September 18

The Malbim, Rabbi Meir Leibush ben Yehiel Michel, whose analytic commentary spanned nearly the whole Hebrew Bible, died in Kiev on this day in 1879.

Walpola Rahula, the Sri Lankan monk-scholar and author of 'What the Buddha Taught,' died; he was the first bhikkhu to hold a Western professorial chair.

The French physicist Leon Foucault, whose great swinging pendulum gave a visible demonstration of the Earth's rotation and who measured the speed of light, was born in Paris.