Henry IV (11 November 1050 – 7 August 1106) was Holy Roman
Emperor from 1084 to 1105. After his father's death in 1056, Henry was
placed under his mother's guardianship. Archbishop Anno II of Cologne
kidnapped him in 1062 and administered Germany until he came of age in
1065. Ignoring the ideas of the Gregorian Reform, Henry insisted on the
royal prerogative to appoint bishops in his German and Italian realms.
The Investiture Controversy culminated when Pope Gregory VII
excommunicated Henry in response to Henry's attempt to dethrone him.
Henry carried out his penitential Walk to Canossa in 1077 and Gregory
absolved him. Henry's German opponents ignored this absolution and
elected an anti-king. Most German and northern Italian bishops remained
loyal to Henry and elected the antipope, Clement III, who crowned Henry
emperor in Rome in 1084. His son, Henry V, forced him to abdicate on
31 December 1105.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_IV,_Holy_Roman_Emperor>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1794:
U.S. president George Washington invoked the Militia Acts of
1792 to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militia_Acts_of_1792>
1946:
The Soviet Union informed Turkey that the way in which the
latter was handling the Turkish Straits no longer represented the
security interests of its fellow Black Sea nations, escalating the
Turkish Straits crisis.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Straits_crisis>
2008:
Fighting between the Georgian and South Ossetian separatist
forces escalated to the six-day Russo-Georgian War.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
calabash:
1. A tree (known as the calabash tree; Crescentia cujete) native to
Central and South America, the West Indies, and southern Florida,
bearing large, round fruit used to make containers (sense 3); the fruit
of this tree.
2. The bottle gourd (calabash vine, Lagenaria siceraria), a vine
believed to have originated in Africa, which is grown for its fruit that
are used as a vegetable and to make containers (sense 3); the fruit of
this plant.
3. A container made from the mature, dried shell of the fruit of one of
the above plants; also, a similarly shaped container made from some
other material.
4. A calabash and its contents; as much as fills such a container.
5. (music) A musical instrument, most commonly a drum or rattle, made
from a calabash fruit.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/calabash>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
The real struggle is not between the right and the left —
that's where most people assume — but it's between the party of the
thoughtful and the party of the jerks. And no side of the political
spectrum has a monopoly on either of those qualities.
--Jimmy Wales
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales>