- 45 BC -
The Julian Calendar comes into effect. This is the first first of January so to speak. January, the first month is named for Janus, the two-faced Roman god of luck and new beginings.
- 404 AD -
The last gladiatorial combat takes place in Rome. Entertainment wouldn't sink this low again until the advent of Reality TV. I know what you're thinking, "aren't they supposed to be Catholics by then?" which is a fair point. Constantine (the Emperor who converted to Christianity) did actually stop it from 325-328 and after that it was steadily declining in popularity.
- 404 AD -
While we're on matters gladiatorial it was also on this day, according to Bishop Theodoret that St. Telemachus was killed intervening in a gladiator fight and that this inspired the Emperor Honorius to ban the practice once and for all.
- 630 AD -
According to Wikipedia this is when the Prophet Mohammed "bloodlessly" conquered Mecca. I nearly sprayed beer out my nose.
- 1431 AD -
The man who would become Pope Alexander VI is born Rodrigo Borgia. He would be remembered as one of history's most evil men but for the purposes of today's piece we'll focus on just one item, the Treaty of Tordesillas. Spain and Portugal needed the new world divided between them (they were the only ones paying enough attention to the Vatican these days) so everything west of the mouth of the Amazon (roughly) belonged to Spain, everything east of it belonged to Portugal and Britain, France and Holland could get stuffed.
- 1700 AD -
Russia adopts the Anno Domini dating system, finally abandoning the Anno Mundi [Latin: Year of the World] system which placed the year 0 not at the birth of Christ but at the year of creation. 3761 BC, apparently. Now most folks would scoff at any number around there as the prevailing opinion on the subject puts it at a few billion but since I'm one of these Bible-thumping young-earthers the question holds an interest for me that it doesn't for most.
The Anno Mundi system is based on the Seder Olam Raddah of Rabbi Yose Ben Halafta (160 AD) but his wasn't the only dog in the fight. The Venerable Bede claimed the world was created on 18 March 3952 BC but there seems to be more support for The Chronicon of Eusebius & Jerome (that's St. Jerome who gave us the Latin Vulgate - I can't tell you how many times I've had to tell people that we don't play Chinese Whispers with this fellow) which dated creation to 5199 BC. Irish and Roman sources seem content with this date early on and it's certainly closer to Etos Kosmou (Anno Mundi in the Byzantine calander): 1 September 5509 BC. James Ussher (1654) thought it was 4004 but by then everybody was having a crack at dating the earth (popular girl, y'see? *cymbal crash*) John Lightfoot, Joseph Justus Scaliger, Isaac Newton . . . before you know it even the Freemasons are in on the act; giving their "Anno Lucis" as a nice round 4000 BC.
The problem with all of this enthusiastic ink-spilling on the subject of the Earth's age is that IF one takes the Bible as one's only source of information and tries to establish the age of the Earth based on the portions referring specifically to dates (the lifetimes of those mentioned in lineages and such like) you don't actually get a specific date. The main reason for this is that it's just not important. The Bible relates a vast amount of history but it isn't an historical document in the sense that it preserves history for it's own sake. Most of the action in the book of Daniel takes place in Babylon and while there may have been some mention of the very impressive gates there wasn't (as far as I can recall) a word about the Hanging Gardens. That doesn't mean they weren't there (and there's presently a school of thought that maintains they were actually at Ninevah) they just didn't have anything to do with the story. So it is with the date of creation . . . not mislaid, not concealed just irrelevant.
- 1782 -
Johann Christian Bach dies. No, not that Bach, that's Johann Sebastian Bach (the one we've all heard of) J. C. Bach was J. S. Bach's eleventh son. Apparently the young bloke was a pretty good composer but to be fair even if he had invented the Fender Stratocaster, recorded the white album and Dark Side of the Moon and stage-dived at Woodstock 1764 he would still be vastly overshadowed by his father (probably the most influential man in the history of music). If they'd had TVs in the 18th century this guy would have been lobbing them out of windows.
- 1801 -
Giuseppe Piazzi discovers the dwarf planet "Ceres" lurking in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It's only 950km in diameter (our own little moon is closer to 4000) but there's more to it than meets the eye. The crust is apparently composed of water ice, hydrated carbonates and clays (not the kind you use in skeet, tho.) and underneath there is believed to be an ocean of liquid water. Some folks say there could be any number of things living in there. More level-headed folks suggest that some day we might live there. Clearly the best case scenario for Hollywood is for both to be right.
- 1833 -
The Re-establishment of British Rule in the Falkland Islands . . . now I could get myself into quite a bit of trouble here. Not everybody's a fan of Maggie Thatcher and there's still a lot of strong feelings on the issue of the Falklands. Everybody has a claim somewhere along the line but to give some history in short. First confirmed European to sight the islands is the Dutch explorer Sebald de Weert in 1600 (they were often called the Sebald Islands because Weert Islands doesn't work in any language). John Strong stops by in 1690 and names the islands after his patron Anthony Cary, 5th Viscount Falkland - so the British are the first to actually get their flag in the dirt. The Spanish call the place Islas Malvinas which is derrived from Iles Malouines, the name given to it by Louis Antoine de Bougainville who led the French settlement there in 1764 so theirs were the first boots on the ground on a more permanent basis. The British were (unaware that they would have French neighbours) just behind them settling there in 1766.
The French (who were desperate for colonies in the South Atlantic, in the Seven Years War just prior they had lost Quebec, Newfoundland, Guadelupe, Martinique and Senegal to the British - the only territory to change hands in the other direction was Minorca) settlement was passed on to the Spanish (who weren't too concerned about who discovered what or settled where, the Treaty of Tordesillas said that the islands were in the half of the world that the Pope had given to Spain) who attacked the British and drove them out in 1770. One can understand their motives, they were France's allies in the Seven Years War and Britain had relieved them of Havana and Manilla. The incident led up to a tense diplomatic stand-off that ended with the British withdrawing with both sides still asserting sovereignty over the islands. By 1811 the Spanish left as well.
Both Britain and Spain had both left little plaques claiming to own the place but nobody was left to polish them. The United Provinces of the River Plate (Argentina to you and me) took a liking to the islands and set up a small settlement and penal colony in 1828 (in 1820 the Argentine Dictator had sent an American Privateer to stick their shiny new flag in the dirt but by the time he got there most of his crew had died of scurvey and he had to come home). The trouble with this arrangement was that neither the US or UK recognized the Argentine claim (the Argentine governor asked for British permission and protection but their response can be distilled to "Don't make me come over there!") more specifically they didn't recognize their exclusive fishing rights. Folks didn't have wildlife screensavers in the early 19th century so seal hunting was not the unpopular occupation it is today (even I find it fairly unpalatable and I thought Bambi's mother looked delicious) indeed it was a lucrative trade, a seal being a convenient package of rich meat and solid, unprocessed oil wrapped in a fine fur. The new residents of the islands started arresting US fisherman, confiscating their boats and carting their senior officers back to the mainland for trial. The US had not long before dealt with the Barbary States and so their policy of not putting up with this sort of thing was a matter of very public record. On the 28th of December 1831 the corvette USS Lexington destroyed the Puerto Luis settlement and the Captain declared the islands free of government (which was fair enough, as it was now free of just about everything except seals and little plaques).
This brings us around to 1833. The British arrived and said that it was theirs and the Argentines (their colonel, who's crew had mutinied, along with the few survivors) weren't in a position to argue. Propaganda claims the population was expelled but there's nothing to support that. Charles Darwin was in the neighbourhood at the time and he didn't see anything sinister. The British ran the place reasonably and uneventfully until it was invaded in 1982, the Falklands War. Now you know the backstory.
- 1890 -
The Italians consolidate a cluster of possessions on the African coast into the colony of Eritrea. This had been building for some time and from a fairly humble start. A Genovese shipping company had sent a Catholic priest to buy the Red Sea port of Assab from a low-ranking Ottoman sultan. This was in 1869, can you guess which year the Suez canal opened? It goes to show that governments are usually slower on the uptake with financial matters, no surprise that this was the work of a businessman rather than a politician. King Umberto I and the Italian government were eager to buy the company's possessions and quickly expanded them north, much to the chagrin of the Egyptians who liked to think of that part of the world as their own.
Expansion into the highlands was made very difficult by the Ethiopian army led by King Yohannes IV. He was keen for an empire of his own that would compete with the European ones. Yohannes had fought hard in the 1870s to protect his northern territories from Ottoman Egypt, culminating in the battles of Gundat and Gura. When someone proclaiming themselves "Al-Mahdi" rose up in Sudan and started kicking out the Egyptians (who had an arrangement that they'd run the place for Britain) Yohannes struck a deal with the British that he would allow Egyptian forces to flee through his territory in exchange for British support for his territorial claims over coastal regions that were starting to get a bit cultura italiano. Mad Al the Mahdi took this badly and turned his ire on the Ethiopians. While Ras Alula and the Ethiopian army were tied up belting the Mahdi army at Kufit (1885) the Italians were moving into the port of Massawa. Yohannes was peeved, to be sure, but the need to fend off the Mahdi made it necessary to come to an undertanding with the Italians. His boy, Ras Alula, mustn't have been paying attention because he took it upon himself to attack Italian units on both sides of the border (wherever it was). Yohannes had bearly got his fighting trousers on when some other portion of Ethiopia revolted. By the time they had been stomped into submission Al-Mahdi was up to his old tricks and burning churches in the northern territories.
It must be said that the idea of a stable and authentically African empire is not without its appeal. Especially if it's being run by a stable, Coptic monarchy. It sounds great but like so many good ideas it didn't work in practice. I won't go into a detailed account of how Ethiopia lapsed into civil conflict after Yohannes died but it all got very messy. Even the nature of and circumstances surrounding his death illustrate the difference between European and African empires. On March 9, 1889 he was mortally wounded by a sniper at the battle of Metemma (the Mahdi's successor was invading). Yohannes claimed that his "nephew" was his natural son and, now, his heir (the fellow who previously held that title had been dead for a couple of years) a few hours before he died. The Ethiopians had soundly defeated their enemies but hearing about their leader's death broke their morale and allowed their enemies to counterattack. The Ethiopians were scattered and the Emperor's body captured and taken back to Omdurman where his head was paraded through the streets on a pike. That sort of thing never happened to Queen Victoria . . . Mussolini, though . . .
- 1901 -
Every Australia day ("Invasion Day" as some elements insist on calling it) some folks put about the notion that January 1st should be Australia day. It was on that day in 1901 that the British colonies of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia federated to form the Commonwealth of Australia and so marks our birth as a nation. That might be a compelling case at the UN or in a foreign NGO but here where anybody who might be voting on it lives most of us understand that throwing away a perfectly good long weekend to fly flags on a day that we'll all be hung over on anyway just because some people who's hobby it is to be cross about things are cross about something is bloody stupid.
- 1925 -
American Astronomer Edwin Hubble finds galaxies beyond our own. I'm sure I could track down some numbers for the dimensions involved with these sort of things but they're fairly meaningless to those who take no interest in astronomy. Galaxies are vast things and a universe that can contain thousands, possibly millions, of them can't be described wihtout resorting to a level of hyperbole that would make Jeremy Clarkson sound like Tony Snow. I will, however, take this opportunity to rail against one of my pet hates. It irritates me no end when people talk about "multiple universes" because "universe" means "everything that is." Any reference to anything existing beyond anything referred to as a or the universe is a contradiction in terms. Whether there are multiple dimensions or planes of existance beyond the one(s) we're familiar with I'll leave to the astrophysicists to decide but I wouldn't waste any more time listening to someone talking about "multiple universes" than I would someone talking about the "living dead."
- 1971 -
A great day of lovers of motorsport. Cigarette advertising is banned on US television, freeing up thousands, possibly millions, of dollars for the sponsorship of formula one and touring car racing teams, their technological advances, like traction control, active suspension and antilock brakes, will flow on to the open auto market in ordinary family cars that the rest of us buy. Next time you see a vintage car and marvel at how far we've come just remember that it's something else we have to thank those noble, self-sacricing smokers for.
- 1996 -
Distinguished US Admiral Arleigh Burke dies aged 94. He had served in both WW2 and Korea before being promoted ahead of many more senior officers to become Chief of Navy Operations in 1955. It bears noting that Burke supported the development of nuclear-powered vessels (now the core of the most modern navies) and was behind the Polaris program while most people still thought the idea of firing a missile from a submarine was daft. The ability to fire missiles from nuclear powered submarines that can travel under ice for months was central to Cold War strategy in the years after he retired in 1961. In 1991 the US Navy commissioned the USS Arleigh Burke (replacing the Spruance Class destroyers) and today all the USN's destroyers (more than 60 in all) are Arleigh Burke Class.
