(Feature Photo: Depiction of the Pharos lighthouse in Egypt painted in 1721; Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

 

630   

The prophet Mohammed returns to Mecca (after fleeing it because of persecution from pagans) and conquers it, then makes it into a spiritual center of his new religion of Islam

 

631 

 

635   

Cynegils, king of the West Saxons, is baptized

 

637   

First stone structure is completed on the site of York Minster by Oswald and is dedicated to St. Peter  

 

642   

‘Amr ibn al-As captures Alexandria, the last Byzantine stronghold in Egypt (A History of the World, Map by Map pg. 95)

 

645   

Somewhere around this time, the son of Cynegils builds the first Christian church in Winchester, the heart of Anglo-Saxon Wessex (Winchester Cathedral website)