1581: Commissioned by Catherine de’ Medici, the 1st ballet “Ballet Comique de la Reine” is staged in Paris 1582: Gregorian calendar introduced in Spain, Portugal and pontifical states, after skipping 10 days after Oct 4 to sync the calendar 1815: Napoleon Bonaparte arrives on island of St Helena to begin his exile 1969: Vietnam Moratorium Day; millions nationwide protest the war 1993: Nelson […]
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 Philadelphia 1867: 15th and last Tokugawa Shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu resigns 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: Greenwich in London established as the universal time meridian of longitude 1924: Mecca falls without struggle to Saudi forces led by Abdulaziz Ibn Saud 1943: Italy declares war on former Axis partner Germany 1944: US 1st army begins […]
539 BC: The 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: War of the Triple […]
1138: Earthquake in Aleppo, Syria, kills an estimated 230,000 1634: Burchardi flood – “the second Grote Mandrenke” kills about 15,000 in North Friesland, Denmark and Germany 1737: Earthquake reported to have killed 300,000 and destroyed half of Calcutta in India. Now thought to have been an exaggerated account of a hurricane which claimed 3,000 of the city’s […]
680: Al-Hussein (Al-Ḥusayn ibn) and his followers killed at Karbala by army of Yazid, the Umayyad caliph, on the way to Kufa 1780: Great Hurricane of 1780 kills 20,000 to 30,000 in the Caribbean, hitting Barbados first. Atlantic’s deadliest recorded hurricane. 1954: Ho Chi Minh enters Hanoi after withdrawal of French troops 1957: A fire at the Windscale nuclear plant […]
768: Charlemagne and his brother Carloman I are crowned Kings of The Franks 1000: Leif Ericson discovers “Vinland” (possibly L’Anse aux Meadows, Canada) reputedly becoming first European to reach North America 1446: The Hangul (Korean) alphabet is first published in Korea by King Sejong the Great 1831: Ioannis Kapodistrias, first Head of State of modern Greece, assassinated in Nafplion 1941: US […]
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 at Poverty Bay on the East Coast of the North Island 1856: The Second Opium […]
1571: Battle of Lepanto: Holy League of southern European nations destroy Ottoman fleet in 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 Proclamation of 1763, closing lands in North America north and west of Alleghenies to white settlement […]
1917: Battle of Passchendaele: Canadian troops capture the village of Passchendaele in the Third Battle of Ypres, after 250,000 casualties on both sides 1939: Adolf Hitler announces plans to regulate Jewish problem 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 […]
