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The siege of Baghdad took place in early 1258 when a large army under Hulegu, a prince of the Mongol Empire, attacked Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. Hulegu had been sent by his brother, the Mongol khan Möngke, to conquer Persia. He expected Baghdad's ruler, Caliph al-Musta'sim, to reinforce his army, but this did not happen. Provoked by al-Musta'sim's arrogance, Hulegu decided to overthrow him. The Mongol army routed a sortie by flooding their camp, and besieged the city. After Mongol siege engines breached Baghdad's walls, al-Musta'sim surrendered on 10 February, and was later executed. The Mongol army pillaged the city for a week. The number of deaths was inflated by epidemics of disease, but Hulegu estimated his soldiers killed 200,000. The siege, often seen as the end of the Islamic Golden Age, was in reality not era-defining: Baghdad later prospered under Hulegu's Ilkhanate. (Full article...)

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February 10: Feast day of Saint Scholastica (Christianity); National Memorial Day of the Exiles and Foibe in Italy

Delegates at the Inter-Allied Women's Conference

1355 – A tavern dispute between students of the University of Oxford and townspeople in Oxford became a riot that left about 90 people dead.
1919 – The Inter-Allied Women's Conference (delegates pictured) opened as a counterpart to the Paris Peace Conference, marking the first time that women were allowed formal participation in an international treaty negotiation.
1939 – Spanish Civil War: The Nationalists concluded their conquest of Catalonia and sealed the border with France.
2009 – The satellites Iridium 33 and Kosmos 2251 destroyed each other in the first accidental hypervelocity collision between two intact satellites in low Earth orbit.

Ira Remsen (b. 1846)
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