The history of Buddhism spans from the 6th century BCE to the present, starting with the birth of the Buddha Siddharta Gautama. This makes it one of the oldest religions practiced today. Throughout this period, the religion evolved as it encountered various countries and cultures, adding to its original Indian foundation Hellenistic as well as Central Asian, East Asian and Southeast Asian cultural elements. In the process, its geographical extent became considerable so as to affect at one time or another most of the Asian continent. The history of Buddhism is also characterized by the development of numerous movements and schisms, foremost among them the Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions, punctuated by contrasting periods of expansion and retreat.
Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Buddhism
Today's selected anniversaries:
1642 Abel Tasman led the first European expedition to reach Tasmania. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmania)
1859 The Origin of Species by British naturalist Charles Darwin was first published, and it immediately sold out its initial print run. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Species)
1904 The first successful caterpillar track was made. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterpillar_track)
1963 Alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was mortally wounded when Jack Ruby shot him in Dallas, Texas on live national television. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ruby)
1998 America Online announced it would acquire Netscape Communications in a stock-for-stock transaction worth US$4.2 billion. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Communications)
Wikiquote of the day:
"Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." ~ Václav Havel (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/V%C3%A1clav_Havel)