He Kept Us Out of War
On 6 April 1917, the US declared war on Germany. Wilson had been re-elected five months earlier on a promise of neutrality. He won. Then he changed his mind. The 20th century was shaped in that gap.
Blog
Blogs, essays, updates, and occasional notes that sit alongside The Butterfly Effect.
The Ice and the Memory
On 5 April 1242, a twenty-year-old Prince of Novgorod halted a crusader advance on the ice of Lake Peipus. Russia never forgot. Most of Western history never noticed.
The Man Who Took Barcelona
On 4 April 801, Louis the Pious captured Barcelona after a seven-month winter siege. History would remember him as the weeping, penitent emperor who let the Carolingian Empire fall apart. On this morning he was twenty-two, and had just done something his father never managed.
The Man Who Wouldn't Take the Title
On 3 April 1721, Robert Walpole became Britain's first de facto Prime Minister. He denied the title throughout his twenty-one years in office. His successors scramble for it and last, on average, three.
The Father of Something
On 2nd April 747, Charlemagne was born. He would build an empire stretching from the Atlantic to the Elbe. His heirs would spend thirty years tearing it apart. The pieces became France and Germany.
One Man Was Not Enough
On 1st April 286, Diocletian appointed Maximian as co-Augustus, establishing Rome's first diarchy. The empire covered 5 million square kilometres. The logic was straightforward.
The Black Ships
On 31 March 1854, Commodore Matthew Perry forced the Tokugawa Shogunate to sign the Convention of Kanagawa, ending 220 years of Japanese isolation. The treaty was designed to keep Japan dependent. Japan had other ideas.
The Man Who Killed the Scream
On 30 March 1842, a country doctor in Jefferson, Georgia, soaked a towel in sulphuric ether and held it under a young man's nose. James Venable felt nothing. Crawford Long had just changed surgery forever.
Carthage's Parting Gift
Rome had soldiers in Spain a century before Julius Caesar bothered with France, even though France was right next door. The reason has nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with Hannibal.
The Man Who Fought With a Chequebook
Edward Stettinius dropped out of school at sixteen, ground his way through a decade of failed ventures, and eventually ran the Diamond Match Company. Then the Allies hired J.P. Morgan to buy for the First World War, and Morgan hired him.