1494: Piero the Unfortunate of the de’ Medici family, ruler of Florence, loses power and flees the state 1799: Napoleon Bonaparte pulls off a coup and becomes the dictator of France under the title of First Consul 1867: Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the 15th and last Tokugawa Shogun in Japan, resigns due to intense political pressure from […]
392: Roman Emperor Theodosius I declares Christianity the state religion 1519: First meeting of Aztec Emperor Moctezuma II and Spanish Conquistador Hernán Cortés in Tenochtitlan, Mexico 1701: William Penn presents the Charter of Privileges, guaranteeing religious freedom for the colony of Pennsylvania 1734: Vincent La Chapelle, master cook to various nobility and royalty, forms a […]
1492: Ensisheim Meteorite strikes a wheat field near the village of Ensisheim in Alsace, France. Oldest meteorite with a known date of impact. 1872: Cargo ship Mary Celeste sails from Staten Island for Genoa and is mysteriously found abandoned four weeks later 1917: October Revolution in Russia; Lenin and the Bolsheviks seize power, capture the […]
1813: Congress of Chilpancingo declares Mexico independent from Spain 1860: Republican Abraham Lincoln of Illinois is elected the 16th President of the United States of America 1913: Mahatma Gandhi is arrested for leading an Indian miners’ march in South Africa 1917: Bolshevik Revolution begins with the bombardment of the Winter Palace in Petrograd during the […]
1492: Christopher Columbus learns how to grow and harvest maize (corn) from Cuba’s Indigenous population 1556: Second Battle of Panipat: Hindu Emperor of North India Hem Chandra Vikramaditya is defeated by forces of Mughal Emperor Akbar, who captures and later beheads Hem Chandra 1605: Catholic conspirator Guy Fawkes attempts to blow up King James I […]
1576: Eighty Years’ War: In Flanders, the Spanish defeat the Walloons and capture Antwerp 1841: The first wagon train arrives in California after a five-and-a-half-month, 1,730-mile journey over the Sierra Nevada from Missouri [1] 1845: First nationally observed uniform election day in the United States, the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November 1862: American […]
644: The second Muslim caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab, is injured in an assassination attempt in Medina by Lu’lu, an enslaved Persian captive. The caliph dies four days later. 1534: English Parliament passes the Act of Supremacy, making Henry VIII and all subsequent monarchs the Head of the Church of England 1620: Great Patent granted to […]
1875: Verney Cameron reaches Benguela in Angola from Africa’s east coast, the first European to cross equatorial Africa from sea to sea 1917: British government proclaims support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine in the Balfour Declaration 1930: Coronation of Ras Tafari Makonnen as Haile Selassie I, the 225th Emperor of the Ethiopian Solomonic Dynasty […]
1755: Lisbon earthquake kills more than 50,000 in Portugal 1814: Congress of Vienna opens to re-draw the European political map after the defeat of France, in the Napoleonic Wars 1894: Vaccine for diphtheria is announced by Dr. Émile Roux of Paris 1916: Paul Miliukov delivers in the Russian State Duma the famous “stupidity or treason” speech, […]
1517: Martin Luther sends his Ninety-five Theses to Albert of Brandenburg, Archbishop of Mainz, precipitating the Protestant Reformation 1541: Michelangelo finishes painting “The Last Judgment” on the altar wall of the Sistine Chape in Vatican City [1] 1876: Great Backerganj Cyclone of 1876 ravages British India (modern-day Bangladesh), killing over 200,000 1917: British War Cabinet […]
