1618: Second Defenestration of Prague: Two Catholic Lords Regent and their secretary are thrown out of a window and amazingly are not seriously injured by the 70-foot (21 m) fall; event triggers the Thirty Years’ War 1785: Benjamin Franklin describes his invention of bifocals in a letter to his friend George Whatley 1813: South American […]
334 BC: Macedonian army of Alexander the Great defeats Darius III of Persia in the Battle of the Granicus 1570: First atlas “Theatrum Orbis Terrarum” (Theatre of the World) is published by Abraham Ortelius in Antwerp with 70 maps 1843: First wagon train departs Independence, Missouri, for Oregon with 700 to 1,000 migrants 1939: Germany’s […]
1792: Mount Unzen on Japan’s Shimabara Peninsula erupts, creating a tsunami and killing about 15,000 people in the country’s deadliest volcanic eruption 1832: First US Democratic National Convention is held in Baltimore 1871: French Army attacks Paris, starting the Semaine Sanglante (Bloody Week), a weeklong battle that kills 10,000-15,000 and ends the Paris Commune 1927: […]
526: Possible date of the Antioch earthquake in the Byzantine Empire (present-day Syria), which kills 200,000 people 1498: Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama arrives in Calicut, India, becoming the first European to reach India by sea 1609: William Shakespeare’s Sonnets are first published in London, perhaps illicitly, by publisher Thomas Thorpe 1862: US President Abraham […]
1536: Anne Boleyn, second wife of English King Henry VIII, is beheaded at the Tower of London on charges of adultery, incest and treason 1643: Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven form the United Colonies of New England 1649: England is declared a Commonwealth by an act of the Rump Parliament, making England a […]
1291: After 100 years of Crusader control, the last Crusader stronghold of Acre is reconquered and destroyed by the Mamluks under Sultan al-Ashraf Khalil 1804: Napoléon Bonaparte is proclaimed Emperor of France by the French Senate 1896: Khodynka Tragedy: A stampeding crowd on Khodynka Field, Moscow, during the coronation festivities for Russian Tsar Nicholas II, […]
1792: Twenty-four merchants form the New York Stock Exchange at 70 Wall Street 1803: John Hawkins and Richard French patent the reaping machine 1861: The first color photograph, of a tartan ribbon is shown by Scottish scientist James Clerk Maxwell to the Royal Institution in London 1973: US Senate Watergate Committee begins its hearings into […]
1689: Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō leaves Edo on his epic 150-day journey to Honshu Island in Japan, which he writes about in the literary masterpiece “Oku no Hosomichi” (The Narrow Road to the Deep North) 1862: Belgian-French engineer Étienne Lenoir builds the first automobile with an internal-combustion engine 1868: US Senate fails to impeach President […]
1252: Pope Innocent IV issues the papal bull Ad Extirpanda, which authorizes but also limits the torture of heretics in the Medieval Inquisition 1618: German astronomer Johannes Kepler discovers the third of his three planetary laws, the “harmonic law” 1841: First emigrant wagon train to reach California leaves Independence, Missouri, on a 1,730-mile journey over […]
1787: Delegates gather in Philadelphia to draw up the Constitution of the United States 1796: English country doctor Edward Jenner administers his revolutionary cowpox-based vaccine for smallpox in Berkeley, Gloucestershire 1804: Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s expedition sets out from St. Louis for the Pacific Coast, commissioned by Thomas Jefferson 1853: Land surveyor, newspaper publisher, and […]
