A Brief History On June 24, 109 AD, Roman Emperor Trajan opened the aqueduct known as Aqua Traiana, bringing water to Rome from Lake Bracciano 25 miles away. The ancient Romans are known for their architectural achievements, but other societies also built some pretty impressive projects as well. Here we list 10 impressive examples of ancient architecture, not necessarily the most famous, but ones we hope you will like. Digging Deeper 10. The Mound Builders, 3400 BC to 1500 AD. Along the Mississippi Valley to the Ohio Valley, Native American civilizations built a series of earthen mounds of large proportions…
Browsing: June 24
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A Brief History On June 24, 1374, the German city of Aachen experienced a sudden outbreak of St. John’s Dance, a bizarre condition where masses of people experience hallucinations, jump and twitch (dance) until they fell from exhaustion! And this fiasco was not the only time or place. Digging Deeper The Aachen incident seems to have spread across Europe that year and into the next two years, affecting many other cities. Italy had their own brand of this disorder that they called “tarantism” where the dancers, presumably bit by a tarantula spider, would dance off the poison by dancing a “tarantella.”…
A Brief History On June 24, 1779, the largest battle of the American Revolutionary War began at the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea at the British Fortress of Gibraltar. Spanish and French forces greatly outnumbered the British forces, in men, guns, and ships, and yet after almost 4 years of siege the British had held firm and Gibraltar is known as a metaphor for an impenetrable fortress. Spain and France had attempted to take advantage of British preoccupation with its war in America to gang up on their old foe, and had gone to war in a back handed support…
A Brief History On June 24, 1398, the Hongwu Emperor of China died. Soon after this emperor’s death, one of his sons, Zhu Di (1360-1424), began an ultimately successful rebellion to seize the throne from the Hongwu Emperor’s teenage successor, a nephew of Zhu Di. By 1402, Zhu Di’s nephew was dead and Zhu Di, now known as the Yongle Emperor, began a reign that has gone down in history as one of the most famous and significant in all of Chinese history. During his reign of over twenty years, the Yongle Emperor’s famed eunuch admiral Zheng He (1371-1433) conducted…