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Not 1270, and never finished

The Summa Theologiae was not completed in 1270 — or in any year of Aquinas's life. He went on composing it through 1273 and then stopped writing while teaching at Naples.

According to testimony preserved through the canonisation tradition, something extraordinary happened while he celebrated Mass on 6 December 1273; afterward he ceased writing and dictating.

The cessation is well attested, but the nature of his experience is not independently recoverable, and modern biographers also consider exhaustion or illness.

Where the text stops

The authorial text ends in the Tertia Pars at question 90, in the treatment of penance, leaving the remaining sacraments and intended final subjects unwritten.

Aquinas's own unfinished work has 512 questions and 2,669 articles. Counts of 614 questions and 3,125 articles include the Supplement and appendices.

He wrote or dictated no further part of the Summa, and died three months later.

The ending someone else supplied

A later Supplement assembled by Aquinas's followers from his earlier commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences was added to printed versions. It is not a completion written by Aquinas.

Reginald of Piperno, his companion and secretary, is associated in later biography with Aquinas's final months, and reports that Aquinas refused his requests to resume writing.

The familiar statement that his writings seemed like “straw” comes from that biographical testimony, not from Aquinas's surviving written works.

14 March 1273

Southern Song commander Lü Wenhuan surrendered Xiangyang on 14 March 1273, after Mongol forces moved the siege engines used against Fancheng into position against his city.

According to the Yuan dynastic history, a projectile struck Xiangyang's watchtower with a thunderous report, panic spread, and some officers defected over the walls.

What ended the siege, which had run since 1268, was a negotiated surrender rather than a final storming.

The broken arrow

The Mongol commander Alihaiya offered Lü safety and advancement, then broke an arrow as an oath guaranteeing the terms. Lü ultimately accepted and capitulated.

Fancheng had already fallen and its population had been massacred; about 10,000 bodies were reported piled outside it, and relief was no longer credible.

The capitulation ended the Xiangyang–Fancheng operation without a second massacre.

What the siege actually introduced

This was not the first combat use of firearms. Gunpowder weapons were used in China centuries earlier — a Cambridge history timeline records a fire-spear at De'an in 1132.

The decisive new technology was the counterweight trebuchet, brought into this theatre by engineers connected with the Ilkhanate, Ismaʿil and ʿAla' al-Din.

Xiangyang passed intact into Mongol hands and Lü Wenhuan entered Yuan service, opening an operational route toward the Yangtze — though not immediate control of it.

Where the year 1320 comes from

No event here can be assigned to a particular day, or securely to the single year 1320. The strongest anchor for that number is one cooking-and-discard deposit at the Wairau Bar village on the northern South Island, radiocarbon-dated to 1320–1350 CE at two standard deviations.

That deposit postdates the village's foundation, so it cannot date the first landfall by itself. A date from one oven, midden or settlement feature is not necessarily the date anyone arrived.

What the archaeology actually supports

Voyagers ancestral to Māori crossed roughly 3,000 km from tropical East Polynesia and established permanent communities in Aotearoa New Zealand. The evidence places that within a late-13th- to early-14th-century interval rather than in a fixed year.

Te Ara summarises permanent settlement as established by around 1250–1300 CE. A 2022 analysis of more than 2,250 radiocarbon dates argued for initial North Island settlement in 1250–1275, earlier than the year listed here.

A 2017 mass-migration study finds the strongest archaeological signature in the early 14th century, but expressly does not rule out earlier visits or settlement.

Wairau Bar and the people buried there

Wairau Bar — Te Pokohiwi-o-Kupe — was an early permanent village connected to long-distance voyaging and exchange, and the 2017 synthesis documents at least 42 burials there. Rangitāne ki Wairau worked with researchers on the study and reburial of ancestral remains from the site.

A shell chisel recovered there came from a tropical species absent from New Zealand waters, so it crossed the ocean with the migrants. Isotope signatures in the teeth of some of the earliest burials suggest those individuals spent part of childhood outside New Zealand.

Different dating analyses place the village's initial occupation near the end of the 13th century or in the first decades of the 14th.

24 June 1276

On 24 June 1276, King Rudolf I formally declared war on King Ottokar II of Bohemia.

He simultaneously renewed or intensified the imperial outlawry directed against Ottokar and his supporters; an initial imperial ban had been in place by 1275 and had not compelled compliance.

Ottokar had refused to recognise Rudolf's election, answer imperial summons, or surrender territories that Rudolf and the princes judged reverted to the imperial crown.

A declaration, not a march

The declaration converted a long-running legal dispute over Ottokar's recognition of Rudolf and possession of imperial fiefs into an announced military conflict. Rudolf did not begin his principal advance that same day.

He left the Rhine region in August, and one scholarly chronology dates the active Austrian campaign from late September.

Ottokar prepared for an invasion of Bohemia; Rudolf instead pivoted south after Henry XIII of Lower Bavaria changed sides, and advanced toward Vienna.

Vienna by November

Allied advances and defections isolated Ottokar. Meinhard II of Gorizia-Tyrol helped bring Carinthia and Styria onto Rudolf's side, and Vienna was besieged.

The settlement came in several connected acts: an arbitral settlement dated 21 November, and the preliminary peace instrument that the Austrian State Archives identifies as 26 November 1276.

The peace was reinforced by planned marriages between the two royal families only months after they had gone to war.

26 August 1278, on the Marchfeld

Rudolf I's forces and their Hungarian allies fought Ottokar II's army on the Marchfeld between Dürnkrut and Jedenspeigen, in present-day Lower Austria, on 26 August 1278.

Hungarian and Cuman mounted archers harassed Ottokar's flanks while Bohemian heavy cavalry drove Rudolf's German wing backward. The reported duration is about five to six hours.

A hostile rider killed Rudolf's horse; Heinrich Walter von Ramswag helped the fallen king up and remounted him.

The concealed reserve

A concealed reserve under Ulrich von Kapellen struck Ottokar's exposed flank, turning the fighting into a general Bohemian rout. It has been estimated at only about 50 to 60 knights.

A cry of “They are fleeing” reportedly spread through the battlefield and converted local disorder into a general collapse.

Ottokar continued fighting with a small group but was overtaken and killed during or immediately after the rout.

What is firm and what is not

Sources disagree on whether Ottokar was slain while still fighting, killed during flight, or captured and then murdered by personal enemies. His stripped body was carried first to Marchegg and then to Vienna, where it was embalmed and publicly displayed.

The date and outcome are firm; the neat army totals commonly repeated are not. Medieval and modern estimates vary enormously, and the figure of about 9,000 allied troops cannot be treated as verified.

Within days Rudolf pursued the defeated coalition, released the Hungarian auxiliaries, announced his victory abroad and advanced into Moravia, where resistance rapidly collapsed.

Mid-August 1281

A powerful tropical cyclone struck Kyūshū and the Yuan–Goryeo invasion fleet on or about 15–16 August 1281, sinking, grounding and scattering many ships.

The converted Western date is not uniform: NOAA gives 15–16 August, while other modern works give 13–14 August, 14 August or 23 August, reflecting different conversions and chronologies.

Much of the combined fleet was gathered around Takashima and Imari Bay, and both period records and underwater archaeology associate the destruction with that location.

The storm was not the whole story

The invasion did not fail through weather alone. Before the storm, Japanese fortifications, coastal resistance and small-boat attacks had prevented a secure landing and a sustained bridgehead.

The two divisions had converged around Hirado and Takashima after weeks of unsuccessful operations against northern Kyūshū, leaving a large, crowded fleet exposed near shore when the cyclone arrived.

The Southern Route fleet did not arrive first; the Eastern Route force from Korea had sailed and attacked earlier.

Numbers that will not verify

The traditional totals of more than 140,000 soldiers and 4,000 ships come from textual traditions. Thomas Conlan argues the manpower figure may be inflated by a factor of ten or more.

Archaeology confirms major destruction but does not verify claims that 4,000 ships or 80 per cent of personnel were lost. One modern simulation puts the likely maximum wave height at roughly four to six metres.

Kublai did not immediately abandon Japan: he renewed preparations for another invasion before diverting resources toward Champa and Đại Việt.

A story told two centuries later

The accession conventionally dated to 1281 rests on a much later account preserved by the Ottoman historian Neşrî, writing in the late fifteenth century. In it, Ertuğrul's death produced a leadership contest at Söğüt: some nomadic households favoured his son Osman, while others favoured Ertuğrul's brother Dündar.

In that account, Osman's own group supported him, a majority ultimately recognised him, and Dündar submitted. The source does not describe Osman fighting relatives during the succession.

No contemporary record

Neither Ertuğrul's death nor Osman's accession is independently datable to 1281; the year is conventional or approximate.

The contemporary Byzantine historian George Pachymeres first clearly places Osman on the historical stage around 1302.

Halil İnalcık argued that the Battle of Bapheus on 27 July 1302 made Osman a dynasty-founding bey, and is a stronger candidate for the Ottoman state's foundation date.

What the label conceals

Söğüt was a frontier settlement, not the name of a tribe. The identity of Osman's following as a unitary Kayı tribe is debated, and the source itself distinguishes Osman's own group from a broader collection of nomadic households.

“Ottoman Empire” is anachronistic here: Osman initially led a small frontier following, and the formation of an Ottoman state was gradual.

The supposed rival uncle was still serving as Osman's kethüda, or deputy, by about 1299.

Augsburg, 27 December 1282

At a royal court assembly in Augsburg on 27 December 1282, King Rudolf I issued a charter jointly enfeoffing his sons Albert and Rudolf with the duchies of Austria and Styria, and with Carniola and the Windic March.

The brothers were elevated to the rank of imperial princes, and the grant was made zu gesamter Hand — jointly — so that they initially shared the lordship.

Rudolf authenticated the instrument with a royal gold seal; the original deed is catalogued by the Austrian State Archives as AT-OeStA/HHStA UR AUR 1792.

A feudal act, not a bequest

This was a feudal enfeoffment of imperial lands, not a private transfer of property to heirs. Rudolf was King of the Romans, not a crowned Holy Roman emperor.

He had sought a durable dynastic settlement for territories recovered from Ottokar II, and had obtained the necessary support of the imperial princes.

“Co-rulers” is defensible, but “jointly enfeoffed” is the more precise description.

Six months of joint rule

The grant established a Habsburg territorial base in the eastern Alpine lands. Albert did not become sole ruler until the Rheinfelden family settlement of 1 June 1283, under which Rudolf II relinquished his position.

After this deed, the Austrian State Archives notes, the Habsburgs began styling themselves “of Austria.”

December 1287, on a date nobody agrees on

A destructive storm tide struck the Low Countries and neighbouring North Sea coasts in December 1287, breaching or overtopping coastal defences, inundating settlements and causing deaths and permanent land loss.

The event is traditionally called the St Lucia flood and dated 13–14 December, but medieval chroniclers also supplied other days: the Dutch chronicler Melis Stoke gives 17 December, and the English chronicler John of Oxnead gives 26 December.

Researchers cannot determine whether these accounts describe one storm with confused dates or several storms in the same month.

What the chronicles describe

English accounts associated with the December flooding describe people climbing trees and then falling into the water, damage to Great Yarmouth's cemetery wall, and floodwater rising more than a foot above the high altar at Hickling.

English chronicles report about 180 to 200 deaths at Hickling. The island settlement of Griend was reportedly reduced to roughly ten houses plus the church choir.

The often-repeated regional toll of 50,000 to 80,000 is a traditional estimate, not a securely reconstructed demographic count.

It did not make the Zuiderzee

The flood contributed to further erosion and enlargement of the Wadden Sea–Zuiderzee landscape, but it did not create the Zuiderzee in a single night.

Archaeological and geological studies place that formation across repeated twelfth- and thirteenth-century floods, and the Zuiderzee already existed by about 1170. Dutch dike building also predated 1287, so coastal management did not begin as a response to this disaster.

Floris V of Holland subsequently exploited the flood-weakened and isolated condition of West Friesland during his conquest.

9 April 1288, in the estuary

Early on 9 April 1288, the Yuan naval column commanded by Ô Mã Nhi and Phàn Tiếp entered the Bạch Đằng estuary while retreating toward the sea from Đại Việt.

Forces under Prince Trần Quốc Tuấn — better known as Trần Hưng Đạo — feigned retreat at high water and drew the Yuan vessels into a prepared system of concealed wooden stakes, iron chains, shoreline ambushes and incendiary craft.

Reconstructed water levels put the tide at about 3.2 metres between midnight and 2 a.m., and about 0.9 metres around midday.

The tide goes out

As the tide ebbed, Đại Việt forces counterattacked from the river and both banks. Deep-draft Yuan ships became trapped or immobilised, their formation broke apart, and fire attacks and close fighting continued through the day.

The reconstructed span of major fighting runs from roughly five in the morning until seven in the evening.

The trap was more than a row of stakes: scholarship describes stake fields, chains, riverbank troops, naval formations, fire craft, and control of the tributaries and escape routes.

By evening

By evening the Yuan fleet had been largely destroyed or captured. Ô Mã Nhi, Phàn Tiếp and other commanders were taken alive, while remnants attempting to escape across Hà Nam Island were pursued and destroyed.

About 400 warships were reported captured out of an estimated 500 in the retreating force — an annalistic figure supported by later studies, not a modern physical count. Archaeology has identified multiple stake fields, but no wrecks from the battle.

The defeat ended the naval withdrawal as an organised force and left Toghon's separate land army to flee north in disorder.

11 June 1291

A Mamluk chronicle records that Sultan al-Ashraf Khalil entered Damascus on Monday, 12 Jumada II 690, after leaving Acre seven days earlier. In conventional Julian chronology that is 11 June 1291.

Damascus was elaborately decorated, with ceremonial structures erected along the approach from the prayer ground to Bab al-Jadid.

Ibn Taghribirdi's account, as translated by Roger Crowley, describes Muslim scholars, mosque officials, Sufi shaykhs, Christians and Jews lining the route with candles even though the procession occurred before noon.

The prisoners

Frankish prisoners were displayed in fetters before the sultan, while captives carried captured Frankish standards upside down.

Ibn Taghribirdi puts the number of fettered prisoners at 280.

Narrative sources differ over whether a gruesome object carried on a spear was heads or hair from slain Franks.

Acre had fallen weeks earlier

This was not the fall of Acre. Khalil's army had captured the city on 18 May 1291, after a main siege of about six weeks, and overcome the last resistance in its Templar compound by 28 May.

He remained in Damascus for more than a month; the reduction or evacuation of the other Frankish coastal positions was carried out separately by his commanders over the following weeks and months.

Tortosa and Atlit were not lost within weeks of Acre — their evacuations occurred in August.

No day, and no certain year

No surviving document identifies a day — or even an uncontested year — on which Dante began the poem. The 1308 date is reconstructed from internal historical allusions and the chronology of his other writings.

The Princeton Dante Project says most scholars place his first work on the poem approximately between 1306 and 1308. A University of Leeds overview dates Inferno to roughly 1307–1309, Purgatorio to 1310–1313 and Paradiso to 1313–1321.

A recent peer-reviewed argument places the beginning later, around 1310.

Which dates belong to what

The poem's fictional action occurs in spring 1300. That is not its date of composition, and not evidence that Dante had written any of it by then.

The three canticles were not composed simultaneously from a single starting date; their individual parts circulated only later.

The creative trigger is undocumented. A plausible chronology has Dante setting aside the unfinished Convivio and De vulgari eloquentia as the much larger project took shape during his exile.

The title came later

Dante called the poem Comedìa. The adjective “Divina” was posthumous — Giovanni Boccaccio was the first known writer to apply “divine” to it — and it became part of the printed title in 1555.

The finished work runs to 14,233 lines across 100 cantos: 34 in Inferno, 33 in Purgatorio, 33 in Paradiso.