On July 27, 1890, Vincent van Gogh walked into the countryside outside Auvers-sur-Oise and returned after dark with a bullet wound in his chest. He was thirty-seven, had been painting for barely a decade, and had sold almost nothing. In his final seventy days he produced more than seventy paintings while his brother Theo, his sole support, faced troubles of his own.

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On July 26, 1533, Spanish conquistadors executed Atahualpa, the captive ruler of the Inca empire, in the square at Cajamarca. Months earlier, fewer than two hundred Spaniards had ambushed him and seized the god-king through whom the whole empire of Tawantinsuyu ran. He tried to buy his life with one of the largest ransoms ever recorded, a room filled with gold and two more with silver.

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On July 25, 306 AD, Roman troops in the fortress at York hailed Constantine as emperor, hours after his father Constantius died there. Constantine held no imperial office. Diocletian had built the Tetrarchy precisely to stop soldiers from making emperors, and to keep sons from inheriting power. Now the senior Augustus, Galerius, had to choose between civil war and legitimizing a usurper. The choice he made set Constantine on the road to Christianity, Constantinople, and sole rule of Rome.

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