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)
- July 1
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1523 — Henry Voes and Johann Eck, two Augustinian friars, the first two Protestant martyrs in the Lowlands, burned at the stake.
1569 — Union of Lublin, in which Lithuania (then extending from the Baltic through the Ukraine to Odessa on the Black Sea, and fearful of Russian expansion) accepted the King of Poland as its Grand Duke, and sent delegates to the Sejm (Parliament). This union made Poland a Great Power.
- July 2
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1644 — The Battle of Marston Moor, at which parliamentary forces beat royalist forces (under Prince Rupert) in what was probably the largest battle in England to that day.
1776 — Congress approved the Declaration of Independence. Due to bureaucratic delays, it was first published on the 4th. (CiL 177)
"May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self government."
— Thomas Jefferson, letter declining to attend the 50th anniversary celebration of the Proclamation of the Declaration, 1826
1778 — Jean Jacques Rousseau died, Ermenonville, outside Paris.
- July 3
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1683 — William Lord Russell, radical Whig, tried on a charge of treason, having argued (along with Algernon Sidney) that it was lawful to resist the king on occasion.
1778 — Wyoming Massacre. 360 settlers, men, women and children, in the Wyoming valley of Pennsylvania, were slaughtered by British troops and Iroquois under the command of Colonel John Butler.
1979 — President Jimmy Carter signed the first directive for covert US aid to opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Afghanistan.
- July 4
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1187 — Hittin, near Tiberias, Palestine. The key battle of the Crusades, in which al-Malik al-Nasir Salahed-din Yusef bin Ayyub ("the King, the Defender, the Honor of the Faith, Joseph, son of Job") — Saladin — beat the Crusaders. The battle is a classic example of the use of terrain and environment to destroy an enemy. Among the booty was the True Cross (we are told….), which a priest had been using as a battle standard, and which Saladin sent to the caliph at Baghdad.
1450 — Rebelling peasants and urban laborers, lead by Jack Cade, tried and beheaded two officials particularly hated for their tyrannies and exactions. Henry VI later pardoned all but eight of the rebels, "to the great rejoicing of all his subjects".
1776 — Declaration of Independence published. It was translated into French and circulated with the tacit approval of the French government. Rousseau's disciples and the philosophes acclaimed it.
"It [the Declaration] is not at all the charter of a new nation. It is a rationalization of rebellion. The indictment of the British crown was but a springboard from which Jefferson launched a political principle: that government, far from being an end in itself, is but an instrument invented by man to aid him in bettering his circumstances, and when that instrument fails to function properly it is high time to kick it out. And, which is most important, he meant any government, not only the particular one which at that time engaged his attention."
-- Frank Chodorov, 1945
1778 — Jean Jacques Rousseau buried, Isle of Poplars in a small lake. The island became an object of pilgrimage; even Marie Antoinette made the trip.
- July 6
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1415 — The Council of Constance condemned John Wycliffe and John Huss; it burned Huss at the stake.
1573 — Charles IX signed the Peace of La Rochelle guaranteeing religious liberty to Huguenots.
1685 — At Sedgemoor, in the last battle on English soil (excluding World War II), royalist forces defeated rebels trying to overthrow the Catholic James II.
1775 — The second Continental Congress issued the "Declaration Of the Causes and Necessity Of Taking Up Arms" against the Crown.
1957 — The greatest cartoon ever produced, Chuck Jones' What's Opera, Doc?, released. As Mark Twain said, Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
- July 7
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1307 — Edward I "Longshanks" died, Burgh-by-Sands, Cumberland, en route to wage war yet again on the Scots. His tombstone reads, "Edwardus Primus Scotorum Malleus hic est, 1308. Pactum Serva"
1535 — Thomas More executed for treason, having refused to take an oath to the Act of Succession. On mounting the scaffold, he found it rather wobbly, and said to an attendant, "I pray you, Mr. Lieutenant, see me safe up, and for my coming down, let me shift for myself."
1746 — Diderot's Pensés philosphiques burned on the order of the Parlement of Paris because of its attacks on the established religion. The burning gained the book great attention and readership: it was translated into German and Italian. In those days, "Banned in Paris" was almost as good for circulation as "Banned in Boston" in a later century. Both are harder to obtain these days.
1769 — Boston merchants signed a non-importation agreement, to protest the Stamp Act and other British tyranny (CiL 186).
1907 — Robert Heinlein's Birthday, "Seven, Seven, Ought Seven" Butler, Mo., U.S., d. May 8, 1988, Carmel, Calif.)
- July 8
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1776 — First public proclamation of the Declaration of Independence. (CiL 177)
1777 — Vermont adopted the first constitution in the United States which abolished slavery. As New Connecticut, and later, Vermont, it remained an independent country until 1791.
1947 — Samuel E. Konkin III, prominent libertarian activist, publisher, and science fiction fan, born, Saskatchewan. Died February 23, 2004.
- July 9
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1776 — New York voted for Independence. (CiL 182)
1786 — Having taking notes of his conversations almost since meeting him, Boswell now began his The Life of Samuel Johnson.
- July 10
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138 — Baiae, west of Rome: Hadrian, emperor of Rome at its greatest extent, died. He had the good sense to withdraw from Mesopotamia, and fixed the eastern border of Syria as the eastern extent of the Empire, which it remained until the Arab Eruption in the VIIth Century. He was ultimately buried in the Castel Sant'Angelo, in Rome, later a papal residence.
1509 — John Calvin born, Noyon, France.
1890 — Wyoming admitted to the Union, becoming the 44th state. The name is derived from a Delaware Indian word meaning "land of vast plains," obviously applied by someone who has driven from Riverton to Casper or Gillette to Douglas.
1925 — Dayton, Tennessee: The Scopes "Monkey" trial on the teaching of evolution began.
- July 11
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1648 — Fall of Pembroke, allowing Cromwell to move north against the Scots invading England in support of the royalist party.
1782 — British troops evacuate Savannah, Georgia. (CiL 355)
1804 — Aaron Burr - Alexander Hamilton duel.
- July 12
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1642 — Parliament appointed a "Committee of Public Safety" and started to raise an army.
1817 — Henry David Thoreau, naturalist, author and proto-libertarian, born, Concord, Massachusetts.
- July 13
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1787 — Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, "An Ordinance for the government of the Territory of the United States northwest of the River Ohio."
1863 — New York City Draft Riots in opposition to the First Conscription Act.
- July 14
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1683 — The Turkish army arrived at the walls of Vienna.
1789 — After a day of hunting, Louis XIV wrote in his diary "July 14: Nothing". Meanwhile, Parisians captured the Bastille.
- July 15
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1099 — After a siege of one lunar month, Jerusalem fell to the first crusade. "Many Saracens and Hebrews in the city were massacred. When submission was complete, when all opposition ended, Godfrey was invested with supreme power and nominated king." — Anna Comnena (Sewter trans.)
1429 — Charles VII entered Reims to be crowned, in spite of English occupation troops.
1662 — Charles II conveyed a royal charter on the "Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge."
- July 16
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622 — (20 June Julian, 16 July Gregorian) The first day of the year of the Hegira, Mohammed's flight from Mecca to Medina. This is the basis of the Islamic calendar.
1794 — The Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 began. Five citizens killed by federal goons.
1945 — The U.S. government sets off the first atomic bomb.
- July 17
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1647 — Naples: Tommaso Aniello assassinated, Naples. The assassination ended an uprising he had led against the Spanish occupiers. A fishmonger by trade, his wife had been fined for smuggling corn, and the Spanish had laid a tax on fruit in order to fund a navy. 100,000 Italians followed him to the viceregal palace to demand repeal of the tax. Unprincipled and leaderless, the revolt died out after his assassination.
1790 — Adam Smith died, Canongate.
- July 18
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1817 — Jane Austen died, Winchester, unmarried.
1969 — 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne gave her life for her country.
- July 19
-
64 — Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Nero, according to Tacitus, fiddled in land sales and reconstruction contracts after the fire. The only difference between modern "urban renewal" and what Nero did is that today they plan it in advance, thereby increasing the scope both of destruction and of corruption.
1814 — Samuel Colt, inventor of the "Great Equalizer," the colt revolver, born.
- July 20
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1374 — Petrarch found, leaning over a book, apparently asleep, dead, on his seventieth birthday. He died as he wished to go. Eighteen months later Boccaccio died, depriving Italy of two of its greatest poets.
1944 — The "Generals Plot" to kill Hitler failed. Had it been successful, the generals would probably have concluded the war sooner than it did end, saving many lives. An excellent use of the right to overthrow the state.
Next time you're in Berlin, visit the German Resistance Memorial Center.
1969 — Neil Armstrong became the first bureaucrat to walk upon the moon.
- July 21
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1683 — William Lord Russell, radical Whig, executed on a charge of treason, having argued (along with Algernon Sidney) that it was lawful to resist the king on occasion. Rachel Lady Russell survived him into her nineties, never remarrying. When she died in 1722, the Weekly Journal commemorated both:
"Russell, the chaste, has left this earthy stage
A bright example to a brittle age…
No arts her soul to second vows inclin'd
No storm could frighten his unshaken mind."
1796 — Robert Burns died while his wife was giving birth to a son. A bit of a womanizer and having what he called "a genius for paternity", he did not like the repressive attitudes of the Scottish Presbyterian Kirk:
The Kirk an' State may join an' tell,
To do sic things I maunna,
The Kirk an' State may gae to hell,
And I'll gae to my Anna.
- July 23
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2002 — The "Downing Street Meeting", at the prime ministerial residence, at which the head of British intelligence reported that Bush and Cheney were intent on invading Iraq and were "fix[ing] the intelligence and facts around the policy. … There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."
- July 24
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1656 — Spinoza excommunicated from the Jewish community in Amsterdam.
- July 25
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1775 — Maryland issued currency depicting George III trampling Magna Carta.
1834 — Samuel Taylor Coleridge died.
1868 — Wyoming Territory was created. Federal interference has been increasing ever since.
- July 26
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1581 — The Hague: representatives of Holland, Zeeland, Gelderland, Utrecht, Flanders and Brabant signed the "Act of Abjuration". They proclaimed that a ruler who treats his subjects as slaves and destroys their liberties should no longer be considered their sovereign, and may be legitimately deposed. The sentiment was later echoed in the English Declaration of Rights (1689) and the United States' Declaration of Independence.
1946 — Mises began lecturing as a Visiting Professor in Mexico's School of Economics.
1956 — Egypt nationalized the Suez canal, taking it away from Britain. While the takeover itself was peaceful, it prompted a military offensive led by Israel, Britain and France which became a turning point in the Cold War.
- July 28
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1540 — Thomas Cromwell, counselor to Henry VIII, arranger of royal marriages and chief of secret police, beheaded on a charge of treason. Henry married Catherine Howard the same day. And so police states always consume themselves.
1750 — Johann Sebastian Bach died of an apoplectic stroke.
- July 29
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1805 — Alexis de Tocqueville, French chronicler of American life, born.
1821 — Peruvian independence from Spain.
- July 30
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1619 — First Assembly meets at Jamestown.
- July 31
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1912 — Milton Friedman, born, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.
2001 — Poul Anderson, libertarian science fiction writer, died.
- August 1
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— Lammas, Lugnasad, or the Feast of Lug, a Celtic god.
1768 — Governor of North Carolina demands tax payments; the Regulators refuse. (CiL 238)
- August 2
-
1940 — Mises emigrated to the United States, arriving in New York City.
1946 — Battle of Athens, Tennessee. Residents of McMinn County, TN, overthrew the corrupt county government in order to ensure fair elections. See C. Stephen Byrum, The Battle of Athens, Paidia Productions, Chattanooga TN, 1987.
- August 3
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1492 — Columbus set sail west from Palos, Spain, in search of China, with three ships, 88 men and provisions for a year.
1546 — Étienne Dolet, printer, humanist, friend of Rabelais, and firebrand of Lyons, burned alive on a charge of heresy.
1780 — Étienne Bonnot, Abbé de Condillac, French liberal philosopher and libertarian pioneer, died.
- August 4
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1687 — James II issued his first Declaration of Indulgence, which granted religious tolerance in England (except for continuing the establishment of the Anglican Church). In addition to objecting to religious tolerance, the people of England also objected to how James proposed to legalize it: by royal decree abrogating statutes passed by Parliament. Thus parliamentary supremacy became once again an issue. This lead to negotiations with William III of Orange to replace James.
- August 5
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1884 — Cornerstone of the Statue of Liberty laid.
- August 6
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1806 — Francis II, seeing Napoleon truncating the Holy Roman Empire, renounced the title and prerogatives of Emperor, becoming Francis I of Austria.
1945 — 08:15 local time: American forces drop "Little Boy", the first atomic weapon used in warfare, on the children of Hiroshima, Japan.
"…[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan … My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make wars in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."
Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman.
2001 — George Bush responds to a security briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" by going fishing.
2005 — Cindy Sheehan started Camp Casey outside the Crawford, TX, green zone.
- August 8
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1786 — Congress adopts definition of US dollar as 375.64 grains of fine silver. They've been mucking with the definition of money ever since.
1945 — Charter of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) published. It defined (in Article VI) three crimes for which German and Japanese (but not Allied) officials were to be tried.
The following acts, or any of them, are crimes coming within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal for which there shall be individual responsibility:
- Crimes against Peace: namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a Common Plan or Conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing.
- War Crimes: namely, violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labour or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
- Crimes against Humanity: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of domestic law of the country where perpetrated.
- August 9
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1765 — Connecticut Gazette article denounced stamp distributors as traitors. (CiL 118)
1945 — 11:00 AM (local time), US forces dropped an atomic weapon on St. Mary's (Urakami) Cathedral, Nagasaki, Japan. It was the second and last — so far — atomic weapon to be used in warfare. Two thirds of the Roman Catholics in Japan were killed.
1974 — Richard Nixon became the first U.S. president in history to resign. Unfortunately, he was replaced.
- August 10
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1774 — A Georgia meeting condemns the Coercive Acts. (CiL 291)
- August 13
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1422 — William Caxton, first English printer, born.
1521 — Hernando Cortes captured Guatemoc, last independent king of Mexico, beginning Spanish rule in Mexico.
1553 — Ten days after entering London as Queen of England, Mary Tudor declared that she would not "compel or constrain consciences" in religious matters, one of the earliest acts of religious tolerance. Alas, her good will lasted five days.
- August 14
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1483 — Portugal's Independence Day. King João — John the Great — leading a popular rebellion and an improvised army with 500 English archers, defeated a Castilian invasion at Aljubarrota.
1765 — A Boston crowd hung in effigy Andrew Oliver, a Massachusetts stamp distributor, and ransacked his home. (CiL 165) (His brother, Chief Justice Peter Oliver, was the only one of five Massachusetts Justices to accept a salary from the Crown.) Too bad the people of Massachusetts don't show the same spirit today.
- August 15
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1534 — Don Íñigo de Oñez y Loyola, Francis Xavier and eight others took vows of chastity and poverty in a little chapel in Montmarte. They planned to go to the Holy Land and there live exemplary lives. Things didn't quite work out: this was the founding of the Society of Jesus, commonly known as the Jesuits.
1765 — Andrew Oliver, a Massachusetts stamp distributor, offers his resignation to the Crown. (CiL 106) Of course, had he had a press agent, his press agent would have denied that his resignation had anything to do with the events of the previous day. If he had thought that anyone would have believed it.
1769 — Napoleon Bonaparte born, Ajaccio, Corsica, fifteen months after Genoa sold Corsica to France, making him a French subject.
1902 — Fritz Machlup, economist and Mises's colleague and friend, born.
1947 — Independence Day for India and Pakistan
- August 16
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— Vermont Independence Day
1777 — Battle of Bennington (Vermont). (CiL 210).
- August 18
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1503 — Alexander VI, nee Rodrigo Borgia, died, probably of Rome's interminable malaria. The people of Rome, celebrating the death of the "Spanish Pope", rioted and plundered.
- August 19
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14 — Augustus died at Nola in Campania. He ate figs poisoned by his wife Livia and was buried in his own mausoleum. Livia had killed all of the other heirs to the throne so that her son, Tiberius, would become emperor. Augustus' dying words were "Fabula acta est" ("The play has been done").
1561 — Mary lands at Leith, the port of Edinburgh, to become Mary, Queen of Scots.
1607 — English colonists land in Popham Beach, Maine. Apparently they couldn't handle the Maine winters and sailed back to England the next year, on the first ship build by Europeans in what is now the US, the Virginia.
1662 — Blaise Pascal died in the 40th year of his age.
1692 — Martha Allan Carrier, the only person accused in the Salem witch trials who did not plead guilty, executed anyway. "I would rather die than confess a falsehood so filthy."
1741 — Voltaire's play Mahomet opened in Paris. It was the literary event of the season, winning praise all around, except from a few clergymen who thought the play a satire on the Christian religion. They might even have been right.
1841 — John Tyler vetoed a bill to establish "The Fiscal Bank of the U. S." — a second U. S. Bank — on the grounds of unconstitutionality.
- August 20
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1778 — Bernardo O'Higgins born, Chillán, Chile, Viceroyalty of La Plata (died October 24 1842, Peru). South American revolutionary leader and first Chilean head of state ("supreme director," 1817-23), who commanded the military forces that won independence from Spain.
In 1809, at the age of 31, O'Higgins had observed: "The career to which I seem inclined by instinct and character, is that of labourer"; in rural life, he would have come to be "a good campesino and a useful citizen." As "supreme director", O'Higgins had the positive attributes of solid moral principles, an eagerness to work hard, and singular honesty. In the countryside, as he himself understood, these virtues would have been ample, but in public administration they were not enough.
1940 — Leon Trotsky murdered in Mexico City by Frank Jackson. Don't tell the TSA that he used an ice pick.
- August 21
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1762 — Lady Mary Montague Wortly died. Letter writer, diarist and poet extraordinary, she is best known for observing the Turks inoculating against smallpox while in Constantinople. She had her own son inoculated there, and brought the procedure back to London.
1792 — Resistance to the Excise Tax is documented in a series of resolutions drawn up by Albert Gallatin at a Pittsburgh convention.
1861 — The Cherokee Nation, by a General Convention at Tahlequah, C.N., declared its common cause with the Confederate States against the Northern Union.
1992 — "Ruby Ridge" (Boundary cty, Idaho) siege began. Federal officers killed a young boy, a mother armed with nothing more dangerous than a loaded baby, and possibly federal Marshal Degan. So far, not one of the perps has been tried.
- August 22
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1450 — Johann Gutenberg mortgaged his printing press to Johann Fust for 800 Gulders.
1791 — Inspired by the French Revolution, 100,000 of Haiti's 500,000 slaves rose in a bloody rebellion against slave owners. An educated slave and student of military history, François Dominiqe Toussaint Louverture soon emerged as the leader of the only successful slave rebellion in history. He was able to surprise French forces with his tactical and strategic skills.
- August 23
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408 — Flavius Stilicho, a Vandal general for the western Empire, murdered in Ravenna. He probably was the last competent western general.
1305 — Sir William Wallace (b. c. 1270, probably near Paisley, Renfrew, Scot.) executed, London. With typical English thoroughness, he was hanged, disemboweled, beheaded, and quartered. Wallace is one of Scotland's greatest national heroes, leader of the Scottish resistance forces during the first years of the long, and ultimately successful, struggle to free Scotland from English rule. He is also the basis for the heroic movie Braveheart.
1754 — Louis-Auguste, Duc du Berry, later Louis XVI, born.
1775 — King George III issued the Proclamation of Rebellion. (CiL 117)
- August 24
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— Ukraine Independence Day.
79 — Vesuvius erupted, burying the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Tough on the folks who got caught in the lava flows and gasses, but an archaeologists' and historians' treasure trove almost two millenia on.
410 — Alaric and his army invaded Rome through the Salarian gate. Aleric and his fellow foederati — allies of Rome — sacked the city for three days in lieu of back pay.
1774 — Louis XVI appointed Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot to the most critical post in the government: controller general of finance. Turgot espoused a laissez faire policy and implemented it. Unfortunately he implemented it so fast that he made too many enemies, beneficiaries of the old statist policies. "What would you have me do?" he said, defending the speed of his reforms. "The needs of the people are enormous and in my family we die of gout at fifty."
1814 — British forces burn the U.S. Capital and Presidential Mansion (now White House) to the ground.
1946 — Bill Clinton told the truth for the first and probably the last time. When asked what he wanted to eat, he said, "goo".
1991 — Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as head of the CPUSSR.
- August 25
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— "Brownie Mary Day", celebrating a court appearance of Mary Jane "Brownie Mary" Rathbun, who distributed Alice B. Toklas Brownies in the AIDs wards of San Francisco General Hospital, and helped win the legalization of medical marijuana.
— Walt Kelly Day: born 1913. Pogo for President! "Don't take life so seriously, folks. It ain't no-how's permanent."
- August 26
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1364 — Battle of Crécy. English pikes and longbows slaughtered some 30,000 French nobles on horseback. The battle marks the beginning of the end of armor, and with it, feudalism.
1576 — Titian died, Venice, aged 99.
1765 — Boston crowds shouting "Liberty and Property!" sacked the homes of government officials, including the Lieutenant Governor. (CiL 107) Too bad the people of Massachusetts don't show the same spirit today.
1776 — David Hume died quietly. A large crowd attended the burial. A voice was heard to say, "He was an athiest." Another replied: "No matter, he was an honest man."
1789 — French Constituent Assembly issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, influenced by the American Bill of Rights and the Virginia Declaration Of Rights.
- August 27
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— Moldavia's Independence Day
1642 — Charles I started the Civil War.
1765 — A crowd in Newport, Rhode Island, hanged three effigies, including that of the Rhode Island stamp distributor. (CiL 111)
1783 — A hydrogen balloon designed and built by Jacques-Alexandre Charles ascended from Paris. It came down 15 miles away and was torn apart by villagers fearing an invasion from the sky. And so was born UFOlogy.
1914 — Mises's teacher and mentor Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk died.
- August 28
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1765 — Rhode Island stamp distributor resigned after a crowd razed his house. (CiL 111) Funny how that works, isn't it?
1833 — Britain abolished slavery, a month after William Wilberforce, its most vociferous opponent, died.
1963 — Martin Luther King made his "I have a dream" speech, Washington, D.C.
- August 29
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284 — Diocletian declared emperor. He fixed wages and prices, thereby predating Richard Nixon's wage and price controls by 1700 years. He resigned in 305 after a long reign, one of the few emperors to live long enough to resign.
1632 — John Locke born, Wrington, Somerset, England, d. Oct. 28, 1704
- August 30
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1979 — President Carter attacked by a rabbit on a canoe trip in Plains, Georgia. Rumor has it the rabbit's name was Harvey.
- September 1
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1835 — William Stanley Jevons, economist, born.
2008 — (Monday) Labor Day
- September 2
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1192 — al-Malik al-Nasir Salahed-din Yusef bin Ayyub — Saladin — and Richard Coeur de Lion concluded a three year truce. There was much celebrating, including feasts and tournaments. The two divided Palestine (not for the last time). Richard left for England, promising to return in three years and take Jerusalem. Saladin, ever gracious, replied that if he were to loose land, he would liefer loose it to Richard than any other man.
1839 — Henry George, single taxer, economist and social critic, born.
2008 — Ramadan begins
- September 3
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1687 — Miguel de Molinos, Spanish priest who preached direct communion with God, indicted by the Inquisition. It confined him for life.
1793 — Treaty of Paris, by which Britain formally recognized U.S. independence, is signed.
- September 5
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1536 — John Calvin began preaching, Church of St. Peter, Geneva.
1638 — Louis XIV, probably the greatest and most oppressive (the two are allied) king France had, born. Mazarin was later to declare that he "has in him the stuff to make four kings and an honourable man."
1774 — First continental congress meets, Philadelphia. (CiL 284, 296)
1999 — Jim Hume, patriot and activist, died. RIP, Jim.
- September 6
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1683 — Jean Baptiste Colbert, finance minister to Louis XIV, died. He was so unpopular that he was buried at night lest the people insult his body.
- September 8
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1087 — William the Conqueror died, Monastery of St. Stephen, Caen.
I have persecuted the natives of England beyond all reason. Whether gentle or simple I have cruelly oppressed them; many I have unjustly disinherited; innumerable multitudes perished through me by famine or sword…. I fell on the English of the northern shires like a ravening lion. I commanded their houses and corn, with all their implements and chattels, to be burnt without distinction, and great herds of cattle and beasts of burden to be butchered wherever they are found. In this way I took revenge on multitudes of both sexes by subjecting them to the calamity of a cruel famine, and so became the barbarous murderer of many thousands, both young and old, of that fine race of people. Having gained the throne of that kingdom by so many crimes I dare not leave it to anyone but God….
William's deathbed confession, according to Ordericus Vitalis, c. 1130.
None of this namby pamby "I regret the appearance of impropriety" or "Mistakes were made." nonsense. Now, there, as Screwtape would say, is a villain you can sink your teeth into!
1380 — St. Bernardino of Siena, priest who praised the gift of entrepreneurship, born.
1522 — The Victoria completed the first circumnavigation of the globe. The ship's log showed the date as September 7. It fell to Cardinal Gasparo Contarini to explain the discrepancy as due to the westward direction of the voyage.
1774 — The Suffolk Resolves. Delegates from Boston and neighboring Suffolk County met to unanimously declare their refusal to obey either the Intolerable Acts or the officials enforcing for them. They urged the people to cease paying taxes and to undertake militia drill each week.
- September 9
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— World Naked Gardening Day (WNGD)!
1828 — Leo Tolstoy, Russian novelist, born.
1976 — Mao Tse-tung, Communist Chinese dictator, died at age 82.
- September 10
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1649 — Cromwell captured by storm the fortified town of Drogheda, on the Boyne. He put the entire garrison to death, some of the civilians and every priest in the town as well. "I wish that all honest hearts may give the glory of this to God, to whom indeed the praise of this mercy belongs." He had hoped that this one act of terror would bring a swift end to the war. It continued for three years. Sound familiar?
1960 — Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) founded, at the home of William F. Buckley, Sharon, Connecticut.
- September 11
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1823 — Economist David Ricardo, pioneer of the classical school, died.
1973 — A military coup seized power in Chile, overthrowing Salvador Allende's Marxist government and bringing Augusto Pinochet Ugarte to power and to the world's attention.
- September 12
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1683 — Battle of Vienna: the Christian armies, under Sobieski, attacked the besieging Turks and destroyed them. Nightfall stopped the battle. The next morning the Christians woke up to find the Turks gone.
1768 — Boston Town meeting orders all citizens armed to resist "any French invasion". The real fear was a British invasion.
1880 — H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken born, Baltimore, Md. (d. Jan. 29, 1956, Baltimore), controversialist, curmudgeon, humorous journalist, and pungent critic of American life who powerfully influenced U.S. fiction through the 1920s.
- September 13
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1592 — Michel de Montaigne (b. 1533), essayist, died. He summed up his writing technique: "I speak to paper as I do to the first person I meet."
1598 — Philip II of Spain died, in his favorite room in the Escorial, after 53 days of painful gout. He had bade his son, Philip III, to see the humbling finale of earthly power. Philip II introduced compulsory schooling to Spain — in order to suppress Morisco culture.
- September 14
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1321 — Durante Alighieri — Dante — died in Ravenna of a fever caught in the marshes of the Veneto, in the 57th year of his age.
1474 — Lodovico Ariosto born, Reggio Emilia. Poet and satirist, his best known work is the Orlando furioso, almost 39,000 lines, or longer than the Iliad and Odyssey combined.
1949 — Publication of the first edition of von Mises' Human Action, the definitive statement of the Austrian School of economics, and a powerful intellectual argument for free markets.
- September 15
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1793 — The French legislature closed all law schools as an anti-lawyer measure.
- September 18
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53 — Trajan (M. Ulpius Traianus) born near Seville, the first non-Italian emperor.
1714 — George, Elector of Hanover, now George I of England, arrived in London. He brought with him his son, daughter-in-law, some aides, and two mistresses.
1775 — Congress created a secret committee to make deals for foreign munitions. (CiL 110)
- September 19
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1648 — Florin Périer, at the request of his brother-in-law Blaise Pascal climbed the Puy de Dòme, a mountain near Clermont-Ferrand, to verify Pascal's conjecture that at different altitudes, mercury sealed in a tube at one end with the other open to the air would expand due to barometric pressure. This experiment validated the barometer.
1796 — Washington delivers his Farewell Address, which, one observer said, "had the moral force of an amendment to the Constitution, and that it should be constantly read in our public schools." Remember when Amendments to the Constitution had moral force? Any force?
- September 20
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1519 — Five ships, widely considered unseaworthy, captained by Fernão de Magalhães, sailed down the Guadalquivir River. One, the Victoria, completed the first circumnavigation of the globe.
2008 — "Software Freedom Day (SFD) is a worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Our goal in this celebration is to educate the worldwide public about of the benefits of using high quality FOSS in education, in government, at home, and in business — in short, everywhere!"
- September 21
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1558 — Charles I of Spain, Emperor Charles V, died after a month of great pain. He is noted for bleeding Spain in order to wreak vast devastation on Italy.
- September 22
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1768 — Massachusetts Convention replaced the legislature, met illegally, protested the coming of British troops to Boston. (CiL 182)
1791 — Michael Faraday discovers the principle behind the electric motor.
1792 — The First French Republic proclaimed.
1792 — The French Revolutionary calendar proclaimed.
2008 — Harvest Home, or Mabon, or the Autumnal Equinox, 9:44am (MDT)
- September 23
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-484 — Euripides, Athenian playwright and political satirist, born.
- September 24
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622 — Mohammed and Abu Bekr arrived in Medina; "the Hegira" — the flight — from Mecca is completed. That year became the year of the Hegira, from which the Islamic calendar is dated.
1862 — Confederate Congress adopts Confederacy seal.
- September 25
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935 — Duke Wenceslas I of Bohemia, Bohemia's tutelary saint, killed while on his way to Mass. The conspirators believed he did not have the vices desirable in a king. Having learned Christianity from his mother, St. Ludmilla, he fed and clothed the poor, gave hospitality to strangers, and bought freedom for slaves. The day is still remembered in Bohemia as the Feast of Wenceslas.
1066 — Battle of Stamford Bridge. Harold Hardrada ("hard rede", or "hard advice") of Norway, had conquered York and had himself crowned king of England. In a feat of medieval logistics, Harold Godwinsson and his house carls rode hard and fast to the north to oppose Harold Hardrada. They met at Stamford Bridge. The narrow bridge allowed the English to defeat the Norwegians, and slay Harold Hardrada and Tostig, Harold Godwinsson's brother, who had given Harold Hardrada legitimacy.
However, the battle is more than the usual Scandinavian dynastic squabbling of the day. It took Harold away from southern England and weakened his house carls, making it harder for him to oppose William at Hastings three weeks later.
1688 — Louis XIV orders his armies to invade Germany, not Holland. This left William III of Orange free to invade England to depose James II, resulting in the accession of William and Mary (Protestant daughter of Catholic James II) to the Throne.
- September 26
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1580 — Sir Francis Drake returned to Plymouth with £ 600,000 in booty after the first English circumnavigation of the globe.
1687 — Venetian commander Francesco Morosini (1618-94) bombarded Turkish forces holed up in a temple turned church turned mosque in Athens. After 800 rounds, his cannoneers finally blew up the Turkish magazine, destroying a large portion of the building. For his victory over the Ottomans, Morosini went on to become the 108th Doge (1688-94). Athens fell on the 28th, the Turks recaptured it the next year. Oh, the building? The Parthenon.
1777 — Cornwallis occupied Philadelphia. (CiL 220)
1898 — Leonard Read, founder of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) and innovator of the postwar libertarian movement, born.
- September 27
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1540 — Paul III issued the bull Regimini militantis ecclesiae formally recognizing and chartering the Societas Jesú. The term "Jesuit" appeared after 1544 as a term of opprobrium in the writings of critics and opponents such as Calvin. Loyola never used it.
1722 — Samuel Adams, born, Boston, d. Oct. 2, 1803, Boston.
- September 28
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1776 — Pennsylvania promulgated a very libertarian state constitution. (CiL 260)
- September 29
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1560 — Gustavus I, founder of the Vasa dynasty in Sweden, died after a reign of 37 years.
1758 — Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson born, Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk, of Viking stock.
1774 — British troops occupy Boston. (CiL 182)
1793 — The French Convention extended price controls on grains to all commodities. Production fell, and the informal market burgeoned. The only thing remarkable is how few people learn from history.
1881 — Ludwig Edler (von) Mises born to Arthur Edler and Adele (Landau) von Mises, Lemberg, Austria-Hungary (now Lviv, Ukraine), d. Oct. 10, 1973, New York City. His Human Action (1949; rev. ed. 1966) sets forth Austrian economic theory.
- September 30
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1715 — Étienne Bonnot, Abbé de Condillac, French radical Lockean liberal, born.
1996 — Lautenberg bill passed by 104th (Republican) congress. This legislation 1) imposed an ex post facto punishment (violating Art I § 9 para. 3, U.S. Const.), 2) imposed a federal penalty for a state crime (violating the Xth Amendment), and 3) is the most sweeping federal gun control bill in the history of the country (violating the IInd Amendment). So much for the "Republican Revolution".
2008 — Rosh HaShanah 5769
