1025
Basil II in a manuscript portrait, crowned by Christ and flanked by angels.Image: from the Middle Ages, unknown · Public domainpolitics · Europe
Basil II dies and the Byzantine high tide passes
Basil II died on 15 December 1025 after a reign of almost fifty years, the longest of any Byzantine emperor. He had broken the Bulgarian state, secured the Balkans and the eastern frontier, curbed the great landowning families and left a full treasury. His brother Constantine VIII, co-emperor in name for sixty-three years and never in charge of anything, became sole ruler and died three years later, leaving the throne to his daughters Zoe and Theodora. The empire was at its greatest extent since the Arab conquests; within fifty years it had lost Anatolia.
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Constantine VIII ↗
The United States Bill of Rights, as ratified.Image: 
Les Invalides in Paris, its gilded dome over Napoleon’s tomb.Image: 
Sitting Bull, photographed by David F. Barry.Image: 
Reza Shah Pahlavi.Image: 
Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in a publicity still for Gone with the Wind.Image: 
Meiji Shrine in Tokyo.Image: 
The courtroom in Jerusalem, with the bullet-proof glass booth built for the defendant.Image: 
A Venera descent capsule on display.Image: 
A statistical card of the kind once used to record diagnoses in mental hospitals.Image: 
The Chernobyl nuclear power plant, with the containment arch over reactor four.Image: