1850: Robert McClure sights the fabled Northwest Passage for the first time (from Banks Island towards Melville Island) 1861: Pony Express (Missouri to California) ends after 19 months 1863: International conference begins in Geneva aimed at improving medical conditions on battlefields – beginning of the Red Cross 1977: Last natural case of smallpox discovered in Merca district, Somalia. Considered the anniversary […]
1415: Battle of Agincourt: Henry V’s forces defeat larger French army and the longbow defeats the armoured knight 1854: The infamous “Charge of the Light Brigade” during the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War results in over 100 killed 1962: US Ambassador to the UN Adlai Stevenson demands USSR UN rep Zorin answer regarding Cuban missile bases saying “I […]
1260: Qutuz, Mamluk Sultans of Egypt (1259-60), is assassinated by Baibars, a fellow Mamluk leader, who seizes power for himself 1648: Treaty of Westphalia ends The Thirty Years’ War in the Holy Roman Empire; Switzerland’s independence recognized 1929: “Black Thursday”, start of stock market crash, Dow Jones down 12.8% 1962: Cuban Missile Crisis: Soviet ships approach but stop short […]
42 BC: Roman Republican civil wars: Second Battle of Philippi – Brutus’s army is decisively defeated by Mark Antony and Octavian. Brutus commits suicide. 1911: 1st aerial reconnaissance mission is flown by an Italian pilot over Turkish lines during the Italo-Turkish War 1942: During WWII, Britain launches major offensive at El Alamein, Egypt 1977: Paleontologist Elso Barghoorn announces discovery of a 3.4-billion year old one-celled fossil, […]
1633: Battle of Liaoluo Bay: Dutch East India Company defeated by Chinese Ming naval forces in southern Fujian sea 1721: Tsar Peter the Great becomes “All-Russian Imperator” 1879: Thomas Edison perfects carbonized cotton filament light bulb 1884: International Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C. adopts Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) worldwide, creating 24 international time zones with longitude zero at the Greenwich meridian 1907: Panic […]
1805: Battle of Trafalgar: British Admiral Horatio Nelson defeats combined French and Spanish fleet. Nelson shot and killed during battle. 1854: Florence Nightingale with a staff of 38 nurses is sent to the Crimean War 1944: World War II: US troops capture Aachen, 1st large German city to fall 1948: UN rejects Russian proposal to destroy atomic weapons 1950: Chinese forces occupy Tibet […]
1097: 1st Crusaders arrive in Antioch during the First Crusade 1603: Chinese uprising in the Philippines fails after 23,000 killed 1803: US Senate ratifies the Louisiana Purchase 1917: US suffragette Alice Paul begins a 7 month jail sentence for protesting women’s rights in Washington 1935: Communist forces end their Long March at Yan’an, in Shaanxi, China, bringing Mao Zedong to prominence 1944: US forces under […]
202 BC: Battle of Zama: Hannibal Barca and the Carthaginian army are defeated by Roman legions under Scipio Africanus, ending 2nd Punic War 1781: British forces under General Charles Cornwallis sign terms of surrender to George Washington and Comte de Rochambeau at Yorktown at 2 pm, ending the US Revolutionary War 1926: Russian Politburo throws out Leon Trotsky and his followers 1943: Streptomycin, the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, […]
1009: The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is destroyed by the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who hacks the Church’s foundations down to bedrock 1685: French King Louis XIV revokes Edict of Nantes cancelling rights of French Protestants 1867: Alaska Purchase: US takes formal possession of Alaska from Russia, having paid $7.2 million 1931: American gangster Al Capone convicted of tax […]
1854: French and British forces bombard Sevastopol for the first time during the Crimean War 1907: Guglielmo Marconi’s company begins the first commercial transatlantic wireless service between Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada and Clifden, Ireland 1943: Burma railway completed, built by Allied POWs and Asian laborers for use of the Japanese army 1973: OPEC oil ministers use oil as an […]
