20 de septiembre

A total lunar eclipse, eleven nights before the battle, logged by the astronomers in Babylon and by the Greek writers in camp. Alexander sacrificed to the Moon, the Sun and the Earth; his seer read it as doom for the Persians.

On the vigil of St Matthew, a Wednesday, the northern earls Edwin and Morcar met the Norwegians at Gate Fulford, two miles south of York, and were beaten: many English were “killed or drowned or driven in flight”. York made terms and promised hostages, to be handed over at Stamford Bridge. The…

Five ships and about 270 men sailed from Sanlúcar under a Portuguese captain in Spain's pay. One ship and 18 of those men came back three years later, having sailed round the world without meaning to.

From this place and from this day forth begins a new era in the history of the world. — Goethe, who was there with the Prussians Mostly an artillery duel, but the Prussians turned back. Goethe wrote down his remark thirty years later, so it may be hindsight.

The Assembly’s last day. It allowed divorce by mutual consent or incompatibility, and moved the registers of births, marriages and deaths from the parish priest to the town hall.

Clark’s starving scouts walked out of the forest into a Nez Perce camp digging camas. Nez Perce tradition says some thought of killing the strangers for their guns, and that a woman named Watkuweis, once a captive who had been treated kindly by whites, told them to do the strangers no harm. They…

After a six-day assault the British held the city. Zafar surrendered at Humayun’s tomb the next day; William Hodson shot two of his sons and a grandson at a city gate, and Delhi was emptied of its people.

After a week of street fighting the Company’s army held the city. It was sacked and its people driven out. Bahadur Shah gave himself up at Humayun’s Tomb, and William Hodson shot three Mughal princes in cold blood. The emperor was tried and exiled to Rangoon.

Lee’s first invasion of the North, hoping to win Maryland, sway the autumn elections and impress Britain and France. It ended at the Potomac with none of the three.

With Longstreet’s corps brought west by rail, Braxton Bragg broke the Union line through a gap opened by a mistaken order. George Thomas’s stand saved the army and made him the “Rock of Chickamauga”. 34,624 casualties (NPS).

For ten days, the first time the exchange had ever shut its doors.

Lucy dies. Seward writes “only resolution and habit can let me make an entry”, and notes that Mrs. Westenra and Arthur’s father have died within days of one another. Van Helsing tells him he will do “our operation” himself after Lucy is coffined.

Its start is a Julian date: 22 May in Russia, 4 June in the West. General Brusilov attacked along a wide front with little warning and shattered the Austro-Hungarian armies in Volhynia and Galicia, taking hundreds of thousands of prisoners. It was Russia’s greatest success of the war, and it bled…

Britain’s Communal Award gave the Depressed Classes separate electorates of their own. Gandhi, in Yerwada again since January, held that this would split Hindu society for ever, and stopped eating until it was withdrawn.

Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase labelled a virus’s protein with radioactive sulphur and its DNA with radioactive phosphorus, let it infect bacteria, then shook the empty coats off in a Waring blender. The phosphorus was inside the cells: the virus injects its DNA.

At a meeting at Apple, a week after playing Toronto with his Plastic Ono Band. Harrison was not there. Klein, who was signing a new royalty deal with EMI that day, persuaded them to keep it secret.

Seven months in which the Beatles had split and the world did not know. The four were already fighting over who should run their money: McCartney wanted his in-laws, the lawyers Lee and John Eastman; the others chose Allen Klein. The partnership was not formally dissolved until the end of 1974.

The first sample returned by a robot: 101 grams of soil from the Sea of Fertility, drilled, sealed and flown home with no one on board.

The Treasury’s draft asked for 700 billion dollars to buy mortgage assets and, in Section 8, for immunity: Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative…