1346: Battle of Crécy: Edward III’s English longbows defeat Philip VI’s army south of Calais in northern France; cannons are used for the first time in battle 1682: English astronomer Edmond Halley first observes the comet named after him 1873: The first free kindergarten in the United States is started by Susan Blow in Carondelet, […]
1609: Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers, including the Doge (ruler) of Venice, Leonardo Donato 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] 1718: Hundreds of French colonists arrive […]
79: Believed until 2018 to be the date of the massive eruption of Mt. Vesuvius which buried the cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis and Stabiae, killing untold thousands, latest evidence suggests the eruption occurred after 17 October [1] [2] 410: Rome is overrun by Visigoths under Alaric I for the first time in nearly 800 […]
1305: Scottish patriot William Wallace is executed for high treason by Edward I of England at Smithfield, London 1542: Rabbi Joseph Caro completes his major work, the “Beit Yosef,” a voluminous commentary on the “Arba’ah Turim” code 1942: Battle of Stalingrad: 600 Luftwaffe planes bomb Stalingrad, killing 40,000 people 1943: Battle of Kursk, the largest […]
1485: Battle of Bosworth Field: Henry Tudor’s forces defeat English King Richard III during the last battle in the Wars of the Roses. Richard is killed, becoming the last English monarch to die in battle. 1639: Madras (now Chennai), India, is founded by the British East India Company on a sliver of land bought from […]
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 fifty years of parliamentary rule 1888: American inventor William Seward […]
1597: First Dutch East India Company ships return from the Far East 1741: Alaska is first sighted by a Russian expedition led by Danish explorer Vitus Bering 1905: Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen forms the first chapter of Tongmenghui, a union of secret societies determined to bring down the Qing dynasty 1968: 250,000 Soviet and Warsaw […]
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 […]
1590: Governor of Roanoke Island colony John White returns from England to find no trace of the colonists he left there three years earlier 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 […]
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 along the 38th parallel 1945: Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta declare Indonesia (formerly the Dutch East Indies) independent from the Netherlands 1947: The Radcliffe Line is revealed, setting the […]
