The Ottoman Turks Make Their First Attack on the Eastern Roman Empire

It was on the twenty-seventh of July, in the year twelve hundred and ninety-nine of the Christian aera, that Othman first invaded the territory of Nicomedia; and the singular accuracy of the date seems to disclose some foresight of the rapid and destructive growth of the monster.

Gibbon, Edward, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 6 vols., London: A. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1788, v. 6, p. 311.