1693. Bayonets first used at the battle near Turin on loaded muskets, which has been practiced ever since. In 1620 they were first constructed at Bayonne. Hence the name.
1722. James Watson, author of the History of Printing in Scotland, died at Edinburgh.
1757. Aaron Burr, president of New-Jersey college, died. He was an able divine and an accomplished scholar.
1793. Foundation laid of the Iron bridge over the river Wear, at Sunderland, England. It was finished in 1796.
1803. Berbice, a Dutch colony in Guiana, celebrated for its fine coffee, surrendered to the British.
1805. William Byrne, a distinguished British landscape engraver, died.
1811. French under general Marmont forced Wellington to raise the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo in Spain.
1816. Eusebius Valli, an eminent Italian physician, died a martyr to science. He visited Smyrna and Constantinople to make observations on the plague, and the West-Indies to study the nature of the yellow fever. In both instances he voluntarily subjected himself to the disease, and in the latter made a fatal experiment in exposing himself to the infection with a dead body, so that in three days the scene closed upon him in death.
1821. The Hetærists, a Greek brotherhood, extirpated. On the breaking out of the Greek revolution they hastened from all parts of Europe and formed a legion of heroes. The last band of them were attacked and defeated at the monastery of Seck, where their leader Jordaki, being wounded, and to escape falling into the hands of the Turks, set fire to the monastery, and perished in the conflagration.
1825. Peter Paul Dobree died; an eminent professor of Greek and Latin, who succeeded Porson at Cambridge, and was one of the most finished classical scholars in Europe.