History Notes this week of Feb 8

1478 — Birth of Sir Thomas More

Background: The late 15th century was an era of Renaissance humanism sweeping across Europe. More would grow up to become one of its foremost English practitioners, blending classical learning with devout Catholic faith — a combination that would ultimately cost him his life.

Birth of the brilliant counselor to Henry VIII, Sir Thomas More (d.1535), who called himself “The King’s good servant, but God’s first.”

1497 — The Bonfire of the Vanities

Background: Florence in the 1490s was in turmoil. The powerful Medici banking family had been expelled in 1494, leaving a power vacuum that the charismatic Dominican friar Savonarola rushed to fill. His fiery apocalyptic preaching tapped into popular resentment of corruption and excess during the Italian Renaissance.

In Florence, Italy, the Dominican Friar Girolamo Savonarola instigates from the pulpit a quest for purity from “moral laxity,” calling for systematic destruction of any items that might lead to sin: i.e., mirrors, cosmetics, statuary, fine arts, books, and the like. He ordered the items piled in the central square, and on this day burned them to ashes, in what he called The Bonfire of the Vanities. Yes, the original and actual one, not the metaphor. The event represented the apex of Savonarola’s spiritual and political influence over Florence, whose leading family (the Medici) had been regular targets of his righteous indignation, despite their earlier patronage of his ministry.

By May, his exhortations became too much for Pope Alexander VI, who finally excommunicated him. A year later, after torture and confessions, Savonarola himself and two associates were executed, and their bodies burned in the very spot of the Bonfire of the Vanities. To avoid their remains becoming the relics of martyrs for his faithful followers, the corpses were re-burned twice, their bones crushed and thoroughly mixed in with the ashes of brushwood, and then thrown into the River Arno to eliminate the need for a grave site. Savonarola’s apocalyptic preaching remains the archetype for near-cultic demagoguery.

1554 — Death of Lady Jane Grey

Background: The Tudor succession was one of the most turbulent chapters in English history. Henry VIII’s break with Rome created deep religious fault lines, and each change of monarch risked swinging England between Protestantism and Catholicism. Lady Jane Grey was a pawn in this larger power struggle, placed on the throne by Protestant nobles desperate to prevent the Catholic Mary Tudor from inheriting.

Death of Lady Jane Grey, cousin of Edward VI (Henry VIII’s son and heir), who held the throne of England for nine days based on the deathbed will of the 15-year-old Edward. The will itself, her attendant claim, and the stronger counter-claim by Henry’s daughter Mary triggered a succession crisis that ended in a conviction of treason against both Lady Grey and her husband Lord Guilford Dudley.

I won’t strain your brain (or mine) with all the convoluted iterations of possible succession alternatives and competing claims, but today’s execution launched yet another round of Protestant-Catholic struggle and years of deadly intrigue surrounding England’s throne.

1587 — Death of Mary, Queen of Scots

Background: The rivalry between Mary Stuart and Elizabeth I was one of the defining dramas of 16th-century Europe. Mary had a plausible claim to the English throne through her Tudor grandmother, making her a permanent focal point for Catholic plots to overthrow the Protestant Elizabeth. The geopolitics of the era — with Catholic Spain and France arrayed against Protestant England — made this far more than a personal feud.

Death of Mary, Queen of Scots (b.1542), executed on allegations of treason against Elizabeth I. She was, in fact, deeply entwined in several conspiracies seeking to depose Elizabeth and re-impose Catholic rule to Great Britain. She had family connections to the French throne, who threatened military action but sent none. The more aggressive Spanish throne was actually deep in planning to perform multiple assassinations, including a regicide, in order to un-do Henry VIII’s work of creating a nominally Protestant kingdom. Elizabeth’s counselor, Francis Walsingham, penetrated the Spanish plans and captured documents signed by Mary that directly implicated her in the plot. Her fate was thus sealed. At her execution, the axe man picked up her head to present it to the crowd, but it fell back to the platform, with the executioner left holding only her red hair, which was actually a wig that disguised her short, grey locks.

1693 — College of William and Mary Chartered

Background: Colonial Virginia in the late 17th century was England’s most established and prosperous North American settlement. The founding of a college reflected the colony’s growing maturity and the desire of its planter elite for an institution to educate clergy and gentlemen closer to home, rather than sending them across the Atlantic to Oxford or Cambridge.

In the colony of Virginia, the College of William and Mary is granted a Royal Charter from King William III and Queen Mary II. No word yet about what the monarchs instructed regarding the name for their athletic team’s mascot.

1733 — Settlement of the Colony of Georgia

Background: By the 1730s, Britain’s Atlantic seaboard colonies stretched from Massachusetts to the Carolinas, but a gap remained to the south — territory contested by Spanish Florida. Georgia served a dual purpose: a philanthropic experiment to give England’s imprisoned debtors a fresh start, and a strategic military buffer against Spanish expansion northward.

British General James Oglethorpe settles the 13th British colony in North America, Georgia, specifically formed to be a haven for Britain’s poor, especially those confined in debtor’s prison. So yes, Georgia was settled by prisoners, but no, it was not settled by criminals.

1763 — Treaty of Paris Ends the French and Indian War

Background: The Seven Years’ War (known in North America as the French and Indian War) was a truly global conflict that reshaped the colonial map. France’s defeat effectively ended its presence as a major power in mainland North America and handed Britain a vast new empire — but the costs of the war and the question of who would pay for it planted the seeds of the American Revolution just over a decade later.

Signing of the Treaty of Paris, which ends the fighting known in the New World as the French and Indian War.

1775 — Massachusetts Declared in Rebellion

Background: Tensions between the American colonies and the British Crown had been escalating for a decade — from the Stamp Act to the Boston Massacre to the Boston Tea Party. By early 1775, Massachusetts was the epicenter of colonial resistance, with local militias drilling openly and the colonial legislature effectively operating as a shadow government. Parliament’s formal declaration of rebellion set the stage for the armed conflict that erupted at Lexington and Concord just two months later.

Completely stymied by the continuing unrest in its primary New World port, the British Parliament formally declares Massachusetts to be in rebellion.

1809(a) — Birth of Abraham Lincoln

Background: Born into poverty on the Kentucky frontier, Lincoln would rise through self-education and sheer determination to become arguably the most consequential president in American history. His birth in a one-room log cabin has become one of the enduring symbols of the American ideal that anyone, regardless of origin, can rise to greatness.

Birth of Abraham Lincoln (d.1865), born in a log cabin, in Hardin County, Kentucky.

1809(b) — Birth of Charles Darwin

Background: Remarkably born on the very same day as Lincoln, Darwin grew up in a well-to-do English family with deep roots in science and medicine. The early 19th century was a time of explosive scientific discovery, and Darwin’s work would become its most revolutionary — and controversial — contribution, fundamentally challenging humanity’s understanding of its own origins.

Birth of British naturalist Charles Darwin (d.1882), whose observations of flora, fauna and fossils during the 4½ year circumnavigation voyage of HMS Beagle led him to develop the theory of natural selection as the means by which species adapted to their environments. He followed up his initial publication of On the Origin of Species with the explosive culmination of evolutionary theory in The Descent of Man, the thesis of which defines the essence of what we know today as the Culture War, to wit: is mankind the current end point of essentially random natural processes or the end result of a creative God?

A century and a half of intellectual, spiritual and emotional energy has been expended on this question, to no apparent avail.

1812 — The Original Gerrymander

Background: The early American republic was already deeply partisan, with Federalists and Democratic-Republicans locked in fierce competition. Electoral mapmaking quickly became a weapon in this fight. Governor Gerry’s maneuver gave his name to a practice that has persisted for over two centuries and remains one of the most contentious issues in American democracy.

Massachusetts Governor Eldridge Gerry signs a redistricting bill designed to favor his Democratic-Republican political party. The unusual shape of the ensuing districts, one in particular that was shaped like a salamander, prompted widespread derision and anger, and eventually the coining of a new verb to describe the act: gerrymandering.

1825 — John Quincy Adams Elected by the House

Background: The election of 1824 was a chaotic four-way race that exposed the fractures within the old Democratic-Republican Party. When no candidate won a majority in the Electoral College, the decision fell to the House of Representatives for only the second time in U.S. history. Adams’s victory despite finishing second in both popular and electoral votes — aided by a deal with Henry Clay that critics called the “Corrupt Bargain” — haunted his presidency and fueled Andrew Jackson’s eventual triumph four years later.

John Quincy Adams is elected to the Presidency by the House of Representatives. In the four-way race for president during the November election, none of the other three candidates was able to secure a majority of electoral votes. Adams actually finished second in the original electoral count behind Andrew Jackson, who had a plurality, but not the required majority, thus sending the election to the House, per the rules laid down in the 12th Amendment to the Constitution.

1847 — Birth of Thomas Alva Edison

Background: The mid-19th century was the dawn of the electrical age, and Edison would do more than perhaps anyone to harness that new force for practical use. His approach — systematic, team-based invention in a dedicated laboratory — was itself an innovation, essentially creating the model for modern industrial research and development.

Birth of Thomas Alva Edison (d.1931), the brilliant inventor dubbed “The Wizard of Menlo Park,” who held 1,093 U.S. patents on a plethora of gadgets and processes that in many respects define the 20th century. He began his professional life as a telegrapher, becoming very familiar with the physics and practical application of electricity, which in turn fed his mind with scores of ideas, many of which paid off handsomely. A couple examples: the stock market ticker, the kinetoscope motion picture process, phonographic sound recording and, of course, the carbon-filament incandescent light bulb.

One of his most important works was the establishment of his industrial research laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, where he and a core staff pursued any and every lead enroute to the next big thing. And they found it. Repeatedly. A true American original.

1867 — Birth of Laura Ingalls Wilder

Background: The American frontier was rapidly closing during Wilder’s childhood. Her family’s experiences — homesteading, enduring brutal winters, encountering Native Americans, and building communities from scratch — captured a way of life that was vanishing even as she lived it. Her books, written decades later during the Great Depression, offered Americans a nostalgic yet honest portrait of pioneer resilience.

Birth of author Laura Ingalls Wilder (d.1957), whose stories of life growing up on the wild American prairie have inspired generations of more sedentary explorers.

1893 — Birth of Omar N. Bradley

Background: Bradley was born in rural Missouri just as the United States was beginning its transformation from a continental power into a global one. He would graduate from West Point in the famous “class the stars fell on” (1915), alongside Eisenhower, and go on to exemplify the citizen-soldier ideal — a quiet, methodical commander beloved by the troops he led, in contrast to the flamboyant Patton.

Birth of Omar N. Bradley (d.1981), “The Soldier’s General” in World War II. Patton’s deputy in North Africa, he vaulted over his former boss to lead the American armies swarming ashore at Normandy. After passage of the National Security Act of 1948, he was named the first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He had the distinction of being the United States’ last surviving 5-star general.

1898 — The Zola Trial and the Dreyfus Affair

Background: France’s Third Republic was only three decades old and still fragile, scarred by defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and deeply divided along lines of class, religion, and ideology. Anti-Semitism was rampant in the military and government. The Dreyfus Affair became far more than one man’s wrongful conviction — it was a national reckoning that tested whether republican ideals of justice could withstand institutional bigotry and militarism.

Opening day of the criminal libel trial of Emile Zola, the brilliant French intellectual and journalist who sparked The Dreyfus Affair with a front page, open letter to the President of the French Republic entitled “J’Accuse!” (lit: I Accuse You!) (DLH 1/13). His accusation was that the French government was intentionally covering up an egregious miscarriage of justice — the conviction of an artillery captain of espionage four years earlier — because the captain was Jewish, and because the government was, at its core, anti-Semitic and reactionary.

The ensuing controversy almost immediately polarized French society, and for another eight years l’affaire Dreyfus was bitterly fought out in the press and in the courtrooms of France. Alfred Dreyfus himself was at the time imprisoned on the notorious Devil’s Island in the Caribbean. When the President eventually offered to pardon him, he refused, insisting on complete exoneration.

As Zola predicted, the truth eventually became clear, and Dreyfus was released from prison and re-instated in 1906 as a major. He fought in the Great War from start to finish, and left the army as a lieutenant-colonel. For his part, Zola was convicted on the 23rd of the month and immediately fled to England, where he remained through June 1899. After his return to France he continued to write, but in September 1902, he died suddenly in his apartment, the cause being carbon monoxide poisoning from a blocked chimney. Conspiracy Alert: the roofer who intentionally blocked the chimney took credit for the act as a political statement, as he himself lay on his deathbed ten years later.

1904 — First Shots of the Russo-Japanese War

Background: The turn of the 20th century saw imperial rivalries intensifying across Asia. Russia was expanding eastward along the Trans-Siberian Railway, seeking ice-free Pacific ports, while Japan — newly modernized after the Meiji Restoration — was asserting itself as a regional power. Their collision over Manchuria and Korea resulted in a conflict whose outcome shocked the world: the first modern defeat of a European power by an Asian nation, reshaping the global balance of power.

First shots of the Russo-Japanese War, a torpedo attack by Japanese warships against the Russian fleet anchored at Port Arthur, Manchuria. The bitter 18-month conflict centered on Russian desires for a warm-water seaport for their Pacific fleet, and the Japanese Empire’s equal determination to prevent such a force from establishing a presence so near the Japanese homeland.

1906 — Launch of HMS Dreadnought

Background: At the dawn of the 20th century, naval supremacy was the foundation of the British Empire. The Royal Navy had been the world’s dominant fleet for a century, but the rapid pace of technological change — in armor, propulsion, and gunnery — threatened to level the playing field. HMS Dreadnought was Britain’s bold gamble to leap ahead of all competitors in a single stroke, but it also had the paradoxical effect of nullifying Britain’s existing numerical advantage, since every pre-Dreadnought battleship was now obsolete — including Britain’s own.

Launch of HMS Dreadnought, the first modern battleship, whose innovations were so overwhelming that she immediately made all earlier warships completely obsolete. The scramble to compensate for Britain’s sudden advantage triggered a naval armaments race — particularly with Germany — that was one of the proximate triggers for the Great War eight years hence.

Dreadnought’s technical innovations centered on her design as an “all big gun” platform: ten 12″ guns mounted in five turrets with only minimal secondary armament, as opposed to the conventional bristling of multiple layers of secondary and tertiary guns. She was also the first warship to be powered by steam turbines, giving her a speed in excess of 21 knots, unheard of in an age of 12-knot capital ships.

For naval historians, HMS Dreadnought set the marker that decisively defined the end of the transition from sail to steam, and set the standard for all the naval innovations to come. There is the pre-Dreadnought era, and the Dreadnought era, which lasted to the rise of aircraft carriers in the early 1930s.

1915 — Release of Birth of a Nation

Background: The early film industry was just beginning to discover its power as a medium for mass storytelling. D.W. Griffith’s technical innovations — cross-cutting, close-ups, sweeping battle sequences — essentially invented the language of cinema. But the film also demonstrated cinema’s terrible power as propaganda. Its sympathetic portrayal of the Klan directly contributed to the organization’s revival in the 1920s and entrenched racist narratives that persisted for generations.

Hollywood director D.W. Griffith releases his masterpiece, Birth of a Nation. The movie almost immediately became a sensation, both for its technical excellence in storytelling, and more (from a negative sense) for the story itself, which presented a sympathetic telling of the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. President Woodrow Wilson is quoted favorably — as part of the story line — in one of the early card frames, with a rather startling quote from his “History of the American People.” The racism of the movie is blatant, and is actually astonishing when seen through the lens of modern sensibilities.

1921 — Birth of Lana Turner

Background: Hollywood’s Golden Age was just getting underway, and the studio system was creating a new kind of American celebrity: the movie star. Turner would become one of its most glamorous icons, discovered (according to legend) at a soda fountain on Sunset Boulevard — a story that, true or not, perfectly captured the era’s mythology of overnight stardom.

Birth of Lana Turner (d.1995), star of the original version of the thriller, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946).

1922 — Birth of Audrey Meadows

Background: Meadows came of age during the birth of television as a mass medium. The 1950s sitcom was defining American popular culture, and The Honeymooners — with its working-class Brooklyn setting and sharp-tongued domestic comedy — was among its most influential creations. Meadows’s Alice Kramden became the template for the sensible, wisecracking TV wife.

Birth of Audrey Meadows (d.1996), the wise-cracking Alice Kramden on Jackie Gleason’s 1950s sitcom The Honeymooners.

1935 — Crash of USS Macon

Background: The interwar period saw intense military experimentation, and few technologies captured the imagination — or proved as tragically fragile — as rigid airships. The U.S. Navy invested heavily in these flying aircraft carriers, hoping they could serve as long-range scouts across the vast Pacific. But a series of catastrophic losses proved the technology fatally vulnerable to weather, ending one of aviation’s most dramatic dead ends.

Crash of the U.S. Navy rigid airship USS Macon (ZRS-5) off the coast of Big Sur, California. The Navy was heavily invested in the technology of lighter-than-air vessels for reconnaissance and patrol, but the loss of Macon and the earlier losses of USS Akron (ZRS-4) and USS Shenandoah (ZR-1) sealed their fates.

Macon and Akron both carried the F-9C Sparrowhawk fighter for what was termed “parasitic protection.” The fighter was dropped in flight, and at the completion of the mission recovered aboard the airship via a strong hook and trapeze assembly that would pull it inside the envelope for servicing and storage.

1937 — Death of Elihu Root

Background: Root’s career spanned the pivotal era when the United States transformed from a continental republic into a global power. He served under presidents who oversaw the Spanish-American War, the construction of the Panama Canal, and America’s growing involvement in international affairs. His legal brilliance and institution-building helped create the frameworks — from the modern War Department to international arbitration treaties — that the U.S. would rely on through two world wars.

Death of Elihu Root (b.1845), who served as Secretary of War under Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt, Secretary of State for President Roosevelt, and Senator from New York, in between practicing law and serving as member of various commissions and delegations. His was one of the great practical minds who helped define the United States’ coming of age as a world power.

1942 — Japanese Invasion of Singapore

Background: Japan’s sweep through Southeast Asia in early 1942 was one of the most stunning military campaigns in history. The fall of Singapore — supposedly an impregnable fortress — was the worst British military disaster of the war and shattered the myth of European colonial invincibility in Asia. Its effects on the postwar decolonization of the region were profound and lasting.

Continuing their South Pacific juggernaut, Japan initiates an invasion of Singapore.

1945 — Birth of Mia Farrow

Background: Farrow was born into Hollywood royalty — her father was director John Farrow, her mother actress Maureen O’Sullivan (Jane in the original Tarzan films). She would become one of the most recognizable faces of 1960s and ’70s cinema and later an internationally prominent humanitarian and activist.

Birth of Mia Farrow, who had the good sense to ease herself away from Woody Allen.

1950 — Birth of Mark Spitz

Background: Spitz emerged during an era when the Olympic Games were reaching new heights of global visibility, amplified by television. His seven-gold-medal performance at the 1972 Munich Olympics — each in world-record time — was one of the most dominant athletic achievements in history, a record that stood for 36 years until Michael Phelps surpassed it in 2008.

Birth of the great Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz, 9-time Olympic gold medalist, including 7 at the 1972 games in Munich.

1959 — Soviet R-7 ICBM Launch

Background: The late 1950s were the peak of Cold War technological anxiety. The Soviets had already stunned the world with Sputnik in 1957, and the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles raised the terrifying prospect that nuclear weapons could now reach any city on Earth within minutes. The perceived “missile gap” became a defining political issue and accelerated both the arms race and the space race.

The Soviet Union launches the R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile — the world’s first — creating yet another layer of technical anxiety and competition between themselves and the U.S. The launch was the core issue in the “missile gap” controversy that dominated the 1960 presidential election between Vice President Richard Nixon and Senator John Kennedy.

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1962 — U.S. Embargo of Cuba

Background: The Cuban Missile Crisis was still months away, but the relationship between Washington and Havana had already collapsed. Castro’s revolution, his nationalization of American-owned businesses, and his alignment with the Soviet Union turned Cuba from a close ally into America’s most proximate adversary. The embargo was part of a broader strategy — alongside the failed Bay of Pigs invasion — to isolate and pressure the Castro regime.

In an attempt to apply economic sanctions against a too-close-for-comfort hostile communist regime, the United States institutes an embargo of imports and exports from Cuba. Its goal, if not to force Fidel Castro from power, was to at least force him to moderate his anti-American rhetoric and activities. Castro, you probably noticed, remained firmly in power (lately using his brother as mouthpiece) until just a couple years ago, when he finally earned his just reward. The embargo remained in effect through 10 U.S. presidencies, although its effectiveness remains an open question. You may have noted that our 44th president’s attempt to ease the tension does not seem to be playing out as expected; I’d guess the animosity runs pretty deep, in both directions.

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1964 — The Beatles on Ed Sullivan

Background: Post-war America in the early 1960s was primed for a cultural earthquake. The trauma of JFK’s assassination just months earlier had left the nation somber, and youth culture was hungry for something new and joyful. The Beatles’ arrival — amplified by the unifying power of network television in an era of only three channels — became one of the great cultural inflection points of the century, launching the “British Invasion” and transforming popular music forever.

Those shaggy guys from Liverpool, those guys with no collars on their suits, those guys who led the ensuing British Invasion:… The Beatles perform their first gig on the Ed Sullivan Show, sending millions of adolescent girls into a swoon.

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1996 — Kasparov vs. Deep Blue

Background: The match between the reigning world chess champion and IBM’s supercomputer was a watershed moment in the history of artificial intelligence. For decades, chess had been considered the ultimate test of machine intelligence. Kasparov’s loss in this first game (though he won the overall match) signaled the beginning of an era in which computers could match and eventually surpass human cognitive abilities in specific domains — a theme that has only grown more consequential since.

Chess Grand Master Garry Kasparov loses his first match to the IBM Deep Blue supercomputer.

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Wayne Creed

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