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1099 Godfrey of Bouillon was elected first Defender of the Holy Sepulchre of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

1246 Güyük Khan (c. 1206 - 1248), Mongol leader, demanded the homage of the Roman Catholic Pope (Innocent IV); Khan's letter of demand was delivered in November of that year.

Wikipedia says: Güyük (also transliterated Guyuk, Kuyuk, Güyük, etc.) was the third Mongol khan, son of Ögedei Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, who reigned from 1246 - 1248.

Giovanni da Pian del Carpini, or John of Plano Carpini or Joannes de Plano (??-1252) was one of the first Europeans to enter the court of the Great Khan.

Carpini was a Franciscan monk who was sent by Pope Innocent IV with a letter to the Great khan of the Mongol Empire. He was accompanied by the Polish monk Benedict of Poland, who worked as his interpreter, and the Czech monk Stefan (known also as Czeslaw). Some sources also mention another monk, de Bridia from Breslau (Wrocław). They left Lyon in 1245. Near the Volga River, they were stopped by Mongols who allowed only Benedict and Carpini to continue their journey, and in 1246 they reached Karakoram.

The great khan Güyük refused the invitation to become Christian and demanded that the Pope and rulers of Europe should come to him and swear allegiance to him. Carpini and his companion returned to Rome in 1247.

(On February 16, 1249, Andrew of Longjumeau was dispatched by Louis IX of France as his ambassador to meet with Güyük Khan, but on arrival found that Khan was dead.)

"Soon after Carpini's return, Louis IX of France was in Cyprus organizing the disastrous Sixth Crusade against the Saracens (Mamelukes) in Egypt, when he received an envoy from the Mongol commanding general at Tabriz in Persia. This messenger brought news that the Great Khan and his nobles had been converted to Christianity 3 years previously and there was a possibility of the Mongols helping Louis to fight the Saracens. This welcome overture prompted the immediate dispatch of a second mission to the court of Guyak in 1249, this time headed by a Dominican, Andrew of Longjumeau. Traveling at ten leagues a day, he and his companions reached Mongolia only to find that Guyuk had died 2 years previously without becoming a Christian. In the absence of a Great Khan, Longjumeau was sent home with an arrogant message to the effect that unless Louis sent a yearly tribute to her court he and his subjects would be destroyed."
Source

 

1298 Battle of Falkirk – Edward I (Longshanks) of England and his longbowmen defeated William Wallace and his Scottish schiltrons outside the town.

The Pied Piper of Hamelin  

1376* The Pied Piper came to Hamelin (Hameln), a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, and led the children out of town.  (Read the legend here.)

The story of the Pied Piper (Rattenfänger) of Hamelin was popularized in German by the Brothers Grimm and in English by the poet Robert Browning (1812 - '89) in his narrative poem of that name.

It comes from an old German legend translated into English in 1605 by Richard Verstegan, English publisher and antiquarian (c. 1548 - c. 1636), who gave this as the date in A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence. (A 14^th-Century account gives the date as June 26, 1284.) The oldest remaining source is a note in Latin prose, made one and a half centuries later (1430 - 1450) as an addition to a 14^th-Century manuscript from Lüneburg.

The stranger, dressed in pied, or multicoloured, clothing, offered to rid the town of Hamelin of its plague of rats, for an agreed price. He played his pipe and the rats followed his beguiling tune down to the Weser River, all drowning. The burghers of Hamelin refused to pay the piper, so in revenge he began piping his charming song and the town's children, entranced, followed him to a mountain cave, which as if by magic sealed itself shut.

The historical record

There are historical records of a stained glass window in the church of Hamelin that dates from before 1300, depicting the children's exodus. Unfortunately, the picture has been missing since the window was replaced around 1660. A rhyme appeared with this window, reporting that a piper dressed in many colours led 130 children away from Hamelin.

A German version of the tale seems to have survived in a 1602/1603 inscription found in Hamelin in the Rattenfängerhaus (Pied Piper's, or Ratcatcher's house):

Anno 1284 am dage Johannis et Pauli
war der 26. junii
Dorch einen piper mit allerlei farve bekledet
gewesen CXXX kinder verledet binnen Hamelen gebo[re]n
to calvarie bi den koppen verloren  

which has been roughly translated into English as:

In the year of 1284, on John's and Paul's day
was the 26th of June
By a piper, dressed in all kinds of colours,
130 children born in Hamelin were seduced
and lost at the place of execution near the Koppen.  (Source)

We do know that something remarkable happened in medieval Hamelin that changed the town forever. Somehow, 130 of the town's children were taken away, and the grief imprinted itself on the village's soul, enough for the town church to have a stained-glass window installed that showed many children being led away by a person unknown.

One Decan Lude of Hamelin was reported around 1384 to have in his possession a chorus book containing a Latin verse giving an eyewitness account of the event. The verse was reportedly written by his grandmother, but, unfortunately, the chorus book is believed to have been lost since the late 17th Century.

Pied Piper theories

Many people have proposed explanations for the famous legend. Perhaps the most likely is that the Bishop Bruno of Olmütz (now Olomouc) went on a Crusade recruitment drive – perhaps a Children's Crusade – in his diocese. Many family names in Olomouc bear a strikingly similarity to those in Hamelin, so a pilgrimage or military campaign might be the basis of the legend.

It has also been suggested that Hamelin's children, or some of them, were victims of an accident, perhaps either drowning in the Weser or being buried in a landslide ...

Read on at the Pied Piper page in the Scriptorium

 

Prehistoric pipers?

"After 50,000 years of silence, the music of a prehistoric flute has been heard once again. This sonorous trip into the Neolithic era began with the discovery of several broken instruments in Divje Bave, a cave in Slovenia. They are thought to be the world's oldest musical instruments.

"They were carved from the leg bones of bears and unearthed alongside Neanderthal tools and an ancient fireplace. The recovered flute fragments have just two holes and were recovered from the dig in 1995.

"But now musician and archaeologist Dr Jelle Atema, from Boston University, has reconstructed the flute using a genuine 50,000-year-old bear bone.

"He said the range of the flute would have been less than an octave and showed that the pitch could be changed by blowing harder.

"But it would always be a mystery why early humans first started making music: 'I believe it may go back as far as 200,000 years,' he said at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"One theory is that Neanderthal males used music to charm women, he said. 'It's one of many hypotheses that I entertain with pleasure.

"'But there are certainly simpler explanations. It could have been a hunting instrument, used to attract birds or it could have accompanied dancing.'

"Dr Atema also played two reconstructions of ancient French flutes. The first was made from a 40,000-year-old deer bone whilst the second was a somewhat young 4,000 years old and made from the bone of a vulture.

Source: Blue Moon News

 

1587 Colony of Roanoke: A second group of English settlers arrived on Roanoke Island off North Carolina to re-establish the deserted colony. See also August 18 (1587 and 1590, On this day in history).

The Lost Roanoke Colony

1645 Death of Gaspar de Guzman, Count of Olivares, Duke of San Lucar.

1676 Death of Pope Clement X.

1724 Weird stuff from Hamelin again. A naked, animal-like boy of about twelve was captured in the woods near Hamelin, Germany. He was sent to Hertfordshire, England and lived till about 72 years of age. He was always known as Peter the Wild Boy (or, Wild Peter) and wore a brass collar inscribed to that effect.

Feral children - Wikipedia

Feral Children website

1793 Alexander Mackenzie reached the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first Euro-American to complete a transcontinental crossing north of Mexico.

1796 Surveyors of the Connecticut Land Company named an area in Ohio 'Cleveland' after Gen. Moses Cleaveland, the superintendent of the surveying party.

1812 Peninsular War: British forces led by Arthur Wellesley (later Duke of Wellington) defeated French troops near Salamanca in Spain.

1832 Death of Napoleon II of France.

1861 The First Battle of Bull Run, the first major engagement in the American Civil War, in which the Union forces under General Irvin McDowell were defeated.

1864 American Civil War: Battle of Atlanta – Outside Atlanta, Georgia, Confederate General John Bell Hood led an unsuccessful attack on Union troops under General William T Sherman on Bald Hill.

1870 Death of Josef Strauss, Austrian composer.

1883 Australian utopian labor leader William Lane "married Annie Mary Errington Macguire at Algonac, Michigan; they were to have eight daughters and three sons."   Source

1908 USA: Albert Fisher established the Fisher Body Company to manufacture carriage and automobile bodies.

1910 Captain Henry Kendall suspected that two of the passengers on his Canadian Pacific steamer, the SS Montrose, on the Atlantic were the notorious wife-murderer, homeopath Hawley Crippen, and his lover, Ethel le Neve, disguised as a boy.

At 1500 he telegraphed the British authorities:

"Have strong suspicions that Crippen London cellar murderer and accomplice are among Saloon passengers. Moustache taken off growing beard. Accomplice dressed as boy. Voice manner and build undoubtedly a girl."

Crippen was arrested on July 31 and hanged on November 23.

Unusual coincidence

According to Wikipedia: As World War One approached, the Admiralty feared that Dover harbour would be an easy target for U-boats, and decided to sink two obsolete ships at the harbour entry as an added defence. The Admiralty bought the SS Montrose, filled its hull with ballast and moored it at Admiralty Pier, Dover. On December 28, 1914, a storm raged and the Montrose broke her moorings, drifting up the English Channel towards the Goodwin Sands. Tugs were sent after her and four men boarded the wreck to secure cables but to no avail. She sank in the channel between the North and South banks of the sands where she can be seen to this day. The last sailor to leave the Montrose before she broke up was named Crippen.

The Crippen story

1916 Death of James Whitcomb Riley (b. 1849), probable source of the expression 'the life of Riley'.

1925 Australia: The first regular Sydney-Melbourne airmail service is established.

1933 Wiley Post became first person to fly solo around the world, travelling 15,596 miles in 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes, bettering his own record of two years before.

His historic round-the-world solo flight slashed 21 hours off the previous record of eight days, 15 hours and 51 minutes.

1934 USA: Outside Chicago, Illinois's Biograph Theatre, 'Public Enemy No. 1', John Dillinger, was mortally wounded by FBI agents.

Dillinger font    More

1937 New Deal: The United States Senate voted down President Franklin D Roosevelt's proposal to add more justices to the Supreme Court of the United States.

1942 Holocaust: The systematic deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto began.

1946 King David Hotel bombing: Zionist terrorist group Irgun bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, headquarters of the British civil and military administration, killing 91 people, 17 of them Jewish.

1946 Bread rationing began in the UK.

1957 Shell and BP left Israel following pressure from Arab oil interests.

1962 Mariner program: The Mariner 1 spacecraft flew erratically several minutes after launch and had to be destroyed.

1968 Bones found at Lake Mungo in NSW, Australia were found to be those of an aborigine who lived and died in the area at least 25,000 years ago. The discovery pushed back the known date of human occupation of this continent.

1969 Juan Carlos of Spain was named as Francisco Franco's heir as head of State and future King of Spain. The 31-year-old prince was grandson of King Alfonso XIII.

1969 Apollo 11 lifted off from the Moon.

1977 Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping was restored to power.

1979 Australia announced an increase of its refugee intake from 10,500 to 14,000 per year.

1983 Australian electronics millionaire and aviator, Dick Smith, completed his round-the-world helicopter flight.

1988 Russell 'Mad Dog' Cox and Raymond John Denning, two of Australia's most wanted criminals, were captured after a chase by Victorian police.

1991 American serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested after the remains of 11 men and boys were found in his Milwaukee, Wisconsin apartment.

1992 Near Medellín, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar escaped from his luxury prison after a bloody shoot-out, to avoid extradition to the United States.

1997 The second Blue Water Bridge opened between Port Huron, Michigan and Sarnia, Ontario, Canada.

2002 USA: FBI translator and whistleblower, Sibel Edmonds, filed suit against the Department of Justice, the FBI, and several high-level officials, alleging that she was wrongfully terminated from the FBI in retaliation for reporting criminal activities committed by government officials and employees.

2005 A man was killed by police as the hunt began for the London Bombers. See July 7, 2005 London bombings and July 21, 2005 London bombings.

2005 The last Buick LeSabre rolled off the assembly line.

Tomorrow: Leo, Neptune, Salacia

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