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Western Chalukya Empire in 1121

The Western Chalukya Empire ruled most of the western Deccan, South India, between the 10th and 12th centuries. This Kannadiga dynasty is sometimes called the Kalyani Chalukya after its regal capital at Kalyani, today's Basavakalyan in the modern Bidar District of Karnataka state, and alternatively the Later Chalukya from its theoretical relationship to the sixth-century Chalukya dynasty of Badami. Prior to the rise of the Western and Eastern Chalukyas, the Rashtrakuta Empire of Manyakheta controlled most of the Deccan and Central India for over two centuries. In 973, seeing confusion in the Rashtrakuta Empire after a successful invasion of their capital by the ruler of the Paramara dynasty of Malwa, Tailapa II, a feudatory of the Rashtrakuta dynasty ruling from Bijapur region, defeated his overlords and made Manyakheta his capital. The dynasty quickly rose to power and grew into an empire under Someshvara I who moved the capital to Kalyani. (Full article...)

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Michel Patrick Boisvert

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On this day

May 2: National Day of Prayer in the United States (2024); Flag Day in Poland

Mireya Moscoso in 2012

1559 – Presbyterian clergyman John Knox returned from exile to lead the Scottish Reformation.
1889 – The Treaty of Wuchale was signed, ending the Italo-Ethiopian War, but differences in translation later led to another war.
1964 – Vietnam War: An explosion caused by Viet Cong commandos led USNS Card to sink in the port of Saigon.
1999 – Mireya Moscoso (pictured) became the first woman to be elected President of Panama.
2014 – Two mudslides in Badakhshan Province, Afghanistan, killed at least 350 people.

Marutha of Tikrit (d. 649)
Mary Moser (d. 1819)
Giacomo Meyerbeer (d. 1864)
Engelbert Humperdinck (b. 1936)

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Today's featured picture

A plan of the cities of London and Westminster, and borough of Southwark is a 1746 map of the City of London and surrounding area, surveyed by John Rocque and engraved by John Pine. Rocque combined two surveying techniques: he made a ground-level survey with a compass and a physical metal chain – the unit of length also being the chain. Compass bearings were taken of the lines measured. He also created a triangulation network over the entire area to be covered by taking readings from church towers and similar high places using a theodolite made by Jonathan Sisson (inventor of the telescopic-sighted theodolite) to measure the observed angle between two other prominent locations. The process was repeated from point to point. This image depicts all 24 sheets of Rocque's map.

John Rocque and John Pine

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