World roundup: June 1 2026

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TODAY IN HISTORYJune 1, 1215: After a lengthy siege during which a substantial portion of its population is believed to have starved to death and after which many more were massacred (actual figures are hard to come by), the city of Zhongdu—known today as Beijing—surrenders to Genghis Khan’s invading Mongolian army. This was the Mongols’ second siege of Zhongdu, the ostensible capital of northern China’s Jin dynasty. After the initial siege the Jin retained control of the city but moved their court to Kaifeng for security, which was perceived by the Mongols as a provocation and thereby triggered the second siege. Because the Mongols turned their attentions west shortly after capturing Zhongdu, the Jin were able to survive at Kaifeng until it (and the dynasty as a whole) fell to the Mongols in 1233.June 1, 1916: The Battle of Jutland, the largest naval battle of World War I and at least by some measures the largest in history to that point, ends in what I would say (there’s still disagreement on this point) was a fairly pyrrhic German victory. The Germans sank substantially more British ships and killed substantially more British personnel than vice versa, but these were losses that the British navy could sustain more easily than the Germans. The German government was able to claim victory in the immediate aftermath of the battle, but the British fleet maintained and arguably even increased its naval superiority for the remainder of the war, while keeping Germany’s High Seas Fleet largely out of the Atlantic Ocean. Put another way, the battle was a German tactical victory bu…