Category: Today In History

655 – Battle of Winwaed: Penda of Mercia is defeated by Oswiu of Northumbria. 1492 – Christopher Columbus notes first recorded reference to tobacco 1532 – Pope Clemens VII tells Henry VIII to end relationship with Anna Boleyn 1660 – First kosher butcher (Asser Levy) licensed in New Amsterdam 1813 – Tax revolt in Amsterdam...

1770 – James Bruce discovers what he believes to be the source of the Nile. James Bruce was a Scottish traveler and travel writer who spent more than a dozen years in North Africa and Ethiopia, where he traced the origins of the Blue Nile. Herman Melville 1851 – Moby-Dick, a novel by Herman Melville...

1770 – James Bruce discovers what he believes to be the source of the Nile. 1851 – Moby-Dick, a novel by Herman Melville is published in the USA. Born at #6 Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan, the third child of a merchant in French dry goods. Within a few years, his father Allan Melvill moved...

1634 – Following pressure from Anglican bishop John Atherton, the Irish House of Commons passes “An Act for the Punishment for the Vice of Buggery”. 1640 – Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, impeached by the House of Lords on the evidence of John Pym, and imprisoned in the Tower of London; he was later executed....

1202 – Fourth Crusade: Despite letters from Pope Innocent III forbidding it and threatening excommunication, Catholic crusaders begin a siege of Zara (now Zadar, Croatia). 1580 – After a three-day siege, the English Army beheads over 600 people, including papal soldiers and civilians, at Dún an Óir, Ireland. 1766 – The last colonial governor of...

694 – At the Seventeenth Council of Toledo, Egica, King of the Visigoths of Hispania, accuses Jews of aiding Muslims, sentencing all Jews to slavery. 1620 – Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower sight land at Cape Cod, Massachusetts. 1851 – Kentucky marshals abduct abolitionist minister Calvin Fairbank from Jeffersonville, Indiana, and take him to Kentucky to...