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Events

Deaths

Events

★ February — Battle of Mortemer — Normans defeated a French army as it was caught pillaging and plundering. King Henry I of France withdrew his main army from Normandy as a result.

★ Cardinal Humbertus, a representative of Pope Leo IX, and Michael Cerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople, decree each other's excommunication. Most historians look to this act as the final step in the initiation of the Great Schism between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian Churches. In 1965, those excommunications were rescinded by Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras when they met in the Second Vatican Council. However, to this day each church claims to be the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church and each denies the other's right to that name.

★ July 4 — The SN 1054 supernova is recorded by the Chinese, Arab and possibly Native Americans near the star ζ Tauri. For 23 days it remained bright enough to be seen in daylight. Its remnants form the Crab Nebula (NGC 1952).^[1]

Deaths

★ April 19 — Pope Leo IX (b. 1002)

★ September 24 — Hermannus Contractus

★ The death of Yaroslav the Wise, the most well-known prince of Kievan Rus who ruled during the high point of the state's golden age.
1. Journal of Astronomy, part 9, chapter 56 of ''Sung History (Sung Shih)'' first printing, 1340. facsimile on the frontispiece of Misner, Thorne, Wheeler ''Gravitation'', 1973.