AUGUST 31.
1130. Abu Abdillah Mohammed, founder of the sect and dynasty of Almohades, died. The empire founded by this imposter, lasted 140 years.
1290. Edward I, by a proclamation, exiled the whole race of English Jews forever, on penalty of death.
1422. Henry V of England died at Vincennes, in France. He had conquered the kingdom, and was received at Paris as the future master of the country.
1523. Ulric Hutten, an eccentric German poet, died.
1568. John de la Valette Parisot, grand master of the knights of Malta, died. He bravely defended the island against a formidable siege by the Turks in 1557.
1578. Frobisher embarked to return from his third voyage to the northernmost part of the American continent. His fleet was separated the next night, by a violent storm, but arrived safe, one ship after another, in England. Stow, the chronicler, says, "they fraught their shippes with the like pretended gold ore out of the mines," as on their last voyage, "but after great charges it proved worse than good stone, whereby many men were deceived to their utter undoings."
1615. Stephen Pasquier died; an eminent French advocate and poet.
1660. John Freinshemius, a learned German, died. He understood most of the languages of Europe, and his supplements to Livy and Quintus Curtius, go far to supply the loss of the originals.
1688. John Bunyan died, aged 60. From an abandoned youth he became a respectable preacher; the authorship of Pilgrim's Progress will perpetuate his memory.
1733. Fifty tons of half pence and farthings sent from the Tower of London to Ireland.
1772. William Borlase, an English writer on natural history, &c., died. He also devoted much attention to antiquities.
1805. James Currie, an eminent Scottish physician, died. He wrote on medicine, and published an edition of Robert Burns with an excellent memoir.
1813. Battle of St. Sebastian; Wellington having driven the French over the Pyrennes, carried this place by storm and achieved a victory on the heights of San Marceil. French loss 15,000.
1832. Everard Home, an English anatomist, died, aged 77. He was one of the most eminent medical men of his day, and his publications are numerous and in high repute.
1849. The convention for framing a state constitution for California, assembled at Monterey.
1852. James L. Kingsley, professor of languages and ecclesiastical history, died, aged 73. He was connected with the college in the department of classical literature, with high reputation, for half a century.
1853. The cholera appeared at Newcastle upon Tyne, in England, and caused 1538 deaths before its disappearance on the 26th October.
1853. A Roman circus of great size was discovered at Tours in France, where excavations were being made.
1853. The small pox raged at the Sandwich islands, having since May carried off 1,805 persons out of a population of 60,000.
1855. William H. Fry died at Philadelphia, aged 78. He was one of the magnates of the press in that city, and the founder of the National Gazette.
1855. Lewis Weston Dillwyn, a British naturalist, died at Swanse, Wales, aged 77. He produced several valuable works on natural history, and communicated various papers on fossils, shells and plants to the Royal society.