The Sack of Amorium by the Abbasid Caliphate in mid-August 838 was one of the major events in the Arab–Byzantine Wars. In retaliation for Byzantine attacks the previous year, the Caliph al-Mu'tasim targeted Amorium in central Anatolia, one of the Byzantine Empire's most important cities. The Abbasid army launched a two-pronged offensive, defeated the Byzantine emperorTheophilos and his forces at Anzen, and sacked the city of Ancyra on their way to Amorium. Faced with intrigues at Constantinople and an army rebellion, Theophilos was unable to aid the city. Amorium was strongly fortified and garrisoned, but after two weeks of siege (siege depicted), a traitor revealed a weak spot in the wall, where the Abbasids effected a breach. The commander of the breached section left his post to try to negotiate privately with the Caliph, allowing the Arabs to capture the city. Amorium was systematically destroyed, never to recover its former prosperity. Many of its inhabitants were slaughtered, and the remainder driven off as slaves. The conquest of Amorium not only was a major military disaster and a heavy personal blow for Theophilos, but also a traumatic event for the Byzantines, its impact resonating in later literature. (Full article...)
... that before he was ordered to be executed, jailed communist leader Juan Pablo Wainwright is said to have spat in the face of Guatemalan dictator Jorge Ubico?
... that Proteus has been described as an anti-game, due to its lack of clear objectives?
More than 100 people are missing or dead after a collision between the MV St. Thomas Aquinas and a cargo ship near Cebu, Philippines.
Petroglyphs at Winnemucca Lake in the U.S. state of Nevada are dated to at least 10,500 years ago, making them the oldest petroglyphs ever found in North America.
NASA declares the Kepler space telescope unfixable, officially ending its primary mission.
1910 – Hurricane-force winds combined hundreds of small fires in the U.S. states of Washington and Idaho into the Devil's Broom fire, which burned about three million acres (12,140 km²), the largest fire in recorded U.S. history.
The Mugimaki Flycatcher(Ficedula mugimaki) is a small bird from Asia in the Old World flycatcher family. Found in forests and woodlands, the birds migrate between their breeding grounds in Siberia and North-East China and their wintering grounds in South East Asia.
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