September 17

On this day, in 480 BC, at a narrow coastal pass known to the local Greeks as The Hot Gates, a small force of Spartans and their allies prepared to hold off the vast forces of the second Persian invasion of Greece under the command of King Xerxes I.

The Greek forces, led by the Spartan King Leonidas I, found themselves outnumbered by more than a thousand to one. They were dead men and they knew it. They had come not for victory, but to buy time for the rest of Greece to raise their armies and to extract as heavy a toll as they could against the invaders. They succeeded.

When commanded by the Persian King Xerxes to lay down their arms, Leonidas responded with a typically laconic Spartan reply:
"Μολὼν λάβε!" — "Come and take them!"

On this day

[more] What else happened today
480 BC – The Battle of Thermopylae, fought between 300 Spartans, led by king Leonidas, and the Achaemenid Empire begins with the immortal challenge: "Μολὼν λαβέ!!" 1848 — Christian Sharps receives the initial patent for his rifle. 1862 — The Allegheny Arsenal explosion results in the single largest civilian disaster during the American Civil War.