29 maart

A fleet under a leader the Franks called Reginheri, perhaps the Ragnar of legend, rowed up the Seine and entered Paris on Easter Sunday. Charles the Bald paid them 7,000 pounds of silver to leave: the first of many Frankish payments, which taught raiders that a threat could be worth more than a…

Ranjit Singh took Lahore at eighteen and built a kingdom from Kashmir to Peshawar with a European-drilled army. Ten years after his death the Company annexed it, and the Koh-i-Noor went to Queen Victoria.

After a winter of failed canals and bayou expeditions, Grant marched down the west bank, crossed below the fortress city, cut loose from his supply line and won five battles in under three weeks before sealing Vicksburg in.

Grant broke through at Petersburg and chased Lee’s starving army west, heading it off from the railroad and the supplies waiting on it. Lee had eleven days of war left.

The first match billed as for the championship of the world, first to ten wins. It began in New York, moved to St Louis and ended in New Orleans. Johannes Zukertort led 4–1 after five games; Wilhelm Steinitz won 12½–7½, with ten wins, five losses and five draws.

The marathon was new, invented for these Games from the legend of the runner from Marathon, and Greece had won nothing on the track. Louis, a water carrier from Marousi, came into the stadium alone and won in 2:58:50, seven minutes ahead of another Greek, Charilaos Vasilakos.

Every day we have been ready to start for our depot 11 miles away, but outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift. The three men died in the tent, Scott apparently last. His journal ends: “For God’s sake look after our people.” Beside it he left letters to the families and a…

The state dropped the charges against most of the accused, and from 1958 tried the last thirty in a converted synagogue in Pretoria. After more than four years the three judges found all thirty not guilty: the prosecution had not shown that the ANC meant to overthrow the state by violence.

Police arrested 156 leaders of the Congress Alliance, of every race, and charged them with a communist plot to overthrow the state, with the Freedom Charter as evidence. The case against most fell away; the last few dozen were tried in a converted synagogue in Pretoria and all acquitted after four…

He moved between safe houses disguised as a chauffeur, a cook or a gardener, and phoned newspapers from call boxes; the press named him the Black Pimpernel. The strike of 29–31 May 1961 met the largest call-up of police and troops in peacetime, and he told a reporter that the time for non-violence…

The final troops flew out of South Vietnam and the U.S. Military Assistance Command closed. What stayed behind was an embassy, a Defense Attaché Office, some civilian contractors and Nixon’s private promise to Thiệu to respond with force if Hanoi broke the agreement.

American troops came home in stages while South Vietnam’s forces grew past a million men and the bombing grew heavier. The war widened into Cambodia and Laos even as it was being handed over. More than 20,000 Americans died in these years.

The first look at Mercury, from about 700 km. It found a cratered world like the Moon, but with a magnetic field nobody expected. The three flybys mapped under half the planet.

Huế had been given up days before. South Vietnam’s second city, crowded with a million or more refugees, fell with barely a fight, as soldiers and civilians fought for places on the last planes and boats.

On the high tide before dawn the tugs pulled the stern off the west bank. The ship was partly afloat, but her bow was still stuck.

For six days one of the largest ships afloat lay wedged across the canal, and hundreds of ships queued at both ends. Times here are UTC; Egypt was two hours ahead.

Tugs pulled the bow free to a chorus of their own horns, and the ship was towed to the Great Bitter Lake. Egypt held her there until July while it negotiated compensation with her owners.