1703: Edirne Incident: Turkish army ousts Sultan Mustafa II, replacing him with his brother Ahmed III, reducing the power of the Sultan 1772: King Gustav III of Sweden completes a coup d’état by adopting a new constitution and installing himself as an enlightened despot, ending 50 years of parliamentary rule 1888: American inventor William Seward […]
1597: First Dutch East India Company ships return from the Far East 1619: Slavery begins in mainland British colonies of North America when the first known African captives (approximately 20) land at Point Comfort, Virginia, before being sold or traded into servitude [1] 1741: Alaska is first sighted by a Russian expedition led by Danish […]
43 BC: Octavian, later known as Augustus, compels the Roman Senate to elect him consul 1839: Louis Daguerre’s daguerreotype photographic process with complete working instructions is published “free to the world” in Paris as a gift from the French government 1942: World War II: Over 4,000 Canadian and British soldiers are killed, wounded, or captured during […]
1737: First public admission to the Salon de Paris art exhibition at the Louvre in Paris 1838: United States Exploring Expedition headed by Charles Wilkes departs for the Pacific Ocean and Antarctica 1919: Anti-Cigarette League of America forms in Chicago, Illinois 1920: State Representative Harry T. Burn (24) casts the deciding vote in Tennessee’s and […]
1590: Governor of Roanoke Island colony John White returns from England to find no trace of the colonists he left there three years earlier [or August 18, 1591] 1903: Joseph Pulitzer donates $1 million to Columbia University and begins the Pulitzer Prizes in the United States 1945: Korea is divided into North and South Korea […]
1513: Battle of the Spurs at Guinegate (now Enguinegatte): King Henry VIII of England and Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I defeat French forces, capturing the town and routing the French cavalry 1858: Britain’s Queen Victoria telegraphs US President James Buchanan for the first time via transatlantic telegraph cable; he replies, “It is a triumph more […]
1461: Empire of Trebizond surrenders to forces of Sultan Mehmed II, the last remnant of the Byzantine Empire to fall; Emperor David is exiled and later executed 1620: The Mayflower sets sail from Southampton, England, with 102 Pilgrims bound for the New World 1900: Chinese Empress Dowager Cixi, her family, and court retainers flee Peking […]
1281: During Kublai Khan’s second Mongol invasion of Japan, his invading Chinese fleet of 3,500 vessels disappears in a typhoon near the Japanese coast 1842: US Army Colonel Worth declares the Second Seminole War over after nearly seven years; over 3,000 surviving members of the Seminole Nation are forcibly relocated from Florida to Oklahoma, with […]
1521: Spanish conquistadors led by Hernán Cortés capture Aztec Emperor Cuauhtémoc in Tenochtitlan, bringing the Aztec Empire to an end 1536: Buddhist monks from Kyoto’s Enryaku-ji Temple set fire to 21 Nichiren temples throughout Kyoto in the Tenbun Hokke Disturbance (Traditional Japanese date: July 27, 1536) 1642: Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens discovers Mars’s southern polar […]
1121: Battle of Didgori: Georgian army under King David the Builder wins a decisive victory over the renowned Seljuk commander Ilghazi 1480: Ottoman troops conquer Otranto in southern Italy after a 15-day siege, killing 12,000, enslaving 5,000, and beheading 800 Christians for refusing to convert to Islam 1851: American inventor Isaac Singer patents his famous […]
