Category: looking back

Dostoevsky Escapes Death Sentence

22nd December 1849

On this day the writer Fyodor Dostoevsky escaped imminent death. He had been convicted of participating in a secret revolutionary society with conspiratorial aims, the Petrashevsky Circle, and had been sentenced to death. After the sentence, the conspirators were taken to Semyonov Place in Saint Petersburg where they were lined up in front of a firing squad. The execution was about to take place when a cart arrived with a letter from the Tzar commuting the sentence. Dostoevsky later described the experience of what he believed to be the last moments of his life in his novel The Idiot.

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Madame Curie Discovers Radium

21st December 1898

On this day Marie Curie and her husband Pierre discovered radium. Marie Curie was a pioneering physicist and chemist who made groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of radioactivity, a term she actually coined. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and remains the only person to have won Nobel Prizes in two different scientific fields: Physics and Chemistry. In addition to her scientific achievements, Curie was deeply committed to the practical application of her research. During World War I, she established mobile radiography units, known as “Little Curies”, to provide X-ray services to field hospitals, significantly improving medical care for wounded soldiers.

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South Carolina Secedes from the United States

20th December 1860

On this day the state of South Carolina voted 169-0 to secede from the United States, declaring itself an independent commonwealth. The other southern cotton states of Mississippi,  Florida,  Alabama,  Georgia,  Louisiana, and  Texas were quick to follow suit. Fear was in the air in the South that the new President, Abraham Lincoln, would stop the expansion of slavery and put it on a course toward extinction. The secession of the southern states led to the American Civil War [1861-1865] which resulted in defeat for the South and, eventually, to the abolition of slavery in the United States.

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Coronation of Henry II of England

19th December 1154

On this day Henry II was crowned King of England and reigned until his death in 1189. He was an energetic and ruthless leader who spent much of his reign in conflict with Louis VII of France. He is best remembered, however, for his involvement in the gory murder, in 1170, of his former friend and supporter Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was opposed to Henry’s desire to control the English Church. Becket was brutally hacked to pieces by Henry’s knights on the high altar of Canterbury Cathedral. Henry’s reign came to an end at the hands of his own son Richard (the Lionheart) and Philip II of France, the son of Louis VII.

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Kublai Khan and the Yuan Dynasty of China

18th December 1271

On this day the Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan, who reigned from 1260 to 1294 over one fifth of the world’s inhabited area, renamed his empire the ‘Great Yuan’, marking the start of the Yuan Dynasty of China. Just eight years later, in 1279, the Yuan conquest of the previous Song dynasty was completed and Kublai became the first foreign conqueror to rule all of China. His dynasty, the ‘Great Yuan’ lasted until 1368.

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The First Motorised Flight by the Wright Brothers

17th December 1903

On this day the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, successfully carried out what is widely recognised as the first sustained motorised aircraft flight at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina. At 10:35 in the morning, piloted by Orville Wright, their prototype aeroplane the ‘Wright Flyer’ stayed in the air for about 12 seconds, travelling at a speed of 6.8 miles per hour (10.9 km/h) and an altitude of 120 feet (37 m). Thanks to the Wright brothers’ innovative three-axis control system, the pilot had total control of the aircraft during flight. This method has remained the standard on all subsequent aeroplanes.

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Eruption of Mount Vesuvius

16th December 1631

On this day the volcano, Mount Vesuvius, in southern Italy, after about five centuries in a state of quiescence, erupted violently. The explosion caused a giant column of smoke which lasted for about eight hours and showered the entire area with lapilli (solidifying lava fragments from 2 to 64 mm in size) . The following morning there was a violent earthquake, followed by massive lava flows which rapidly destroyed the lush vegetation, vineyards and orchards on the slopes of the volcano and overwhelmed several villages. The final death toll was estimated at around 3000 people.

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Premiere of Gone With the Wind

15th December 1939

On this day the film ‘Gone with the Wind’, directed by Victor Fleming and starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, premiered in Atlanta. Set in the American South against the backdrop of the American Civil War, the film tells the story of Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh), the strong-willed daughter of a Georgia plantation owner, and her romantic adventures. Immensely popular when first released, ‘Gone with the Wind’ became the highest-earning film made up to that point and held the record for over a quarter of a century. When adjusted for monetary inflation, it is still the highest-earning film in history.

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