Juneteenth (a portmanteau of June and nineteenth; also known as Freedom Day) is an unofficial American holiday and an official Texas state holiday, celebrated annually on the 19th of June in the United States to commemorate Union army general Gordon Granger announcing federal orders in the city of Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, proclaiming that all slaves in Texas were now free. Although the Emancipation Proclamation had formally freed them almost two and a half years earlier and the American Civil War had largely ended with the defeat of the Confederate States in April, Texas was the most remote of the slave states, with a low presence of Union troops, so enforcement of the proclamation had been slow and inconsistent. Although this day marks the emancipation of all slaves in the Conf...
The capture of Breda in June 5, 1625 was one of the major successes of Spanish arms in the latter stages of the Eighty Years’ War. The Spanish general, Genoese aristocrat Ambrogio Spinola, conquered Breda even against the instructions of his superiors. Before its capture, the Spanish government had decided that siege warfare against heavily defended towns of the Low Countries was too wasteful and that they would concentrate instead on an economic blockade of the Dutch Republic. The bulk of Spanish forces were diverted to the unfolding Thirty Years War. Breda, a city near the frontier of Holland proper had been occupied in 1567 by the Duke of Alba, ten years afterwards recovered by Holach, and again seized by Haultepenne. The town was the seat of the Orange family, who had a castle th...