this day in history

On 3 April 1721, Robert Walpole became Britain's first de facto Prime Minister. He denied the title throughout his twenty-one years in office. His successors scramble for it and last, on average, three.

On 2nd April 747, Charlemagne was born. He would build an empire stretching from the Atlantic to the Elbe. His heirs would spend thirty years tearing it apart. The pieces became France and Germany.

On 1st April 286, Diocletian appointed Maximian as co-Augustus, establishing Rome's first diarchy. The empire covered 5 million square kilometres. The logic was straightforward.

On 31 March 1854, Commodore Matthew Perry forced the Tokugawa Shogunate to sign the Convention of Kanagawa, ending 220 years of Japanese isolation. The treaty was designed to keep Japan dependent. Japan had other ideas.

On 30 March 1842, a country doctor in Jefferson, Georgia, soaked a towel in sulphuric ether and held it under a young man's nose. James Venable felt nothing. Crawford Long had just changed surgery forever.

On 29 March 1857, Sepoy Mangal Pandey shot at his officers at Barrackpore and started no rebellion. Six weeks later India was on fire. The uprising that followed ended the East India Company — and handed the subcontinent to the Crown for ninety more years.

On 28 March 1939, Madrid fell to Franco's forces after a siege that had lasted nearly two and a half years. The war ended days later. The reprisals lasted much longer.

On 27 March 196 BC, a council of priests in Memphis issued a decree for a child king who needed their support. They wrote it in three scripts as a practical measure. Two thousand years later, that afterthought unlocked Egyptian civilisation.

On 26 March 1830, a bookshop in Palmyra, New York, put 5,000 copies of the Book of Mormon on sale. The religion it spawned has 17 million members. The text's historical claims have not fared as well.

On 25th March 1821, Bishop Germanos of Patras is said to have raised the flag of revolution at the Monastery of Agia Lavra. The revolt had already started. The date was chosen deliberately, and that was exactly the point.