Category: Today In History

1397 – Geoffrey Chaucer tells the Canterbury Tales for the first time at the court of Richard II. Chaucer scholars have also identified this date in 1387 as when the book’s pilgrimage to Canterbury begins. The Canterbury Tales is a collection of 24 stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by...

1178 BC – A solar eclipse may have marked the return of Odysseus, legendary King of Ithaca, to his kingdom after the Trojan War 1705 – Queen Anne of England knights Isaac Newton at Trinity College 1777 – Battle of Bennington-New England’s Green Mountain Boys rout British 1853 – The first passenger rail opens in...

1713 – Peace of Utrecht; France cedes Maritime provinces to Britain – English, Prussian, Savoois, Portuguese & French peace treaty 1775 – The last execution for witchcraft in Germany takes place. 1865 – Abraham Lincoln urges a spirit of generous conciliation during reconstruction 1868 – The Shogunate is abolished in Japan. 1890 – Ellis Island...

1667 – First public art exhibition (Palais-Royale, Paris) 1682 – Robert La Salle claims lower Mississippi (Louisiana) for France 1833 -First tax-supported public library in Peterborough, New Hampshire Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee 1865 – General Robert E. Lee and 26,765 troops, surrender at Appomattox Court House in Virginia to US General Ulysses S....

46 BC – Julius Caesar defeats Caecilius Metellus Scipio and Marcus Porcius Cato (Cato the Younger) in the battle of Thapsus. 1199 – King Richard I of England dies from an infection following the removal of an arrow from his shoulder. 1580 – One of the largest earthquakes recorded in the history of England, Flanders,...

1566 – Two-hundred Dutch noblemen, led by Hendrick van Brederode, force themselves into the presence of Margaret of Parma and present the Petition of Compromise, denouncing the Spanish Inquisition in the Seventeen Provinces. 1614 – In Virginia, Native American Pocahontas marries English colonist John Rolfe. 1621 – The Mayflower sets sail from Plymouth, Massachusetts on...