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On 20 August 1858, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace published their joint theory of evolution by natural selection in the Linnean Society journal. It was not a tidy triumph of scientific method, but a panic-driven establishment rescue operation after twenty years of paralysis.
On 19 August 1745, Charles Edward Stuart raised the Jacobite standard at Glenfinnan, launching the '45 rebellion. The romantic myth of Bonnie Prince Charlie hides what the venture really was: an Italian-born prince gambling a centuries-old Celtic society on a dynastic fantasy.
On 18 August 1492, Antonio de Nebrija presented Queen Isabella I with the first grammar of the Castilian language. Weeks after Columbus set sail, Nebrija handed the Spanish Crown the ultimate weapon of statecraft: a standardised tongue.
On 17 August 1498, Cesare Borgia became the first person in history to resign the cardinalate. Trading his red hat for a French duchy and an army, he became the lethal blueprint for Machiavelli's Prince.
On 16 August 1717, Prince Eugene of Savoy broke an Ottoman army twice the size of his own in the mist outside Belgrade. It was a masterpiece of tactical audacity - and a reminder of how quickly imperial triumphs unravel.
On 15 August 1209, Carcassonne - the supposedly impregnable stronghold of the Trencavel viscounts and shield of the Cathar heresy - surrendered to the Albigensian Crusade. The Pope called it a holy war. The map of France calls it something else.
On 14 August 70 BC, a Roman jury convicted the governor Gaius Verres of extortion after his own advocate, Quintus Hortensius, gave up the defence as hopeless. The case that dethroned Rome's most celebrated lawyer made the reputation of the man who beat him: Cicero.
On 13 August 1876, Das Rheingold opened the first complete Ring cycle at the first Bayreuth Festival. Wagner's politics have aged badly. The fifteen-hour work he built a theatre to house has not.
On 12 August 1624, Charles de La Vieuville - the minister who had personally forced Richelieu onto the royal council four months earlier - was arrested for corruption. By the next evening, the cardinal had his job, and would keep it for eighteen years.
On 11 August 1315, Edward II of England stopped at St Albans and could not find bread for himself or his household. Three years of ruined harvests followed, killing perhaps a tenth of Northern Europe. The richest continent on earth was, within living memory of its own kings, unable to feed itself.