Gilbert M. Stack's Blog, page 118

Today in History: The Gunpowder Plot

On this day (November 5) in 1605 the Gunpowder Plot failed to blow up the English House of Lords and King James I. The plotters were Catholics who had given up hoping that James would extend toleration to them in England and decided to start a Midlands revolt which they hoped would put nine year old Princess Elizabeth on the throne as a Catholic monarch. Today, the most famous of the plotters is Guy Fawkes, after whom, Guy Fawkes Day is named, and who’s memory played a prominent role in the graphic novel and movie, V for Vendetta.

An anonymous letter betrayed the conspirators so that Fawkes was caught with thirty-six barrels of gunpowder in the undercroft (a sort of basement) beneath the meeting room of the House of Lords. It proved too difficult for him to explain what he was doing with all of this gunpowder and he was arrested. He and seven other surviving conspirators were hanged, drawn and quartered.

Today in History: Julian the Apostate

On this day (November 6) in 355, Roman Emperor Constantius II appointed his cousin Julian to be Caesar (and his heir). Julian would go on to become the philosopher-Emperor known as Julian the Apostate. Julian attempted to reverse the Christianization of Rome not through persecution but by cutting off imperial support for the churches, ending preferences for Christians, and mandating that all religions (including those branches of Christianity deemed “heresies” by the Christian authorities) be treated equally under the law. No more persecution of anyone on religious grounds.

Julian might have succeeded in fatally undermining Christianity but he picked a completely unnecessary war with the Persians and died in combat early in his reign. One of the great alternate history questions is: How would the Mediterranean world have developed if Julian the Apostate had reigned to a ripe old age?

Today in History: King Tut's Tomb Is Found

On this day (November 4) in 1922 Howard Carter and his team discovered the entrance to King Tut’s tomb. Tutankhamun was a relatively unimportant pharaoh who died young, but his tomb survived the robbers who pillaged so widely in the Valley of the Kings making this an unsurpassed archaeological find.

 

Eight people on the team that opened Tut’s tomb died within a dozen years of the event leading to the popular myth of the “Curse of the Pharaohs.” For the record, forty-six people on that team, including Howard Carter and Lady Evelyn Herbert died of natural causes much later.

 

Today in History: Henry VIII Takes Command of the English Church

On this day (November 3) in 1534 the English Parliament past the First Act of Supremacy, which declared Henry VIII to be the head of the Church of England, denying the pope’s historical authority. Henry had maneuvered toward this moment for several years, although it is a subject of scholarly debate as to whether or not he wanted this moment to come when he first began proceedings to annul his marriage to Catharine of Aragon. It’s also a subject of debate as to how much Anne Boleyn wanted Henry to break England away from Rome. Whatever his initial intentions, Henry was not a man who took refusal well and quickly convinced himself that the pope had usurped the power every English king should have always had. It’s ironic that this moment of triumph that Anne must have celebrated with him started her down the road to the headman’s axe.

Today in History: Game Show Fraud

On this day (November 2) in 1959, Charles Van Doren, a contestant on the wildly popular television game show, Quiz Show, admitted to Congress that he had been given the questions in advance. The scandal derived from the disastrous premier of the new show when neither contestant seemed to know any answers. The sponsor, Geritol, warned the show that it would not stand for a repeat of the first night’s performance. So they began to choreograph the show, telling contestants what to say and how to dress and act. Charles Van Doren was a wildly popular clean-cut contestant who eventually triumphed over the far less popular Herbert Stempel after he was ordered to take a dive and lose to Van Doren. After doing so, Stempel accused the show of being rigged. His accusations didn’t make much headway until a contestant on the gameshow, Dotto, discovered a notebook with all the questions and answers being asked of the current champion. Investigations began and many rigged gameshows came to light, including Quiz Show.

Today in History: The Sistine Chapel

On this day (November 1) in 1512, the Sistine Chapel ceiling was displayed to the public for the first time. The ceiling had been painted by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512. It is 40 meters long and 13 meters wide and is composed of more than 300 images and depicts the prophets and stories from the book of Genesis.

Today in History: The Origins of Halloween

On this day (October 31) sometime during the reign of Pope Gregory III (731-741) Christians began celebrating All Hallows Eve (contracted today to Halloween) as the beginning of their commemoration of the dead on All Saints (Hallows) Day (November 1) and All Souls Day (November 2). In Christianity it is traditional to begin the celebration of major religious feasts with a vigil the night before.

Many people think that Pope Gregory placed the vigil on October 31 because of the Celtic feast of Samhain. The celebrations of many Christian festivals were purposely set to coincide with pagan observances in an effort to coopt the revelries for Christianity. Samhain marked the end of the harvest season and the beginning of the dark wintery half of the year.

The Puritans opposed the celebration of Halloween as they did many of the Church of England feasts so they did not bring it with them when they settled the New World. It was not until the mass migration of Scotts and Irish in the mid-nineteenth century that Halloween began to be widely celebrated in North America. Today, like many Christians feasts, the day has lost most (if not all) of its religious connotations and is marked by imaginative and often scary costumes, parades, parties, decorating, carving of pumpkins, tons of candy, and the pranks referred to in the challenge, “Trick or Treat!”

My father used to tell a story about Trick or Treating when he was young. The houses on his street did not have indoor plumbing and children who were disappointed at the front door of a house on Halloween used to go around to the backyard to knock over the outhouse in protest of poor rewards. As my father tells it, one wily old man decided not only to be stingy with his treats but to play a prank of his own on his costumed visitors. He moved his outhouse back several feet so that the children planning to do mischief in his back yard could fall in the open hole…

Happy Halloween!

Today in History: The Haun's Mill Massacre

On this day (October 30) in 1838 the Haun’s Mill Massacre took place. In the days preceding, an unofficial milita unhappy at the growing numbers of Mormons living in Missouri began confiscating weapons from Mormons in the area of Haun’s Mill. Thirty-six Mormons formed a force of their own in self-defense. A truce was established Sunday evening on October 28 between the groups and around 4pm on Tuesday, October 30, the militia broke the truce. Armed Mormons fled to a blacksmith shop which became a death trap for them. The militia then shot those who had surrendered and several wounded men including two boys, one ten years old and one seven years old. They mutilated many of the bodies, then robbed everything that could be moved and assaulted many of the women who had fled into nearby woods. Only four of the 240 militia men were wounded, none died.

Today in History: An Early Serial Murderer

On this day (October 29) in 1901, Jolly Jane Toppan was arrested for murdering the Davis family. She would go on to confess to 31 murders and famously said she wanted "to have killed more people—helpless people—than any other man or woman who ever lived". Toppan had a fascinatingly tragic background. She was born Honora Kelley and her mother died of tuberculosis when she was very young. Her abusive father abandoned her and her sister in an orphanage when she was eight. (The father, Peter “Kelley the Crack” went insane later in life where a popular story about him reported that he sewed his own eyes shut.) Two years later she was placed with the Toppan family as an indentured servant and took their name.

She trained as a nurse and was apparently so well liked she received the nickname, Jolly Jane, but she became fascinated with death. She would administer drugs to her victims and stare into their eyes as she brought them to the brink of death and back again. She would hold them close and reported to the police that she received a sexual thrill from the process of killing them. Her victims included her foster sister, the families of people she worked for, and even a housekeeper whom she murdered so she could get her job and access to a family she had decided to kill. At her trial she argued she was sane because she knew that what she was doing was wrong, but the jury found her not guilty by reason of insanity anyway. She was committed to the Taunton Insane Hospital.

Today in History: The First Ticker Tape Parade

On this day (October Twenty-Eight) in 1886, New York City hosted its first ticker tape parade during the dedication of the Statue of Liberty by President Grover Cleveland. Ticker tape was the paper that ran through the stock ticker giving updates on stock information around the country. Today confetti is used instead of ticker tape.