Make a date - Christmas Day - and 4 and 14 December

HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL READERS OF THIS BLOG!

 

Some time ago I published a regular monthly column linking a set selection of dates in history. The series was popular. I'm busy coordinating the articles into book form. As today is 25 December, here are a number of linked events for that date plus two other December dates. To avoid repetition, I've simply indicated the relevant date in brackets. The three dates for this article are:

 4, 14 and 25 December

4(International hug day!), 14 (Christians’ Feast of St John of the Cross) and 25 (Christmas Day and the birthday of Pakistan’s Muhammed Ali Jinnah (in 1876) December

Rarely these days do the British politicians seem to talk about the military and moral morass that’s become modern Iraq – they’re more interested in deflecting our attention elsewhere, perhaps towards Iran. In fact Iraq actually gained its independence (14) from the UK in 1927– so why did we go back? Ironically – or maybe deliberately – Saddam Hussein’s capture was announced on the same day (14) in 2003.

Some leaders fall from grace, others attain thrones, such as the Christmas Day coronations of Charlemagne (800), crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome and William the Conqueror (1066), crowned king of England at Westminster Abbey. And on the same auspicious day in 1991 Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union, which was dissolved the next day, heralding the end of the Cold War. A brave man, a brave move.

Gorbachev (Wikipedia-common)

 

Egyptian president Anwar Sadat was born on Christmas Day in 1918 and on his birthday in 1977 met Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in Egypt, beginning the moves of peace between those two warring countries and later earning both of them the Nobel Peace Prize.

Most people know about the Christmas Day three day First World War truce in 1914, when the vying forces crossed No man’s land and exchanged gifts. Perhaps they sang Silent Night, which was first performed in Austria in 1818 on Christmas Day. Naturally, the authorities realised it couldn’t last, as it would lower moral if soldiers fraternised with men who they were ordered to kill...

Earlier peace talks occurred in 1918 when Woodrow Wilson sailed for Verseilles (4), becoming the first US president to travel to Europe while in office. At least that president knew where Europe was... A mere 299 years before, on the same day (4), thirty-eight English colonists from Berkeley disembarked in Virginia and gave thanks – starting off the annual American Thanksgiving holidays.

It seemed unthinkable, but Panam, the airline that seemed a byword for trans-Atlantic flight, stopped operations (4) in 1991; the next time you watch Blade Runner you’ll see that Panam adverts are quite prominent in that futuristic movie set in Los Angeles in 2020...

 
News from the New World had to rely on sailing vessels and was slow until the telegraph was invented and laid across the Atlantic; but if you think that’s an amazing accomplishment, consider the Pacific Ocean – it’s enormous – yet the first telegraph cable was laid (14) across this vast expanse in 1902. Another method of passing messages over great distances was the semaphore, invented by Claude Chappe who was born on Christmas Day, 1763.

Christmas cards and shop windows often feature the Nativity scene – unless you’re in a politically correct country - yet the first such scene was only assembled by Saint Francis of Assisi on Christmas Day, 1223. Surprisingly, the first broadcast (25) of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was only read on radio in 1939, the same day that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was introduced by the Americans, which might have pleased animal lover Saint Francis.

 

You tend to feel some sympathy for those people born on Christmas Day, since they probably only get presents once a year. True, Christmas is not simply about presents. And we know it’s only the observed date for the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God – who’s also considered to be a prophet by Islam – which could be anywhere between four and seven years B.C. Now that’s really confusing!

 

Perhaps some Christmas Day birthday folk felt that they needed to strive harder – certainly that could be said of Sir Isaac Newton, physicist and mathematician (1642), Conrad Hilton, hotelier (1887), actor Humphrey Bogart (1899) and singer Little Richard (1932), among others.

Film producer Charles Pathé was born and actually died on Christmas Day, in 1863 and 1957 respectively. And of course his name lived on with Pathé News. The world’s first Sunday newspaper was The Observer, published (4) in 1791.

It was The Times that reported the first expedition to reach the South Pole in 1911, led by Roald Amundsen (14).  The question is, did Nostradamus – born on the same day (14) in 1503 – foresee this event, among others? He supposedly predicted the end of the world – which is probably what it felt like in China on Christmas Day in 1932 when the Ganshu earthquake – magnitude 7.6 - killed about 70,000 people.

More massive loss of life occurred (14) in 1287 when the remarkable Zuider Zee sea wall collapsed, killing over 50,000 people. Less devastating yet quite lethal, the Great Smog of London (4) killed hundreds in 1952 – the word being an amalgamation of smoke and fog – a polluting inheritance from the Industrial Revolution.

Long before the American Revolution of 1776, North America was being colonised and explored by intrepid and religious men and women, among them Father Jacques Marquette who set up a mission on the shores of Lake Michigan (in 1674) to minister to the Illinois Indians (4). The mission became Chicago. That great warrior who fought at the Little Big Horn, Chief Crazy Horse, was born on the same day (4) in 1849, sharing the same birthday as Francisco Franco (1892), dictator of Spain, though fifty-three years apart.

Crazy Horse

 
And on the same day in 1872 the crewless ship Marie Celeste was found, like something out of a science fiction movie; it was discovered relatively undamaged, having been abandoned for nine days.

Rod Serling, scriptwriter and the brain behind the science fiction series The Twilight Zone, was also born on Christmas Day (1924). The inventor of the word robot was Karel Capek, a Czech writer, who died on the same day in 1938.

And, finally, to come full circle back to the same part of the world, the Persian poet, astronomer, mathematician and philosopher Omar Khayyám died (4) on the same day in 1131.

 

Going South-2 - Going South To The Costa Blanca-2003

Yesterday, I offered a shortened article about our emigration from the UK to Spain December 2003. At landfall, we’d driven off the P&O Portsmouth-Spain ferry the Pride of Bilbao and headed out of the port area, Jen navigating from the AA route planner obtained off the Internet plus the Michelin map. 

Bilbao is dominated by the green slopes of the surrounding mountains, even beyond the high-rise buildings.  The city’s busy reinventing itself, its steel mills and shipyards being transformed into conference centres and luxury flats, and of course there’s the famous Guggenheim Museum (opened in 1997 and featured in the Bond movie The World is Not Enough) which has generated a tourism boom.  The city celebrated its 700^th anniversary and is worthy of an article in its own right.  We drove round the edge of sprawling Bilbao as the dark receded.

It’s strange how quickly you adapt to driving on the other side of the road – even with a right-hand drive car.  Reading the smaller numbers on the speedometer’s kph dial soon became second-nature.  We had no intention of falling foul of speed restrictions here – though there were very few speed cameras in evidence.

It was overcast and dull.  Not surprising, really, as the north of Spain gets more than its fair share of rain and is green most of the year as a result.  One motorway sign we came across was of a raining cloud and a ‘100’ kph limit – warning motorists to reduce speed from the standard 120 on this section when it rains.  As we climbed into the surrounding mountains it did start to rain.  Another motorway sign showed a huge snowflake, warning of possible snow.  We saw two snow-ploughs driving up an adjacent road.  (Less than four days later this journey would have been through heavy snow, these selfsame ploughs working overtime to keep roads clear).

We turned onto the A68 or E80 – many roads have a European number as well as a national one. 

The only toll booth we encountered in our 530-mile drive south was at Junction 3 where we picked up an entry ticket and would be charged further south.  We now met mist and low-lying cloud.  Our daughter Hannah rang on the mobile so we gave her a weather report as we drove through fog.  A ten minute stop at a service area exotically named Area de Quintanapalla where we enjoyed tortilla and coffee. 

A few years ago some Eurocrat busybodies tried to get the enormous black Osborne bull-silhouette advertisements taken down; a sensible compromise was arrived at whereby the company name would be removed but the bulls could stay since they were synonymous with the image of Spain.  We passed the first of five of these bulls on the Burgos southern bypass signposted Valladolid, Madrid and the second on the approach to the N1, the end of the motorway, and paid the toll. 

 

Burgos was the home of El Cid in the eleventh century and was the base two centuries later for Fernando el Santo to reconquer Murcia, Cordoba and Seville.  Fernando started the building of Burgos’s cathedral, one of the greatest in all Spain.

Still keen to find the sunshine we’d promised it, our trusty car climbed to one of the highest points in the Puerto de Somosierra area – 1440 metres - and met sleet and snow.  One of the tapes we played was Placido Domingo, singing the American Hymn from East of Eden, and the words held a little significance for us both: ‘I dreamed of Eden all my life and now … where  ever I go across the land I stand so proudly in the sun and say “I am home”’ – though the sun still had to make an appearance!

 
Now we joined the toll-free motorway M40, the Madrid western bypass and followed the signs for the Aeropuerto – not that we were considering flying out through lack of sun or anything, just following directions … Essentially, this ring-road round Madrid was clear for us though vehicles travelling in the other direction were at a standstill, echoing our beloved M25 no doubt. 

Eventually we turned onto the A3 for Valencia – the Avenida Mediterraneo - for a short while, joining the A31 and stayed with this road for some 176 kilometres following the signs to Albacete.  From a psychological standpoint, you feel you’re covering a lot of ground as the kilometres rather than miles count down on the road-signs.

 
Now – at last! - the land was filled with sunshine, the ploughed fields a deep russet colour contrasting with the green trees and cultivated hills.  Rise after rise displayed modern wind turbines, graceful against the blue skyline, like small armies frozen in time while on the march.  Here you could imagine a modern-day Don Quixote tilting at these windmills.

After 275 miles we filled up with CEPSA petrol and soon afterwards sighted two more bulls. 

 

At about 3:50pm we joined the N301 until we hit Albacete – the fifth bull was sighted at the junction for Albacete.  Because our car was fully laden we didn’t stop, but this small city is worth a visit.  It was called Al-Basit – the plain – by the Moors but apart from a few old back-streets it’s a modern city.  The museum is renowned for its archeological and ethnographical collection, including five small Roman dolls perfectly sculpted and jointed and an array of local Roman mosaics.  Like Toledo, Albacete is famous for its high-quality knives, an industry that can be traced back to the Moors.

We passed under the hill-top fortress of Chinchilla de Monte Aragon but didn’t linger for the view as we still had over 150 kilometers to go.  A short run down the N430 then onto the N330 for seventy-five km and we were in familiar territory, the Alicante region and arrived at 6:30pm as dusk turned into night.  We’d covered some 815km in ten hours, with stops.  It was a lot easier unloading than loading the car.  We’d arrived at our temporary residence, a base from where we would seek a permanent home under Spanish skies.

And just a week later on Christmas Day we were sitting with friends on the roof under those clear blue skies eating a traditional turkey meal with all the trimmings. 

 

[Note: Not every Christmas lunch can be eaten out, sometimes it's just a bit too cold; the nights are cold too. But the skies are usually gloriously clear blue! Then, petrol was about 81 cents a litre, now it's 1 euro 41 cents!]