January 16

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1556

Accession of Philip II of Spain.

“I will not be the king of heretics”, proclaimed Philip Habsburg (1527-98), in his time King of Spain, Portugal, England and Ireland (briefly), the Netherlands, southern Italy, North and South America, trading ports in Africa, India and East Asia and the Philippine Islands. Ruler of a vastly wealthy empire, he spent his country into bankruptcy trying to exterminate Protestantism in Europe and drive Muslim navies out of the Mediterranean.

Born the son of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor who confronted Martin Luther, Philip was raised in Spain as a devoted Catholic. He was highly intelligent, cautious and suspicious, growing to manhood during the European religious wars when he did his utmost to confront Protestantism in all his realms and among his neighbours as well. After his first marriage to a Portuguese princess ended in her death, Philip was persuaded in 1554 to marry a cousin, Mary I of England, despite her being a decade older than he. The marriage produced no children, engendered a good deal of anti-Spanish sentiment and cost England its last remaining continental possession, Calais. When Mary died in 1558 Philip’s authority in England ended; his courtship of Mary’s sister Elizabeth was deftly avoided by the new queen.

In 1555 Charles V retired and divided his holdings between his brother Ferdinand and Philip. Ferdinand received the Holy Roman Empire and promptly agreed to a religious truce with German Protestants; Philip received the rest of Charles’s lands and vowed to wipe out Protestantism wherever he found it. This resulted in expensive wars in France where he sided with the Catholic League against the Valois kings, against England ( a war fought largely at sea), and against the Dutch Calvinist rebels and their German supporters. In the Mediterranean Philip’s navies battled Islamic pirate lords along the Barbary coast and their Turkish masters, Suleiman the Magnificent and his successors.

Philip failed to halt Protestantism in either England, against which he launched three great armadas, or the Netherlands where war raged for 80 years. He was a proponent of state-sponsored assassination and offered bounties for the death of his heretic enemies. His policy in France was not a total failure; though the Catholic League was defeated, the Protestant victor Henry of Navarre felt obliged to convert to Catholicism. Philip’s war on Islam was as unrelenting. At home he forced the descendants of Moorish converts to leave Spain, rendering the country purer in religion but poorer economically. In the Mediterranean, he lost some North African holdings but contributed to significant Turkish losses at Malta (1565) and Lepanto (1571). All this was accomplished at enormous financial cost to Spain which began a century of decline after Philip’s death.

January 15

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1892 James Naismith publishes the rules of basketball

James Naismith (1861-1939) was a Canadian physical education instructor who was charged in 1892 while working at the Springfield YMCA with the task of inventing a new game to keep rowdy pupils amused during the New England winter. His superior specified that the sport not be too rough, nor take up too much room. Naismith conceived of a game that would require participants (at first 9 a side) to throw a soccer ball into a peach basket ten feet above the gym floor. To keep physical contact to a minimum the ball could only be advanced by passing it — no dribbling or running with it was allowed.  (Early experiments had resulted in tackles, black eyes, and a concussion.)

These are the original 13 rules:

  1. The ball may be thrown in any direction with one or both hands.
  2. The ball may be batted in any direction with one or both hands (never with fist).
  3. A player cannot run with the ball, the player must throw it from the spot on which he catches it, allowance to be made for a man who catches the ball when running at a good speed.
  4. The ball must be held in or between the hands; the arms or body must not be used for holding it.
  5. No shouldering, holding, pushing, tripping or striking in any way the person of an opponent shall be allowed. The first infringement of this rule by any person shall count as a foul; the second shall disqualify him until the next goal is made or, if there was evident intent to injure the person, for the whole of the game. No substitute allowed.
  6. A foul is striking at the ball with the fist, violation of rules 3 and 4, and such described in rule 5.
  7. If either side makes three consecutive fouls, it shall count a goal for the opponents (consecutive means without the opponents in the meantime making a foul).
  8. A goal shall be made when the ball is thrown or batted from the grounds into the basket and stays there (without falling), providing those defending the goal do not touch or disturb the goal. If the ball rests on the edge, and the opponent moves the basket, it shall count as a goal.
  9. When the ball goes out of bounds it shall be thrown into the field and played by the first person touching it. In case of dispute the umpire shall throw it straight into the field. The thrower in is allowed five seconds, if he holds it longer, it shall go to the opponent. If any side persists in delaying the game, the umpire shall call a foul on them.
  10. The umpire shall be the judge of the men and shall note the fouls, and notify the referee when three consecutive fouls have been made. He shall have power to disqualify people according to Rule 5.
  11. The referee shall be judge of the ball and shall decide when the ball is in play, in bounds, to which side it belongs, and shall keep the time. He shall decide when a goal has been made and keep account of the goals with any other duties that are usually performed by a referee.
  12. The time shall be two fifteen minute halves, with five minutes rest between.
  13. The side making the most goals in that time is declared the winner. In case of a drew game may, by agreement of the captain, by continued until another goal is made.

The new sport dubbed “Basket Ball” spread throughout schools and colleges. Naismith himself became the basketball coach at the University of Kansas and has the dubious distinction of being the only mentor with a losing record (55-60) in the history of the school.

It is worth noting that Naismith himself was an accomplished athlete, representing McGill University in football, lacrosse, rugby, soccer, and gymnastics. While playing football for Springfield he was coached by Amos Alonzo Stagg and scored a touchdown in an indoor game at Madison Square Garden.

January 14

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1643 Death of an Anglican Scholar

Dr John Boyse (also spelled Bois or Boys) was born in 1560 and was given an intensive education as a child — by the age of 5 he could read the Hebrew Bible. He intended to become a physician but found that studying medicine brought on bouts of hypochondria so he switched to a career in the Church of England. 

Boyse’s scholarship in Greek was so highly regarded that he was named as one of the translators whose job it was to produce a new English Bible, the one that became the Authorized (or King James) Version. He was responsible for the books of the Apocrypha as well as assisting in other Old Testament passages. Boyse was also acclaimed for his translations of the writings of St John Chrysostom.

A 19th-century biographer said of him:

Boyse lived to eighty-two, though generally engaged eight hours a day in study. He seems to have been wise before his time as to the management of his physical system under intellectual labour, and his practice may even yet be described with advantage. He made but two meals, dinner and supper; betwixt which he never so much as drank, unless, upon trouble of flatulency, some small quantity of aqua-vitae and sugar. After meat he was careful, almost to curiosity, in picking and rubbing his teeth; esteeming that a special preservative of health; by which means he carried to his grave almost a Hebrew alphabet of teeth [twenty-two]. When that was done, he used to sit or walk an hour or more, to digest his meat, before he would go to his study. . . . He would never study at all, in later years, between supper and bed; which time, two hours at least, he would spend with his friends in discourse, hearing and telling harmless, delightful stories, whereof he was exceedingly full. . . . The posture of his body in studying was always standing, except when for ease he went upon his knees. No modern physiologist could give a better set of rules than these for a studious life, excepting as far as absence of all reference to active exercise is concerned.

In fact, Boyse was fond of walking, and was noted for never standing by a window, or going to bed with cold feet.

Knut’s Day Yeast and Weevils

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In folklore, Nuutti has meant the day after Epiphany, the seventh of January. The day was not moved to its current location on the calendar until January 13, until the early 18th century. Many of Nuut’s customs and sayings related to the end of Christmas actually belong to the day after Epiphany.

The Nuuttipuk tradition has continued alive in Finland until the last wars. At the heart of the procession of yeast or weevils were strangely dressed men or women. The dresses had the skin of a goat or sheep on their heads, their faces covered with leather or a masked face, or blackened. There was a long beard in his chin. The jacket on the stand could be leather upside down or a jacket made of straw braids. Some had in their hands a rod with a wet scepter at their head to swing people.

The nuts went from house to house, singing greetings and asking: Is there any yeast left? The peasants had to endure the buck with food and food. If the sahti was over, the goats took the pegs out of the beer kegs and sang mocking songs. In northern Finland, poor houses were also carried inside. However, if entertainment was received, the goats gave thanks and sang. The peasants responded to the costumes with their own songs.

People along the way joined the crowd passing from house to house. The procession marked on the door or aft wall of each house that the house had paid its “tax”. If the entertainment had been plentiful, as many pictures of the branch as had been offered in the house were drawn on the wall. The drawing was allowed to be in place all winter to witness the wealth and hospitality of the house.

The food and drinks collected by the buck could be gathered in one house that had been chosen to host the last games and dances of the Christmas season. The people of the village arrived there in the evening together to eat, drink and thus say goodbye during Christmas. The parties played, danced and made noise. At the end of the celebration, Christmas straws were carried out of the house.

January 12

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1700

The death of a Canadian saint.

The colony of New France was in a perilous state in the middle of the seventeenth century. A number of private corporations had failed to establish a secure position in the St Lawrence valley; few colonists were attracted to the harsh landscape; infant mortality was high; and attacks by native tribes discouraged settlement. To this tenuous toehold came Frenchwoman Marguerite Bourgeoys in 1653.

Marguerite had been recruited to the colony by Paul Chomedey de Maissoneuve, the Governor of Ville-Marie (later Montreal) who brought her, 15 girls searching for husbands, and 100 settler-soldiers to hold the little fort. It was Marguerite’s job to care for the marriageable women, find suitable mates for them and instruct children. A cloistered community of nuns was unsuitable for the situation so Marguerite developed a community of secular sisters, a dangerous innovation in the eyes of some church leaders. She built the town’s first church, set up a school in a stable and recruited women to form the Congregation Notre-Dame which would teach the children of colonists and natives across the colony. She journeyed to France several times on recruitment missions and efforts to keep her community from being forced to accept a lifestyle of seclusion. Marguerite was successful in all these efforts and when she died in 1700 she had the reputation of a saint. She was officially canonized in 1982 by Pope John Paul II.

January 11

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1815 Birth of the founder of Canada

John Alexander Macdonald was born in Scotland but emigrated to Upper Canada with his family in 1820. They settled in Kingston where Macdonald trained for a career in the law. In 1838 he was in Toronto where he famously defended an accused rebel from the 1837 uprising. His law practice and business thrived; he acquired large real estate holdings and was named the first president of Manufacturers Life Insurance.

Macdonald entered politics first as an alderman in Kingston and then as a representative in the Legislative Assembly, serving in a Conservative administration as receiver general. Canadian political life was in a state of flux; reformers were making demands for responsible government; there were calls to split the united Province of Canada. Macdonald walked a careful line in an alliance with Québec politicians, serving as joint premier from 1857-62.

In the 1860s there was widespread interest in the colonies of British North America for some sort of union and increased independence from Great Britain. Macdonald took part in conferences to help bring those aims to fruition. In 1867 a new nation emerged – a confederation of Ontario, Québec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia to form the Dominion of Canada. Macdonald assumed the office of Prime Minister.

The Canada of 1867 was an enclave in the eastern part of the continent; Macdonald had a vision of a nation that would embrace other British colonies, resist American encroachment, and stretch to the Arctic and the Pacific Oceans. Canada soon acquired the vast territories of the Hudson Bay Company (which became the Northwest Territories), admitted the provinces of Manitoba, British Columbia and Prince Edward Island, and began railway projects to bind the country together.

A financial scandal brought down the Macdonald government in 1874 but Sir John (as he now was) returned to power four years later and remained Prime Minister until his death in 1891. These last terms brought about the completion of the transcontinental railway, the defeat of the Northwest Rebellion, and the implementation of a high-tariff National Policy to protect Canadian industry from American competition.

Macdonald was undeniably the greatest Canadian; the equivalent of George Washington,  Alfred the Great, or Giuseppe Mazzini. He has fallen into disfavour in the eyes of today’s hypersensitive pearl-clutchers for his discouragement of Chinese immigration, the execution of Louis Riel, and his part in the establishment of Indian Residential schools. It is the fashion of the day for bien-pensants to regard this country as a racist hell-hole and, thus, Macdonald is now the equivalent of Adolf Hitler, Jack the Ripper, or J.K. Rowling. Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.

January 10

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by gerryadmin

1840 Birth of the Penny Post

Here are images of stamps from Canada, the USA, and France.

Here are images of British stamps.

Notice any difference? Of course, you do. British stamps, uniquely in the world, do not carry the name of the country that issues them. Only the portrait of the current monarch is needed to denote them as a product of Great Britain, the country that invented the modern postal system. A 19th-century account explains:


The 10th of January 1840 will be a memorable day in the history of civilization, as that on which the idea of a Penny Postage was first exemplified. The practical benefits derived from this reform, are so well known that it is needless to dwell upon them. Let us rather turn attention for a few moments to the remarkable, yet most modest man, whom his species have to thank for this noble invention.


Rowland Hill, born in 1795, was devoted through all his early years, even from boyhood, to the business of a teacher. At the age of forty, we find him engaged in conducting the colonization of South Australia upon the plan of Mr. Edward
Gibbon. Wakefield, for which his powers of organization gave him a great advantage, and in which his labours were attended with a high degree of success. It was about the year 1835, that he turned his attention to the postal system of the country, with the conviction that it was susceptible of reform. Under enormous difficulties he contrived to collect information upon the subject, so as to satisfy himself, and enable him to satisfy others, that the public might be benefited by a cheaper postage, and yet the revenue remain ultimately undiminished. The leading facts on which he based his conclusions have been detailed in an authoritative document. ‘The cost of a letter to the Post-Office he saw was divisible into three branches.

First, that of receiving the letter and preparing it for its journey, which, under the old regime, was troublesome enough, as the postage varied first in proportion to the distance it had to travel; and again, according as it was composed of one, two, or three sheets of paper, each item of charge being exorbitant. For instance, a letter from London to Edinburgh, if single, was rated at 1s. 1½d.; if double, at 2s. 3d.; and if treble, at 3s. 4½d.; any-the minutest-inclosure being treated as an additional sheet. The duty of taxing letters, or writing upon each of them its postage, thus became a complicated transaction, occupying much time and employing the labour of many clerks. This, and other duties, which we will not stop to specify, comprised the first of the three branches of expense which each letter imposed on the office. The second was the cost of transit from post-office to post-office. And this expense, even for so great a distance as from London to Edinburgh, proved, upon careful examination, to be no more than the ninth part of a farthing!


The third branch was that of delivering the letter and receiving the postage-letters being for the most part sent away unpaid. Rowland Hill saw that, although a considerable reduction of postage might and ought to be made, even if the change rested there, yet that, if he could cheapen the cost to the Post office, the reduction to the public could be carried very much further, without entailing on the revenue any ultimate loss of serious amount. He therefore addressed himself to the simplification of the various processes. If, instead of charging according to the number of sheets or scraps of paper, a weight should be fixed, below which a letter, whatever might be its contents, should only bear a single charge, much trouble to the office would be spared, while an unjust mode of taxation would be abolished.

This led to the proposal for pre-payment by stamped labels, whereby the Post-office is altogether relieved from the duty of collecting post-age. Thus, one by one, were the impediments all removed to the accomplishment of a grand object—uniformity of postage throughout the British Isles.’

January 9

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by gerryadmin

1995 Death of Peter Cook

Peter Cook (1937-95) was the most important comedic figure in the English-speaking world in the last half of the 20th century. He may rightly be considered the godfather of satire and the inspiration for innumerable writers, comedians, and producers.

He began his career in the famous Footlights of Cambridge University, an institution that nurtured such talents as Eric Idle, Hugh Laurie, and Douglas Adams. Cook joined with Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett, and Jonathan Miller in 1960 to form the revue “Beyond the Fringe” which was a success in London and Broadway. His financial support of the satirical magazine Private Eye allowed that publication to continue through difficult years. Cook’s partnership with Dudley Moore produced classic sketches and a genial collaboration in movies The Wrong Box and Bedazzled but their relationship foundered in later years.

Cook, like many comedic geniuses, was not a happy man and suffered from alcoholism before dying of a gastro-intestinal haemorrhage. 

Here is Cook in one of his most famous moments.

January 8

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by gerryadmin

1908 Birth of Fearless Nadia

Few performers have had the cross-cultural impact of Fearless Nadia, born Mary Ann Evans in Perth Australia. She was the daughter of a British soldier who moved with her parents to India at an early age. When her father died in World War I the family moved to Peshawar on the Northwest Frontier where she learned to ride and shoot. These skills came in handy when she took up a career in the circus (her mother had been a belly dancer and may have inspired her show-business ambitions). On the advice of a fortune teller she changed her name to Nadia.

In the 1930s she attracted the attention of movie mogul JBH Wadia who thought that her height, blonde hair, and blue eyes would prove an attraction in action films. She made over 40 cinematic appearances with her bigggest hit as masked adventuress “Hunterwali”. Doing her own stunts, she sang and danced her way into the hearts of the Indian move-going public who were dazzled by her racy athletic performances. One critic noted: “A hero in a male-dominated universe, she was a star, a stuntwoman, a horse-rider, roof-climber and gravity-defier, all rolled into one. She brandished a whip at the drop of a hat. Wearing a mask, she sent men flying with a thwack. She ran atop trains and made lions her pet.”

At the age of 53 she married Homi, the brother of JBH Wadia, and thus became Nadia Wadia. The couple had long postponed their nuptials due to the opposition of his traditionally-minded mother.

Fearless Nadia died in 1996 but her career is now undergoing a posthumous reassessment and she is hailed as a proto-feminist and pioneer. Her film 1940 Diamond Queen” is said to have “mixed stunts, slapstick and important issues such as fighting corruption, advocating education and literacy and exhorting Indian women to rise up against chauvinism and patriarchy.”

January 7

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by gerryadmin

St Lucian’s Day

It’s about time we honoured another obscure saint. Today it is St. Lucian, surnamed of Antioch, born at Samosata, in Syria. He lost his parents whilst very young; and being come to the possession of his estate, which was very considerable, he distributed all among the poor. He became a great proficient in rhetoric and philosophy, and applied himself to the study of the holy scriptures under one Macarius at Edessa. Convinced of the obligation annexed to the character of priesthood, which was that of devoting himself entirely to the service of God and the good of his neighbour, he did not content himself with inculcating the practice of virtue both by word and example; he also undertook to purge the scriptures, that is, both the Old and New Testament, from the several faults that had crept into them, either by reason of the inaccuracy of transcribers, or the malice of heretics. Some are of opinion, that as to the Old Testament, he only revised it, by comparing different editions of the Septuagint: others contend, that he corrected it upon the Hebrew text, being well versed in that language. Certain, however, it is that St. Lucian’s edition of the scriptures was much esteemed, and was of great use to St. Jerome.

St. Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, says, that Lucian remained some years separated from the Catholic communion at Antioch, under three successive bishops, namely, Domnus, Timeus, and Cyril. If it was for too much favouring Paul of Samosata, condemned at Antioch in the year 269, he must have been deceived, for want of a sufficient penetration into the impiety of that dissembling heretic. It is certain, at least, that he died in the Catholic communion; which also appears from a fragment of a letter written by him to the church of Antioch, and still extant in the Alexandrian Chronicle. Though a priest of Antioch, we find him at Nicomedia, in the year 303, when Dioclesian first published his edicts against the Christians. He there suffered a long imprisonment for a the faith; for the Paschal Chronicle quotes these words from a letter which he wrote out of his dungeon to Antioch: “All the martyrs salute you. I inform you that the pope Anthimus (bishop of Nicomedia) has finished his course of martyrdom.’ This happened in 303. Yet Eusebius informs us, that St. Lucian did not arrive himself at the crown of martyrdom till after the death of St. Peter of Alexandria, in 311, so that he seems to have continued nine years in prison.

At length he was brought before the governor, or, as the acts intimate, the emperor himself, for the words which Eusebius uses, may imply either. On his trial, he presented to the judge an excellent apology for the Christian faith. Being remanded to prison, an order was given that no food should be allowed him; but, when almost dead with hunger, dainty meats that had been offered to idols, were set before him, which he would not touch. It was not in itself unlawful to eat of such meats, as St. Paul teaches, except where it would give scandal to the weak, or when it was exacted as an action of idolatrous superstition, as was the case here. Being brought a second time before the tribunal, he would give no other answer to all the questions put to him, but this: “I am a Christian.” He repeated the same whilst on the rack, and he finished his glorious course in prison, either by famine, or according to St. Chrysostom, by the sword. His acts relate many of his miracles, with other, particulars; as that, when bound and chained down on his back in prison, he consecrated the divine mysteries upon his own breast, and communicated the faithful that were present: this we also read in Philostorgius, the Arian historian. St. Lucian suffered at Nicomedia, where Maximinus II. resided.