630: Conquest of Mecca: Prophet Muhammad sets out with an army of 10,000 to capture Mecca 1599: Jacob van Neck’s fleet leaves Bantam, Java in modern-day Indonesia with 1 million pounds of pepper and cloves and a further half a ship full of nutmeg, mace and cinnamon 1838: First public demonstration of telegraph messages sent […]
49 BC: Julius Caesar defies the Roman Senate and crosses the Rubicon, uttering “alea iacta est” (the die is cast), signaling the start of civil war and his appointment as Roman dictator for life 1430: Catholic Order of the Golden Fleece is founded in Bruges in celebration of the prosperous and wealthy domains of Philip […]
1431: Judges’ investigations for the trial of Joan of Arc begin in Rouen, France, the seat of the English occupation government 1760: Afghans defeat the Indian Maratha Empire in the Battle of Barari Ghat 1839: Louis Daguerre demonstrates his daguerreotype photographic process to the French Academy of Sciences 1909: Ernest Shackleton, as part of the […]
1656: Oldest surviving commercial newspaper, “Weeckelycke Courante van Europa”, now known as “Haarlems Dagblad”, and still in print, begins publication in Haarlem, Netherlands 1790: First US President George Washington delivers the first State of the Union address 1835: US national debt reaches $0 for the first and only time in history 1912: Chiefs, representatives of […]
1610: Galileo Galilei discovers the first three moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa and Ganymede 1714: Typewriter patented by Englishman Henry Mill (built years later) 1941: New Fourth Army Incident: Chinese Kuomintang forces under orders from Chiang Kai-shek fire on the surrounded Communist New Fourth Army at Maolin, Anhui Province, killing or capturing about 7,000 troops […]
1649: The English Rump Parliament votes to put Charles I on trial for treason and other high crimes 1838: Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail demonstrate their telegraph machine in New Jersey 1912 Geophysicist and meteorologist Alfred Wegener presents his controversial theory of continental drift in a lecture to the Geological Association at the Senckenberg Museum […]
1477: Battle of Nancy: Swiss Confederacy led by René II decisively defeats the Duchy of Burgundy, 7,000+ killed including the Duke of Burgundy Charles the Bold 1781: British naval expedition led by Benedict Arnold burns Richmond, Virginia 1919: German Workers’ Party forms, precursor to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi) 1930: Mao Zedong writes […]
1847: Samuel Colt sells his first revolver pistol to the United States government 1865: New York Stock Exchange opens its first permanent headquarters at 10-12 Broad Street, near Wall Street, in New York City 1959: USSR’s Luna 1 (Mechta) becomes the first spacecraft to escape Earth’s gravity 1961: Longest recorded strike ends as Danish barbers’ […]
1496: Leonardo da Vinci unsuccessfully tests a flying machine 1521: Martin Luther is excommunicated by Pope Leo X from the Roman Catholic Church for refusing to recant parts of his Ninety-Five Theses, which started the Protestant Reformation 1777: General George Washington’s Revolutionary Army defeats British forces at the Battle of Princeton, New Jersey 1925: Benito […]
366: The Alamanni cross the frozen Rhine River in large numbers and invade the Roman Empire 1492: Muhammad XII, the last Emir of Granada, surrenders the city to Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, ending the Reconquista and centuries of Muslim rule on the Iberian Peninsula 1570: Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible […]
