624: Battle of Badr: Muhammad’s Muslim forces win a significant victory over the Meccan army 1781: William Herschel sees what he thinks is a “comet” but actually discovers the planet Uranus 1877: American Chester Greenwood patents earmuffs after inventing them at age 15 1884: Siege of Khartoum, Sudan, begins by Mahdist forces and lasts ten months […]
538: Witiges, King of the Ostrogoths, ends his siege of Rome and retreats to Ravenna, leaving the city in the hands of the victorious Byzantine general Belisarius 1455: First record of Johannes Gutenberg’s Bible, a letter dated this day by Enea Silvio Piccolomini refers to the Bible printed a year earlier 1918: Fearing foreign invasion, […]
843: Icon veneration is officially reinstated at Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Constantinople 1502: Founder of the Safavid dynasty, Ismail I, is crowned Shah of Persia (rules till 1524) 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 […]
241 BC: Battle of the Aegates Islands: Romans sink the Carthaginian fleet, ending the First Punic War 1783: USS Alliance, under Captain Barry, fights and wins the final naval battle of the American Revolutionary War off Cape Canaveral 1861: West African political leader El Hadj Umar Tall seizes the city of Ségou, destroying the Bambara […]
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 1517: copy of Martin Luther’s 95 theses, the publication of which began the Protestant Reformation in EuropeThe Protestant Reformation 1522: Martin Luther begins preaching his “Invocavit Sermons” in the German […]
1531 King Henry VIII is recognized as the supreme head of the 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 […]
161: Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius dies and is succeeded by co-emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, an unprecedented political arrangement in the Roman Empire 1530: English King Henry VIII’s divorce request is denied by Pope Clement VII 1876: Alexander Graham Bell receives a patent for the telephone in the US 1912: Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen […]
1479: Treaty of Alcáçovas: Portugal cedes the Canary Islands to Castile in exchange for claims in West Africa 1836: Battle of the Alamo: After 13 days of fighting, 1,500 to 3,000 Mexican soldiers overwhelm the Texan defenders, killing 182 to 257 Texans, including William Travis, Jim Bowie, and Davy Crockett 1857: Dred Scott Decision: US […]
363: Roman Emperor Julian moves from Antioch with an army of 90,000 to attack the Sassanid Empire in a campaign that leads to his death 1046: Persian scholar Naser Khosrow begins a seven-year Middle Eastern journey, which he later describes in his book “Safarnama” 1496: English King Henry VII grants John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) a […]
1238: Battle of the Sit River: Mongol forces of Batu Khan overcome Russians under Yuri II of Vladimir-Suzdal near Yaroslavl in Russia, ending Russian resistanc 1801: Thomas Jefferson is the first US President to be inaugurated in Washington, D.C. 1861: Abraham Lincoln is inaugurated as the 16th US President 1902: American Automobile Association (AAA) is founded […]
