Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 March 15b

Seal of the Catalan Company

The Battle of Halmyros was fought on 15 March 1311 between the Frankish Duchy of Athens and the Catalan Company (seal depicted). The Catalans were mercenaries hired by the Byzantine emperor to combat the increasing power of the Turks in Anatolia. After the Byzantines murdered the Catalan leader, Roger de Flor, the company crossed the southern Balkans and arrived in southern Greece in 1309. The new Duke of Athens, Walter of Brienne, hired them to attack Thessaly. The Catalans conquered much of the region, but Walter refused to pay them and prepared to forcibly expel them. The two armies met at Halmyros in southern Thessaly. The Catalans positioned themselves behind marshy terrain, but the Franks, confident in the prowess of their heavy cavalry, charged headlong against the Catalan line. The marsh impeded their attack, and the Frankish army was routed. Walter and almost all of his knights fell in the field, allowing the Catalans to take over the Duchy of Athens and rule it until the 1380s. (Full article...)

Prokofiev (on the podium, right) after the second performance of his Sixth Symphony

• ... that the Sixth Symphony by Sergei Prokofiev (pictured) was said to depict the "private world of modern man against the terrifying machinery of universal destruction"?
• ... that Lester Collins developed Innisfree Garden over 55 years, and it was listed in the US National Register of Historic Places in 2019?
• ... that Femme au béret et à la robe quadrillée (Marie-Thérèse Walter), an oil-on-canvas painting by Pablo Picasso, was one of the most expensive paintings ever sold at an auction in Europe?
• ... that no more than 50 mature individuals of the critically endangered northern brown howler are estimated to remain?
• ... that the opening of a new church in Guston, Colorado, was said to have brought fire and "divine intervention" on a rival neighboring community?
• ... that French rugby union player Audrey Forlani scored a try in the decisive match of the 2016 Women's Six Nations Championship, after which France won the tournament?
• ... that the owners of Kettlethorpe Hall used a relocated 14th-century chapel as a boathouse, and the chapel's remains are now in a public park?
• ... that Wilbur Nelson was known as the "singing evangelist" because he both sang and preached at his services?

Taylor Swift

• Folklore by Taylor Swift (pictured) wins Album of the Year and Billie Eilish's "Everything I Wanted" wins Record of the Year at the Grammy Awards.
• A data breach of Microsoft Exchange Server affects an estimated 250,000 servers globally.
• A series of explosions in Bata, Equatorial Guinea, leaves at least 108 people dead and more than 600 others injured.
• In Zamfara, Nigeria, 279 girls who had been kidnapped from a secondary school by armed bandits are released.

March 15: Ides of March

Detail from The Death of Julius Caesar by Vincenzo Camuccini

• 44 BC – Julius Caesar, the dictator of the Roman Republic, was stabbed to death (depicted) by a group of senators led by Marcus Junius Brutus.
• 1783 – George Washington delivered a speech to Continental Army officers in Newburgh, New York, asking them to support the supremacy of the Congress of the Confederation, defusing a potential coup.
• 1927 – In rowing, Oxford defeated Cambridge in the inaugural edition of the Women's Boat Race.
• 1951 – The Iranian oil industry was nationalized in a movement led by Mohammad Mosaddegh.
• 2019 – A lone gunman carried out two consecutive mass shootings during Friday prayers at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, resulting in 51 deaths.