394 B. C. Agesilaus crossed the Hellespont, on his recal from the Persian satrapy, a march of thirty days, which had occupied Xerxes twelve months.—The great battle fought by the Spartans against their countrymen happened about the same day.
965. Benedict V, pope, died. He was elected in opposition to Leo VIII. His short reign was stormy, and he was carried to Hamburg by Otho, who favored the cause of his rival.
1044. Aba, king of Hungary, defeated by his own subjects and killed in battle.
1100. Jerusalem taken by the Crusaders, after a siege of five weeks, and given up to massacre and pillage. Every inhumanity was practiced; those who had surrendered upon terms of safety, were butchered in cold blood to the number of 10,000; and among the inhabitants, also, neither age nor sex escaped the merciless fury of the Christian swords.
1529. Paulus Æmilius, a Veronese historian, died at Paris. He had begun a Latin history of the kings of France, and although he spent many years at it, was able only to reach the reign of Charles VIII. ([May 5]?)
1535. Thomas More, a celebrated English statesman, beheaded. He was doomed, for his adherence to the papal supremacy, to descend from the highest office under the king to an apartment in the tower, and suffered death rather than yield his opinions. He wrote several works, the most noted of which is the Utopia.
1566. Robert Carnegie, a Scottish statesman, died. He was a lord of session, and often sent on important embassies to France and England.
1582. At Rockhausen, not far from Erfurth, in Prussia, there fell a great quantity of a fibrous matter resembling human hair. It was at the close of a great tempest, such as usually precede an earthquake.
1614. Peter de Bourdeilles (or Brantome), a French abbot and courtier, died. His memoirs are printed in 15 vols.
1623. William Bride, an English music composer, died. The grace non nobis Domini, composed by him, was first sung on the second anniversary of the gunpowder plot, 1607.