4 MIN READ ·
Charlotte Corday and the Killing of Marat, 13 July 1793
She stabbed him once. It made him a saint.
ON THIS DAY THIS HAPPENED · THE ARTICLE COLLECTION
History worth reading.
Royal scandals, forgotten lives and moments that changed everything. Take a little longer with the stories behind them.
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94 articles
3 MIN READ ·
Warwick's Daughter Anne Marries Richard, Duke of Gloucester, 1472
She had already been married once for someone else's ambition, and widowed by someone else's war. The second time, the price of the wedding was that her own mother had to be treated in law as though she were already dead.
3 MIN READ ·
Catherine Parr: Henry VIII's Sixth Wife, Regent and Author
Catherine Parr was already in love with another man when Henry VIII decided he wanted her. She said yes anyway. It was the only way either of them was getting out of it alive.
4 MIN READ ·
Elisabeth Farnese: The Queen of Spain Who Built Thrones for Her Sons
She married a king whose throne could never pass to her own sons. So she spent the next three decades making sure some throne would.
3 MIN READ ·
Rome's Sentence of 11 July 1533 Against Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn
Rome had already decided the case. Catherine of Aragon was still his wife. Anne Boleyn's marriage did not exist, and the child inside her had just been declared illegitimate before it was born. Henry read the verdict and went on exactly as he had before.
3 MIN READ ·
Marjorie of Carrick: The Countess Who Captured Her Husband, Mother of Robert the Bruce
She had taken a crusader captive in her own castle and refused to let him leave until he married her. The king fined them for it. Their eldest son would one day be called Robert the Bruce.
3 MIN READ ·
The Murder of Eleonora di Toledo by Pietro de' Medici
The official story said she had fallen down the stairs. The people who had heard her knew perfectly well she had been strangled.
3 MIN READ ·
Margaret Clitherow: Pressed to Death at York, 1586
On the morning they killed her, Margaret Clitherow sent her shoes and stockings to her daughter Anne. She walked the last stretch of her life on bare stone.
4 MIN READ ·
Catherine de' Medici at the Deathbed of Henry II, July 1559
Catherine de' Medici watched her husband ride into a tournament wearing another woman's colours. He was carried out with a lance through his eye and called for his mistress from the bed where he was dying. Catherine refused to let Diane de Poitiers in. The queen had finally found a door she could close.
3 MIN READ ·
Kenilworth, July 1575: Robert Dudley's Nineteen-Day Proposal to Elizabeth
For nineteen days, Robert Dudley turned his own castle into a proposal. Elizabeth ate the food, watched the pageants, praised the fireworks, and left exactly as unmarried as she had arrived. The queen had understood the invitation perfectly.
4 MIN READ ·
Anne of Cleves: The Annulment of July 1540 and the King's Beloved Sister
The French Ambassador reported that Anne of Cleves had collapsed in terror when the men arrived and told her that her marriage no longer existed. The men sent to inform her said she took the news without any change of expression. She knew exactly what had happened to the wives who had fought him.
5 MIN READ ·
The Nineteen Clergy of Gorkum: Hanged at Brielle, 9 July 1572
On the ninth of July 1572, nineteen men of faith were led into a turf shed at an abandoned monastery near Brielle. They had been promised their lives if they surrendered. The beams above them were already fitted with ropes.