On this day in 1066 William the Conqueror invaded England. He would be the last person to do so and conquer its people. William was the Duke of Normandy and had been promised to be the heir to Edward the Confessor as King of England. But on his death bed that slick bastard named Harold Godwine. This pissed William off to the point that he assembled his army for the invasion. Harold thought he'd be ready for this, but a subsequent invasion from a couple of Norwegian kings through Scotland made him leave the English Channel unprotected. He defeated the Norwegian forces only to find Williams forces waiting for him. At the battle of Hastings Harold was shot in the eye with an arrow and William declared himself king.
On this day in 1941 Ted Williams became the last man to hit above .400 in baseball. It has become the goal of most good hitters to get to that mark for the season, but it has only been challenged a handful of times since. Williams was above the mark heading into a double-header against the A's, and could have sat out to guarantee his place in history, but he decided to play. He went 6-8 and finished at .406. Interestingly enough Williams would hit a home run on this day in 1960 in his last at bat of his career.
On this day in 1781 the Battle of Yorktown begins in Virginia during the American Revolution. The British General Cornwallis made a calculated error by moving his troops onto a spit of land surrounded on three sides by water. He didn't know that the French fleet had defeated the British and had control of the water surrounding the town. General George Washington got wind of this error and moved his troops to block an escape by land.
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