June 8 in History

The death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 AD, in the city of Medina, ended the life of the man who had founded Islam and united much of the Arabian Peninsula under a single political and religious community. It also raised a question he left unresolved in any way all Muslims accept: who should lead the community after him? The disagreement over that question became the root of the division between Sunni and Shia Islam, which still shapes the religious and political landscape of the Muslim world.

In 793 AD, Norse seafarers attacked the monastery of Lindisfarne, a small island community off the coast of Northumbria in northeastern England. The raid was not the first Viking attack on the British Isles, since there are hints of earlier incidents, but it became the most famous. Its shock value in the Christian world has led many historians to treat it as the symbolic opening of the Viking Age, a period of roughly two and a half centuries in which Scandinavian raiders, traders, and settlers reshaped much of Europe.