DECEMBER 24.
361. George of Capadocia, Arian bishop of Alexandria, was assassinated in consequence of his oppression.
705. Ælfrid, king of Northumberland, died.
1156. Peter (the Venerable), a French ecclesiastic, died. He was sprung of a noble family, and became general of the order of Cluni. He was a man of great learning and exemplary piety.
1247. Robin Hood, the English outlaw, has his death placed on this day (See [Nov. 18]).
1460. Battle of Wakefield Green; the Lancasterians under Margaret queen of Henry IV, defeated Richard duke of York, who was slain.
1525. Vasquez de Gama, the Portuguese navigator, died at Cochin in Malabar. He discovered the course to the East Indies, by the cape of Good Hope.
1535. Euricius Cordus died; a German physician and poet, the friend of Erasmus.
1560. At Lillebone, Lower Seine, France, a fiery meteor fell, attended with red rain.
1565. A Dutch church was opened at Norwich by order of queen Elizabeth.
1650. Edinburgh castle taken by Cromwell, said to be the first time ever reduced.
1664. A comet styled a blazing star appeared in England.
1704. First eruption on record of the peak of Teneriffe.
1728. Second newspaper established in Philadelphia, called the Universal Instructor in all Arts and Sciences and Pennsylvania Gazette, by Samuel Keimer. The first press had been established by Bradford about six weeks after the city was founded.
1736. Plot discovered to destroy the whole family of Brunswick Wolfenbuttel.
1740. Daniel Waterland, an eminent English divine and polemical writer, died.
1771. Charles John Francis Henault, an eminent French chronologist, died. His great work, the result of forty years' study, has gone through many editions and been translated into the Chinese and several European languages.
1775. John Campbell, king's agent for the province of Georgia, died. He was an eminent writer on biography, history and politics.
1793. The French convention decreed
that the houses in Toulon should be leveled with the ground.
1794. South Hadley canal, or Connecticut river, opened. It was constructed to overcome a fall of 53 feet in the river; is upwards of 2 miles in length, including a cut of 300 feet in length through solid rock, 40 feet deep and 18 wide. The descent into the river was made by an inclined plane 230 feet in length, traversed by a carriage with six wheels, which was regulated by a water wheel. It was altogether quite an original affair.
1798. Robert Merry, author of the Pains of Memory, died at Baltimore.
1800. An attempt to assassinate Bonaparte at Paris by an infernal machine.
1804. Martin Vahl, a Norwegian naturalist, died. He extended his researches over various parts of Europe and the African coast.
1805. American exploring party under Capts. Lewis and Clark, went into winter quarters in huts on the shore of the Pacific, near the mouth of Columbia river.
1806. Battle of Nasielsk; the Russians under Kaminski defeated by the French under Davoust.
1806. Battle of Kursonet, on the Wrka; 15,000 Cossacks defeated by the French under Nansouty.
1808. Thomas Beddoes, an eminent English physician, died. He is known by his perseverance in making experiments to cure consumption by the application of pneumatics.
1814. Preliminaries of the treaty of peace between England and the United States signed at Ghent.
1824. Christopher Aretin, a learned German writer, died. On the abolition of the monastries in 1803 he was appointed to examine their libraries.
1830. Stephania Felicite de Genlis, a celebrated French authoress, died, aged 84. For the last thirty years of her life, her inexhaustible pen continued to pour forth a variety of works of which space is here wanted to enumerate even their names. The whole of her literary progeny falls little short of an hundred volumes, and are characterized by fertility of imagination and purity of style.
1831. A volcanic island, recently formed near Sicily, disappeared.
1832. The citadel of Antwerp, with 3,500 troops, surrendered to the French, after a brave resistance of 26 days. The French had thrown up 14,000 metres of trenches, and fired 63,000 rounds, by which 695 were wounded and 108 killed.
1836. Francisco Espoz y Mina, a distinguished Spanish constitutional general, died.
1836. Great snow storm in England, which blocked up the roads so as to prevent all traveling, and many lives were lost. In some places the snow drifted to the depth of forty feet, and in others avalanches buried houses and their inhabitants.
1846. Erastus Root, a distinguished statesman in the state of New York, died while on a visit to New York city, aged 74.
1849. Patrick Frazer Tytler, the Scottish historian, died.
1849. Great fire at San Francisco; property destroyed valued at a million and a half of dollars.
1851. The principal room of the library of Congress was destroyed by fire.