July 2

Caught in a thunderstorm near Stotternheim, the law student Martin Luther vowed to become a monk, a turn that reshaped his life's course.

Cyril John Gadd, the British Assyriologist and Sumerologist who later kept the British Museum's cuneiform collections, was born in Bath.

Muhammad Asad, born Leopold Weiss in Lemberg (Lviv), became a traveler, writer and translator whose English rendering and commentary on the Qur'an reached readers worldwide.

Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor, author of Night, and Nobel Peace laureate who devoted his life to memory and human rights, died in New York.