Posts, updates, and occasional notes that sit alongside The Butterfly Effect.
On 5 July 1687, Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica came off the press in London. The Royal Society had already spent its year's budget on a book about fish, so Edmond Halley paid the printing costs himself and talked Newton out of pulling the whole thing over a priority dispute with Robert Hooke.
On 4 July 1776, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, a treason confession from thirteen colonies with no army, no navy and no treasury. Two hundred and fifty years on, the doubters are still losing.
On 3 July 1908, Major Ahmed Niyazi raided an armoury in Macedonia and marched into the mountains demanding a constitution. Three weeks later Sultan Abdul Hamid II gave in. The men who forced him did not just modernise the Ottoman Empire - they eventually organised a genocide and dragged it into the First World War.
On 2 July 1823, a Portuguese garrison slipped out of Salvador aboard 83 ships after a 16-month siege, ending three centuries of colonial rule in Brazil. The war that actually won Brazil's independence looked nothing like the schoolbook version.
On 1 July 1997, Britain handed Hong Kong back to China after 156 years of colonial rule, closing the last major open account from the Opium Wars. Deng Xiaoping designed the deal but died four months before the flag came down, and the fifty-year promise he made has been fraying ever since.
Six months ago I set out to write a new 'this day in history' entry for every single day of the year. I am still going. Here is what 181 days of daily history writing actually looks like from the inside.
On 30 June 1908, the largest impact event in recorded history exploded over Eastern Siberia. It flattened 2,150 km² of forest and left no crater. We are still arguing about what it was.
On 29 June 1849, Sergei Witte was born in Tiflis. As Russia's Minister of Finance he industrialised the empire, built the Trans-Siberian Railway, and drafted the October Manifesto that created a constitutional monarchy. Nicholas II fired him six months later.
On 28 June 1838, a nineteen-year-old queen was crowned at Westminster Abbey in a ceremony generally agreed to be a shambles. The Archbishop put the ring on the wrong finger. An 82-year-old lord fell down the altar steps. The reign that followed lasted sixty-three years and built an empire.
On 27 June 1844, Joseph Smith was shot dead at Carthage Jail while running for President of the United States. The mob that killed him made the same mistake as everyone who has ever underestimated what a martyr story can do for a new religion.