1576: Eighty Years’ War: In Flanders, Spanish defeat Walloon and capture Antwerp 1841: First wagon train arrives in California after a five and a half month and 1,730 mile journey over the Sierra Nevada from Missouri 1845: First nationally observed uniform election day in the United States, the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November 1862: American inventor Richard […]
644: Umar ibn al-Khattab, second Muslim caliph, is killed in Medina by Lu’lu, an enslaved Persian captive 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 Plymouth Colony 1640: English Long Parliament forms 1906: International Radiotelegraph Conference in Berlin selects “SOS” (· · · […]
1875: Verney Cameroon reaches Benguela in Angola, from Africa’s east coast, 1st European to cross equatorial Africa 1917: Balfour Declaration proclaims support for a Jewish state in Palestine 1930: Coronation of Ras Tafari Makonnen as Haile Selassie I, 225th Emperor of Ethiopian Solmonic Dynasty 1949: The Netherlands recognizes its former colony Indonesia as a sovereign state 1966: The Cuban Adjustment Act comes into […]
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 announced by Dr Émile Roux of Paris 1916: Paul Miliukov delivers in the Russian State Duma the famous “stupidity or treason” speech, precipitating the downfall of the […]
1517: Martin Luther sends his 95 Theses to Albrecht von Brandenburg, the Archbishop of Mainz, precipitating The Protestant Reformation 1541: Michelangelo Buonarroti finishes painting “The Last Judgement” in the Sistine Chapel, Vatican City 1876: Great Backerganj Cyclone of 1876 ravages British India (Modern-day Bangladesh), over 200,000 killed 1918: Spanish Flu kills 21,000 people in the US in a single week 2011: The world population […]
1340: Battle of Rio Salado (or Tarifa): King Afonso IV of Portugal and King Alfonso XI of Castile defeat Sultan Abu al-Hasan ‘Ali of Morocco and Yusuf I of Granada, last Marīnids invasion of Iberian Peninsula 1899: Battle of Ladysmith, Natal: Boers defeat the British, leading to the Siege of Ladysmith 1905: “October Manifesto” Russian Tsar Nicholas II grants civil […]
539 BC: King Cyrus “the Great” of Persia marches into Babylon, freeing Jewish captives and allowing them to return home 1268: Conradin, the last legitimate male heir of the German Hohenstaufen dynasty of Kings and Holy Roman Emperors, is executed with Frederick I, Margrave of Baden by Charles I of Sicily 1665: Battle of Mbwila [Ambuila]: Portuguese defeat […]
1492: Christopher Columbus sights Cuba and claims it for Spain under the name “Juana” 1538: The first university in the New World, the Universidad Santo Tomás de Aquino, is established on Hispaniola 1746: Peruvian cities of Lima and Callao demolished by earthquake, 18,000 die 1904: St Louis police try a new investigation method – fingerprints 1919: Volstead Act passed by US […]
312: Roman Emperor Constantine the Great is said to have received his famous Vision of the Cross 1795: Pinckney’s Treaty [Treaty of San Lorenzo] signed by Spain and US, establishing the southern boundary of the US and giving Americans right to navigate the Mississippi River 1962: Black Saturday during the Cuban Missile Crisis: An American spy plane is shot down over Cuba […]
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 […]
