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.
Blog
Blogs, essays, updates, and occasional notes that sit alongside The Butterfly Effect.
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.
The Consortium That Lost China
In 1911, a cartel of Western banks lent the dying Qing dynasty £6 million to nationalise China's railways and hand the proceeds to foreign creditors. The protests that followed toppled the empire. The bonds were still worthless in 1983.
The Cartridge and the Crown
On 29 March 1857, Sepoy Mangal Pandey shot at his officers at Barrackpore and started no rebellion. Six weeks later India was on fire. The uprising that followed ended the East India Company — and handed the subcontinent to the Crown for ninety more years.
The battle of Susquehanna
In August 1869, Jay Gould attempted to seize the Albany and Susquehanna Railroad the same way he did everything else: through bribed judges, forged shares, hired men, and when those failed, a train full of armed roughs sent toward another train full of armed roughs.
The City That Held Out Too Long
On 28 March 1939, Madrid fell to Franco's forces after a siege that had lasted nearly two and a half years. The war ended days later. The reprisals lasted much longer.