Christmas Every Day

1977

Hanafi Siege in Washington

The Nation of Islam (NOI), or Black Muslim cult, is no stranger to murderous violence, as the assassination of breakaway leader Malcolm X shows. Another such dissident was Hamaas Abdul Khaalis, (born Ernest Timothy McGhee, also known as Ernest “XX” McGee and Ernest 2X McGee), former national secretary of the Nation of Islam, who left NOI and formed his own sect in 1958 called the Hanafi Movement. In 1973, Black Muslims entered a house owned by basketball player Kareem Abdul Jabbar and murdered seven members of Khaalis’s family in revenge for his insulting the leader of the Nation of Islam. The dead included children, slain because “the seed of the hypocrite is in them.” Though the killers were convicted of murder, Khaalis was not satisfied and his precarious mental state was worsened.

On March 9, 1977 armed members of the Hanafi Movement stormed three buildings in Washington, DC: the B’nai Brith headquarters, city hall, and an Islamic Center, taking 149 people hostage and killing two bystanders. Khaalis’s main demand was that the 1973 killers be turned over to him but he also railed against Jews  who controlled the courts and media, ordered the end of showing a movie about the life of Muhammed, demanded a refund on a $750 fine, and insisted on a meeting with boxer Muhammed Ali. After negotiations with the police and three ambassadors from Islamic countries, the siege was ended. Khaalis was sentenced to a lengthy prison term and died in jail in 2003.

1945

Operation Meetinghouse Burns Tokyo

In the 1930s the Japanese Empire launched a war to conquer China, expel Europeans and Americans from their Asian and Pacific holdings, and establish a Japanese hegemony. At its greatest extent in 1942, the Japanese “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” held sway over millions of square miles from Alaska to Burma.

The decision to attack the United States at Pearl Harbor in December 1941 was supposed to buy Japan enough time to conquer eastern Asia and present the Americans with a fait accompli. However, the failure to sink American carriers meant that a fight-back began very quickly and for the next few years, while American efforts were concentrated on Europe, the war in the Pacific consisted of a battle for a series of island chains ever closer to Japan.

Mainland Japan remained largely out of range of American bombers until late 1944 when new airbases on the Mariana Islands and new B-29 high-altitude bombers were brought into the fight. The failure of the Japanese kamikaze attacks deprived Japan of any effective air cover, making its cities virtually defenceless against B-29 raids using incendiary bombs.

On March 10, 1945, an air raid by almost 300 planes on Tokyo dropped 1,665 tons of bombs, mostly phosphorus or napalm. The resulting firestorm killed at least 100,000 people, injured hundreds of thousands more, and rendered a million Japanese homeless. The Americans lost 27 planes during the raid, some of them victims of huge winds which the bombing created.

Raids of this sort should have convinced the Japanese government that defeat was inevitable, but Hirohito’s cabinet held out until August, 1945 after atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

1999

Death of the “Yankee Clipper”

Joseph Paul “Joe” DiMaggio (1914 –1999), aka “Joltin’ Joe” and “The Yankee Clipper” was born to an Italian immigrant family in San Francisco that produced three major league baseball centre-fielders. After a minor league career in the Pacific Coast League, DiMaggio joined the New York Yankees for the 1936 season and led them to four straight World Series titles. Aside from his war-time duty in the airforce, Joe played with the Bronx Bombers from 1936 to 1951. He was an All-Star every year (13 times), Most Valuable Player 3 times, World Series winner 9 times, leading the league twice in batting average, runs batted in and home runs. His range in centre field was legendary.

DiMaggio’s most famous feat was the 56-game hitting streak in 1941, breaking the record of 45 games set in 1896-97 by “Wee Willie” Keeler. It has been called “the most extraordinary thing that ever happened in American sports.” Since then the closest anyone has come to breaking the mark was Peter Rose of Cincinnati with 45 games.

After his retirement DiMaggio was briefly married to Marilyn Monroe.

1277 

Bishop Tempier condemns 219 propositions

Stephen Tempier was Bishop of Paris during a time of great philosophical excitement; the University of Paris was the leading site for an attempt to reconcile the intellectual contributions of Aristotle and his Muslim commentators, with Christian doctrine. Thomas Aquinas and his fellow Dominicans were developing Scholasticism, the dominant intellectual mode of the late Middle Ages, and in the process aroused suspicions that they were treading on to heretical ground. Tempier established a commission to investigate such Aristotelian writings and came up with 219 propositions in the work of thinkers such as Aquinas, Siger of Brabant, and Egidius Romanus that were contrary to orthodoxy.

Some of the objectionable doctrines were:

• That the world is eternal

• That there is only a single intellect

• That one should not hold anything unless it is self-evident or can be manifested from self-evident principles.

1875

The first indoor hockey game

Ice hockey and related games had been played out of doors for some time before someone thought of bringing such sporting contests indoors. The credit for this act of genius goes to James Creighton, a lawyer and figure skater, who organized a game between members of Montreal’s Victoria Skating Club.

The Montreal Gazette announced the impending tussle thusly:

Victoria Rink – A game of Hockey will be played at the Victoria Skating Rink this evening, between two nines chosen from among the members. Good fun may be expected, as some of the players are reputed to be exceedingly expert at the game. Some fears have been expressed on the part of intending spectators that accidents were likely to occur through the ball flying about in too lively a manner, to the imminent danger of lookers on, but we understand that the game will be played with a flat circular piece of wood, thus preventing all danger of its leaving the surface of the ice. Subscribers will be admitted on presentation of their tickets.

The paper duly reported the results of the match:

HOCKEY — At the Rink last night a very large audience gathered to witness a novel contest on the ice. The game of hockey, though much in vogue on the ice in New England and other parts of the United States, is not much known here, and in consequence the game of last evening was looked forward to with great interest. Hockey is played usually with a ball, but last night, in order that no accident should happen, a flat block of wood was used, so that it should slide along the ice without rising, and thus going among the spectators to their discomfort. The game is like Lacrosse in one sense — the block having to go through flags placed about 8 feet apart in the same manner as the rubber ball — but in the main the old country game of shinny gives the best idea of hockey. The players last night were eighteen in number — nine on each side — and were as follows: — Messrs. Torrance (captain), Meagher, Potter, Goff, Barnston, Gardner, Griffin, Jarvis and Whiting. Creighton (captain), Campbell, Campbell, Esdaile, Joseph, Henshaw, Chapman, Powell and Clouston. The match was an interesting and well-contested affair, the efforts of the players exciting much merriment as they wheeled and dodged each other, and notwithstanding the brilliant play of Captain Torrance’s team Captain Creighton’s men carried the day, winning two games to the single of the Torrance nine. The game was concluded about half-past nine, and the spectators then adjourned well satisfied with the evening’s entertainment.

It would not have been a hockey game, of course, without a fight breaking out. The fisticuffs were not on the ice, but broke out after the game when players encountered hostile members of the skating club angry that the ice had been denied to them for their usual skate.