Category: Today In History

1440 – Gilles de Rais, one of the earliest known serial killers, suspected to have killed hundreds of children, is taken into custody upon an accusation brought against him by the Jean de Malestroit, Bishop of Nantes. Sentenced to execution by hanging and burning, the French serial killers died on October 26 of that year....

1541 – After three years of exile, John Calvin returns to Geneva to reform the church under a body of doctrine known as Calvinism. 1609 – Henry Hudson reaches the river that would later be named after him 1814 – In a turning point in the War of 1812, the British fail to capture Baltimore....

1609 – Henry Hudson begins his exploration of the Hudson River while aboard the Half Moon 1938 – Adolf Hitler demands autonomy and self-determination for the Germans of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. 1953 – U.S. Senator and future President John Fitzgerald Kennedy marries Jacqueline Lee Bouvier at St. Mary’s Church in Newport, Rhode Island....

1776 – The Continental Congress officially names its new union of sovereign states the ‘United States’. 1791 – Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, is named after President George Washington. 1947 – First case of a computer bug: A moth lodges in a relay of a Harvard Mark II computer at Harvard University....

1264 – The Statute of Kalisz, guaranteeing Jews safety and personal liberties and giving battei din (rabbinical court) jurisdiction over Jewish matters, is promulgated (established as law) by Boleslaus the Pious, Duke of Greater Poland. 1655 – Warsaw falls without resistance to a small force under the command of Charles X Gustav of Sweden during...

1764 – Election of Stanisław August Poniatowski as the last ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Otherwise known as The Commonwealth, this dualistic state came into being through the Union of Lublin, establishing an elective monarchy. The union was necessary directly for the Lithuanians, offering the nation adequate defense from the growing Russian empire. The elected...