October 31

Historian Heinrich Graetz, author of the multi-volume History of the Jews, was born in Xions in the Grand Duchy of Posen.

Martin Luther dated his letter to Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz enclosing the Ninety-five Theses on indulgences, later marked as Reformation Day.

Adolf Erman, founder of the Berlin school of Egyptology and a pioneer in the study of ancient Egyptian grammar, was born on this day in 1854.

The American Zen teacher and translator Ruth Fuller Sasaki, later the first Westerner ordained a priest at a Daitoku-ji temple, was born on 31 October 1892.

Mathematician Karl Weierstrass, born 31 October 1815 in Westphalia, gave calculus its rigorous foundations and is often called the father of modern analysis.