September 15 Through History

Explanation: The Nuremberg Laws, passed at the Nazi party congress, included the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor. They stripped Jews of German citizenship and banned marriages between Jews and non-Jews.

Explanation: Mojang Studios is the Swedish studio created by Markus 'Notch' Persson, the mind behind the famous game Minecraft. This acquisition by Microsoft is one of the biggest in the history of the video game industry, allowing the Redmond company to take ownership of one of the best-selling franchises of all time.

Explanation: Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador proclaimed their independence on the same day. Belize, on the other hand, only gained its independence much later, in 1981, after having been a British colony known as British Honduras.

Explanation: Agatha Christie, nicknamed the 'Queen of Crime', is the most translated author in the world after William Shakespeare. She created iconic characters like Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, and works such as 'Murder on the Orient Express' and 'And Then There Were None' remain classics of detective fiction.

Explanation: Konrad Adenauer was 73 years old when he took office as chancellor, making him the oldest head of government ever elected in Germany. He stayed in office until 1963, a total of 14 years, and was the architect of the German 'economic miracle' and of the Franco-German reconciliation with the Élysée Treaty signed with de Gaulle.

Explanation: The domain name 'google.com' was registered on September 15, 1997 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two students at Stanford University. The name comes from the word 'googol', which refers to the number 10 to the power of 100, symbolizing the engine's ambition to organize the vast amount of information available on the web.

Explanation: On September 15, 1940, the Royal Air Force inflicted its heaviest losses on the Luftwaffe in a single day of combat, destroying 60 German aircraft. This victory convinced Hitler to indefinitely postpone the maritime and land Operation Barbarossa against England. The United Kingdom officially celebrates 'Battle of Britain Day' on September 15 every year.

Explanation: The Cassini-Huygens mission, launched in 1997 by NASA in collaboration with ESA, lasted 20 years. The probe was deliberately plunged into Saturn's atmosphere to avoid any contamination of its moons, particularly Enceladus and Titan, which could harbor life forms. Cassini transmitted data until its final moments.

Explanation: The formation of AUKUS triggered a serious diplomatic crisis because Australia cancelled a 90 billion Australian dollar contract signed in 2016 with the French naval group for the supply of 12 conventional submarines, in favor of American and British nuclear-powered submarines. France recalled its ambassadors from Washington and Canberra, an exceptional diplomatic move between allies.

Explanation: Marco Polo spent about 17 years in the service of Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan and founder of the Yuan dynasty in China. He recounted his adventures in 'The Travels of Marco Polo' (also known as 'The Book of the Marvels of the World'), written in collaboration with Rustichello da Pisa while he was imprisoned in Genoa, a work that profoundly influenced the European vision of Asia.