1240: Mongols led by Batu Khan occupy and destroy Kyiv after an 8 day siege; out of 50,000 people in the city only 2,000 survive 1865: 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution is ratified, abolishing slavery (except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,) 1921: Anglo-Irish Treaty signed; Ireland receives dominion status; partition creates […]
771: Charlemagne becomes the sole King of the Franks after the death of his brother Carloman 1349: 500 Jews of Nuremberg massacred during Black Death riots 1456: Earthquake strikes Naples; about 35,000 die 1848: US President James K. Polk triggers gold rush of 1849 by confirming a gold discovery in California 1933: Prohibition ends in the US when 21st Amendment to the US Constitution ratified, 18th Amendment repealed […]
1534: Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent occupies Baghdad 1563: Council of Trent holds its last session, after 18 years. Last ecumenical council for more than 300 years. 1619: 38 colonists from Berkeley Parish, England disembark in Virginia and give thanks to God. Considered by many The First Thanksgiving in the Americas. 1791: Britain’s “The Observer” is first published, the oldest Sunday newspaper in […]
1804: General Napoleon Bonaparte is crowned Emperor of the French at the Notre Dame de Paris in a ceremony officiated by Pope Pius VII 1823: US President James Monroe declares the “Monroe Doctrine” opposing European colonialism in the Americas, arguing any European political intervention in the New World would be a hostile act against the United States 1845: US President James K. Polk announces to Congress that […]
1913: Ford Motor Company institutes world’s 1st moving assembly line for the Model T Ford 1934: Leningrad mayor Sergey Kirov is assassinated, Joseph Stalin uses it as an excuse to begin his Great Purge of 1934-38 1955: Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to move to the back of a bus and give her seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama 1988: Benazir […]
1016: Cnut the Great [Canute], King of Denmark, claims the English throne after the death of Edmund ‘Ironside’ 1487: The first German Beer Purity Law (Reinheitsgebot), is promulgated in Munich by Albert IV, Duke of Bavaria stating beer should be brewed from only three ingredients – water, malt and hops 1648: English Parliamentary army captures King Charles I 1786: Grand Duke of Tuscany Leopold […]
526: A possible date for the Antioch earthquake in present-day Syria (then the Byzantine Empire) which killed 200,000 people 1745: Bonnie Prince Charlie’s army moves into Manchester and occupies Carlisle 1877: US inventor Thomas Edison demonstrates his hand-cranked phonograph for the first time 1935: Physicist Erwin Schrödinger publishes his famous thought experiment “Schrödinger’s cat”, a paradox that illustrates the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of […]
1520: Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan begins crossing the Pacific Ocean 1814: The Times of London first printed by automatic, steam powered presses built by German inventors Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer – makes newspapers available to a mass audience 1893: Women vote in a national election for the first time, in the New Zealand general election 1919: American-born Lady Nancy Astor elected as […]
1095: Pope Urban II preaches the west to wrestle control of the Holy land from the Seljuk Turks at the Council of Clermont, triggering the First Crusade 1295: English King Edward I calls what later became known as “The Model Parliament” extending the authorities of its representatives 1493: Christopher Columbus returns to La Navidad colony, finding it destroyed by the 1st […]
43 BC: Second Triumvirate alliance of Roman leader Octavian (later Caesar Augustus), Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, and Mark Antony formed 1778: British explorer Captain James Cook is the first European to visit Maui in the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii) 1789: 1st national Thanksgiving in America 1791: 1st US cabinet meeting, held at George Washington’s home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Secretary […]
