1066: Battle of Hastings: William, Duke of Normandy and his Norman army defeat the English forces of Harold II who is killed in the battle 1322: Robert the Bruce of Scotland defeats King Edward II of England at Byland, forcing Edward to accept Scotland’s independence 1774: 1st Continental Congress makes Declaration of Colonial Rights in […]
54: Nero succeeds Claudius as Roman Emperor 1307: French King Philip IV has Grand Master Jacques de Molay and Knights Templar arrested and charged with idolatry and corruption 1884: International Meridian Conference in Washington DC establishes Greenwich in London, England as the universal time meridian of longitude 1924: Mecca falls without struggle to Saudi forces […]
539: BC The 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: […]
1138: Earthquake in Aleppo, Syria, kills an estimated 230,000 1634: Burchardi flood – “the second Grote Mandrenke” kills about 15,000 in North Friesland, Denmark and Germany 1737: Earthquake reported to have killed 300,000 and destroyed half of Calcutta in India. Now thought to have been an exaggerated account of a hurricane which claimed 3,000 of […]
680: Al-Hussein (Al-Ḥusayn ibn) and his followers killed at Karbala by army of Yazid, the Umayyad caliph, on the way to Kufa 1780: Great Hurricane of 1780 kills 20,000 to 30,000 in the Caribbean, hitting Barbados first. Atlantic’s deadliest recorded hurricane. 1871: The Great Chicago Fire is finally extinguished after 3 days, leaving approximately 300 […]
768: Charlemagne and his brother Carloman I are crowned Kings of The Franks 1000: Leif Ericson reaches “Vinland” (possibly L’Anse aux Meadows, Canada) reputedly becoming first European to reach North America 1446: The Hangul (Korean) alphabet is first published in Korea by King Sejong the Great 1831: Ioannis Kapodistrias, first Head of State of modern Greece, assassinated in Nafplion 1941: US […]
1480: Great Stand on the Ugra river: Standoff between forces of Akhmat Khan, Khan of the Great Horde and Ivan III, Grand Prince of all Rus. Ends with a Tatar-Mongol retreat, leading to the disintegration of the Horde. 1769: Captain James Cook lands in New Zealand at Poverty Bay on the East Coast of the North Island 1856: The Second Opium […]
1571: Battle of Lepanto: Holy League of southern European nations formed by Pope Pius V destroy an Ottoman fleet in a significant loss off Western Greece 1737: A cyclone causes 40 foot waves that are believed to have killed 300,000 in Calcutta, India 1763: George III of Great Britain issues Proclamation of 1763, closing lands in North America north and west […]
1917: Battle of Passchendaele: Canadian troops capture the village of Passchendaele in the Third Battle of Ypres, after 250,000 casualties on both sides 1939: Adolf Hitler announces plans to regulate Jewish problem 1948: Earthquake in Ashgabat kills 100,000 in the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic 1948: Paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey finds the first partial fossil skull of Proconsul africanus, an ancestor of apes and […]
1274: Around 1,000 soldiers of the Mongol army land on the Japanese island of Tsushima, the first attack of Kublai Khan’s Mongol invasion of Japan 1789: French Revolution: Women of Paris march to Versailles in the March on Versailles to confront Louis XVI about his refusal to promulgate the decrees on the abolition of feudalism, demand bread, and have the King and his court […]
