2137 B.C.
Chinese Royal astronomers, Ho and Hsi, were executed after not predicting a solar eclipse caused panic in the streets of China.
1400
Geoffrey Chaucer died at the age of 57. He was the first poet to be buried in Westminster Abbey.
1415
During the Hundred Years' War between England and France, Henry V, the young king of England, leads his forces to victory at the Battle of Agincourt in northern France.
Two months before, Henry had crossed the English Channel with 11,000 men and laid siege to Harfleur in Normandy. After five weeks the town surrendered, but Henry lost half his men to disease and battle casualties. He decided to march his army northeast to Calais, where he would meet the English fleet and return to England. At Agincourt, however, a vast French army of 20,000 men stood in his path, greatly outnumbering the exhausted English archers, knights, and men-at-arms.
The battlefield lay on 1,000 yards of open ground between two woods, which prevented large-scale maneuvers and thus worked to Henry's advantage. At 11 a.m. on October 28, the battle commenced. The English stood their ground as French knights, weighed down by their heavy armor, began a slow advance across the muddy battlefield. The French were met by a furious bombardment of artillery from the English archers, who wielded innovative longbows with a range of 250 yards. French cavalrymen tried and failed to overwhelm the English positions, but the archers were protected by a line of pointed stakes. As more and more French knights made their way onto the crowded battlefield, their mobility decreased further, and some lacked even the room to raise their arms and strike a blow. At this point, Henry ordered his lightly equipped archers to rush forward with swords and axes, and the unencumbered Englishmen massacred the French.
Almost 6,000 Frenchmen lost their lives during the Battle of Agincourt, while English deaths amounted to just over 400. With odds greater than three to one, Henry had won one of the great victories of military history. After further conquests in France, Henry V was recognized in 1420 as heir to the French throne and the regent of France. He was at the height of his powers but died just two years later of camp fever near Paris.
1760
George III took the British throne after the death of King George II, his grandfather.
1812
During the War of 1812, the U.S. frigate United States captured the British vessel Macedonian.
1854
The Charge of the Light Brigade took place during the Crimean War. The British were winning the Battle of Balaclava when Lord James Cardigan received an order to attack the Russians. He took his troops into a valley and suffered 40 percent caualties. Later it was revealed that the order was the result of confusion and was not given intentionally.
1870
The first U.S. trademark was given. The recipient was the Averill Chemical Paint Company of New York City.
1881
Pablo Picasso, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, is born in Malaga, Spain.
Picasso's father was a professor of drawing, and he bred his son for a career in academic art. Picasso had his first exhibit at age 13 and later quit art school so he could experiment full-time with modern art styles. He went to Paris for the first time in 1900, and in 1901 was given an exhibition at a gallery on Paris' rue Lafitte, a street known for it's prestigious art galleries. The precocious 19-year-old Spaniard was at the time a relative unknown outside of Barcelona, but he had already produced hundreds of paintings. Winning favorable reviews, he stayed in Paris for the rest of the year and later returned to the city to settle permanently.
The work of Picasso, which comprises more than 50,00 paintings, drawings, engravings, sculptures and ceramics produced over 80 years, is described in a series of overlapping periods. His first notable period--the "blue period"--began shortly after his first Paris exhibit. In works such as The Old Guitarist (1903), Picasso painted in blue tones to evoke the melancholy world of the poor. The blue period was followed by the "rose period", in which he ofted depicted circus scenes, and then by Picasso's early work in sculpture. in 1907, Picasso painted the groundbreaking work Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which, with it's fragmented and distored representation of the human form, broke from previous European art. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon demonstrated the influence on Picasso of both African mask art and Paul Cezanne and is seen as a forerunner of the Cubist movement, founded by Picasso and the French painter Georges Braque in 1909.
In Cubism, which is divided into two phases, analytical and synthetic, Picasso and Braque establihed the modern principal that artwork need not represent reality to have artistic value. Major Cubist works by Picasso included his costumes and sets for Sergey Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (1917) and The Three Musicians (1921). Picasso and Braque's Cubist experiments also resulted in the invention of several new artistic techniques, including collage. Read More
1888
Richard Byrd, the first person to see the North Pole, was born.
1917
The Bolsheviks (Communists) under Vladimir Ilyich Lenin seized power in Russia.
1918
The Canadian steamship Princess Sophia hit the reef off the coast of Alaska. Nearly 400 people died.
1920
King Alexander of Greece died from blood poisoning that resulted from a bite from his pet monkey.
1929
Alber B. Fall, of U.S. President Harding's cabinet, was found guilty of taking a bribe. He was sentenced to a year in prison and fined $100,000.
1939
"The Time of Your Life," by William Saroyan, opened in New York.
1951
In Panmunjom, peace talks concerning the Korean War resumed after 63 days.
1954
A U.S. cabinet meeting was televised for the first time.
1955
The microwave oven, for home use, was introduced by The Tappan Company.
1958
U.S. Marines withdrew form Beirut, Lebanon. They had been sent in on July 25, 1958, to protect the nation's pro-Western government.
1960
The Accutron watch by the Bulova Watch Company was introduced.
1962
U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson presented photographic evidence to the United Nations Security Council. The photos were of Soviet missile bases in Cuba.
1962
American author John Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.
1971
The U.N. General Assembly voted to expel Taiwan and admit mainland China.
1983
U.S. troops and soldiers from six Caribbean nations invaded Grenada to restore order and provide protection to U.S. citizens after a recent coup within Grenada's Communist (pro-Cuban) government.
1990
It was announced by U.S. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney that the Pentagon was planning to send 100,000 more troops to Saudi Arabia.
1994
Susan Smith of Union, SC, claimed that a black carjacker had driven off with her two sons. Smith was later convicted of drowning her children in a nearby lake.
1999
Golfer Payne Stewart and five others were killed when their Learjet crashed in South Dakota. The plane flew uncontrolled for four hours before the crash.
2000
AT&T Corp. announced that it would restructure into a family of four separately traded companies (consumer, business, broadband and wireless).
2001
It was announced that scientists had unearthed the remains of an ancient crocodile which lived 110 million years ago. The animal, found in Gadoufaoua, Niger, grew as long as 40 feet and weighed as much as eight metric tons.
Credit to History.com & On This Day.
