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Denmark's Valdemar I (the Great) dies May 12 at age 51 after a 25-year reign in which he has gained independence from the Holy Roman emperor, ended a Wend (Slav) threat to Danish shipping, and gained Church approval of hereditary rule by his dynasty. His 19-year-old son will reign until 1202 as Canute VI, calling himself king of the Danes and Wends, resisting northward expansion by the Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich I, and extending Danish dominion over Pomerania and Holstein as he makes his country the dominant power in the Baltic.
A Constantinople mob massacres the Venetian, Genoan, and other Latin officials and traders who rule as agents of the dowager empress Maria of Antioch, regent for the boy emperor Alexius II Comnenus. A 64-year-old cousin of Maria's late husband, Manuel I Comnenus, has raised an army in the spring and entered the city, representing himself as the protector of young Alexius; he is proclaimed co-emperor under the name Andronicus I Comnenus, and will soon arrange for the death of the dowager empress (see 1183).
England's port of Bristol sends wooden vessels "built shipshape and Bristol fashion" out to Spain (Jerez) for sherry, Portugal (Oporto) for port wine, Iceland for stockfish (dried cod), and Bordeaux and Bayonne in Gascony for woad from the plant Isatistinctoria to make blue dye for Bristol's woolens.
France banishes her Jews. Crusaders who have gone to the Holy Land to kill Muslims have turned their wrath on the Jews (see 1189).
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