The year is 82 bc.

Rome

• Sulla defeats Samnite allies of Rome in the Battle of the Colline Gate, and takes control of Rome.
• Cnaeus Pompeius was sent by Sulla to stamp out democratic rebels in Sicily and Africa, while the young Gaius Julius Caesar was acting as a subordinate of Sulla in the east.
• The Aurigd shower parent comet C/1911 N1 (Kiess) returns to the inner solar system and sheds the dust particles that one revolution later cause the 1935, 1986, and 1994 (and yet to come 2007) Aurigid meteor outbursts on Earth.