The Mysteries of History (February 14 Edition)
Valentine, Captain Cook, Valentine's Day Massacre (Scarface and Bugs), Satanic Verses, Pale Blue Dot, Parkland School Shooting (Plus Rant)
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana, 1905
c. 270 — Valentine and His Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
public domain painting of a Lupercalia celebration from wikimedia commons
If legend is to be believed, on this date on or about the year 270 in Rome, Emperor Claudius the Second had a Priest named Valentine executed. The reason for the capital punishment was Valentine’s defiance of an order made by Claudius banning all marriages and engagements in Rome. The reason for this draconian decree by the Emperor? The Roman army was having a hard time attracting soldiers due to the strong attachment local men had to their wives and families. In other words, rather than leave home to wage war, they wanted to remain ordinary citizens and enjoy a peaceful family life.
Valentine, holding marriage and family to be more important than warfare, secretly continued to perform weddings. When discovered, Emperor Claudius decreed that Valentine be beaten to death with clubs and then beheaded.
While Valentine’s actions seem noble and brave, there is considerable confusion and disagreement about who Valentine really was (there were three “Saint” Valentines in that general time period). It’s also possible that the date settled on for Valentine’s Day is tainted by connections with Lupercalia, a pagan festival of “love” (actually a fertility fest, described as a violent and sexually charged affair).
Questions: When was Lupercalia replaced by Valentine’s Day? Are there other holidays that have a connection with pagan events and festivals? What happened to Claudius later in his life? What were the benefits and detriments of Claudius’ criminalizing marriage, and how long did this injunction last?
1779 — Captain Cook Killed in Hawaii
public domain image from wikimedia commons
English Navigator and Explorer Captain James Cook was killed on this day in 1779 in Hawaii. For more details, see the previous article from the January 18th edition of this series titled “1778 — Captain Cook Discovers Paradise at His Peril” here.
Questions: What was Cook’s first shipboard job? Besides Hawaii, to what other places had Cook sailed during his career? On which Hawaiian island was Cook killed? Is there a monument to mark the spot of his death? Did the English sailors immediately retaliate? Did England send further ships to Hawaii after this event?
1929 — Valentine’s Day Massacre
public domain image from wikimedia commons
Around a century ago, during the Prohibition/Bootleg era, Chicago crime kingpins Al “Scarface” Capone and George “Bugs” Moran conducted an ongoing feud which reached its climax on this day in 1929 when four of Capone’s men, dressed as policemen, entered Moran’s headquarters, lined seven of his men against a wall, and shot them to death. Capone’s main target, Moran, was not there; the two had been trying to kill each other throughout the 1920s.
Previously, Moran had done his level best to send Capone to his grave by carrying out a multiple-car drive-by shooting of a restaurant where Capone and his men were having lunch. Bugs and his henchmen fired over 1,000 bullets from the motorcade of at least six cars that cruised past the hotel, but Capone was not injured.
What became known as “The Valentine’s Day Massacre” was Capone trying to “return the favor” by having Moran ambushed. But Moran had arrived later than expected, shortly before the bloodbath, and saw what he thought were real policemen entering his place to arrest his gang, and waited outside. Moran didn’t die until 1957, outliving Capone by ten years.
Questions: How did George Moran get the nickname “Bugs”? How old and in what circumstances did Capone die? How old and in what circumstances did Moran die? For which crimes was Capone arrested in the years following the Massacre? For what was Moran imprisoned at the time of his death? What name was Moran given at birth?
1989 — Iranian Tyrant’s Barbaric Response to a Book
public domain image from wikimedia commons
On this date in 1989, painfully sensitive and woefully intolerant Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini overreacted to Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses by calling for the author’s death. Obviously not an adherent of Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Speech, the Iranian Tyrant called on “all brave Muslims” (I don’t think that word [brave] means what he thought it meant) to kill Rushdie — and the book’s publisher, too.
Perhaps Khomeini’s main source of irrational fevered irritation was that, not just the Prophet Muhammad, but also he himself was skewered in Rushdie’s novel.
But those bent on punishment didn’t stop at targeting the author and publisher: The Japanese translator of the book was stabbed to death two years later, and the Italian translator was also viciously attacked.
Rushdie was knighted by Great Britain in 2007 for his services to literature. The India-born author survived being stabbed in 2022, proving he was either wrong or whistling past the graveyard when he earlier said that he considered the calls for his death to be “a piece of rhetoric rather than a real threat.”
Questions: Do you think Khomeini should be held responsible for the attacks on the translators and on Rushdie himself? Does the fact that Khomeini died four months after issuing the fatwa against Rushdie change your answer? What is a fatwa? How long did Rushdie live in India? How long did Rushdie live in the UK? How long has Rushdie lived in the United States? Was Rushdie well-known prior to “The Satanic Verses”?
1990 — Pale Blue Dot
on left, public domain image from wikimedia commons; image on right generated using Bing Image Creator
On this date in 1990, the outer space exploration vehicle Voyager 1 took a photo of the earth known as Pale Blue Dot.
Scientist Carl Sagan (1934-1996) waxed poetic about the image, writing:
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
Questions: Would you want to travel into outer space? Would you want to live on another planet? If so, what would you miss most about the earth? What would you miss least about the earth? Have you read any of Carl Sagan’s books?
2018 — Unthinkable Tragedy at Parkland, Florida High School
public domain image from wikimedia commons
Countless parents, grandparents, siblings, and other relatives and close friends were devastated on this date in 2018 when a mass shooting was carried out at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, near Miami. Seventeen students were killed, and another 17 physically injured (along with countless others who were/are psychically and emotionally injured) by a deranged ex-student.
After the mayhem, the 19-year-old gunman left his weapon in a stairwell and joined the fleeing students, exiting the schoolgrounds by blending in with the crowd. He then went to Walmart, a Subway sandwich shop, and finally to McDonalds. Soon thereafter, he was arrested. He is serving 34 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.
RANT: ON
For those who are in a position to help in these situations and don't — meaning primarily those whose job it is to protect the kids, such as school security officers and law enforcement personnel called to the scene — I have no respect whatsoever when they fail to do everything they can to save the kids. They are cowards. They are accomplices in the deaths of the children. By taking such jobs, they were implicitly saying they would DO the job if such an emergency arose. By failing to do it, they prevented someone of a better character from having the job they fraudulently accepted. If they can’t do it, then they shouldn't have accepted the role in the first place. There is no excuse — none! — for armed and trained men to hold back in such a situation. They need to “storm the castle” without hesitation! If they die, it's better than having to live with the woulda/shoulda/coulda shame of not acting. Even one child saved is worth the sacrifice. And if those who “wimp out” in such a situation don't feel shame, they certainly should. I’m not going to name names, but the school shooting written of above had such an individual, and the school shooting that took place in Uvalde, Texas in 2022, was far worse — masses of police officers waiting around while kids were being killed inside. They are fake cops. False protectors. Servants of nobody. Fake men. Phonies. Charlatans. Bums. There’s no shame in being fearful, as long as you acknowledge that trait and stay away from careers that require bravery, or have the grit to withstand your fear and act in spite of it. But by taking on those “tough guy/macho men (or women)” roles, you had better live up to what society expects of you — what the students, parents, and teachers, in particular, expect of you. That's all there is to it.
Of course, though, those worthy of the strongest vitriol are the shooters themselves. They may have been bullied or teased in school, or neglected and worse at home, but that’s no excuse — there’s no excuse — for what they do. I acknowledge that mental illness exists, but I won’t accept it as a valid reason to defend their actions. If they have enough self-control to plan and carry out such an act, they have enough to resist the urge of harming others.
Many of the shooters end up committing suicide at the end of their spree. If only they would reverse the order of their plans and kill themselves first, they would be worthy of some respect and in some cases even pity. Perhaps that is the intent of some: they want to commit “suicide by cop”; in light of that, those with the authority and power to do so should act immediately and eliminate the threat when an armed individual arrives on school grounds. A person who brings a lethal weapon to school (especially when it is a person already known to be a potential threat, which many of them are) is not doing arriving at school armed in order to intimidate his classmates or ex-classmates into buying Girl Scout Cookies. It should be pretty basic: while taking time to “make a plan” would be nice, when you hear the sound of shooting, that means kids are being shot at. There’s no time to draw up a play; it could be too late for those in the crosshairs. Don’t over think it; just go, toward the sound of the shots. If the first guy doesn’t get him, the next one will, or the next.
The shooter and the not-responding Responder are a match made in hell. Those charged with the safety of the children who prevaricate, or worse yet, absquatulate, should be co-defendants in the trials to follow.
There are plenty of brave peace officers around. I believe most of them would do the right thing, and be rightly viewed as heroes. Those individuals mentioned above, though: rank failures. Frauds. Inexcusable.
RANT: OFF
Fortunately, only a very small number of people will have to personally experience such a tragedy.
Since 1999, when the Columbine school massacre took place, there have been on average about 16 school shootings in the U.S. per year, or one every 23 days. There are 131,000 Elementary, Middle, and High schools in the U.S., so the chance in any given year that one of those schools will be attacked is 1:8,188. Thus, the chance of your school, or your child's school, being assaulted by a gunman in a given year are exceedingly, almost vanishingly tiny. Even if you count all 14 years you or your child will be in school (14 years if you or they attend Pre-K and K in addition to grades 1-12), the chance of being a victim (that is, being onsite, not even a direct physical victim) is still miniscule, about 1:585. But the danger is still there; the possibility is there: After all, experiencing a school shooting is more likely than winning the lottery (the odds of which are approximately one in 300 million, the reason why some consider the purchasing of lottery tickets to be a tax on fools) or getting struck by lightning (approximately one in a million chance in a given year). So school shootings are something to prepare against, but not something to constantly worry about.
Questions: Why is it so hard to control assault weapons? Is it mainly a “follow the money trail” situation (people increase their wealth by producing and selling guns, and are thus disinclined to put people over a political agenda)? What possible beneficial use could such weapons have? Are people’s “rights” to bear such arms more important than the countless lives that could be saved if these weapons were strictly monitored, controlled, or even banned altogether? Who is David Hogg? Have you heard the Lynyrd Skynyrd song “Saturday Night Special”? What is more important than the safety of kids? (answer: NOTHING!)
