1619: René Descartes has the dream that inspires his “Meditations on First Philosophy” 1674: Dutch formally cede New Netherlands (New York) to the English 1885: German engineer Gottlieb Daimler unveils the world’s first motorcycle 1918: Western Union Cable Office in North Sydney, Nova Scotia receives a top-secret coded message from Europe stating on November 11, 1918 all fighting would cease on land, […]
1494 Piero the Unfortunate of the de’ Medici family, ruler of Florence, loses his power and flees the state 1799: Napoleon Bonaparte pulls off a coup and becomes the dictator of France under the title of First Consul 1980: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein declares holy war against Iran 1994: Darmstadtium, Chemical element 110, discovered at GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research […]
392: Roman Emperor Theodosius declares Christian religion the state religion 1519: 1st meeting of Aztec Emperor Moctezuma II and Spanish Conquistador Hernán Cortés in Tenochtitlan, Mexico 1701: William Penn presents Charter of Privileges, guaranteed religious freedom for the colony in Pennsylvania 1734: Vincent la Chapelle, master cook to various nobility and royalty, forms Free Masons Lodge in Netherlands 1895: German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen produces and detects electromagnetic […]
1492: Ensisheim Meteorite strikes a wheat field near the village of Ensisheim in Alsace, France. Oldest meteorite with a known date of impact. 1872: Cargo ship Mary Celeste sails from Staten Island for Genoa; mysteriously found abandoned four weeks later 1917: [OS Oct 25] October Revolution in Russia; Lenin and the Bolsheviks seize power, capture the Winter Palace and overthrow the Provisional […]
1813: Chilpancingo congress declares Mexico independent of Spain 1860: Republican Abraham Lincoln of Illinois elected the 16th President of the United States of America 1913: Mahatma Gandhi arrested for leading Indian miners’ march in South Africa 1917: [OS Oct 24] Bolshevik revolution begins with bombardment of the Winter Palace in Petrograd during the Russian October Revolution 1978: Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi places the country […]
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 […]
