August 19

Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician and Christian apologist whose 'Pensées' were published after his death, died in Paris at the age of 39.

Edward Hincks, the Irish clergyman whose work helped decipher Akkadian cuneiform, was born in Cork.

Baron Edmond de Rothschild, whose patronage supported many of the earliest Jewish agricultural settlements in Ottoman Palestine, was born in Paris.

George Smith, who first read the Mesopotamian flood account in the Epic of Gilgamesh, died at Aleppo on this day.

Swami Saradananda, direct disciple of Ramakrishna and first secretary of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission, died on 19 August 1927.

Israel's Knesset unanimously passed the Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Law, establishing Yad Vashem as the national Holocaust remembrance authority.

Sir Max Mallowan, who directed the great excavations at Nimrud, died at Greenway in Devon on this day.

Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, founder of the Satmar Hasidic dynasty and a major figure in postwar Hasidism, died in New York.

Swami Satchidananda, founder of Integral Yoga, died in Chennai on 19 August 2002.

Simin Behbahani, the Iranian poet celebrated for renewing the classical Persian ghazal, died in Tehran.