October 15- Belisarius enters Carthage

Really busy today, so only a quick report on some of the more noteworthy events:

533   Ninety-four years after their capture of Carthage, everybody�s favourite Germanic tribe, the mighty vandals, are driven out again. One month his victory at the Battle of Ad Decimum, the East-Roman General Belisarius takes possession of the ancient city, much to the relief of its non-Vandal population, who not only celebrated their redemption of Barbarian rule, but also the return of Orthodoxy. The Vandals had been Arians and had been trying to impose their heresy onto the native believers.
Belisarius� entry was greeted with extraordinary scenes of jubilation, all the Church bells were ringing, masses were celebrated in the Cathedral and every Church, and the festivities lasted for weeks.
Belisarius immediately began to repair and re-inforce the fortifications, as the Vandals were still out there, somewhere in the desert, trying to regroup and to raise a new army.
There was no need to hurry for the Byzantine General however, the vandals were a spent force and in March 534 their last King Gelimer surrendered to the Byzantine General and his Emperor Justinian.
East-Roman rule was to last another 164 years, in 698 the Roman exarchate of Carthage was conquered by the Arabs.



Carthage



1764   �Edward Gibbon observes a group of friars singing in the ruined Temple of Jupiter in Rome, which inspires him to begin work on The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire �. I quoted that directly from Wikipedia, as it sounds so obscure and I couldn�t phrase it better myself. I don�t know, if this story is apocryphal or true, but in any case, it should be.
Whatever our numerous resident Byzantines think about Gibbon�s evaluation of the East-Roman Empire, about which Gibbon is not to complimentary, to put it mildly, his work on the Roman Empire is one of the most seminal historiographies ever published. It set new standards for historical research and description, spawned a whole new generation of historians and, after its initial publishing, was partly responsible for a renewed public interest in Roman and Greek antiquity. If you haven�t read it yet, here�s your chance:



The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon


1815   After his defeat at the battle of Waterloo on June 18 and his formal surrender on July 15, Napoleon I lands on St.Helena, a tiny island in the middle of nowhere and the Atlantic Ocean, to begin his second and last exile. He lived here as a virtual recluse for another six years.

1946   Herrmann Goering, one of Hitler�s earliest and closest friends and collaborators, commits suicide in Nuremberg, hours before he was due to be hanged for his participation in Nazi-Germany�s war crimes.

Full list of events:

Wikipedia