1633: Battle of Liaoluo Bay: Dutch East India Company is defeated by Chinese Ming naval forces in the southern Fujian Sea 1721: Tsar Peter the Great titles himself “Emperor of All Russia” 1879: Thomas Edison perfects the carbonized cotton filament light bulb 1884: International Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C. adopts Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) worldwide […]
1805: Battle of Trafalgar: British Admiral Horatio Nelson defeats the combined French and Spanish fleet. Nelson is shot and killed during the battle. 1854: Florence Nightingale, with a staff of 38 nurses, is sent to the Crimean War 1944: US troops capture Aachen, the first large German city to fall in World War II 1948: […]
1097: The first Crusaders reach Antioch in northern Syria during the First Crusade 1603: Chinese uprising in the Philippines fails after 23,000 people are killed 1803: US Senate ratifies the Louisiana Purchase 1917: US suffragette Alice Paul begins a seven-month jail sentence for peacefully picketing in support of the Women’s Suffrage (right to vote) Amendment […]
202 BC: Battle of Zama: Hannibal Barca and the Carthaginian army are defeated by Roman legions under Scipio Africanus, ending the Second Punic War 1781: British forces under General Charles Cornwallis sign terms of surrender to George Washington and Comte de Rochambeau at Yorktown at 2 p.m., effectively ending the American Revolutionary War 1943: Streptomycin, […]
1009: Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is destroyed by the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who hacks the church’s foundations down to the bedrock 1685: French King Louis XIV revokes the Edict of Nantes, canceling the rights of French Protestants 1867: US takes formal possession of Alaska from Russia, after paying $7.2 million […]
1854: French and British forces bombard Sevastopol for the first time during the Crimean War 1907: Guglielmo Marconi’s company begins the first commercial transatlantic wireless service between Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada and Clifden, Ireland 1943: Burma Railway, built by Allied POWs and Asian laborers, is completed for use by the Japanese army 1973: OPEC […]
1813: Battle of Leipzig begins; the largest battle in Europe prior to World War I, sees Napoleon’s forces defeated by Prussia, Austria, and Russia after 3 days [1] 1900: Great Britain and Germany sign the Yangtze Agreement, agreeing to maintain the territorial integrity of China and support the “Open Door” policy called for by the […]
1581: The first ballet “Ballet Comique de la Reine,” commissioned by Catherine de Medici, is staged in Paris Pope Gregory XIII with the calendar that was to make his nameGregory Conquers Julius Caesar 1582: Gregorian calendar is introduced in Spain, Portugal, and the Papal States after skipping 10 days from October 4 to sync the […]
54: Nero succeeds Claudius as the Emperor of the Roman Empire; Agrippina the Younger is thought to have murdered Claudius, her husband, with poisonous mushrooms to secure the succession for her son Nero 1307: French King Philip IV has Grand Master Jacques de Molay and the Knights Templar arrested and charged with idolatry and corruption […]
539 BC: 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: Brazilian […]
