On this day in 959, Edgar became King of England, having succeeded Edwy, who had succeeded Edred, who had succeeded Edmund. Edgar would be succeeded by Edward. Edward, in turn, would be succeeded by Ethelred, who, not being an Ed-king, was deemed Unready and has been condemned by all decent historians ever since.

On this day in 2000, Windows Me was released. Every year on this date, a community of loyal Windows Me users gathers in Krzrnski’s Cafe to open a bottle of Finger Lakes champagne and reminisce about the good old days, although police had to be called to last year’s meeting when one of the users mentioned that he had recently upgraded to Windows XP and found it ran much better on his machine.

Funerary mask of Yuknoom Ch’een II, photographed by Bernard DUPONT. Used under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

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On this day in the year 600, by our calendar, Yuknoom the Great was born. That we have a name, dates, and biography of this Maya ruler—that we know enough about him to call him “the Great”—and that we can do the same for dozens of others: these things should be matters for astonishment and constant celebration, an accomplishment at least as remarkable as the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs or Akkadian cuneiform. Yet it seems not to have penetrated popular culture at all. There is still a curious divide even among the learned: Old World cultures make history, but New World cultures create only anthropology. On his birthday, therefore, Dr. Boli would like to give Yuknoom the Great the gift of acknowledging that he was an individual, a real person who did things, and therefore belongs in the realm of Clio.

On this day in 1816, Tristan da Cunha became part of the British Empire. This was a symptom of the madness of King George III; in reality, there is no such place as Tristan da Cunha.

On this day in 1887, L. L. Zamenhof published his first book introducing what would later become known as Esperanto. In it he proposed a “universal vote,” in which people would pledge to learn the International Language as soon as ten million people had signed the pledge. In an early indicator of the rapid worldwide success that would characterize Esperanto, within the first two years almost a thousand people had signed the pledge. If the number ever reaches ten million, those people will be morally obliged to learn Esperanto. Today, as Wikipedia points out, “Esperanto is the working language of several non-profit international organizations such as the Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda, a left-wing cultural association which had 724 members in over 85 countries in 2006”—a figure that amounts, on average, to more than eight and a half per country.

On this day in the year 64, the emperor Nero gave his most acclaimed musical performance. Some musical historians credit him with the invention of hot jazz.

On this day in 1456, Joan of Arc was declared innocent of heresy. She had already been executed twenty-five years earlier, however, in accordance with the usual medieval legal principle of “sentence first—verdict afterward.”

Are you a rabbit in search of a hole? Wikipedia has an article on “hand-in-waistcoat” that could be the beginning of weeks of compulsive rummaging in museum sites and image archives.

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On this day in 1754, George Washington surrendered Fort Necessity to the French. This was the only surrender of his military career. In other unsuccessful battles, he simply ran away.

Readers in search of the true story of George Washington’s career will find something of interest in the Memoir of the Late George Washington by an Associate, edited by Dr. Boli. Whether what they find is the true story is up to them to decide.

On this day in 1374, an outbreak of choreomania, in which people began to dance until they dropped from exhaustion, began in the city of Aachen. From there it spread through much of Europe, and the plague did not cease until Xavier Cugat was taken into custody by the Inquisition.