Sadly, on this day in history, on the 9th of November 1518, Katherine of Aragon, first wife of King Henry VIII, gave birth to a stillborn girl.

There are very few surviving details of Katherine’s pregnancy but Venetian Ambassador Sebastian Giustinian wrote that “This night the Queen was delivered of a daughter, to the vexation of as many as know it;—the entire nation looked for a prince.” A later report in the Venetian archives stated that: “The Queen had been delivered in her eighth month of a stillborn daughter, to the great sorrow of the nation at large”.