This Day In European History
31st May
Events1527: King Henry VIII of England announces he is to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, because she was previously married to his elder brother. He is desperate for a son and Catherine is 41.
1594: 20,000 French peasants gather in La Boule to protest against taxes; they call themselves Tard Avises (Late Advised), the rich call them Croquants.
1669: Samuel Pepys makes the last entry in his famed diary.
1740: King Frederick II succeeds to the Prussian throne; he earns the epithet 'the Great'.
1814: The First Treaty of Paris, in which France returns to its 1792 borders.
1850: New French President Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte replaces universal suffrage with a much more limited franchise.
1859: London's Big Ben chimes for the first time.
Births
1469: King Manuel I of Portugal.
1750: Karl August von Hardenberg, Prussian statesman.
1860: Walter Sickert, British impressionist painter and a suspect for Jack the Ripper.
Deaths
1594: Tintoretto, Venetian painter.
1596: John Leslie, Scottish bishop.
1740: King Frederick William I of Prussia.
1809: Joseph Haydn, Austrian composer.
1832: Évariste Galois, French mathematician.
