Diocletian (244–311) was Roman Emperor from 284 to 305. Acclaimed
emperor by the army, his ascension to power ended the Crisis of the
Third Century. Diocletian appointed Maximian his Augustus, his senior
co-emperor, in 285. In 293, he appointed Galerius and Constantius as
Caesars, junior co-emperors. Under this "Tetrarchy", each emperor would
rule over a quarter-division of the empire. In campaigns against
Sarmatian and Danubian tribes (285–90), the Alamanni (288), and
usurpers in Egypt (297–98), Diocletian secured the empire's borders and
purged it of threats to his power. In 299, Diocletian led negotiations
with Persia, the empire's traditional enemy, and achieved a lasting and
favorable peace. He also separated and enlarged the empire's civil and
military services and reorganised the provincial divisions,
establishing the largest and most bureaucratic government in Roman
history. Not all Diocletian's plans were successful; the Edict on
Maximum Prices was counterproductive and quickly ignored. The
Diocletianic Persecution failed to destroy the empire's growing
Christian community. His Tetrarchic system collapsed after his
abdication. Despite his failures, Diocletian's reforms fundamentally
changed the structure of Roman government, enabling an empire that had
seemed near the brink of collapse in Diocletian's youth to remain
essentially intact for another century.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocletian>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1066:
Harold Godwinson of England defeated Harald Hardråde of Norway in
Yorkshire at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, marking the end of Viking
invasion of England.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stamford_Bridge>
1396:
Ottoman wars in Europe: Ottoman forces under Bayezid I defeated a
Christian alliance led by Sigismund of Hungary in the Battle of
Nicopolis near present-day Nikopol, Bulgaria.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nicopolis>
1513:
Conquistador Vasco Núñez de Balboa , upon a peak in present-day Darién,
Panama, became the first European known to have seen the Pacific Ocean
from the New World, naming it Mar del Sur, or South Sea, a few days
later.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasco_N%C3%BA%C3%B1ez_de_Balboa>
1944:
World War II: British troops began their withdrawal from the Battle of
Arnhem in the Netherlands, ending the Allies' Operation Market Garden
in defeat.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Arnhem>
1983:
In one of the largest prison escapes in British history, 38 Provisional
Irish Republican Army prisoners hijacked a prison meals lorry and
smashed their way out of HM Prison Maze in County Antrim, Northern
Ireland.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maze_Prison_escape>
1996:
The last Magdalene Asylum, an institution to rehabilitate so-called
"fallen" women, in Ireland was closed.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_Asylum>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
haggle (v):
To argue for a better deal, especially over prices with a seller
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/haggle>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by
artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when
a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is
mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something
behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the
artist's way of scribbling "Kilroy was here" on the wall of the final
and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.
--William Faulkner
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Faulkner>