0037 Rome, History: The Senate conferred the title of Principate on emperor Caligula.
1566 Malta, History: The foundation stone for Valleta was laid at the Our Lady of Victories Church by the Order of St John under the leadership of Jean de Vallete, its grand master after a war with the Ottomans. That success encouraged European monarchs to support the Order in Malta. It was then and remained a strategic post in the Mediterranean Sean.
1778 San Francisco, History: Juan Bautista de Anza with 247 colonists arrived at the site of San Francisco. They set about building the Presidio some of which remains visible. The party included a priest who dedicated the Presidio to St Francis of Assisi. He had explored the Pacific northwest in 1772 and then established an overland road between Sonora Mexico and what is now northern California.
1842 Vienna, Music: The first concert of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra was performed. Until then public performance were offered by ad hoc assemblies of musicians with little or no rehearsal. Many were dissatisfied with the result and began to talk of a permanent orchestra for a public program. This premier was the first step in that direction, but it was more than a decade later before it became well established, according to the ‘New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.’
1930 Ankara, History: The Turkish government changed the name of this city to Ankara from Angora and its rabbits, goats, and cats. In 1920 Constantinople and environs was occupied by the victorious Allies who planned to divvy it up among themselves. The nascent Turkish nationalists gathered in far away Angora to plan their own plans. Why the name was changed is not discussed on the fount of Wikipedia. While Ankara was a small and remote town, it was on the path of many with the result that that the archeological treasures in central Anatolia are great. We spent a day there in 2015 and were agog at the antiquities museum.
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