Inventions, firsts, and turning points tied to today’s date — each one sourced and dated.
In the dawn hours, French firing squads shot the Madrid insurgents of the day before — a massacre Goya turned into one of art's great paintings.
In a single dramatic session, the Great Sejm passed a charter that made Poland-Lithuania Europe's first to enshrine modern constitutional rule.
Using Newton's gravity, Halley forecast where and when the Moon would swallow the Sun — and missed by only four minutes.