Category: Today In History

539 BC – Cyrus the Great entered the capital of Babylon and allowed the Jews to return to their land. 1390 – First trial for witchcraft in Paris leading to the death of three people. 1618 – English adventurer, writer, and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh is beheaded for allegedly conspiring against James I of England. 1675...

285 – Execution of Saints Crispin and Crispinian during the reign of Diocletian, now the patron saints of leather workers, curriers, and shoemakers. 1616 – Dutch sea-captain Dirk Hartog makes second recorded landfall by a European on Australian soil, at the later-named Dirk Hartog Island off the West Australian coast. 1861 – The Toronto Stock...

1260 – Chartres Cathedral is dedicated in the presence of King Louis IX of France. The cathedral is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 1590 – John White, the governor of the second Roanoke Colony, returns to England after an unsuccessful search for the “lost” colonists. 1851 – William Lassell discovers the moons Umbriel, and...

1590 – Carlo Gesualdo, composer, Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, murders his wife, Donna Maria d’Avalos, and her lover Fabrizio Carafa, the Duke of Andria at the Palazzo San Severo in Naples. 1843 – Sir William Rowan Hamilton comes up with the idea of quaternions, a non-commutative extension of complex numbers. 1847 –...

1142 – A peace treaty between the Jin dynasty and Southern Song dynasty is formally ratified when a Jin envoy visits the Song court during the Jin-Song wars. 1582 – Due to the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, this date does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain. 1767 – Surveying...

1582 – Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain. 1760 – In a treaty with the Dutch colonial authorities, the Ndyuka people of Suriname– descended from escaped slaves – gain territorial autonomy. 1845 – In Annapolis, Maryland, the Naval School,...