1,233 years ago today
Vikings Raid Lindisfarne
On June 8, 793, Norse raiders attacked the monastery on the island of Lindisfarne off the northeast coast of England, killing monks, plundering treasures, and carrying others into slavery. The assault shocked the Christian world — Lindisfarne was the holiest site in English Christianity, home to the relics of St. Cuthbert and the supremely beautiful Lindisfarne Gospels. The scholar Alcuin, writing from the court of Charlemagne, described the event as a portent of divine punishment: "Never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race." The raid is conventionally treated as the opening act of the Viking Age — two and a half centuries of Norse expansion, settlement, and transformation that stretched from Iceland to North America, from Russia to Sicily. The monasteries of western Europe, concentrated along coasts and rivers, proved wealthy and defenceless targets, and the Lindisfarne attack established a pattern of hit-and-run raiding that defined early Viking activity.
On the record: Charlemagne
This day, across time
- 632 CEDiedMuhammad
- 793 CEFeaturedVikings Raid Lindisfarne
- 1783EventLaki Volcano Begins Eruption in Iceland
- 1789EventJames Madison Proposes the Bill of Rights
- 1794EventRobespierre Inaugurates the Cult of the Supreme Being
- 1810BornRobert Schumann
- 1845DiedAndrew Jackson
- 1867BornFrank Lloyd Wright
- 1903BornMarguerite Yourcenar
- 1906EventTheodore Roosevelt Signs the Antiquities Act
- 1916BornFrancis Crick
- 1924EventMallory and Irvine Go Missing on Everest
- 1925BornBarbara Bush
- 1949EventGeorge Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four Published
- 1967EventUSS Liberty Attacked During the Six-Day War
- 1972Event"Napalm Girl" Photograph Taken in Vietnam
- 2004EventFirst Venus Transit in 122 Years
Alive in 793 CE
OverlapSame years; not influence
Charles the GreatDates approximate
Adi ShankaraDates approximate
Muhammad ibn Musa al-KhwarizmiDates approximate
On This Day in History
10 EventsVikings Raid Lindisfarne
Norse raiders attack the holy island of Lindisfarne off northeast England, marking the conventional start of the Viking Age and shocking the Christian world with the vulnerability of its most sacred sites.
Laki Volcano Begins Eruption in Iceland
The Laki volcanic fissure in Iceland begins an eight-month eruption that kills over 9,000 people on the island, poisons livestock across Europe, causes a seven-year famine, and may have contributed to the extreme weather that preceded the French Revolution.
James Madison Proposes the Bill of Rights
James Madison introduces twelve proposed amendments to the United States Constitution in Congress. Ten of them were ratified in 1791 and became the Bill of Rights, the foundational guarantees of individual liberty in American law.
Robespierre Inaugurates the Cult of the Supreme Being
Maximilien Robespierre inaugurates the French Revolution's new state religion — the Cult of the Supreme Being — with organized festivals across France, attempting to replace both Catholicism and atheism with a rational deism. Six weeks later he was himself arrested and guillotined.
Theodore Roosevelt Signs the Antiquities Act
President Theodore Roosevelt signs the Antiquities Act into law, giving the President authority to protect areas of historic or scientific interest as national monuments. Roosevelt himself used it to protect 18 sites including the Grand Canyon.
Mallory and Irvine Go Missing on Everest
British mountaineers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappear high on Mount Everest during their 1924 summit attempt. Whether they reached the top — and thus climbed Everest 29 years before Hillary and Norgay — remains one of mountaineering's greatest unsolved mysteries.
George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four Published
George Orwell's dystopian masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four is published in Britain, introducing to the world the concepts of "Big Brother," "doublethink," and "thoughtcrime." Written while Orwell was dying of tuberculosis on a remote Scottish island, it became one of the most influential political novels ever written.
USS Liberty Attacked During the Six-Day War
The USS Liberty, a U.S. Navy intelligence ship in international waters near the Sinai Peninsula, is attacked by Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats during the Six-Day War, killing 34 Americans and wounding 171. Israel apologized and called it a misidentification; many survivors and investigators dispute this.
"Napalm Girl" Photograph Taken in Vietnam
Associated Press photographer Nick Ut captures the iconic image of nine-year-old Phan Thị Kim Phúc running naked down a road, screaming, after a napalm airstrike on her village. The Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph intensified international opposition to the Vietnam War.
First Venus Transit in 122 Years
Venus crosses the face of the Sun in a transit visible from much of Earth — the first such event since 1882. Transit of Venus observations historically allowed astronomers to calculate the distance from the Earth to the Sun; the next transit will not occur until 2117.
Born on This Day
Frank Lloyd Wright
American Architect
The most celebrated American architect in history, Wright designed over 1,000 structures including Fallingwater, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Tokyo Imperial Hotel. His philosophy of "organic architecture" — buildings in harmony with their natural surroundings — revolutionized the field and influenced every architectural movement that followed him.
Francis Crick
English Biologist & Nobel Laureate
The co-discoverer, with James Watson, of the double helix structure of DNA in 1953 — one of the most consequential scientific discoveries in history. Crick and Watson shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Maurice Wilkins, though Rosalind Franklin's crucial X-ray data went unacknowledged in the prize.
Robert Schumann
German Composer & Music Critic
One of the great Romantic composers and a pioneering music critic, Schumann created some of the most intimate and psychologically complex piano music ever written. His mental health deteriorated over his lifetime; he attempted suicide by jumping into the Rhine in 1854 and died two years later in an asylum, aged 46.
Barbara Bush
American First Lady (1989–1993)
The wife of President George H. W. Bush and mother of President George W. Bush, Barbara Bush was one of the most popular First Ladies in modern American history. Her warm, plainspoken public persona and her advocacy for family literacy made her a broadly trusted public figure.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Belgian-French Novelist
The first woman elected to the Académie française, Yourcenar is best known for Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), a historical novel written in the first person as the dying Roman Emperor reflects on his reign — widely considered one of the greatest historical novels of the 20th century.
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Muhammad
Prophet & Founder of Islam
The Prophet of Islam died in Medina at approximately 62 years of age, having spent the last 23 years receiving and transmitting the revelations that form the Quran. His death triggered the first great crisis of Islam — the question of succession — which produced the Sunni-Shia split that persists to this day.
Andrew Jackson
7th President of the United States
The seventh President of the United States and founder of the Democratic Party, Jackson died at his plantation, The Hermitage, near Nashville. His presidency was defined by populist rhetoric, the forced relocation of Native Americans in the Trail of Tears, and a fierce battle against the Second Bank of the United States.
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