History Trivia

June 24, 109 The Aqua Traiana was inaugurated by Emperor Trajan, the aqueduct channeled water from Lake Bracciano, 25 miles north-west of Rome. 217 Hannibal defeated the Romans at Lago di Trasimeno in the Second Punic War. 451: 10th recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet. 451 Attila the Hun raised his siege of Orleans, France in a prelude to his being pushed out of France by a combined army of Romans and barbarians. 803 Bishop Higbald of Lindisfarne died. In a communiqué to the scholar Alcuin of York (teacher at the Carolingian court at the invitation of Charlemagne), he described in graphic detail the Viking raid on Lindisfarne on 8 January 793 in which many of his monks were killed. 843 Vikings destroyed Nantes (western France). 1314 Robert the Bruce of Scotland defeated the English army under Edward II at Bannockburn, near Stirling. 1340 In the Hundred Years War, British fleet under the command of King Edward III destroyed the French at Sluys (Flanders). 1374 A sudden outbreak of St. John's Dance (Dancing Plague) caused people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to experience hallucinations and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapsed from exhaustion. One of the most prominent theories is that victims suffered from ergot (fungus) poisoning. 1441 King Henry VI of England founded Eton College. 1497 John Cabot landed in North America at Newfoundland leading the first European exploration of the region since the Vikings. 1497 Cornish rebels Michael An Gof and Thomas Flamank were executed at Tyburn, London. 1509 Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon were crowned King and Queen of England. 1520: Mass at Field of Cloth of Gold where Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France met between Guînes and Ardres near Calais to discuss an alliance.