Category: Today In History

671 – Emperor Tenji of Japan introduces a water clock (clepsydra) called Rokoku. The instrument, which measures time and indicates hours, is placed in the capital of Ōtsu. 1692 – Salem witch trials: Bridget Bishop is hanged at Gallows Hill near Salem, Massachusetts, for “certaine Detestable Arts called Witchcraft & Sorceries”. 1786 – A landslide dam on the Dadu River created...

  68 – Roman Emperor Nero commits suicide, imploring his secretary Epaphroditos to slit his throat to evade a Senate-imposed death by flogging. 1310 – Duccio’s Maestà Altarpiece, a seminal artwork of the early Italian Renaissance, is unveiled and installed in the Siena Cathedral in Siena, Italy. An altarpiece composed of many individual paintings commissioned by the city of...

632 – Muhammad, Islamic prophet, dies in Medina and is succeeded by Abu Bakr who becomes the first caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate. 793 – Vikings raid the abbey at Lindisfarne in Northumbria, commonly accepted as the beginning of Norse activity in the British Isles. 1042 – Edward the Confessor becomes King of England, one of the last Anglo-Saxon kings...

1099 – First Crusade: The Siege of Jerusalem begins. 1628 – The Petition of Right, a major English constitutional document, is granted the Royal Assent by Charles I and becomes law. It was passed by the House of Commons in 1628 in response to years of abuse by the King regarding forced billeting of soldiers, imprisonment without cause,...

1639 – Massachusetts grants 500 acres of land to erect a gunpowder mill 1664 – New Amsterdam renamed New York 1683 – The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, opens as the world’s first university museum. 1816 – 10″ snowfall in New England, “year without a summer” Mount Tambora was an active volcano on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia and swelled...

Today in History June 3 Goodyear blimp pilot Jack Boettner lands the airship Pilgrim on the roof of the M. O Neil Co. roof in downtown Akron on June 20, 1928. 350 – Roman usurper Nepotianus, of the Constantinian dynasty, proclaims himself Roman Emperor, entering Rome at the head of a group of gladiators. 1083 – Henry IV...