March 5

Cecil Roth, the English historian who became editor-in-chief of the Encyclopaedia Judaica, was born in London.

Austen Henry Layard, the excavator of Nimrud and Nineveh who recovered the Assyrian palace reliefs and the library of Ashurbanipal, was born.

Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, whose copying of the Behistun inscription helped open the reading of cuneiform, died in London.

Karl Rahner, the Jesuit theologian whose thought helped shape the Second Vatican Council, was born in Freiburg im Breisgau.

Italian physicist Alessandro Volta, who built the first electric battery, the voltaic pile, and gave his name to the volt, died at Como.

French mathematician and astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace, known for celestial mechanics and foundational work in probability, died in Paris on the same day as Alessandro Volta.