Christmas Every Day

1514 Birth of an assassin

The Medici family dominated the political life of Florence for centuries, sometimes well, sometimes not so well. At times they were beloved by Florentines and other occasions they were expelled for their misrule. The family produced some great rulers such as Cosimo, the dynasty’s founder, and Lorenzo the Magnificent as well as a host of popes; it also gave history notable losers such as Alessandro “il Moro” and his killer Lorenzino.

Lorenzino was a member of a lesser branch of the family and was raised outside of Florence in a Tuscan villa and Venice. As a teenager he was involved in a serious act of vandalism in Rome and his character was not improved when he moved to Florence and became a companion of Alessandro de Medici, the young Duke of the city. Both became known for riotous living and both came to be unpopular figures in the eyes of influential Florentines. At some point the two quarreled and Lorenzino decided to murder his cousin.

On the evening of Epiphany, 1537 Alessandro was lured to a palace apartment under the impression that Lorenzino had arranged a sexual encounter with his aunt Caterina Soderin “a young woman of marvelous beauty, no less chaste than beautiful”. Unarmed and unsuspecting, Alessandro was knifed to death by Lorenzino and an accomplice, despite nearly biting off one of his assailant’s fingers. Lorenzino fled and wrote a book which declared that he had murdered the duke in order to restore republican government to Florence.

Some hailed him as a virtuous tyrannicide and compared him to Brutus, the assassin of Julius Caesar. Others were bent on revenge, forcing Lorenzino to spend the rest of his life in exile looking over his shoulder, as a contemporary explained, “dying neither night or day, he died a thousand times both night and day, not of a dagger or poison, but of remorse and shame.” In February 1548 he was killed by two thugs commissioned by no less a figure than Emperor Charles V, whose daughter was the widow of Alessandro.

1473 The murder of Miguel Lucas de Iranzo

Born into a family of no particular noble distinction, Lucas de Iranzo (1453-73) rose in rank because he had been a page to prince Enrique who would become King of Castile. (Some chroniclers would suggest a homosexual relationship between the prince and Iranzo). Because of this bond he was heaped with honours: Constable, Royal Falconer, Chancellor, and member of the Council. His ascent caused jealousy among the ranks of the nobility, so for the sake of a quiet life he moved to the city of Jaén where he was governor. There he undertook civic improvements, established a mint, and strengthened fortifications — the city had only been wrested for the hands of a Muslim prince in 1446 and Andalusia was a contested frontier area. Iranzo was frequently at war with the forces of the Islamic Kingdom of Granada. As governor, Iranzo quarrelled with the local bishop, aroused the envy of local nobles, and upset the common people because of his protection of the city’s Jewish converts. 

Lucas de Iranzo was murdered on March 21, 1473 while he was praying on his knees in the main chapel of the cathedral. The act was publicly justified because of the support that the Constable had given to the Jews, and, indeed, anti-Jewish attacks soon erupted in the city. After his death, King Enrique IV arrived in Jaén incognito and went to the Council, where he inquired about certain jurors and aldermen whom he deemed to be guilty of the assassination. He ordered them to be hanged from their windows in retribution.

2000 Capture of a violent radical

Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin was born Hubert Gerold Brown but is best known as H. Rap Brown. On this date in 2002 he was apprehended by police for the murder of a Georgia police officer.

Rap Brown first came to the attention of America in the 1960s when he assumed the chairmanship of the civil rights group known as the Students’ Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, (SNCC, pronounced “snick”). Under his leadership the group’s pronouncements were anything but nonviolent. He clashed with President Johnson in a visit to the White House, telling him “I think that the majority of Black people that voted for you wish that they had gone fishing.” He called for urban guerilla warfare in an armed uprising of blacks against the country he termed the “Fourth Reich” – “Black folks built America. If America don’t come around, we should burn it down.” He played a part in a short-lived attempt to merge SNCC with the Black Panthers, after which the group collapsed and Brown became increasingly alienated from the mainstream of the civil rights struggle.

Brown was charged with inciting a riot and a firearms offence; his trial was tumultuous, marked by bombings and Brown’s going on the run for 18 months. He was convicted in 1971 and served five years in New York’s notorious Attica prison. There he converted to Islam and took his new name.

After his release he moved to Atlanta and was active in community organizing and Islamic outreach. But the polic interest in him did not die down. In 1995 he was accused of shooting a man outside of the grocery store he ran but the charges were dropped. In 1999 he was stopped by police for driving a stolen car and impersonating a police officer; when he didn’t appear for a court date, two policemen (both black) were sent to serve a warrant on him. In the gunfire that ensued both officers were shot, one fatally. Al-Amin fled but was arrested four days later. He was convicted of murder by a majority-black jury and is serving a sentence of life without parole. Efforts continue to have him released.

1649 Abolition of the House of Lords

The long-simmering quarrel between much of England’s political class and the monarchs of the new Stuart dynasty boiled over into civil war in the 1640s. The result of this Parliament-Crown conflict was the execution of King Charles I and an attempt to institute a form of republican government. On March 19, 1649, the lower house of the bicameral Parliament, the House of Commons representing the towns and shires of the country, voted to abolish the upper chamber, the House of Lords, where the heads of the noble families and England’s bishops sat.

Though a number of aristocrats had supported Parliament during the Civil War, the House of Lords was a far less radical body than the Commons. In order to counter the conservatism of the Lords, it was suggested that the upper house be abolished but the members of it allowed to sit in a unicameral body. This was resisted out of a fear that the influence of the nobility would sway the Commons unduly. Some suggested that the Lords might serve as a kind of court or a consultative body but pressure grew to do away with the House of Lords altogether. At first, the highly-influential Oliver Cromwell was opposed, calling the idea madness at a time when unity was required but he was outvoted. Th existence of a powerful chamber of aristocrats in a country which had killed its king and done away with monarchy seemed to serve no purpose and the following bill was passed:

The Commons of England assembled in Parliament, finding by too long experience, that the House of Lords is useless and dangerous to the People of England to be continued, have thought fit to Ordain and Enact, and be it Ordained and Enacted by this present Parliament, and by the Authority of the same, That from henceforth the House of Lords in Parliament, shall be and is hereby wholly abolished and taken away; And that the Lords shall from henceforth not meet or sit in the said House called The Lords House, or in any other House or Place whatsoever, as a House of Lords; nor shall Sit, Vote, Advise, Adjudge, or Determine of any matter or thing whatsoever, as a House of Lords in Parliament: Nevertheless it is hereby Declared, That neither such Lords as have demeaned themselves with Honor, Courage and Fidelity to the Commonwealth, nor their Posterities who shall continue so, shall be excluded from the Publique Councils of the Nation, but shall be admitted thereunto, and have their Free Vote in Parliament, if they shall be thereunto elected, as other persons of Interest elected and qualified thereunto, ought to have.

It is little remembered but the republican government of the 1650s reconstituted an upper chamber in 1657. Called the “Other House”, it was meant to be an assembly of nominated life (as opposed to hereditary) peers and to serve as a check on the restive Commons. It disappeared with the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660.

1906 Birth of Henny Youngman

Henry “Henny” Youngman was born to a family of Russian Jews in England but moved to New York as a child. Working with a jazzband called the Swanee Syncopaters, he began to tell jokes between numbers and developed a reputation as a comedian. Working in radio from the late 1930s he developed a style of rapid-fire one-liners with an occasional riff on the violin he always carried as a prop. He worked in nightclubs, on television, and in the movies – in fact, anywhere people would pay him. Only his death in 1998 ended his performing career. Here are some of Youngman’s innumerable jokes, amny at the expense of his wife Sadie, to whom he was actually devoted:

My wife said to me, ‘For our anniversary I want to go somewhere I’ve never been before.’ I said, ‘Try the kitchen!’

I take my wife everywhere, but she keeps finding her way back.

My wife will buy anything marked down. Last year she bought an escalator.

We always hold hands. If I let go, she shops.

My wife told me the car wasn’t running well. There was water in the carburetor. I asked where the car was, and she told me it was in the lake.

My wife and I went to a hotel where we got a waterbed. My wife called it the Dead Sea.

My wife is on a new diet. Coconuts and bananas. She hasn’t lost weight, but can she climb a tree.

Last night my wife said the weather outside was fit for neither man nor beast, so we both stayed home.

 I was so ugly when I was born, the doctor slapped my mother.

If you’re going to do something tonight that you’ll be sorry for tomorrow morning, sleep late.

I told the doctor I broke my leg in two places. He told me to quit going to those places.

My son complains about headaches. I tell him all the time: ‘When you get out of bed, it’s feet first!’