April 3 in History 686 – Maya king Yuknoom Yich’aak K’ahk’ assumes the crown of Calakmul. 801 – King Louis the Pious captures Barcelona from the Moors after a siege of several months. 1043 – Edward the Confessor is crowned King of England. 1077 – The first Parliament of Friuli is created. 1559 – The Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis treaty is signed, ending the Italian Wars. 1860 – The first…
March 30 in History 598 – Balkan Campaign: The Avars lift the siege at the Byzantine stronghold of Tomis. Their leader Bayan I retreats north of the Danube River after the Avaro-Slavic hordes are decimated by the plague. 1282 – The people of Sicily rebel against the Angevin king Charles I, in what becomes known as the Sicilian Vespers. 1296 – Edward I sacks Berwick-upon-Tweed, during armed…
March 26 in History 590 – Emperor Maurice proclaims his son Theodosius as co-emperor of the Byzantine Empire. 1027 – Pope John XIX crowns Conrad II as Holy Roman Emperor. 1169 – Saladin becomes the emir of Egypt. 1344 – The Siege of Algeciras, one of the first European military engagements where gunpowder was…
March 18 in History 1068 – An earthquake in the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula, leaves up to 20,000 dead. 1229 – Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, declares himself King of Jerusalem in the Sixth Crusade. 1241 – First Mongol invasion of Poland: Mongols overwhelm Polish armies in Kraków in the Battle of Chmielnik and plunder the city. 1314 – Jacques de Molay,…
March 11 in History 222 – Alexander Severus becomes emperor of Rome, replacing his cousin, 18-year-old Elagabalus. The bodies of the assassinated emperor and his mother, Julia Soaemias, are dragged through the streets of the city and thrown into the Tiber. 1387 – Battle of Castagnaro: English condottiero Sir John Hawkwood leads Padova to victory…
March 10 in History 241 BC – First Punic War: Battle of the Aegates: The Romans sink the Carthaginian fleet bringing the First Punic War to an end. 298 – Roman Emperor Maximian concludes his campaign in North Africa and makes a triumphal entry into Carthage. 947 – The Later Han is founded by Liu Zhiyuan.…
March 1 in History 509 BC – Publius Valerius Publicola celebrates the first triumph of the Roman Republic after his victory over the deposed king Lucius Tarquinius Superbus at the Battle of Silva Arsia. 86 BC – Lucius Cornelius Sulla, at the head of a Roman Republic army, enters Athens, removing the tyrant Aristion who was supported by…
For superstitious reasons, when the Romans began to intercalate to bring their calendar into line with the solar year, they chose not to place their extra month of Mercedonius after February but within it. February 24 — known in the Roman calendar as “the sixth day before the…
February 7 in History 457 – Leo I the Thracian becomes emperor of the Byzantine Empire. 987 – Bardas Phokas the Younger and Bardas Skleros, Byzantine generals of the military elite, begin a wide-scale rebellion against Emperor Basil II. 1301 – Edward of Caernarvon (later king Edward II of England) becomes the first English Prince of…
February 6 in History AD 60 – The earliest date for which the day of the week is known. A graffito in Pompeii identifies this day as a dies Solis (Sunday). In modern reckoning, this date would have been a Wednesday. 1579 – The Archdiocese of Manila is made a diocese…