The Battle of Svolder was a naval battle fought in September 999 or
1000 somewhere in the western Baltic between King Olaf Tryggvason of
Norway and an alliance of his enemies. King Olaf was sailing home after
an expedition to Wendland (Pomerania), when he was ambushed by an
alliance of Svein Forkbeard, King of Denmark, Olaf Eiríksson, King of
Sweden, and Eirik Hákonarson, Jarl of Lade. Olaf had only 11 warships
in the battle against a fleet of at least 70. His ships were cleared
one by one, last of all the Long Serpent, which Jarl Eirik captured as
Olaf threw himself into the sea. After the battle, Norway was ruled by
the Jarls of Lade as a fief of Denmark and Sweden. The most detailed
sources on the battle, the kings' sagas, were written approximately two
centuries after it took place. Historically unreliable, they offer an
extended literary account describing the battle and the events leading
up to it in vivid detail.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Svolder>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1459:
Yorkist forces led by Richard Neville defeated Lancastrian troops at
the Battle of Blore Heath in Staffordshire, England, the first major
battle of the Wars of the Roses.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blore_Heath>
1803:
Maratha troops were beaten by British forces at the Battle of Assaye,
one of the decisive battles of the Second Anglo-Maratha War.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Assaye>
1846:
Using mathematical predictions by French mathematician Urbain Le
Verrier, German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle became the first
person to observe Neptune and recognise it as a hitherto unknown planet
.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_Neptune>
1868:
Ramón Emeterio Betances led the Grito de Lares, a revolt against
Spanish rule in Puerto Rico.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram%C3%B3n_Emeterio_Betances>
1952:
In one of the first political uses of television to appeal directly to
the populace, Republican vice presidential candidate Richard Nixon
delivered the "Checkers speech", denying he received illegal campaign
contributions.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkers_speech>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
koan (n):
1. (Zen Buddhism) A story about a Zen master and his student, written
as a riddle or as a fable, which has become an object of Zen study and
meditation.
2. A riddle with no solution, used to provoke reflection on the
inadequacy of logical reasoning, and to lead to enlightenment
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/koan>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
In an ideal University, as I conceive it, a man should be able to
obtain instruction in all forms of knowledge, and discipline in the use
of all the methods by which knowledge is obtained. In such a
University, the force of living example should fire the student with a
noble ambition to emulate the learning of learned men, and to follow in
the footsteps of the explorers of new fields of knowledge. And the very
air he breathes should be charged with that enthusiasm for truth, that
fanaticism of veracity, which is a greater possession than much
learning; a nobler gift than the power of increasing knowledge; by so
much greater and nobler than these, as the moral nature of man is
greater than the intellectual; for veracity is the heart of morality.
--Thomas Henry Huxley
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Henry_Huxley>