History postslu... er Game

[Celsus]

Ok, let's see if we can start something that's both fun and educational, and begs for a History subforum. The rules of the game are simple. You start with a year, describe an event in that year, and then something else related to that topic leading to a different year. The next person uses that year to come up with another connection ending in yet another year. Bonus points for using something related to the previous poster's subject as well. You can give as much or as little information as you like, and Google and Wikipedia are your friends--the fun is in drawing the connections to see where our time machine ends up, plus picking up cool and completely useful, life-changing trivia along the way.

I'll begin with something not completely unfamiliar, using two connections as an example, lest we get into the 8th century and talking about Nestorian monks. Plus, I mention the Nazis right from the start so as to kick Godwin out the window.

1933 saw the election of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany. He was said to have been fond of music by Richard Wagner, who finally completed his opera, Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung, but usually known as just the Ring) in 1874.

Joel

[Dingfod]

1874 saw Hawaii sign a trade agreement with the USA. Hawaii became the 50th state in 1959.

[Celsus]

1959 was the year Singapore became self-governing, on the road to independence from the British. The last British colony to gain independence was Hong Kong in 1997.

[Ensign Steve]

1997: Simi Valley, CA, experienced twin earthquakes (http://www.trinet.org/eqreports/old/29January02-171705.html). Okay not exactly history, but I remember them well because I was 7 months pregnant and all I wanted to do was sleep!

The "twin" quakes were right before dawn, about 24 hours apart, and they woke me up two mornings in a row, shortly after having fallen asleep very late, due to pregnancy insomnia. The second time it happened, I was like, "GIVE ME A BREAK!" This was supposed to be an autobiography thread, right?

1989: 6.9 earthquake hits San Francisco, CA. Collapses Bay Bridge and interrupted World Series game at Candlestick Park.

[livius drusus]

In 1989 pro-democracy student demonstrations in Tienanmen Square are violently suppressed by the Chinese army. A terracotta version of a Chinese army is buried in Emperor Quin's mausoleum in 210 BC.

[Celsus]

210 BC marked the death of the Qin Emperor Shih Huang Di. During his reign he had many Chinese books burned to restrict freedom of thought, particularly those of Confucius. "Confucian values" were a reason for the success of East Asia, according to former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. Ironically, he had graduated from Cambridge University in 1949.

[Edit: Hang on... did I just cheat at my own game? Is that too much the same thing?]

[beyelzu]

1949 saw the creation of nato. nato, north atlantic treaty orginization was an alliance dedicated to stopping the evil communist bastards. the evil communist bastards stopped themselves with the fall of the berlin wall in 1989

[livius drusus]

[Edit: Hang on... did I just cheat at my own game? Is that too much the same thing?]

You totally cheated, Celsus. I'm shocked and appalled. That's okay, though. bey's reused a date from 2 posts before, so I think we can afford to be charitable.

[beyelzu]

[Edit: Hang on... did I just cheat at my own game? Is that too much the same thing?]

You totally cheated, Celsus. I'm shocked and appalled. That's okay, though. bey's reused a date from 2 posts before, so I think we can afford to be charitable.
I thought it was kind of clever, plus lots of shit happened in 89, shit that I remember, which is cool.

[Dingfod]

1989 was the year I moved to Salt Lake City, an unmitigated disaster of a decision, the worst one since I was born in 1955.

[beyelzu]

in 1955 the evil soviet union signed the warsaw pact a defensive treaty with other communist nations which strikes me as ironic since no one has invaded russia successfully in what seems like forever. Napoleon lost his ass when he tried to do it in 1812

[beyelzu]

1989 was the year I moved to Salt Lake City, an unmitigated disaster of a decision, the worst one since I was born in 1955.
you ok?


a smilie would alleviate my worry if you are.

[Dingfod]

:slide:

[livius drusus]

1812 was when the US declared war on Britain and invaded Canada, of all places, which is where the Dionne quintuplets were born in 1934.

[Dingfod]

1934, in May a dust storm in Oklahoma kicked off what is known as The Dust Bowl. Will Rogers, cowboy philosopher and newpaperman, was born outside Claremore, Oklahoma Indian Territory in 1879.

[Crumb]

1879 Ablert Eistein is born, revolutionizes physics (and the world) and then dies in 1955.

ETA: Ablert Eistein is rumored to have suffered from dyslexia... heh

[Dingfod]

1955, West Germany joined NATO. NATO was founded in 1949.

[The Lone Ranger]

In 1949 Great Britain formally recognized the independence of the Republic of Ireland. Brian Boru, the king who united Ireland, died in 1014.

[Dingfod]

Damn, that's going to be a hard one.

[Ensign Steve]

Denmark defeats England:

After deposing his father, Harald Gormsson, Blue-Tooth, from the throne, Svein became king of Denmark in 985. From 994, on, he made a career out of attacking England and received the notorious Danegeld paid by Æthelred II. In 1013, Svein returned to England, not for more Danegeld, but with the idea of capturing the throne. On this expedition, he took with him, his son, Knut Sveinsson, who would later rule England as Canute I. The thought of engaging Svein and his son, Knut, in battle apparently did not thrill Æthelred, and caused him to vacate his throne in favor of a safe haven in Normandy. The vacant throne was seized by Svein, who held it for a mere five weeks. He died in February, 1014. source (http://www.britannia.com/history/monarchs/mon16.html)

2004: England defeats Denmark (http://www.thefa.com/England/U19s/NewsAndFeatures/Postings/2004/04/England_vDenmark_preview.htm)

[beyelzu]

in 1014 Henry II was crowned Holy Roman Emperor. He advocated far reaching church reform. Centuries later the catholic church would actually engage in reform during the second Vatican Counsel in 1962




everyone say thank you for the return to modern times

damn, too slow.


ignore this post

[Ensign Steve]

You're welcome.

[beyelzu]

You're welcome.
yeah, but mine flowed better.


:tmtongue:

[beyelzu]

in 2004 the supreeme court decided to leave the words under god in the pledge which probably would have come as surprise to the orignator of the pledge, Francis Bellamy, as he made no mention of god when he authored the pledge in 1892

[Celsus]

1892 was the year Arthur Conan Doyle published the detective story, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The first "detective" story may well have been the Apocryphal addition to Daniel known as Bel and the Dragon where our intrepid detective uncovers a secret plot by Babylonian temple priests to remove food offered to the god Bel, and claim that Bel actually ate it while everyone was asleep. The canonical Daniel itself fails to anticipate the death of the object of its polemic, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and so is dated to about 165 BC.

New rule: Anything before 2000 BC can have a margin of error of a century, and anything between that and 1 AD can have a margin of error of 10 years, anything from 1 AD to 1000 AD a margin of 5 years, so that people (I) won't stoop to devious cheating or be afraid to plop a date down that's completely obscure (or do it to try and kill my game. You know who you are).

[Ensign Steve]

Okay, but what do you define as devious cheating? In your OP you said "Google and Wikipedia are your friends" and I totally cited my source. I hope you don't think that I cheated.

[Dingfod]

165 B.C. Judas Maccabeus defeats the rulers of Palestine in the Battle of Beth Zur, leading to the recapture of Jerusalem. Israelis took control of Jerusalem in 1967.

[Celsus]

Okay, but what do you define as devious cheating? In your OP you said "Google and Wikipedia are your friends" and I totally cited my source. I hope you don't think that I cheated.
Don't worry, I was just kidding. Now if I were to mention the Six Day War in reply to Warrenly (in which Jerusalem was captured), that would be cheating, just like what I did when I mentioned the death of the Qin emperor since Liv was talking about the teracotta warriors buried in his tomb. Naturally I suck at my own game.

1967 was the year the Congo uprising began, led by Belgian mercenaries fighting against Belgian troops. King Leopold of Belgium was the one who originally began the "scrable for Africa" by organising a conference to open up its interior in 1876.

[livius drusus]

In 1876 the Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho beat the living shit out of Custer at the battle of Little Big Horn. The US army got them back fourteen years later by killing hundreds of Sioux men, women and children at Wounded Knee.

[The Lone Ranger]

In 1890 Vincent Van Gogh committed suicide. Don McLean's song "Vincent" ("Starry, Starry Night") reached Number One in 1972.

[Celsus]

The Munich Olympics were held in 1972, where a group of Palestinian terrorists killed the 11 Israeli athletes being held hostage after a rescue plan broke. Israeli-Palestinian tensions can be traced back to at least the period following the First World War, when the Balfour Declaration allowed Jews to begin returning to Palestine in 1917

[Dingfod]

November 1917, Russia got the first communist government led by Vladimir Lenin (not his real name), starting an era that ended with the last communist leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who became General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1985.

[livius drusus]

In 1985, one Alexey Pajitnov wrote a few silly lines of code and called it Tetris. Naturally it was owned by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, so he never saw a shiny red cent for his enormous genius, but was driven into the spindly arms of the ultimate in capitalist pigdog technology: Bill Gates of Microsoft.

Speaking of whom, in 1976 he for the first but oh so not the last time publically stated that people stealing his programs were inhibiting good software from being written.

[Crumb]

In 1976 I was born! On a related note in 1973 my older sister was born, exactly 3 years and 4 days before I would be.

[The Lone Ranger]

Speaking of whom, in 1976 he for the first but oh so not the last time publically stated that people stealing his programs were inhibiting good software from being written.
Pretty ironic, considering that an excellent case can be made that practically everything Microsoft has put out was stolen from somebody else.



In 1976 I was born! On a related note in 1973 my older sister was born, exactly 3 years and 4 days before I would be.


In 1973 Theodosius Dobzhansky published his famous essay Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution (http://www.2think.org/dobzhansky.shtml). Darwin published the Origin of Species in 1859.

[Dingfod]

N/A

[xouper]

In 1859, Bernhard Riemann published his famous Hypothesis about the zeta function, which remains the most celebrated and studied problem in mathematics to this day. A relationship between the zeta function and the value of Pi was proven in 1735 by Leonard Euler, when he published his solution to the Basel Problem.

[Celsus]

Carolus Linnaeus published his Systema Naturae in 1735. This ordering of biological species was a necessary component for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution as expounded in The Origin of Species... which was preceded by Alfred Russell Wallace's publication On the Law Which has Regulated the Introduction of Species in 1855.

[xouper]

Astronomer Percival Lowell was born in 1855. He founded the Lowell Observatory (http://www.lowell.edu/) in Arizona. He was convinced there were canals on Mars. He died in 1916.

[Dingfod]

Allied forces withdrew from Gallipoli in 1916. Mel Gibson was in Gallipoli, the 1981 movie about that battle.

[Shaguar]

1981 Ronald Reagan became the fortieth president of the USA, according to some he was to win the cold war single handed thereby easing the worlds fears of nuclear obliteration, he was born in 1911 the same year that radioactive babe Marie Curie won the Nobel prize for chemistry

[Celsus]

In 1911, Sun Yat-Sen became president of China, leading a nationalist party that was to hold on to power till the Communists sent them packing to Taiwan in 1949

[Dingfod]

In 1949 the Tucker Automobile Corporation was shut down by bankruptcy, ending production having only produced 51 of the very innovative automobile designed by Preston Tucker, born 1903.

[Crumb]

January 1, 1903 - Edward VII of the United Kingdom is proclaimed Emperor of India. On the 15th of August, 1947, India became completely independent.

[Dingfod]

August 7, 1947 - Thor Heyerdahl's balsa wood raft the Kon-Tiki, smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands after a 101 day 4,300 mile journey across the Pacific Ocean proving that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America. Thor Heyerdahl made a similar voyage in a papyrus barge, Ra II, sailing from Safi, Morocco to Barbados in 1970.

[viscousmemories]

1970 saw the launch of the 'routine' space flight of Apollo 13, resulting in the popularization of the phrase, "Houston, we have a problem."

Ron Howard directed a star-studded cast (including Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, Ed Harris, Kevin Bacon and Gary Sinise) in Apollo 13, the 1995 film on the subject.

[Dingfod]

In January 1995, a 7.3 magnitude earthquake does tremendous damage in Kobe, Japan. Almost a decade later, a large earthquake off Sumatra triggers a tsunami that devastates coastal areas all around the eastern Indian Ocean, 2004.

[viscousmemories]

In 2004, the Freethought Forum was born! One of the co-founders, viscousmemories, was born 36 years earlier in 1968.

[xouper]

On Christmas Eve 1968, Apollo 8 was the first manned spacecraft to orbit the Moon. This is what astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders saw first-hand:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/earthrise_apollo8.gif

Image courtesy of http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov

Lovell went on to command Apollo 13.

The astronauts of Apollo 1 -- Edward White, Gus Grissom, and Roger Chaffee -- died on the launch pad when their spacecraft caught fire, January 1967.

[viscousmemories]

1967 saw the death of the Cuban revolutionary, Ernesto ("Che") Guevara. Che made Time magazine's 100 Most Important People in the 20th Century (http://www.time.com/time/time100/heroes/profile/guevara01.html), and graced the magazine's cover in 1960.

[BigBlue2]

1960 saw the election of John F Kennedy to the Presidency of the United States. The poor chap got himself assassinated in 1963 by eithe Lee Harvey Oswald or a conspiracy involving the Mafia/CIA/Fidel castro/various space aliens/George W. Bush.

[xouper]

In 1960, Captain Joseph Kittinger Jr. set a world skydiving record when he jumped from a balloon at 102,800 feet and plummeted 84,700 feet before opening his parachute. He is the first and only person to reach supersonic speeds in freefall. His altitude record remains unsurpassed. Kittinger was born in Tampa, Florida in 1928.



Edited to add: I didn't see BigBlue's post. Damn you Blue!! :D

And I had a really good one too. :ptht: :ptht:

OK, to make my end date the same as BigBlue's and preserve continuity, in 1963, Kittinger began the first of his three tours of duty in Vietnam, eventually getting shot down near Hanoi and held captive for over a year. Kittinger was awarded the Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross, Harmon Trophy and a host of other military and civilian awards.

[ChuckF]

In 1963, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Hotline Agreement, which established a direct link between the leaders of the two countries. The Hotline was designed to reduce the risk of retaliation in the event of a nuclear accident on either side.

The first transatlantic communications cable was a telegraph cable laid in 1858.

[beyelzu]

in 1858 Max Plank of Plank's constant fame was born. He was the father of quantum physics. Dragar start his quantum physics thread (http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1874) in 2005

[xouper]

In March 2005, Steve Fossett made aviation history when he became the first person to fly an airplane solo non-stop around the world without refueling. The first ever non-stop flight around the world without refueling was in 1986, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager.


2005: http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/03/03/globalflyer.fossett/
1986: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaled_Composites_Voyager

[Crumb]

On March 8th 1986 Japanese spacecraft Suisei flies by Halley's Comet, studying its UV hydrogen corona and solar wind. Historical records show that Chinese astronomers observed the comet in 240 BC.

[Clutch Munny]

In 240 BC Hippoclides and Polystratus, two philosophers of the Epicurean school, are said to have died on the same day; in 1936 the academic supervisor of my supervisor's supervisor, philosopher Moritz Schlick -- himself a supervisee of Planck -- was shot and killed by a student disgruntled about the grade he received on an essay.

[xouper]

The Hindenburg made its first flight in 1936. With a length of 804 feet (only 78 feet shorter than the Titanic), it still holds the record as the world's largest airship. By comparison, the largest Boeing 747 is only 231 feet long. The Hindenburg made its last flight in 1937.

[ChuckF]

In 1937, Neville "Peace in our Time" Chamberlain became Prime Minister of Great Britain. He was proven very, very wrong in in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland and started World War II in Europe.

[xouper]

The Heinkel He-178, the world's first jet airplane, flew in 1939, at Rostock, Germany.

http://www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org/LRG/images/he178-2.jpg
Image courtesy of http://www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org




The North American YF-100, the world's first supersonic jet airplane, broke the sound barrier on its first flight in 1953, piloted by civilian George Welch.

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/aircraft/fighter/f100/yf100_01.jpg
Image courtesy of http://www.aerospaceweb.org

[Dingfod]

1953 saw the FCC reverse it's 1951 decision and approve the RCA/NTSC color television system. That was quite an advance over the television tube envisioned by a 14 year old Philo Farnsworth while riding a tractor in 1920.

[The Lone Ranger]

Due to complaints by farmers about the poor performance of tractors, the Nebraska Tractor Test Laboratory was opened in 1920, to test and rate various models of farm tractors for reliability and performance. In 1804, the first U.S. Government explorers reported back from what is today Nebraska (but was then part of the newly-purchased Louisiana Territory), describing it as a "vast wasteland."

[Dingfod]

Thomas Jefferson won reelection in the 1804 Presidential election. Jefferson, one of the "Founding Fathers" was the primary author of The Declaration of Independence, which when signed in 1776 marked the founding of The United States of America.

[livius drusus]

In December of 1776, Washington crossed the Delaware to capture Trenton. The guy in the boat painting (http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/gw/el_gw.htm) him finally got around to finishing it in 1851.

[beyelzu]

in 1851 Daniel Wilson coined the phrase prehistory, "the period of human evolution before writing was invented and records kept" from here (http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0840048.html). Prehistory ended when people started writing shit circa 6000 bc

[The Lone Ranger]

The earliest known use of ships comes from Egyptian rock drawings dating back to roughly 6,000 B.C.E.. These depict crescent-shaped vessels made of reeds that had no keels and were rowed.

The first "modern" battleship (that is, a battleship whose main guns were all of the same calibre) was the H.M.S. Dreadnought, launched in 1906.

[Clutch Munny]

In 1906 political theorist Hannah Arendt was born. She went on to coin the phrase "the banality of evil" in reference to Nazi efficient-murder maven Adolf Eichmann (also born, dammit, in 1906).

Given her noted expertise in anti-Semitism, it caused a bit of an uproar when it came to light that she'd had a brief affair with unapologetic one-time Nazi party member Martin Heidegger... who died in 1976.

[Dingfod]

1976 was celebrated as the U.S. Bicentennial. Australia's Bicentennial twelve years later celebrated the arrival of the first settlers at Botany Bay in 1788.

[livius drusus]

In 1788 Edward Gibbon finished The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He talks about one emperor -- Julian -- for 4 chapters. Henrik Ibsen wrote a play about Julian -- Emperor and Galilean -- in 1873.

[Celsus]

Between 1873 and 1874, George Smith discovered and translated the famous Enuma Elish tablets at Babylon. Originally thought to confirm the Biblical Creation and Flood stories, it was soon found that they predated the Biblical picture by anywhere between 1200 years and 1900 years, the earliest examples of this myth dating as they did to the 22nd century BC.

Joel

[Crumb]

2150 BC Mentuhotep II Reunifies Egypt - After a period of strife between the nobles and the Kings known as the First Intermediate Period, King Menthuotep reunited the Kingdom under a new dynasty.

1865 Abraham Lincoln and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant reunify the USA. :wink:

[Celsus]

Damn. I swear I'll kill this thread yet.

1865 saw the foundation of the Salvation Army. A real Christian Army that goes around killing people in the name of God traces itself at least as far back as 1063, with the Papal authorisation for Spaniards to attack Moorish cities set set up under Moorish invasions in the century prior.

Joel

[Dingfod]

In 1063, Sancho I becomes ruler of Aragon. The real center of commerce for Aragon was Barcelona. Legend has it that Barcelona was founded by Hamilcar Barca, father of Hannibal. Hannibal Barca defeated the Romans in battles at the river Trebia, Lake Trasimene, and Cannae between 218 and 216 BCE.

[viscousmemories]

Construction of the largest Romanesque cathedral in Tuscany, the Pisa Cathedral (http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/pisa/pisacathedral.html), began in 1063.

http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/pisa/distant.jpg

Pisa saw the birth of Galileo Galilei in 1564, the same year Michelangelo died.

ETA: Damn! I took too long. Oh well, it's pretty so I'm leavin' it. Just pay no attention to me over here.

[viscousmemories]

Back on track...

The Romans suffered their greatest defeat in history during the Second Punic War in 216 BCE, losing 50-80,000 soldiers to Hannibal in the battle at Cannae.

Sir Anthony Hopkins portrayed Hannibal Lecter in the 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs.

[The Lone Ranger]

The Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991; it broke up after the resignation of President Mikhail Gorbachev.

The Soviet Union was formed in 1922, when the "Treaty of Union" formally joined Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia, and Transcaucasia (which was divided in 1936 into the Georgian, Armenian, and Azerbaijan republics) to form the U.S.S.R.

[viscousmemories]

In 1922, fascist Benito Mussolini became the youngest Premier in the history of Italy. Italy became a Nation-State in 1861.

[Dingfod]

Feb. 23, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln survives an assassination attempt. John Wilkes Booth successfully assassinated Lincoln in 1865, shouting "Sic semper tyrannus", "Thus always to tyrants", the state motto of the state of Virginia, the phrase supposedly uttered by Brutus as he assassinated Julius Caesar. Timothy McVeigh was wearing a t-shirt with that motto on it when his mug shots were taken after his arrest for his involvement in the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995.

[maddog]

It's hard to believe that the OJ Simpson trial dominated the media in 1995 -- it seems more recent than that to me, somehow. (I had to look it up to be sure.) OJ was first famous for playing football. The first intercollegiate football game is reputed to have taken place between Harvard and McGill University in 1874.

#399

[Dingfod]

In 1874, Levi Strauss received a patent for blue jeans with copper rivets, 25 years after he first made pants for miners from tent canvas during the California gold rush of 1849.

[Crumb]

Early in the morning of October 7, 1849 Edgar Allen Poe died. Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 19, 1809.

[beyelzu]

edgar allen poe was born in 1809, he died in 1849


:tmtongue:

[Crumb]

:shakefist:

[xouper]

Another person born in 1809 was Joseph Liouville, who was the first to construct a provably transcendental number in 1844.

http://www.xoup.net/img/liouville.gif

[Dingfod]

In 1844, Samuel Morse sent the first telegraphic message from Baltimore to Washington D.C., "What hath God wrought?" Some believe God wrought all that is in 5509 BCE.

[Legs]

believe God wrought all that is in 5509 BCE.

September 1st 5509 BC is the first day of the Byzantine Calendar and the day the world was created.

The ancient Greek city of Byzantium was formally christened as "new Rome" in AD 330

[Dingfod]

In 330 AD St. Moses the Black was born into slavery in Ethiopia. St. Moses the Black once took refuge in the monastery at Petra, ornate buildings carved into stone in what is now Jordan, a country ruled by King Hussein from 1953 until his death in 1999.

[livius drusus]

In 1999 National Infrastructure Protection Center analyst Terrill Maynard reported that "India and Israel appear to be the countries whose governments or industry may most likely use their access [to non-Y2K compliant U.S. software] to implant malicious code in light of their assessed motive, opportunity, and means."

Media outlets picked up this bullshit with the fearful awe and hushed tones which characterized much of the Y2K coverage in 1999, but somehow never got around to the pointing and laughing part once the report was exposed as total paranoid nonsense.

Speaking of which, the Illuminati of Bavaria were founded on May 1, 1776.

[Dingfod]

In 1776, Austria decriminalized witchcraft. Recently there has been a revival of witchcraft within the neo-pagan Wiccan religion, which got its start with works by Gerald Gardner, published in 1954.

[Shake]

In 1954 after a campaign initiated by the Roman Catholic Knights of Columbus, Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan sponsored a bill to amend the pledge to include the words under God, to distinguish the U.S. from the officially atheist Soviet Union, and to remove the appearance of flag and nation worship. This was endorsed by President Eisenhower who died in 1969.

[Darren]

1969 , the year the British army moved into Northern Ireland to "put down" Republican "unrest". 1649, the year Cromwell massacred the inhabitants of Drogheda as a preliminary to imposing his military dictatorship over Ireland.

[Dingfod]

1649, the year the forces of Pope Clement X completely destroyed the Italian city of Castro, ending the Castro Wars. Two Roman Catholic Popes were born that same year, Benedict XIII and Clement XI. Pope Benedict XIII was the last member of the great Orsini family of Rome to become Pope. The first was Pope Celestine III, who died in 1198.

[Legs]

Innocent III was only thirty-seven years old when he was elected Pope in 1198 but he is not the youngest on record... another young Pope was chosen in 955 with 18 year old Octavius taking the name John XII for 11 years.

(this game hurts my head a little :eek: )

[xouper]

Some 42 years after he was born in CMLV, Dominic the Diminutive of Napoli gained some noteriety when he published unprecedented dire warnings about the impending Y1K Bug. But when the Julian Calendar rolled over from year CMXCIX to M and nothing bad happened, he faded from the public eye and died penniless in Oblivia, an obscure southern suburb of Parma.

[livius drusus]

:giggle:

Well, I ain't coverting Julian to Gregorian nohow, so in 1000 Leif Ericson trundled over the Atlantic and landed in Vinland, AKA, Canada. In 1964 LBJ proclaimed October 9th Leif Ericson day and 8 years minus 1 day later, I was born.

[Legs]

In 1964 I was born :yup: and and Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life in prison ....he was later released in 1990

[ceptimus]

Deleted, as I had my facts wrong.

[Crumb]

January 31, 1990 the first McDonald's opens in Moscow, Russia. Almost two years later on December 26, 1991 the Soviet union was officially dissolved. Coincidence? I think not.

[xouper]

The Tampa Bay Lightning were awarded an NHL franchise in 1991, played their first game in 1992, and finally won a Stanley Cup in 2004.

http://nhl.speedera.net/image-upload/andreychuk_cup_bettman060704.jpg
Image courtesy of http://nhl.speedera.net


The Stanley Cup was first awarded in 1893 to an amateur team from Montreal.

[xouper]

In 1893, New Zealand became the first country to give women the right to vote. New Zealand became a British colony in 1840. And yet no New Zealand hockey team has ever won the Stanley Cup.

[Dingfod]

In 1840, David Livingstone, left for Africa. During this expedition he discovered Victoria Falls, named for Queen Victoria, who ruled as Queen of the British Empire from 1837 to her death in 1901.

[Brimshack]

1901, the very year that Belgium secured rights to annex the Congo, a right it finally exercised in 1908.

[Dingfod]

Jan. 1, 1908, a ball signifying New Year's Day drops in New York's Times Square for the first time. During The Great Depression of the 1930s Times Square became known for it's peep shows and later for X-rated movie houses and live sex shows and the like. Mayor Rudolph Guiliani cleaned up Times Square in the mid-1990s, closing down much of the sex-related businesses. Guiliani was sworn into the office of Mayor of New York City in January of 1994.

[viscousmemories]

1994 was designated "The International Year of the Family" by the United Nations, which was founded in 1945.

[livius drusus]

In March of 1945, Anne Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Her diary was published in the United States in 1952.

[Sock Puppet]

In 1952, Dwight D. Eisenhower won the US Presidential election in a landslide victory over the Democratic candidate, Adlai E. Stevenson. Stevenson, often wistfully regarded by lib'rul types as someone who would have been a great President, later was appointed the US Ambassador to the U.N. by President Kennedy. Stevenson's most famous moment came during the Cuban Missle Crisis, when he asked the Soviet representative, Valerian Zorin, if his country was installing missiles in Cuba, punctuated with the demand "Don't wait for the translation, answer 'yes' or 'no'!" and followed up with, "I am prepared to wait for my answer until Hell freezes over," in 1962.

[viscousmemories]

In 1962, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy took television viewers on a tour of the White House. A tour that was re-enacted by Parker Posey in 1997's House of Yes.

[beyelzu]

In 1997 the green bay packers won the superbowl led by qb Brett Favre. Favre would still be playing in 2007 when he became the all time nfl qb touchdown leader.

[Sock Puppet]

On June 28, 2007, the Bald Eagle was removed from the Endangered Species List. The Bald Eagle is the national bird of the United States, much to the chagrin of Benjamin Franklin, who outlined his objections in a famous letter from Paris to his daughter, criticizing the choice and suggesting the Wild Turkey as a better representative of American qualities, in 1784.

Hah! That damned date needed to be pushed waaaaay back.

[livius drusus]

On December 13 1784, Samuel Johnson died. Johnson wrote was is commonly described as the first dictionary of the English language, but there had been several other dictionaries published before Johnson was a twinkle in his daddy's eye.

The first English dictionary was actually a Latin-English dictionary written by Sir Thomas Elyot and published in 1538.

Ha! Now it's pushed even backer!

[beyelzu]

in 1538 michangelo begins work on piazza de campodoglio,

michangelo is remember for many things the best of which is being a teenage mutant ninja turtle.

tmnt debuted in 1984 in a comic book and boy do they love pizza.

[beyelzu]

brought it back to the eighties for you guys. im so kind.

[cappuccino]

bastard...i was about to post a factoid about the first university being found in New World in 1538

[Sock Puppet]

On June 22, 1984, the official name of the Turkish city Urfa was changed into Şanlıurfa. Islam first arrived at Urfa around 639 C.E., when the Umayyad army conquered the region without a fight. Islam was then established permanently in Urfa by the empires of the Ayyubids, Seljuk and Ottoman Turks. In the aftermath of the First Crusade, the city was the center of the Crusader County of Edessa, but Muslim forces retook the city in 1146.

:D

[beyelzu]

1146 is the year of the first written mention of the city of Bryansk which is in Russia. In fact the bolsheviks took it over in 1919, it is still in russia but after 70 plus years it is no longer communist. Communism fell in 1989 followed by the fall of the soviet union.

[Cynical-Chick]

March 4, 1989: The first ACT (Australian Capital Territory) elections are held. The First Fleet landed at Oz in 1788.

[Sock Puppet]

On February 9, 1788, Austria entered the Russo-Turkish War of 1787-1792 and attacked Moldavia. Moldavia was where the future Byzantine Emperor, Andronicus I Comnenus, was taken prisoner by Vlach shepherds in 1164.

[Dingfod]

In 1164, Henry II, King of England and Duke of Normandy, insists that everyone, including clerics, are subject to the royal court. His wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine died in 1204.

[mindbender]

On April 12, 1204, the Fourth Crusade ends in the capture of Constantinople. Constantinople is named after the Roman emperor Constantine who died on May 22, 337.

[Kyuss Apollo]

In 337, Shapur II the ninth King of the Sassanid Empire and probably the only king in history crowned in utero, launched a war that greatly expanded Persian territory and that left dead Julian the Apostate, the last pagan emperor of Rome. In Utero is the third and final studio album by the American grunge band Nirvana, released on September 21, 1993.

[livius drusus]

On April 30th, 1993, Monica Seles was stabbed in the back by a crazed fan at a tennis tournament in Germany. The first Wimbledon tennis tournament was held in 1877.

[Sock Puppet]

On February 20, 1877, Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake debuted, presented by the Ballet of the Moscow Imperial Bolshoi Theatre. Swan Lake usually ends with the hero and heroine ascending to heaven in apotheosis. Apotheosis is most commonly used to refer to the Roman process whereby an Emperor, empress, hero or leader was recognized to be divine by decree of the Senate or popular consent. It had its origins in the worship of Romulus, who became known in his deified form as Quirinus, and in the declaration by the Senate of Julius Caesar as a god after his assassination in 44 BCE.

[livius drusus]

In 44 BCE, Cicero published the first of his Phillippics praising Octavian and attacking Marc Anthony. He called them Phillipics after Demosthenes' speeches opposing Philip of Macedon, who was assassinated in 336 BCE.

[viscousmemories]

Philip of Macedon was succeeded by Alexander III of Macedon, or "Alexander the Great", in 336 BCE. What the 20 yr. old lacked in age he made up for in education, having studied under the Greek philosopher Aristotle in his early teens. Arisotle was himself a student of Plato, perhaps best known for his Apology. Plato's Apology is thought to be a historical recounting of the defense made by Socrates in 399 BCE.

[Dingfod]

In 399 BCE, Lysander of Sparta unsuccessfully attempted a quiet revolution, advocating that kings should be elected, not inherited. He was unsuccessful. The modern city of Sparta is sistered to Niš, Serbia, Serbia's third largest city. Niš was captured by the Turks in 1443.

[Watser?]

On June 22, 1984, the official name of the Turkish city Urfa was changed into Şanlıurfa. Islam first arrived at Urfa around 639 C.E., when the Umayyad army conquered the region without a fight. Islam was then established permanently in Urfa by the empires of the Ayyubids, Seljuk and Ottoman Turks. In the aftermath of the First Crusade, the city was the center of the Crusader County of Edessa, but Muslim forces retook the city in 1146.

:D

Şanlıurfa means Glorious Urfa I remember my Turkish teacher explaining.

[viscousmemories]

Vlad II, also known as Dracul (the Dragon) began his second term as ruler of Wallachia in 1443. He was the father of Vlad III - the Impaler, aka Dracula (son of the Dragon). Author Bram Stoker used Vlad III as the inspiration for the main character in his 1897 novel about vampires, Dracula.

[Dingfod]

June 2, 1897, Samuel Clemens, AKA Mark Twain, responded to rumors of his death with "The report of my death was an exaggeration." Clemens derived his penname Mark Twain from depth soundings that would be shouted to steamboat pilots on the Mississippi River. Mark Twain meant two fathoms, or about 12 feet deep, safe water for riverboat passage. Achieving a dream of his youth, Clemens received his riverboat pilot license in 1859.

[viscousmemories]

British Naturalist Charles Darwin published his seminal On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, aka The Origin of Species, in 1859. Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, UK.

"The Battle of Shrewsbury, fought on July 21st, 1403 between an army led by the Lancastrian King, Henry IV and a rebel army led by members of the Percy family from Northumberland, is principally remembered today by many as the climax of Shakespeare's play, Henry IV part 1."*


*source: The Battle of Shrewsbury 1403 - Welcome to The Battle of Shrewsbury (1403) 2003 Events Site (http://www.battleofshrewsbury.org/)

[Leesifer]

1403 In Korea, a book is printed from movable type.

Around 1040, the first known movable type system was created in China by Bi Sheng out of porcelain.

Various sources

[Dingfod]

The worlds first brewery was found in 1040 in the Weihenstephan Abbey in Germany. Adolph Coors founded the Coors Brewing Company in Golden, Colorado in 1873.

[viscousmemories]

US President Ulysses S. Grant began his second term in office in 1873.

James Joyce's novel Ulysses was first published in Paris in 1922, but banned in the US and UK until the 1930's.

[Dingfod]

The United States Naval Petroleum Reserve at Teapot Dome, Wyoming was leased to Harry Sinclair of Mammoth Petroleum in 1922 without competitive bidding, sparking what became known as the Teapot Dome Scandal. Harry Sinclair went on to found Sinclair Petroleum, which was purchased by Atlantic Richfield (ARCO) company in 1969.

[livius drusus]

In the wee hours of June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village, New York, precipitating three days of riots that would mark the beginning of the gay rights movement in the United States.

Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, Alfred Kinsey's landmark study positing that 10% of males have primarily same-sex partnerships for at least 3 years of their lives, was published in 1948.

[California Tanker]

1948, Israel was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and has been widely regarded as a 'bad move'

One group of those angry people hijacked an Air France airliner in 1976, diverting to Uganda, under the control of Idi Amin. The resulting unprecedented rescue in Entebbe also resulted in the destruction of a good portion of the Ugandan air force on the ground. Only one soldier was killed, the Colonel leading the attack. One civilian was lost, a 75-year-old lady who had been sent to hospital and was never heard of until her remains were discovered in 1979.

NTM

[Deadlokd]

In 1976 the Northern Territory passed the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (Cth). This act allowed Aborigines to claim land that their ancestors had used. This ultimately led to Federal vindication in the Mabo case in 1992 before the High Court of Australia (the highest court in the land). The ruling decreed that Aborigines have a legitimate claim to the land, a position that was anathema to the ruling white elite before this.