‘Dominic’s posts are the ‘In Our Time‘ of the Telegraph’
‘Thank you, Mr Selwood, for being dangerous’
‘What a great read … a fragment of world history made interesting. Thank you.’
This is easily one of the best and most important articles I’ve read this year.
As fair an evaluation of a conflicted and deeply divisive ‘object’ as I have ever read. Well done.
Selwood´s work is a fascinating change from the usual dusty history books
These articles will take you to www.telegraph.co.uk/on-this-day
597 BC On this day in 597 BC: King Nebuchadnezzar II sacks Jerusalem and exiles the Jews (16 March)
354 BC On this day: an ancient Athenian performer invents the theatre as we know it (23 November)
49 BC On this day in 49 BC: Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon (10 January)
19 BC On this day in 19 BC: Virgil, epic poet of the Aeneid, dies (21 September)
AD 51 On this day in AD 51: the brutal, vainglorious Roman emperor Domitian is born (24 October)
AD 68 On this day in AD 68: The death of the tyrannical Emperor (9 June)
AD 80 On this day in AD 80: Titus, scourge of Jerusalem and rebuilder of Rome, dies (13 September)
AD 313 On this day in 313 AD: Constantine liberates the Christians with the Edict of Milan (13 June)
AD 395 On this day in AD 395: The Roman Empire is forever cloven in two (17 January)
AD 455 On this day in AD 455: the beginning of the end for Rome (2 June)
AD 516 1,500 years ago – King Arthur’s epic battle (30 December)
AD 532 On this day in AD 532: The Nika riots sweep across Constantinople (11 January)
AD 632 On this day in AD 632: Yazdegerd III ascends the throne of the Sassanian Empire (16 June)
AD 679 On this day in 679: Æthelthryth, Anglo-Saxon princess and saint, dies at Ely (23 June)
AD 918 On this day in 918: the death of Æthelflæd, the powerful queen who united England (12 June)
AD 1076 On this day in 1076: Waltheof’s secret execution prompts scandal and speculation (31 May)
AD 1120 On this day in 1120: The Knights Templar order of warrior monks is formed (16 January)
AD 1152 On this day in 1152: Eleanor of Aquitaine marries Henry II (18 May)
AD 1198 On this day in 1198: the Islamic philosopher Averroës dies in Marrakech (10 December)
AD 1199 On this day in 1199: brave Richard the Lionheart dies (6 April)
AD 1215 On this day in 1215: Magna Carta is sealed (15 June)
AD 1216 On this day in 1216: the Dominican Order is approved by the Pope (22 December)
AD 1256 On this day in 1256: the Mongol horde crushes the legendary Assassins (15 December)
AD 1324 On this day in 1324: Marco Polo, the great Venetian traveller, dies (9 January)
AD 1337 On this day in 1337: the illustrious Duchy of Cornwall is born (17 March)
AD 1387 On this day in 1397: The first reading of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (17 April)
AD 1400 On this day in 1400: The deposed Richard II conveniently dies, leaving Henry IV unchallenged
AD 1408 On this day: the order which gave Count Dracula his name was founded (12 December)
AD 1415 On this day in 1415: St George’s Day declared a national feast day (23 April)
AD 1469 On this day in 1469: Niccolò Machiavelli, author of The Prince, is born (3 May)
AD 1484 On this day in 1484: the College of Arms, font of heraldry, is founded (2 March)
AD 1542 On this day: Mary Stuart becomes Queen of Scots at six days old (14 December)
AD 1582 On this day in 1582: Pope Gregory XIII announces the new Gregorian calendar (24 february)
AD 1606 On this day in 1606: Guy Fawkes, treasonous plotter, is executed in Westminster (31 January)
AD 1612 On this day in 1612: The Pendle witch trials (18 August)
AD 1662 On this day in 1662: The Great Ejection sees puritanism purged from public life (24 August)
AD 1687 On this day on 1687: A direct hit by a Venetian mortar blows up the Parthenon (26 September)
AD 1688 On this day in 1688: James II goes into exile, leaving Parliament supreme (23 December)
AD 1692 On this day in 1692: The Salem witch trials begin with a wave of hysteria (1 March)
AD 1702 On this day: Jack Sheppard, thief and prison escape artist extraordinaire, is born (4 March)
AD 1713 On this day in 1713: the Treaty of Utrecht is signed, ceding Gibraltar to Britain (11 April)
AD 1718 On this day: Blackbeard’s last stand (22 November)
AD 1752 On this day: Lady Day, and until 1752 the first day of the year (25 March)
AD 1775 On this day: Jane Austen was born (16 December)
AD 1788 On this day in 1788: The First Fleet reaches Australia and founds a nation (18 January)
AD 1797 On this day in 1797: A French invasion of Wales ends in wine-addled surrender (22 February)
AD 1804 On this day: Napoleon crowned himself emperor in Notre Dame (2 December)
AD 1820 On this day in 1820: the statue of Venus de Milo is discovered (8 April)
AD 1859 On this day in 1859: America’s largest ever sale of slaves reaches its tragic end (3 March)
AD 1859 On this day in 1859: The birth of Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle (22 May)
AD 1869 On this day in 1869: Rasputin was (probably) born (21 January)
AD 1889 On this day in 1889: Paris’ dramatic icon, the Eiffel Tower, opens (31 March)
AD 1893 On this day in 1893: Hermann Goering, Adolf Hitler’s right hand man, is born (12 January)
AD 1895 On this day in 1895: the catalysis for Oscar Wilde’s demise is triggered (3 April)
AD 1900 On this day in 1900: Friedrich Nietzsche dies (25 August)
AD 1903 On this day in 1903: Orde Wingate, leader of the Chindits, is born (27 February)
AD 1912 On this day in 1912: The sinking of RMS Titanic (15 April)
AD 1914 On this day in 1914: Archduke Franz Ferdinand is assassinated in Sarajevo (28 June)
AD 1914 On this day in 1914: Dylan Thomas, Wales’s wildest poet, is born (27 October)
AD 1916 On this day in 1916: the savage slaughter of the Battle of Verdun begin (21 February)
AD 1917 On this day: the Bolsheviks seize power in the Russian October Revolution (7 November)
AD 1917 On this day: Edmund Allenby captures Jerusalem, ending 730 years of Muslim rule (9 December)
AD 1919 On this day in 1919: The German Fleet is scuttled at Scapa Flow (21 June)
AD 1922 On this day: Howard Carter unlocks the tomb of Tutankhamun (4 November)
AD 1934 On this day in 1934: The world’s most infamous prison welcomes its first inmates (11 August)
AD 1935 On this day in 1935: The death of Lawrence of Arabia (19 May)
AD 1935 On this day in 1935: The Nuremberg racial laws were passed (15 September)
AD 1937 On this day in 1937: German bombs rain down on the Spanish town of Guernica (26 April)
AD 1942 On this day: Germany invades Vichy France (10 November)
AD 1945 On this day in 1945: The Germans surrender in World War Two (7 May)
AD 1945 On this day in 1945: The Nuremberg trials of 24 surviving senior Nazis begin (20 November)
AD 1953 On this day in 1953: The execution of Soviet spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (19 June)
AD 1953 On this day: Piltdown Man (21 November)
AD 1954 On this day in 1954: Joseph McCarthy, scourge of communism, makes the error that ends his career (18 February)
AD 1961 On this day in 1961: beloved British entertainer, George Formby, dies (6 March)
AD 1962 On this day in 1962: The execution of Adolf Eichmann, Holocaust organiser (1 June)
AD 1963 On this day: Lee Harvey Oswald’s murder was broadcast live on TV (24 November)
AD 1968 On this day in 1968: Robert F Kennedy is assassinated, five years after his brother (6 June)
AD 1971 On this day in 1971: Decimal Day heralds the end of the “bob” and “tanner” (15 February)
AD 1972 On this day: Paris’ notorious guillotine claims its final victim (28 November)
AD 1977 On this day in 1977: The premiere of the world’s greatest space opera, Star Wars (25 May)
AD 1977 On this day in 1977: The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Elvis Presley, dies at 42 (17 August]
AD 1979 On This Day: Ayatollah Khomeini seizes control in the Iranian Revolution (11 February)
AD 1983 On this day in 1983: the ‘Hitler diaries’ announced (22 April)
AD 1994 On this day in 1994: the Channel Tunnel opens, linking England to France (6 May)
AD 1995 On this day: Operation Desert Storm ends (30 November)
AD 2005 On this day in 2005: Saddam Hussein goes on trial for crimes against humanity (19 October)
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Dominic Selwood is a historian and barrister. He is a bestselling author and novelist, and frequent contributor to national newspapers, radio and television.
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