Ceawlin was a King of Wessex. He may have been the son of Cynric of Wessex and the grandson of Cerdic of Wessex, whom the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle represents as the leader of the first group of Saxons to come to the land which later became Wessex. Ceawlin was active at a time when the Anglo-Saxon invasion was being completed; by the time he died, little of southern England remained in the control of the native Britons. The chronology of Ceawlin's life is highly uncertain: his reign is variously listed as lasting seven, seventeen, or thirty-two years, and the historical accuracy and dating of many of the events in the later Anglo-Saxon Chronicle have been called into question.<ref>Stenton, p. 29, accepts the date given for Ceawlin's accession in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of 560, but Barbara Yorke in her online DNB article on Ceawlin states that that his reign seems to have been deliberately lengthened.</ref> The Chronicle records several battles of Ceawlin's between the years 556 and 592, including the first record of a battle between different groups of Anglo-Saxons, and indicates that under Ceawlin Wessex acquired significant territory, some of which was later to be lost to other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Ceawlin is also named as one of the eight "bretwaldas": this was a title given in the Chronicle to eight rulers who had overlordship over southern Britain, although the actual extent of Ceawlin’s control is not known. Ceawlin died in 593, having been deposed the year before, possibly by his successor, Ceol. He is recorded in various sources as having two sons, Cutha and Cuthwine, but the genealogies in which this information is found are known to be unreliable.

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_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1702:

Princess Anne of Denmark and Norway became the Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland, succeeding William III. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_of_Great_Britain

1782:

American Revolutionary War: Almost 100 Native Americans in Gnadenhutten, Ohio died at the hands of Pennsylvanian militiamen in a mass murder known as the Gnadenhutten massacre. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnadenhutten_massacre

1978:

BBC Radio 4 transmitted the first episode of English author and dramatist Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a science fiction radio series that was later adapted into novels, a television series, and other media formats. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_%28radio_series%29

1983:

The Cold War: During a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, U.S. President Ronald Reagan described the Soviet Union as an "evil empire". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/evil_empire

1985:

A failed assassination attempt on Islamic cleric Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah in Beirut killed more than 80 people and injured almost 200 others. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Beirut_car_bombing

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

superadd (v): To add on top of a previous addition http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/superadd

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

We no longer have a coherent conception of ourselves, and our universe, and our relation to one another and our world. We no longer know, as the Middle Ages did, where we come from, and where we are going, or why. That is, we don't know what information is relevant, and what information is irrelevant to our lives. --Neil Postman http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Neil_Postman