Language & Words
Origins of words, alphabets, phrases, dictionaries, and naming traditions
History: January 4 (#1)
January 4, 1909 Explorer Aeneas Mackintosh of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition escaped death by fleeing across ice floes.
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January 4, 1912 The Scout Association is incorporated throughout the British Empire by royal charter.
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January 6, 1838 Alfred Vail and colleagues demonstrate a telegraph system using dots and dashes (this is the forerunner of Morse code).
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January 6, 1947 Pan American Airlines becomes the first commercial airline to offer a round-the-world ticket.
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January 8, 1547 The first Lithuanian-language book, the Catechism of Martynas Mažvydas, is published in Königsberg.
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January 8, 2004 The RMS Queen Mary 2, then the largest ocean liner ever built, is christened by her namesake's granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II.
Read commentary →History: January 9 (#3)
January 9, 2017 Mont-Libre Agile Learning Centre, the province of Quebec's first alternative schooling democratic learning centre to support homeschooled youth, opens in the city of Montreal.
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January 10, 69 Lucius Calpurnius Piso Licinianus is appointed by Galba as deputy Roman Emperor.
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January 13, 1435 Sicut Dudum, forbidding the enslavement by the Spanish of the Guanche natives in Canary Islands who had converted, or were converting to, Christianity, is promulgated by Pope Eugene IV.
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January 16, 378 General Siyaj K'ak' conquers Tikal, enlarging the domain of King Spearthrower Owl of Teotihuacán.
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January 17, 1608 Emperor Susenyos I of Ethiopia surprises an Oromo army at Ebenat; his army reportedly kills 12,000 Oromo at the cost of 400 of his men.
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January 18, 1778 James Cook is the first known European to discover the Hawaiian Islands, which he names the "Sandwich Islands".
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January 22, 1970 The Boeing 747, the world's first "jumbo jet", enters commercial service for launch customer Pan American Airways with its maiden voyage from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport to London Heathrow Airport.
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January 25, 1650 As part of the purges following the Great Potosí Mint Fraud of 1649 Francisco Gómez de la Rocha, a rich former corregidor of Potosí, is executed.
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January 28, 1933 The name Pakistan is coined by Choudhry Rahmat Ali Khan and is accepted by Indian Muslims who then thereby adopted it further for the Pakistan Movement seeking independence.
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January 29, 1845 "The Raven" is published in The Evening Mirror in New York, the first publication with the name of the author, Edgar Allan Poe.
Read commentary →History: February 1 (#2)
February 1, 1884 The first volume (A to Ant) of the Oxford English Dictionary is published.
Read commentary →History: February 2 (#2)
February 2, 1725 J. S. Bach leads the first performance of his chorale cantata Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin, BWV 125, based on Luther's paraphrase of the Nunc dimittis.
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February 2, 1207 Terra Mariana, eventually comprising present-day Latvia and Estonia, is established.
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February 4, 2004 Facebook, a mainstream online social networking site, is founded by Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin.
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February 9, 1932 Prohibition law is abolished in Finland after a national referendum, where 70% voted for a repeal of the law.
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February 9, 1900 The Davis Cup competition is established.
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February 10, 1933 In round 13 of a boxing match at New York City's Madison Square Garden, Primo Carnera knocks out Ernie Schaaf. Schaaf dies four days later.
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February 27, 907 Abaoji, chieftain of the Yila tribe, is named khagan of the Khitans.
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February 28, 202 BCE Liu Bang is enthroned as the Emperor of China, beginning four centuries of rule by the Han dynasty.
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March 2, 1989 Twelve European Community nations agree to ban the production of all chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by the end of the century.
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March 4, 852 Croatian Knez Trpimir I issues a statute, a document with the first known written mention of the Croats name in Croatian sources.
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March 9, 1842 Giuseppe Verdi's third opera, Nabucco, receives its première performance in Milan; its success establishes Verdi as one of Italy's foremost opera composers.
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March 9, 1009 First known mention of Lithuania, in the annals of the monastery of Quedlinburg.
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March 15, 351 Constantius Gallus is elevated as Caesar and then sent to Antioch to govern the Roman East.
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March 16, 1621 Samoset, an Abenaki, visits the settlers of Plymouth Colony and greets them, "Welcome, Englishmen! My name is Samoset."
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March 21, 1925 The Butler Act prohibits the teaching of human evolution in Tennessee.
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March 22, 1906 The first England vs France rugby union match is played at Parc des Princes in Paris.
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March 25, 1957 The European Economic Community is established with West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg as the first members.
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March 25, 1725 Bach's chorale cantata "Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, BWV 1", is first performed on the Feast of the Annunciation, coinciding with Palm Sunday.
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March 25, 1770 Daskalogiannis leads the people of Sfakia in the first Greek uprising against the Ottoman rule
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March 28, 1910 Henri Fabre becomes the first person to fly a seaplane, the Fabre Hydravion, after taking off from water runway Étang le Barre, near Marseille.
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April 4, 1796 Georges Cuvier delivers the first paleontological lecture.
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April 13, 2025 Rory McIlroy wins the Masters Tournament, becoming just the sixth person to complete the Grand Slam in golf.
Read commentary →History: April 15 (#1)
April 15, 1817 Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc found the American School for the Deaf (then called the Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons), the first American school for deaf students, in Hartford, Connecticut.
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April 15, 1738 Serse, an Italian opera by George Frideric Handel, receives its premiere performance in London, England.
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April 15, 1755 Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language is published in London.
Read commentary →History: April 19 (#1)
April 19, 1925 Colo-Colo, the most successful and popular soccer football team in the South American nation of Chile, was founded at the El Llano Stadium in San Miguel, Santiago, by footballer David Arellano and some of his teammates who had also left the Deportes Magallanes club.
Read commentary →History: April 25 (#1)
April 25, 1829 Charles Fremantle arrives in HMS Challenger off the coast of modern-day Western Australia prior to declaring the Swan River Colony for the British Empire.
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April 28, 1294 Temür, grandson of Kublai, is elected Khagan of the Mongols with the reigning title Oljeitu.
Read commentary →History: April 29 (#2)
April 29, 1770 James Cook arrives in Australia at Botany Bay, which he names.
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May 2, 1867 Albert Günther publishes the first study to recognise that the New Zealand tuatara is not a lizard.
Read commentary →History: May 8 (#2)
May 8, 1541 Hernando de Soto stops near present-day Walls, Mississippi, and sees the Mississippi River (then known by the Spanish as Río de Espíritu Santo, the name given to it by Alonso Álvarez de Pineda in 1519).
Read commentary →History: May 10 (#3)
May 10, 1294 Temür, Khagan of the Mongols, is enthroned as Emperor of the Yuan dynasty.
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May 11, 1919 Uruguay becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty.
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May 19, 1743 Jean-Pierre Christin developed the centigrade temperature scale.
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May 22, 1987 First ever Rugby World Cup kicks off with New Zealand playing Italy at Eden Park in Auckland, New Zealand.
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May 24, 1595 Nomenclator of Leiden University Library appears, the first printed catalog of an institutional library.
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May 26, 1986 The European Community adopts the European flag.
Read commentary →History: June 1 (#2)
June 1, 1412 Treaty of Lubowla: The royal gathering continues in Buda. It is one of the largest and most magnificent royal meetings ever held in medieval Buda with Sigismund of Hungary as host and Wladyslaw II Jagiello as guest of honor. A large feast and grand tournament is held with over 40.000 nobles and 2000 knights.
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June 6, 1674 Shivaji is crowned as the first Chhatrapati of the Maratha Empire at Raigad Fort.
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June 8, 1772 Alexander Fordyce flees to France to avoid debt repayment, triggering the credit crisis of 1772 in the British Empire and the Dutch Republic.
Read commentary →History: June 11 (#2)
June 11, 1724 Johann Sebastian Bach leads his cantata O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort (O eternity, you word of thunder), BWV 20, on the first Sunday after Trinity, beginning his second cycle, the chorale cantata cycle.
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June 11, 1770 British explorer Captain James Cook runs aground on the Great Barrier Reef.
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June 11, 980 Vladimir the Great consolidates the Kievan realm from Ukraine to the Baltic Sea. He is proclaimed ruler (knyaz) of all Kievan Rus'.
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June 14, 1955 Chile becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty.
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June 17, 1901 The College Board introduces its first standardized test, the forerunner to the SAT.
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June 17, 1673 French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet reach the Mississippi River and become the first Europeans to make a detailed account of its course.
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June 23, 1926 The College Board administers the first SAT exam.
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June 25, 1996 American rapper Jay-Z releases his debut album, Reasonable Doubt.
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June 26, 1889 Bangui is founded by Albert Dolisie and Alfred Uzac in what was then the upper reaches of the French Congo.
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June 26, 1409 Western Schism: The Roman Catholic Church is led into a double schism as Petros Philargos is crowned Pope Alexander V after the Council of Pisa, joining Pope Gregory XII in Rome and Pope Benedict XIII in Avignon.
Read commentary →History: July 1 (#3)
July 1, 1766 François-Jean de la Barre, a young French nobleman, is tortured and beheaded before his body is burnt on a pyre along with a copy of Voltaire's Dictionnaire philosophique nailed to his torso for the crime of not saluting a Roman Catholic religious procession in Abbeville, France.
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July 3, 1886 The New-York Tribune becomes the first newspaper to use a linotype machine, eliminating typesetting by hand.
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July 4, 1862 Lewis Carroll tells Alice Liddell a story that would grow into Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequels.
Read commentary →History: July 6 (#2)
July 6, 1484 Portuguese sea captain Diogo Cão finds the mouth of the Congo River.
Read commentary →History: July 10 (#1)
July 10, 1997 In London, scientists report the findings of the DNA analysis of a Neanderthal skeleton which supports the "out of Africa theory" of human evolution, placing an "African Eve" at 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.
Read commentary →History: July 12 (#1)
July 12, 1543 King Henry VIII of England marries his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr, at Hampton Court Palace.
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July 15, 1910 In his book Clinical Psychiatry, Emil Kraepelin gives a name to Alzheimer's disease, naming it after his colleague Alois Alzheimer.
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July 16, 1251 Celebrated by the Carmelite Order–but doubted by modern historians–as the day when Saint Simon Stock had a vision of the Virgin Mary.
Read commentary →History: July 17 (#1)
July 17, 180 Twelve inhabitants of Scillium (near Kasserine, modern-day Tunisia) in North Africa are executed for being Christians. This is the earliest record of Christianity in that part of the world.
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July 20, 1831 Seneca and Shawnee people agree to relinquish their land in western Ohio for 60,000 acres west of the Mississippi River.
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July 24, 1534 French explorer Jacques Cartier plants a cross on the Gaspé Peninsula and takes possession of the territory in the name of Francis I of France.
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July 30, 1863 Valuev Circular banned the publication of religious, educational and training books in Ukrainian in the Russian Empire.
Read commentary →History: August 1 (#2)
August 1, 1964 The former Belgian Congo is renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Read commentary →History: August 3 (#1)
August 3, 1829 The Treaty of Lewistown is signed by the Shawnee and Seneca peoples, exchanging land in Ohio for land west of the Mississippi River.
Read commentary →History: August 7 (#1)
August 7, 1858 The first Australian rules football match is played between Melbourne Grammar and Scotch College.
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August 8, 1831 Four hundred Shawnee people agree to relinquish their lands in Ohio in exchange for land west of the Mississippi River in the Treaty of Wapakoneta.
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August 11, 1858 The Eiger in the Bernese Alps is ascended for the first time by Charles Barrington accompanied by Christian Almer and Peter Bohren.
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August 13, 1960 The Central African Republic declares independence from France.
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August 17, 1488 Konrad Bitz, the Bishop of Turku, marks the date of his preface to Missale Aboense, the oldest known book of Finland.
Read commentary →History: August 18 (#1)
August 18, 1958 Brojen Das from Bangladesh swims across the English Channel in a competition as the first Bengali and the first Asian to do so, placing first among the 39 competitors.
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August 18, 1492 The first grammar of the Spanish language (Gramática de la lengua castellana) is presented to Queen Isabella I.
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August 21, 1879 The locals of Knock, County Mayo, Ireland report their having seen an apparition of the Virgin Mary. The apparition is later named "Our Lady of Knock" and the spot transformed into a Catholic pilgrimage site.
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August 22, 1770 James Cook names and lands on Possession Island, and claims the east coast of Australia for Britain as New South Wales.
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August 24, 394 The Graffito of Esmet-Akhom, the latest known inscription in Egyptian hieroglyphs, is written.
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August 27, 1991 The European Community recognizes the independence of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
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August 30, 1574 Guru Ram Das becomes the Fourth Sikh Guru/Master.
Read commentary →History: September 4 (#1)
September 4, 1972 The Price Is Right premieres on CBS. It currently is the longest running game show on American television.
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September 4, 1800 The French garrison in Valletta surrenders to British troops who had been called at the invitation of the Maltese. The islands of Malta and Gozo become the Malta Protectorate.
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September 6, 1620 The Pilgrims sail from Plymouth, England on the Mayflower to settle in North America. (Old Style date; September 16 per New Style date.)
Read commentary →History: September 8 (#1)
September 8, 1952 The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation makes its first televised broadcast on the second escape of the Boyd Gang.
Read commentary →History: September 13 (#1)
September 13, 1807 Beethoven's Mass in C major, Op. 86, is premiered, commissioned by Nikolaus I, Prince Esterházy, and displeasing him.
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September 14, 1723 Grand Master António Manoel de Vilhena lays down the first stone of Fort Manoel in Malta.
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September 19, 1982 Scott Fahlman posts the first documented emoticons :-) and :-( on the Carnegie Mellon University bulletin board system.
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September 22, 1792 Primidi Vendémiaire of year one of the French Republican Calendar as the French First Republic comes into being.
Read commentary →History: September 27 (#2)
September 27, 1930 Bobby Jones wins the (pre-Masters) Grand Slam of golf.
Read commentary →History: October 10 (#1)
October 10, 1760 In a treaty with the Dutch colonial authorities, the Ndyuka people of Suriname – descended from escaped slaves – gain territorial autonomy.
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October 12, 1999 The former Autonomous Soviet Republic of Abkhazia declares its independence from Georgia.
Read commentary →History: October 14 (#3)
October 14, 1808 The Republic of Ragusa is annexed by France.
Read commentary →History: October 22 (#4)
October 22, 1724 J. S. Bach leads the first performance of Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele (Adorn yourself, O dear soul) in Leipzig on the 20th Sunday after Trinity, based on the communion hymn of the same name.
Read commentary →History: October 26 (#1)
October 26, 1958 Pan American Airways makes the first commercial flight of the Boeing 707 from New York City to Paris.
Read commentary →History: November 1 (#3)
November 1, 1928 The Law on the Adoption and Implementation of the Turkish Alphabet, replaces the Arabic alphabet with the Latin alphabet.
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November 1, 996 Emperor Otto III issues a deed to Gottschalk, Bishop of Freising, which is the oldest known document using the name Ostarrîchi (Austria in Old High German).
Read commentary →History: November 5 (#1)
November 5, 1499 The Catholicon, written in 1464 by Jehan Lagadeuc in Tréguier, is published; this is the first Breton dictionary as well as the first French dictionary.
Read commentary →History: November 6 (#1)
November 6, 1995 Cleveland Browns relocation controversy: Art Modell announces that he signed a deal that would relocate the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore.
Read commentary →History: November 15 (#2)
November 15, 1988 The first Fairtrade label, Max Havelaar, is launched in the Netherlands.
Read commentary →History: November 20 (#1)
November 20, 1980 Lake Peigneur in Louisiana drains into an underlying salt deposit. A misplaced Texaco oil probe had been drilled into the Diamond Crystal Salt Mine, causing water to flow down into the mine, eroding the edges of the hole.
Read commentary →History: November 22 (#1)
November 22, 1908 The Congress of Manastir establishes the Albanian alphabet.
Read commentary →History: November 23 (#1)
November 23, 534 BCE Thespis of Icaria becomes the first recorded actor to portray a character on stage.
Read commentary →History: November 24 (#2)
November 24, 1906 A 13–6 victory by the Massillon Tigers over their rivals, the Canton Bulldogs, for the "Ohio League" Championship, leads to accusations that the championship series was fixed and results in the first major scandal in professional American football.
Read commentary →History: November 26 (#1)
November 26, 1778 In the Hawaiian Islands, Captain James Cook becomes the first European to visit Maui.
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November 28, 1991 South Ossetia declares independence from Georgia.
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November 30, 1971 Iran seizes the Greater and Lesser Tunbs from the Emirates of Sharjah and Ras Al Khaimah.
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November 30, 1916 Costa Rica signs the Buenos Aires Convention, a copyright treaty.
Read commentary →History: December 1 (#1)
December 1, 1952 The New York Daily News reports the news of Christine Jorgensen, the first notable case of sex reassignment surgery.
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December 1, 1958 The Central African Republic attains self-rule within the French Union.
Read commentary →History: December 2 (#2)
December 2, 1971 Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Fujairah, Sharjah, Dubai, and Umm al-Quwain form the United Arab Emirates.
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December 4, 1991 Pan American World Airways ceases its operations after 64 years.
Read commentary →History: December 6 (#1)
December 6, 1933 In United States v. One Book Called Ulysses Judge John M. Woolsey rules that James Joyce's novel Ulysses is not obscene despite coarse language and sexual content, a leading decision affirming free expression.
Read commentary →History: December 8 (#2)
December 8, 1854 In his Apostolic constitution Ineffabilis Deus, Pope Pius IX proclaims the dogmatic definition of Immaculate Conception, which holds that the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived free of Original Sin.
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December 8, 1504 Ahmad ibn Abi Jum'ah writes his Oran fatwa, arguing for the relaxation of Islamic law requirements for the forcibly converted Muslims in Spain.
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December 23, 1936 Colombia becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty.
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December 25, 333 Roman Emperor Constantine the Great elevates his youngest son Constans to the rank of Caesar.
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December 27, 1521 The Zwickau prophets arrive in Wittenberg, disturbing the peace and preaching the Apocalypse.
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December 28, 1768 King Taksin's coronation achieved through conquest as a king of Thailand and established Thonburi as a capital.
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December 28, 1836 South Australia and Adelaide are founded.
Read commentary →History: December 30 (#1)
December 30, 1825 The Treaty of St. Louis between the United States and the Shawnee Nation is proclaimed.
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