Pope John II becomes the first pope to assume a different name on becoming pontiff, abandoning his given name; Mercurius. Not wishing to offend any of papist persuasion but I’d have preferred this tradition not to catch on. This would have given us popes with names like Maffeo, Fabio, Albino and Deusdedit which would be more interesting. At the very least it would mean we wouldn’t have eleventy-million Pope Johns anymore (it would, however, probably mean eleventy-million Pope Giovannis instead so maybe we should just ignore what I think).
- 1699 -
Osman III is born, destined to become the Ottoman Sultan and a colossal anus (two occupations that overlap with depressing frequency). During his reign Christians and Jews were forced to wear distinctive badges, which seems oddly familiar. Osman had spent next to no time outside the palace so was mad as a (thoroughly misogynistic) brush and used to stomp around in iron shoes so that all the women could hear him coming and run away. He apparently died childless (who could’ve guessed?).
- 1860 -
French mathematician Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier discovers a planet that doesn’t exist. Vulcan, as he called it, was never seen but he was sure it was there. He proved it with, like, maths and shit. To be fair this wasn’t the first time he’d done something like this. In 1846 he’d managed to discover Neptune without ever having seen it. Uranus was acting like it had a planet behind it and now Mercury was doing the same thing.
Fair enough, there should have been a planet behind Mercury. Le Verrier even had a name picked out for it; Vulcan – the Greek god of humourless blacksmiths with pointy ears. When a doctor called Edmond Modeste Lescarbault wrote to Le Verrier saying that he’d observed the planet it seemed too good to be true. Lescarbault wanted to be an astronomer more than anybody’s ever wanted anything, even going so far as to build an observatory in his house.
Is that a grain silo or a preliminary study for the Maginot Line?
Le Verrier desperately wanted Lescarbault to be right because that would mean he’d have two out of two for discovering planets without even seeing them. Lescarbault desperately wanted Le Verrier to be right because that would mean he was the bestest astronomer evar.
The discovery of the new planet was announced to the Académie des Sciences in Paris and Lescarbault’s dream was realised. He was awarded the Légion d’Honneur and was invited to all the fanciest smart-people events. Not everyone agreed and over the years the number of people who claimed they had seen Vulcan was depressingly small. Le Verrier dutifully collected all the alleged sightings sent in by amateur astronomers and refined his astonishingly accurate predictions of where his planet damn well should be.
He went to his grave in 1877 still claiming that Vulcan was there. It wasn’t until 1915 that Einstein proved (in a boring, mathematical way) that Vulcan didn’t need to exist. The numerical oddities that prompted Le Verrier to calculate that Vulcan was there could be explained with the theory of relativity’s new, improved version of what-gravity-does. Mercury was, Einstein concluded, probably just acting like there was another planet behind it.
It would have been a slightly depressing ending but in 1970 (when, many folks agree, drugs were at their most potent) American astronomer Henry C. Courten claimed to have seen a planet like object inside Mercury’s orbit along with some other asteroids. It hasn’t been seen since but a number of asteroids in this region have been verified. They’re called “vulcanoids” after the planet that was sought so tenaciously in its place. I don’t know if Lescarbault would call it a legacy but it’s certainly a lot closer than most of us are going to get.
- 1911 -
A couple of weeks earlier a group of armed burglars had been interrupted in an East London jewellery store. 18 police officers (half of whom were unarmed) arrived on the scene to be shot at with gay abandon. Three officers were killed in what would be known as the Houndsditch Murders.
Having lost some of their own the police were determined not to make the same mistake when they were informed of the surviving burglar’s whereabouts. 200 officers cordoned off the area around 100 Sidney Street. Despite their huge advantage of numbers the Metropolitan Police still found itself more or less outgunned by the small band of politically active Latvian burglars.
The police weren’t the only ones interested in the siege. Then Home Secretary Winston Churchill had heard about the siege and had arrived on the scene with a detachment of Scots Guards and a piece of field artillery en route . . . you know, just in case. By the time the big gun showed up the building was already in flames anyway and Churchill decided the fire brigade should just hold off for a bit to see what would happen. The place burned down and the two burglars inside were roasted which wasn’t actually that surprising when you think about it.
- 1959 -
The Soviet Union launch Luna I, the first vehicle to exit the Earth’s orbit, circle the moon and settle in a heliocentric orbit. The little rocket that could celebrated it’s achievement by doing a huge straight-line burnout over the Indian Ocean (one presumes releasing 1kg of sodium gas in a glowing, orange trail is the astronomical equivalent of cutting a massive 11).
Luna I now lives the quiet life between the orbits of the Earth and Mars under the name Мечта (Russian: “Dream”). A year, in its neighbourhood, takes 450 days so it’s probably aging gracefully.
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