For the present is the past rolled up for action, and the past is the present unrolled for our understanding.
Will and Ariel Durant, VI The Story of Civilization viii (1957)
- October 1
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1202 — The Fourth Crusade set sail from Venice in a fleet of 480 ships, with the fratricidal objective of taking Constantinople. Priests stood on the war-castles of the ships, singing Veni Creator Spiritus. In a stupendous feat of navigation, it arrived at Constantinople on June 24, 1203.
- October 2
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1608 — Prototype of modern reflecting telescope completed by Jan Lippershey. He presented it to the States General of the United Provinces (Netherlands), then at war with Spain for their independence. Seeing immediately the military implications, the legislature voted him some 900 florins.
- October 3
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1226 — Francis of Assisi died, in the forty fifth year of his age, singing a psalm. He reinvigorated Christianity by bringing Christ back into it.
1789 — The French legislature declared that charging interest was not a crime. Well, doh!
- October 5
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1713 — Denis Diderot, encyclopediest and philosophé, born, Langres, Champagne.
1877 — Chief Joseph (1840 - September 21, 1904), the "Red Napoleon", surrenders.
I am tired of talk that comes to nothing…. You might as well expect the rivers to run backwards as that any man who was born free should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases.
1878 — Thomas Alva Edison invented the electric light bulb.
- October 6
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1600 — Premiere performance of the oldest extant opera, Euridice, at the wedding of Henry IV and Maria de' Medici, Florence.
- October 7
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1571 — Battle of Lepanto, which should have been the most decisive naval battle in modern history, except that exhaustion and a storm prevented the Holy League's (Venice, Spain and the Papacy) forces from following the defeated Turks. Cervantes, among the 7500 wounded Christians, described it as "the most memorable occasion that either past or present ages have beheld, and which perhaps the future will never parallel." It was one of the largest naval battles in history: the Turks had some 222 galleys and 750 cannon; the League 207 galleys, six galleasses and 1800 canon.
1763 — The Crown established East and West Florida and Quebec, and barred settlement west of the Appalachians. All were sore points with the colonists, as reflected in the "acts which may define a tyrant" listed in the Declaration of Independence. (CiL ??)
1861 — The Confederate States and the Cherokee Nation conclude an alliance.
- October 8
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1699 — "Rembrandt van Rijn, painter … Leaves two children", according to the death records of the Westerkerk.
1754 — Henry Fielding, English novelist, died, Lisbon. He was the father of the modern novel; his "The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling" still has a delightful charm.
- October 9
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1547 — Miguel de Cervantes baptized, Alcalá, Spain. Although born in a university town, he appears to have never gotten much formal education, and had to learn of life by actually living it instead of from lectures. His father was an unlicensed itinerant physician.
1647 — The parliamentary arm issued a pamphlet, The Case of the Army Truely Stated, which called for freedom of trade, and end to monopolies, restoration of common lands to the poor, and a guarantee that no man be forced to testify against himself in court.
1974 — F. A. Hayek received Nobel Prize for works in economic theory.
2008 — Yom Kippur
- October 10
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1899 — Wilhelm Röpke, free market adviser to Konrad Adenauer, born.
1973 — Ludwig von Mises died.
- October 11
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1956 — Murray Rothbard awarded his doctorate.
- October 12
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1310 — Suppression of the Knights Templar by order of King Philip IV of France. Accusing them of homosexuality, being in league with Muslims, worshiping idols, and various other things, he raided them with a precision and surprise the DEA would envy. Had the word "terrorism" been in Philip's vocabulary, he no doubt would have accused the Templars of that, too. He seized their wealth and tortured them.
Du Molay, the Grand Master, confessed under torture. Led to the stake for burning, he recanted. The inquisitors proposed to re-try him; Philip insisted on an immediate execution, which was graced by the royal presence.
- October 13
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1066 — Hastings, England. William the Conqueror defeated Harold Godwinsson, King of England, to enforce a fraudulently obtained oath to make William King of England.
The slaughter was so brutal and cruel that the monks sent to find Harold's body could not identify it until they asked the help of Edith Swansneck, his former mistress.
Twenty years after the Conquest, Domesday Book showed a massive redistribution of the wealth of England from the Anglo-Saxons to the Norman conquerors. William started the process with two crippling gelds (land taxes) in 1067 and 1068. The gelds were possible because the Normans decapitated and took over the English bureaucracy, one of the most efficient in western Europe, thereby illustrating R.H.C. Davies' dictum that "Countries which are well governed should be able to resist invading armies more easily than countries which are not, but if by chance they fail they are easier for a conqueror to control. They do not lend themselves to guerrilla resistance, because efficient governments remove the opportunities for such activities."
There is nothing new about the political cleansing that goes on in American universities, or the cultural cleansing of the Blair government, except that the Normans were more honest and brutal about it. By 1080, only one of the 16 English bishoprics was in the hands of a native. By 1200, the Normans had razed almost every Saxon cathedral and abbey, replacing them with the Norman equivalent of Stalinist-modern architecture, and for much the same reasons. Norman propaganda falsely insisted that the Anglo-Saxons had lived in wooden palaces and used wooden churches, and that English culture and manners were rude, insular and out of date. The Normans also destroyed Anglo-Saxon literature and vernacular.
One lesson to be drawn from this is that however well meaning those who implement government bureaucracies may be, their successors may not be either so well intentioned or so scrupulous. It certainly sounds like a good reason for Census Resistance.
1870 — Albert Jay Nock, American essayist and libertarian aristocrat, born.
1982 — The Mises Institute founded.
1991 — Last Communist government in Eastern Europe ousted in elections, Bulgaria.
2008 — Columbus Day, celebrating perhaps the world's most famous navigational error.
- October 14
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1774 — Adoption of the Declaration of Rights.
1944 — Lew Rockwell born
2008 — Sukkot
- October 15
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1764 — It was at Rome,… as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind. But my original plan was circumscribed by the decay of the city rather than the empire.
Edward Gibbon
1783 — Jean François Pilâtre became the first human to ascend in a balloon. He used a Montgolfier hot air balloon and stayed up for four minutes.
- October 16
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1773 — First Tea Act meeting in the colonies, in Philadelphia. (CiL 269)
1793 — Henri Sanson executed Marie Antoinette at the Place de la Révolution.
- October 17
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1777 — Burgoyne, with 5,000 British soldiers and 3,000 German mercenaries, defeated at Saratoga by an American army of 20,000 men. He surrendered. This defeat began to convince the British that perhaps Lord Chatham was correct: that they could not conquer America. It also moved France closer to an open alliance with America.
- October 18
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1787 — First anti-federalist letter published in the "New York Journal," warning that the Constitution will breed despotism.
- October 19
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1745 — Johnathan Swift, satirist and clergyman, died in his 78th year. His epitaph reads, "Ubi save indignatio Cor ulterius lacerare nequit", "where no bitter indignation can tear his heart."
1781 — Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown. (CiL 349)
- October 21
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1097 — The first crusaders arrived at the gates of Antioch. They began a siege. The city fell on June 3, 1098.
1772 — Samuel Taylor Coleridge born, tenth child of John Coleridge, a linguistic scholar and mathematician.
1805 — Battle of Trafalgar. Nelson signaled his fleet: "England expects that every man will do his duty." He obliterated a combined French and Spanish fleet, giving Britain mastery of the sea for a century. He also doomed Napoleon to be a land power only, preventing him from blockading or invading England. Trafalgar made possible Waterloo.
2008 — Shemini Atzeret
- October 22
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-4004 — James Ussher, Anglican Archbishop of Armagh, informs us that Creation occurred "at the beginning of the night".
1612 — The Polish garrison in the Kremlin fled in the face of an advancing Russian army, having held it for 18 months under siege. They were reduced to eating rats, men, and boiled Greek manuscripts.
2008 — Simchat Torah
- October 23
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524 — Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, author of de consolatione philosophiae and several other works of philosophy, minister to Theodoric, King of the Goths, and arguably the last pagan Roman philosopher, executed. His De Musica was used as a textbook at Oxford and Cambridge until the XXth Century.
1956 — Hungarian Uprising against Soviet occupation began as students demanded a radio station broadcast their demands. The State Security Police (AVH) opened fire on the demonstrators. In the ensuing melee, ambulances with red crosses sped to the scene. When the doors opened, AVH goons wearing white coats and wielding machine guns emerged from them. Outrage over the student deaths and the AVH's deception lead to the Uprising.
- October 24
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1793 — The office of attorney-at-law abolished in France.
1956 — Imre Nagy finally formed a government in Hungary. He ordered a ceasefire (which the insurgents honored), abolished the State Security Police (AVH), asked the Soviets to withdraw their forces from the country, released all political prisoners, and asked the international community to defend Hungary's neutral status. The Soviets were not happy.
1956 — Imre Nagy, readmitted to the Hungarian Communist party a week earlier, elected to the politburo and made prime minister. It was intended to assuage the insurgents, but there was so much confusion that it didn't.
- October 25
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1400 — Geoffrey Chaucer died in poverty.
1415 — Battle of Agincourt, near Crécy. The battle was the climax of a campaign by Henry V to assert his right to some French territories. Mired in the mud, French men-at-arms, too proud to learn the lessons of Crécy, were easy pickings for English longbow archers, who could fire as many as 20 arrows a minute.
1760 — George II died after a reign of 33 years, and George III acceded to the throne. "I am sick to death of all this foolish stuff, and wish with all my heart that the devil may take all your bishops, and the Devil take all your ministers, and the Devil take your Parliament, and the Devil take the whole island, provided I can get out of it and go to Hanover."
1767 — Benjamin Constant, French libertarian theorist, born.
- October 26
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1786 — Henry Deringer born, Easton, Pa., U.S., d. 1868, the inventor of the "derringer" pistol. The misspelling is due to inaccurate press reporting on the death of Abraham Lincoln. The press haven't reported accurately in a firearms-related story since.
1942 — Battle of Guadalcanal. Marine platoon sergeant Mitchell Paige saw his entire platoon killed or wounded defending a ridge against two Japanese regiments. Paige moved from position to position, firing one of his .50 caliber Brownings to con the Japanese into believing that the ridge was still defended. He then moved, alone, hand carrying one of the Brownings, toward the Japanese troops massing to take his ridge, firing as he went.
"One marine, one hill."
It is Paige's face on the Hasbro "G.I. Joe" doll, a singularly fitting monument for a free society.
- October 27
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1553 — Geneva: Michael Severtus, wanted by the Inquisition for heresy, burned at the stake by Calvinists for heresy.
- October 28
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1740 — Robert Boswell born, Edinburgh.
1767 — Boston Town Meeting, led by attorney James Otis, protested the Townshend Act; Non-importation movement began. (CiL 168)
1861 — The Cherokee National Council issued a Declaration by the People of the Cherokee Nation of the Causes Which Have Impelled them to Unite Their Fortunes With Those of the Confederate States of America, Tahlequah, C. N.
- October 29
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1765 — Massachusetts Stamp Act Resolves: "Resolved, no man can justly take the property of another without his consent." (CiL 129)
- October 30
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1735 — John Adams born, Braintree, Mass., d. July 4, 1826, Quincy, Mass.
1765 — George Mercer arrived in Virginia to be the stamp distributor there. (CiL 116)
1840 — William Graham Sumner, American proto-libertarian sociologist, born.
- October 31
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— Samhain, known to certain Johnny-come-lately religions as Halloween.
— National Coffee Day celebrated in Japan.
1517 — Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of Wittenberg church at noon, thus beginning the protestant reformation.
1765 — George Mercer, after less than a full day in Virginia, resigns as stamp distributor. (CiL 117) (See Oct. 30 :-) "Such insouciance!" — Claire Wolfe
1992 — Pope John Paul II expressed regret for how the Galileo Galilei affair was handled, after a study by the Pontifical Council for Culture.
- November 1
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1478 — Pope Sixtus IV issued a bull authorizing Ferdinand and Isabella to appoint six priest holding degrees in theology to investigate and punish heresy. So began the Spanish Inquisition.
1775 — 9:40 A.M., the great Lisbon earthquake struck, while many people were at All Saint's Day Mass. In six minutes thirty churches and a thousand homes were leveled, 15,000 killed outright and another 15,000 fatally injured. Yet the home of the future Marquês de Pombal, one of the of the Jesuits' most fervent enemies, was spared. Voltaire wrote a poem taking theological issue with the benevolence of God.
- November 2
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1732 — John Dickenson, revolutionary and founder, born.
1755 — Vienna: Marie Antonia Josepha, later Marie Antoinette, queen to Louis XVI, born to Maria Theresa, Hapsburg empress regnant.
1765 — The Virginia Surveyor General advised the Virgina Customs officials to issue clearances without stamped paper. (CiL 132)
2008 — Nighttime Wasting Time Ends 2:00am (MDT). Don't you feel silly changing all your clocks just because a bunch of danged politicians said to? Not only is the hour we "gain" in the fall obliterated (rather nastily) in the spring, but we also waste time going around setting all the dang clocks. Only a bunch of politicians could have come up with this nonsense.
- November 3
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1640 — The "Long Parliament" assembled at Westminster. It included Oliver Cromwell. It was called by Charles I, and it beheaded him.
1783 — Washington orders the Continental Army disbanded.
- November 4
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1768 — François-René de Chateaubriand, France's greatest writer during the Napoleonic period, born, St. Malo, Normandy.
1924 — California legalized professional boxing (illegal since 1914).
1956 — Soviet and other Warsaw Pact tanks roll into Hungary, to crush the Uprising, which they brutally did in two days.
- November 5
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1414 — Council of Constance. The Council of Pisa failed to resolve a schism by electing a third pope. The Council of Constance dealt with the issue by effecting a revolution in Church governance: it declared itself superior to popes, and started deposing them. But it failed to reform the church, leading to popes re-asserting themselves, and ultimately to the Reformation.
It is interesting to see in the history of the Church some of the same issues played out that Rome, Britain and the US have had to deal with.
1605 — Speaking of "alter[ing], reform[ing] or abolish[ing] the government": Guy Fawkes Day, named for Guy Fawkes (b. 1570, York, Eng., d. Jan. 31, 1606, London), British soldier and best-known member of the failed Gunpowder Plot. Its object was to blow up Parliament building, while Parliament, James I, and his chief ministers met within, in reprisal for increasing oppression of Roman Catholics in England. Fawkes and several co-conspirators were caught on November 5, 1605, to be tortured, hung, drawn and quartered.
1688 — William III of Orange lands in England to seize the throne from James II. He met no real resistance, and many of James' army defected to William.
1763 — Virginia Twopenny Act declared Null in county court. Patrick Henry was the winning lawyer. The Act tried to fix tobacco at 2 pennies per pound of tobacco. Since tobacco circulated as currency, it was in effect a currency control act.
1889 — The Wyoming state constitution, first in the world to include women's suffrage, approved by a vote of the territorial population.
All power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety, happiness; for the advancement of these ends they have at all times an inalienable and indefeasible right to alter, reform or abolish the government in such manner as they may think proper.
Wyoming Constitution, art. 1, § 1
1935 — Parker Brothers released the board game "Monopoly".
1939 — Georg Elser set the timers for his bomb that he intended to kill Hitler. Unfortunately, he missed.
- November 6
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331 — Flavius Claudius Iulianus, Julian, Roman Emperor, born. Nephew of Constantine, he is commonly known as the Apostate. Julian represents the last effort at religious tolerance in the Empire. He also is remembered for reducing the size of the imperial household in Constantinople, which he inherited from his cousin Constantinius, and for his personal frugality and vigor. Not exactly George W. Bush's role model.
1954 — Novelist and anti-New Deal author Garet Garrett died.
- November 7
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1938 — 17-year-old Jewish refugee Herschel Grynszpan shot and killed a German diplomat in Paris. The highly publicized shooting gave the Nazis the excuse they needed for a major crackdown. German newspapers whipped up hysteria over the threat of Jewish terrorism. See November 9.
- November 8
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1519 — Cortes entered Tenochitlan (Mexico City).
1674 — John Milton, poet and theorist for regicide and free speech, died "of the gout struck in.".
1939 — A bomb set by German patriot Georg Elser in an attempt to kill Adolph Hitler went off in the Burgerbraukeller, site of the 1923 "Beerhall Putsch". Unfortunately, Hitler arrived early, gave his speech early, and left before the bomb went off.
1945 — Revenue Act cuts taxes by $6 billion (back when $6 billion was a lot of money), setting the stage for the postwar recovery.
- November 9
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1938 — Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass). "Spontaneous" riots all over Germany destroyed the property of Jews. The next day, an amendment to the Nazi Weapons law proscribing Jews from "acquiring, possessing, and carrying firearms and ammunition, as well as truncheons or stabbing weapons" took effect. Not that there's any connection between gun control and genocide, of course. Uh huh.
- November 10
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1483 — Martin Luther born, Eisleben.
1799 — Napoleon seized power.
- November 11
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— Veteran's Day, the politically incorrect version.
1534 — Parliament voted the Statute of Supremacy, reaffirming the King's supremacy over the Church and state in England, and named the former Ecclesia Anglicana, and moved power over a number of religious issues (including heresy, which still carried the death penalty) from the Church to the King. The act made it treason to write or speak of the King as a usurper, tyrant, schismatic, heretic or infidel.
1706 — Johann Sebastian Bach admonished by his employer for failure to run the choir properly and for permitting "a stranger maiden to sing in the church." The "stranger maiden" was his cousin, Maria Barbara Bach, whom a year later he made neither a stranger nor a maiden: he married her.
- November 12
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1799 — Germaine de Staël, nee Necker, returned to Paris, to become Napoleon Bonaparte's greatest political opponent.
- November 13
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— World Kindness Day. Send an H.L. Mencken book to the liberal of your choice. Or a W.C. Fields movie.
1775 — Montreal surrenders to American forces. (CiL 49)
1789 — Benjamin Franklin lamented to a friend, "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."
- November 14
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565 — Justinian died, and was succeeded by his nephew Justin II, after a 38 year reign (quite long for Roman emperors). Justinian is probably best know for the Codex, a compilation and codification of all previous Roman law. He was married to Theodora, once an actress, and arguably Hillary Clinton's role model (except that I. Clinton hasn't got the flair, and II. they don't teach history in law school). His general Belisarius reconquered North Africa and Italy.
1565 — Margaret of Parma, regent for Phillip II in the Netherlands, enforced the decrees of the Council of Trent (1564), bringing the Inquisition to the Netherlands. The decrees were so totalitarian and their enforcement by the Inquisition so barbaric that even Catholics protested them. Thus began the "Eighty Years War", which ended in Dutch independence.
1716 — Baron Gottfreid Wilhelm von Leibniz died. He and Newton independently invented the Calculus.
- November 15
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64 — Nero began persecution of the Christians in Rome, to provide a scapegoat for the fire of Rome. Christians, Jews, militiamen — governments have always sought scapegoats for their own failings, particularly their own failures to ensure the liberties of the people.
1832 — Proto-Austrian school economist Jean Baptiste Say died.
- November 16
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1885 — Louis Riel, Canadian separatist, executed for high treason, Regina, Saskatchewan. He negotiated the entry of Manitoba into Confederation (1869-70), and later rebelled against it (1884-5).
- November 17
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1558 — Queen Mary died, making Elizabeth Tudor Queen of England.
1790 — August Ferdinand Moebius, German astronomer and professor at the University of Leipzig, born in Schulpfort, Saxony. Invented the Moebius Strip in 1858. Draft dodger, too.
- November 18
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1777 — As British armies were suffering defeat after defeat in America, William Pitt the Elder, Lord Chatham, responded to a ministerial "address from the throne":
I rise, my Lords, to declare my sentiments on this most solemn and serious subject.…
I cannot concur in a blind and servile address, which approves and endeavors to sanctify the monstrous measures which have heaped disgrace and misfortune upon us. This, my Lords, is a perilous and tremendous moment! It is not a time for adulation. The smoothness of flattery cannot now avail — cannot save us in this rugged and awful crisis. It is now necessary to instruct the Throne in the language of truth. We must dispel the illusion and the darkness which envelop it, and display, in its full danger and true colors, the ruin that is brought to our doors.
This, my Lords, is our duty. It is the proper function of this noble assembly, sitting, as we do, upon our honors in this House, the hereditary council of the Crown. Who is the minister — where is the minister, that has dared to suggest to the Throne the contrary, unconstitutional language this day delivered from it? The accustomed language from the Throne has been application to Parliament for advice, and a reliance on its constitutional advice and assistance. As it is the right of Parliament to give, so it is the duty of the Crown to ask it. But on this day, and in this extreme momentous exigency, no reliance is reposed on our constitutional counsels! no advice is asked from the sober and enlightened care of Parliament! but the Crown, from itself and by itself, declares an unalterable determination to pursue measures — and what measures, my Lords? The measures that have produced the imminent perils that threaten us; the measures that have brought ruin to our doors.
…You cannot, I venture to say it, you cannot conquer America.…You may swell every expense and every effort still more extravagantly; pile and accumulate every assistance you can buy or borrow; traffic and barter with every little pitiful German prince that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign prince; your efforts are forever vain and impotent — doubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates, to an incurable resentment, the minds of your enemies, to overrun them with the mercenary sons of rapine and plunder, devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty! If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms — never — never — never.
…You cannot conciliate America by your present measures. You cannot subdue her by your present or by any measures. What, then, can you do? You cannot conquer; you cannot gain; but you can address; you can lull the fears and anxieties of the moment into an ignorance of the danger that should produce them. But, my Lords, the time demands the language of truth. We must not now apply the flattering unction of servile compliance or blind complaisance. In a just and necessary war, to maintain the rights or honor of my country, I would strip the shirt from my back to support it. But in such a war as this, unjust in its principle, impracticable in its means, and ruinous in its consequences, I would not contribute a single effort nor a single shilling.
1985 — The first Calvin and Hobbes strip appears.
- November 20
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1767 — Townshend Acts take effect. (CiL 166)
1772 — Boston Resolves, introduced by Sam Adams, establish the Boston Committees of Correspondence.
1789 — New Jersey became the first state to ratify the Bill of Rights. This day is Bill of Rights Day in New Jersey.
1975 — Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco Bahamonde, A.K.A. el Caudillo (the Leader), died in Madrid. A prime example of governments causing shortages: according to the Economist, within three days there was no champagne to be had in all of Spain.
- November 21
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1694 — Voltaire [François Marie Arouet], French liberal, born, Paris.
1768 — "Junius" published the first of a series of incendiary letters that ran until January 21, 1772, on English politics and law. He kept his identity secret so that today no-one knows who he was. His purpose was to "assert the freedom of election, and vindicate your exclusive right to choose your representatives".
- November 22
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1773 — A joint meeting of the Boston area Committees of Correspondence resolved unanimously to prevent the landing or sale of British tea, setting the stage for the Boston Tea Party.
1799 — Second set of the Kentucky Resolutions is passed.
1963 — C. S. Lewis (b. Belfast, 1898) died. Also, Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) and French composer Francis Poulenc. Some ephemeral politician died the same day, grabbing all the headlines, which should tell you how much the press are in tune with the really important things.
1963 — Walt Disney, in an airplane chartered pseudonymously, overflew portions of Orange County, Florida, and decided to build what is now Disney World there.
- November 23
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1765 — People of Frederick County, Maryland, refuse to pay England's Stamp Tax.
- November 24
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1632 — Baruch de Spinoza, Dutch rationalist philosopher, born, Amsterdam.
1643 — "Areopagitica: A Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, to the Parliament of England" published.
For Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soule was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous Dragons teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet on the other hand, unlesse warinesse be us'd, as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book; who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, Gods Image; but hee who destroyes a good Booke, kills reason it selfe, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye.…We should be wary therefore what persecution we raise against the living labours of publick men, how we spill that season'd life of man preserv'd and stor'd up in Books; since we see a kinde of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdome, and if it extend to the whole impression, a kinde of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elementall life, but strikes at that ethereall and fift essence, the breath of reason it selfe, slaies an immortality rather then a life.
1878 — R.C. Hoiles, libertarian newspaper magnate, born. He founded Freedom Communications, which includes the Orange County Register and Colorado Springs Gazette. Among other unpopular stands, Hoiles had the courage to oppose the forcible relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II.
1888 — Dale Carnegie, author of motivational works, born.
- November 25
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1491 — Granada surrendered to Spanish conquerors under rare good terms. The people of Granada were to keep their property, language, dress, religion, ritual and to be judged by their own laws and magistrates. No taxes were to be imposed for three years, and then only those such as Muslim rulers had levied. All Moors who wished to leave might do so, and transport to North Africa would be provided. Compare that with the American occupation of Iraq.
1792 — The French government adopted the metric system.
- November 26
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1862 — Mathematician Charles Lutdwidge Dodgson sent a handwritten manuscript called Alice's Adventures Under Ground as a present to Alice Liddell, the ten-year-old daughter of a colleague.
- November 27
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1773 — The Tea ship Dartmouth arrived in Boston, the first ship carrying Tea Act tea. (CiL 266) The Committee of Correspondence told the Captain to tie up at the wharf and land all of his cargo except the tea.
1791 — The French Assembly extended full civil rights to Jews.
1874 — Charles A. Beard, American revisionist historian, born. Beard's methodology is to examine the economic motivations behind historical events. He'd have loved Oil War III.
1941 — The State of Jefferson declared its independence, as six counties in northern California and southern Oregon secede from their respective states. Yreka was declared the capital. Gilbert Gable, mayor of Port Orford, was elected Governor, to be inaugurated on December 4th. The State Seal represented a miner's pan, with two Xs in it, representing the double crosses from Sacramento and Salem.
2008 — Thanksgiving celebrated in the U.S.
- November 28
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1995 — President Bill Clinton signs bill to end the 55 miles-per-hour federal speed limit. Those Wyomingites who notice say, "What 55 MPH speed limit?"
- November 29
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1804 — Pope Pius VII married Napoleon and Josephine. Josephine thought a papal marriage would be an obstacle to divorce. If it was, it wasn't enough of one.
1876 — Nellie Tayloe Ross born, St. Joseph, Mo., U.S., d. Dec. 20, 1977, Washington, D.C, elected governor of Wyoming, 1924. First woman to serve as a state governor (back when politicians served someone other than themselves), by a narrow margin: Miriam Ferguson was inaugurated governor of Texas just 16 days later.
- November 30
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— St. Andrew's Day, St. Andrew being the patron saint of Scotland and St. Peter's older brother.
1667 — Jonathan Swift, satirist, born in Dublin.
1773 — Boston "Body" meeting resolves that all tea be shipped back to Britain with no duty paid, i.e. that it not even clear customs. (CiL 266) A night watch was instituted, citizens were armed and instructed in how to respond if the bells sounded. Post riders were sent to neighboring towns.
1835 — Mark Twain (pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens) born Nov. 30, 1835, Florida, Mo., U.S. (d. April 21, 1910, Redding, Conn.), American humorist, writer, and lecturer who won a worldwide audience for his stories of youthful adventures, especially The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Life on the Mississippi (1883), and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).
Twain delighted in perpetrating journalistic hoaxes, such as his "The Petrified Man" and "The Empire City Massacre." These were tall tales told so plausibly that other newspapers reprinted them as true. These days, the media still reprint tall tales. It's just that now, they come on official stationery.
1998 — The HCI version of Brady, which imposed a five day waiting period on purchases from FFLs and, in some jurisdictions, de facto registration, of handguns only, sunset into the NRA's version of Brady, which imposes a three day "instant" registration of all firearms purchased from an FFL or returned by a pawn broker, or returned by a gunsmith, in all jurisdictions, by the FBI, the same people who brought you Waco.
- December 1
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1083 — (In the seventh indiction) Anna Comnena, daughter of the Emperor Alexius and Empress Irene, historian, scholar, Byzantine poitician, born.
1773 — New York tea consignees resign after public protests. (CiL 270)
- December 2
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1927 — Henry Ford unveils the Model A automobile, successor to the Model T, at the Waldorf Hotel in New York.
- December 4
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1642 — Cardinal Richelieu died. His confessor administered the last sacrament and asked if he had forgiven his enemies. He responded that he had no enemies save those of France. The "Iron Cardinal" took real politics to the point of funding German Protestants against a Catholic Emperor in order to weaken Hapsburg Austria and Spain.
1679 — Thomas The Leviathan Hobbes died.
1718 — John Law's bank, the Banque Générale, reconstituted as the Banque Royale, and its notes given legal tender status. So the Mississippi Bubble scheme rolled forward.
1804 — Napoleon crowned himself Emperor and Josephine Empress.
1829 — Lord William Bentinck banned sati (suttee) in the Bengal Presidency lands (India). As with previous efforts to end suttee, mostly by the Moghuls, this failed as well.
1879 — Thomas Edison demonstrated the light bulb.
- December 5
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1773 — "The Tea that bainfull weed is arrived" in Boston, Abigail Adams writes to Mercy Warren of Plymouth.
1886 — Rose Wilder Lane, author of The Discovery of Freedom, born.
1933 — Repeal of Prohibition.
2007 — Hanukkah, The Dedication: Jewish holy day of the lighting of the menorah to celebrate the successful resistance against the Hellenic usurper and temple despoiler Antiochus, 163 BC.
- December 6
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1889 — Jefferson Davis died in New Orleans.
- December 7
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-43 — Marcus Tullius Cicero (b. 106 BC), orator and conservative Roman politician, died, having been proscribed by the Second Triumvirate for opposing Marcus Antoninus, one of the triumvirs, in his superb Phillipics.
- December 8
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1660 — Margaret Hughes plays Desdemona in what is believed to be the first appearance of a woman on the English stage. Female roles were typically played by boys.
1755 — Premiere of Gluck's L'innocenza gustifiata musical drama.
- December 9
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1315 — After a battle at Morgarten called the "Marathon of Switzerland", in which Swiss halberdiers (peasants, by and large) defeated Austrian cavalry (nobility, almost exclusively), three cantons renewed their oaths of mutual support, thereby creating the Swiss Confederacy.
1608 — John Milton born, London. A poet and theorist for regicide and free speech (for protestants only), he bitterly opposed the Restoration of Charles II.
1774 — The Massachusetts Connection urged publication of the names of tea importers. The anti-boycott effort foundered. (CiL 304)
- December 11
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1792 — The trial of Louis XVI began. He plead lack of memory or blamed things on his ministers.
- December 13
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1250 — Death of Frederick II, a Renaissance man a hundred years before it began. He replaced the Bible with the Classics, faith with reason, God with Nature, Providence with Necessity, and stood resolutely against the Papacy. A freethinker (if not an atheist), he could celebrate a Muslim religious feast with his Saracen guests.
1564 — Ivan IV "The Terrible" left Moscow with his family, icons and treasury to retire in the country, alleging a plot by the nobles, bureaucracy and Church to overthrow him. The middle and lower classes agitated for his return, to which he ultimately "submitted".
1774 — Paul Revere warns Portsmouth, New Hampshire, of British plans to garrison troops there. (CiL 321)
1784 — Samuel Johnson, literary ursus major, died. He was buried a week later in Westminster Abbey.
- December 14
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1720 — John Law left Paris for Venice, after the collapse of the Mississippi Bubble. Shares had gone from 500 livres in 1718 to more than 12,000 to less than 2,000 before the whole mess was wound up.
1774 — Radical troops seize military stores ("informal privatization") from a British fort before troops can get there to garrison it. (CiL 321)
- December 15
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1791 — Bill of Rights Day. In 1791, Virgina ratified the Bill of Rights, thereby amending the Constitution.
See also Liberty Activists
"Meantime, go buy a copy of the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights, and read them to a child.
"It's our next-to-last last hope." — Vin Suprynowicz.
- December 16
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1689 — The "Declaration of Right", known as the English Bill of Rights, passed by Parliament as a condition of offering the throne to William and Mary.
1770 — Ludwig van Beethoven born of Dutch stock, Bonn. His grandfather sang bass, his father tenor in the Elector's choir. He learned a smattering of French and Latin as well as his native German, but never learned to spell nor punctuate in any language.
1773 — The Boston Tea party: tax resisting militia members protested Britain's claim to tax colonists by dumping 342 chests of tea from three different ships into Boston harbor. Other than £18,000 worth of tea, they did no damage. "The most magnificent movement of all. There is a dignity, a majesty, a sublimity in this last effort of the patriots that I greatly admire." — John Adams
1774 — François Quesnay, physiocratic leader, died. Physician to Mme. de Pompadour and influential in the government, he affected policy toward free market laissez faire policies.
- December 17
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1765 — A Boston crowd forced customs to allow ships to clear the port without stamped papers. (CiL 132)
1860 — South Carolina Secession Convention issued a resolution in favor of secession.
1862 — Union general (and later president) Ulysses S. Grant issued "General Order #11," expelling all Jews "as a class" from his conquered territories within 24 hours. Perhaps Grant thought the Jews were competing with his own family's cotton trading?
1903 — Wright Brothers' first flight.
1914 — Harrison Act passed, the US' first entry into the War on Drugs the Bill of Rights.
- December 18
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1621 — The House of Commons issued the "Great Protestation", affirming the rights of the subjects of England and the right of the Commons to debate and pass on "the arduous and urgent affairs concerning the king, state, and defense of the realm."
1987 — First release of the Perl programming language. Civilization just hasn't been the same since.
- December 19
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1370 — Pope Urban V, having traveled to Avignon to make peace between England and France, died there, clothed in the habit of a Benedictine monk. He had ordered that all who sought admittance to him should enter so that they could see how vain and brief was the splendor of the most exalted.
1655 — Queen Christina (retired) of Sweden arrived in Rome, where she established what would later be called a salon.
1789 — The French National Assembly authorized the Caisse de l'Extraordinaire to sell 400 million francs worth of assignats, currency based on land recently confiscated from the Church. This marks the beginning of an inflationary, later hyperinflationary, spree. They were at 47% of face by April, 1793, and 33% that July. See Andrew Dickson White's Fiat Money Inflation in France for more information.
1828 — Resolves of South Carolina Legislature deemed the Tariff of Abominations unconstitutional; John C. Calhoun abandoned nationalism.
- December 20
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1775 — Elbridge Gerry elected to the Massachusetts delegation to the Continental Congress, giving the radical party a majority in the delegation. (CiL 134)
- December 21
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1375 — Giovanni Boccaccio, Italian poet and raconteur, died, aged 61.
2008 — Yule, or the Winter Solstice, 11:07pm (MST)
- December 22
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1773 — Tea landed in Charleston. It was immediately moved to a warehouse, where it stayed until after the Revolution. (CiL 271)
- December 23
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1559 — Anne du Bourg, who had argued against persecution of heresy in the Parlement (court) of Paris, burned at the stake for heresy.
1688 — James II, despondent, quit England for France, leaving England for William and Mary.
- December 24
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1798 — Virginia Resolution is passed.
1850 — Claude Frédéric Bastiat, French legislator and economist, died. He is probably best known for exposing the broken window fallacy (which has nothing to do with Microsoft).
1979 — Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan, drawing them into a trap set by the US.
- December 25
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-272 — Birthday of Mithras.
— Christmas
— Newton's Day, or Gravmas — Sir Issac Newton's Birthday, 1642 (January 4, 1643, new style), Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, d. March 20 (March 31, N.S.), 1727, in London.
274 — Roman holiday "Natalis Solis Invicti" established by the emperor Aurelian.
800 — Charlemagne, wearing the chlamys and sandals of a patricius Romanus, crowned Emperor by the pope, St. Peter's Cathedral, Rome. This was the first coronation of a western emperor since that of Honorius in 476.
1066 — William, variously "the Conqueror" or "the Bastard", crowned king of England.
1765 — New York and Connecticut Sons of Liberty meet and pledge mutual aid in the event of a British attack. This was the first step at inter-colonial organization. (CiL 161)
1773 — A tea ship stopped four miles from Philadelphia. (CiL 269)
1809 — George Gordon Lord Byron entered Athens, and saw The Isles of Greece under the Turks.
The mountains look on Marathon.
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dreamed that Greece might still be free;
For standing on the Persians' grave
I could not deem myself a slave.
1946 — W.C. Fields died.
His hardest and longest fight was against regimentation. Had he been inducted into the army, he might have tried the manual-of-arms drill with his famous crooked pool cue. This I can safely say: Any branch of the service would have cashiered him within two weeks for disobeying orders. And if he had been handed a dishonorable discharge, he would have had the certificate laminated and proudly hung in his den.
…The Bureau of Internal Revenue, as it was called in those days, stirred his particular anger: He felt sure that those representatives of the government devoted a full eight hours daily, with no lunch breaks, to catching him in error.
— Carlotta Monti, W.C. Fields & Me 45-46, 1971
1989 — "Romanian term limits": Romanian dictator Nicolai Ceausescu and his wife shot.
- December 26
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— Boxing Day
1662 — Molière's "L'École des femmes", which deals with jealousy and liberty, premiered. It is considered the first great comedy of French theater.
- December 27
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1706 — Pierre Bayle, "The Father of the Enlightenment", died. His Dictionnaire stood accused of obscenity, atheism and various other heresies, but sold popularly well throughout the XVIIIth century.
1714 — James III sailed from Dunkirk in a futile attempt to regain the throne of England.
1911 — Anna Russell, skewerer of operatic foibles, born.
- December 28
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1917 — H.L. Mencken published a story in the New York Evening Mail on the history of the bathtub, detailing who first added pipes for running water and for draining, and who first took a bath in the newfangled contraption. The story quickly became the standard history of the bathtub. It has but one flaw: it was a hoax. Once again the gullibility of the media — and their readers/viewers/etc. was demonstrated.
1966 — Libertarian journalist Frank Chodorov died.
1969 — Linus Torvalds born, Helsinki.
- December 29
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1890 — Indian Wars in the US ended with the first battle at Wounded Knee. U.S. Army forces fought to suppress the religious practice called the "Ghost Dance."
1989 — Vaclav Havel, poet, author and playwright, became the first non-Communist elected as president of Czechoslovakia in 40 years.
- December 30
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1170 — That "turbulent priest", Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of England, killed by four of Henry II's knights at the altar of Canterbury Cathedral. The murder was pivotal in the battle between Church and State. While the Church lost an excellent archbishop, it gained a martyr (canonizing him in 1172), and won the propaganda war. But in spite of this debacle, Henry won his fight to free English law of feudal and ecclesiastical limitations, and eventually England created English law.
1331 — Bernard Gui died at the castle of Lauroux in the Hérault. Noted Dominican and inquisitor, he invented the GUI as a device for torturing heretics.
1861 — South Carolina troops seize the U. S. arsenal at Charleston, after President Buchanan's failure to remove U. S. troops from Charleston Harbor.
1865 — Joseph Rudyard Kipling, born, Bombay, India, d. Jan. 18, 1936, London, Eng., English short story writer, poet, and novelist. He is chiefly remembered for his tales of British imperialism, his tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. He was never made Poet Laureate of England, possibly because of his portrayal of Queen Victoria as "The Widow of Windsor". Some of his poetry has a very libertarian bent, such as "MacDonough's Song" and "Dane Geld".
It is politically correct to think of Kipling as a racist, but an unbiased reading of "Gunga Din" and "Fuzzy Wuzzy," inter alia, should dispell that myth.
- December 31
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192 — Roman emperor Commodus — "the jock emperor" — died. His mistress Marcia tried and failed to poison him, then had the wrestler Narcissus strangle him in his bathtub. Popular dude, eh? He is best known for his habit of fighting in the gladiatorial ring. Of course the fights were rigged.
The next day, P. Helvius Pertinax was elected emperor by the Senate. He was murdered by the Praetorian Guard on March 28. They then auctioned off the purple to Didius Iulianus, who lasted until June 1, murdered by his successor, L. Septimius Severus, a competent soldier. Severus' deathbed advice to his sons, future emperors Geta and Caracalla, was "Live in peace, enrich the soldiers, and despise the rest of the world." Now, that's term limits.
1600 — The East India company founded.
1995 — Bill Watterson ceased producing Calvin and Hobbes. For the last time. So far.
1999 — Panama took over the operation of the Panama Canal.
