This Day in Dismal History

It's Monday, October 16th, 2006 and a banner day for atrocious  anniversaries. 

Portland Maine was burned by British Soldiers on this date in 1775.  Some say that the city never recovered, and others say that they thought Portland was in Oregon.  Both groups are correct. 

Abolitionist John Brown led his unsuccessful raid on Harper's Ferry on this date in 1859.  Brown believed that by taking the armory at the remote river depot, he could spark a civil insurrection that would lead to the ending of slavery in America.  Brown was, however, more idealistic than practical, and was captured during the abortive raid, tried, and hanged for his efforts.  While some may argue that his actions helped foment the American Civil War and that the would-be people's general would have been pleased by the eventual outcome, Brown himself has issued no comment.

The Warsaw Ghetto, the infamous Nazi-imposed pogrom, was established on this date in 1940.  This was mitigated, as will be explained below, by the results of the Nuremberg trials.

Speaking of segregation based upon religious beliefs, the first Partition of Bengal was implemented on this date in 1905.  Originally designed as an administrative redistricting by the occupying British forces, the Partition was seen as political favoritism, since anti-Muslim factions, rumours, and the yellow press conspired to depict the partition as offering special services and privileges to the minority Muslim population.  The first partition set the stage for the separation of India and Pakistan in 1947, an event that prompted the migration of millions, riots, death, disease, and general discomfort.  Also pertinent to the area, the first Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Kahn, was assassinated on this day in 1951.

Still further east, it was on this day in 1934 that the then-fledgling People's Liberation Army of China began its Long March, a strategic retreat that lasted over a year, resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and gave Mao Zedong his opportunity to take control of the Chinese Communist Party.  Thirty years later, perhaps to commemorate this event, China detonated its first nuclear bomb.

In 2001, American air forces, working from outdated and faulty maps, bombed a Red Cross warehouse in Kabul, Afghanistan on then-exiled King Mohammed Zahir Shah's 87th birthday, which was probably not the 'blast' he'd been hoping for.

Several prominent and ghastly historical figures were born on this date, including Japanese warlord Niwa Nagahide in 1535, whose rapid ascension to power and suspicious death could not overcome the fact that his name, the better part of five centuries later, bears an uncanny similarity to the modern term for cheap, faux leather.  Also born today were maligned and oft-unhappy writer Oscar Wilde, Enver Hoxa, the Albanian dictator, and Andrei Chikatilo who made a lot of Russians, mainly prostitutes, runaways, and drifters, very unhappy by killing them.  Chikatilo was sentenced to death on the day before his 56th birthday, a sentence that was carried out the following February, on Valentine's Day.

Today also boasts a long list of famous deaths.  King Louis of Sicily succumbed to bubonic plague, aka the Black Death, on this date in 1355.  Two hundred years later, Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, protestant British clergymen, were burned at the stake by Elizabeth I's elder half-sister, Mary I, aka Bloody Mary.  The pair's death has lived on in the imagination of the public, being quoted in Ray Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451' and according to some historians inspiring the nursery rhyme 'Three Blind Mice', with Mary, whose husband, Phillip of Spain, owned extensive farms, being the  'farmer's wife' and Latimer, Ridley, and their subsequently executed comrade Thomas Cranmmer (author of the first two Books of Common Prayer) as the mice.

In 1591 Pope Gregory XIV, the 'Giggling Pope', died, reportedly from a gallstone weighing 70g, as much as the average cell-phone charger, 14 U.S. nickles, or 70 Bic pen caps.

Of particular note is the 1793 beheading of Marie Antoinette, who reportedly ascended the steps to the guillotine barefoot, standing 5'2" and descended a short while later a mere 4'6".

In 1946 on this date, ten nazi war criminals were hanged, having been found guilty of gross atrocities by the Nuremburg tribunals.  Whether the authorities meant it or not, October 16 of that year fell on the day of the Jewish holiday Hoshanah Rabbah, when according to Torahnic belief, God seals His judgement on the fate of humanity for the year ahead.  Not among those executed was Hermann Goring, the nazi general, who had committed suicide by cyanide the previous evening.  Goring had requested execution by firing squad, since he thought hanging was a form of death for 'common' criminals and it seems that his self-termination was prompted not out of fear of the noose but rather to prevent the ignominy of a peasant's demise.  Perhaps Goring did himself a favor, as two other criminals hung on October 16th, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Julius Streicher did not enjoy the broken neck that is the hallmark of a well-meaning hangman, and instead strangled to death slowly, taking twenty and twelve minutes to die, respectively.

Second to lastly, this date marks the 15th anniversary of the Luby's Massacre, when George Hannard, aged thirty-five and one day, shot and killed 23 people in the eponymous restaurant in Killeen Texas with weapons he had tried to sell a month before.  Many of the victims and survivors had possessed firearms but left them in their cars in compliance with state law.  Partly in reaction to the massacre, Texas decided that an effective prophylactic would be to legalize the carrying of concealed weapons, with a permit, by all citizens of the state.  While a history of mental illness may disqualify a candidate, applicants who develop psychological disorders after receiving their permits are currently unregulated.

Finally, it is Bosses' Day in the United States.  Patricia Bays inagurated this holiday in 1958, registering it with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as a way of acknowledging her boss (and father).  So tell a brown-noser or recipient of nepotistic advantage to pucker up because today they have an actual excuse for their toady, sycophantish fawning.

Good day and good riddance.