#TodayInHistory – September 8

September 8 – Some important events on this day.

1024 👉🏼 Duke Conrad II chosen as German king and crowned at Mainz Cathedral
1264 👉🏼 The Statute of Kalisz, guaranteeing Jews safety and personal liberties and giving battei din jurisdiction over Jewish matters, is promulgated by Boleslaus the Pious, Duke of Greater Poland.
1276 👉🏼 John XXI, Peter Juliani, elected Pope, only Portuguese Pope
1380 👉🏼 Battle on Kulikovo: Moscow’s great monarch Dimitri defeats the Mongols beginning the decline of the Tatars

1504 👉🏼 Michelangelo’s Statue of David is unveiled in Florence
Commissioned by the Duomo of Florence in 1501 as a symbol of the city, Michelangelo’s Statue of David is regarded as the artist’s and one of the period’s most important sculptural works. Standing five feet high and weighing over 5 tonnes it was carved from a single block of marble already rejected by other artists.
Michelangelo was only 26 when he began this work and unlike other artist he depicts David before his battle with Goliath and uses the contropposto pose to convey his subject’s pent-up energy before battle.

1522 👉🏼 Spanish navigator Juan de Elcano returns to Spain, completing 1st circumnavigation of the globe (expedition began under Ferdinand Magellan)
1565 👉🏼 1st permanent European settlement in the US founded at St. Augustine, Florida
1664 👉🏼 Dutch surrender colony of New Netherlands (including New York) to 300 English soldiers
1966 👉🏼 “Star Trek” 1st premieres on NBC-TV starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy
1970 👉🏼 Black September hijackings begin, three airliners hijacked and blown up by Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
1858 👉🏼 Abraham Lincoln supposedly says in a speech “You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all the time”
1941 👉🏼 Entire Jewish community of Meretsch, Lithuania, is exterminated
1943 👉🏼 Italy surrenders to Allies in WWII
1946 👉🏼 Bulgaria ends monarchy
1986 👉🏼 “The Oprah Winfrey Show” is first broadcast nationally
2016 👉🏼 Giraffe DNA study published in “Current Biology” reveals there are 4 species not just 1, as previously assumed
2018 👉🏼 Egypt sentences over 700 people, including 75 death sentences for 2013 pro-Muslim Brotherhood sit-in at Rabaa al-Adawiya square
2018 👉🏼 Archaeologists uncover more than 300 gold coins from late imperial period from theatre in Como, Italy