Today in History: August 23

686: Charles Martel (“the Hammer”) is born at Herstal in what is now Belgium.  His victory against great odds at the Battle of Poitiers will stop the Arab advance into Europe, though it will be two generations before the Arabs are finally driven back across the Pyrenees.

1305: Scottish hero Sir William Wallace is strangled, emasculated, drawn, and quartered at Smithfield Market in London.

1614: The Rijksuniversiteit Groningen is founded.  Today its law school is regarded as one of the best in the Netherlands.

1784: Delegates from counties in what is now the eastern part of Tennessee (then western North Carolina), meeting at Jonesborough, form the “State of Franklin.” It is never recognized by the United States and by 1790 it will cease to exist.

1833: Slavery is abolished in British crown colonies, but not in lands owned and controlled by the East India Company.

1902: Fannie Merrit Farmer opens Miss Farmer’s School of Cookery at Boston, Massachusetts.  She’ll popularize the use of precise measurements in recipes, and get a candy company named after her.

1939: Stalin and Hitler sign agree to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty, which provides for nonaggression and amicably divvies up Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania between the two.