History Trivia

On September 2,31 BC, the defeat of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's navy at Actium gave Octavian control of the Roman empire. In 44 BC, Cicero delivered his First Philippic, an attack on Mark Antony, in the Roman senate. In 490 Phidippides of Athens was sent to seek help against the invading Persian Army. The runner was the inspiration for the 26-mile marathon of the Olympic Games in Athens in 1896.
In 595, St. John the Faster, Patriarch of Constantinople, died. In 1397 Francesco Landini a leading composer of 14th-century Italy died and in 1666 The Great Fire of London began in a bakery on Pudding Lane and destroyed much of the city.