Author: Marisa Ollero
The Grito de Dolores. September 16, 1810.
The Grito de Dolores (Cry of Dolores) is considered to be the act that triggered the Mexican Independence War. According to Mexican tradition, a priest called Manuel Hidalgo y Costilla, together with Ignacio Allende and Juan Aldama, called his parishioners to rise up against “New Spain”. There is no documentation of who all the participants or direct witnesses were in the first hours of the indepe...
The Battle of Frigidus. September 6, 394.
The Battle of Frigidus, or the Battle of the River Frigid, took place between September 5 and 6, 394, pitting the Roman Emperor Theodosius I´s army against the army of the western usurper, Eugenius. As a result of Eugenius and his Frankish magister militum, Arbogast´s, defeat, the Roman Empire was in the hands of a sole emperor for the last time in its history. As a Christian, Theodosius was enrag...
Paris is well worth a mass. August 18, 1572.
Henry of Bourbon, King of Navarre under the name of Henry III from 1572 and 1610, lived for some time in Lower Navarre, a similar territory to the current Navarre, in Spain, although he spent most of his life in Bearne, later becoming king of France from 1589 to 1610. He was the first claimant from the House of Bourbon to reign in France, where he was known as Henry the Great (Henri le Grand) or T...
The Great Famine. August 10, 315.
The Great Famine of 1315 to 1317 is the historical name given to a catastrophic event that took place in the across northern Europe and Italy. The famine created a secular crisis known as the Crisis of the 14th century. Between 1310 and 1330, Europe experienced a long period of bad weather, with extreme temperatures in winter and cold and floods in summer. The combination of a global climate chan...
The Battle of Cannae. August 2, 216 BC.
The Battle of Cannae, an historic and decisive battle of the Second Punic War, took place on August 2, 216 BC between the Punic army, led by Hannibal Barca, and Roman troops, commanded by consuls Gaius Terentius Varro and Lucius Aemilius Paullus. The battle took place in the city of Cannae in the Apulian region to the southeast of the Italian Peninsula, and ended with the victory of the Carthagini...
The Revolt of the Batavi. August 1, 69 AD.
The Revolt of the Batavi took place in the Roman province of Germania Inferior between the years 69 and 70 AD. The revolt was led by the Batavi and other tribes from Germania and by the heir apparent Julius Civilis from Gaul, an official from the auxiliary troops. The revolt took advantage of the instability that was taking place in the Empire during the Year of the Four Emperors, with the Batavi ...
The Great Fire of Rome. July 19, 64 AD.
The apocryphal image of Nero fiddling as Rome burned has long been burned into our minds, as well, but the lack of historical eyewitnesses has always made this event a controversial matter. The Great Fire of Rome took place, according to Tacitus, on the night of the 18th to the 19th of July 64 AD (he was only at the time seven years old at the time, but the date is not in dispute). What is known i...
The Storming of the Bastille. July 14, 1789.
The Storming of the Bastille took place in Paris on July 14, 1789. Although the medieval fortress only guarded seven prisoners, its fall into the hands of the Parisian revolutionaries symbolized the end of the Ancien Régime, and was a flashpoint of the French Revolution. The surrender of the prison as a symbol of the monarchy´s power and despotism, sent shockwaves not only across France, but also ...
The city of Tyre falls to the Venetian Crusade. July 7, 1124.
The Venetian Crusade, an expedition to Holy Land launched by the Republic of Venice at the request of the Pope, took place from 1122 to 1124 and ended in victory for the crusaders when they took the city of Tyre. This victory meant the start of a period in which the Kingdom of Jerusalem expanded to its largest size under the reign of Baldwin II. On February 15, 1124, the Venetians and the Franks l...
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. June 28, 1519.
Charles I of Spain was also Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire. He was known as the “Emperor” or the “Caesar”. As Charles I, he first reigned together with his mother, Joanna I of Castille, until 1555, and was king of all the Hispanic reigns and territories, reuniting for the first time in the same person the crowns of Castille (including the kingdom of Navarre) and Aragon. He became Holy Roman E...
The Battle of La Rochelle. June 22, 1372.
The Battle of La Rochelle took place on June 22, 1372 between the Castilian fleet and the English fleet along the coast of the city of La Rochelle, France. This battle was the first phase of what would lead to the siege of La Rochelle by the French, when terrestrial and naval forces of France and Castille took the city that had been in English hands. In 1369, Charles V of France broke the Treaty o...
The Solar Eclipse of June 15, 763 BC.
A solar eclipse was recorded in the Near East on June 15, 763 BC. But wait, how can we date such an ancient event so accurately? While little is known about how time was recorded in prehistoric eras, wherever archaeologists turn up records and artifacts, we usually find that there was a concern with measuring and recording the passage of time. In the Old Testament, the Book of Amos (circa 750 BC)...