January 6

Alan Watts, the British writer who helped introduce Zen and other Asian traditions to Western readers, was born in Chislehurst, Kent.

Nima Yushij, widely regarded as the father of modern Persian poetry, died in Tehran.

Gregor Mendel, whose experiments with pea plants uncovered the basic laws of inheritance and founded the science of genetics, died in Brünn (Brno).

In a lecture at Frankfurt's Senckenberg Museum, meteorologist Alfred Wegener first publicly set out his idea that the continents had once formed a single landmass and slowly drifted apart.