Events Pre–1600 46 BC – Julius Caesar defeats Caecilius Metellus Scipio and Marcus Porcius Cato (Cato the Younger) at the Battle of Thapsus. 402 – Stilicho defeats the Visigoths under Alaric in the Battle of Pollentia. 1320 – The Scots reaffirm their independence by signing the Declaration of Arbroath. 1453 – Mehmed II begins his siege of Constantinople. The city falls on May 29, and is renamed Istanbul. 1580 – One of the largest earthquakes recorded in the history of England, Flanders, or Northern France, takes place. 1601–1900 1652 – At the Cape of Good Hope, Dutch sailor Jan van Riebeeck establishes a resupply camp that eventually becomes Cape Town. 1712 – The New York Slave Revolt of 1712 begins near Broadway. 1776 – American Revolutionary War: Ships of the Continental Navy fail in their attempt to capture a Royal Navy dispatch boat. 1782 – King Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke (Rama I) of Siam (modern day Thailand) establishes the Chakri dynasty. 1793 – During the French Revolution, the Committee of Public Safety becomes the executive organ of the republic. 1800 – The Treaty of Constantinople establishes the Septinsular Republic, the first autonomous Greek state since the Fall of the Byzantine Empire. (Under the Old Style calendar then still in use in the Ottoman Empire, the treaty was signed on 21 March.) 1808 – John Jacob Astor incorporates the American Fur Company, that would eventually make him America's first millionaire. 1812 – British forces under the command of the Duke of Wellington assault the fortress of Badajoz. This would be the turning point in the Peninsular War against Napoleon-led France. 1814 – Nominal beginning of the Bourbon Restoration; anniversary date that Napoleon abdicates and is exiled to Elba. 1830 – Church of Christ, the original church of the Latter Day Saint movement, is organized by Joseph Smith and others at either Fayette or Manchester, New York. 1841 – U.S. President John Tyler is sworn in, two days after having become president upon William Henry Harrison's death. 1860 – The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, later renamed Community of Christ, is organized by Joseph Smith III and others at Amboy, Illinois. 1862 – American Civil War: The Battle of Shiloh begins: In Tennessee, forces under Union General Ulysses S. Grant meet Confederate troops led by General Albert Sidney Johnston. 1865 – American Civil War: The Battle of Sailor's Creek: