399BC: Socrates is sentenced to death. A glass of hemlock seals his fate in the presence of his students. As a philosopher, he questioned almost everything–the Socratic Method is a way of discerning Truth, particularly on moral issues, by asking a series of questions that individually are relatively insignificant, but which collectively lead the questioner to the truth he seeks. Socrates actually enjoyed poking the upper crust of Athenian society: he called himself “Athens’ gadfly” (like the fly that stings a horse into action). Eventually, his annoyances became too much for the Administration, and he was convicted of: 1) “corrupting youth” and, 2) “failing to honor Athens’ gods.”
270AD: Traditional date of the martyrdom of one of the Roman Church fathers, Valentinus. There are really only two known facts about him: 1) his name, and; 2) his burial place north of Rome. That said, there are more than a few biographical bits, variously recorded through the 13th century, that paint a little broader picture of his importance. His most common identity is either as a priest in Rome or a bishop of Terni, not far inland from Rome itself. The most detailed account of his activities indicates he was persecuted by the Emperor Claudius II, for officiating at the marriage of Christian couples, which was illegal at the time. Claudius himself became friends with Valentinus, until the priest tried to convert the Emperor himself to Christianity, at which point his vocation became treason. Conventional stoning failed to kill him, and the execution ended with his beheading.
600AD: Pope Gregory the Great issues a decree that confirms, “God bless you” is the correct response to a sneeze.
1542: Death of Catherine Howard (b.1523), Henry VIII’s fifth wife and first cousin to Anne Boleyn; executed for adultery. She is beheaded at age 19 after only 17 months of marriage to the mercurial king
1554: 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. The execution launched more of the Protestant-Catholic struggle and years of deadly intrigue surrounding England’s throne.
1564: Birth of Galileo Galilei (d.1642) in Pisa, Italy
1733: 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.
1763: Signing of the Treaty of Paris, which ends the fighting known in the New World as the French and Indian War. France lost large territories in North America, everything west of the Mississippi went to her ally Spain in compensation for Spain’s loss of Florida to Great Britain. France lost everything east of the Mississippi, including all of French Canada, to Great Britain. They also lost most of their Caribbean islands to l’Albion perfide, thus confirming Britain’s absolute colonial dominance of the North America.
1779: Death of Captain James Cook , during his third voyage of discovery in the Pacific Ocean. He was initially greeted as a god by the natives of Hawaii, who lavished him and his crew with every type of assistance during their earlier month-long stay on the island. Only a week or so after their departure, HMS Resolution suffered problems with her rigging, which necessitated the ship’s return for repairs. The islanders were not happy to see them again, and on this day attempted to steal a longboat from Cook’s shore party. A scuffle ensued, and dozens of the islanders descended on Cook and beat him to death as the rest of the crew vainly fought them off until they could themselves escape. After the event, the Hawaiians honored Cook’s body with full royal rites and ceremony.
1797: A Royal Navy fleet of 15 ships of the line (plus 5 frigates) under Admiral Sir John Jervis, meets defeats a Spanish fleet of 27 ships of the line (plus 7 frigates) at the Battle of Cape Saint Vincent. The decisive victory allowed the Royal Navy to resume its patrols in the Mediterranean, and brought fame and fortune to Jervis, including ceremonial swords, gold medals, promotion, knighthood, and a huge share of prize money. More importantly for the future of the Royal Navy, his young commander Horatio Nelson was recognized for his ability during the battle, leading a boarding party to capture the Spanish ship San Nicholas, with which his own ship Captain was entangled. Seizing the opportunity to double the capture, Nelson then ordered a second boarding party to continue with him across to the similarly entangled San Jose, which also surrendered to Nelson. Nelson himself was knighted into the Order of Bath and made Rear Admiral, and given command of the RN force that went on to repeated victories against the French throughout the Mediterranean theatre, including the Battle of the Nile.
1804: American naval captain Stephen Decatur leads a daring nighttime raid in Tripoli harbor. He and a hand-picked cadre of men re-board and set fire to the American frigate USS Philadelphia, which grounded last October and was subsequently captured by the Pasha of Tripoli. The raid climaxes by burning the ship to the waterline to prevent its use by the Barbary pirates. None other than Horatio Lord Nelson called Decatur’s work “the most bold and daring act of the Age.” Decatur himself returned to the United States a national hero.
1809: Birth of Abraham Lincoln, born in a log cabin, in Kentucky.
1809: Birth of British naturalist Charles Darwin , whose observations of flora, fauna and fossils during the 4 ½ year circumnavigation voyage of HMS Beagle led him to develop the theory of natural selection. He followed up his initial publication of On the Origin of Species with the explosive culmination of evolutionary theory in The Descent of Man.
1812: 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.
1818: Birth of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
1847: Birth of Thomas Alva Edison (d.1931), the brilliant inventor, dubbed “The Wizard of Menlo Park,” who held 1093 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
1898: The American battleship USS Maine blows up in Havana harbor. In the United States, William Randolph Hearst leads the journalistic hysteria in demanding a declaration of war with Spain, not only to avenge the loss of the ship and its sailors, but to free Cuba and the Philippine Islands from the yoke of Spanish colonial oppression. The “Splendid Little War” that follows gives us Colonel Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders’ charge up San Juan Hill, the battle of Manila Bay (“You may fire when your are ready Gridley…”) and new American possessions of Cuba, the Philippine Islands and Puerto Rico.
1924: King Tut’s tomb is opened, three months after its discovery by explorer Howard Carter. Earlier, on November 26, 1922, Carter made the famous “tiny breach in the top left hand corner” of the doorway, and was able to peer in by the light of a candle and see that many of the gold and ebony treasures were still in place. He did not yet know at that point whether it was “a tomb or merely a cache”, but he did see a promising sealed doorway between two sentinel statues. When Lord Carnarvon asked him if he saw anything, Carter replied: “Yes, I see wonderful things”
1933: President-elect Franklin Roosevelt survives an assassination attempt in Miami. An unemployed bricklayer named Guiseppe Zangara shouts “Too many people are starving!” and fires six shots toward FDR, who had just finished a speech from the back of his car. Five people were hit, including the mayor of Chicago, who was mortally wounded. Zangara was executed for the killing on March 5th, a mere four weeks after the event.
1945: An overnight Allied air raid on Dresden ignites a literal firestorm, killing upwards of 300,000 civilians (some estimates climb toward 500,000), many of whom had just recently fled to Dresden from the fighting along the Russian front. Dresden’s casualty count** is higher than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. 1600 acres of the central city is pulverized to rubble in the 13 hour raid
1945: Three years after its loss to the Japanese, American forces re-take the island fortress of Corregidor in Manila Bay.
1945: President Franklin Roosevelt meets with Ibn Saud, King of Saudi Arabia, aboard USS Quincy (CA-71), formally establishing diplomatic ties between the new Arab kingdom and the United States.
1950: Birth of Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz, 9-time Olympic gold medalist, including 7 at the 1972 games in Munich.
1956: At the 20th Soviet Party Congress, General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev gives a four hour speech entitled “The Personality Cult and its Consequences.” Given behind closed doors, it is often referred to as the “Secret Speech,” although it gained wide and official circulation in the months that followed. In it, Khrushchev repudiates the methods and results of Stalin’s stewardship of the Soviet state, in particular the perversion of leadership into a cult of personality, and the wholesale abuses of individuals and groups who opposed his rule. Although the speech was intended to lift Soviet Russia into a new, more open environment, the deadening bureaucracy that underlay Stalin’s power stayed in place through 1990, when the internal contradictions of the communist system finally collapsed of their own weight.
1959: Fidel Castro is sworn in as Prime Minister of Cuba after forcing former dictator Fulgencio Batista into exile in the Dominican Republic. The event is the culmination of the three year guerrilla campaign that Castro, his brother Raul and Che Guevarra, the hard-line Argentine Marxist, led from the Sierra Maestra mountains. Fidel’s dictatorship was the first Communist government in the western hemisphere.
1961: A trio hunting for geodes near Olancha, California, finds a likely nodule that they tentatively date at 500,000 years old. When they cut through the stone to hopefully find a beautiful crystal geode, they instead find what appears to be a 1920s vintage Champion spark plug. The Coso Artifact immediately generates a firestorm of controversy over geological dating methods. The estimable Wikipedia reports that other researchers, more certain than most, conclude that the dating method is infallibly accurate, therefore the spark plug was most likely the result of: 1) an ancient, advanced civilization like Atlantis; 2) a pre-historic visit by extraterrestrial travelers; 3) human time-travelers dropping something from their period.
1971: Great Britain officially adopts the decimal system for their currency, dropping the ancient pound-shilling-pence (“LSD”) denominations.
1996: Chess Grand Master Garry Kasparov loses his first match to the IBM Deep Blue supercomputer.
1847: Birth of Thomas Alva Edison (d.1931), the brilliant inventor, dubbed “The Wizard of Menlo Park,” who held 1093 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
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