Christmas Every Day

1799 Jeanne Geneviève Garnerin takes a pioneering jump

Late in the 18th century, the French were fascinated by the globe aérostatique, hot-air ballooning. Since the Montgolfier brothers made the first ascent in 1783, the possibilities for air travel — military, commercial, recreational — tickled the French imagination. Women were among the first passengers and in 1799 Jeanne Geneviève Garnerin (neé Labrosse) became the first woman to fly solo and pilot a lighter-than-air craft when she took a hydrogen balloon aloft.

Mme Garnerin was made of very brave stuff. Her husband André-Jacques Garnerin, who would be named the Official Aeronaut of France, had been the first to jump from a balloon and survive with the aid of a parachute. On October 12, 1799 Jeanne Geneviève took a balloon to an altitude of 900 meters and separated her basket from the balloon, controlling her descent with an attached parachute — the first woman to do so. They later filed a patent for  “a device called a parachute, intended to slow the fall of the basket after the balloon bursts. Its vital organs are a cap of cloth supporting the basket and a circle of wood beneath and outside of the parachute and used to hold it open while climbing: it must perform its task at the moment of separation from the balloon, by maintaining a column of air.”

1303 Death of an ambitious pope

Since the middle of the eleventh century, popes had been asserting their power over secular rulers. They claimed that the spiritual authority ordained by God held precedence over mere earthly power. They had deposed kings and emperors and named substitute rulers; they had precipitated civil wars; they had claimed dominion over entire kingdoms and excommunicated princes right, left and centre. By 1300 they had gutted the power of their chief rival, the Holy Roman Emperor, and begun to quarrel with the new centralized monarchies of western Europe.

Benedetto Caetani, elected Pope Boniface VIII in dubious fashion in 1294, had twice forbidden the kings of England and France from taxing the Church in their countries. The King of France, Philip IV “the Fair”, responded by cutting off money from the French church to the papacy. Boniface replied by hinting that he might exercise his right of deposing Philip who immediately began a campaign of vilification of the pope including circulating forged documents.

This led Boniface on November 17, 1302 to issue the proclamation Unam Sanctam, which asserted the doctrine of papal monarchy in the most uncompromising terms ever. He asserted (1) there is but one true Church, outside of which there is no salvation; (2) the Church’s head is Christ, and His representative the pope is above, and can direct, all kings; (3) whoever resists the highest power ordained by God resists Himself; and (4) it is necessary for salvation that all humans should be subject to the Roman Pontiff.

Philip the Fair now summoned a kingdom-wide assembly, and before it he accused Boniface of every imaginable crime from murder to black magic to sodomy to keeping a demon as a pet. A small French military force crossed into Italy in 1303 and took Boniface prisoner at his palace at Anagni with the intention of bringing him to France for trial. The French plan failed—local townspeople freed Boniface a couple of days later—but the proud old pope died shortly thereafter, outraged that anyone had dared to lay hands on his sacred person.

This marks the beginning of the waning of medieval papal power. In 1305 the cardinals elected the Frenchman Clement V who submitted to the French king on the question of clerical taxation and publicly burned Unam Sanctam, conceding that Philip the Fair, in accusing Pope Boniface, had shown “praiseworthy zeal.” A few years after his election, Clement moved the papacy from Rome to Avignon in southern France, the start of the period of papal humiliation known as “The Babylonian Captivity”.

680 The Battle of Karbala

Though relatively bloodless, few combats in Islamic history have been as consequential as the Battle of Karbala.

When Mohammed died in 632, rulership of the Muslim world fell to a series of four caliphs or “successors”: Abu-Bakr, Mohammed’s father-in-law; Umar; Uthman; and Ali, Mohammed’s cousin and son-in-law. The turbulence of the time may be seen in the fact that the last three were all assassinated. At the death of Ali in 661, the succession was disputed with a regional governor named Muawiyah winning more support than Ali’s oldest son Hasan. Muawiyah would establish a new dynasty, the Umayyads, and move the capital of the Islamic world from Mecca to Damascus.

Resistance to this new caliphate was led by Husayn, Ali’s second son, whose followers came to be known as Shi’ites. Husayn claimed that in establishing a dynasty the Umayyads had forfeited their right to rule. On October 10, 680 Husayn’s caravan was attacked by Umayyad forces and everyone in it killed or taken prisoner.  This Battle of Karbala became part of Shi’ite sacred history, inspiring further resistance and engendering the annual Ashura period of mourning. The split in the Islamic world between the majority Sunni and minority Shia branches remains unhealed to this day.

Given the recent events in Afghanistan and the supposed appearance of a newer and more modern Taliban 2.0, I present this post from last year.

2012 Attempted murder of Malala Yousafzai

The Taliban group of Afghani Islamists arose out of their country’s war against the occupying Soviet army and subsequent struggles against rival rebel groups. Their strict interpretation of Muslim law (combined with Pashtun tribal codes) was enforced when the group took power and ruled Afghanistan from 1996-2001. Banned were modern democracy, women’s rights, music, popular entertainments, television and the internet. The Taliban might well have consolidated power and ruled for a long time, if they had not chosen to let the country be used by jihadist groups conducting anti-western terrorism. One of these groups was al-Qaeda.

In September, 2001 an al-Qaeda operation against the United States attacked New York and Washington, killing almost 3,000 people. The Taliban expected the U.S. to retaliate but expected that they could weather the cruise missiles and air strikes that were anticipated. They refused American demands to hand over the leadership of al-Qaeda and close terrorist training camps. On October 7, 2001 a western coalition attacked Afghanistan and soon drove the Taliban from power, with its cadres fleeing across the border to Pakistan whose government unofficially sheltered them. Since then they have attempted to retake Afghanistan and have conducted a long guerrilla war against the new Afghani government and western military forces.

In the areas the Taliban occupied they opposed education for girls and destroyed over a hundred schools that had taken in female students. One such girl student was 11-year-old Malala Yousafzai, whose father had long supported education for every child. Malala and her father agreed to cooperate with the BBC in publicizing the plight of girls under the Taliban; she wrote a blog, appeared on television and petitioned foreigners to help her cause, becoming along the way famous for her precocious opposition to the Taliban. Death threats were made against the family, quite realistic ones in light of the fact that the Taliban had decided to kill her. On October 9, 2012 a gunman boarded a school bus on which she was riding and shot her, hitting her in the brain and wounding two other girls. Malala was transferred to Germany and later to Britain where surgeons repaired the damage and allowed her to resume her campaigns.

The assassination attempt backfired in that it made of a hero of Malala who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize. She continues to be an advocate for the education of girls and peace in her homeland.

Don Larsen’s Perfect Game

It was the fifth game of the 1956 World Series, between the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers, with both teams having won two games. Yankee Stadium was crammed with 64,519 spectators, watching Brooklyn’s Sal “The Barber” Maglie on the mound for the Bums and Don Larsen pitching for the Bronx Bombers. Maglie had earned his nickname because his high and inside fastballs gave batters a close shave; Larsen was having his best year, with an 11-5 record and a 3.26 ERA.

The Yankee lineup was full of stars such as Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Enos Slaughter, and Billy Martin – but the Dodgers’ lineup was equally stellar: Jim Gilliam leading off, followed by four future Hall of Famers in Peewee Reese, Duke Snider, Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella. On this day in 1956 not one of the Brooklynites was able to get a hit; none of them reached base on a walk or an error. Using only 97 pitches, and shunning a windup, Don Larsen retired 27 Dodgers in a row, thus pitching the first, and only, perfect game in World Series history.

Listen to Vin Scully call the last pitch of the game:

1813 The death of Tecumseh

The War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain was fought at sea and along the Canadian border. Allied with the British were many native tribes, resentful at American expansion into their traditional territories. A tribal confederacy under the Shawnee chief Tecumseh and his mystical brother known as The Prophet had consistently opposed yielding land to the Americans but had suffered a number of reversals.

In the autumn of 1813, the British and their native allies were being pushed back from positions below the Great Lakes. Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry had won the Battle of Lake Erie capturing an entire British squadron, which prompted the famous phrase, “we have met the enemy and he is ours” and ashore the future president William Henry Harrison was also successful. He recaptured Detroit and launched an invasion of Upper Canada. On this day Harrison’s forces met a British army under Henry Procter backed by hundreds of Tecumseh’s warrior in what is now southern Ontario. The British wilted under an American charge but Tecumseh’s forces stood their ground. In the fighting Tecumseh was shot and killed.

The battle itself was of little significance as the victorious Americans were obliged to withdraw but the death of Tecumseh was a catastrophe for the native cause. Their confederacy collapsed and hopes of a pan-native resistance died.