner, German journalist and sportscaster
 * 1964  – Les Kiss, Australian rugby league player
 * 1964  – Paul Landers, German guitarist
 * 1965 – Joe Ausanio, American baseball player and coach
 * 1966 – Kirsten Gillibrand, American lawyer and politician
 * 1966  – Dave Harold, English snooker player
 * 1966  – Gideon Sa'ar, Israeli lawyer and politician, 24th Israeli Minister of Internal Affairs
 * 1966  – Martin Taylor, English footballer and coach
 * 1967 – Joshua Bell, American violinist and conductor
 * 1967  – Jason Dozzell, English footballer and manager
 * 1968 – Kurt Angle, American freestyle and professional wrestler
 * 1968  – Brian Bell, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
 * 1968  – Brent Price, American basketball player
 * 1969 – Jakob Dylan, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
 * 1969  – Saskia Garel, Jamaican-Canadian singer-songwriter
 * 1969  – Lori Greiner, American businesswoman and television personality
 * 1969  – Bixente Lizarazu, French footballer
 * 1969  – Raphaël Rouquier, French mathematician and academic
 * 1969  – Allison Smith, American actress
 * 1970 – Kara DioGuardi, American singer-songwriter and producer
 * 1970  – Lance Krall, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter
 * 1971 – Geoff Barrow, English drummer, DJ, composer, and producer
 * 1971  – Nick Hysong, American pole vaulter and coach
 * 1971  – Petr Nedvěd, Czech-Canadian ice hockey player
 * 1972 – Reiko Aylesworth, American actress
 * 1972  – Tré Cool, German-American drummer and songwriter
 * 1972  – Michael Corcoran, American singer-songwriter and producer
 * 1972  – Fabrice Santoro, Tahitian-French tennis player and sportscaster
 * 1972  – Saima Wazed, Bangladeshi psychologist
 * 1973 – Stacey Abrams, American politician and activist
 * 1973  – Fabio Artico, Italian footballer
 * 1973  – Vénuste Niyongabo, Burundian runner
 * 1973  – Bárbara Padilla, Mexican-American soprano
 * 1974 – David Akers, American football player
 * 1974  – Canibus, Jamaican-American rapper
 * 1974  – Aloísio da Silva Filho, Brazilian footballer
 * 1974  – Wendy Dillinger, American soccer player, coach, and manager
 * 1974  – Fiona MacDonald, Scottish curler
 * 1976 – Mona Hanna-Attisha, American pediatrician, professor, and public health advocate
 * 1977 – Shayne Graham, American football player
 * 1977  – Imogen Heap, English singer-songwriter and keyboard player
 * 1978 – Gastón Gaudio, Argentinian tennis player
 * 1978  – Jesse Metcalfe, American actor and musician
 * 1979 – Olivia Lufkin, Japanese-American singer-songwriter
 * 1979  – Stephen McPhail, Irish footballer
 * 1979  – Aiko Uemura, Japanese skier
 * 1980 – Simon Helberg, American actor, comedian, and musician
 * 1980  – Ryder Hesjedal, Canadian cyclist
 * 1980  – Mark Riddell, Australian rugby league player and sportscaster
 * 1981 – Mardy Fish, American tennis player
 * 1982 – Tamilla Abassova, Russian cyclist
 * 1982  – Nathalie De Vos, Belgian runner
 * 1982  – Ryan Grant, American football player
 * 1982  – Jim Slater, American ice hockey player
 * 1982  – Bastian Swillims, German sprinter
 * 1983 – Jermaine Beckford, English-Jamaican footballer
 * 1983  – Neslihan Demir Darnel, Turkish volleyball player
 * 1983  – Dariusz Dudka, Polish footballer
 * 1983  – Jolene Purdy, American actress
 * 1984 – Ángel Guirado, Spanish–Filipino footballer
 * 1984  – Leon Hall, American football player
 * 1985 – Wil Besseling, Dutch golfer
 * 1986 – Aron Baynes, Australian basketball player
 * 1987 – Kostas Giannoulis, Greek footballer
 * 1987  – Gerald Henderson Jr., American basketball player
 * 1987  – Mat Latos, American baseball player
 * 1987  – Hikaru Nakamura, Japanese-American chess player
 * 1987  – Jeff Petry, American ice hockey player
 * 1987  – Joshua Sasse, English actor
 * 1988 – Kwadwo Asamoah, Ghanaian footballer
 * 1989 – Eric Bledsoe, American basketball player
 * 1990 – Ashleigh Brewer, Australian actress
 * 1990  – Denise Hannema, Dutch cricketer
 * 1991 – Langston Galloway, American basketball player
 * 1991  – Choi Min-ho, South Korean singer and actor
 * 1993 – Mark McMorris, Canadian snowboarder
 * 1993  – Laura Smulders, Dutch cyclist
 * 1995 – Simone Fontecchio, Italian basketball player
 * 1995  – McKayla Maroney, American gymnast
 * 1995  – Kelly Oubre Jr., American basketball player
 * 1996 – Mackenzie Blackwood, Canadian ice hockey player
 * 1996  – Kyle Connor, American ice hockey player
 * 1996  – MyKayla Skinner, American gymnast
 * 2000 – Diāna Ņikitina, Latvian figure skater

Pre-1600

 * 638 – Sergius I of Constantinople
 * 730 – Al-Jarrah ibn Abdallah, Arab general
 * 748 – Nasr ibn Sayyar, Umayyad general and politician (b. 663)
 * 933 – Li Congrong, prince of Later Tang
 * 1117 – Gertrude of Brunswick, Markgräfin of Meißen
 * 1165 – Malcolm IV of Scotland (b. 1141)
 * 1242 – Richard le Gras, Lord Keeper of England and Abbot of Evesham
 * 1268 – Vaišvilkas, Prince of Black Ruthenia, Grand Duke of Lithuania
 * 1299 – Bohemond I, Archbishop of Trier
 * 1437 – Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (b. 1368)
 * 1544 – Teofilo Folengo, Italian poet (b. 1491)
 * 1565 – Pope Pius IV (b. 1499)

1601–1900

 * 1603 – William Watson, English priest (b. 1559)
 * 1625 – Ubbo Emmius, Dutch historian and geographer (b. 1547)
 * 1636 – Fabian Birkowski, Polish preacher and author (b. 1566)
 * 1641 – Anthony van Dyck, Belgian-English painter and illustrator (b. 1599)
 * 1669 – Pope Clement IX (b. 1600)
 * 1674 – Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, English historian and politician, Chancellor of the Exchequer (b. 1609)
 * 1706 – Peter II of Portugal (b. 1648)
 * 1718 – Vincenzo Coronelli, Italian monk and cartographer (b. 1650)
 * 1761  – Tarabai, Queen of Chatrapati Rajaram (b. 1675)
 * 1793 – Yolande de Polastron, French-Austrian educator (b. 1749)
 * 1798 – Johann Reinhold Forster, German pastor, botanist, and ornithologist (b. 1729)
 * 1830 – Heinrich Christian Friedrich Schumacher, Danish surgeon, botanist, and academic (b. 1757)
 * 1854 – Almeida Garrett, Portuguese journalist and author (b. 1799)
 * 1858 – Robert Baldwin, Canadian lawyer and politician, 3rd Premier of Canada West (b. 1804)
 * 1887 – Mahmadu Lamine, Senegalese religious leader

1901–present

 * 1906 – Ferdinand Brunetière, French author and critic (b. 1849)
 * 1907 – Eva Nansen, Norwegian mezzo-soprano singer and pioneer on women skiing (b. 1858)
 * 1916 – Natsume Sōseki, Japanese author and poet (b. 1867)
 * 1924 – Bernard Zweers, Dutch composer and educator (b. 1854)
 * 1930 – Rube Foster, American baseball player and manager (b. 1879)
 * 1932 – Karl Blossfeldt, German photographer, sculptor, and educator (b. 1865)
 * 1932  – Begum Rokeya, Bangladeshi social worker and author (b. 1880)
 * 1935 – Walter Liggett, American journalist and activist (b. 1886)
 * 1937 – Lilias Armstrong, English phonetician (b. 1882)
 * 1937  – Gustaf Dalén, Swedish physicist and engineer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1869)
 * 1941 – Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Russian author, poet, and philosopher (b. 1865)
 * 1943 – Georges Dufrénoy, French painter (b. 1870)
 * 1944 – Laird Cregar, American actor (b. 1913)
 * 1945 – Yun Chi-ho, South Korean activist and politician (b. 1864)
 * 1957 – Ali İhsan Sâbis, Turkish general (b. 1882)
 * 1963 – Daniel O. Fagunwa, Nigerian author and educator (b. 1903)
 * 1963  – Perry Miller, American historian, author, and academic (b. 1905)
 * 1964 – Edith Sitwell, English poet and critic (b. 1887)
 * 1965 – Branch Rickey, American baseball player and manager (b. 1884)
 * 1967 – Charles Léon Hammes, Luxembourgian lawyer and judge, 3rd President of the European Court of Justice (b. 1898)
 * 1968 – Enoch L. Johnson, American mob boss (b. 1883)
 * 1970 – Artem Mikoyan, Armenian-Russian engineer and businessman, co-founded the Mikoyan-Gurevich Design Bureau (b. 1905)
 * 1970  – Feroz Khan Noon, Pakistani politician, 7th Prime Minister of Pakistan (b. 1893)
 * 1971 – Ralph Bunche, American political scientist, academic, and diplomat, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1904)
 * 1971  – Sergey Konenkov, Russian sculptor and painter (b. 1874)
 * 1971  – Rev. Aeneas Francon Williams, Church of Scotland Minister, Missionary in India and China, writer and poet (b. 1886)
 * 1972 – Louella Parsons, American writer and columnist (b. 1881)
 * 1975 – William A. Wellman, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1896)
 * 1979 – Fulton J. Sheen, American archbishop (b. 1895)
 * 1982 – Leon Jaworski, American lawyer and politician (b. 1905)
 * 1991 – Berenice Abbott, American photographer (b. 1898)
 * 1992 – Vincent Gardenia, American actor (b. 1922)
 * 1993 – Danny Blanchflower, Northern Irish footballer and manager (b. 1926)
 * 1995 – Toni Cade Bambara, American author and academic (b. 1939)
 * 1995  – Douglas Corrigan, American pilot (b. 1907)
 * 1996 – Patty Donahue, American singer-songwriter (b. 1956)
 * 1996  – Mary Leakey, English archaeologist and anthropologist (b. 1913)
 * 1996  – Alain Poher, French lawyer and politician (b. 1909)
 * 1996  – Diana Morgan, Welsh playwright and screenwriter (b. 1908)
 * 1998 – Shaughnessy Cohen, Canadian lawyer and politician (b. 1948)
 * 1998  – Archie Moore, American boxer and actor (b. 1913)
 * 2001 – Michael Carver, Baron Carver, English field marshal (b. 1915)
 * 2002 – Mary Hansen, Australian singer and guitarist (b. 1966)
 * 2002  – Ian Hornak, American painter and sculptor (b. 1944)
 * 2002  – Stan Rice, American painter and poet (b. 1942)
 * 2003 – Norm Sloan, American basketball player and coach (b. 1926)
 * 2003  – Paul Simon, American soldier, journalist, and politician, 39th Lieutenant Governor of Illinois (b. 1928)
 * 2005 – György Sándor, Hungarian-American pianist and educator (b. 1912)
 * 2005  – Robert Sheckley, American author (b. 1928)
 * 2006 – Georgia Gibbs, American singer (b. 1919)
 * 2007 – Rafael Sperafico, Brazilian race car driver (b. 1981)
 * 2007  – Gordon Zahn, American sociologist, author, and academic (b. 1918)
 * 2008 – Ibrahim Dossey, Ghanaian footballer (b. 1972)
 * 2008  – Yury Glazkov, Russian general, pilot, and astronaut (b. 1939)
 * 2009 – Gene Barry, American actor (b. 1919)
 * 2010 – James Moody, American saxophonist, flute player, and composer (b. 1925)
 * 2010  – Dov Shilansky, Lithuanian-Israeli lawyer and politician, 10th Speaker of the Knesset (b. 1924)
 * 2012 – Béla Nagy Abodi, Hungarian painter and academic (b. 1918)
 * 2012  – Patrick Moore, English lieutenant, astronomer, and educator (b. 1923)
 * 2012  – Alex Moulton, English engineer and businessman, founded the Moulton Bicycle Company (b. 1920)
 * 2012  – Jenni Rivera, American singer-songwriter, producer, and actress (b. 1969)
 * 2012  – Charles Rosen, American pianist and musicologist (b. 1927)
 * 2012  – Riccardo Schicchi, Italian director and producer, co-founded Diva Futura (b. 1953)
 * 2012  – Norman Joseph Woodland, American inventor, co-created the bar code (b. 1921)
 * 2013 – Hristu Cândroveanu, Romanian editor, literary critic and writer (b. 1928)
 * 2013  – John Gabbert, American soldier, lawyer, and judge (b. 1909)
 * 2013  – Barbara Hesse-Bukowska, Polish pianist and educator (b. 1930)
 * 2013  – Eleanor Parker, American actress (b. 1922)
 * 2013  – John Wilbur, American football player (b. 1943)
 * 2014 – Sacvan Bercovitch, Canadian-American author, critic, and academic (b. 1933)
 * 2014  – Jane Freilicher, American painter and poet (b. 1924)
 * 2014  – Jorge María Mejía, Argentinian cardinal (b. 1923)
 * 2014  – Mary Ann Mobley, American model and actress, Miss America 1959 (b. 1937)
 * 2014  – Blagoje Paunović, Serbian footballer and manager (b. 1947)
 * 2014  – Jože Toporišič, Slovenian linguist and author (b. 1926)
 * 2015 – Soshana Afroyim, Austrian painter (b. 1927)
 * 2015  – Norman Breslow, American statistician and academic (b. 1941)
 * 2015  – Juvenal Juvêncio, Brazilian lawyer and politician (b. 1934)
 * 2015  – Julio Terrazas Sandoval, Bolivian cardinal (b. 1936)
 * 2021 – Speedy Duncan, American football player (b. 1942)
 * 2021  – Demaryius Thomas, American football player (b. 1987)
 * 2022 – Jovit Baldivino, Filipino singer and actor (b. 1993)

Holidays and observances

 * Anna's Day, marks the day to start the preparation process of the lutefisk to be consumed on Christmas Eve, as well as a Swedish name day, celebrating all people named Anna. (Sweden and Finland)
 * Armed Forces Day (Peru)
 * Christian feast day:
 * Feast of the Conception of the Most Holy Theotokos by St. Anne (Eastern Orthodox Church)
 * Juan Diego
 * Leocadia
 * Nectarius of Auvergne
 * Peter Fourier
 * December 9 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
 * Fatherland's Heroes Day (Russia)
 * Independence Day, celebrates the independence of Tanganyika from Britain in 1961. (Tanzania)
 * International Anti-Corruption Day (United Nations)
 * National Heroes Day, formerly V.C. Bird Day. (Antigua and Barbuda)
 * Navy Day (Sri Lanka)

title: December 9


text:
Diaspora studies

Diaspora studies is an academic field established in the late 20th century to study dispersed ethnic populations, which are often termed diaspora peoples. The usage of the term diaspora carries the connotation of forced resettlement, due to expulsion, coercion, slavery, racism, or war, especially nationalist conflicts.

Academic institutes

 * The International Institute for Diasporic and Transcultural Studies (IIDTS) — a transnational institute incorporating Jean Moulin University (Lyons, France), the University of Cyprus, Sun Yat-sen University (Guangzhou, China) and Liverpool Hope University (UK) — is a dedicated research network operating in a transdisciplinary logic and focused on cultural representation (and auto-representation) of diasporic communities throughout the world. The institute sponsors the trilingual publication Transtext(e)s-Transcultures: A Journal of Global Cultural Studies.

 * Nehru University's School of International Studies, www.jnu.ac.in has a strong research programme, DIMP (Diaspora and International Programme) and its faculty run a network www.odi.in (Organisation for Diaspora Initiatives), an international network of higher academic researchers focused on studying Diaspora from International Perspective and examining diaspora as a resource in international relations. ODI publishes a research journal www.tandfonline/rdst with Routledge, London.

 * Golong Gilig Institute of Javanese Diaspora Studies, Indonesia.

Select Bibliography

 * Hall, Stuart (1990). "Cultural Identity and Diaspora." From Jonathan Rutherford, e.d, Identity: Community, Culture, and Difference (Lawrence & Wishart), pp. 222-37. Available online. (Also available here .)

title: Diaspora studies