Plowed the Sea
On 24th July 1783, Simón Bolívar was born in Caracas. He spent the next forty-seven years freeing six nations from Spain, then spent his last ones deciding those same nations could not be trusted with the liberty he had won them.
Blog
Posts, updates, and occasional notes that sit alongside The Butterfly Effect.
The Company That Invented Everyone Else
On 23 July 1903, the Ford Motor Company delivered its first car with $223.65 left in the bank - to a Chicago dentist whose surname, fittingly, is the German word for a small coin. Everything the company built afterwards, its rivals eventually copied.
A Parcel of Rogues
On 22 July 1706, English and Scottish commissioners struck the deal behind the Acts of Union. Scotland's negotiators were men whose fortunes had been wrecked by the Darien disaster - and the treaty they signed paid them back for it.
Fame Prepared in Flames
On 21 July 356 BC, Herostratus burned the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus - one of the Seven Wonders - so the world would know his name. Ephesus banned that name. The ban failed. The bargain is still on offer.
Football ⚽ goes global
On 20 July 1885, the Football Association legalised professionalism after northern clubs threatened to walk away. That surrender made the Football League - and the global game we still argue about - possible.
The Colonist Who Wrote the Indictment
On 18 July 1566, Bartolomé de las Casas died in Madrid after fifty years spent prosecuting Spain's own conquest. He had begun as an encomendero in Hispaniola, and he never stopped being inconvenient - then to the colonists, now to almost everyone who tries to claim him.
A Russian Flag Over Kauai
On 18 July 1817, Georg Anton Schäffer was forced off Kauai after trying to seize the Hawaiian islands for the Russian-American Company. Everyone remembers Alaska. Almost nobody remembers how close Russia came to a Pacific enclave.
Perpetual Happiness
On 17 July 1402, Zhu Di crowned himself the Yongle Emperor four days after his nephew's palace burned to the ground with three unidentifiable bodies inside. He then erased that reign from the calendar, had 873 people executed over one scholar's refusal to pick up a pen, and built one of the most productive 22 years in Chinese history.
Freelance Excommunication
On 16 July 1054, three papal legates laid a bull of excommunication on the altar of Hagia Sophia during the Saturday liturgy. The pope who had sent them had been dead for three months. Historians still call it the formal start of the Great Schism.
Blood to the Bridle Reins
On 15 July 1099, Crusaders broke into Jerusalem after a five-week siege and three years of marching. Raymond of Aguilers described men riding through the Temple Mount in blood up to their horses' bridles.