#TodayInHistory – January 2

January 2 – Some important events on this day

366 👉🏼 The Alamanni cross the frozen Rhine River in large numbers, invading the Roman Empire

1492 👉🏼 Muhammad XII, the last Emir of Granada, surrenders his city to Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabel I of Castile, ending both the Reconquista and centuries of Muslim rule in the Iberian peninsula.
The Muslim forces of the Umayyad dynasty invaded and conquered much of the Iberian peninsula in the 8th century, beginning a 780 year process by Christian forces of recapturing the territory. This period of Spanish history is known as the Reconquista.
By the early 1490s, the tributary state of Granada on the southern Spanish coast was the only remaining Muslim presence on the peninsula. Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, the Catholic Monarchs, launched war against Granada in 1482. The Islamic territory surrendered on this day and was annexed by Castile.
The Reconquista ended hundreds of years of Muslim influence on Spain, and led to the expulsion and forced conversion of many Muslims remaining in the territories, as well as the Alhambra Decree, which expelled Jews from all territories of the Catholic Monarchs in 1492.

1570 👉🏼 Tsar Ivan the Terrible’s march to Novgorod begins
1839 👉🏼 1st photo of the Moon (French photographer Louis Daguerre)
1843 👉🏼 Richard Wagner’s opera “The Flying Dutchman” premieres in Dresden
1890 👉🏼 Record 19.2 feet (almost six meters) alligator shot in Louisiana by American businessman Edward Avery McIlhenny
1905 👉🏼 American anarcho-syndicalist union known as the Industrial Workers of the World forms
1906 👉🏼 Willis Carrier receives a US patent for the world’s first air conditioner
1942 👉🏼 World War II: the 28 nations at war with Axis powers pledge to make no separate peace deals
1947 👉🏼 Mahatma Gandhi begins march for peace in East Bengal

1986 👉🏼 Ivan, perhaps the most professional of our collaborators and the author of most of our volleyball articles, was born on this day in Sofia, Bulgaria. Happy birthday! 🎂

2009 👉🏼 Rare Bugatti found in British garage
On this day, media outlets report that a rare unrestored 1937 Bugatti Type 57S Atalante Coupe has been found in the garage of a British doctor. A month later, on February 7, the car sold at a Paris auction for some $4.4 million.
The black two-seater, one of just 17 57S Atalante Coupes ever made by Bugatti, had been owned by English orthopedic surgeon Harold Carr since 1955. The man, who died in 2007, reportedly had kept the rare vehicle parked in his garage since the early 1960s and hadn’t driven it in five decades. The car was built in May 1937 and originally owned by Francis Richard Henry Penn Curzon, the 5th Earl Howe. Curzon was also the first president of the British Racing Drivers’ Club and a winner of the 24 Hour Le Mans race.