October 11 in History

In 1138, a powerful earthquake struck northern Syria and the surrounding region, devastating Aleppo and other towns. Medieval sources put the death toll at around 230,000, which would make it one of the deadliest earthquakes in recorded history. That figure should be treated with great caution, but even allowing for exaggeration, the disaster left a deep mark on the memory of the Levant.

The Second Vatican Council, known as Vatican II, was a gathering of the world's Catholic bishops that opened in Rome in 1962 and reshaped how the Catholic Church worshipped, understood itself, and related to other faiths and to the modern world. It was only the twenty-first council the Church counted as ecumenical, and its reforms affected the daily experience of hundreds of millions of Catholics, from the language of the Mass to the role of laypeople.