Category: looking back

Around the World in Seventy-Two Days

14th November 1889

On this day, Elizabeth Jane Cochran, better known as Nellie Bly, left New Jersey on the steamship Augusta Victoria in her attempt to turn Jules Verne’s fictional Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) into fact for the first time. She arrived back in New York seventy-two days later having travelled alone for almost the entire journey. Bly was no newcomer to bold adventures and had already made a name for herself as a pioneer female investigative journalist. In her first undercover investigation, in a copper cable factory, she provided a firsthand view of the poor working conditions for women and children. She then spent six months in Mexico as a foreign correspondent, before a second undercover investigation in the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island. Feigning insanity, Bly spent ten days in the asylum where she experienced the deplorable conditions firsthand. Her book Ten Days in a Mad-House, caused a sensation, prompted the asylum to implement reforms, and brought her lasting fame.

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The St Brice’s Day Massacre

13th November 1002

On this day, King Aethelred of England, commonly known as “the Unready” but whose nickname would be more accurately translated as “the ill-advised“, ordered the deaths of all the Danes in his kingdom. After a brief period of relative peace and stability the Vikings had begun to launch raids again, winning a decisive victory at the Battle of Maldon in 991. Aethelred managed to buy a few years of peace at great cost to the treasury, but it was a short-term solution. The full scale of the massacre he ordered is not known, but the victims included Gunhilde, the sister of Sweyn Forkbeard, the formidable King of Denmark, who waged a vindictive ten-year war on England. Eventually, in 1013, Forkbeard defeated Aethelred, marched into London, and claimed the land to be his own. Sweyn’s son Cnut finished the job in 1016 and Aethelred’s kingdom became an extension of Denmark’s growing Empire.

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The Bluebelle Murders

12th November 1961

On this day, late in the evening, the sailing ketch “Bluebelle” was scuttled following an act of mass murder by Julian Harvey, the ship’s captain. Harvey, together with his wife was hired to take the Duperrault family on a once-in-a-lifetime cruise from Florida Keys to the Bahamas. On the last night, though, Harvey murdered his wife in order to claim her life insurance money. Probably caught in the act, he then murdered the entire Duperrault family, except for the 11-year-old Terry Jo who was below deck. He then scuttled the boat and escaped on a life raft. He was rescued by an oil tanker the following day. Terry Jo, who had seen the bodies of her brother and mother, was rescued three and a half days later, barely alive, on a small cork dinghy. When she was finally able to speak, her version of the facts soon unmasked Harvey’s fabricated story, and when Harvey discovered that she had been found alive and was talking, he committed suicide almost immediately.

Terry Jo at sea
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The Hanging of Joseph Blueskin Blake

11th November 1724

On this day, the notorious pickpocket and highwayman, Joseph “Blueskin” Blake was hanged at the Tyburn Tree Gallows in London. Blake started his life of crime working for Jonathan Wild. Wild was a major figure in London’s criminal underworld who posed as a public-spirited vigilante entitled the “Thief-Taker General” while simultaneously running a significant criminal empire. When Blake split up with Wild and joined forces with the notorious thief and jail-breaker Jack Sheppard, it was Wild who had them both arrested. On the day of his trial, Blake tried to persuade Wild to put in a good word for him. When Wild refused, Blake attacked him, slashing his throat with a pocket-knife. Wild survived the attack and Blake was convicted and hanged. Shepherd was hanged five days later and the following year Wild was also hanged for organising a jailbreak.

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Dr. Livingstone, I presume?

10th November 1871

On this day, after two years of searching, the Welsh-American explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley, finally found the Scottish doctor, missionary and explorer David Livingstone in the town of Ujiji on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in Eastern Africa. Since January 1866, Livingstone had been seeking the source of the Nile and had lost all contact with the outside world. He was also suffering from ill health. Although Stanley’s famous greeting on reaching Livingstone’s village, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” has gone down in history as a rather clumsy attempt at appearing dignified in the bush of Africa, it may have been a fabrication. The same applies to Livingstone’s reported answer, “Yes, I feel thankful that I am here to welcome you.” Determined to complete his mission, Livingstone refused to return to England with Stanley, but two years later he died from malaria and dysentery in Chief Chitambo’s village at Chipundu, in present-day Zambia.

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Edward VII and the Cullinan Diamond

9th November 1907

On this day, the Cullinal diamond, the largest gem-quality rough diamond ever found, was presented to King Edward VII on his 66th birthday by Sir Richard Solomon, Agent-General for the South African province of Transvaal. The king asked his colonial secretary, Lord Elgin, to announce that he accepted the gift “for myself and my successors” and that he would ensure “this great and unique diamond be kept and preserved among the historic jewels which form the heirlooms of the Crown”. The king chose Joseph Asscher & Co. of Amsterdam to cleave and polish the rough stone into brilliant gems of various cuts and sizes, and after several months of labour, 9 major stones and 96 minor brilliants were produced. Cullinans I and II are today part of the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom, while seven other major diamonds were privately owned by Elizabeth II, who inherited them from her grandmother, Queen Mary, in 1953.

Queen Mary
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The Adventures of Rupert Bear

8th November 1920

On this day, Rupert Bear, a comic strip character created by Herbert Tourtel and illustrated by his wife, the artist Mary Tourtel, made his first appearance in the Daily Express newspaper. The initial purpose of the strip was to win sales from the rival newspapers the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror. Rupert is a bear who lives with his parents in a house in Nutwood, a fictional idyllic English village. He is drawn wearing a red jumper and bright yellow checked trousers, with matching yellow scarf. Most of the other characters in the series are also anthropomorphic animals. Each story begins in Nutwood, where Rupert usually sets out on a small errand for his mother or to visit a friend, which then develops into an adventure to an exotic place. At the end of the story Rupert returns to Nutwood, where all is safe and well, and where his parents seem perfectly sanguine about his adventures.

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The Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse

7th November 1940

On this day, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, a suspension bridge in the U.S. state of Washington that spanned the Tacoma Narrows strait of Puget Sound between Tacoma and the Kitsap Peninsula, dramatically collapsed into Puget Sound. The bridge’s collapse has been described as “spectacular” and in subsequent decades “has attracted the attention of engineers, physicists, and mathematicians”. Throughout its short existence, it was the world’s third-longest suspension bridge. During construction, the bridge was nicknamed ‘Galloping Gertie’ because of the way it swayed in windy conditions, and on the morning in question, with 64 km/h winds, the alternating twisting motion gradually increased in amplitude until the bridge finally tore apart. The collapse boosted research into bridge aerodynamics-aeroelastics, which has influenced the designs of all later long-span bridges.

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