Year 1080 was a leap year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar. Autumn – Nikephoros Melissenos, an Byzantine general and aristocrat, seizes control of what remains of Byzantine Asia Minor and proclaims himself emperor against Nikephoros III. Melissenos makes an alliance with Sultan Suleiman ibn Qutulmish and recruits many Turkish mercenaries to his army. January 27 – Battle of Flarchheim: Emperor Henry IV defeats the forces led by the German anti-king Rudolf of Rheinfelden, duke of Swabia, near the town of Flarchheim. April 17 – King Harald III dies after a 4-year reign and is buried at Dalby Church in Scania, he is succeeded by his brother Canute IV as ruler of Denmark. October 14 – Battle on the Elster: Rudolf of Rheinfelden defeats the imperial forces led by Henry IV at the Elster River. Rudolf dies the following day at Merseburg of wounds received. May 14 – William Walcher, bishop of Durham, is killed by rebel Northumbrians. King William I sends a punitive expedition led by his half-brother Odo of Bayeux to pacify Northumbria.

Autumn – Robert Curthose, a son of William I, is sent to invade Scotland. He reaches as far as Falkirk and forces King Malcolm III to agree to terms while building fortifications at Newcastle-on-Tyne. Osmund, bishop of Salisbury, builds Devizes Castle in Wiltshire; the Rubenid Principality of Cilicia gains independence after its founder, Ruben I, succeeds in establishing his authority in the mountainous regions of Cilicia. The Almoravid emir, Yusuf ibn Tashfin, conquers Tangier and Hunayn. Shen Kuo, Chinese polymath scientist and statesman, begins his defensive military campaign against the Tanguts of the Western Xia, he defends the invasion route to Yanzhou. June 25 – Wibert of Ravenna is elected as anti-pope Clement III during the pro-imperial Synod of Brixen. Pope Gregory VII is deposed, signed in a decree by Henry IV. King Alfonso VI of León and Castile establishes Latin liturgy in the Catholic Church, in place of the Hispanic Rite. Benno II, bishop of Osnabrück, founds the Benedictine abby of Iburg Castle.

Adolf III, German count of Berg and Hövel Alberic of Ostia, French cardinal-bishop Barthélemy de Jur, French bishop Cellach of Armagh, Irish archbishop Egas Moniz o Aio, Portuguese nobleman Ermesinde of Luxembourg, countess of Namur Guarinus of Palestrina, Italian cardinal-bishop Harald Kesja, king of Denmark Helie of Burgundy, countess of Toulouse Henry I, archbishop of Mainz Honorius Augustodunensis, French theologian Ibn Tumart, Almoravid political leader Leo I, prince of Cilician Armenia Lhachen Utpala, Indian king of Ladakh Magnus Erlendsson, Norse earl of Orkney María Rodríguez, countess of Barcelona Matilda of Scotland, queen of England Richard Fitz Pons, Norman nobleman Robert Pullen, English cardinal Rotrou III, French nobleman Theresa, Portuguese queen and regent Wanyan Zonghan, Chinese nobleman Wulfric of Haselbury, English wonderworker January 26 – Amadeus II, count of Savoy April 17 – Harald III, king of Denmark May 14 – William Walcher, bishop of Durham July 5 – Ísleifur Gissurarson, Icelandic bishop October 15 – Rudolf of Rheinfelden, duke of Swabia Abraham, bishop of St. David's Aristakes Lastivertsi, Armenian historian Bertha of Blois, duchess of Brittany Lhachen Gyalpo, Indian king of Ladakh Michael Attaleiates, Byzantine historian and writer Muhammad ibn Abbas, ruler of the Ghurid Dynasty

Pandoro is a traditional Italian sweet bread, most popular around Christmas and New Year. A Veronese product, pandoro is traditionally shaped like a frustum with an eight-pointed star section, it is served dusted with vanilla-scented icing sugar made to resemble the snowy peaks of the Italian Alps during Christmas. Pandoro appeared in remote times, the product of the ancient art of breadmaking, as the name, pan d'oro, suggests. Throughout the Middle Ages, white bread was consumed by the rich, while the common people could only afford black bread and not that. Sweet breads were reserved for nobility. Breads enriched with eggs and sugar or honey were served in the palaces and were known as royal bread or golden bread; the desserts consumed in the 17th century were described in the book Suor Celeste Galilei, Letters to Her Father, published by La Rosa of Turin, they included "royal bread" made from flour, sugar and eggs. However, the bread was known and appreciated in the ancient Rome of Pliny the Elder, in the 1st century.

That bread was made with "the finest flour combined with eggs and oil". Virgil and Livy mentioned the preparation under the name Libum; the first citation of a dessert identified as pandoro dates to the 18th century. The dessert figured in the cuisine of the Venetian aristocracy. Venice was the principal market for spices as late as the 18th century, as well as for the sugar that by had replaced honey in European pastries and breads made from leavened dough, and it was at Verona, in Venetian territory, that the formula for making pandoro was developed and perfected, a process that required a century. The modern history of this dessert bread began at Verona on October 30, 1894, when Domenico Melegatti obtained a patent for a procedure to be applied in producing pandoro industrially. Panettone, a similar Italian Christmas bread Colomba Pasquale, a traditional Italian Easter bread di Giovine, Elia. Pandoro. Successo segreto di un dolce dalle origini alla fase industriale. Gemma Editco. ISBN 8889125284.

Pan d'oro

Ping-Pong was a battlefield reconnaissance rocket developed by Lockheed-California – the Lockheed Missiles and Space Company – for use by the United States Army. Intended to give battlefield commanders the ability to gain photographic data on enemy locations, it reached the flight-test stage before being cancelled. In 1964 the United States Army called for proposals for a rocket that could be launched by Army units towards the suspected location of enemy units, with a camera carried on board the rocket taking pictures of the target area, before a second retrorocket motor, located in the nose of the rocket, fired to return it to its point of launch for analysis of its reconnaissance pictures. Proposals were received from Lockheed-California, Goodyear Aerospace, the Chrysler Corporation Missile Division, Beech Aircraft. Ping-Pong was conventional in appearance, launched from a tube 4 inches in diameter. A cruciform fin arrangement provided stabilization. Flight testing of Ping-Pong took place at Rosamond Dry Lake in California during the second half of 1964.

The tests were considered to be successful, with the rocket being reported as "the free world's only round-trip ballistic missile". Internet Archive: Ping-Pong-rocket on rocketservices.co.uk