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On 14 May 1610, Henry IV of France was stabbed to death in his carriage on the Rue de la Ferronnerie by a Catholic zealot named François Ravaillac. He had survived thirty years of religious civil war. He did not survive a traffic jam.
On 13 May 1846, the United States declared war on Mexico over Texas, borders, and ambition. Less than two years later the treaty ink was dry, California was American, and the argument that would tear the Union apart had new fuel.
On 12 May 113 AD, Trajan dedicated a thirty-metre marble column in Rome depicting his conquest of Dacia in 2,500 carved figures. The wars it commemorated were Rome at its peak — and the plunder that paid for almost everything.
On 11 May 1904, Salvador Dalí was born in Figueres, Catalonia. He became one of the most technically gifted painters of the twentieth century and arguably its greatest self-promoter. The two things were never entirely separable.
On 10 May 1497, Amerigo Vespucci allegedly left Cádiz for his first voyage to the Americas — beating Columbus to the mainland by a year. The voyage is almost certainly a fabrication. The continent is named after him anyway.
On 9 May 1386, England and Portugal ratified the Treaty of Windsor, beginning the oldest diplomatic alliance still in force. Six centuries later, it was still working - helping to win the Second World War.
On 8 May 1429, Joan of Arc lifted the siege of Orléans and sent the English army marching north. England had been close to winning the Hundred Years' War — they had the law, the victories, and the treaty. What they had not accounted for was the girl.
On 7 May 1794, Robespierre introduced a new state religion to replace Christianity. He had 82 days left to live. The Cult of the Supreme Being is one of the stranger episodes in a Revolution that was already stuffed with strange episodes.
In 1396, a Bavarian teenager named Johann Schiltberger was spared execution at Nicopolis because he was sixteen. Over the next thirty-three years he served as a slave to Bayezid I, Tamerlane, and four of Tamerlane's heirs, crossed into Siberia, and walked home.
On 6 May 1682, Louis XIV moved the French court permanently to Versailles. The palace was not a vanity project. It was the most sophisticated political trap ever built.