I think we could fill up a whole year with disasters that befell the Byzantine Empire. Or as our Constantine XI puts it: The whole Byzantine history is just one long Sophokleian tragedy. Or such.
Although is not strictly speaking a Byzantine affair, but as it concerns the Byzantine heartlands of centuries to come, heres another of such catastrophes:
On
August 9, 378 , near Adrianople ( todays Edirne) the East-Roman Army, commanded by Emperor Valens (328-378), is defeated by a combined force of Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Alans led by the Visigoth King Fritigern (reigned 369-380)
The Visigoths were just one of the many Germanic tribes that had left their cold and swampy North-European homelands in the search for better pastures, and had swarmed all over Europe during the 3rd and 4th centuries..
The Visigoths had finally settled in Dacia around 280 and would have probably lived there happily ever after, if it hadnt been for Huns, who had come out of the Central Asian Steppes sweeping everything in front of them.
The Visigoths, now joined by displaced parts of the Ostrogoths and Alans appealed to the Roman Empire, asking to be allowed to cross the Danube and to settle in Roman Thrace, where they would be safe from the Huns. Emperor Valens agreed in the hope that the tribesmen could fill the ranks of his army, and promised land to farm and settle, and necessary supplies.
But Roman help never materialized and soon the Goths were starving in their new home, and out of desperation began to raid and plunder the surrounding country in the search of food.
Emperor Valens, who had been busy on the Persian frontier, returned as quickly as he could to Constantinople, collected a huge army of 60.000 and marched onwards to Thrace to subdue the unruly Goths.
On August 9, 378 the two armies met near Adrianople, and their encounter resulted in one of the worst defeats in Roman history. The exhausted and inflexible Roman infantry was no match for the Goths experienced and mobile cavalry, and the battle ended in a rather one-sided massacre. Two-thirds of the Romans were killed, amongst them the Emperor Valens, one of very few Roman Emperors to die in battle. (Quiz question: Who were the others, including East Roman/Byzantines?).
The Visigoths continued to rule and ravage Thrace and the Balkans for a few more years, until they made their peace with the Empire and became an indispensable part of the army. The rest is history.
What else happened on this day?
48 BC In the Battle of Pharsalos, Julius Caesar defeats Pompeius, who then fled to Egypt to be murdered the following month.
1910 Alva Fisher patented the first complete, self-contained electric washing machine. (A much underrated event in history, as anybody who has ever tried to wash his jeans in a sink, can testify!)
1945 The US Air force drops an Atom bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, with similar results to that three days earlier on Hiroshima.
Full list:
Wikipedia