This Week in History - 12/5 - 12/10

12/5/1492 - Christopher Columbus sets foot on the island of Hispaniola, now known as Haiti / the Dominican Republic. By the end of 1517, the island’s native population would be reduced from 1,000,000 to 14,000 due to diseases and war brought by the Spanish.

12/6/1768 - The first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica is published. Largely a Scottish project, the encyclopedia was written as a response to the French “Encyclopedie”.

12/7/1787 - Delaware becomes the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. This process of ratification would continue until the last of the first thirteen states (Rhode Island) would vote to ratify on May 29, 1790.

12/8/1907 - Gustaf V becomes King of Sweden, and would rule until October 29, 1950. His most notable accomplishment during this period was keeping Sweden neutral during World War 2, using a policy of Realpolitik, in which a ruler leads using practical instead of moral motivations. In this case, that meant allowing Nazi troops to pass through Sweden to get to the Soviet Union, for the sake of avoiding a potential conflict.

12/9/536 - The Byzantine general Belisarius enters Rome unopposed as part of the Gothic War, an attempt by the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) empire to retake Rome from the Ostrogothic Kingdom. Despite this success, Gothic resistance groups would continue to fight until the Byzantines took the capital of the Ostrogoths in 540.

12/10/1508 - The League of Cambrai is formed between Pope Julius II, France, the Holy Roman Empire, and Aragon in opposition to Venetian in. Beginning the aptly named “War of the League of Cambrai”, the league would quickly dissolve over the course of the war, and the map of Italy would retain its borders from 1508