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)
- January 1
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1431 — Rodrigo Borgia, later Alexander VI, born, Xativa, Spain. He was a cardinal at 25, vice chancellor of the curia at 26, and a priest at age 37. He formed a permanent more or less monogamous union with Vanozza de' Catanei, who bore him at least four children, including Cesare and Lucretia, thereby setting a better example than some ecclesiastics.
1523 — The Knights of St. John, after a 145 day siege, left the island of Rhodes for Crete, later for Malta. Sultan Suleiman condoled with the order's Grand Master, and remarked to his Vizier that it caused him great pain to see this Christian forced from his home and belongings in his old age.
1776 — Governor of Virginia shelled Norfolk, giving the rebels a chance to burn out Tories.(CiL 83)
1801 — Karl Friedrich Gauss discovered the asteroid Ceres, the first such discovered.
1804 — Gonaïves, Haiti, rebel slaves declared the world's first black republic.
1888 — John Cantius Garand born, St. Remi, Quebec, Can., d. Feb. 16, 1974, Springfield, Mass., U.S. Inventor of the M-1 Garand rifle.
1909 — Barry Goldwater born, Phoenix, Arizona Territory, d. May 29, 1998, Phoenix, Arizona.
1970 — The Unix epoch.
1983 — All "old style" traffic ceased on ARPANET, leaving TCP/IP as the sole protocol. Arguably the birth of the Internet.
- January 2
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1672 — Charles II, having bypassed Parliament's power of the purse, being £1,328,526 in debt, and about to go to war against the United Provinces, stopped for a year all interest payments on his debts. Payments were resumed in 1674, but in the form of new government debt. In essence this date marks the beginning of the English national debt.
1933 — U. S. troops leave Nicaragua.
- January 4
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1824 — Byron returns to Greece, this time with money to aid the Greek rebellion against the Turks.
- January 5
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1757 — Robert François Damiens attempted to assassinate Louis XV. This ended a period of relative tolerance: two years later the penalty for attacking the Church or royal authority was death.
1767 — Proto-Austrian school economist Jean Baptiste Say born.
1776 — New Hampshire adopts the first native (non-British) constitution in North America. (CiL 131) The written constitution is a North American invention, not that it is doing us much good right now.
1933 — Calvin Coolidge died (Northampton, Mass). When told, Dorothy Parker asked, "How could anyone tell?"
- January 6
-
— Christmas on the Julian calendar.
1558 — England, in a war with France she didn't really want, lost Calais, having held it for 211 years. Thus England lost its last possession in France, and its last possession in Europe until the House of Hanover ascended the throne.
1649 — Parliament appointed 135 commissioners to try Charles I. One appointee, proto-libertarian Algernon Sydney, told Cromwell they had no authority to try him; Cromwell lost his temper.
1861 — New York City Mayor Fernando Wood proposed that if the Union is dissolved, New York should become a free city, trading with North and South.
1907 — Maria Montessori opened her first school and daycare center for working class children in Rome.
- January 7
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1610 — Galileo Galilei first observed the Jovian satellites Io, Europa and Callisto through his telescope. With Ganymede, they make up the Galilean moons.
1715 — François Fénelon, adviser to Louis XIV and opponent of big government, died.
1995 — Murray N. Rothbard died.
- January 8
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1642 — Galileo Galilei, almost 78, died in the arms of his disciples. Grotius called him the greatest mind of all time.
1942 — Stephen Hawking born, Oxford, England.
1950 — Joseph Schumpeter died.
- January 9
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1757 — Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, French philosopher, died, 33 days short of a century old. At the age of ninety, he was introduced to a pretty woman, and remarked, "Ah, if I were only eighty now."
1861 — Mississippi became the second state to secede from the Union.
- January 10
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-49 — Julius Caesar led his troops across the Rubicon River from Gaul into Italy, saying "Alea iacta est" ("The die is cast"). This violated a Roman law prohibiting generals from bringing their own troops into Italy. Civil war began.
1834 — John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, First Baron Acton of Aldenham, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely," born.
1861 — Florida became the third state to secede from the Union.
2008 — Islamic New Year 1428
- January 11
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347 — Byzantine emperor Theodosius I born.
532 — Nika riots started. They were backed by senators who wished to overthrow Justinian.
1672 — Isaac Newton elected to the Royal Society.
1861 — Alabama became the fourth state to secede from the Union.
2002 — The first prisoners arrived at the US torture camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
- January 12
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1729 — Edmund Burke, political philosopher, born.
1838 — Mormons fled Ohio for Missouri to avoid religious persecution.
1912 — Gustave de Molinari, French libertarian radical economist, died.
- January 13
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1957 — Wham-O Company produced the first Frisbee.
- January 14
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1639 — Connecticut invents the written constitution by adopting The Fundamental Orders.
- January 15
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1622 — Molière born, 96 Rue St. Honoré, Paris, as Jean Baptiste Coquelin IV.
1809 — Pierre Joseph Proudhon, "libertarian socialist," born.
1873 — Max Adler, Austrian sociologist-socialist, born.
- January 16
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-27 — The Senate gave Octavian the title Augustus.
1707 — Scottish Parliament passed the Articles of Union, joining England and Scotland to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain, under Parliament.
1770 — New York Sons of Liberty called a meeting to protest British cutting down a Liberty Pole. 3000 attend.(CiL 204)
1777 — "Vermont Independence Day": Vermont declared independence from New York.
- January 17
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1706 — Benjamin Franklin born.
1746 — Falkirk: "Bonnie Prince Charlie" defeated an English army. It was a Pyrrhic victory: due to lack of supplies and quarreling advisers, he retreated to Scotland and the army melted away.
1800 — Napoleon suppressed sixty of the seventy three newspapers then in France. "Three hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets" — Napoleon Bonaparte.
- January 18
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1689 — Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu born, Brède, near Bordeaux. He is best known for his The Spirit of Laws, which Catherine the Great said should be "the breviary of sovereigns".
1782 — Daniel Webster, born, Salisbury, N.H., d. Oct. 24, 1852, Marshfield, Mass.
- January 19
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1649 — Westminster Hall: The trial of Charles I on charges of treason began. Charles denied the authority of the court to try him, and asserted that government by the Rump Parliament was worse tyranny than anything he had done.
1729 — English playwright William Congreve died of injuries sustained when his carriage overturned. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. It is not recorded whether he was wearing a seat belt.
1770 — Battle of Golden Hill, New York, between Sons of Liberty and British regulars.(CiL 204)
1807 — Robert E. Lee born. "All the South has ever desired was that the Union, as established by our forefathers, should be preserved, and that the government, as originally organized, should be administered in purity and truth." (Letter to C. Chauncey Burr, January 5, 1866)
1808 — Lysander Spooner, postal entrepreneur, legal theorist, and anarchist, born, Athol, Massachusetts.
1861 — Georgia became the fifth state to secede from the Union.
- January 20
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1781 — New Jersey regiments rebel, Washington has the leaders shot. (CiL 284)
1918 — Bolsheviks confiscate church property and abolish all religious instruction in the schools.
- January 21
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1793 — Execution of Louis XVI. Unfortunately, the French revolution went further downhill from there.
1855 — John Moses Browning born, Ogden, Utah, U.S., d. Nov. 26, 1926, Herstal, Belg. A legendary designer of firearms, Browning was an ardent Latter Day Saint (LDS, or Mormon). His father was one of the first converts to the LDS. Browning Senior was enlisted by the first LDS church leaders to build and supply weapons for fellow Mormons to defend themselves against Protestant bigots intent on wiping out what they perceived as an "enemy". Browning's best known design is probably the M1911, which is still used by civilian and military agencies around the world.
1950 — George Orwell (nee Eric Arthur Blair) died, University College Hospital.
1977 — President Carter gave Vietnam draft evaders full pardon.
- January 22
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1788 — George Gordon Lord Byron born, London.
1879 — Zulu forced route British forces at the Battle of Isandlwana.
- January 23
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1571 — Royal Exchange opens in London. Lime-light seeking politicians were a nuisance even then, as Queen Elizabeth I showed up for the ceremonies.
- January 24
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41 — Cassius Chaerea and the disgruntled Praetorian Guards gave Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus (Caligula) the boot.
1848 — James W. Marshall discovered gold in California.
1902 — Economist Oskar Morgenstern born.
- January 26
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1861 — Louisiana became the sixth state to secede from the Union.
- January 27
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1521 — The Diet of Worms assembled to discuss a number of issues, none of them Martin Luther. But he was a major subject of conversation. By then most German nobles applauded Luther, and the papal nuncio, Jerome Aleander, reported that he could not go out in the street without people putting hands to swords.
1736 — Voltaire's play Alzire premiered. It set theatrical history by dressing the actors in the clothing of the time and place of the story, the Spanish conquest of Peru.
We are the scourge Of this new world, vain, covetous, unjust ...
We alone
Are the barbarians here; the simple savage,
Tho' fierce by nature, is in courage equal,
In goodness our superior.
1756 — Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart born.
1766 — The threat of mob action forced the governor of Georgia to pull stamped paper out of circulation. (CiL 134)
- January 28
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1573 — The Polish Diet drew up the "Confederation of Warsaw", which guaranteed religious liberty to all dissidentes de religione without exception. Poland became a home for a variety of sects persecuted elsewhere. In 1579, Faustus Socinus came to Poland and began to organize a church. In 1598, a mob in Cracow dragged him from his home and destroyed his library. They would have killed him but for the intervention of the Catholic rector of the university.
1986 — Space shuttle Challenger exploded during launch. Would you really want the Post Office to deliver your oxygen?
- January 29
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1737 — Thomas Paine born.
- January 30
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1648 — Münster, Spanish plenipotentiaries signed the Treaty of Wesphalia, ending the "Eighty Years War", the war of Dutch independence from Spain. Thus ended one of the most cruel wars in the history of the world.
1649 — (Tuesday) Charles I, king of Great Britain and Ireland (1625-49), convicted of high treason and "other high crimes against the realm of England," beheaded, London.
1774 — Boston merchants suspend all sales of tea. (CiL 271)
1934 — Congress steals privately owned gold previously backing U.S. currency by vesting the government with title to all gold supposedly held in trust. If you or I did it, it would be "felony conversion".
1945 — Eddie Slovik executed by firing squad for desertion, the only death sentence for desertion U.S. forces carried out.
1948 — Mahatma Ghandi assassinated, by a Hindu opposed to Ghandi's conciliation toward Muslims and Pakistan.
- February 1
-
1775 — Massachusetts Provisional Congress orders the militia to seize military stores from the Crown. It refused to levy taxes. (CiL 320)
- February 2
-
— Imbolc, Candlemas, Bridget's Day
— Ground Hog Day. Hey, it's at least as accurate as a government economic forecast.
— St. Bridget's Day.
1905 — Ayn Rand, born, St. Petersburg, Russia, d. March 6, 1982, New York, N.Y. A woman with an axiom to grind.
- February 4
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1861 — At Montgomery, Alabama, the Confederate States of America are organized at the first session of the Provisional Confederate Congress.
- February 5
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1649 — Less than two weeks after the beheading of Charles I, the Scottish Estates (parliament) declared his son Charles II to be the rightful king of Great Britain, France and Ireland.
1725 — James Otis, born, West Barnstable, Mass. (U.S.), d. May 23, 1783, Andover, Mass. Attorney, constitutionalist and staunch patriot, he laid ideological groundwork for the Revolution in his spirited opposition to Writs of Assistance and the court party. One of his first ideological works was an early statement of American principles, a 53 page pamphlet, "Vindication of the Conduct of the House of Representatives of the Province of Massachusetts-Bay," (1762).
John Adams later wrote, "Look over the declaration of rights and wrongs issued by Congress in 1774. Look into the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Look into the writings of Dr. Price and Dr. Priestley. Look into all the French constitutions of government; and to cap the climax, look into Mr. Thomas Paine's Common Sense, Crisis and Rights of Man. What can you find that is not to be found in this 'Vindication of the Conduct of the House of Representatives'?"
- February 6
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1481 — The first auto-da-fé of the Spanish Inquisition celebrated. Six men and women were burned at the stake. "Both the Inquisition and the witch-burning were expressions of an age afflicted with homicidal certainty in theology, as the patriotic massacres of our era may be due in part to homicidal certainty in ethnic or political theory." — Will and Ariel Durant, VI The Story of Civilization 216 (1957)
1685 — Charles II died in the Roman Catholic Church.
1765 — Stamp Act bill introduced in Parliament. (CiL 92)
1778 — France and the revolting British colonies in America signed an alliance. France prepared for war with England.
1899 — Spanish-American War ends, leaving the U.S. in possession of the Philippines, the first U.S. possession in Asia.
- February 7
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1817 — Frederick Douglass, original name, Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, born, Tuckahoe, Md., U.S., d. Feb. 20, 1895, Washington, D.C., abolitionist orator.
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
Frederick Douglass, Speech, Canandaigua, New York, August 3, 1857
2008 — Chinese New Year (Wu-Zi)
- February 8
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1587 — Mary, Queen of Scots, executed, Fotheringay Castle. That morning she wrote a poem in Latin asking Jesus to set her free. King Phillip II of Spain now made ready to invade England.
1600 — Giordano Bruno condemned by the Inquisition, after eight years of imprisonment and torture. "Perchance you who pronounce my sentence are in greater fear than I who receive it."
1622 — Irate at Parliament for asserting its rights, James I dissolved it and ordered the imprisonment of several parliamentary leaders.
1883 — Joseph Schumpeter, economist and contemporary of von Mises, born.
- February 9
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1861 — Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens elected the first and only president and vice president, respectively, of the Confederate States of America (so far).
- February 10
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1531 — Parliament and Convocation (of the Church) accepted Henry XIII's insistence that they accept him as "the protector and only supreme head of the Church and Clergy of England". Archbishop Warham, 81, reluctantly proposed the language, adding "so far as the law of Christ permits". Thus the Church of England declared its independence of the papacy, and produced the first of many Anglican fudges. Warham later dictated a deathbed repudiation of the Convocation's submission.
1755 — Montesquieu died of pneumonia.
- February 11
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1650 — René Descarte died. Born tubercular, always weak, he took the job of teaching Queen Christina of Sweden philosophy. She was one smart and persistent cookie; teaching her philosophy would have been rough on anyone. She preferred her instructions thrice weekly at the hour of 5:00 AM. On February 1, 1650 he caught a cold while walking through the snow to the Queen's library. It proved fatal ten days later.
1768 — Massachusetts General Court approved a circular letter denying Parliament's right to tax the colonies. (CiL 169)
1889 — The Emperor Meiji handed Japan's first written constitution, which drew greatly on German ideas, to Prime Minister Count Kuroda. This made it clear that the Meiji Constitution was a gift from the Emperor, and not something extracted from him, like Magna Carta. "[Japan] shall be reigned over and governed by a line of Emperors unbroken for ages eternal."
- February 12
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1851 — Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Austrian finance minister and Mises mentor, born.
1966 — Wilhelm Röpke, free market adviser to Konrad Adenauer, died.
- February 13
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1503 — A medieval moment. During yet another French invasion of Italy, at the fortress town of Barletta, a French officer said that the Italians were an effeminate and dastardly people. Taking umbrage, the Italian commander challenged thirteen Frenchmen to fight thirteen Italians. It was agreed, the war was interrupted for a day, and both armies watched (and probably took bets). The thirteen Italians wounded overpowered, and took prisoner their opponents. El Gran capitán Gonzalo de Córdoba, on the Italian side, paid the ransoms for the thirteen Frenchmen from his own pocket and returned them to their army.
The incident raised Italian morale. They issued from the town and routed the French. Gonzalo's troops defeated the French again, and eventually defeated the French in all of southern Italy. He offered the French troops in Gaeta, their last stronghold, generous terms, which he actually kept after they surrendered, thereby earning the title le gentil capitaine.
1800 — The Bank of France formed out of several agencies.
- February 14
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— Valentine's Day
- February 15
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1521 — Leo X issued a papal bull, Honestis, ordering the excommunication of any civil authority, and an interdict on their communities, who refused to carry out the sentences, without examination or revision, of inquisitors. Thus, the claims of the Church that it never executed anyone for witchcraft are shown to be, however technically accurate, hollow.
1564 — Galileo Galilei born.
1791 — Thomas Jefferson argued against chartering a national bank, a precursor to the Federal Reserve Bank.
1842 — Adhesive postage stamps introduced by a private U.S. postal company.
1898 — American battleship Maine sunk in Havana harbor, 9:40 PM, by a coal fire which ignited the forward magazine. The U.S. used the sinking as an excuse to start the Spanish American war, in which the US acquired an empire. Sound familiar?
- February 16
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1918 — Lithuania gains independence from Czarist Russia. Unfortunately, they had to do it all over again from the Soviet Union (March 11, 1990). Will they have to regain it from the EU?
- February 17
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1776 — Volume I of Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire published, priced at a guinea. The thousand copies of the first edition were sold out by March 26. A second edition, available on June 3, sold out in three days. It garnered high praise.
- February 18
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1546 — Martin Luther died. He was buried in the Castle Church in Wittenberg, upon the doors of which he had posted his theses.
1564 — Michelangelo died in the eighty ninth year of his age.
1766 — A mob released a vessel seized in North Carolina for having unstamped papers.(CiL 134)
1943 — Hans and Sophie Scholl arrested by the Gestapo for distributing White Rose pamphlets opposed to Hitler and the Nazis.
2008 — Dead Politicians Day. A holiday for some 'crats.
- February 19
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1600 — Giordano Bruno, still impenitent, his tongue tied, nude, was lashed to an iron stake on a pyre in the Piazza Campo de' Fiori, and burned alive at the age of 52. On that spot in 1889 a statue to him was erected, paid for by subscriptions from all over the world.
1942 — FDR signs Executive Order 9066, authorizing the "internment" — relocation and confinement — of over 112,000 Japanese Americans.
"The truth is — as this deplorable experience proves — that constitutions and laws are not sufficient of themselves … Despite the unequivocal language of the Constitution of the United States that the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, and despite the Fifth Amendment's command that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, both of these constitutional safeguards were denied by military action under Executive Order 9066 … ."
Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark
- February 20
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1513 — Julius II died. Most noted for rebuilding the Papal states and St. Peter's Cathedral, it was said that he spent half of his pontificate wearing armor.
1677 — Baruch Spinoza died.
1766 — A mob forced officials to agree not to enforce the Stamp Act in North Carolina. (CiL 134)
1766 — Motion to repeal the Stamp Act passed the House of Commons, 275-167. (CiL 153)
1769 — John Horne Tooke formed the "Society of the Supporters of the Bill of Rights". Its immediate goal was to help get John Wilkes out of jail and restore him to his seat in Parliament. Other goals included annual Parliaments, universal adult male suffrage, responsibility of ministries to Parliament, requiring MPs to take an oath never to take a bribe or any emolument from the Crown, addressing the grievances of Ireland, and support for the American colonies having the sole power to tax their people. Many American liberals joined. Maybe it's time to revive the Society?
- February 21
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1787 — The Continental Congress resolved that "it is expedient that on the second Monday in May next a Convention of delegates who shall have been appointed by the several states be held at Philadelphia for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation and reporting to Congress and the several legislatures such alterations and provisions therein as shall when agreed to in Congress and confirmed by the states render the federal constitution adequate to the exigencies of Government & the preservation of the Union." (emphasis added)
The Convention thus called became known as the Constitutional Convention.
1965 — Malcolm X assassinated in New York City by members of the Nation of Islam.
- February 23
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1685 — Georg Friedrich Handel born, Halle, Upper Saxony. By the age of eleven, he was composing sonatas.
1841 — Carl Menger, father of the Austrian school, born.
- February 24
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1582 — Gregory XIII signed the bull establishing the Gregorian calendar in Roman Catholic countries. This was the first calendar reform in the West since Julius Caesar's in 46 BC, and corrected some twelve days of accumulated error. To accommodate the transition, ten days were struck from October, 1582. So the day after the fourth was the 15th. Acceptance was slow and staggered, with Russia not adopting it until 1918. England, Wales and Scotland adopted it in 1752, producing this calendar:
September 1752
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
1793 — The French Convention voted for conscription. The rich could buy substitutes. Revolts against conscription broke out in several provinces.
1803 — Marbury v. Madison, The world's most subtle coup d'etat: the Supreme Court arrogated to itself the power to hold an act of Congress unconstitutional.
- February 25
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1791 — First National Bank chartered by Congress.
1901 — U. S. Steel Corporation organized under directorship of J. P. Morgan.
1913 — XIVth Amendment ratified, authorizing income tax.
- February 26
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1775 — Radicals embarrassed British troops by stopping them from seizing military stores in Salem and Danvers, Massachusetts. (CiL 321)
- February 27
-
1765 — Stamp Act passed Commons. (CiL 94)
1933 — The Reichstag fire, Hitler's "9/11". Using the fire as an excuse, Hitler consolidated his power and, using "temporary" emergency powers, made Germany even more of a police state.
- February 28
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1933 — The Decree for the Protection of People and State suspended guarantees of personal liberty and permitted arrest and incarceration without trial. Germany.
1993 — ATF lays siege to a church, Waco, TX. Over 80 people died, including several children. The survivors have all been convicted and given cruel and unusually long punishments. Not one of the perps has been indicted, nor brought to trial or convicted.
- February 29
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1776 — Pierre-Augustin Caron-Beaumarchais, then a secret agent for the French government, sent Louis XVI a letter from London recommending covert French support for the American cause. The crown provided him with funds, which he used to supply men and materiel to the Americans.
- March 1
-
1768 — Boston merchants pledge one year of non-importation from Britain, providing New York and Philadelphia join in. (CiL 170)
1781 — Articles of Confederation took effect after ratification by Maryland. The Articles describe a loose association of states with no central government. The federal government's been getting bigger ever since.
1781 — Volumes II and III of Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire published.
1872 — Congress established Yellowstone National Park, and has been micromismanaging it ever since.
- March 2
-
1776 — Using cannon captured from Fort Ticonderoga, Americans begin a cannonade of Boston to drive the British occupiers out. (CiL 95)
1836 — Texas declared its independence from Mexico.
"Let the Convention go on and make a declaration of independence, and we will then understand, and the world will understand, what we are fighting for. If independence is not declared, I shall lay down my arms, and so will the men under my command. But under the flag of independence, we are ready to peril our lives a hundred times a day…."
— William Barret Travis, commander at the Alamo.
1926 — Economist Murray N. Rothbard, Mises's brilliant student, born.
- March 3
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1819 — Gustave de Molinari born.
1863 — Frank Fetter, American Austrian economist, born.
- March 4
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1554 — Mary Tudor reinstated Catholicism in England, and suppressed Protestantism.
- March 5
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1615 — The Holy Office (Inquisition) published its edict on Galileo Galilei:
"The view that the sun stands motionless at the center of the universe is foolish, philosophically false, and utterly heretical, because contrary to Holy Scripture. The view that the earth is not the center of the universe and even has a daily rotation is philosophically false, and at least an erroneous belief."
That same day, Galileo's books were placed on the Index.
On hearing of the condemnation of Galileo Galilei, René Descartes wrote to Mersenne, "This has so strongly affected me that I have almost resolved to burn all my ms., or at least to show them to no one. … If [the motion of the earth] is false, all the principles of my philosophy are erroneous, since they mutually support each other. … But on no account will I publish anything that contains a word that might displease the Church."
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1770 — Boston Massacre, 5 dead. Sam Adams used the incident to rouse Americans against the British. The British government tried the soldiers. Although ably defended by James Otis and John Adams, they (unlike, say, Lon Horiuchi or the Waco, TX, perpetrators) were convicted.
1770 — Lord North moves repeal of all Townshend taxes except that on tea. (CiL 199)
1933 — FDR declared a four day bank holiday, a suspension of all bank transactions — including redemption of gold certificates.
1953 — Stalin died. "His death dropped right into the middle of this whole gigantic system of mechanized enthusiasm, of mechanized wrath and mechanized love of the people, organized and designated on instructions from the district Party committees.
"Stalin died without previous planning, without instructions from the administrative apparatus. Stalin died without the personal instructions of Comrade Stalin."
— Vasily Grosman, Forever Flowing 28-29 (Thomas P. Whitney, Translator. Northwestern University Press, 1997)
- March 6
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1475 — Caprese, Italy: Michelangelo Buonarroti, favorite artist of Julius II, born.
1770 — Captain Preston and the soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre were arrested by Massachusetts civil authorities and indicted for murder. (CiL 200)
1836 — Remember the Alamo!
- March 7
-
1775 — British decide to abandon Boston for Halifax, N.S. (CiL 95)
- March 8
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1265 — The "Great Parliament," the first Parliament to include commoners ("good and loyal men") meets, London. It was called by Simon de Montfort (1208 - 4 Aug 1265), the Toyotomi Hideyoshi of England — except that de Montfort did not disarm the peasants after he came to power. (He left that for John Major and Tony Blair.)
1765 — The Stamp Act passed the Lords, the last step prior to Royal Assent making it law. (CiL 94)
1958 — William Faulkner says U. S. schools have degenerated to babysitters.
- March 9
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1556 — Sultan Suleiman remonstrated Pope Paul IV against the treatment of the Jews in Ancona, then a Papal possession. He demanded and got release of all Jews who were Turkish subjects.
1661 — Cardinal Jules Mazarin, protege of Cardinal Richelieu, later chief minister to Louis XIV, died. Jean Baptiste Colbert revealed the location of his hoard to Louis, who confiscated it, thereby becoming the richest monarch of his day. Louis said, "I do not know what I should have done if he had lived much longer."
1796 — Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine du Beauharnais married in a civil ceremony.
2008 — Nighttime Wasting Time begins 2:00am (MST). Why are you changing all your clocks just because a bunch of dang fool 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.
- March 10
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1836 — Economist Antonie Louis Claude Destutt, Comte de Tracy, a brilliant predecessor to the Austrian tradition, died.
- March 11
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1766 — Stamp Act repeal passed Lords, 185-71 (CiL 153)
1829 — Johann Sebastian Bach's Matthäuspassion performed for the first time outside a church, 100 years after its premiere. The conductor and resurrector was a 20 year old Jew: Felix Mendelssohn.
1861 — The Confederate Congress unanimously adopts the Constitution of the Confederate States of America.
1990 — Lithuania declared its independence from the Soviet Union, the first Soviet republic to do so. Will they have to regain it from the EU?
- March 12
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1759 — Halley's comet passed perihelion on its first return trip after Halley discovered it. Alexis Clairaut had calculated perihelion would occur on April 13, only a month's error.
1773 — Virginia House of Burgesses sets up the first colonial Committee of Correspondence. (CiL 258)
- March 13
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1775 — "Westminster Massacre": the first deaths in the war between New York and New Hampshire over Vermont take place in Westminster, Vermont.
- March 14
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— Pi (π) day, 3/14, or 3.14159 … Also Albert Einstein's birthday. Celebrate with a piece of pi.
1781 — William Herschel discovered a new planet. He mistook it for a comet. Since this was the first recorded discovery of a planet, the error is understandable. He proposed to name it Georgium Sidus (the star of the Georges), but astronomers mercifully renamed it Uranus.
1900 — The Gold Standard Act put into place.
- March 15
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-44 — Roman citizens exercise the right to overthrow tyrants on the floor of the Senate House.
1751 — James Madison, author of the Bill of Rights, born. He graduated Princeton in two years and later pushed Virginia's Statute of Religious Freedom through the legislature over Patrick Henry's objections. (March 5, Old Style.)
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations," Madison told the Virginia ratifying Convention on June 16, 1788.
1773 — Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer first produced.
1775 — Joseph Priestly send the Royal Society a letter announcing his discovery of oxygen. He predicted its medical benefits and that it might become a luxury item.
- March 16
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1660 — The Long Parliament officially ended, paving the way for the Restoration of Charles II.
1792 — Jakob Ankarström, exercising the right of tyrannicide, shot Gustavus III at a masquerade ball. Ankarström was one of the nobles alarmed at Gustavus' attempts to over-ride the Riksdag. Gustavus died on March 26, after appointing a regency. Gustavus opposed the French and American revolutions, fearing (correctly) that they were a danger to monarchs.
1861 — Arizona territory seceded from Union.
1883 — Fort Benton, MT: In the court of Judge S. Wade, Louis Riel became a citizen of the US.
- March 17
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— St. Patrick's Day. St. Patrick is the patron saint of engineers. While evicting the snakes from Ireland, he invented the worm drive.
1776 — End of the year-long siege of Boston. General William Howe evacuated his troops by sea in 170 ships, a victory of militiamen over regulars.
- March 18
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1584 — Ivan IV "the Terrible" died while playing chess with Boris Gudunov. This gave rise to the inevitable gossip that Gudunov had poisoned him, which is doubtful because the Boyars by now found him preferable to his sons. But it made for some good opera.
1766 — Official repeal of the Stamp Act (CiL 183)
1781 — Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, free market radical and minister to Louis XVI, who actually got a chance to implement reforms, died.
1800 — Napoleon re-legalized lawyers, banned since 1793. Drat.
1885 — Provisional government declared in Saskatchewan; the beginning of the Rebellion of 1885.
- March 19
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1611 — Moscow burned to the ground by a mob rising up against a Polish and Catholic king, Ladislas, 16 year old son of Sigismund III of Poland. The Polish garrison retreated into the Kremlin.
1776 — Congress calls on Canada to join the rebellion against Britain. No mention is made of reconciliation.
1812 — Spain, having been liberated from Napoleon by the English, proclaimed a reasonably liberal constitution, other than establishing Catholicism and banning other religions. It abolished the Inquisition, slavery, torture, feudal courts and signorial rights. One block among the delegates called themselves "Liberals", the first known use of the term as a political designation.
1920 — U. S. Senate rejects the Treaty of Versailles.
2008 — Ostara, Eostar, or the Vernal Equinox, 11:48pm (MDT)
- March 20
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1727 — Isaac Newton died. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night;
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.
— Alexander Pope
- March 21
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1685 — Johann Sebastian Bach born, Eisenach, Saxe-Weimar. Luther created the Reformation; Bach set it to music.
1729 — John Law, money crank behind the Mississippi bubble, died.
1949 — Economist Frank A. Fetter died.
- March 22
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1457 — Gutenberg Bible became first printed book.
1933 — The Enabling Act transferred legislative power to Hitler, permitting him to decree laws, laws moreover that "may deviate from the Constitution." Sound familiar?
- March 23
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1721 — Johann Sebastian Bach sent a set of six concertos to an otherwise obscure prince, Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg.
1766 — Madrilenos rebel against Charles III's aide Marchese de'Squillaci, who had offended them by banning concealed weapons and the long Spanish cape and broad brimmed hat, which made it harder to identify suspects. The people captured ammunition stores, killed the Walloon palace guard, attacked Sqillaci's home, and rioted for two days. Charles repealed those bans, and others, and packed Squillaci back to Naples whence he had come.
1775 — Patrick Henry delivers his "Give me liberty or give me death" speech to a rump session of the Virgina House of Burgesses.
"If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged. Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable — and let it come!! I repeat it sir, let it come!!
"It is vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, peace, peace; but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle?
"What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?
"Forbid it, Almighty God - I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!"
Henry's prediction ran true: the next gale did bring the clash of resounding arms. Within a month American irregulars met and beat British regulars at the villages of Lexington and Concord.
1904 — Proto-libertarian science fiction writer H. Beam Piper born. Many of Piper's works deal with history and theories of government.
1992 — Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek died, Freiburg, Ger.
- March 24
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1773 — Philip Dormer Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield, died, having contributed a great deal of wit and wisdom to the world in the form of his Letters to His Son, aged 79.
- March 25
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— Greek Independence Day (from Turkey)
1409 — Council of Pisa began. With two popes (Gregory XII and Benedict XIII), the Church was in schism. It was necessary to find a mechanism to resolve the issue. The Council deposed both popes, elected a new one, Alexander V, and adjourned. The two refused to recognize the Council's authority, continuing the stalemate.
- March 26
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1778 — At the age of eight, Ludwig van Beethoven gave his first concert.
1827 — Ludwig van Beethoven died, after three months of suffering. 30,000 people attended the funeral.
1885 — Battle at Duck Lake marks the first violence of the Saskatchewan uprising.
1937 — Spinach growers of Crystal City, Texas, erected a statue of Popeye, the existential philosopher.
- March 30
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1774 — Boston Port Bill passed. The Bill closed the port of Boston in retaliation for the Boston Tea Party. (CiL 274) Party poopers.
- March 31
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1683 — The Turkish army began its march from Adrianople to Vienna.
1854 — Treaty of Kanagawa, signed at a small fishing village, Yokohama, between Japan and the US. It allowed US ships into two minor Japanese ports, provided for the care of stranded American sailors, and allowed a US consul into Japan. This was the beginning of the end of Japanese isolation under the Tokugawas. The Tokugawa shogunate didn't last much longer, either.
1950 — Mises began a lecture tour of Peru, at the invitation of the Central Reserve Bank.
