FUNNY HISTORY JOKES

Will and Guy's Humour In History

Will and Guy are convinced that humour, laughter and jokes have been with us since the beginning of human life on earth, and we would like to share some jokes with you that have an historical background.

 Funny Historical Facts, Jokes, Trivia and Fun

Aristotle felt that laughter was a distinctive trait of humanity and one that distinguished humans from the animals.

Did you know that the eighth Duke of Devonshire, known to his friends as "Harty Tarty", was told off by Queen Victoria for picking his nose at dinner. A poor shot, he once killed a pheasant and his gun-dog and wounded two bystanders [one of whom was his chef] with a single cartridge.

Baldulf, the medieval soothsayer, prophesied to the king that his favourite mistress would soon die. Sure enough, the woman died a short time later. The king was outraged at the soothsayer, certain that his prophecy had brought about the woman's death. He summoned Baldulf and commanded him, 'Tell me when you will die!'

Baldulf realized that the king was planning to execute him straightaway, no matter what answer he gave. 'I do not know when I will die,' he cleverly answered finally. 'I only know that whenever I do die, you will die two days later.'

Our Top Ten Hilarious, Funny, Witty and Short Jokes from History

The Philgelos or "Laughter-lover" is probably the oldest compilation of jokes in existence; it contains some 265 jokes. It is said that the famous Monty Python Parrot sketch has its origins in a joke told in the Philogelos.

1. Why were the early days of history called the dark ages?  Because there were so many knights.
2. It appears that shortest war on record was between Zanzibar and Britain in 1896.  Zanzibar [now part of Tanzania] surrendered after 38 minutes.
3. What kind of lighting did Noah use for the ark?  Floodlights and Ark lights
4. Which English King invented the fireplace?  Alfred the Grate.
5. How was the Roman Empire cut in half?  With a pair of Caesars.
6. I'm desperately trying to establish why kamikaze pilots wore helmets.
7. Last words from a general in the American Civil War, 'Nonsense.
   They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist……………'
8. Asked by the court barber how he wanted his hair cut, the king replied, 'In silence.' [From the Philogelos]
9. What's the difference between Joan of Arc and a canoe?  One is Maid of Orleans and the other is made of wood. [The Victorians enjoyed jokes like this one]
10. Wishing to teach his donkey not to eat, a pedant did not offer him any food. When the donkey died of hunger, he said, 'I've had a great loss. Just when he had learned not to eat, he died.' - Dated to the *Philogelos 4th Century CE]

FUNNY HISTORY OF THE WORLD

One of the fringe benefits of being an English or History teacher is receiving the occasional jewel of a student blooper in an essay. I have pasted together the following "history" of the world form certifiably genuine student bloopers collected by teachers throughout the United States, from eighth grade through college level. Read carefully, and you will learn a lot.

• The inhabitants of Egypt were called mummies. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cultivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of huge triangular cube. The Pyramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain.
• The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, asked "Am I my brother's son?" God asked Abraham to sacrifice Issac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Issac, stole his brother's birthmark. Jacob was a partiarch who brought up his twelve sons to be partiarch, but they did not take to it. One of Jacob's sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites.
• Pharao forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw. Moses led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fought with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in Biblical times. Solomon, one of David's sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines.
• Without the Greeks, we wouldn't have history. The Greeks invented three kinds of columns - Corinthian, Doric and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a female moth. One myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the River Stynx until he became intolerable. Achilles appears in "The Illiad", by Homer. Homer also wrote the "Oddity", in which Penelope was the last hardship that Ulysses endured on his journey. Acutally, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.
• Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.

AMERICA ATTACK 9/11

An American Airlines Boeing 767 (Flight 11) left Boston’s Logan Airport at 7:59 EDT heading for Los Angeles. Mohamed Atta (who had flown to Boston from Portland, Maineearly on 9/11 and whose suitcase, containing a video on flying airplanes, a fuel consumption calculator and a copy of the Koran was later found [this draft government report is in PDF format] at Logan Airport) was on board. So were four other hijackers.

When Atta and his compatriots took control of Flight 11, they diverted the plane south toward New York City. It struck the North Tower between the 95th and 103rd floors at 8:46:40 EDT. (The video links in this paragraph depict what Jules Naudet filmed [move the cursor ahead, to 21:04, to see his interview with Charlie Rose] as the first attack took place.) All 92 people onboard died, including nine flight attendants and both pilots.
Air traffic controllers could hear part of the conversation in the cockpit after the hijackers took control of the plane. (A quick-thinking member of the flight crew had managed to activate that system.) At 8:28 EDT, one of the attackers said:

Don’t do anything foolish. You are not going to get hurt. We have more planes. We have other planes.

One of those “other planes” was already on its suicide-murder mission.

 he idea of a center for world trade, to be located at the tip of Manhattan Island, began to seriously take shape when John F. Kennedy was America’s president. It was a time of dreams: to put a man on the moon; to achieve lasting world peace; to create a central place where worldwide commerce could be conducted.

Minoru Yamasaki, a Japanese-American with humble beginnings whose architectural firm was in metropolitan Detroit, created the center's design. Leslie Robertson was its chief structural engineer.

To support such a massive structure, one-quarter mile high, engineers had to dig to bedrock - 70 feet below the surface. Designers used innovative techniques (referred to as “a bathtub”) to keep the waters of the Hudson River out.

It took nearly ten years to complete the twin towers and the trade center complex. From the South Tower’s observation deck, one could look north to midtown Manhattan, east to the Brooklyn Bridge, and south to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

Photographs from the U.S. national archives, and a movie produced by the Port Authorityof New York and New Jersey, document the birth of the twin towers - once the tallest structures in the world:

• When the towers were built, rotting pier timbers and debris floating on the Hudson River (from illegally dumped industrial waste) were clearly visible.
  
• In 1973, Manhattan had a new skyline from the East River perspective.
  
• People traveling to the city on the Staten Island Ferry in May of 1973 had anawesome view of the new twin towers.
  
• An old neighbor (the historic Trinity Church on Lower Broadway at the foot of Wall Street) welcomed a new one in the spring of 1973.

Both neighbors, and everything else in the surrounding area, were threatened on the morning of September 11 as two planes, flying at about 500 miles an hour, approached the World Trade Center.

merican Airlines Boeing 767 (Flight 11) left Boston’s Logan Airport at 7:59 EDT heading for Los Angeles. Mohamed Atta (who had flown to Boston from Portland, Maineearly on 9/11 and whose suitcase, containing a video on flying airplanes, a fuel consumption calculator and a copy of the Koran was later found [this draft government report is in PDF format] at Logan Airport) was on board. So were four other hijackers.
When Atta and his compatriots took control of Flight 11, they diverted the plane south toward New York City. It struck the North Tower between the 95th and 103rd floors at 8:46:40 EDT. (The video links in this paragraph depict what Jules Naudet filmed [move the cursor ahead, to 21:04, to see his interview with Charlie Rose] as the first attack took place.) All 92 people onboard died, including nine flight attendants and both pilots.
Air traffic controllers could hear part of the conversation in the cockpit after the hijackers took control of the plane. (A quick-thinking member of the flight crew had managed to activate that system.) At 8:28 EDT, one of the attackers said:

Don’t do anything foolish. You are not going to get hurt. We have more planes. We have other planes.

One of those “other planes” was already on its suicide-murder mission.

 can Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757, left Washington’s Dulles Airport at 08:20 EDT. Sixty-four people were going to Los Angeles, including four flight attendants and two pilots.

After the hijackers took control, they turned off the cockpit’s transponder which caused the plane to drop off radar. Air Force jets were scrambled but arrived too late.
Eyewitnesses on the ground saw the plane approach Washington from the southwest. When it was just outside the city, the plane made a 270-degree turn and headed straight for the Pentagon (headquarters of America's Department of Defense). It crashed into thebuilding, causing a five-story section to collapse.
Everyone on the plane, plus 190 people in the Pentagon, died. Reporters, trying their best to get on top of the story, initially had no idea it was a third hijacked plane which had caused the massive Pentagon fire.
Author and TV commentator Barbara Olson, wife of U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson, called her husband twice during the ordeal. She reported the hijackers were armed with knife-like weapons and asked her husband, "What should I tell the pilot to do?"
The pilot, of course, was no longer in control of the plane.




At 08:42 EDT, a Boeing 757 took off from Newark, New Jersey with 44 people onboard,including two pilots and five flight attendants. United Airlines Flight 93 was en route to San Francisco when hijackers, likely armed with knife-like instruments and a box they said was a bomb (as reported by Mark Bingham), took control of the plane.
Using his cell phone, passenger Jeremy Glick called his wife to say he and some other passengers had voted to tackle the hijackers. Thomas Burnett told his wife, "I know we’re all going to die...There’s three of us who are going to do something about it." And Todd Beamer, in his now-famous statement, said, "Let’s roll."
Flight 93's voice recordings help to reconstruct what happened. Forty-six minutes after takeoff, at 9:28 EDT, the hijackers attacked while the plane was at 35,000 feet above eastern Ohio. The aircraft "suddenly dropped 700 feet."
The 9-11 Commission Report notes (scroll down 30%) that Cleveland Center received a message from the flight crew:

Eleven seconds into the descent, the FAA's air traffic control center in Cleveland received the first of two radio transmissions from the aircraft. During the first broadcast, the captain or first officer could be heard declaring "Mayday" amid the sounds of a physical struggle in the cockpit. The second radio transmission, 35 seconds later, indicated that the fight was continuing. The captain or first officer could be heard shouting: "Hey get out of here-get out of here-get out of here."

At 9:32, one of the attackers spoke to the passengers:

"Ladies and Gentlemen: Here the captain, please sit down keep remaining sitting. We have a bomb on board. So, sit." The flight data recorder (also recovered) indicates that Jarrah [the hijacker flying the plane] then instructed the plane's autopilot to turn the aircraft around and head east.

The plane, investigators believe, was now on a path to Washington, D.C.

Using GTE airphones, passengers on board began calling friends, family, colleagues and other people on the ground. They learned of the successful attacks on the World Trade Center and advised they were going to fight back:

Five calls described the intent of passengers and surviving crew members to revolt against the hijackers. According to one call, they voted on whether to rush the terrorists in an attempt to retake the plane. They decided, and acted.

The passengers took action, beginning at 9:57:

Several passengers had terminated phone calls with loved ones in order to join the revolt. One of the callers ended her message as follows: "Everyone's running up to first class. I've got to go. Bye."

Recovered data from the plane reveals what happened next:

The cockpit voice recorder captured the sounds of the passenger assault muffled by the intervening cockpit door. Some family members who listened to the recording report that they can hear the voice of a loved one among the din. We cannot identify whose voices can be heard. But the assault was sustained.

Realizing passengers were fighting back, the hijacker flying the plane reacted:

In response, Jarrah immediately began to roll the airplane to the left and right, attempting to knock the passengers off balance. At 9:58:57, Jarrah told another hijacker in the cockpit to block the door. Jarrah continued to roll the airplane sharply left and right, but the assault continued. At 9:59:52, Jarrah changed tactics and pitched the nose of the airplane up and down to disrupt the assault. The recorder captured the sounds of loud thumps, crashes, shouts, and breaking glasses and plates. At 10:00:03, Jarrah stabilized the airplane.

Recognizing Flight 93's passengers had thwarted their original objective - of slamming into a Washington building - the attackers talked about crashing the plane:

Five seconds later, Jarrah asked, "Is that it? Shall we finish it off?" A hijacker responded, "No. Not yet. When they all come, we finish it off." The sounds of fighting continued outside the cockpit. Again, Jarrah pitched the nose of the aircraft up and down. At 10:00:26, a passenger in the background said, "In the cockpit. If we don't we'll die!" Sixteen seconds later, a passenger yelled, "Roll it!" Jarrah stopped the violent maneuvers at about 10:01:00 and said, "Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest!" He then asked another hijacker in the cock-pit, "Is that it? I mean, shall we put it down?" to which the other replied, "Yes, put it in it, and pull it down."

The heroes of Flight 93 were making significant progress:

The passengers continued their assault and at 10:02:23, a hijacker said, "Pull it down! Pull it down!" The hijackers remained at the controls but must have judged that the passengers were only seconds from overcoming them. The airplane headed down; the control wheel was turned hard to the right. The airplane rolled onto its back, and one of the hijackers began shouting "Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest." With the sounds of the passenger counterattack continuing, the aircraft plowed into an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 580 miles per hour, about 20 minutes' flying time from Washington, D.C.

The actions of Flight 93's passengers averted another strike on a Washington, D.C. target - most likely the Capitol. Instead, at 10:03:11 EDT the plane crashed (leaving more than one debris field) in Shanksville, Pennsylvania - about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

Four planes, originally scheduled to depart American cities within 12 minutes of each other, had caused the worst attack on U.S. soil since the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.  According to the official 9-11 Commission Report, the plot had beenmasterminded by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
The American intelligence "system was blinking red," but, apparently, few people had noticed.


As the passengers of Flight 93 wrested control of the plane from the hijackers, the South Tower of the World Trade Center was in its final moments of life.
Five minutes before Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania, the South Tower, (which was hit by the second plane) collapsed at 10:05 EDT. Hundreds of rescue workers, plus people trying to escape, were crushed to death.
Twenty-four minutes later, the North Tower also collapsed. A cloud of volcanic-like ashrushed through the streets of lower Manhattan as people fled for their lives. It was too late, however, for rescuers and people inside the building. They, like so many others in the South Tower, died on September 11.
Some people survived. They survived because of miracles or heroes. Heroes like Rick Rescorla who made sure nearly all of Morgan Stanley’s 2700 employees left the South Tower even while building announcements advised people to stay put.
Rescorla, then in charge of security at Morgan Stanley, was never one to follow advice he didn’t trust. He knew what danger was - he had faced it in Vietnam. Because of him, thousands of people were not victims - as he was - of the terrorist plot.
The WTC complex was damaged. At 5:20 p.m. EDT, Number 7 World Trade Center (a 47-story building) also collapsed. At the time, although it was not well-publicized, officialsfeared that the Hudson River could flood the entire area if the WTC foundations caved in.
But what, exactly, caused the towers to fall?
 September 11 was not the first time terrorists attacked the World Trade Center. On 26 February 1993, six people died, more than a thousand were injured and 50,000 trade center workers were evacuated when a bomb in excess of 1,000 pounds exploded on thesecond level of the parking basement. The home-made device had been driven into the building in a stolen Ryder truck. The explosion’s epicenter was under the northeast corner of the Vista Hotel. (The same hotel, on 9/11, was owned by Marriott.)
The attack plan in 1993, as authorities later learned, was to topple one tower so it fell on the other, spewing forth cyanide gas and killing tens of thousands of Americans. At the time, and later, few people realized the scope of what the terrorists had set in motion. It is now believed that September 11's events began to take shape soon after the 1993 bomb failed to produce the hoped-for catastrophic results. If true, the well-coordinated attack on the United States was eight years in the making.
Two years after the bombing, but before Ramzi Yousef was arrested for his role in the failed attempt to topple the twin towers, he and his fellow terrorists plotted another spectacular disaster. Using a liquid explosive designed to pass through airport security, the terrorists planned to blow up eleven commercial American aircraft in one day. That plot was foiled when Yousef started a fire in Manilla.
When he fled the scene of the fire, Yousef left his computer behind. It contained what authorities needed to arrest him. Soon after, he was apprehended in Pakistan and extradited to the United States. He, and five other conspirators, were tried and convicted for their role in the bombing. Each received a prison sentence of 240 years.
In its Winter 1995/1996 edition, The National Interest published an article (by Laurie Mylroie) about several highly debatable issues.  One of those issues was the possibility of future terrorist actions against the United States (and its interests).
The article’s main concern (that uncoordinated communication between U.S. law enforcement agencies “may have created a niche for terrorism within America’s borders”) raised a point still hotly debated today.


On 7 August 1998, Al-Qaeda terrorists bombed the U.S. Embassy Compounds in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The coordinated attacks took place about four minutes apart. At least 212 people died and thousands more were injured.
In Nairobi, many of the victims were working in nearby buildings when the bomb exploded at approximately 10:40 a.m. local time. The American Embassy, located in a congested part of town, was gutted as the blast ripped through each floor and pulverized nearby vehicles.
The FBI, in the largest overseas deployment of agents in FBI history, conducted more than 1,000 interviews. As a result of that massive investigation, 22 people were charged with bombing the embassies. In May of 2001, four individuals were convicted even as a primary defendant - Osama Bin Laden - remained a fugitive. Those convicted men weresentenced to life in prison in October of 2001.
In August of 1997, about one year before the embassy bombings, Kenyan police and FBI agents found a very disturbing letter on the computer hard drive of longtime Bin Laden aide, Wadih El Hage. (He was one of the four convicted for bombing the embassies.) Near its end (scroll down about 80%) the letter states:

As you know, the decision to declare war on America was taken...

Government officials understandably observe that they receive so many warnings it is frequently impossible for them to determine which are real. But on 12 October 2000, another terrorist attack killed more Americans - this time aboard the U.S. guided missile destroyer USS Cole (DDG 67).

Eleven months before the events of September 11, the USS Cole, an American guided missile destroyer, was on its way to Bahrain. It planned to make a port visit where the headquarters of America's Fifth Fleet is located.
Needing fuel on 12 October 2000, the Arleigh-Burke class destroyer made a scheduled refueling stop at the Port of Aden in Yemen. As it "was mooring to a harbor refueling island," a "small boat exploded alongside" the ship, causing a 40-by-40-foot holeamidship on the port side.
The Cole's crew immediately responded with significant damage control. Among other things, they wrapped and plugged the hull at the point where a propeller shaft had penetrated the destroyer's hull. U.S. Marines were sent in to set up special checkpointsaround the Port of Aden.
Seventeen sailors died and 39 were injured. Navy divers found some of the missing men in the destroyer's flooded compartments.
The U.S. Navy's pictures of the USS Cole - in its injured state and as it was transported back to America aboard the Norwegian heavy transport Blue Marlin - are on-line:

• A patrol boat, with sailors and marines on board, provided security before the Colewas towed to sea and hoisted on board the Blue Marlin;
• The two ships crossed the Atlantic (you need an MPG player for this video link) and, in December of 2000, returned to America. They arrived at Pier 4 of the Ingalls Shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi where the Cole was slated for repairs.

Early on it was clear the explosion had been a terrorist attack. Within a year, the finger ofresponsibility pointed directly at Osama Bin Laden whose Yemeni family had migrated to Saudi Arabia many years before.
 The United States, with the help of its allies, responded to the September 11 terrorist attack with military force. On 7 October 2001, American and British forces directed a "measured, broad and sustained attack" on suspected terrorist cells in then-Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The so-called "war against terror" continues.

Every day one hears reports of military successes and failures. Where is bin Laden? Is he dead? Hiding somewhere? The broadcasts sound the same, one week seamlessly blending into the next. But the real story of America's response comes from her people. From the children. The teenagers. From the folks in the cities and in the heartlands. What is their response to these shattering events?
The U.S. Library of Congress has acquired many original works reflecting America's response to the attacks. Profiled here are creations from a broad spectrum of people - children and adults, amateurs and professional artists. All have generously given their productions to the national archives.

• The Twin Towers - "I Can't Take It!" - by Hannah Beach, third-grade student from Knoxville, TN
• The Twin Towers - "No, No" - by Meagan Yoakley, third-grade student from Knoxville, TN
• "It's OK" - Eddie Hamilton, third-grade student from Knoxville, TN
• "New Vocabulary as of September 12, 2001." - Liz Johnson
• "Flower Towers." - Jen Kim
• "We Interrupt This Regularly Scheduled Programming to Bring You Reality." - Ann Telnaes
• "How My Life Has Changed." - Hilary North
• "Nothing Feels Safe Anymore." - Daniel DiGia
• "Can't Stop Watching TV." - Marie Blanchard
• "WTC 010911 9:15 AM." - S. Torre
• "Engine Company 54 Lost 15 Men." - Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt
• "After the Screaming." - Marc Yankus
• "Fear, Fate and Faith." - Scip Barnhart
• "In Memory." - Brian Niemann

On the anniversary date of the September 11 attacks, the world remembers what happened on that day in 2001. One of the stories, donated to the Library of Congress, helps to put all those memories in perspective.

Letters From a Broken Apple, an illustrated story about New York on September 11, helps all of us remember our own thoughts and responses to the tragic events of that day:

• At the beginning of such a tragedy, no one really knows what to write.
• Maybe we start with the sirens.
• Or maybe we start with the rescuers.
• The only planes in the air are military - the F16s.
• What has happened? It is beyond belief.
• Friends and family frantically call each other: "Are you okay?"
• Two friends have not checked in. Are they okay?
• America shakes in her "collective skin."
• Heroes steer people clear of collapsing walls and throat-clogging ash.
• In fact, heroes are the first thing we notice.

What Americans take from the tragedy, among other things, is this: "We the People" will be "okay" because the people stand together. Because terrorists will never destroy America's national spirit.  And because ... as President Obama noted years later in his speech entitled "A New Beginning" ... America will reach out, to find common ground with the Muslim world, even as she will also "relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security."
 A "primary source" is the best place to get first-hand information. A person who experiences an event, and gives an account of it, is a source of primary information. Maps, photographs, drawings, videotapes, diaries, letters, manuscripts and other similar items can be primary sources.
Someone who interprets primary sources - like a scholar, for example - is creating a secondary source. (See Yale University's web site for a good understanding of the differences between primary and secondary sources.)
It is our policy to link to primary source material whenever possible. That is the reason most of our links are to worldwide national archives, museums, universities, military and government sites as well as other institutions like historical societies and libraries. It is our aim to provide a virtual trip to reliable places where primary sources are maintained. We frequently link to scholarly sources as well. All links serve as footnotes to our stories.
Where helpful, we link to scholarly narratives that explain the subject, or issue, in more detail. Scholarly-narrative links - when we use them - usually appear near the end of our stories, when the reader is more prepared to explore them.
Each recommended link, embedded in the story, takes you directly to the source of the footnoted information. If you would like to visit the main page of the linked site, or to further explore its content, eliminate everything in the URL after the ".edu, .gov, .org," etc., and then press "enter." That will take you to the main site where you can then search for whatever additional information you may need.
We have thoroughly researched appropriate links. Wherever possible, people who really know the subject matter have reviewed the stories for accuracy. Our main objective is to help our visitors find their way to some of the best on-line information regarding the profiled subjects - and to have fun at the same time. We hope you have enjoyed your visit.
In addition to the embedded links, we recommend that you explore the following web sites if you are seeking further information:

• The BBC has an incredible source of information regarding the attack.
• The Library of Congress has also assembled extensive materials about the events of September 11 and their aftermath.

 

10 Forgotten Facts About Historical Events

History is a funny sort of thing. As humans, we often take an extremely complex event and filter the information from that event that best captures the story in our minds. As a result of the limited nature of the human brain, often fascinating and/or critical information is lost. In this list, I wanted to capture some of the often overlooked and under-reported information surrounding major historical events. This list is in no way definitive and somewhat U.S.-centric. It would be great to see future lists that cover the topic in respect to other countries.

10

Man on the Moon

While the moon landing may be the single most remembered event in the history of mankind and President John Kennedy, as the man who championed and led this accomplishment, often forgotten is Kennedy’s true motive for the daunting task. In a conversation with James Webb, the director of NASA at the time, Kennedy was quoted as saying, “Everything we do ought to really be tied into getting on to the Moon ahead of the Russians [...] otherwise we shouldn’t be spending that kind of money, because I’m not interested in space [...] The only justification for [the cost] is because we hope to beat [the USSR] to demonstrate that instead of being behind by a couple of years, by God, we passed them.” Due to this passion to push the U.S. past the Soviets, Kennedy essentially diverted all of NASA’s funds to the moon landing, much to the dismay of Webb, who favored a broader approach of discovery and programs.

9

Mass suicide at Jonestown

Due to the powerful images conjured up while recalling the horrific incident in Jonestown that saw 900+ men, women and children die through suicide or murder, the world often only remembers the victims that were actually in the compound itself and forgets the victims that tried to flee with Congressman Leo Ryan, who was there to determine whether or not U.S. citizens were being held against their will. The day before the mass suicide, Ryan and other U.S. government officials landed in Guyana. During their visit, many of the cult members asked to leave with Ryan’s delegations. Arriving at the airport, the delegation was ambushed by the cult, one of who had embedded himself into the group asking to leave. The embedded cult member drew a gun on the plane and summarily shot the passengers. Additionally, the cult disbanded a small force and attacked the delegation from a tractor with a trailer. Congressman Ryan was one of those murdered, becoming the first and only U.S. Congressman killed in the line of duty in the history of the U.S.

8

Japan’s Emperor after Hiroshima

When U.S. history recalls Japan in WWII, it often only remembers the mushroom clouds that scarred Japan’s physical geography and overlooks the strong psychological moorings that were devastated after the surrender. Following the surrender of Japan, U.S. General MacCarthur forced Hirohito to issue the, “Humanity Declaration,” or the Ningen-sengen. In the declaration, the Emperor proclaimed that in fact and contrary to the Shinto religion, which the culture at the time was largely built upon, he was not a god. Interestingly however, the confession was given in an archaic, court form of Japanese allowing the Emperor to be deliberately vague. It is theorized that he substituted the much more common word, “arahitogami” or “living god”, with the much more unique word “akitsumikami,” meaning an, “incarnation of god.” Many scholars have noted that one could be a living god, without being an incarnation of god.

7

The terrorist attacks of 9/11

Again, because of the sensational images of the two, 110-story Twin Towers of the World Trade Center falling, many people forget the overall tremendous devastation that the acts truly resulted in. On 9/11, in addition to the Twin Towers- 7 World Trade Center (47-stories tall), 6 World Trade Center (8-stories tall), 3 World Trade Center and the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church were all completely destroyed, the latter entirely buried by debris of Tower 2. Also, 5 World Trade Center (9-stories tall), 4 World Trade Center (9-stories tall), the Deutsche Bank Building (40-stories tall), and Manhattan Community College’s Filterman Hall (15-stories tall) were all damaged beyond repair and have been or are slated for demolition.

6

2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami

Immediately following the 2004 Tsunami, the world was so rocked with the staggering death toll of nearly 240,000 individuals that it is often forgotten that many of the more rural and traditional citizens were able to survive through an indigenous understanding of the signs of an incoming tsunami. For example, scientists in the area initially were convinced that the aboriginal population of the Andaman Islands would be significantly ravaged by the tsunami, however, all but one of the tribes in the islands (oddly enough, the one that had largely converted to Christianity and thus, a change of lifestyle,) suffered only minor casualties. When questioned, the tribesmen explained to the scientists that the land and ocean often fought over boundaries and when the earth shook they knew that the sea would soon enter the land until the two could realign their borders. Because of this, the villagers fled to the hills and suffered little or no casualties. Additionally of note is the story of Tilly Smith, a 10-year-old British student vacationing on Mikakhao Beach in Thailand. Tilly, had recently studied tsunamis in school and immediately recognized the frothing bubbles and receding ocean as a harbinger of a tsunami. Along with her parents, they warned the beach and it was entirely evacuated safely.

5

The Bobby Kennedy Assassination

While nearly everyone can name the place (The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles) and perpetrator of the assassination (Sirhan Sirhan), few people recall the man who captured and disarmed the gunman. That man was Rosie Grier, an American Football sensation (Super Bowl Champion, 2 time pro-bowler, member of the Ram’s “Fearsome Foursome,” and 5 time All Pro defensive tackle.) On the night of the assassination, Grier was the bodyguard for Kennedy’s pregnant wife. Along with Rafer Johnson, an Olympic gold medal decathlete, Grier heard the shots and tackled Sirhan. Grier, then jammed his finger behind the trigger of the gun and broke Sirhan’s arm. Grier then fought off those that were literally ready to rip Sirhan apart. Later Grier, would explain that, “I would not allow more violence.” Additionally, Grier would later testify to Judge Lance Ito during the O.J. Simpson trial that he had been present when O.J. confessed to the crimes in prison. Judge Ito however, ruled that the testimony was inadmissible.

4

The Moscow Theatre Massacre

When the news broke that the Russian military had ended the standoff where 850 people were held hostage by a Chechen separatist group in Moscow, the focus of the news quickly turned to the dramatic rescue. Due to this, the heroism and sacrifice of Olga Romanova, is often overlooked. When Romanova, a 26 year-old perfume-shop clerk, heard of the crisis, she left the safety of her parent’s house and walked to the Theatre alone. Convinced that she could reason with the terrorists and at the very least convince them to free the women and children, Romanova somehow managed to bypass the intense security in the area and enter the theatre. She then confronted the rebels and pleaded for the immediate release of the hostages. The terrorists, suspecting that she was FSB, marched her into an adjoining room and executed her with a shot to the head.

3

Kent State Shootings

Due to the iconic photo of a student lying dead and another leaning over his body and weeping, the Kent State Massacre has largely been accepted as a single event that took place in Ohio and resulted in 4 students being killed by the U.S. National Guard. What is often forgotten about the event is the sheer size and scale of the overall national unrest at the time of the shootings. Immediately following the shooting and centered on the common sentiment of, “they can’t kill us all,” 900 college campuses were closed because of violent and non-violent protests. Also, 100,000 people descended on Washington D.C., smashing car windows, lighting fires, looting and barricading streets and freeways. The President of the United States was evacuated to Camp David and the 82nd Airborne was brought in to defend the white house. Additionally, Nixon organized a special commission to focus solely on campus unrest. Ray Price, Nixon’s chief speechwriter was quoted as saying, “that’s not student protest, that’s civil war.” Overall, 4,000,000 people took place in the protests. It was at the time, the only nation wide protest on college campuses.

2

Altamont Free Concert of 1969

When the Altamont Concert is remembered, it is often solely for the Hell’s Angels providing “security,” and the ensuing riot that left an 18-year old man dead. According to sources, the Rolling Stones had hired the Hell’s Angels to keep people off the stage and to escort the Stones through the site. According to some witnesses, the Angels were hired for $500.00 worth of beer. As the evening went on, the crowd and the Angels got increasingly agitated with one another. The crowd pressed to the stage and the Angels fought them back. In the ensuing melee, Meredith Hunter was killed and the death has ever since been remembered as an example of the Angel’s inherent lawlessness and violence. However, what is not often remembered is the actual event that spawned the killing. Meredith Hunter, high on methamphetamine was captured on camera approaching the stage and brandishing a pistol. In response to the imminent danger, an angel drew a knife and stabbed him. The act of violence was determined by a judge to be an act of justifiable homicide as the Angel had every reason to believe his life was in jeopardy.

1

The Boston Massacre

The Boston massacre was one of the most critical events that led the colonies of America to revolt against King George III. While it is well remembered in this fashion, the fates of the British soldiers that fired on the civilians are often forgotten. In fact, the Captain that was present and 8 of the soldiers were arrested and tried. What is interesting is that the defender of the soldiers was none other than, John Adams, founding father and future President of the United States. No lawyer in Boston would take the case and so the court pled with Adams to represent the men. Although, he was hesitant, he so believed that everyone deserved a fair trial that he finally relented. Adams successfully convinced the jury that 6 of the men were afraid for their life and therefore, had the right to defend themselves. Interestingly, two of the men were convicted of murder, however, Adams presented a loophole to the court whereby according to English law, if the men could read then they could claim to be clergy and thereby were not bound by secular law. Adams had the men read out-loud from the Bible and the charges were reduced to manslaughter for which they were punished by a branding on the thumb.

Charles Darwin's Bombshell

The Book that Revealed Evolution as the Master-Key to Nature’s Secrets

The idea of Evolution is so much part and parcel of our thinking that it is hard to realize that up to as recently as the middle of the last century many, perhaps most, scientists looked upon it as being little more than an interesting hypothesis. There might have been an evolution of the rocks, that they were prepared to allow; but they could find little evidence for a similar evolution of plants and animals. While as for the Evolution of Man, the very suggestion was considered to be too far-fetched to be considered seriously. Was it not most clearly stated in the opening chapters of the book of Genesis that all mankind is descended from a single human pair who were specially created as the first man and woman? Why, they even knew when this had occurred, for there in the margin of the big family Bible was given the date, 4004 B.C.
There are people to-day, the so-called Fundamentalists, who still hold to some such view. But there are not many of them. In all the countries of the world the great majority of scientists, as well as the leaders of religious thought and indeed most thinking men, are Evolutionists, and make no bones about acknowledging it. Evolution is no longer regarded as a supposition, but as a master-key for the unlocking of the secrets of Nature. All that we see and know has evolved from something very different from what it is at present, and not least Man himself has gone through an evolutionary process.
Obviously a great intellectual revolution has occurred, one of the most momentous and far-reaching in human history; and if there is one man who was responsible for it more than any other it is an English scientist whose name everybody has heard of, even though by no means everybody has read so much as a line of any of the books that he wrote.
Charles Darwin was born in 1809, and he lived until 1882. He was the son of a doctor in Shrewsbury, who besides marrying a wealthy wife, she was a Miss Wedgwood, one of the famous potter’s family, made a fortune out of his practice. Charles was the second son and nearly the youngest of a family of six. He went to a private day-school, where he learnt very little, and then had seven years at the great public school of Shrewsbury, where again he learnt next to nothing.
He had not the slightest interest in making Latin verses, but he was interested in chemistry experiments and in collecting beetles. He was also good at sport, and his father, in a fit of irritation at his lack of scholastic success, once grumbled, “you care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and to your family!” It is characteristic of Darwin that when he recorded this outburst in his Autobiography he was quick to add that “my father was the kindest man I ever knew”.
Leaving Shrewsbury at sixteen, he proceeded to Edinburgh University to train as a doctor, but the sights and smells of the operation-room proved too much for him and he speedily with­drew. His father then thought that he might as well become a clergyman, and sent him to Cambridge for three years. His time there was wasted, as far as his studies were concerned, just as had been the years at school and Edinburgh. But he read widely and made some good and useful friends, and he still collected beetles. Once he discovered a fresh species, and it was with immense satisfaction that he read one day in a book on British insects that this particular beetle had been discovered by Charles Darwin, Esq.
Then he had a stroke of great good fortune. One of his friends among the dons recommended him for the post of naturalist to accompany an expedition that was being sent out by the Govern­ment to make a survey of the coasts of the most southern parts of South America. Darwin nearly lost the opportunity. His father was against his accepting the offer, and Captain FitzRoy, who was to command the expedition in his ship H.M.S. Beagle, when he first met him didn’t like the shape of his nose, since it suggested to him a lack of energy and determination…
But the objections, parental and nasal, were overcome, and in 1831 Darwin sailed from Devonport on the Beagle, and he did not see England again until the autumn of 1836. To begin with, he was most horribly seasick, but before long he was enjoying himself in a crowd of fresh sights and experiences. He wandered in a tropical forest when they first touched land in Brazil, and oh, the wonder of it! “To a person fond of natural history“, he wrote in his journal, “such a day as this brings with it a deeper pleasure than he can ever hope to experience again.” He rode with cowboys across the pampas, and joined in a kangaroo hunt in the Australian bush. He enjoyed the hospitality of slave-holding planters, and took back with him an undying hatred of slavery as an institution. In Tierra del Fuego he saw the human species at its lowest: “The sight of a naked savage in his native land is an event which can never be forgotten.”
He gave full vent to his passion for collecting, and the sailors were so amused that they dubbed him “The Flycatcher”.
Now and again he fell out with FitzRoy, whose temper was none of the easiest, but it is noteworthy that it was the Captain who christened Darwin Mountains and Darwin Sound in Tierra del Fuego, in recognition, as he said, of the young man’s exertions beyond the call of duty. Very shortly Darwin had discovered that “the pleasure of observing and reasoning was a much higher one than that of skill and sport”, and when he went ashore he left his gun behind. Years later when he looked back on the voyage in the Beagle, he declared that it had been the most important event in his life and had determined his whole career.
When at length he got back home he told his father that he had decided on what he wanted to do. “Adding a little to Natural Science,” is how he expressed it, and his father raised no objection; after all, the boy was old enough now to know his own mind, and there was no question of his having to earn his living, with so much money in the family. But Natural Science is a big enough subject in all conscience, and it was some time before Darwin had settled on the particular part of it that he would do his best to add to. Then as he arranged his notes and specimens that he had brought back with him, his mind kept reverting to something that he had often observed and pondered over. On every hand he had seen “organisms of every kind beautifully adapted to their habits of life”. But how had they managed to do this?
The problem, so he tells us, haunted him, and he decided to collect as many facts as he could on the variation of plants and animals both in a state of nature and when domesticated, with a view to discovering just what had made them change and adapt themselves. “My first note-book was opened in July, 1837,” he recorded; this was less than a year after the return from the voyage.
For nearly twenty years he worked on the problem, collecting facts, writing them down, comparing them, evaluating them. He was able to do this because he was supremely fortunate in marrying a woman who was an excellent manager and let him work away undisturbed. She was a cousin, Emma Wedgwood, and all that we read about her is pleasant and to her credit. For some years after their marriage in 1839 they lived in London, but Darwin got tired of dining out and frequent callers and making calls, and in 1842 they moved to a large house that he bought on the outskirts of the little village of Downe, in Kent. For forty years Darwin lived there in the most happy circumstances, but for his health. What he actually suffered from is not clear, but there is little doubt that he was somewhat hypochondriacal. Emma nursed him, read to him, listened to talk which she often did not properly understand, and, not least, bore him ten children in seventeen years.
Year after year went by, with Darwin still plodding away at his note-books. He thought that there was plenty of time, since the subject was not one that had attracted the attention of other workers in the field. At least that is what he thought; in fact, he was wrong, as we shall see. Soon after his removal to Downe he had sketched out his theory in 35 pages; in the summer of 1844 he enlarged this to 230 pages. More years passed, and still he had nothing ready for the printer. The friends with whom he had discussed it urged him to “get a move on”, and in 1858 he had got a book almost ready.
Then one morning in June of that year he received a nasty shock, in the shape of a letter from another British naturalist with whom he had been having some friendly communications on matters of common interest. Alfred Russel Wallace was his name, and he was a naturalist exploring in the East Indies. But for years, it transpired, he had been working on the very problem which Darwin thought he had made his own. And now, accompanying his letter, was a manuscript in which the theory he had arrived at was outlined. In all essentials it was the same as Darwin’s, “if Wallace had had my MS sketch written out in 1842″, he noted, “he could not have made a better short abstract!”
Darwin’s first reaction was to declare that he would rather burn his book than that Wallace “or any other man should think that I had behaved in a paltry spirit”. But eventually (since both he and Wallace were Victorian gentlemen) the matter was satisfactorily arranged. It was settled that a joint statement should be prepared, and this was read at a meeting of the Linnean Society in London on 1 July, 1858. Strangely enough, none of the small audience of thirty fellows who heard the paper read seems to have thought that the theory was at all out of the way. But when at last Darwin’s book was published, in November, 1859, a storm broke about his ears.
The book’s full title was The Origin of Species, by means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.
It was a big book, of nearly 600 pages, and by no means easy reading. But the first edition of 1,250 copies at 15s. each was sold out on the day of publication, and a second edition of 3,000 copies that was rushed through the press was likewise soon disposed of. Four further editions were published in Darwin’s life-time, and the book still sells, since it has long been acknowledged as one of the great classics of Science.
Now, what was the book about, and why did it cause such a furore? In the first place, it should be made quite clear that Darwin did not “discover Evolution”, as is sometimes alleged. There were evolutionists among the thinkers of ancient Greece, and in the eighteenth century Lamarck in France and Darwin’s own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, had advanced theories of an evolutionary character. And among Darwin’s own circle of intimate friends there was at least one, Herbert Spencer, who was quite convinced of the truth of Evolution, even though he was not in a position to prove it. This is where Darwin had the advantage; if he did not prove it beyond any doubt, he could hardly have done so in the then state of scientific knowledge, he made it seem exceedingly probable, and suggested a way by which it might have been brought about.
At the outset he was not a believer in any evolutionary theory himself; like nearly every one of his contemporaries, he thought that each species of animals and plants had been independently created. Even after his return from the voyage in the Beagle he was still far from sure that this had not been the case. Then he happened to read The Principle of Population by the Rev. T. R. Malthus that had been first published in 1798, and this book gave him the clue he had been looking for.
Malthus demonstrated how there was a natural tendency for living creatures to become so prolific that in a few years they would fill the world, that is, if they were left to themselves. But in practice their numbers were kept down by a lack of sufficient food, and they were obliged to struggle among themselves to survive. Darwin had already seen evidences of such a struggle in his studies of plants and animals, and now it struck him that “under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species.” To this process he gave the name of Natural Selection.
“Although much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure,” he wrote in the introduction to the Origin, “I can entertain no doubt, after the most deliberate study and dispassionate judgment of which I am capable, that the view which most naturalists until recently entertained, and which I formerly entertained, namely, that each species has been independently created, is erroneous. I am fully convinced that species are not immutable; but that those belonging to what are called the same genera are lineal descendants of some other and generally extinct species. . . . Furthermore, I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the most important, but not the exclusive, means of modification.”
Well, that was his conclusion; and looking back, it may seem difficult to understand what all the fuss was about. For fuss there was, and plenty of it. As regards the scientific world, quite a number of the leading scientists ranged themselves on Darwin’s side, notably Professor Thomas Huxley, who acquired the nickname of “Darwin’s bulldog” on account of his spirited championship of the Darwinian theory. But the general public, and even some scientists, were greatly worried about the theory’s implications. If the different species of plants and animals had evolved, could they draw the line there and exclude Man? Might it not be argued that Man, too, had evolved? To the Victorian self-esteem Darwin’s book came as a bombshell. “What, us, descended from monkeys? Perish the thought!”
This point was seized upon by Bishop Wilberforce, when at a meeting of the British Association at Oxford in 1860 he crossed swords with Professor Huxley. The Bishop had “crammed” up the subject (runs one account of the famous incident) and knew nothing of it at first hand. He ridiculed Darwin badly and Huxley savagely, and then slipped into banter. “I would like to ask Professor Huxley”, he said, “as to his belief in being descended from an ape. Is it on his grandfather’s side or on his grandmother’s that the ape ancestry comes in?” Nothing of the kind had been alleged, of course, but Huxley rose to the bait. “I should feel it no shame to have risen from such an origin,” he declared, “but I should feel it a shame to have sprung from one who prostituted the gifts of culture and eloquence to the service of prejudice and falsehood.” The effect was tremendous; at least one lady fainted and had to be carried out…
Huxley delighted in such contests; Darwin kept well away from them. He just carried on with his chosen work, and published a new book every now and again. The best known of these is The Descent of Man, published in 1871, in which he definitely applied his theories to the Development of Man. It was quite uncompromising in its assertion that “Man is descended from some lowly organized form… and still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin,” but it created nothing like the angry stir that had saluted the Origin. The first book had broken the ice, as it were, and the idea of Evolution was now pretty generally accepted. When Darwin died in 1882 he was buried in Westminster Abbey, as befitted a man who had added such immense lustre to Science. And the passing of the years have only added to his fame.
This is not to say that his particular theories are accepted nowadays as the final word: they are not. A great deal has been discovered since Darwin wrote, particularly in the field of Genetics, about which absolutely nothing was known in Darwin’s time. He had never heard Mendel’s name so far as we know, and had no suspicion of the existence of genes and chromosomes. If Darwin could come back to-day he would find that his theory had been changed in the light of this new knowledge, although in main essentials it is still accepted as the most likely explanation of the way the evolutionary process has worked. He would not have been in the least surprised or minded. Science must advance, and theories are but stepping-stones to further progress.
What he was chiefly concerned with was the truth of the principle of Evolution, and that stands four-square. So, looking back on his momentous career, we may surely agree with what he himself wrote in his Autobiography about it: “As for myself, I believe that I have acted rightly in steadily following and devoting my life to Science.”

FOUNDING OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY

The Beginning of British Rule in India

About the same time that the English had begun to settle in North America, in the latter half of the sixteenth century, they had also begun to turn their interest to the opposite side of the world. Released by the defeat of the Spanish Armada from the threat to the peace and security of their own islands, and having no strength left, for the moment, to be tempted to seize some of Spain’s empire from her, they turned instinctively to trade and adventure, and equally instinctively began to look for both in the east as well as the west.
England’s contact with India may be said to have begun when, in 1583, a certain Ralph Fitch, with three companions, set out for the Far East by the overland route. So many years passed without any news of them that they were given up for lost. Then one day in 1591 Ralph Fitch came home again, and the tale he had to tell would not have shamed Scheherazade.
By way of the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf, he had come at last to Goa, where the Portuguese had long ago staked a claim. Arrested as a spy, he had been cast into prison there, and had only been released by the intervention of an English Jesuit resident. He had then visited the court of the Mogul at Agra, and the story he told of the riches of this country caused great excitement in the City of London.
Such great excitement, in fact, that before 1591 passed into 1592, the City merchants had despatched three vessels to do trade with the Far East. Only one survived, and reached Malaya, where it took on a cargo of pepper and spices to a resale value of one million pounds.
On the way home, she was swept by contrary winds across the Atlantic to Hispaniola and Labrador, but in 1593, battered, with half her rigging missing and a mere handful of survivors, who had put off their Captain, James Lancaster, they knew not where, she limped into Plymouth. It was not until the following year that a French vessel put Captain Lancaster ashore at Rye.
Despite the hazards this expedition had encountered, it had nevertheless proved an important point, such voyages to the Far East were feasible. Over the next two years or so, the City merchants laid their plans for establishing Far Eastern trade on a regular basis, and on 31 December, 1600, Elizabeth I granted a charter to “The Company of Merchants of London trading to the East Indies”.
First experiences did not hold out the prospect of a long life for the East India Company. With the traditional caution of the City merchants, since the uncertainties of any expedition required to voyage many thousands of miles were so great, the members of the Company wound up their accounts after each voyage and returned all the capital, plus profits, to the investors. This practice led to considerable confusion as soon as permanent agents began to be established in the East, yet it was persisted in until 1657, when the Company raised a permanent capital, and became a joint-stock concern in the modern sense.
The dominant desire of the members of the East India Company was to trade, and though they knew that sometimes, in order to trade successfully, their servants would have to fight, they wanted as little fighting as possible. When applying for their charter, they had told the Lord Treasurer of their resolve “not to employ any gentlemen in any place of charge. We wish to be allowed to sorte our business with men of our own qualitye lest the suspicion of the employmt of gentlemen being taken hold of by the generalitie do dryve a great number of the Adventurers to withdraw their contributions.”
The founders of the Company, therefore, had no designs on India. They had formed it to trade in spices in the East Indies, the archipelago of islands off the south-east coast of Asia. It was force majeure which was to compel them, very reluctantly, to turn their first attentions to the subcontinent.
Six years before the Company had been formed, the Dutch had begun trading with the islands, but their United East India Company was not the private concern that the English company was. It received such heavy official backing that it was virtually a department of State. Already much weaker than their Dutch rivals, the Company’s position was weakened further still when, in 1619, James I compelled the Company to accept a treaty with the Dutch whereby the English while having to contribute a third of the cost of the civil and military administrations of the islands, were allowed only one-third of the value of the trading carried on by the Dutch.
A clash of interests such as this was bound to lead to a physical clash, despite the English Company’s pacific intentions. It came to a head in February, 1623, when the Dutch governor at Amboyna in the Moluccas suddenly seized the eighteen English agents resident there, accused them of conspiring to seize the islands and executed ten of them in the presence of the native population.
The massacre of Amboyna went far towards founding the British Empire in India, for it brought to an end English trade with the Spice Islands, since the Company felt itself incapable of defending itself against such perfidy. Within two years, it had abandoned all activity in the farthest East, and was concentrating on India.
In India, the principal rivals, and obstacles, to trade were the Portuguese, who had been firmly established in Goa, and on the Malabar coast, and had been in possession of Ceylon for many years. At this time they were aiming to secure a monoply of Indian trade with Europe and with the Far East. So here, too, the Company had to be prepared to see its servants fight, for, as much as they disliked it, trade could be had on no other terms.
A dozen years before the abandonment of the Spice Islands’ trade, the Company’s representatives had already been challenging the Portuguese in India, and had had some success. In 1612, the Mogul governor of Surat, in acknowledgment of the English victory over the Portuguese after a prolonged struggle within his jurisdiction, had granted permission for the setting up of the first English trading-post in the dominions of the Great Mogul. This was the beginning of the collapse of the Portuguese empire.
A year earlier, an equally significant event had also occurred. An English factory had been established at Masulipatam, halfway up the eastern coast, and from Masulipatam, much against the wishes of the Company’s directors, Francis Day had acquired for his employers the sovereignty of a strip of land in Madras. Here Day built Fort George, the first fortified factory in India.
Despite these mettlesome activities of its servants and the indisputable fact that India was a rich field to cultivate, the Company was not prepared to take responsibility for developing English influence in India, and for about a quarter of a century it gave almost no effective support to its agents. Underlying this strange state of affairs was really a difference of opinion among the Company’s members as to what form the Company should take. The differences might never have been resolved had not Cromwell stepped in and as a result of his inquiries into its affairs decreed that the Company’s monopoly should be maintained. Though historians in the past, and too many still in the present, have overlooked the fact, the next thirty years, the era of Charles II, was seminal in the history of India. For at the beginning of this period we find the resident in Surat is the local manager of a trading company, while at the end of it he is President of Bombay, head of an executive government, with law courts, a standing army, and a system of taxation.
The first event in this process was a new charter granted in 1661, which added to the old privileges a wider jurisdiction over all Englishmen in the East, and new powers to raise troops and maintain fortifications. The first intention of this charter was to enable the Company to defend itself more effectively against its European rivals. Nevertheless, Charles began to entrust the instruments of government to the merchants.
In 1668 the king handed over to the Company, for a rent of £10 a year, the Crown colony of Bombay, which had come to him as part of the dowry of his Portuguese wife, but which had proved terribly costly to administer. Against all the signs to the contrary, the merchants “believed in” Bombay’s future. They fortified it, and in ten years its population rose from ten to sixty thousand.
A change was now beginning to come over the Indian scene. The great Mogul Empire was showing signs of disintegration. Up to now, the English merchants had reckoned on trading within the peace kept by the native rulers and had no thought of administration or government. But the growing ineffectualness of that rule made it necessary for the merchants to protect themselves, and this was the first step towards involvement in empire building.
The period of this development was one of relentless struggle against seemingly insurmountable odds. Only the strength of Puritan resistance could probably have performed the apparently impossible. Take, for example, the obstinacy of Job Charnock, the Bengal agent.
In his territory the Company needed a port, and Charnock established one at the mouth of the River Ganges. In 1687 he was compelled by the Mogul’s soldiers to evacuate it; before the end of the year he was back, only to be forced to leave again the following year. Again he returned, in 1690, and this time was determined to stay for good. And he did. In 1697 Fort William was built there, and from it rose Calcutta, where, for the first time, the Company possessed rights of justice and police over the native population.
But other developments were also taking place in India which were to become part and parcel of a struggle which was to be fought out in Europe and North America a century later.

French East India Company

In the mid-i66os, the French East India Company had entered the field and had leased factories at Pondicherry, south of Madras, and at Chandernagore in Bengal. They were permitted to fortify their factories and to maintain a handful of soldiers for what were practically police purposes.
The leading French figure here was Francois Dupleix. Realizing to the full the disintegration of the Mogul Empire and the instability of the Mohammedan dynasties, Dupleix conceived the idea of establishing supreme French influence at the courts of the native rulers thus making the French masters of India. Before he could achieve this, however, the British had to be suppressed.
Unfortunately for Dupleix, he lacked the necessary sea-power. A simple duel between the French and the British actually in India might, and probably would, have resulted in a French victory. Sea-power turned the scales completely, because it enabled the British to recover from the effects of defeat while making it impossible for the French to do likewise. Therefore, instead of the French suppressing the British, the British suppressed the French.
The headquarters of the French and British were at Madras and Pondicherry respectively, both situated in the Carnatic, a vast province where the Nawab was a lieutenant of the Nizam of the Deccan. The declaration of war between the French and British in 1744 provided Dupleix with his opportunity. Having previously secured the favour of the Nawab, in 1746 he attacked the British and captured Madras. His progress was temporarily checked in 1748, when the treaty of peace compelled him to restore Madras to the British. But then a new way was opened when the succession both to the Nawab and the Nizam fell into dispute. Dupleix supported two of the claimants; the British the other two.
The French and their candidates seemed on the point of victory when the tables were turned by the brilliant achievements of Robert Clive. Peace in 1754 left the battle drawn, with the French candidate on the Nizam’s throne and the British candidate on the Nawab’s.
The outbreak of the Seven Years War in 1757 renewed the combat, and this time the British victory was complete. After 1763 the Nawab of the Carnatic was their puppet, and South India was divided between four powers, the British, the Nizam, the military state of Mysore just founded by the Mohammedan adventurer Haidar, and the Mahrattas. The rapidly expanding power of the last was utterly crushed at the third battle of Panipat by the Afghan ruler, Ahmed Shah.
In the meanwhile the British had in effect acquired a new dominion in Bengal as well as in the south. In Calcutta the local native potentate, Suraj-ud-Dowlah, shut up one hundred and twenty British residents in a small room in such conditions that all died. As a result of this outrage, known to history as the Black Hole of Calcutta, Clive was sent to Bengal with a punitive expedition. His sensational victory at Plassey on 23 June, 1757, made him the responsible master of Bengal, with complete control over the new ruler who was set up in the place of Suraj-ud-Dowlah. The position was regularized in 1765 when the Mogul, still the nominal sovereign of India, recognized the British as administrators of the province, while the Nawab of the neighbouring province of Oudh became their protege and dependant.
British ascendancy dates from Plassey, but the whole area under definite British control down to 1790 comprised only one-eighth of India. The authority of the British was vested in the East India Company, a trading concern without experience in political administration.
The home government awoke to some sense of its responsibilities and Lord North’s Regulating Act of 1773 devised an experimental system, under which it became the task of the Governor-General, Warren Hastings, not to extend the dominion, but to maintain the existing position. In the face of enormous difficulties, Hastings succeeded in this tremendous task and left India in 1785, having laid the foundations of the administrative system in Bengal upon which the structure of the British government in India was afterwards built up. But his rule had shown the necessity, first, for greatly increasing the freedom of action of the Governor-General, and, secondly, for the assumption of ultimate responsibility by the imperial government at home.
The result was characteristically British, a compromise, which though logically indefensible, was practically successful. Pitt’s India Act of 1784 appointed the Governor-General as the choice of the home government, and gave him general instructions, but at the same time authority to act on his own judgment.
By this time there were two aggressive native powers. Tippoo, the Sultan of Mysore in the south, and the Mahrattas in central India. And behind them loomed the fear of the recrudescence of the power of France in alliance with the enemies of the British. Tippoo forced war on Lord Cornwallis, and had part of his territories annexed as a result in 1792. But this did not deter Tippoo, who was finally quelled by Wellesley in 1799, when more territory was annexed, and Mysore was taken under British protection.
Wellesley developed the system of subsidiary alliances. He saw the necessity, if India were to survive, for a paramount power able to prevent aggression and enforce order. That power must naturally be British. He therefore pressed upon the native rulers the substitution of a protecting force under British control for huge native levies. At the same time, the Mogul, the supreme native ruler, was taken under British protection, and the British Government assumed his sovereign authority.
The decisive struggle with the Mahrattas came under the rule of Lord Moira (1813-1822), and the outcome was the transference of the Peshwa’s dominions to direct British control. The north-west still remained untouched, but there was a short and sharp conflict with the Gurkhas of Nepal, which resulted in a large cession of territory and the permanent establishment of friendly relations with the Gurkha kingdom. A deliberate challenge from Burma in 1823 led to the first annexations of territory in what was called Farther India in 1826.
The next twenty years, following upon Moira’s rule, saw no further expansion. Fear of French aggression was replaced by fear of a Russian advance through central Asia, and suspicion that the Amir of Afghanistan was intriguing with the Russians led Lord Auckland’s government to depose him in 1839 and to restore the ruler he had ejected. The reinstated Amir was supported by a British force at Kabul, until in 1843 the Afghans rose, cut up the British who were retreating under an ignominious capitulation, and forced them into a campaign which ended, admittedly, in the defeat of the Afghans, but also showed that the British had made an error of judgment in reinstating their supposed protege. So they deposed him, and put back on the throne the man whom they had deprived of it. Dost Mohammed now proved himself a loyal ally.
In 1839, the great Sikh Maharajah, Ranjit Singh, who had built up the powerful Punjab state, died, leaving an army full of confidence but with no controlling head. In 1845 it crossed the Sutlej and invaded British territory. A bloody campaign ended in the defeat of the Sikhs, but in 1848 a second war broke out, and after further fierce battles the Punjab was annexed in 1849.
Lord Dalhousie, the current Governor-General, having annexed Lower Burma, as the result of a second challenge from that quarter in 1852, then hit upon a means of extending British rule. Convinced that every expansion was for India’s good, he introduced the legal doctrine that when a territory was left without a legitimate heir, the territory lapsed to the paramount power. By these means, when Dalhousie retired in 1856 British rule had been extended to something like two-thirds of all Indian territory. The conquest had been achieved by troops which were for the greater part non-European. In the army of the East India Company, theoretically the Lord paramount of India, the Queen’s regiments and the Company’s own regiments were in 1856 outnumbered five to one by native regiments, though European officers commanded the latter.
Wherever British administration was established, order followed and general benefits accrued. But often a lack of sympathetic intelligence caused British methods to run violently counter to Hindu sentiments of immemorial sacredness, while the Mohammedans, dominant before the British ascendancy, resented their changed status, and the Mahrattas, too, were equally resentful.
Though on the surface all was well, under it doubts and questionings, hopes and fears were seething. In particular a fanatical group of Mohammedans were dreaming of a Mogul restoration, while Nana Sahib, the Mahratta Peshwa, nursed a bitter grudge against the British Government.
This state of affairs culminated in the Indian Mutiny, a stupendous event which brought home to the British people the anomalous character of their rule in India and the necessity of assuming national responsibility for her welfare. The East India Company was therefore wound up and the control of India formally transferred to the British Crown.
A period of active development now began. In 1860 the penal code originally drawn up by Lord Macaulay in 1837 was adopted, and in 1861 the Indian Councils Act, giving seats to Indians on the Governor-General’s Executive Council, marked the first step in the closer association of Indians with the machinery of government. The opening up of the resources of the country was fostered by the extension of the railways and roads, and by further irrigation works.
The visit of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, in 1875 was the occasion of remarkable demonstrations of loyalty to the Crown, and in the following year the Queen’s favourite minister, Benjamin Disraeli, devised a title for his beloved sovereign, and she became Empress of India, a title which was retained by her successors until it was surrendered in 1947, with the end of British rule.
Between 1876 and the latter date, the Indian Government filled the role of a benevolent despot. It was highly efficient and under it India achieved a greater degree of well-being and rate of progress than would have been the case had the British, or any other European power, not welded the many governments under one central authority.
Clearly, however, a civilization as old as India, whose people had once been powerful, and, after their fashion, independent, would not for ever be content to remain under foreign tutelage. The first signs of nationalism made their appearance under the great Vice-royalty of Lord Curzon between 1899 and 1905, and over the next half-century they increased, until it was evident, when the Second World War ended, that British rule in India must soon end, too. In 1947, C. R. Attlee, the British Prime Minister, appointed Lord Mountbatten to be Viceroy with the express purpose of bringing British rule to a close as quickly as possible. This was actually accomplished within seven months.
By 15 August, 1947, the British had completed their withdrawal and on the same day, amid celebrations in India and London, two new dominions, of India and Pakistan, were proclaimed. British rule in India had ended.
A progression over three and a half centuries had culminated in that very rare event in international affairs, an occupying power voluntarily relinquishing its suzerainty over another country. Though the association of Britain with India had been marked, at any rate up to the middle of the nineteenth century, by a full share of strife, nevertheless unlike many occupying powers she brought to the sub-continent a standard of impartial justice and a tradition of incorruptibility in civil administration unmatched anywhere else in the world.
The fact that India and Pakistan elected to remain within the Commonwealth after independence, and that their civil services and judicial systems remained modelled on the British pattern, is a tribute to the enlightenment of British policy.