1659: First known cheque written (£400), now on display at Westminster Abbey 1840: American Charles Wilkes discovers the Shackleton Ice Shelf in Antarctica 1923: Howard Carter opens the inner burial chamber of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb and finds the sarcophagus 1959: Fidel Castro becomes the 16th Prime Minister of Cuba after overthrowing Fulgencio Batista 2005: […]
399 BC: Philosopher Socrates is sentenced to death by the city of Athens for corrupting the minds of the youth of the city and for impiety 590: Khosrau II, the last great Sasanian king, is crowned King of Persia 1763: Austria, Prussia and Saxony sign the Treaty of Hubertusburg, marking the end of the French […]
1014: Pope Benedict VIII crowns Henry II Holy Roman Emperor 1076: Pope Gregory VII excommunicates Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV for the first time 1797: Battle of Cape St. Vincent: British fleet under Admiral Sir John Jervis defeats larger Spanish fleet under Admiral Don José de Córdoba y Ramos near Cape St. Vincent, Portugal. Captain […]
1258: Baghdad, then a city of 1 million, falls to the Mongols as the Abbasid Caliphate is destroyed, with tens of thousands slaughtered, ending the Islamic Golden Age 1601: A fleet of five British East India Company vessels departs on its first voyage from London, led by James Lancaster commanding the “Red Dragon”; the journey […]
1700: Great Northern War begins in Northern Europe between Denmark–Norway, Saxony, Russia, and the Swedish Empire 1912: The last Qing Emperor of China, Puyi (age 6), abdicates after losing the support of the Chinese people and thus the “mandate of heaven” 1947: French fashion designer Christian Dior presents his first influential collection, named the “New […]
660 BC: Traditional date for the founding of Japan by Emperor Jimmu 1858: First vision of the Virgin Mary to 14-year-old Bernadette of Lourdes, France 1929: Vatican City, the world’s smallest country, becomes an enclave of Rome 1945: Declaration of Liberated Europe is signed at the Yalta Conference by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and […]
60: St. Paul is thought to have been shipwrecked at Malta 1720: Edmond Halley is appointed as the second Astronomer Royal at the Greenwich Observatory 1763: Treaty of Paris ends the French-Indian War, France agrees to surrender Canada to Great Britain 1824: Simón Bolívar is named dictator by the Congress of Peru 1906: British battleship […]
1775: British Parliament declares Massachusetts Colony in rebellio 1897: Invasion of Benin City by British Expeditionary Force; the city is burned and looted, ending the Nigerian Kingdom of Benin formed in the 11th century 1904: Japanese torpedo boats launch a surprise attack on Russian ships at the Port Arthur naval base in Manchuria, beginning the […]
1587: Mary, Queen of Scots, is beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle at age 44 after being convicted of plotting to assassinate Elizabeth I in the Babington Plot 1672: Isaac Newton reads his first optics paper before the Royal Society in London 1807: Battle of Eylau ends inconclusively between Napoleon’s forces and the Russian Empire, first battle […]
1301: Edward of Caernarfon (later Edward II) becomes the first English Prince of Wales 1842: Battle of Debre Tabor: Ras Ali Alula, Regent of the Emperor of Ethiopia, defeats warlord Wube Haile Maryam of Semien 1856: Colonial Tasmanian Parliament passes the first piece of legislation, the Electoral Act of 1856, anywhere in the world providing […]
