July 11th,
1405, Admiral Zheng set sail to explore the world. This marked the largest, farthest spanning exploration of the planet thus far in history. It remains a controversial topic, not because the fleets spread catastrophe like European explorations did, but because the Chinese may have made contact with the Americas before Europeans did. This is without mentioning their remarkable voyages past Indonesia and India, and to Africa.
Were this Star Trek, Admiral Zheng would be in Starfleet, Columbus would be in prison.
While Europeans butchered other Europeans over whose brand of Christianity was most Christlike, the Chinese ventured across the globe. Thus, today is China’s National Maritime Day.
Looking past the realms of our reach, in 1801 the French astronomer Jean-Louis Pons made his first comet discovery. He’d discover another 36 comets, the most of anyone in history. Good for him!
In 1798, the United States Marine Corps was re-established, after it had been disbanded at the end of the Revolutionary War. Apparently, after we’d secured our independence, we beat our swords into plowshares. But to secure peace, prepare for war: the USMC was recreated July 11th to prepare for a possible naval war with France. Indeed, in late 18th century France, fighting against everybody at the same time was en vogue.
On the topic of rambunctious male violence, in 1804, perennial asshole Aaron Burr shot wannabe dictator Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Besides the play, Hamilton was likely the inspiration for the “Natural-born-citizen” requirement for the presidency, thus preventing Hamilton from ever ascending to the highest office. I wonder why the other Founders did this. Maybe they fucking hated him.
Although Hamilton lost the duel and his life, Hamilton’s vision won: Americans live in a statist, centralized society where liberty is restrained by power, not the other way around. Had he been president, Canadians would likely be speaking American by now.
In Hamilton’s defense, during these duels, it was customary to aim above or away from the other participant, literally saving face for both so that honor had been restored without bodily harm. Oh, wait. Hamilton shot first, barely missing a tree right behind Burr. Not sure if this was an attempt on his life, Burr was within his rights according to code duello to respond in kind. He didn’t miss.
Happy Birthday to Waterloo Station in London, which opened in 1948. Oh, wait, nevermind. That’s 1848, sorry. Just a reminder of how far behind America is in mass transit.
The Battle of Fort Stevens is fought in 1864 when Confederates half-heartedly tried to invade Washington D.C. Although more of a skirmish meant to distract Union forces, it’s noted as the closest the Confederates came to DC. One Confederate remarked, “Major, we didn't take Washington but we scared Abe Lincoln like hell.” While Lincoln’s fear is unknown, he was present as an observer. Unharmed from the engagement, Lincoln was eventually shot in a theater. Well, technically, he was shot in a hat.
Happy Birthday, Tijuana, born 1889. I know the perfect place to celebrate it at.
1893 saw the first cultured pearl by Kokichi Mikimoto. No, a cultured pearl isn’t a pearl that goes to the bathroom just to fart. A cultured pearl is grown as aquaculture rather than guessed-at and gathered by divers as before with wild pearls. Today, 99% of all pearls sold worldwide are cultured. The rest are worn at monster truck rallies. Seriously though, pearls are the tilapia of jewelry, though more humane than diamonds, which are like the virgin-dolphin meat of jewelry.
In 1895, the brothers Lumiere demonstrated movie film technology to scientists. I’m sure there’s a meme about it.
In 1914, Babe Ruth played his first major league baseball game. It was just as boring then as it would be today.
Speaking of home-run-hitters, the same day, the USS Nevada is launched, serving through WW2. Initially the cutting edge of battleship design, this behemoth of the sea would be rendered obsolete barely 30 years later by the aircraft carrier. Perhaps worth noting as we build our next $13 billion warship. Also of note, this ship courageously beached itself at Pearl Harbor after it was hit, rather than being sunk in the main channel by Japanese torpedoes.
In 1919, an 8-hour workday and Sundays off became law in the Netherlands. A century later, and it will likely become law applied towards computers/automation.
1921, former president and human bathtub stopper William Taft was sworn in as the 10th Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. He’s the only person to ever hold both positions. Oh, and he was too fat to get out of a bathtub. Did I mention that part? Trivia: while in the tub, he was playing with a battleship. It was named the USS Nevada. BOOM! A man so fat he took up two branches of the US government.
Frowny face time:
1947: The SS Exodus 47, carrying 4,500 Jewish immigrants (mostly Holocaust survivors) departs France for British Mandated Palestine. In a remarkable voyage, the ship carrying refugees was boarded by the British outside Haifa, and the refugees sent back to France. En route, it was determined the only area that could accommodate so many refugees was in...Germany. The Jewish refugees, after enduring a harrowing voyage around the Mediterranean, were then shipped to camps in Germany.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
If you have a moment, read about the SS Exodus 47, as it offers many lessons for many parts of the world. It certainly deserves more than a snarky writeup by me.
Yikes, that wasn’t very funny at all.
In 1950, Pakistan joined the IMF and International Bank, and hasn’t been invaded by the West since. Of course, Pakistan hasn’t been invaded by anyone since they obtained nuclear weapons.
“To Kill a Mockingbird” was published today in 1960, and in 1977, MLK was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by the same branch of government that ten years prior wanted him neutralized.
In 1971, copper mines in Chile were nationalized. The US installed Pinochet as dictator two years later. Coincidence? I dunno. Btw, Chile is the Saudi Arabia of copper, times ten.
In 1979, America’s first space station Skylab re-enters Earth’s atmosphere over the Indian Ocean, killing all solar panels and any stowaways aboard.
In 1995, Europe allows the Srebrenica Massacre to begin. It continued until July 22nd. 8,000 Muslim Bosniaks (mostly men and boys) were slaughtered after other, less-printable acts were committed against them when they were taken out to the surrounding forests. This is to say nothing of what happened to the women.
Europe could have prevented this ethnic cleansing of Muslims, but allowed it.
The Yugoslav Wars lasted a decade, killed hundreds of thousands of people, and displaced millions of people in Europe. It was the third genocide on European soil in the 20th century.
If Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, etc can’t stop a genocide in their backyard in the 90’s, maybe Trump is correct: the US pays too much for NATO.
Another religious downer:
In 2006, Islamic terrorists killed 209 people in a series of bombs on the most crowded trains on the planet in Mumbai. Two years later, 74 people were killed and 72 injured by Islamic extremists in a series of bombings in Kampala, Uganda.
And now some birthdays!
Happy birthday to Robert the Bruce from Braveheart, John Quincy Adams from the Adams family, Rod Strickland from the Blazers, Lil’ Kim (the rapper, not the dictator) and
E.B. White, who had forgotten more about writing than I’ll ever learn. Besides co-authoring “The Elements of Style,” he contributed to the The New Yorker for fifty years, and wrote “Stuart Little” and “Charlotte's Web.”
Most importantly, today is Free Slurpee Day in America, as the date 7-11 is apparently sometime in November to the rest of the world.