Today in History: April 7-10
Hank Aaron sets a new home run record, Indonesia’s Mount Tambora volcano has a massive eruption, and more
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April 7, 529: The Codex Justinianeus, the first section of Roman Emperor Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilis, is completed. The Corpus Juris Civilis was meant to standardize and codify imperial law, which had fragmented into multiple codices and laws that didn’t necessarily cohere with one another. Justinian ordered a review and modernization of these law codes upon his accession as emperor. The Codex is the product of that effort. The Corpus Juris Civilis has influenced everything from canon law in the Catholic Church to the legal codes of the Ottoman Balkans and modern Greece to contemporary international law.
April 7, 1994: One day after Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira were assassinated when their aircraft was shot down before landing in Kigali (either by Hutu extremists or by the then-rebel Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front militia), Hutu génocidaires begin slaughtering Tutsi Rwandans en masse. The ensuing genocide left hundreds of thousands dead, including Twa Rwandans and some Hutu along with the Tutsi, with highest estimates putting the death toll at over one million. It finally ended in July, with the RPF seizing control of the country under current Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
April 8, 876: An Abbasid army manages to defeat the rapidly expanding Saffarid empire at the Battle of Dayr al-ʿAqul. The Abbasids had only just emerged from the “Anarchy at Samarra,” a period in which their Turkic military essentially held the caliphate prisoner in the city of Samarra, and their caliphate had begun to fall apart amid the power vacuum at its center. The Saffarids emerged into that vacuum and conquered much of modern Iran and Afghanistan along with parts of modern Pakistan before attempting to march on Baghdad. Despite their weakness, the Abbasid army was able to use the Saffarids’ unfamiliarity with the region to outmaneuver and eventually trap the attackers, possibly saving the caliphate and definitely sending the Saffarids into a decline from which they never recovered.
April 8, 1904: The French and UK governments sign the Entente Cordiale, a series of seemingly relatively minor documents ironing out colonial disputes in Egypt, Morocco, Canada, parts of Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. Despite its humble appearance, the Entente Cordiale is considered the end of the centuries-long rivalry between France and the UK (and their various predecessors) and the beginning of their modern accord. It paved the way for improved relations, driven in part by a shared fear of Germany and leading to a full military alliance in World War I.
April 8, 1974: Henry Louis “Hank” Aaron, right fielder for the Atlanta Braves, hits his 715th career home run to break a 39 year old record previously held by Babe Ruth. Aaron had ended the 1973 season with 713 home runs, one shy of Ruth’s 714, and then endured an offseason replete with death threats from people enraged at the thought of a Black player breaking the white Ruth’s most famous record. He expressed genuine concern that he might not live to see the 1974 baseball season. Aaron hit 755 home runs in his career, setting a record that stood for 33 years until Barry Bonds broke it in 2007, though Bonds’ 762 career home run total is somewhat tarnished by his use of performance enhancing drugs later in his career.
April 9, 1241: A small Mongolian army under the command of Orda, one of Genghis Khan’s grandsons, defeats a Polish force under the command of Grand Duke Henry II at the Battle of Legnica. Despite the victory the battle partially marks the end of the Mongols’ 1240-1241 invasion of Eastern Europe. The expedition’s overall commander, Batu, had to return east after the death of Great Khan Ögedei in 1241 and at any rate there were signs that the Mongol conquests were reaching their territorial/logistical limits the further they advanced into Europe.
April 9, 1288: The Đại Việt defeats the invading Mongols at the naval Battle of Bạch Đằng in what is today the Quảng Ninh province of modern Vietnam. The battle was an overwhelming victory for the Vietnamese, who capitalized on the Mongols’ unfamiliarity with tidal patterns on the Bạch Đằng River to immobilize and annihilate the Mongolian fleet. The Vietnamese forces sunk or captured hundreds of Mongolian ships and killed or captured tens of thousands of warriors. The battle effectively ended the Mongols’ third and final attempted invasion of Vietnam. The Đại Việt eventually negotiated a tributary relationship with the Mongolian Yuan dynasty in China on relatively favorable terms that ended further threat of invasion. The battle is regarded as one of the most important in Vietnamese and arguably Southeast Asian history in that it may have prevented a Mongolian conquest of the region.
April 9, 1865: Confederate General Robert E. Lee, along with his Army of Northern Virginia, surrenders to Union commander Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House. Though there were still other Confederate armies in the field, Lee’s surrender is generally treated as the end of the US Civil War.
April 10, 1815: Indonesia’s Mount Tambora volcano begins the largest eruption in human history with an explosion that was heard 1200 miles away and knocked roughly a full mile off of the volcano’s elevation. The subsequent year, 1816, is known as “The Year Without a Summer” because of the ensuing volcanic winter. The climate effects caused worldwide famine and may have, among other things, contributed to westward migration in the United States and the invention of the bicycle.
April 10, 1998: The governments of the UK and Ireland as well as Republican and Unionist forces in Northern Ireland sign the Good Friday Agreement, ending the Northern Ireland conflict, AKA “The Troubles.” The agreement recognizes Northern Ireland as part of the UK but also left open the possibility of Irish reunification if majorities in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland were ever in favor. It also allowed the people of Northern Ireland to claim British or Irish citizenship, or both if they preferred. The deal’s success relied to a great extent on the soft Irish border, owing to the fact that both Ireland and the UK were at the time in the European Union. It very much remains to be seen whether it can survive Brexit.