Today is Record Store Day, first held in 2008 by independent record store owners as a way to celebrate and spread the word about the unique culture spinning every day in 1400 vinyl shops in the US—and thousands worldwide on six continents.

126 years ago today, Yasunari Kawabata was born. Winner of the 1968 Nobel Prize in Literature, the novelist is recognized as one of the foremost of his time, with titles such as Snow Country and Thousand Cranes held up in the country as masterpieces.

90 years ago today, Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in Akron, Ohio, by Bill Wilson—who, the previous day, drank his last drink.

On this day 110 years ago, the musician and innovator Les Paul was born in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

76 years ago today, Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell was published for the first time in the UK.

272 years ago today, the British Museum Act was given Royal Ascent by King George II, establishing what has become today the most visited museum on Earth.

Happy 96th Birthday to James Barnor, a for-years-obscure Ghanaian photographer working in London who in that obscurity amassed an astonishingly powerful collection of photographs of the city in the 1950s and 60s, of Ghana spiraling towards independence, and intimate scenes of the African diaspora negotiating post-War England. It was at age 71 that Barnor first began to be recognized for his position across history, and by 90, he had been exhibited in the Tate Modern, […]

142 years ago today, the Orient Express began its inaugural departure from Paris en route to Istanbul.

36 years ago today, in the first modern elections in Poland, Lech Walesa’s Solidarity Party of trade unionists won 160 out of 161 seats in the government, triggering the Revolutions of 1989, and quite simply, the fall of Communism, freeing Eastern Europe to pursue self-government and market capitalism. 

60 years ago today, NASA astronaut Ed White became the first American to walk in space. During the Gemini 4 mission, he opened the hatch and used a hand-held oxygen-jet gun to push himself out of the capsule and propel himself to the end of the 8-meter tether.