Édith Giovanna Gassion, known as Édith Piaf was born in Paris. She was named for the recently executed Edith Cavell, the British nurse.
Her parents were both entertainers, with her father being an acrobatic street performer, and her mother a singer and circus performer. She was abandoned by her mother as a child and her father enlisted in the French Army in 1916, after which she lived for a time with his mother, who owned a brothel. She joined her father as a performer at age 14 and went on to be modern France's most admired singer.
Born under hard circumstances, she lived a hard life, but is widely admired as a singer to this day. Her defiant anthem Non, Je ne regrette rien became the unofficial anthem of rebellious French Foreign Legionnaires in Algeria, and oddly enough its featured on a holiday perfume ad now. La Vie en rose is also widely heard to this day.
She died in 1962 at age 47 of liver cancer. She's buried next to her father, and her infant daughter who died at age two.
The Greek Liberal Party boycotted the Greek election over King Constantine publicly opposing that Greece remain neutral during World War I, although why anyone would have wanted into World War One is beyond me.
The Germans launched a gas attack against the British near Ypres, Belgium, using a mix of chlorine and phosgene.
Douglas Haig replaced John French as commander of the British Expeditionary Force.
Captain M.M. Bell-Irving of the No.1 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, achieved the first aerial victory by a Canadian.
Dr. Alois Alzheimer, age 51, German psychiatrist and neuroscientist who identified the first published case of "presenile dementia", Alzheimer's disease; died of heart failure.
Last edition.
