Christmas Every Day

1883 Krakatoa blows its top

The volcano on the island of Krakatoa in the Dutch East Indies had been unusually active for months in 1883, with numerous earthquakes and eruptions of ash and smoke. On the morning of August 27, 1883, these activities reached an astonishing and deadly climax. In four enormous explosions, the island self-destructed with consequences felt around the planet.

The first two explosions set off tsunamis that raced, as tall as 90 feet high, toward neighbouring islands. The third and fourth explosions may have made more noise than anything else in recorded history; they were heard in Australia and India, causing listeners 3,000 miles away to think they were hearing gunfire; they ruptured the ear drums of sailors on ships 40 miles away. The energy released in the final explosion tore the mountain apart; it has been estimated to have been many times more powerful than the largest hydrogen bomb exploded by humans. The air waves ripped around the globe several times and were still being felt days later.

The damage was breath-taking; the tsunamis and lava eruptions killed tens of thousands of inhabitants in the Indies. The clouds of ash that poured forth caused the sky to darken for years and produced sunsets so red and vivid that fire departments in North America were summoned to put out what were thought to be local fires. For months, the moon seemed to be blue or green and a ring was observed around the sun. The ash spewed into the skies reflected more sunlight than usual, causing global temperatures to drop and altering weather patterns for years.

Despite the title of the 1968 disaster movie Krakatoa, East of Java, the island is, in fact, west of Java.

1823 Kindness is rewarded

This site often marks the great, the horrible, and the momentous, but today we pause to consider the actions of six kind people, five of them poor, and undistinguished except by virtue, and the rich man who posthumously recompensed them.

On the 25^th of August 1823, took place one of those distributions of the Montyon prizes which form so pleasant a feature in the social condition of France. The Baron de Montyon, or Monthyon, was a wealthy man, who, during the second half of the last century, occupied a distinguished place in the estimation of his countrymen; chiefly in various judicial capacities, in which his probity and honour were universally admitted. He established, at various periods of his life, no less than eight prizes, to be awarded to worthy recipients by the Académie des Sciences, the Académie Française, and the Faculté de Medicine. They were briefly as follows: In 1780, he invested 12,000 francs, the interest to be spent as an annual prize for inventions and discoveries useful in the arts. In 1782, he invested an equal sum, for an annual prize for any literary work likely to be most useful to society; and a similar one for lessening the unhealthiness of trades and manufactures. In 1783, another of equal amount for the benefit of the poor of Poitou and Berri; one for assisting poor men of letters; one for simplifying certain special mechanical arts; and one for rewarding acts of virtue among the poor. In 1787, and subsequent years, he established other prizes—all for good and worthy objects. The revolution drove him to Switzerland, and then to England, whence he did not return to France till 1815. His prize for virtue had been suppressed by the revolutionists; but he took care, by his will, to remodel it on a permanent and enlarged basis. This good man died in 1820, at the advanced age of eighty-seven.

The distribution in 1823 will serve as well as any other, to show the mode in which the Montyon prize for virtue is awarded. Five prizes were given to five persons—four women and one man. One of the women, although her husband earned but sixteenpence a day, had taken into her house and supported a poor destitute female neighbour. Another, a milliner, had for twelve years supported the mistress under whom she had served as an apprentice, and who was afflicted with an incurable malady. A third had, in a similar way, supported for seventeen years a mistress under whom she had acted as a servant, and who had fallen into abject poverty. A fourth, who was a portress, had shewn her charity in a somewhat similar way. These four persons received one thousand francs each. But the chief prize was awarded to an old clothesman, Joseph Bécard.

During the French Revolution, one M. Chaviffiac, of Arras, had first been imprisoned, and then put to death. Many years afterwards, in 1812, his widow came to Paris, to obtain, if possible, some property which had belonged to her husband. In this she failed, and she was reduced to the lowest pitch of want. Bécard, when a servant to the Marquis de Steinfort, at Arras, had known the Chavilliacs as persons of some consideration in the place; and happening now to meet the poor lady in her adversity, he resolved to struggle for her as well as for himself, for grief had made her blind and helpless. He begged coarse food for himself, in order that he might buy better food for her out of his small incomings as an old clothesman. She became ill, and occupied the only bed he possessed; and he slept on a chair for three months—or rather kept resolutely awake during the greater part of the night, in order that he might attend upon the sick lady. Pain and suffering made her peevish and sour of temper; but he bore it all patiently, never once departing from his custom of treating her as a lady—higher in birth and natural condition than himself. This life continued for eleven years, she being the whole of the time entirely dependent on that noble-spirited but humble man. The lady died in May 1823. Bécard gave a small sum to a curé, to offer up prayers for her soul; he carved with his own hands a small wooden cross; and he placed it, together with an inscription, on her grave. Such was the man to whom the Académie Française, acting under the provisions of the Montyon bequest, awarded a prize of fifteen hundred francs, a gold medal, and honourable commendation in presence of the assembled academicians.

These prizes, often considered the forerunners of the Nobel Prizes, continue to be offered. One of them was awarded in 1879 to the French-Canadian writer Louis Fréchette.

410  Visigoths sack Rome

After decades of wandering through the Roman empire looking for a place to settle, battling other barbarians at times, at other times fighting Roman armies, the Visigothic horde under its king Alaric trudged down the Italian peninsula in the summer of 410. The bribes, diplomacy and military force that had kept Alaric at bay were now absent; he had besieged Rome twice before and now that his extortionate demands were being rebuffed by the Emperor Honorius (safe in Ravenna) he meant to take and loot Rome.

By  this time, Rome was no longer a politically important city; the capital of the West was in Ravenna, the East was governed from Constantinople. It had been bled dry of its wealth by earlier barbarian threats, but it was still a large and prosperous town that Alaric was intent on plundering. On August 24 his troops entered the city and subjected it to a thorough but not atrocious sack. The Visigoths were by this time Christians (though of the Arian variety, now out of fashion in Rome) and they allowed some churches to be used as sanctuary. Nevertheless, there was the usual murder, rape, pillaging and slave-taking before Alaric called a halt and his forces withdrew.

Rome, in physical terms, would undergo worse treatment by invaders. In 455, the Vandals would launch a much more harmful attack; in 846, 11,000 Arab raiders looted St Peter’s Basilica;  in 1527, German troops, many of them Lutherans, sacked Rome in what was probably the most destructive attack the city ever endured. But the psychological effect of the 410 Fall of Rome was enormous. It was, said St Jerome, as if “the whole world had died in one city.” It appalled the ancient world and led many to blame the adoption of Christianity for the destruction. This charge summoned forth St Augustine’s epic The City of God which not only rebutted such accusations but laid forth a Christian scheme for understanding all of history.

In the long run the 410 attack would be overshadowed by the fall of the entire Roman empire in the West. In 476, a barbarian general took the imperial crown from the last emperor and sent the boy home.

Firsts and Lasts

1485 Last of the Plantagenet kings

At the Battle of Bosworth usurper Henry Tudor defeats Richard III who is killed, ending the Plantagenet dynasty whose branches of York and Lancaster had been fighting the Wars of the Roses. Tudor becomes Henry VII.

1642 First day of the English Civil War

Charles I, involved in years of quarrelling with Parliament, raises his royal standard at Nottingham signifying that he was at war with his opponents. Seven years later he will be beheaded by his Parliamentary captors.

1831 Nat Turner’s first victim

Slave Nat Turner began his rebellion with an order to “kill the white people”. His rebels in Virgina murdered 60 whites before they were quelled after two days, leading to murderous reprisals against southern blacks. Turner was executed in November.

1953 Devil’s Island closes

The French government had operated a penal colony in their Guiana colony since 1852. Devil’s Island was known for its harsh conditions and tropical diseases; its most famous prisoner was the falsely-accused Captain Alfred Dreyfus. Few convicts ever returned to France; fewer escaped. The last prison was closed after severe public criticism. The island now houses part of the French space program.

1989 First pitcher to 5,000 K

Nolan Ryan, who played for the New York Mets, California Angels, Houston Astros and Texas Rangers, holds a number of baseball records: the only pitcher with 7 no-hitters, the only player to last 27 seasons, the fewest hits allowed per inning, and the leader in strikeouts. On this date in 1989 he struck out Ricky Henderson of the Oakland A’s to become the first pitcher to strike out 5,000 batters. He would go on to strike out another 714 before retiring in 1993.

1561 Mary, Queen of Scots returns to Scotland

“It cam wi’ a lass and it will gang wi’ a lass!” Such was the prophecy supposedly made by King James V of Scotland at the birth of his only child, Mary, in 1542. The Stuart dynasty had originated in the marriage of a Bruce daughter to a Stuart male and the king seemed to fear that his line would end with his daughter. It was not an accurate prophecy but his daughter did live a tumultuous and, in the end, tragic life.

Mary was half-French; her mother was Marie de Guise, a member of an ultra-Catholic royal clique. To keep Mary safe from the clutches of Henry VIII who wished to force a marriage with his son Edward, the child was whisked away to France where she was raised as a Renaissance princess. She was married to Prince Francis, heir to the throne, and in 1559 when he became French king she became Queen of both France and Scotland. Perhaps, just as important was her claim to be the true Queen of England — she was the grand-daughter of Henry VIII’s sister and after 1558 the ruler, Elizabeth, was a Protestant.

Her reign in France was short-lived because Francis, always sickly, died in late 1560 of a brain infection. The French packed her off the next year to Scotland where she could be useful to them as an anti-English ally. Mary was, however, politically maladroit and totally unprepared for the backwardness and political violence she discovered in her home country. Much of the ruling class had become Protestant and would not submit to a woman who was more French than Scottish and a Catholic to boot. Intrigue, murder, religious strife and sexual hijinks would mark her years in power.

 

A good date for things blowing up

1863 Union forces bombard Fort Sumter

The Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in 1861 marked the beginning of the American Civil War. In 1863 Union forces returned to Charleston harbour but failed in numerous attempts to destroy or capture the fort which remained in Southern hands until 1865.

1943 The Schweinfurt Raid

In an attempt to disable the German aircraft industry, the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force launched massive attacks on Schweinfurt and Magdeburg. The simultaneous raid was designed to disperse Luftwaffe fighter attacks but bad timing and lack of fighter protection made the  raid a disaster. 60 bombers and their crews were lost plus several of their escorts. The folly of long-range penetration without fighter coverage persisted until another raid on Schweinfurt later in the year proved even more catastrophic.

1958 Failure of Pioneer 0

The Space Race between the USA and the USSR was just getting started and rocket technology was still unreliable when an ambitious unmanned lunar expedition was launched. The Pioneer craft was to go into orbit around the moon with a camera and various instruments but less than four minutes into the flight the Thor rocket carrying the payload exploded.

2005 Terror bombing in Bangladesh

Inspired by the success of the Islamic jihad in Afghanistan, the Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (the Awakened Muslim Masses of Bangladesh) and the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen (the Assembly of Holy Warriors) combined forces in 2005 to set off 500 bombs all across Bangladesh. The groups wish to replace the secular state with a sharia-ruled government and force stricter observance of Islam. Though leaders of the groups were tried and executed, fundamentalist violence continues to plague the country.

1975 Assassination of Bangladesh’s founder

In the early hours of August 15, 1975 detachments of the Bangladesh Army roared through Dhaka as part of a military coup. Some were stationed to prevent possible opposition, others were bent on assassinating government figures. One unit backed by tanks attacked the presidential palace and murdered the country’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and members of his family. A junta of army officers was installed to rule the country.

Mujib, as he was called, had been the leading figure in obtaining his country’s independence. In 1947 the territories of British India were partitioned into a Hindu-majority India and two Muslim-dominated areas dubbed East and West Pakistan. The latter were separated by a thousand miles, and different cultures and languages. The West dominated the government and declared Urdu to be the official language despite the fact that the easterners largely spoke Bengali. Resentment against this enforced inferiority resulted in a 1971 rebellion in the east. Mujib, who had called for civil disobedience and resistance, was taken prisoner and the West Pakistani army tried to suppress the rising with enormous brutality including a campaign of rape; millions were displaced, 300,000 were said to have been killed and 200,000 women raped. The actions against women were allegedly supported by Muslim religious leaders, who declared that Bengali women were gonimoter maal (public property). This prompted Indian intervention and the result was a nasty war, ending in the independence of the east in a new state known as Pakistan. Mujib was released and returned home in 1972 to become the country’s first president.

Though Bangladesh was now independent, unrest continued. The country was devastated by the civil war, left-wing rebels wanted to impose communism, and Muslim fundamentalists objected to Mujib’s secular approach. Corruption was endemic, and was blamed for the famine conditions in many parts of the country. Mujib attempted to centralize power in himself with a new constitution that banned all political parties but his own; his paramilitary forces committed numerous atrocities. The situation was ripe for a coup.

After Mujib’s murder, the military junta ruled for a time before it too was overthrown. Bangladesh has suffered from political instability ever since, though at the present time the government is democratic and headed by Mujib’s daughter, Sheikh Hasina.

1961

Construction of the Berlin Wall

At the end of World War II, the the map of the defeated Germany was considerably altered. Parts of the nation were lopped off and given to neighbouring countries while the remaining territory was divided into four, each ruled by one of the occupying powers. There were sectors for the French, British, Americans, and USSR; the old capital Berlin, now deep in the Soviet sector, was similarly divided. In 1948 Stalin tried to drive the Western powers out of Berlin by blockading the city but the Berlin Airlift thwarted that.

Western Germany, or the German Federal Republic, emerged out of the French, British, and American sectors, democratic with a market economy; in the East, the German Democratic Republic, was a Soviet puppet state with a communist command economy. The prosperity gap that increasingly separated the two to the benefit of the westerners and political freedoms led to a desire on the part of GDR residents to migrate west. Before 1961, 3.5 million Germans had done so, perhaps as much of 20% of the population. Particularly irksome to the eastern government was the loss of young, educated Germans to a brain drain, with the relaxed border in Berlin as the faucet. Consequently at the urging of their Soviet masters, the populace of the city awoke on the morning of August 13, 1961 to the construction of the Antifaschistischer Schutzwall, the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart,  a barrier separating East and West Berlin, supposedly designed to keep the nasty capitalists out of the East German paradise. Hundreds of refugees fled over the makeshift border while it was being erected but it soon enclosed West Berlin in a ring of concrete, barbed wire, mines, dog patrols, and a no-man’s land death strip.

The Wall, which was eventually pierced in 1989, may have been of economic benefit to the GDR (ending the black market and enabling tighter control) but it was an enormous spiritual black eye to the communist project. If you had to make a prison of your own country, how could you proclaim the benefits of a Marxist society? Both Presidents Kennedy and Reagan scored propaganda coups by coming to the Wall and demanding its removal.

1965

The Watts Riots

A post-war migration of southern African Americans to the Los Angeles area created urban tensions as restrictive housing laws created largely black sections of the eastern and southern parts of the city. These shady real estate practices and perceived racial bias by the Los Angeles Police Department created resentment in areas such as Watts and Compton. On August 11, 1965 a routine evening traffic stop resulted in six days of rioting that caused deaths, enormous damage, and the summoning of the armed forces to subdue the unrest.

Marquette Frye was arrested for drunkenly driving his mother’s 1955 Buick, but a scuffle broke out when bystanders and Frye’s family protested his treatment. In addition to taking Marquette into custody, his mother and brother were also arrested. Guns were drawn, back-up was summoned, crowds gathered, and bottles were thrown. Despite attempts by community leaders to calm the situation, rumours spread about police brutality, and rioters took to the streets, vandalizing buildings and menacing white passersby. After two days of disturbances, the California National Guard put 2,300 reservists on to the streets to join 1,600 police, all to little avail. Arson was widespread, mobs enforced-no-go areas, and police were attacked; it was estimated that 30,000 inhabitants participated in the riots. The LAPD responded with mass arrests and ordered a curfew; bit by bit they took back the neigbourhoods and by August 16 peace had been restored.

The toll was high: 34 deaths, 1,038 injured, 3,438 arrested; hundreds of buildings and businesses over a 50-square-mile area were burnt or looted. A commission determined that a number of racial inequities in employment, housing and education were to blame. This was not to be the last major race riot in the 1960s.

1680

The Pueblo Revolt

Beginning in the mid-16th century, Spanish troops and settlers penetrated into the territory of the Pueblo in what is now New Mexico. Though royal Spanish law was remarkably tolerant for the time, its enforcement in distant parts of the empire was weak, leading to the enslavement and forced conversion of natives. Franciscan missionaries evangelized the Pueblo and won many to at least a superficial attachment to Christianity but most natives continued various aspects of their traditional spirituality including psychoactive drugs and kachina dances. Drought conditions and raids by the Apache added to the resentment against the Spanish occupiers and prompted a number of local unsuccessful revolts.

In 1680 a Pueblo leader named Popé (or Po’pay) engineered a conspiracy against the Spanish settlers and their missionaries. The notoriously fragmented natives had no tradition of political unity, but such was their hatred of their suppression that they listened to Popé’s blandishments, which promised an end to the drought and a return to prosperity if the foreigners were expelled and the Pueblo returned to the worship of their old gods. On August 10 they rose up en masse and began murdering hundreds of priests and colonists. Columns of frightened Spanish retreated from the territory into the safety of Texas, leaving the Pueblo once again in charge of their destiny. Popé travelled through the land, urging the destruction of all Spanish churches, and buildings, and discouraging the agriculture that the newcomers had brought: the cultivation of fruit trees, wheat and barley, and raising livestock such as cattle and sheep.

For twelve years the Pueblo maintained their independence but the droughts did not end with the return of the old gods, nor did Apache raids cease. When a new Spanish governor invaded again, he promised clemency for the rebels and distributed food; a peace was agreed upon. There would be further outbreaks of violence but, in general conditions, were better and Spanish oppression diminished after the revolt.