February 11

Heraclius, the Eastern Roman emperor who reformed the state in Greek and campaigned against Sasanian Persia, died of illness at Constantinople.

Auguste Mariette, founder of Egypt's Antiquities Service and excavator of the Saqqara Serapeum, was born on this day in 1821.

Josei Toda, the educator who as second president rebuilt the lay Nichiren Buddhist movement Soka Gakkai in postwar Japan, was born in Ishikawa Prefecture.

Paul Carus, the German-American editor whose widely translated 'The Gospel of Buddha' (1894) introduced many Western readers to the tradition, died in Illinois.

The Lateran Treaty was signed in Rome, establishing the sovereign state of Vatican City.

Pope Benedict XVI announced that he would resign the papacy, the first pope to do so in nearly six centuries.

Thomas Edison, the prolific American inventor behind practical incandescent lighting, the phonograph and centralized electric power distribution, was born in Milan, Ohio.

Physicists announced the first direct detection of gravitational waves, ripples in spacetime from two merging black holes recorded the previous September, confirming a prediction of Einstein's general relativity.