TODAY IN HISTORY
September 9 (or thereabouts), 9: A large Roman army under general Publius Quinctillus Varus is thoroughly defeated by a Germanic alliance under one of Varus’s former auxiliaries, Arminius (“Hermann” in German), at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest somewhere in what today is northwestern Germany. Also known as the “Varian disaster,” which gives you some idea of the extent of the Roman defeat, the battle saw the effective destruction of three legions and brought an end to Roman efforts to expand further into Germania. The Roman historian Suetonius writes that, upon hearing of the defeat, Emperor Augustus began beating his head against a wall and shouting “Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!” (I’m sure it sounded nicer in Latin). Recent historiography has argued that this battle was less decisive than the German national mythos presents it and that Roman expansion probably would have reached its natural limit at the Rhine River with or without this setback.
September 9 (or thereabouts), 1141: A Qara Khitai army led by that dynasty’s founder, Yelü Dashi, defeats a Seljuk-Karakhanid army at the Battle of Qatwan, north of the city of Samarkand. Yelü Dashi was a relatively minor royal during the last days of China’s Liao dynasty who fled during the accession of the Jin dynasty and founded the Qara Khitai empire (sometimes also called the Western Liao) in Central Asia. Doing so meant displacing the Karakhanids, which his victory at Qatwan helped accomplish. The defeat of its Karakhanid vassal and the loss of a substantial chunk of eastern territory also triggered, or at least contributed to, the collapse of the Great Seljuk Empire in the Near East. Sketchy tales of this battle may have provided the basis for the Christian legend of “Prester John,” a mythical Nestorian Christian ruler who was supposed to make war against Islam from the east.
September 9, 1855: The nearly year-long Siege of Sevastopol ends with a Russian withdrawal from the city. The siege is among the most famous in history and the centerpiece of the Crimean War—it’s pretty much the reason we call it the “Crimean War” even though most of the other fighting in that conflict took place somewhere other than Crimea. The Allied capture of the city contributed heavily to Russia’s eventual defeat.
INTERNATIONAL
This probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise to anybody who lived through it, but the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service reported on Wednesday that August was the hottest month ever recorded. Global average temperatures reached 16.96 degrees Celsius, topping the previous record set in July 2023 by 0.01 C (effectively a tie).
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors voted unanimously on Wednesday to end the agency’s investigation into past nuclear activity in Syria. The IAEA has repeatedly praised the current Syrian government for cooperating with its inspectors and has made a number of recent declarations regarding the scope of the previous government’s nuclear program. Wednesday’s vote indicates that the agency is satisfied that the Syrian government isn’t hiding anything regarding that program. Damascus is still obliged, like any other party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to support IAEA work in Syria.
