On This Day: June 8

Battle of Antioch: With the support of the Syrian legions, Elagabalus defeats the forces of emperor Macrinus. He flees, but is captured near Chalcedon and later executed in Cappadocia.

Muhammad, Islamic prophet, dies in Medina.

Vikings raid the abbey at Lindisfarne in Northumbria, commonly accepted as the beginning of Norse activity in the British Isles.

Edward the Confessor becomes King of England, one of the last Anglo-Saxon kings of England.

Richard I arrives in Acre, beginning his crusade.

Richard le Scrope, the Archbishop of York, and Thomas Mowbray, Earl of Norfolk, are executed in York on Henry IV's orders.

American Revolutionary War: American attackers are driven back at the Battle of Trois-Rivières.

Laki, a volcano in Iceland, begins an eight-month eruption which kills over 9,000 people and starts a seven-year famine.

James Madison introduces twelve proposed amendments to the United States Constitution in Congress.

Robespierre inaugurates the French Revolution's new state religion, the Cult of the Supreme Being, with large organized festivals all across France.