1077
Henry IV's penance at Canossa
Stripped to a hair shirt in the Apennine snow, the excommunicated German king stood before the walls of Matilda of Tuscany's mountain castle for three days before Gregory VII agreed to see him. The pope absolved him. Going to Canossa became European shorthand for abject humiliation by church authority. Whether the penance was genuine contrition or cynical political theater has been debated by historians ever since.
Battle of Nhu Nguyet Secures Vietnamese Independence
When the Song dynasty sent a retaliatory army south, General Ly Thuong Kiet met it at the Nhu Nguyet River and held. The fighting was fierce - tens of thousands died on both sides - but the Song advance stalled at the river line. A negotiated peace followed: the Song returned conquered lands and recognized Ly Nhan Tong as king. Vietnam's northern border, drawn in blood and diplomacy, would hold for the next two centuries.
Almoravid capital at Marrakesh flourishes
Fifteen years after its founding, Yusuf ibn Tashfin's Saharan capital had become a walled city of palm gardens, great mosques, and caravan markets. The Koutoubia would rise a century later on foundations laid now. Marrakesh was the nerve center of a Berber empire reaching from Senegal to the Ebro River.
Rudolf of Rheinfelden elected anti-king
German princes unhappy with Henry IV's survival of Canossa elected Rudolf of Swabia as anti-king at Forchheim. Civil war engulfed Germany for the next three years. The fighting ended only when Rudolf was mortally wounded at the Battle of the Elster in 1080, his sword hand severed in the fight.
Khmer Empire's West Baray Reservoir Functions
The massive West Baray - an artificial reservoir stretching eight kilometers long and two wide - continued to anchor the hydraulic system that sustained the Khmer empire's agricultural surplus. Fed by diverted rivers and monsoon rainfall, it irrigated the rice paddies that fed Angkor's enormous population. The engineering was invisible to most who benefited from it: water simply appeared in the paddies when needed, as if the gods themselves managed the plumbing.