On this date in history…

(1965) American-English author T.S. Eliot, a leader of the Modernist movement in poetry in such works as The Waste Land (1922), died in London. (1965) In his State of the Union message, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson proclaimed his vision of a “Great Society” and called for an enormous program of social welfare legislation. (1960) French novelist and playwright Albert Camus, who received the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature, was killed in an automobile accident. (1948) The Southeast Asian nation of Burma (Myanmar) formally gained independence, completing the transfer of power negotiated by Burmese leader Aung San and British Prime Minister Clement Attlee in 1947. (1809) French educator Louis Braille, who developed a system of printing and writing that is extensively used by the blind and that was named for him, was born near Paris.