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“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.”
~ Rachel Carson
Wikiquote (Rachel Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) was an American marine biologist and conservationist whose book Silent Spring and other writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement.)
May 26th, 47 BC
Roman Empire:
47 BC - Julius Caesar visits Tarsus on his way to Pontus, where he meets enthusiastic support, but where, according to Cicero, Cassius is planning to kill him at this point.
17 - Germanicus returns to Rome as a conquering hero; he celebrates a triumph for his victories over the Cherusci, Chatti and other German tribes west of the Elbe.
Wikipedia Image: ● Ancient roman statue ● Detail of Head from Roman Statue of Antinous, credit Corbis ● Statue of Neptune, Trevi Fountain, Rome ● International Sand Sculpture Festival, FIESA 7 ancient Rome.
Relief from a 3rd-century sarcophagus depicting a battle between Romans and Germanic warriors; the central figure is perhaps the emperor Hostilian / Depiction of the Menorah on the Arch of Titus in Rome.
May 26th, 451
Sassanid Persian Empire:
451 - Battle of Avarayr; between Armenian rebels and the Sassanid Empire - The Empire defeats the Armenians militarily but guarantees them freedom to openly practice Christianity.
Wikipedia Image: Achaemenid Persian Empire: was an Iranian empire in Western Asia, founded in the 6th century by Cyrus the Great who overthrew the Median confederation ● Persian Archers at Darius' palace at Susa. Exhibited in Pergamon Museum / Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin ● Bas relief nagsh-e-rostam al ● Persian version of a stone relief (from Persepolis) ● Winged sphinx from the palace of Darius the Great at Susa, Louvre.
May 26th, 946
King Edmund I of England is murdered by a thief whom he personally attacks while celebrating Saint Augustine's Mass Day.
Wikipedia Painting: Edmund I (Old English: Ēadmund; 922 – May 26, 946), called the Elder, the Deed-doer, the Just, or the Magnificent, was King of England from 939 until his death.
May 26th, 1135
Alfonso VII of Castile is crowned in the Cathedral of Leon as Imperator totius Hispaniae, "Emperor of all of Spain".
Wikipedia Photo: Statue of Alfonso VI of Castile in Toledo, Spain, Castile-La Mancha, Spain.
May 26th, 1293
Earthquake:
1293 - An earthquake strikes Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan, killing about 30,000.
1983 - A strong 7.7 magnitude earthquake strikes Japan, triggering a tsunami that kills at least 104 people and injures thousands.
Wikipedia Image: Preliminary Determination of Epicenters / Aleppo Syria; Anchorage, Alaska - March 28, 1964 Prince William Sound USA earthquake and tsunami; 8.9 Mega Earthquake Strikes Japan; Tsunami Swirls Japan's Ibaraki Prefecture March 12 2011. credit NOAA / NGDC, NOAA National Geophysical Data Center, USGS, National Geographics.
May 26th, 1538
Geneva expels John Calvin and his followers from the city for Christian heresy. Calvin lives in exile in Strasbourg for the next three years.
Wikipedia Painting: Michael Servetus, commissioned by the Michael Servetus Institute, oil painting by Guillermo (Pérez Baylo)
May 26th, 1573
Eighty Years' War:
1573 - Dutch War of Independence; Battle of Haarlemmermeer - a naval engagement between a Spanish fleet and a Dutch fleet of rebellious Sea Beggars, who were trying to break the Siege of Haarlem.
Wikipedia Painting: Siege of the Schenkenschans by Gerrit van Santen; Relief of Leiden after the siege, (1574); Frederick Henry and Ernst Casimir at the siege of 'sHertogenbosch by Pauwels van Hillegaert; Disarming the waardgelders in Utrecht, 31 July 1618, by Joost Cornelisz. Droochsloot; Swearing of the Peace of Münster by Gerard ter Borch.
Battle between Dutch and Spanish ships on the Haarlemmermeer, 26 May 1573. Sailing before the wind from the right are the Spanish ships, identified by the flags with a red cross. Approaching from the left are the ships of the Sea Beggars. Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom.
May 26th, 1644
Portuguese Restoration War: Battle of Montijo; Portuguese and Spanish forces both claim victory.
Wikipedia Photo: Lisbon, Portugal - Monument to the Portuguese maritime discoveries.
May 26th, 1736
French and Indian War:
1736 - Battle of Ackia; British and Chickasaw soldiers repel a French and Choctaw attack on the Chickasaw village of Ackia, near present-day Tupelo, Mississippi.
The French, under Louisiana governor Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, had sought to link Louisiana with Acadia and the other northern colonies of New France.
Wikipedia Painting: Major Washington and a wounded General Braddock at the Battle of Monongahela. Lemercier, 1854; Portrait of Washington was painted in 1772 by Charles Willson Peale, and shows Washington in uniform as a colonel of the Virginia Regiment. The original hangs in Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. It is the earliest known depiction of Washington; British troops under Edward Braddock near Fort Duquesne, Pa., during the French and Indian War. Credit: MPI / Hulton Archive / Getty Images; Indian from Death of General Wolfe painting By Benjamin West in 1770; Death of General James Wolfe by stray cannon shot at Battle of Quebec in 1759 Painted by Benjamin West in 1770.
May 26th, 1770
Greek War of Independence:
1770 - Orlov Revolt; an attempt to revolt against the Ottoman Empire before the Greek War of Independence, ends in disaster for the Greeks.
1821 - Establishment of the Peloponnesian Senate by the Greek rebels.
Wikipedia Image: Greece satellite image, credit NASA; Acrocorinth, looking north towards the Gulf of Corinth; The Acrocorinth in the background, behind the Temple of Apollo; Temple of Apollo Ancient Corinth; Early morning lightning illuminates the sky over the 2,500-year-old Ancient Parthenon temple, at the Acropolis hill during a heavy rainfall in Athens.
May 26th, 1783
American Revolutionary War:
1783 - A Great Jubilee Day: held at North Stratford, Connecticut celebrated end of fighting in American Revolution.
Wikipedia Paintings: Washington Crossing the Delaware, by Emanuel Leutz; Battle of the Chesapeake, French (left) and British (right) lines; Battle of Bunker Hill, The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill by John Trumbull; The Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar, September 13, 1782, by John Singleton Copley; Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau at Yorktown, 1781; "The surrender at Saratoga" shows General Daniel Morgan in front of a French de Vallière 4-pounder; Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown by (John Trumbull, 1797).
Grand Union - Stars and Stripes Flag
May 26th, 1805
French Revolutionary Wars / Napoleonic Wars:
1805 - Napoléon Bonaparte assumes the title of King of Italy and is crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy in the Duomo di Milano, the gothic cathedral in Milan.
Wikipedia Painting: Battle of Trafalgar: The British HMS Sandwich fires to the French flagship Bucentaure (completely dismasted) in the battle of Trafalgar;
Napoleon in Berlin (Meynier). After defeating Prussian forces at Jena, the French Army entered Berlin on 27 October 1806;
Battle of the Bridge of Arcole Napoleon Bonaparte leading his troops over the bridge of Arcole, by Horace Vernet;
Napoleon as King of Italy (Appiani);
Napoleon Crossing the Alps (David). In 1800 Bonaparte took the French Army across the Alps, eventually defeating the Austrians at Marengo;
Charge of the Russian Imperial Guard cavalry against French cuirassiers at the Battle of Friedland, 14 June 1807;
Battle of Borodino as depicted by Louis Lejeune. The battle was the largest and bloodiest single-day action of the Napoleonic Wars;
Napoleon's withdrawal from Russia, a painting by Adolph Northen;
Wellington at Waterloo by Robert Alexander Hillingford;
Napoleon is often represented in his green colonel uniform of the Chasseur à Cheval, with a large bicorne and a hand-in-waistcoat gesture.
Coronation of Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, 1806.
May 26th, 1830
American Indian Wars:
1830 - Indian Removal Act; passed by the United States Congress - it is signed into law by President Andrew Jackson two days later.
Wikipedia Photos: American Indians - Chief Crazy Horse, Tashunca-uitco (1849 - 1877) ● Geronimo Apache Chief (1829 - 1909) ● Indian Chief 'Two Eagles'; Crow Indian Chief ● Snake Cheif ● Band of Chiricahua Apache Indians, followers of legendary renegade Geronimo, attending a peace negotiation after a long struggle against U.S. government attempts to force them onto reservations - Tombstone, Arizona (1886), Life Magazine ● American Horse - Oglala ● Native American Arapaho Indian ● Washakie, Shoshone leader ● Arapaho American Indian Chief.
May 26th, 1857
Dred Scott is emancipated by the Blow family, his original owners.
Wikipedia Photo:Dred Scott.
May 26th, 1864
Montana is organized as a United States territory.
Wikipedia Photo: © Mountain Goat Glacier National Park, Montana ● Montana Mountains Barn, by Christine Paniecosi ● Beartooth Mountains - Montana; Mountains of Montana, by Evan Millitello ● Montana Rocky Mountains; Northwest Rocky Mountains, Montana ● Glacier national park montana mountains; credit National Geographic, Rocky Mountain Magazine.
May 26th, 1865
American Civil War:
1865 - Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi division, is the last general of the Confederate Army to surrender, at Galveston, Texas.
Wikipedia Image: ● Lincoln Memorial; an American national monument built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln - located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. across from the Washington Monument.
● The northern army led by George McClellan and the southern army led by Robert E. Lee met at Antietam Creek, Maryland in September, 1862. It was a bloody battle where 13,000 Confederates and 12,000 Union troops died in just one day. McClellan had hesitated to attack before the battle thus letting the southern troops regroup. Also, he had saved reserves and refused to use them at the end of the battle thinking that Lee was holding reserves for a counterattack, even though those reserves didn't exist. The Union victory stopped Lee's northward advance and was a turning point in the war.
● Battle of Antietam / Stone Bridge at Antietam Battlefield - Sharpsburg, Maryland
● First Battle Between Ironclads: CSS Virginia/Merrimac (left) vs. USS Monitor, in 1862 at the Battle of Hampton Roads.
● Although photography was still in its infancy, war correspondents produced thousands of images, bringing the harsh realities of the frontlines to those on the home front in a new and visceral way. The Atlantic.
May 26th, 1868
Impeachment trial: President Andrew Johnson in the United States Senate ends with Johnson being found not guilty by one vote.
Wikipedia Image: Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808 – July 31, 1875), 17th President of the United States (1865–1869) (As Vice President of the United States in 1865, he succeeded Abraham Lincoln following his assassination).
May 26th, 1879
Russia and the United Kingdom sign the Afghanistan Treaty of Gandamak establishing an Afghan state.
Wikipedia Image: Middle East Regional Map, credit eMapStore; An Afghan woman begs for alms, as a man rides past, with a backdrop of the Darul Aman's palace which was destroyed during the civil war of 1992 in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan, on March 23, 2008, credit AP / Rahmat Gul; Mazar-e Sharif's blue-tiled Hazrat Ali mosque draws Muslim faithful, tourists, and hungry pigeons, credit Robert Stahl / Getty Images; Afghanistan poppy fields (opium poppy cultivation); An Afghan boy works in an opium poppy field in Musa Qala in Helmand province (poppy production has skyrocketed since 2001), credit Omar Sobhani, Reuters; Eastern Afghanistan, Band-e Amir; Afghanistan Sunset.
May 26th, 1896
Nicholas II becomes Tsar of Russia.
Wikipedia Photo: The Romanovs. From left to right: Olga, Maria, Nicholas II, Alexandra, Anastasia, Alexei, and Tatiana. Livadia, 1913
May 26th, 1896
Charles Dow publishes the first edition of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Wikipedia Photo: The New York Stock Exchange floor, credit Associated Press; and fisheye view, credit © Geoff Sills, © Eric L Bowers.
May 26th, 1897
Dracula, a novel by Irish author Bram Stoker is published.
Wikipedia Photo: Bram Stoker's Gothic novel Dracula Vlad the Impaler, Wallachian Duke Vlad III, more commonly known as ”Dracula”. ● Nosferatu colorized, classic 1922 German Expressionist horror film, directed by F. W. Murnau, starring Max Schreck as the vampire Count Orlok. ● An iconic scene of the shadow of Nosferatu (Count Orlok) climbing up a staircase. ● Bela Lugosi as the 1930s vampire Dracula.
May 26th, 1908
Middle East:
1908 - At Masjed Soleyman in southwest Persia, the first major commercial oil strike in the Middle East is made. The rights to the resource are quickly acquired by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.
Wikipedia Image: Middle East satellite image; World satellite image.
May 26th, 1917
Tornadoes:
1917 - Several powerful tornadoes rip through Illinois, including the city of Mattoon, Illinois killing 101 people and injuring 689.
Wikipedia Photo: Weather Front System; Tornado near Anadarko, Oklahoma; North Dakota Tornado; F3 Category Tornado Swirls Across A South Dakota Prairie by Carsten Peter; A waterspout parallels a lightning strike over Lake Okeechobee in Florida, by Fred K. Smith, National Geographics, Extream Instability.
May 26th, 1918
Democratic Republic of Georgia is established.
Wikipedia Photo: Tbilisi (Georgia) Gergeti Trinity Church, below Mount Kazbegi, in Georgia; Metekhi Church, Tbilisi, Georgia
May 26th, 1938
World War II:
1938 - In the United States, the House Un-American Activities Committee begins its first session.
1940 - Battle of Dunkirk; Dunkirk evacuation - In France, Allied forces begin a massive evacuation from Dunkirk, France.
1942 - Battle of Gazala; takes place.
Post World War II:
1948 - The U.S. Congress passes Public Law 557, which permanently establishes the Civil Air Patrol as an auxiliary of the United States Air Force.
Wikipedia Photo: Bombing of Dresden in World War II; August Schreitmüller's sculpture 'Goodness' surveys Dresden after a firestorm started by Allied bombers in 1945.
USS Bunker Hill was hit by kamikazes piloted by Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa and another airman on 11 May 1945. 389 personnel were killed or missing from a crew of 2,600; Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa, who flew his aircraft into the USS Bunker Hill during a Kamikaze mission on 11 May 1945; Kamikaze Missions - Lt Yoshinori Yamaguchi's Yokosuka D4Y3 (Type 33 Suisei) "Judy" in a suicide dive against USS Essex. The dive brakes are extended and the non-self-sealing port wing tank is trailing fuel vapor and/or smoke 25 November 1944.
German V1 flying-bomb and V2 Rockets - Preparations for a Salvo Launch of V-2 Rockets in the Heidelager near Blizna (Poland) (1944), credit German History in Documents and Images GHDI.
Eastern Front (World War II); Germans race towards Stalingrad. August 1942; Soviet children during a German air raid in the first days of the war, June 1941, by RIA Novosti archive; Soviet sniper Roza Shanina in 1944. About 400,000 Soviet women served in front-line duty units Caucasus Mountains, winter 1942/43; Finnish ski patrol: the invisible enemy of the Soviet Army with an unlimited supply of skis; Men of the German Engineers Corps cross a river which is swollen after the first autumn rains, to strengthen bridges linking the German positions on the central front in Russia. by Keystone / Getty Images. October 1942; Russian snipers fighting on the Leningrad front during a blizzard. Photo by Hulton Archive / Getty Images, 1943; German soldiers surrendering to the Russians in Stalingrad, the soldier holding the white flag of surrender is dressed in white so that there could be no doubt of his intentions, a Russian soldier is on the right of the photograph. by Keystone / Getty Images, January 1943.
May 26th, 1969
Apollo Program: NASA's Apollo 10 returns to Earth after a successful eight-day test of all the components needed for the forthcoming first manned moon landing.
Wikipedia Photo: Apollo Program: Apollo 11 first manned Moon landing and the first walk on the surface on the moon. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin walks on the surface of the moon near the leg of the lunar module Eagle. Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera. Armstrong and Aldrin explored the Sea of Tranquility for two and a half hours while crewmate Michael Collins orbited above in the command module Columbia.
The Blue Marble is a famous photograph of the Earth, taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft, at a distance of about 45,000 kilometres (28,000 mi).
May 26th, 1970
The Soviet Tupolev Tu-144 SST (supersonic transport) becomes the first commercial transport to exceed Mach 2 (speed of sound).
Wikipedia Photo: The Tupolev Tu-144 (NATO name: "Charger'") a supersonic transport aircraft (SST) at the time, one of only two SSTs to enter commercial service, the other being Concorde.
May 26th, 1971
Indo-Pakistani War of 1971:
1971 - Burunga massacre; The Pakistan Army massacres at least 71 Hindus in Burunga, Sylhet and Bangladesh.
Wikipedia Image: Map Satellite India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet AR, Bangladesh.
May 26th, 1972
Willandra National Park is established in Australia.
Wikipedia Image: Austrlian satellite; Whole Earth, satellite image, credit Science Photo Library.
May 26th, 1977
George Willig climbs the South Tower of New York City's World Trade Center.
Wikipedia Photo: The World Trade Center is a site for various buildings in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States (The original World Trade Center was a complex of seven buildings - it featured landmark twin towers, which opened on April 4, 1973 and were destroyed in the September 11 attacks of 2001).
May 26th, 1986
The European Community adopts the European flag
Wikipedia Image: European Union (EU) is a unique economic and political union of 27 member states which are located primarily in Europe (Western Europe Satellite Map).
May 26th, 1998
The Supreme Court of the United States rules that Ellis Island, the historic gateway for millions of immigrants, is mainly in the state of New Jersey not New York.
Wikipedia Image: Ellis Island, an island in Upper New York Bay that was the gateway for millions of immigrants to the United States as the nation's busiest immigrant inspection station from 1892 until 1954.
May 26th, 2001
Gulf War - Iraq War:
2001 - The CIA declassifies the paragraph 39 of the report about the Iraqi nuclear program from January 1991 in the Gulf War.
Wikipedia Photo: USAF F-15Es, F-16s, and a USAF F-15 flying over burning Kuwaiti oil wells; Iraqi Army T-72 main battle tanks. The T-72 tank was a common Iraqi battle tank used in the Gulf War; F-15Es parked during Operation Desert Shield; The oil fires caused were a result of the scorched earth policy of Iraqi military forces retreating from Kuwait; Aerial view of destroyed Iraqi T-72 tank, BMP-1 and Type 63 armored personnel carriers and trucks on Highway 8 in March 1991.
May 26th, 2004
Oklahoma City bombing: The United States Army veteran Terry Nichols is found guilty of 161 state murder charges for helping carry out the Oklahoma City bombing.
Wikipedia Photo: Oklahoma City bombing; was a terrorist bomb attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. ● McVeigh and Nichols cited the federal government's actions against the Branch Davidian compound in the 1993 Waco Siege (shown above) as a reason they perpetrated the Oklahoma City bombing ● The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building two days after the bombing. ● Charles Porter's photograph of firefighter Chris Fields holding the dying infant Baylee Almon won the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography in 1996. A similar photo was taken by Lester LaRue.
May 26th, 2008
The South China floods (2008): Severe flooding begins in eastern and southern China that will ultimately cause 148 deaths and force the evacuation of 1.3 million.
Wikipedia Photo: Water released from the Three Gorges Dam, a gigantic hydropower project on the Yangtze river, in Yichang, central China's Hubei province, on July 24, 2012 after heavy downpours in the upper reaches of the dam caused the highest flood peak of the year. credit Getty Images / NBC News