British troops bombarded the Capitol and caused a fire in 1814, destroying many books in the Library of Congress.
Sources
More in History
- China conducted its first successful nuclear test in 1964.
- The Nottingham Tree-ring Dating Laboratory and the University of Groningen's Center for Isotope Research dated the West Berkshire wood artifact to between 4640 and 4605 B.C.E., with 95 percent confidence.
- Fritz Vincken reportedly witnessed the Christmas Eve truce of 1944 as a child.
- Around 1200 B.C., the Late Bronze Age collapse saw the Mycenaean Empire in Greece, the Hittite Empire in Turkey, and the ancient Egyptian Empire all disintegrate amid civil strife, invasions, and droughts.
- In 1916, Egyptologist Sir Alan Gardiner published a transcription and translation of letters found on a sphinx from Serabit el-Khadim.
- In England, a woman sentenced to death could receive a stay of execution until her baby was born if she was pregnant, a practice called 'pleading the belly'.