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Illjwamh

This Day In History

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On September 1 in History:
 
1420 - A massive, nine point something earthquake rocks the hell out of Chile, causing Tsunamis as far away as a very confused Japan. This also happens to be right around the time when future Inca emperor Pachacuti ("Earthshaker") would have been learning to walk. Coincidence? I think not!
 
1449 - Mongol leader Esen captures the Ming emperor in a severely lopsided battle he had no business winning. He will fail to capitalize on this in any way.
 
1532 - Henry VIII makes his fiancée Anne Boleyn the Marquess of Pembroke. She is the first woman ever granted a hereditary peerage. She might be in line for even more boons from the smitten king as long as she keeps her head and doesn't do anything unbecoming.
 
1604 - It's been 135 years, but Sikhism finally has a sacred text. Historically speaking, that's not bad.
 
1715 - Louis XIV dies after 72 years. That's the longest (verifiable) reign of anyone, ever. Only now France is fucked because he played everything really close to the chest, and nobody in a position to run the country (including his own successor) remembers what things were like before him, so consequently none of them have any idea what the fuck they're supposed to be doing.
 
1873 - Cetshwayo becomes king of the Zulu. This will never happen to anyone again.
 
1905 - Alberta and Saskatchewan become full on Canadian provinces. With lazily drawn straight line borders, they're not off to an auspicious start, though Saskatchewan's leaders claim it is destined to be the most powerful province in the country. Aw, how cute.
 
1914 - St. Petersburg changes its name to Petrograd. The old name was just too German.
 
1914 again - The passenger pigeon goes extinct, the last one being a resident of the Cincinnati Zoo named Martha. Her spirit will live on forever in Batman v. Superman memes.
 
1928 - Current president and former prime minister of Albania Ahmet Muhtar Zogolli decides he's king now, and takes the name Zog I. Okay.
 
1939 - Germans, in Poland: "Surprise, motherfuckers!" Rest of Europe (except Slovakia, who's helping them): "GASP!"
 
1939 again - Hitler, again: "Good job on that Poland thing, guys. But hey, here's something else. I was thinking we could systematically murder everyone who's disabled or mentally ill. Maybe we can expand outwards later; let's see how it goes."
 
1952 - Ernest Hemingway publishes a book about an old man who goes to sea. That...that's it. That's the whole book.
 
1961 - Eritrea begins their war for independence from Ethiopia with the shooting of an Ethiopian police officer. The UK is just relieved they're not involved for once.
 
1982 - Founding of the U.S. Air Force Space Command. Somebody tell Donald Trump.
 
1991 - Uzbekistan declares independence from the Soviet Union. They're trying to get out ahead of things in case somebody decides it should be done in alphabetical order.
 
1996 - Zendaya is born. Contrary to popular belief, her parents did remember to give her a last name; it's just boring.
 
1997 - Jungkook is born. I neither know nor care who that is, though I assume he must be a member of BTS because Twitter won't shut up about him.

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On 8/29/2019 at 4:21 PM, Illjwamh said:

1975 - Death of Haile Selassie, penultimate Ethiopian emperor and most recent person to have a religion built up around him. Unless you count the guys from BTS.

1 hour ago, Illjwamh said:

1997 - Jungkook is born. I neither know nor care who that is, though I assume he must be a member of BTS because Twitter won't shut up about him.

The hashtag #1stseptembermiracle was trending yesterday, so I definitely feel the religion comment is true.

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On September 2 in History:
 
44 BCE - Cleopatra VII makes her son by Julius Caesar, known as Caesarion, co-Pharaoh. He's three years old. That tracks with Egypt's history, actually. Long may they both reign.
 
31 BCE - Octavian defeats the forces of Cleopatra (you remember, from before?) and Mark Antony at the Battle of Actium off the west coast of Greece. This one battle pretty much decides the fate of Europe for the next 2,000 years. Oh, and he'll be wanting a new name soon.
 
1192 - Saladin and Richard Lionheart agree to disagree in the Treaty of Jaffa, effectively ending the Third Crusade. I'm sure this has absolutely nothing to do with Richard needing to go home because England is falling apart without him.
 
1666 - London baker Thomas Farriner of Pudding Lane accidentally leaves the oven on.
 
1807 - The British Royal Navy bombards Copenhagen and steals their fleet so that Napoleon can't have it. The strategy of "Attack everyone before Napoleon does" seems to be working well for them.
 
1862 - Against his better judgement, Abraham Lincoln reinstates George B. McClellan as commander of the Union Army. He will come to regret this, as will the Union Army.
 
1864 - Union forces under Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman enter the city of Atlanta. "Any of you guys ever heard of Thomas Farriner?"
 
1870 - Emperor Napoleon III and up to 100,000 of his troops are captured by the Prussians at the Battle of Sedan. Rather than give up, France will decide to just make a new government without a monarch and keep fighting without him. And this time, they mean it.
 
1901 - At the Minnesota State Fair, U.S. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt softly speaks about his big stick.
 
1935 - The Labor Day Hurricane is the first category 5 Atlantic storm to make landfall in the continental U.S., and has the strongest sustained winds of any such hurricane ever until the one that's happening right now.
 
1939 - The Third Reich, re: the Free City of Danzig: "Yoink."
 
1945 - The Japanese officially surrender on board the USS Missouri, ending WWII. "Just please don't drop any more extinction balls on us."
 
1963 - CBS Evening News is the first weeknight news program in America to extend its run time from fifteen to thirty minutes. Thirty minutes? What could they possibly have to talk about that can fill thirty minutes?
 
1973 - J. R. R. Tolkien sails into the west.
 
1990 - While everyone else is trying to get out of the Soviet Union, Transnistria is trying to get in. Too bad for them, Gorbachev says no.

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5 hours ago, Illjwamh said:

1807 - The British Royal Navy bombards Copenhagen and steals their fleet so that Napoleon can't have it. The strategy of "Attack everyone before Napoleon does" seems to be working well for them.

Ruining our capacity for trade for a quarter of a century as we also had little wood suitable for crafting new vessels. As a result, the foresighted Crown Prince and effective ruler, later King Frederik the 6th, ordered new trees planted suitable for building ships from against Denmark's future need. These have now grown to the mature size necessary for shipbuilding.

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13 hours ago, ijuin said:

A wonderful bit of foresight, if not for the fact that wood has since then been superseded by other materials in shipbuilding.

Yes. I applaud his idea unreservedly even so as he could not have known. And the thing is, these trees are useful anyway, just not for their intended purpose -- we are planting trees to keep atmospheric CO2 down these days!

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On September 6 in History:
 
1492 - Christopher Columbus sets out from the Canary Islands - the edge of the world until Asia, as far as anybody knows - into certain oblivion. Good riddance, I say. That guy was an idiot.
 
1522 - The aptly named Victoria returns to port in Spain, the last remaining ship of Magellan's voyage around the world. Not included: Magellan.
 
1566 - Death of Suleiman, Ottoman sultan. I feel bad for his successor. I mean, how do you follow a guy styled "The Magnificent" and not constantly feel like you're coming up short?
 
1620 - Pilgrims set sail on the Mayflower from Plymouth, England for a new settlement in North America, which they will call Plymouth.
 
1628 - Puritans settle the new town of Salem in the Massachusetts Bay area. Rule number one: No witches!
 
1847 - Henry Davit Thoreau gets tired of freeloading in his friend's cabin on Walden Pond and opts to freeload more directly, moving in with Ralph Waldo Emerson and family down the road.
 
1885 - Ottoman autonomous province Eastern Rumelia joins up with Bulgaria. The reunification is complete! They're still under the Ottomans, though. Womp womp.
 
1901 - U.S. president William McKinley is shot at the Pan-American Expo in Buffalo, NY by an anarchist he was trying to shake hands with who felt it was his duty. The specific event where it happened had been removed from the president's schedule twice by his secretary (who feared an assassination attempt might take place there), but the president insisted on attending. Incidentally, McKinley is the third president assassinated in 36 years, and the last not to have Secret Service protection. Fascinating.
 
1930 - Hipólito Yrigoyen, democratically elected president of Argentina, is deposed in a military coup. Take a shot!
 
1939 - South Africa declares war on Germany. You can see the appeal.
 
1958 - Jeff Foxworthy is born. Many people living under the false impression that they are not rednecks are about to learn otherwise.
 
1966 - South African prime minister Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, the guy who made apartheid what it became, is stabbed to death in the House of Assembly in Cape Town. You can see the appeal.
 
1968 - Swaziland, so named as it is the "land of the Swazi people", gains full independence from the UK. It is known today as eSwatini, which in the Swazi language means "Swaziland".
 
1991 - Russian Parliament agrees to change the name of Leningrad to St. Petersburg. The old name was a little too Communist.
 
1995 - Baltimore Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken, Jr. sets a record and goes down in history for showing up to work 2,131 times in a row.
 
1998 - Korusawa Akira dies, and a piece of cinema history dies with him. Several witnesses to the event give vastly different accounts of how it took place.
 
2019 - Longtime Zimbabwean strongman president Robert Mugabe dies. Depending on whether they thought he was a brutal dictator or a nationalist hero, people have mixed reactions to this.

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Just now, Illjwamh said:

1998 - Korusawa Akira dies, and a piece of cinema history dies with him. Several witnesses to the event give vastly different accounts of how it took place.

 

"Like Korusawa I make mad films, 'k I don't make films, but if I did they'd have a samurai."

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5 hours ago, Illjwamh said:

1566 - Death of Suleiman, Ottoman sultan. I feel bad for his successor. I mean, how do you follow a guy styled "The Magnificent" and not constantly feel like you're coming up short?

I feel even worse for Dolivar the Short. He was doomed from the get go. It didn't matter whom he succeeded.

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On September 8 in History:
 
1100 - Theodoric, the Bishop of Albano, is elected Antipope. Of course he and his pals would tell you he was elected Pope.
 
1331 - Stefan Dušan declares himself to be the King of Serbia. Nobody has the guts to tell him otherwise, so I guess he's the King of Serbia now.
 
1380 - The Battle of Kulikovo between the Mongol Golden Horde and an alliance of various Russian princes under Dmitry of Moscow is the Russians' Captain Picard moment. "The line must be drawn here! This far; no further!"
 
1504 - Michelangelo unveils his statue of a ripped naked guy with a tiny dick in Florence.
 
1522 - Magellan's ship Victoria arrives in Seville today, meaning the circumnavigation was not completed two days ago, but just now. This fact brought to you by this month's issue of "Well, Actually" magazine.
 
 
1593 - Hideyoshi's son, Toyotomi Hideyori, is born. "One day, son, all of Japan will be yours. My good friend Tokugawa here will see to it!"
 
1655 - Charles X Gustav of Sweden marches into Warsaw with a token force and takes it without a fight - the first foreign invader ever to capture the Polish capital. He is able to do this because he's been cutting such a brutal swath through Poland for the last few months that it makes the Blitzkrieg and Sherman's March to the Sea look like snowball fights.
 
1831 - William IV is crowned King of the United Kingdom, and also Hanover (which he already has been for months, but whatever), as they continue to rapidly run through all of George III's descendants. He'd better have a son quick or they're gonna lose that last bit.
 
1926 - Germany is admitted to the League of Nations. I direct you now to the TV Tropes entry for "Token Evil Teammate."
 
1946 - "Tsars? We don' need no stinking tsars." ~Bulgaria
 
1966 - Gene Roddenberry boldly goes where no TV show has gone before.
 
1978 - Iranian soldiers kill anywhere from 700 to 3000 protesters in Tehran, signalling to everyone savvy enough to pay attention that the Shah's days are numbered. The ominous name given to this event sort of loses its punch nowadays that we also use it to describe the mad rush for holiday discounts at Best Buy.
 
1991 - The Republic of Macedonia attains independence. Greece takes exception to their chosen name, and absolutely will not shut up about it for the next 27 years.
 

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7 hours ago, Illjwamh said:

1926 - Germany is admitted to the League of Nations. I direct you now to the TV Tropes entry for "Token Evil Teammate."

That is not funny.

Germany does not deserve the poor reputation it has merely for falling prey to corruption and political malfeasance. Few nations could lay claim to being safe from a similar fate, as current events amply prove.

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4 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

That is not funny.

Germany does not deserve the poor reputation it has merely for falling prey to corruption and political malfeasance. Few nations could lay claim to being safe from a similar fate, as current events amply prove.

Not to mention that 1920s and early 1930s Germany was being treated as Europe's whipping boy.

 

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2 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Not to mention that 1920s and early 1930s Germany was being treated as Europe's whipping boy.

It did not help that the Treaty of Versailles was, as Marshal Foch put it, "This is not a peace treaty! This is a twenty-year armistice!"

He said it in 1919. Remarkably prescient.

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6 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

It did not help that the Treaty of Versailles was, as Marshal Foch put it, "This is not a peace treaty! This is a twenty-year armistice!"

He said it in 1919. Remarkably prescient.

Also in 1919, a moderately respected but little-known British economist - who had walked off the British negotiating team at Versailles in disgust a year earlier - published a book laying out the economic and political history of Europe from about 1920 to about 1938. Yes, it was a future history. Yes, he was substantially correct, and this made him an extremely respected and well-known British economist.

But not an influential one.

This was actually the second time he had walked off a job as economic advisor to the British government, thoroughly disgusted at how politicians mucked things up.

In 1936 he published another book, describing the huge benefits to be achieved by having the politicians run the economy. This made him an extremely influential British economist.

Of course, the politicians mucked things up. I'm 99.99% confident that he expected them to.

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13 minutes ago, ijuin said:

John Maynard Keynes.

Ah yes, I remember him. Some nonsense about it actually being good for the market to give your workers fair wages, thus increasing their buying power. This is clearly ridiculous as it transfers wealth away from the one-percenters.

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Yes, well, if the primary source of your wealth comes from selling millions of widgets, then somebody out there needs to be buying all of those widgets.

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4 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Ah yes, I remember him. Some nonsense about it actually being good for the market to give your workers fair wages, thus increasing their buying power. This is clearly ridiculous as it transfers wealth away from the one-percenters.

Actually, on that specific point Keynes was significantly preceded by Henry Ford.

Keynes laid out a plan where in economic bad times the government would spend freely to get things moving, borrowing if necessary to do so. Then in times of prosperity the government would cut spending and raise taxes to pay off debt and build up reserves against future bad times.

The politicians loved the first half of that plan. The second... well, all that borrowing and spending didn't cause a problem during the downturn, so when things are going well it should be okay to borrow and spend even more wildly, right?

Thing is, Keynes had twice publicly expressed disgust at how politicians were mucking things up. He'd built his reputation by laying out in detail the consequences of a specific instance of politicians mucking things up. And yet he gained power and influence by, in effect, assuming politicians would not muck things up - and I can't believe that this genius with this great depth of experience was that stupid.

Unfortunately, that means I think he sold out and betrayed his science, the world, and the principles that led him to walk out on the British negotiators at Versailles, for his own personal profit.

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On 9/8/2019 at 9:52 PM, The Old Hack said:

That is not funny.

Germany does not deserve the poor reputation it has merely for falling prey to corruption and political malfeasance. Few nations could lay claim to being safe from a similar fate, as current events amply prove.

No, they don't. However, the Germany of that particular time in history was not the most stable of countries - however little of it was their own fault - and they had already started tiptoeing down the road that would lead to the regime of a decade later.

So no, Germany today doesn't deserve a reputation for being the "bad guy" any more than France deserves one for "giving up". But Germany then can't pretend to have its hands clean.

Plus, you know, it's a flippant pop-culture reference on a joke-a-day history post.


 

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I missed a day due to traveling, so here it is.

On September 9 in History:

9 - German-born Roman soldier Arminius leads a coalition of six German tribes in an ambush against three Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest. The resulting slaughter - perhaps the worst defeat in Roman history - permanently ends Rome's designs on Germania, tips the scales of Roman history from expansion toward eventual collapse, and prevents the Romanization of all the Germanic peoples of Europe. In other words, it's kind of a big deal.

337 - Constantine I is succeeded as emperor by his three sons, Constantine II, Constantius II, and Constans. Okay, I'm sensing something of a theme with the names here.

1000 - King Olaf Tryggvasson has all 11 of his ships captured at the Battle of Svolder by the 70+ ships of his enemies (Kings of Denmark and Sweden, and one of Olaf's own Jarls) who didn't like that he was trying to unite Norway under one rule. Chiefly because they wanted bits of Norway for themselves.

1543 - Mary Stuart becomes "Queen of Scots" at nine months old. Surely she will have an illustrious reign.

1947 - The world's first computer bug is found. Literally. There was moth in the Mark II computer at Harvard.

1948 - Kim Il-Sung announces the creation of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. With the exception of "Korea", it will be none of those things.

1956 - Elvis Presley appears on the Ed Sullivan show. Puritans everywhere lose their shit.

1969 - The Canadian government declares French is to be equal to English, leading to numerous comedy sketches involving graffiti all expounding on the same joke.

1991 - Tajikistan quits the Soviet Union. For most westerners, this is the first time they've ever heard of Tajikistan.

1993 - The PLO officially recognizes Israel as a legitimate state. This is, so they say, all they wanted, right? So things can calm down now.

2015 - "Eat it, Victoria." ~ Elizabeth II, longest reigning British Monarch.

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1 hour ago, Illjwamh said:
1956 - Elvis Presley appears on the Ed Sullivan show. Puritans everywhere lose their shit.

I think of it as "flinging".

 

1 hour ago, Illjwamh said:

1969 - The Canadian government declares French is to be equal to English, leading to numerous comedy sketches involving graffiti all expounding on the same joke.

My favorite version.

 

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