410Alaric’s Visigoths break into Rome
By the early 400s the Western Roman Empire was struggling to hold its frontiers, and its emperor, Honorius, ruled from the safety of Ravenna rather than from Rome. Alaric, king of the Visigoths, had served Rome as an ally and wanted land, pay and a high command for his people. When the court refused his terms, he marched on Rome and besieged it more than once in 408 and 409, each time agreeing to withdraw in return for promises that were not kept.
On the night of 24 August 410 a gate was opened, by whom is not known, and Alaric’s army entered the city. For three days the Visigoths plundered palaces and public buildings, though as Christians they largely spared the churches and those who sheltered in them. It was the first time in some 800 years that Rome had fallen to a foreign enemy. The shock ran across the Roman world and moved Augustine of Hippo to write The City of God, and the sack is still seen as a turning point in the decline of the Western Empire.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: Sack of Rome (410 CE) ↗
1814British troops set fire to Washington
Two years into the War of 1812 between the United States and Britain, a British force under General Robert Ross and Rear Admiral George Cockburn landed in Maryland and marched on the American capital. On the afternoon of 24 August 1814 they scattered a hastily gathered American army at Bladensburg, and President James Madison and his government fled the city. Dolley Madison left the President’s House only after arranging for Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of George Washington to be saved.
That evening the British entered Washington unopposed and set fire to the Capitol, the President’s House, the Treasury and other public buildings, partly in revenge for the American burning of York, in Upper Canada, the year before. The library of Congress, some 3,000 books kept in the Capitol, was destroyed. A violent storm the next day helped to put out the flames, and the British soon withdrew. Thomas Jefferson sold his own library to Congress to replace the lost books, and the rebuilt President’s House became known as the White House.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: US Senate: A Capitol in Ruins ↗
1516The Ottomans crush the Mamluks at Marj Dabiq
For more than 250 years the Mamluk sultans of Cairo had ruled Egypt and Syria and acted as guardians of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. To the north, the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Selim I had just defeated Safavid Persia, and the elderly Mamluk sultan, Qansuh al-Ghawri, led his army into northern Syria to face him.
The two armies met at Marj Dabiq, a plain north of Aleppo, on 24 August 1516. The Ottoman troops, with their artillery and musket-armed infantry, routed the Mamluk cavalry, and Qansuh al-Ghawri died on the battlefield. Syria fell to Selim almost without a fight, and after a second victory near Cairo in January 1517 the Mamluk sultanate came to an end. Egypt, Syria and the holy places of Arabia remained under Ottoman rule for some four centuries.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: Battle of Marj Dābiq ↗
1991Ukraine declares its independence
Ukraine had been one of the founding republics of the Soviet Union, and the second most populous after Russia. In July 1990, as Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms loosened Moscow’s grip, its parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, had declared the republic’s sovereignty, but full separation still seemed a distant prospect. Then on 19 August 1991 hardliners in Moscow tried to seize power from Gorbachev, and their coup collapsed within three days.
On 24 August 1991, with the Soviet system visibly breaking apart, the Verkhovna Rada voted by an overwhelming majority to declare Ukraine an independent democratic state whose territory was ‘indivisible and inviolable’. The declaration was put to the people on 1 December 1991, when more than 90 per cent of voters approved it, and within weeks the Soviet Union itself was dissolved. 24 August is celebrated as Ukraine’s Independence Day.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine: Resolution on the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine ↗
