French campaign in Egypt and Syria

• May 19, 1798
  A French armada of 335 ships carrying nearly 40,000 men set sail for Alexandria, Egypt, which Napoleon plans to conquer
• July 1, 1798
  Shortly after disembarkment at Alexandria forces of Napoleon Bonaparte break into the city of Alexandria in Egypt and takes it
• July 21, 1798
  Napoleon Bonaparte defeats Murad Bey and his Mameluke warriors on the outskirts of Cairo at the Battle of the Pyramids ending 700 years of Mamluk rule in Egypt
• August 1, 1798
  Admiral Horatio Nelson's fleet of 14 ships routes the French fleet capturing six and destroying seven of the 17 French vessels in the Battle of the Nile at Aboukir Bay, Egypt
• February 10, 1799
  Napoleon Bonaparte left Cairo for Syria, at the head of 13,000 men, to avoid defend against the Ottoman army and to attack them
• March 7, 1799
  Napoleon Bonaparte captures the Turkish citadel at Jaffa, Palestine and orders the massacre of thousands of imprisoned Muslim soldiers claiming that he could not feed them
• March 20, 1799
  Napoleon Bonaparte begins the siege of Acre defended by Turks, which becomes the turning point of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and Syria
• May 20, 1799
  Napoleon Bonaparte orders a withdrawal from his siege of city of Acre in Ottoman Empire due to plague which run through besieging French forces
• 1799, July
  Pierre-François Bouchard, a soldier of the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt, discovers Rosetta Stone, a black basalt stone with three texts: the upper one is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic script, and the lowest Ancient Greek
• July 25, 1799
  On his way back from Syria, Napoleon Bonaparte defeat superior Ottoman forces at Battle of Abukir, which temporarily secures French control over Egypt and makes Napoleon more popular in France
• October 7, 1799
  Napoleon returns to France and lands at Saint Raphael, 50 kilometers east of Toulon after his campaign in Egypt and Syria
• March 8, 1801
  British defeat French at the Second Battle of Abukir driving them out from Abukir
• September 2, 1801
  French garrison at Alexandria surrender to the British after the siege of Alexandria, the last action of the Egyptian Campaign, and are forced to leave Egypt on British ships

Year 1717

• January 4, 1717
  The Netherlands, Britain and France sign the Triple Alliance in the Hague to prevent Spain to become a superpower in Europe
• 1717
  In France John Law proposes a company with exclusive rights to trade with and exploit the resources of the Mississippi territory and to pay down the government's debt from company profits, which becomes the Company of the West
• April 26, 1717
  Black Samuel Bellamy, the wealthiest pirate in recorded history, dies at the age of 27 along with 143 others when their ship, the Whydah, sank off of Wellfleet, Cape Cod, sending over 4.1 tonnes of silver and gold to the ocean floor
• June 4, 1717
  The Freemasons, who begun in the 13th century as a guild of masons, establish their Grand Lodge in London, the oldest Grand Lodge in the world
• August 22, 1717
  The Austrian army under Eugene of Savoy force the Turkish army out of Belgrade, ending the Turkish revival in the Balkans
• 1717
  The Mississippi Scheme, an attempt to hold a business monopoly in French colonies in North America and the West Indies, leads to increased settlement in Louisiana
• 1717
  Dzungar tribes of Mongolia invade Tibet starting a period of internal strife and civil war
• 1717
  Voltaire, a French Enlightenment writer, is imprisoned in the Bastille, a fortress in Paris used as a state prison by the kings of France, for criticizing the French aristocracy
• December 25, 1717
  A northwesterly storm, which hit the coast area of the Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia, results in approximately 14,000 drowned people

Fyodor Pirotsky

• February 17, 1845
  Fyodor Apollonovich Pirotsky, a Ukrainian-born inventor and engineer, is born in family of Ukrainian Cossacks ancestry in Lokhvytsia Uezd of Poltava Gubernia, modern-day Ukraine
• 1871
  Russian engineer Fyodor Pirotsky develops a new type of blast furnace
• February 17, 1875
  Fyodor Pirotsky puts electrically powered railway cars running on isolated from the ground and working as conductors rails on the Sestroretsks railway Miller's line in Russian Empire
• May 16, 1881
  World's first electric tram, invented and made of two-decker horse tramway by Ukrainian-born Russian engineer Fyodor Pirotsky, goes into service in Saint Petersburg, Russia
• 1881
  Fyodor Pirotsky meets with German entrepreneur Carl Heinrich von Siemens to discuss regular electric transportation
• February 28, 1898
  Fyodor Pirotsky, inventor of the world's first electric tram, dies in poverty and is buried on a credit secured by the furniture in the town of Aleshki, now Ukraine

Ottoman-Habsburg Wars

• August 29, 1526
  Turkish forces of Suleiman the Magnificent defeat the Hungarian forces and kill Hungarian King Louis II at the Battle of Mohács, which leads to the partition of Hungary for several centuries, which becomes the first clash between house of Habsburg and Ottoman Empire
• October 15, 1529
  Ottoman armies under Suleiman end their unsuccessful siege of Vienna and head back to Belgrade, which marks the peak of Ottoman Empire with the Turks settled in Buda on the left bank of the Danube
• May 19, 1565
  The Turkish army of 40,000 men under Suleyman the Magnificent begin 5-month siege of the Knights of Malta, led by Grand Master Jean de la Valette with 2,500 troops at their garrison Fort Saint Elmo
• September 8, 1565
  The Hospitallers defeat the Ottoman Empire at the Siege of Malta halting the westward advance of Islam in the Mediterranean
• October 7, 1571
  Spanish, Venetian and Papal ships of the Holy League under command of Spain's Don Juan de Austria destroys an Ottoman fleet in the naval Battle of Lepanto, the last great clash of galleys
• March 7, 1573
  Venice and Turkey sign treaty whereby Venice surrenders Cyprus and pays Turkey a large indemnity
• July 29, 1593
  The Long War between the Habsburg monarchy and the Ottoman Turks starts since Sinan Pasha's campaign for the Principalities of Wallachia, Transylvania and Moldavia
• May 1, 1648
  The Ottomans begin the Siege of Candia in order to capture Crete from the Venetians
• April 18, 1663
  Osman declares war on Austria beginning Austro-Turkish War
• August 1, 1664
  The Turkish army is defeated by French and German troops in Battle of St. Gotthard, Hungary, which becomes the key episode of the Austro–Turkish War of 1663–64
• September 26, 1669
  The island of Crete, being 465 years as a colony of Venice, fell to the Ottoman Turks after Siege of Candia, the longest siege in history
• September 12, 1683
  A combined Austrian and Polish army defeat the Ottoman Turks in Battle of Vienna and lift the siege on Vienna in Austria which becomes the turning point in the Ottoman–Habsburg wars and finishes the Ottoman Empire's hegemony in south-eastern Europe
• August 12, 1687
  At the Battle of Mohács, Hungary, the forces of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, commanded by Charles of Lorraine defeated the Turks
• September 11, 1697
  Prince Eugene of Savoy leads the Austrians to victory over the Ottoman Turks at Zenta, Serbia, which becomes one of the most decisive defeats in Ottoman history
• January 26, 1699
  The Treaty of Karlowitz ends Great Turkish War marking the end of Ottoman control in much of Central Europe and establishing the Habsburg Monarchy as the dominant power in central and southeast Europe
• August 22, 1717
  The Austrian army under Eugene of Savoy force the Turkish army out of Belgrade, ending the Turkish revival in the Balkans
• August 4, 1791
  The chief item in the Peace of Sistova agreement between the Austrian Empire and Ottoman Empire returns of Belgrade, taken in 1789 by the Holy Roman emperor Joseph II, to Turkey

20 Best Castles Ever

• 1078
  William the Conqueror begins the construction of the Tower of London on the north bank of the River Thames to fortify key position, making foundation of one of the most famous castles in the World
• 1144
  The Knights Hospitallers begin expanding a fortress 140 kilometers northwest of Damascus known as Krak des Chevaliers
• 1150
  Edinburgh Castle, one of the most important strongholds in the Kingdom of Scotland, is built upon the plug of an extinct volcano by the king David I
• 1157
  Eltz Castle, one of three castles in Rhineland-Palatinate which have never been destroyed, is built on a 70-metre rock spur in Koblenz, Germany, by the Eltz family
• 1190
  The King of Castile Alfonso VIII starts rebuilding of a Muslim wooden fort on a rocky crag in Segovia into a stone castle and makes it a royal residence
• 1200 ± 10
  King John's Castle is built on King's Island in Limerick, Ireland by order King John of England
• 1202
  The Predjama Castle is built at the mouth of a huge cave at Postojna, Slovenia
• 1213
  Kilkenny Castle is built by the Anglo-Normans in Ireland to control a fording-point of the River Nore
• 1250
  Cité de Carcassonne, an ancient Roman citadel on a hill on the right bank of the River Aude, France, is reinforced and extended by French government, becoming a strong frontier between France and the Crown of Aragon
• 1289
  Conwy Castle, a medieval fortification in Conwy, Wales, is built as part of the extensive program of castle-building initiated by Edward I after his conquest of Wales
• 1385
  Sir Edward Dalyngrigge, a former knight of Edward III, builds, with the permission of Richard II, a castle known as Bodiam Castle in East Sussex, in order to defend the area against French invasion during the Hundred Years' War
• 1406
  Malbork Castle, the largest castle in the world by surface area, is completed by the Teutonic Knights in Marienburg, the administrative center of the Order in Prussia
• 1452
  Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II begins construction of a new fortress called Rumeli Hisar on the Constantinople side of the Bosporus in order to control the sea traffic on the Bosphorus strait
• 1520
  The fortified monastery on Mont Saint-Michel, an island commune in Normandy, is completed, becoming one of the most recognizable landmarks in France
• 1547
  Château de Chambord, the largest château in the Loire Valley and one of the most famous ones in France is built at the behest of the king of France Francis I
• 1586
  George Khevenhüller, a Carinthian nobleman, who purchased Hochosterwitz Castle on a high rock in Duchy of Carinthia, modern-day Austria, fortifies it to defend the region against Turkish invasions
• 1609
  Himeji Castle, a hilltop Japanese castle located in Himeji, Japan is completely rebuilt into a large castle complex by Japanese daimyo Ikeda Terumasa
• 1857
  Schwerin Palace, a palatial castle in Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, is built by architect Georg Adolph Demmler
• 1867
  Construction on the third Hohenzollern Castle, the seat of the House of Hohenzollern, is completed by Hohenzollern scion Frederick William IV of Prussia atop Berg Hohenzollern, a 234-metre bluff
• 1882
  Neuschwanstein Castle, a Romanesque Revival palace in southwest Bavaria, Germany, is completed by Ludwig II of Bavaria