{"id":6357,"date":"2021-10-15T07:06:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-15T05:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=188555"},"modified":"2021-10-15T07:34:10","modified_gmt":"2021-10-15T05:34:10","slug":"15-october-on-this-day-in-history","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/15-october-on-this-day-in-history\/","title":{"rendered":"15 October: On this day in history"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Dominic Sandbrook\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Friday, 15 October 2021 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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15 October 1582<\/h3>\n

Spain, Portugal, Poland and most of Italy adopted the new calendar introduced by Pope Gregory XIII. Although other Catholic countries soon followed suit Protestant states were slower to accept the change, with Britain only switching in 1752. | Did the introduction of the Gregorian calendar spark riots?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

15 October 1608<\/h3>\n

Birth in Faenza of Italian mathematician, physicist and inventor Evangelista Torricelli. In 1643 he will create the world\u2019s first barometer.<\/p>\n

15 October 1764: Edward Gibbon finds unlikely inspiration in a crumbling city<\/h3>\n

A disappointing trip to the once-great city of Rome inspires the scholar to write his finest work<\/em><\/p>\n

The autumn of 1764 found the 27-year-old Edward Gibbon in Italy, enjoying the delights of the Grand Tour. After leaving Oxford, Gibbon spent years studying in Switzerland and serving with the Hampshire militia during the Seven Years\u2019 War. Now he had made a pilgrimage to what had once been the greatest of all cities, Rome.<\/p>\n

As Gibbon recalled, he would never forget \u201cthe strong emotions which agitated my mind as I first approached and entered the eternal city\u201d. To a learned young man, to see the \u201cruins of the Forum\u201d or the \u201cmemorable spot where Romulus stood\u2026 or Caesar fell\u201d was almost unimaginably thrilling. Yet Rome\u2019s glory days were gone. The city in the 1760s was a crumbling relic, unimaginable as the capital of the greatest empire in the world.<\/p>\n

By Gibbon\u2019s own account, the gulf between past and present weighed heavily on his mind. He later wrote: \u201cIt was at Rome, on 15 October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing Vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gibbon\u2019s biographers often describe this as a fanciful invention, and perhaps it was. But there is no doubt that the trip had an effect on Gibbon. And 12 years later, the great historian published the first of six volumes of his magnum opus, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.<\/p>\n

15 October 1880<\/h3>\n

Marie Stopes, palaeobotanist and advocate of birth control, was born in Edinburgh. She was the elder daughter of architect Henry Stopes and his wife, Charlotte, a Shakespearian scholar.<\/p>\n

15 October 1881<\/h3>\n

English humorist and author of the Jeeves and Wooster series of novels, Pelham Grenville \u2018PG\u2019 Wodehouse, was born, prematurely, in Guildford in Surrey.<\/p>\n

15 October 1839<\/h3>\n

Queen Victoria<\/a> proposed to Prince Albert<\/a> of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, who accepted. The couple married<\/a> in the Chapel Royal at St James\u2019s Palace in the February of the following year.<\/p>\n

15 October 1917<\/h3>\n

Dutch spy Mata Hari<\/a> is executed by firing squad.<\/p>\n

Browse more\u00a0On this day in history<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n