DayBird - June 2nd

 

455 – Sack of Rome: The Vandals enter Rome, and plunder the city. The sack of 455 is generally seen as being more thorough than the Visigothic sack of 410, because the Vandals plundered Rome for 2 weeks whereas the Visigoths spent only three days in the city. Rome was sacked a lot.

1740 – Marquis de Sade, French author, dirty birdy and aristocrat, is born.

1793 – Jean-Paul Marat recites the names of 29 people to the French National Convention. Almost all of these people are guillotined, followed by thousands more over the next year during the Reign of Terror. Marat is eventually assassinated in his bathtub, by Charlotte Corday, a Girondin sympathizer. During her trial, she had testified that she had carried out the assassination alone, saying "I killed one man to save 100,000." I think she was a Vulcan.

1835 – “P. T. Barnum's Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome," a traveling circus, menagerie and museum of freaks starts the first tour of the United States.

1840 - Thomas Hardy, English novelist (Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd )and poet, is born.

The Man He Killed ~Thomas Hardy

"Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!

"But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him and he at me,
And killed him in his place.

"I shot him dead because –
Because he was my foe,
Just so – my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although

"He thought he'd 'list perhaps,
Off-hand like – just as I –
Was out of work – had sold his traps –
No other reason why.

"Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown."

1924 - Coolidge signs the Indian Citizen Act, granting automatic American citizenship to Native Americans born in the United States. Although the legislation stated that "the granting of such citizenship shall not in any manner impair or otherwise affect the right of any Indian to tribal or other property," federal treatment of tribal sovereignty remains a troubled and hotly debated subject today.

1953 – The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, who was crowned Queen of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Her Other Realms and Territories & Head of the Commonwealth, the first major international event to be televised. Charles will never be king.