1581: Commissioned by Catherine de’ Medici, the first ballet “Ballet Comique de la Reine” is staged in Paris Pope Gregory XIII with the calendar that was to make his nameGregory Conquers Julius Caesar 1582: Gregorian calendar is introduced in Spain, Portugal and the Papal States, after skipping 10 days from October 4 to sync the […]
1066: Battle of Hastings: William, Duke of Normandy and his Norman army defeat the English forces of Harold II who is killed in the battle 1322: Robert the Bruce of Scotland defeats King Edward II of England at Byland, forcing Edward to accept Scotland’s independence 1774: 1st Continental Congress makes Declaration of Colonial Rights in […]
54: Nero succeeds Claudius as Roman Emperor 1307: French King Philip IV has Grand Master Jacques de Molay and Knights Templar arrested and charged with idolatry and corruption 1884: International Meridian Conference in Washington DC establishes Greenwich in London, England as the universal time meridian of longitude 1924: Mecca falls without struggle to Saudi forces […]
539: BC Army of Cyrus the Great of Persia takes Babylon 1279: Nichiren, a Japanese Buddhist monk, founder of Nichiren Buddhism, inscribes the Dai-Gohonzon 1492: Christopher Columbus’s expedition makes landfall on a Caribbean island he names San Salvador (likely Watling Island, Bahamas). The explorer believes he has reached East Asia (OS 21 Oct) 1864: Brazilian troops […]
1138: Earthquake in Aleppo, Syria, kills an estimated 230,000 people 1634: Burchardi flood, known as the second “Grote Mandrenke,” kills about 15,000 in North Friesland, Denmark, and Germany 1737: An earthquake is reported to have killed 300,000 and destroyed half of Calcutta in India, now thought to have been an exaggerated account of a hurricane […]
680: Al-Hussein (Al-Ḥusayn ibn) and his followers are killed at Karbala by the army of Yazid, the Umayyad caliph, on their way to Kufa 1780: The Great Hurricane of 1780 hits Barbados and goes on to kill 20,000 to 30,000 people in the Caribbean, making it the Atlantic’s deadliest recorded hurricane 1871: The Great Chicago […]
768: Charlemagne and his brother Carloman I are both crowned King of the Franks 1000: Leif Ericson reaches “Vinland” (possibly L’Anse aux Meadows, Canada), reputedly becoming the first European to reach North America 1446: Korean Hangul alphabet is first published by King Sejong the Great 1831: Ioannis Kapodistrias, the first Head of State of modern […]
1480: Great Stand on the Ugra river: Standoff between forces of Akhmat Khan, Khan of the Great Horde and Ivan III, Grand Prince of all Rus. Ends with a Tatar-Mongol retreat, leading to the disintegration of the Horde. 1769: Captain James Cook lands in New Zealand for the first time, near present-day Gisborne on the […]
1571: Battle of Lepanto: Holy League of southern European nations formed by Pope Pius V destroy an Ottoman fleet in a significant loss off Western Greece 1737: A cyclone causes 40-foot waves that are believed to have killed 300,000 in Calcutta, India 1763: George III of Great Britain issues the Proclamation of 1763, closing lands […]
1917: Battle of Passchendaele: Canadian troops capture the village of Passchendaele in the Third Battle of Ypres, after 250,000 casualties on both sides 1948: Earthquake in Ashgabat kills 100,000 in the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic 1948: Paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey finds the first partial fossil skull of Proconsul africanus, an ancestor of apes and humans on […]
