Two events today can be looked at as either the start and the end of the First World War, or as the start of both WW I and WW II. Assembling this chronology every night offers some interesting symmetries, I can't imagine it was planned that way.
When the Dixie Clipper was the first plane to carry passengers over the Atlantic it was strictly first class. The Boeing craft could carry 72 seated or 40 in berths, there were 22 passengers on the inaugural flight of the plane that was called an Airborne Palace. The fare of $375 one way is equal to about $4,000 today, twice the price of a seat on the Concorde. Trans-Atlantic service ended three months later with the start of World War II.
One of the events that seems to be on every this-day-in-history list for today probably never happened. New York State did, in fact, pass legislation banning the consumption of tomatoes in 1820. The fruit was called the Wolf Peach in some places, based on the Latin name, Lycopersicon. There were many traditional herbalists that were certain that seven-petaled plants were toxic. But the legend that Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson stood on the steps of the courthouse at Salem, New Jersey in front of a crowd of 2,000 eagerly waiting for him to die and ate (variously) a raw tomato, two tomatoes, "an entire bag of them," or a bushel while a band played a funeral dirge cannot be documented. But everyone agrees that it was 28 June 1820!
Readers wrote in with variations on the origin of the term "Wobblies" for the IWW, all relate to immigrant members struggling with the "W"s. I like the version that has a Chinese laundryman responsible for cleaning the banners after each demonstration greeting other members with "YOU wubble-you wubble-you, I wubble-you wubble-you!" when returning the clean banners.
1838 - Alexandrina Victoria was crowned Queen Regnant at Westminster Abbey, London, a month after she came of age, ending the Regency by her unpopular mother. Because a woman was not eligible to rule Hanover, the union of the monarchy of England and Hanover ended after 123 years starting with George I. Her 63-year reign was the longest of any English monarch.
1914 - Archduke Francis Ferdinand (heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary) and his wife were fatally shot by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist in hopes that the assassination would create a crisis leading to independence for the Serbs. Three weeks later diplomacy had failed, another two weeks and Austria-Hungary, Serbia, Russia, Germany, France, and England have declared war in various combinations.
1919 - German delegation sent to Versailles by Chancellor Gustav Bauer signs the Treaty of Versailles to end the hardships caused by the blockade. Reparations demanded by the European victors (and opposed by US President Wilson) destroy German military and economic capacity.
1939 - The first transatlantic passenger service was a Pan American flight in the Dixie Clipper, A Boeing B-314 flying boat, departing Port Washington, New York to Shediac, New Brunswick to Norta, Azores to Lisbon, Portugal and extending to Marseilles, France.
Feast of Saint Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, born in Asia Minor, probably at Smyrna, ca 125, educated and influenced by old men who had known the apostles in their youth, especially Polycarp. Sent to Lyons in Gaul as a priest, he was dispatched to Rome in 177 with a letter for Pope Eleutherius, returned to find persecutions in Lyons had left him as the ranking cleric, becoming bishop. Opposed the Gnostic heresy in Gaul successfully, writing a five volume treatise on the heresies then spreading in Gaul and comparing them to the Gospels. Died at Lyons ca 200, his tomb was destroyed by Calvinists in 1562 and all relics were lost.
1712
- Jean Jacques Rousseau, Swiss/French philosopher - born at Geneva,
mother died in childbirth, violent-tempered father abandoned him to relatives
at age 10. Apprenticed to notary who dismissed him, then to a coppersmith
whose discipline sent Rousseau running. Held wide range of jobs from footman
to copyist to ambassador through France and Italy, long string of lovers
included the wives in several of the home he served. In Paris 1742 to
1754, mostly secretary and music copyist, had five children by one lover
and consigned them all to the foundling hospital. Wrote "Discourse on
the Arts and Sciences" 1750, maintaining that mankind was better off without
either. In Geneva wrote "The Social Contract" which argued that all should
bind themselves to the state which would hold both political and moral
power, the central guiding work of the French Revolution and an important
element of the Communist totalitarian states. Having angered the monarchy
and both Catholic and Protestant churches he wnt to England 1767 to 1770,
living with David Hume but becoming paranoid about imagined persecutions.
Published work after that erratic, sought shelter in a hospital and was
insane when he suffered a thrombosis and died in a cottage at Ermenonville
(NE of Paris) on 2 July 1778.
Why is it that the more mistakes people make, the more paranoid they
become about other people's mistakes?
- Robert Half
To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what
you mean to say, and finish without knowing what you have written.
- Jean Jacques Rousseau
Belladonna (n): In Italian, a beautiful lady; in English, a deadly poison.
A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.
- Ambrose Bierce
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
- Jean Jacques Rousseau
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