On this day in 1634, the first immigrant arrived in the British colony at Maryland, which later formed the core of the U.S. state of the same name. Maryland is particularly interesting because it was reserved for the settlement of Catholic from Great...
Hitler used August Wilhelm for propaganda purposes because the prince gave the Nazi regime greater prestige. Prince August Wilhelm of Prussia died on this date in 1949 in the city of Stuttgart. He was the fourth of six sons of the last German emperor...
Titan is larger than even the planet Mercury. Its surface area is 83 million square kilometers, approximately equal to the territory of Europe, Asia and Africa put together. Saturn’s moon Titan was discovered on this day in 1655. It is the only satel...
On this day, the famous Treaty of Rome was signed, which is the foundation of today’s European Union. It established the European Economic Community (EEC), the forerunner of the EU. This historic agreement was signed in the Palace of the Conservators...
Marshal Joachim Murat became King of Naples, and also received titles of Grand Duke of Berg, Grand Admiral of the French Empire, and Prince of France. Napoleon’s Marshal Joachim Murat, the man whom Bonaparte showered with higher honors than any other...
According to legend, Venice was founded on on this day in 421, exactly at noon. The founding was characterized by the sanctification of the first church, that of St. James (San Giacomo) at the Rialto. Thus, the Rialto area is considered the oldest in...
On this day in 1199, the mighty English king Richard the Lionheart suffered a deadly wound. Namely, on that evening he was shot by a crossbowman while walking around a castle in France, which he wanted to seize. This was the Châlus castle in the Fren...
On this day the Kingdom of Yugoslavia joined the Tripartite Pact, whose membership included Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan. The treaty was signed by representatives of Yugoslavia’s government, which was at that time led by Dragiša Cv...
Napoleon's sister Carolina Bonaparte was born on this day in 1782. She was 13 years younger than Napoleon, which means she was only an 11-year-old child at the time he became a general. When Napoleon took power in France, she was only 17. She fell in...
On this day Saudi Arabia an unusual assassination of the reigning king occurred. Namely, King Faisal was killed by none other than his younger nephew of the same name – Faisal. The young Prince Faisal was the son of the king’s half-brother, who retu...
Sark is a small island (just over five square kilometers) located near Guernsey in the English Channel, just south of Great Britain and around 35 km west of Cherbourg in France. While technically part of the UK, it was mostly autonomous until recentl...
The British kings Edward VII, George V and George VI were the direct male descendants of Ernest of Saxony. Ernest, Elector of Saxony was the last man who ruled over the whole of Saxony. Namely, in 1485 he gave part of Saxony to his younger bro...
Elvis Presley already had a great musical and film career behind him when he was drafted into the U.S. Army on this day in 1958. He became a soldier at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. His arrival at the base was a big media event, accompanied by hundreds of...
One of the most famous Islamic rulers throughout history – the renowned Harun al-Rashid – died on this day. He ruled over a vast expanse from India in the east to about present-day Algeria in the west. Today, the area of his former state is occupied...
The fighting bull Ratón managed to kill as many as three people over the course of his career, which earned him the nickname “The Killer Bull” (Spanish: El toro asesino). This day in 2013 marked the death of the Spanish bull Ratón, known from...
Bach dedicated the Brandenburg Concerts to the wealthy Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg, who was the younger brother of Frederick I Hohenzollern, the first King of Prussia. Today's date marks the anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach's dedication of s...
On this day Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated while celebrating Mass at a chapel in a hospital called “La Divina Providencia” in San Salvador. Such an unprecedented blasphemous act was committed, as the investigation showed, by the members of...
On this day the British Parliament passed a law that granted Catholics substantially increased political freedom in Britain. Namely, British Catholics were often persecuted in earlier times, and laws were directed against them to the extent that the...
On this day British king Charles II granted a huge territory in North America to his faithful supporters, who had helped him reclaim the throne after the Civil War. Namely, the British monarchy had been abolished in the time of Oliver Cromwell, and t...
The thrones of England and Scotland were united on this day in 1603. This took place at the moment when English queen Elizabeth I was succeeded by her cousin, Scottish king James I from the Stuart dynasty. The two thrones have remained under the same...
Jules Verne, probably the most translated author in the world after Agatha Christie, died on this day at the age of 77 at his home in the French city of Amiens. He died from complications caused by diabetes. During his fruitful career, he wrote an in...
Gulbenkian was one of the first entrepreneurs who searched for oil deposits in what is now Iraq. This day in 1869 marked the birth of Calouste Gulbenkian, one of the wealthiest Armenians in history. He was born near Istanbul in a time when most of th...
On this day in 1849, the Austrian Army achieved one of its most famous victories in the 19th century. Namely, it defeated the army of the Kingdom of Sardinia in the Battle of Novara, which was attempting to expand its area of influence to the parts o...
Emperor Paul I was the son of the famous empress Catherine the Great and he succeeded her when she died in 1796. Russian emperor Paul I was assassinated in St. Petersburg on this day in 1801. More precisely, he was killed by the conspirators while he...
On this day in 2001 the Russian space station Mir was taken out of the Earth’s orbit deliberately and in a controlled manner. Interestingly, the Mir station is the largest man-made celestial body taken out of orbit thus far. Namely, it had a total ma...
Listening to the flight data recorders from the black box revealed that two unauthorized passengers were present in the cockpit – the pilot’s 12-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son. On this day 75 people were killed in the crash of the Russian airc...
On this day Adolf Hitler was able to enact one of the most important documents for the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship in the German Parliament (Reichstag). Namely, on this day, the infamous “Enabling Act” (German: Ermächtigungsgesetz) was pas...
On this day in 1839, the phrase OK appeared in the U.S. newspaper The Boston Morning Post for the first time in the history of print. Today it is a universally understood sign of approval. Although there are many theories about what the abbreviation...
Claude Alexandre de Bonneval, a very interesting person with an unusual fate, died on this day in 1747. He was born into an aristocratic French family. He became a soldier and eventually progressed through the ranks of the army of the powerful French...
On this day in 1998 the film Titanic won a record number of Academy Awards in the history of cinematography. It was nominated for 14 Academy Awards and won 11. By the number of Oscars won, only two other films can match Titanic, both with fewer nomin...
