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Today In History

Started by Michael of Galway, January 29, 2010, 08:43:07 AM

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Rowan MacD

   On this day in 1451; future Queen Isabella of Castile was born. Her future marriage to Ferdinand of Aragon would eventually result in the kingdom of Spain, under her grandson, Charles V.

   Her fierce Catholicism led to the expulsion of Jews from Spain and the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition.

  She also supported the voyages of Christopher Columbus, for which she best known.

  Her youngest daughter Catherine would go on to become the first Queen of Henry VIII of England. 

 
What doesn't kill me-had better run.
IWG wench #3139 
19.7% FaireFolk pure-80.3% FaireFolk corrupt

Jay Byrd

April 23

1348         The first English order of knighthood is founded.
1500         Pedro Cabal claims Brazil for Portugal.
1521         The Comuneros are crushed by royalist troops in Spain.
1661         Charles II is formally crowned king, returning the monarchy to Britain, albeit with greatly reduced powers.
1759         British forces seize Basse-Terre and Guadeloupe from France.

Born April 23

1564         William Shakespeare, English playwright and poet.

Jay Byrd

1564
William Shakespeare born



According to tradition, the great English dramatist and poet William Shakespeare is born in Stratford-on-Avon on April 23, 1564. It is impossible to be certain the exact day on which he was born, but church records show that he was baptized on April 26, and three days was a customary amount of time to wait before baptizing a newborn. Shakespeare's date of death is conclusively known, however: it was April 23, 1616. He was 52 years old and had retired to Stratford three years before.

Although few plays have been performed or analyzed as extensively as the 38 plays ascribed to William Shakespeare, there are few surviving details about the playwright's life. This dearth of biographical information is due primarily to his station in life; he was not a noble, but the son of John Shakespeare, a leather trader and the town bailiff. The events of William Shakespeare's early life can only be gleaned from official records, such as baptism and marriage records.

He probably attended the grammar school in Stratford, where he would have studied Latin and read classical literature. He did not go to university but at age 18 married Anne Hathaway, who was eight years his senior and pregnant at the time of the marriage. Their first daughter, Susanna, was born six months later, and in 1585 William and Anne had twins, Hamnet and Judith. Hamnet, Shakespeare's only son, died 11 years later, and Anne Shakespeare outlived her husband, dying in 1623. Nothing is known of the period between the birth of the twins and Shakespeare's emergence as a playwright in London in the early 1590s, but unfounded stories have him stealing deer, joining a group of traveling players, becoming a schoolteacher, or serving as a soldier in the Low Countries.

The first reference to Shakespeare as a London playwright came in 1592, when a fellow dramatist, Robert Greene, wrote derogatorily of him on his deathbed. It is believed that Shakespeare had written the three parts of Henry VI by that point. In 1593, Venus and Adonis was Shakespeare's first published poem, and he dedicated it to the young Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd earl of Southampton. In 1594, having probably composed, among other plays, Richard III, The Comedy of Errors, and The Taming of the Shrew, he became an actor and playwright for the Lord Chamberlain's Men, which became the King's Men after James I's ascension in 1603. The company grew into England's finest, in no small part because of Shakespeare, who was its principal dramatist. It also had the finest actor of the day, Richard Burbage, and the best theater, the Globe, which was located on the Thames' south bank. Shakespeare stayed with the King's Men until his retirement and often acted in small parts.

By 1596, the company had performed the classic Shakespeare plays Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. That year, John Shakespeare was granted a coat of arms, a testament to his son's growing wealth and fame. In 1597, William Shakespeare bought a large house in Stratford. In 1599, after producing his great historical series, the first and second part of Henry IV and Henry V, he became a partner in the ownership of the Globe Theatre.

The beginning of the 17th century saw the performance of the first of his great tragedies, Hamlet. The next play, The Merry Wives of Windsor, was written at the request of Queen Elizabeth I, who wanted to see another play that included the popular character Falstaff. During the next decade, Shakespeare produced such masterpieces as Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, and The Tempest. In 1609, his sonnets, probably written during the 1590s, were published. The 154 sonnets are marked by the recurring themes of the mutability of beauty and the transcendent power of love and art.

Shakespeare died in Stratford-on-Avon on April 23, 1616. Today, nearly 400 years later, his plays are performed and read more often and in more nations than ever before. In a million words written over 20 years, he captured the full range of human emotions and conflicts with a precision that remains sharp today. As his great contemporary the poet and dramatist Ben Jonson said, "He was not of an age, but for all time."

Jay Byrd

April 24

858         St. Nicholas I begins his reign as Catholic Pope.
1519         Envoys of Montezuma II attend the first Easter mass in Central America.
1547         Charles V's troops defeat the Protestant League of Schmalkalden at the battle of Muhlburg.
1558         Mary, Queen of Scotland, marries the French dauphin, Francis.
1792         Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle composes "La Marseilles". It will become France's national anthem.
- See more at: http://www.historynet.com/today-in-history#sthash.vSxxPrhu.dpuf

Born on April 24

1620   John Graunt, statistician, founder of demography.
1743   Edmund Cartwright, English parson who invented the power loom.
1766   Robert Bailey Thomas, founder of the Farmer's Almanac.
1769   Arthur Wellesley, general during the Napoleonic Wars, Duke of Wellington. - See more at: http://www.historynet.com/today-in-history#sthash.vSxxPrhu.dpuf






Jay Byrd

April 27


1296         Edward I defeats the Scots at the Battle of Dunbar.
1509         Pope Julius II excommunicates the Italian state of Venice.
1565         The first Spanish settlement in Philippines is established in Cebu City.
1773         British Parliament passes the Tea Act.
1746         King George II wins the battle of Culloden.


Jay Byrd

Today in History
May 12



254         St. Stephen I begins his reign as Catholic Pope.
1588         King Henry III flees Paris after Henry of Guise triumphantly enters the city.
1641         The chief advisor to Charles I, Thomas Wentworth, is beheaded in the Tower of London
1780         Charleston, South Carolina falls to British forces.
1851         The Tule River War ends.

Jay Byrd

Today in History
June 23

1683         William Penn signs a friendship treaty with the Lenni Lenape Indians in Pennsylvania.
1700         Russia gives up its Black Sea fleet as part of a truce with the Ottoman Empire.
1758         British and Hanoverian armies defeat the French at Krefeld in Germany.
1760         Austrian forces defeat the Prussians at Landshut, Germany.
1848         A bloody insurrection of workers erupts in Paris.

Jay Byrd

Today in History
June 24


217 BC      Carthaginian forces led by Hannibal destroy a Roman army under consul Gaius Flaminius in a battle at Lake Trasimene in central Italy.
1314       Scottish forces, led by Robert the Bruce, win an overwhelming victory against English King Edward II at the Battle of Bannockburn.
1340       The English fleet defeats the French fleet at Sluys, off the Flemish coast.
1497       Explorer John Cabot lands in North America in present-day Canada.
1509       Henry VIII is crowned King of England.
1664       The colony of New Jersey, named after the Isle of Jersey, is founded.
1647       Margaret Brent, demands a voice and a vote for herself in the Maryland colonial assembly.
1675       King Philip's War begins.
1812       Napoleon crosses the Nieman River and invades Russia.
1859       At the Battle of Solferino, also known as the Battle of the Three Sovereigns, the French army, led by Napoleon III, defeats the Austrian army under Franz Joseph I.

Jay Byrd

Today in History
June 25

841         Charles the Bald and Louis the German defeat Lothar at Fontenay.
1658         Aurangzeb proclaims himself emperor of the Moghuls in India.

Sir Ironhead

Additions to yesterday:

1876 - Battle of the Little Bighorn
1950 - Korean War starts
Debaucheteer
IBRSC #1389
Sandbox Inspector
Iron'n M'Crack
Royal Order of Landsharks #41

Jay Byrd

Today in History
June 26

1096         Peter the Hermit's crusaders force their way across Sava, Hungary.
1243         The Seljuk Turkish army in Asia Minor is wiped out by the Mongols.
1541         Former followers murder Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish Conqueror of Peru.
1794         The French defeat an Austrian army at the Battle of Fleurus.

Jay Byrd

Today in History
June 29


1236         Ferdinand III of Castile and Leon take Cordoba in Spain.
1652         Massachusetts declares itself an independent commonwealth.
1767         The British parliament passes the Townshend Revenue Act, levying taxes on America.
1862         Union forces, falling back from Richmond, fight at the Battle of Savage's Station.
1880         France annexes Tahiti.

Jay Byrd

Today in History
June 30

1520         Montezuma II is murdered as Spanish conquistadors flee the Aztec capital of Tenochtilan during the night.
1857         Charles Dickens reads from A Christmas Carol at St. Martin's Hall in London–his first public reading.
1859         Jean Francois Gravelet aka Emile Blondin, a French daredevil, becomes the first man to walk across Niagra Falls on a tightrope.
1908         A mysterious explosion, possibly the result of a meteorite, levels thousands of trees in the Tunguska region of Siberia with a force approaching twenty megatons.


Jay Byrd

Today in History
July 17

1453         France defeats England at Castillon, France, ending the Hundred Years' War.
1762         Peter III of Russia is murdered and his wife, Catherine II, takes the throne.
1785         France limits the importation of goods from Britain.
1791         National Guard troops open fire on a crowd of demonstrators in Paris.
1799         Ottoman forces, supported by the British, capture Aboukir, Egypt from the French.
1801         The U.S. fleet arrives in Tripoli.
1815         Napoleon Bonaparte surrenders to the British at Rochefort, France.