📅 Today in HistoryJuly 29

The Neo-Babylonian Empire sacks Jerusalem and destroys the First Temple.

Pakal ascends the throne of Palenque at the age of 12.

Sack of Thessalonica: Saracen raiders under Leo of Tripoli sack Thessaloniki, the Byzantine Empire's second-largest city, after a short siege, and plunder it for a week.

Battle of Firenzuola: Lombard forces under King Rudolph II and Adalbert I, margrave of Ivrea, defeat the dethroned Emperor Berengar I of Italy at Firenzuola (Tuscany).

Byzantine-Bulgarian wars: Battle of Kleidion: Byzantine emperor Basil II inflicts a decisive defeat on the Bulgarian army, and his subsequent treatment of 15,000 prisoners reportedly causes Tsar Samuil of Bulgaria to die of a heart attack less than three months later, on October 6.

Count Dirk III defeats an army sent by Emperor Henry II in the Battle of Vlaardingen.

Ladejarl-Fairhair succession wars: Battle of Stiklestad: King Olaf II fights and dies trying to regain his Norwegian throne from the Danes.

The Siege of Damascus ends in a decisive crusader defeat and leads to the disintegration of the Second Crusade.

The widowed Mary, Queen of Scots marries Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, Duke of Albany, at Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh, Scotland, in a Catholic ceremony.

The infant James VI is crowned King of Scotland at Stirling.