Terra Tempus Daily #150 · October 28, 2026

Round 1

My Lai Massacre

1968 · 20th Century

Why there: My Lai lay in Quang Ngai province, a rural coastal region of South Vietnam long considered a Viet Cong stronghold, so U.S. forces treated its hamlets as hostile territory during search-and-destroy operations.

Why then: By 1968 the frustration of a guerrilla war with no clear front lines, combined with the shock of the Tet Offensive, had eroded discipline and blurred the line between combatants and civilians for American troops.

• The My Lai Massacre occurred in March 1968 during the Vietnam War.
• U.S. troops killed an estimated 347-504 unarmed civilians.
• Lieutenant William Calley was the only person convicted.

Round 2

Battle of Preveza

1538 · Early Modern

Why there: Preveza guards the mouth of the Ambracian Gulf on Greece's western coast, a chokepoint controlling the sea lanes between the Ottoman Balkans and the Adriatic approaches to Venice and Italy, making it the natural clash point for rival Mediterranean fleets.

Why then: By the 1530s the Ottomans under Suleiman had absorbed the corsair fleets of Barbarossa into imperial service, and Charles V's Habsburg-Venetian-Papal Holy League formed specifically to contest this new Ottoman naval reach, so the galley-warfare showdown could only come once both sea powers had consolidated.

• This 1538 naval clash was an Ottoman victory under the admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa.
• Barbarossa defeated a Holy League fleet whose nominal commander was the Genoese admiral Andrea Doria.
• The Holy League's larger fleet was crippled when calm winds becalmed its ships, securing Ottoman naval dominance for decades.

Round 3

Battle of Poitiers

1356 · Medieval

Why there: The clash fell near Poitiers in west-central France because English forces under the Black Prince were raiding southward from Aquitaine, English-held territory whose defense pulled the French king's army into pursuit across the Loire valley's open ground.

Why then: The mid-14th-century Hundred Years' War pitted rival dynastic claims to the French crown, and the recently proven power of massed English longbowmen against heavily armored knights made this the era when a numerically superior feudal host could still be broken and its king captured.

• The Battle of Poitiers (1356) was the second great English victory of the Hundred Years' War.
• The Black Prince captured King John II of France.
• John's enormous ransom and captivity destabilized France for years.

Round 4

Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

1865 · 19th Century

Why there: Washington was the Union capital and the president attended Ford's Theatre unguarded there, giving a Confederate-sympathizing actor easy access in a city still filled with defeated Southern loyalists.

Why then: The Confederacy's surrender days earlier enraged pro-slavery partisans who saw Lincoln as the architect of their defeat, making the fragile, celebratory close of the Civil War the flashpoint for a revenge killing.

• This was the assassination of Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865.
• The assassin was actor John Wilkes Booth, who shouted 'Sic semper tyrannis.'
• Lincoln died the following morning at the Petersen House across the street.

Round 5

Withheld from the archive

This round was played, but we do not republish it here. Recent events involving mass civilian casualties are excluded from our public archive under our content policy, whatever their place in the day’s puzzle.