811The Bulgarians trap and kill the Byzantine emperor Nikephoros I
In the summer of 811 the Byzantine emperor Nikephoros I led a large army into Bulgaria, determined to crush Khan Krum, whose raids had cost the empire dearly. He took Krum’s capital, Pliska, burned it and plundered the khan’s treasury, and turned away offers of peace. But while the Byzantines lingered, the Bulgarians blocked the narrow mountain passes that led back towards Constantinople with walls of felled timber.
On 26 July 811, as the retreating army camped in one of these defiles, Krum’s troops fell on it at dawn. Most of the Byzantine force was destroyed and Nikephoros himself was killed, the first emperor to die in battle in more than four centuries; his son Staurakios was badly wounded and died within months. According to the chroniclers, Krum had the emperor’s skull lined with silver and used it as a drinking cup. The victory made Bulgaria one of the great powers of the Balkans.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: Krum ↗
1581The Dutch rebels renounce King Philip II
By 1581 the provinces of the northern Low Countries had been in revolt against their Spanish Habsburg ruler, Philip II, for more than a decade. Led by William of Orange, they had resisted Philip’s heavy taxes, his persecution of Protestants and the brutal rule of his governors, and in 1579 several of them had joined in the Union of Utrecht to fight on together.
On 26 July 1581 their States General, meeting in The Hague, issued the Plakkaat van Verlatinghe, the Act of Abjuration. It argued that a prince exists to protect his subjects as a shepherd protects his sheep, and that a king who treats them as slaves forfeits his right to rule; Philip was therefore deposed. The rebels at first looked for another prince, but in time they governed themselves as the Dutch Republic, which Spain finally recognised in 1648. The original document is kept in the Nationaal Archief in The Hague.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Nationaal Archief: Plakkaat van Verlatinge (1581) ↗
1847Liberia declares its independence
Liberia began in 1822 as a settlement on the West African coast founded by the American Colonization Society, a body of white Americans who wanted free Black people to leave the United States. Over the following years thousands of free-born and formerly enslaved African Americans made the crossing, and their capital was named Monrovia after President James Monroe. The colony was run by the society, but as it grew its settlers wanted the powers of a sovereign state, including the right to make their own laws on trade, which foreign merchants and governments would not accept from a private society.
On 26 July 1847 a convention in Monrovia declared Liberia a free and independent republic and adopted a constitution modelled on that of the United States. Joseph Jenkins Roberts, a merchant born in Virginia, was elected its first president. Britain was among the first countries to recognise Liberia, but the United States waited until 1862. The new state was dominated for more than a century by the settlers’ descendants rather than the peoples already living there. 26 July remains Liberia’s Independence Day.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Office of the Historian: Founding of Liberia, 1847 ↗
1953Fidel Castro leads the attack on the Moncada barracks
In March 1952 the former army sergeant Fulgencio Batista seized power in Cuba, cancelling the elections due that year. Among his opponents was Fidel Castro, a 26-year-old lawyer, who secretly gathered and trained a band of young followers. His plan was to seize the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba, the island’s second-largest military post, arm his men with its weapons and spark a national uprising.
Early on 26 July 1953, during Santiago’s carnival, about 160 rebels attacked. The assault collapsed within hours. Many of the attackers were killed, several of them after being captured, and Castro was arrested days later. At his trial he spoke in his own defence, a speech later published as ‘History Will Absolve Me’, and was sentenced to 15 years. Released under an amnesty in 1955, he went into exile in Mexico and named his movement after the date of the attack; within six years the 26th of July Movement had driven Batista from power.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: 26th of July Movement ↗
1956Nasser nationalises the Suez Canal
The Suez Canal had been run since it opened in 1869 by the Suez Canal Company, whose largest shareholders were the British government and French investors. Egypt’s president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, wanted to build a great new dam on the Nile at Aswan, but in July 1956 the United States and Britain withdrew their offers to help pay for it, and the World Bank loan fell through with them.
On 26 July 1956, in a long speech to a huge crowd in Alexandria, Nasser announced that he had signed a decree nationalising the company, with immediate effect. Egyptian officials took over its offices, shareholders were to be compensated at the previous day’s price on the Paris stock exchange, and the canal’s income would pay for the dam. The move made Nasser a hero across the Arab world, but it alarmed Britain and France, and within three months they had joined Israel in the invasion of Egypt that became the Suez Crisis.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Office of the Historian: The Suez Crisis, 1956 ↗
