432: Saint Patrick, aged about 16 is captured by Irish pirates from his home in Great Britain and taken as a slave to Ireland (traditional date) 1521: Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan reaches the Philippines 1861: Italy is unified into a single kingdom under Victor Emmanuel II following the campaigns led by Giuseppe Garibaldi 1905: Albert Einstein finishes his scientific paper detailing his Quantum Theory of […]
597 BC: Babylonians capture Jerusalem, replace Jehoiachin with Zedekiah as king 1527: Battle of Khanua: Mughal Emperor Babur defeats Rajput forces led by Rana Sanga consolidating Mughal power 1660: English Long Parliament disbands 1792: King gustav iii of Sweden is shot by Count Jacob Johan Anckarström at a masked ball at the Opera; he dies on March 29 1867: First publication of an article […]
44 BC: Julius Caesar is stabbed to death by Brutus, Cassius and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March in Rome 221: Liu Bei, a Chinese warlord and member of the Han royal house, declares himself Emperor of Shu-Han, claiming legitimate succession to the Han Dynasty 1493: Christopher Columbus returns to Spain after his first voyage to the New World 1783: In […]
1590: Battle of Ivry: French King Henry IV beats Catholic League during French Wars of Religion 1794: Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin machine revolutionizing the cotton industry in the southern US states 1900: Dutch botanist Hugo de Vries rediscovers Mendel’s laws of genetics 1900: US currency goes on gold standard after Congress passes the Currency Act 1943: World War II: Kraków Ghetto […]
624: Battle of Badr: Muhammad’s Muslim forces win significant victory over Meccan army 1591: Battle at Tondibi: Moroccan army under Judar defeats Sultan Askia Ishaq II of Songhai 1781: William Herschel sees what he thinks is a “comet” but is actually the discovery of the planet Uranus 1884: Siege of Khartoum, Sudan begins by Mahdist forces, lasts 10 months 1903: Fall […]
538: Witiges, King of the Ostrogoths, ends his siege of Rome, retreats to Ravenna, leaving the city in the hands of victorious Byzantine General Belisarius 1455: First record of Johannes Gutenberg’s Bible, letter dated this day by Enea Silvio Piccolomini refers to the bible printed a year before 1642: Abel Tasman is the 1st European to sight New Zealand, viewing […]
843: Icon veneration officially re-instated in Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Constantinople 1502: Ismail I, founder of the Safavid dynasty, crowned Shah of Persia (rules till 1524) 1918: Moscow becomes capital of revolutionary Russia 1966: Military coup led by Indonesian General Suharto breaks out 1985: Mikhail Gorbachev replaces Konstantin Chernenko as Soviet leader 2011: 9.0 magnitude earthquake strikes 130 km (80 miles) east of Sendai, Japan, triggering a tsunami […]
241 BC: First Punic War: Battle of the Aegates Islands – The Romans sink the Carthaginian fleet bringing the First Punic War to an end 1783: USS Alliance under Captain Barry fights and wins last naval battle of US Revolutionary War off Cape Canaveral 1861: West African political leader El Hadj Umar Tall seizes the city of Segou, […]
141 BC: Liu Che, posthumously known as Emperor Wu of Han, assumes the throne of the Han Dynasty in China and rules for 54 years 1522: Martin Luther begins preaching his “Invocavit Sermons” in the German city of Wittenberg, reminding citizens to trust God’s word rather than violence and thus helping bring to a close the revolutionary stage […]
1531: Henry VIII recognised as supreme head of Church in England by the Convocation of Canterbury 1817: The New York Stock Exchange is founded 1867: British North America Act is passed in the House of Commons, serves as Canada’s constitution for more than 100 years 1917: Russian “February Revolution” begins in earnest with protests celebrating International Woman’s Day and riots […]
