The famous St. Crispin’s Day speech is given by England’s King Henry V in Shakespeare’s play of the same name, Henry V. The king gives the rousing speech on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt in the English camp in northern France. The Hundred Years War battle took place on October, 25th, 1415,Saint Crispin’s Day. The English were greatly outnumbered by the French, 5,000 to 30,000, and morale was low amongst the men. A young, twenty-nine year old King Henry V motivates his army – his ‘Band of Brothers.‘ He called upon their valor and comradeship, that which binds soldiers together on the field of battle:
This day is called the Feast of Crispian: He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, will stand a tip-toe when the day is named, and rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age, will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, and say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’ Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars. and say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot, But he’ll remember with advantages what feats he did that day: then shall our names. Familiar in his mouth as household words Bedford and Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester, be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
This story shall the good man teach his son; And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we Band of Brothers; For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition: And gentlemen in England now a-bed shall think themselves accursed they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s Day!
– Henry V, by William Shakespeare, Act 4, Scene 3.
So how did the Battle of Agincourt play out in actual history? King Henry V’s St. Crispin’s Day speechsucceeded in rallying his troops. Though vastly outnumbered, his long bow archers carried them to a decisive victory against France that day. As a result, the French King Charles VI offers his daughter, Princess Catherine, to Henry V in marriage. France and England were finally at peace (at least for a couple years).
For more by historical writer, Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.
Edgar Allan Poe was the Stephen King of his day. A master poet and author of mystery and the macabre. To this day, his name alone evokes a chill down ones spine. Amongst his most popular works were Murders in the Rue Morgue and Masque of the Red Death. His life may have been cut short, but it was filled with brilliance, scandal, tragedy, and heartbreak. Perhaps fittingly, Poe’s death has also long been cloaked in mystery, with competing, twisted theories as to how and why in 1849, he vanished for a week, then when found, passed away at only 40.
As a young adult, Poe was forced to drop out of the University of Virginia due to increasing gambling debts. After a short time in the military, he went to West Point, but was ultimately kicked out of there as well. Poe moved to Baltimore, which at the time was a squalid city of grime and graverobbers that proved the perfect inspiration for macabre and horror. He worked at various newspapers and magazines, and began to write and publish his own poems and short stores.
In 1835, Edgar married his 13-year-old cousin, Virginia Clamm (he was 27).
The marriage lasted 11 years and she died of consumption/tuberculosis at only 24. The death of Virginia sent Edgar into a long, downward spiral. Poe wrote that watching her deteriorate had rendered him severely depressed and ‘insane.’ Never a stranger to the bottle, her sickness only magnified his drinking. It was during his wife’s 5 year long illness, and after her death, that Poe wrote some of his darkest tales, including his famous, grim poem, The Raven, in 1845.
Edgar Allan Poe’s run as a successful author and poet was relatively short. He popularized the horror genre with stories like The Pit and the Pendulum and Fall of the House of Usher. Long before Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, he created the mystery genre in 1841, with his stories about French detective C. Auguste Dupin, in The Purloined Letter and The Tell Tale Heart.
By 1849, Poe had begun to turn a corner, both mentally and financially. His career was better than ever. He was now a famous author who drew large audiences at his readings. He took his doctor’s medical advice, and was now sober. He’d even become a member of the Sons of Temperance. Edgar proposed to his first love, Elmira Royster Shelton, who he had fallen in love with while in college. They were planning to marry after he took a short speaking trip in Philadelphia and New York.
On Sept. 27, 1849, Edgar Allan Poe left Richmond by train, bound for New York City. He got as far as Baltimore before suddenly vanishing for nearly a week. Poe never made it to Philadelphia, where he was to edit a collection of poems, nor to New York for his speaking engagement. He was then to escort his aunt back to Richmond for his wedding. Poe was never to leave Baltimore. For five days his whereabouts were—and continue to be—entirely unknown.
He turned up on October 3rd in a shabby, delirious state outside a tavern called Gunner’s Hall.
This was the first anyone had heard or seen of him since leaving Richmond. It was raining on October 3rd, when Joseph Walker, a typesetter for the Baltimore Sun, headed out to Gunner’s Hall to vote. It was Election Day, and Gunner’s Hall was a polling station for the 4th Ward. Walker found a man, delirious and dressed in cheap, ill-fitting clothes, lying in the gutter. The poor soul was semi-conscious and barely able to move. Joseph Walker realized the man was Edgar Allan Poe!
Walker knew the famous poet shouldn’t be dressed as he was, nor laying in a gutter, so he offered to help. He asked Poe if there was anyone nearby that he could contact on his behalf. Poe mentioned a magazine editor named Joseph Snodgrass. Walker immediately wrote Snodgrass a quick note urging his assistance and sent it by messenger:
Baltimore City, Oct. 3, 1849 Dear Sir,
There is a gentleman, rather the worse for wear, who goes under the cognomen of Edgar A. Poe, and who appears in great distress, & he says he is acquainted with you, he is in need of immediate assistance.
Yours, in haste, JOS. W. WALKER To Dr. J.E. Snodgrass.
Snodgrass arrived and took Poe to Washington College Hospital. There he stayed alone in a windowless room with an attendant physician, Dr. John Moran. The week he spent missing, and the unreliability of the newspapers all contributed to speculation as to what had happened to him. He never regaining enough lucid consciousness to explain what happened. He spent his final days in fits of delirium, plagued by hallucinations. According to Dr. Moran, Poe repeatedly called out for “Reynolds”—a name who, to this day, remains a mystery.
Edgar Allan Poe died on Sunday, October 7th. His last words being, “Lord, help my poor soul.” Perhaps fittingly, with Poe’s death his last great mystery was born. Theories about its cause began cropping up almost immediately. There are no remaining records of his hospitalization. Poe’s death certificate listed the cause as dying of phrenitis, or congestion of the brain — a polite, 19th century term often used for alcoholism or opium overdoses. But in reality, no one knows for sure.
A public debate arose surrounding Poe’s death, focused on whether or not the writer was a “drunkard.” That theory was backed up by Rufus Wilmot Griswold, a literary critic and one of Poe’s leading rivals. He wrote Poe’s New York Tribune’s obituary that was picked up by newspapers around the country.
“This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it. The poet was known, personally or by reputation, in all this country; he had readers in England and Continental Europe, but he had few or no friends; and the regrets for his death will be suggested principally by the consideration that in him literary art has lost one of its most brilliant but erratic stars.”
Griswold was the executor of his literary estate and became a major figure in the mystery. He used his position to write a cruel biography that suggested the author was also an opium addict as well as a drunkard. Snodgrass wrote that when he once found Poe at a bar, the author was “utterly stupified with liquor” and could only produce “mere incoherent mutterings.”
Edgar Allan Poe was a lightweight when it came to liquor. When he did drink, it didn’t take much for him to fall into a stupor. He wasn’t remembered as a heavy drinker, except during his wife’s prolonged illness and following her death. On the advice from a doctor, Poe had pledged his sobriety and joined the Sons of Temperance, along with Snodgrass.
Edgar Allan Poe tomb In Baltimore
Poe had spent years crafting the image of a man well versed in the macabre. It’s certainly fitting that since he invented the detective thriller, he left us with a real-life mystery on his death. So given all this, what did kill Edgar Allan Poe? There was no autopsy performed to go back to. And so, for over a hundred years, speculation has raged on. In addition to medical causes, there are also theories that something more nefarious took place. Let us take a look at the six most likely theories:
1. Alcohol
Poe couldn’t handle his liquor. After a glass of wine or ale he was staggering drunk. His sister had the same hereditary problem. Poe had fallen ill before leaving Richmond. After making a recovery, he was told by his attending physician that “another such attack could prove fatal.” Poe replied that “If people would not tempt me, I would not fall,” suggesting that the illness was brought on a bout of drinking after falling off the temperance wagon.
At the time, Poe acquaintances seemed convinced he did indeed, fall to temptation, and drink himself to death. His close friend J. P. Kennedy said “Poe died from the effects of a debauch. He likely fell in with some companion here who seduced him to the bottle, which he had renounced some time ago. The consequence was fever, delirium, and madness, and in a just few days the termination his sad days in the hospital. Poor Poe! A bright but unsteady light has been awfully quenched.”
This theory fails to explain his five-day disappearance however, or his second-hand clothes. It was nonetheless, a popular theory propagated by Snodgrass and Griswald after Poe’s death. Snodgrass even gave temperance speeches cross the country, blaming Poe’s death on binge drinking.
2. Cooping
Voter fraud was common in Baltimore around the mid 1800s. Unscrupulous politicians were known to employ cooping, the practice of hiring local goons to kidnap random men on the street. They’d then force drugs or alcohol in them, then send them to the polls to vote again and again. They’d change their outfits every time, in order to ensure themselves a new vote. Given that Poe was found on an Election Day, outside Gunners Hall, a polling place, in a stranger’s clothes, has given this theory some plausibility and acceptance over the years.
Repeat voters were given alcohol either forcibly before or as a reward after. If Edgar Allan Poe had been forced to drink and vote multiple times in a cooping scheme, that would explain his abandoned, ragged, and semi-conscious state.
3. Rabies
Some have speculated that Poe died of rabies as the symptoms match his delirious decline in the hospital. This is in part based on Dr. Moran’s accounts, who said that Poe’s madness had ebbs and flows, with periods of lucidness in between spikes of mania. Moran noted that Poe drank little water, which also matches up with the symptoms of rabies. Dr. Moran is something of an unreliable narrator, however, because he wrote his observations down many years later.
Rabies’ symptoms are similar – lethargy and confusion with a rapid downward spiral towards delirium, hallucinations, and rapid, shallow breathing. Within four days—the average length of survival after the onset of serious symptoms—Poe was dead. Rabies was a fairly common in the 19th century with no vaccines yet. But without DNA evidence, it’s impossible to say. There was also no mention of any animal bites.
In fact, it may well have been the flu that advanced into pneumonia. Before his fateful trip, Poe visited a Richmond physician, complaining of illness. His fiancé noted that he had a fever, and she didn’t think he should travel. The doctor also told him we was too sick to take such a journey. It was raining in Baltimore when Poe was found. The cold rain may have exasperated the flu and eventually lead to pneumonia. The high fever might account for his hallucinations and confusion.
4. Poisoning
In 1999, public health researchers argued that Poe’s death was a result of carbon monoxide poisoning. It would have come from the coal gas that was commonly used for indoor lighting during the 19th century. They took preserved clippings of Poe’s hair and tested them for certain heavy metals that would reveal the presence of coal gas. The test was inconclusive however, leading historians to discredit this theory.
The tests did reveal elevated levels of mercury in Poe’s system. They were most likely elevated as a result of a cholera epidemic he’d lived through in July of 1849, while in Philadelphia. Poe’s doctor there prescribed calomel, or mercury chloride. Mercury poisoning could explain some of Poe’s hallucinations and delirium before his death. However, the levels of mercury found in Poe’s hair were still 30 times below the level consistent with mercury poisoning.
5. Brain Tumor
A more modern theory states the author succumbed to a brain tumor, which caused his symptoms and behavior before death. Poe was buried in an unmarked grave in Baltimore’s Westminster Presbyterian Cemetery. 26 years later, a statue was erected, honoring Poe, near the graveyard’s entrance. Edgar Allan Poe’s coffin was dug up, and his remains exhumed, in order to be moved to the new place of honor. After two decades of decay, Poe’s coffin fell apart as workers tried to move it. Little remained of Poe’s body, but the workers did remark on a strange feature of Poe’s skull. A mass appeared to be rolling around inside!
Newspapers of the day claimed that the cerebral mass was Poe’s poor brain, diminished yet somehow still intact. After 26 years however, there is no way that his brain would still exist. What could linger in a skull, was a hard, shrunken brain tumor. A forensic pathologist said that a tumor can calcify after death into a hard mass. A New York physician once told Poe that he had a ‘lesion on his brain,’ that caused his adverse reactions to alcohol.
6. Murder most Foul
Another story says that at the instigation of a woman who considered herself injured by his writing, ‘ruffians’ were hired to cruelly beat him senseless, to the point where his brain fever followed. Another story went like this: While in Baltimore, Poe ran into some old friends from West Point. They convinced him to join them for just one drink. Poe, unable to handle liquor, became madly drunk after a single glass of champagne. After he left his friends, he wandered the streets in a daze. In his drunken state, he was robbed and beaten by ruffians, then left delirious in the gutter all night, until he was found in the rain the next day.
Yet another salacious theory was that Poe was murdered by the brothers of his wealthy fiancée, Elmira Shelton. It claims that Poe actually made it to Philadelphia, where he was ambushed by her three brothers. They warned Edgar not to marry their widowed sister. Frightened by the threat, Poe disguised himself in shabby clothes and hid for a week, before heading back to Richmond to get married. Her brothers followed Poe to Baltimore, beat him up, and forced him to drink whiskey, which they knew would send Poe into his final spiral towards death.
Interestingly, mystery author Agatha Christie likewise disappeared for a week almost a century later. She was later found alive, claiming amnesia.
While all these Poe theories are darkly entertaining, they’re not very plausible or persuasive. So there you have it. None of the theories above fully explain Poe’s sad and pitiful end. Most likely Poe’s cause of death resulted from a combination of unfortunate factors. His works of mystery and gothic horror have been made into stage plays and numerous Hollywood movies over the years. There was even a fictional account of the poet’s death in the 2012 movie, The Raven, starring actor John Cusack as Edgar Allan Poe.
In death, Poe ironically embraced the old saying that “life imitates art,” with a mysterious demise worthy of his most eerie, gothic horror story. After 170 years, people still speculate about what actually happened during that mysterious missing week in the life of Edgar Allan Poe. Will we ever know the truth? Perhaps it’s best summed up by the poet himself:
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
For more by historical writer, Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.
After over 100 years of British East India Company rule and another 90 years of British imperial rule, India had finally achieved its independence. What should have been a moment of joyful triumph turned into a year of unthinkable bloodshed. Indian freedom from Britain and the Partition took place on August 15, 1947. The partition of India created three separate, independent states: a Hindu majority India and Muslim majority West and East Pakistan. It was the final solution of the British Empire to secure an agreement on Indian independence. Few realized the violence that the Partition would unleash.
The massive migrations that followed, on both sides in both directions, and the ensuing violence and bloodshed shocked the world. The provinces of Punjab and Bengal were effectively split in half. 7 million Hindus and 7 million Muslims suddenly found themselves in the wrong country. Many families packed up belongings and began a trek to either India or West & East Pakistan. The partition instigated one of the largest mass migrations in human history. There was nothing that could have prepared the 14 million refugees for the nightmare to come. Many never made it there alive.
Up to two million people died in the resulting ethnic violence.
How could intermixed Indian communities, with centuries of relative peace, have suddenly turned brutally against each another? The polarization of Hindus and Muslims arose during just a few decades at the start of the twentieth century. By the 1940’s, it was so divided that many on both sides believed it was impossible for the two religions to live together peacefully.
In the nineteenth century, India was still a place where traditions, languages, and cultures mixed freely across religious groups. People did not define themselves primarily by their faith. Many blame the British for the erosion of these shared traditions. Under British rule, they defined communities based on their religion and attached political representatives to them.
The main driver for independence was the Indian National Congress, lead by Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. It argued for a single Indian state; though Muslim minorities were suspicious, thinking it would ensure political power with the Hindus (about 75% of the population). Under British imperial rule, Muslims had their status protected by reserved legislative seats and separate electorates. The prospect of losing this under independence bothered Muslims. Especially in the Muslim-majority provinces of Bengal and Punjab.
Much of it came down to a clash of personalities between Muhammad Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League, and Gandhi & Nehru. All three were lawyers who’d received some of their education in England. They could have been close allies for independence from Britain. But by the 1940’s, their relationship was so toxic that they could barely sit in the same room together.
Jinnah is the man most responsible for the creation of Pakistan. In Indian accounts, he is the villain; for Pakistanis, he is their hero. He was certainly a dogged negotiator with an icy personality. Jinnah drank heavily, rarely went to a mosque, and favored western suits. He even married a non-Muslim Parisian.
Jinnah resented the way Gandhi brought his spiritual beliefs into the political discussion. He also felt eclipsed by the fame of both Gandhi and Nehru. By 1940, Jinnah had steered the Muslim League to demanding a separate Muslim homeland.
Hindus and Muslims began to turn on each other during the Second World War.
Britain took India into the war without consulting the Indian Congress, who opposed it. In 1942, Congress began a campaign of mass, non-violent, civil protests. Gandhi and Nehru were arrested as part of the “Quit India” movement. While they were in prison, Jinnah consolidated Muslim opinion behind himself. By the end of the war, violence between Hindus and Muslims had escalated. People moved away from mixed neighborhoods and into polarized districts.
The first series of widespread religious massacres took place in Calcutta, in 1946.Five thousand Hindus were killed. The American photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White, wrote that Calcutta’s streets “looked like Nazi Buchenwald.” As riots spread, Congress Party leaders began to see Partition as the only way to rid themselves of Jinnah and the Muslim League. Likewise, Britain realized that they had lost control of India and began to speed up an exit strategy.
After World War II, Britain no longer had the resources to control its empire. Its exit from India became hurried and poorly managed. In March 1947, a minor royal, Lord Louis Mountbatten, uncle of Prince Phillip, flew into Delhi as Britain’s final Viceroy. His mission was to hand over power and get out of India as quickly as possible. Parliament was worried that, if they didn’t move rapidly, Britain would end up with an Indian civil war. Gandhi was against partition along religious lines. Mountbatten deployed his royal charms to persuade both parties to agree to Partition as the only solution.
In June, the Viceroy announced August 15, 1947, as the date for independence.
It was 10 months sooner than expected. Mountbatten thought the urgency would force the battling parties into cooperation. However, the rush only brewed further chaos. A British judge, Sir Cyril Radcliffe, was assigned to draw the new borders of the 3 new states, in only 40 days. Neither side was happy. Jinnah regarded the 2 West and East states that Muslims were given only a slice of India’s ‘extremities.’ He warned that the division of Punjab and Bengal “will be sowing the seeds of serious trouble.”
On August 14th at India’s Constituent Assembly, Nehru made his most famous speech. “Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.” The new borders were announced just two daysafter India’s Independence.
The Partition of British Colonial India, 1947
Across the subcontinent, communities that had coexisted for a 1000 years began attacking each other in violence, with Hindus & Sikhs against Muslims. The mutual genocide was both unexpected and unprecedented. In Punjab and Bengal—the provinces abutting West and East Pakistan, the carnage was exceptionally intense, with massacres, arson, abductions, and sexual violence. Some 75 thousand women were raped, many of them disfigured or dismembered.
Gangs of killers on both sides pillaged and set whole villages aflame, hacking to death men, children and the elderly, while raping the young women. Pregnant women had their babies hacked out of their bellies. Infants were roasted on spits.
As many as 16 million were displaced, travelling on foot and by train.
Millions moved to what they hoped would be safer territory – Muslims heading towards Pakistan, and Hindus & Sikhs towards India. In Punjab, walking caravans of refugees stretched for 50 miles in both directions. As peasants trudged along, guerrillas burst out of farmland, cutting them down like livestock. Bodies were simply left along the roadside to rot. Refugee trains, filled to bursting, suffered similar ambushes. Many later died from contagious diseases which swept through the refugee camps in both nations.
Britain was reluctant to use its troops to maintain law and order. The British Army marched out of the country with barely a shot fired and only seven casualties. Gandhi attempted to bring about peace by fasting, but was himself assassinated in January 1948 by a Hindu extremist who blamed him for supporting Muslims.
Both states faced huge problems accommodating Partition refugees, whose numbers only swelled when the two states went to war over the disputed territory of Kasmir in 1948. As the great migration drew to a close later that year, more than 15 million people had been displaced and two million were dead.
Since the Partition of India, many in India and Pakistan have held onto their mutual hatred.
They have fought two wars over the disputed region of Kashmir on their border. In 1971, they fought again, over East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh. In 1999, Pakistani troops crossed into Kashmir again and the two countries, now each possessing atomic weapons, came dangerously close to a nuclear war. Periodic gestures toward peace made by various Prime Ministers have mainly gone nowhere. Politicians and the military continue to stoke the hatred of the 1940s for personal gains. Rabid media outlets on both sides are shrinking the voices of moderates.
Both countries remain vulnerable to religious extremism. Kashmir remains a flashpoint. Another unforeseen consequence was that Pakistan’s Muslim population ended up religiously homogeneous, leading to Islamization in the 1980s. Pakistan later became a safe haven for both Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Seven decades later, well over a billion people still live in the shadow of the British Partition of India, as if the turmoil of the 1940’s had never ended.
Hope Diamond in its current setting at the Smithsonian Museum
Without a doubt, one of the most spectacular gems in the entire world is the so-called Hope Diamond, a haunting blue stone weighing 45.52 carats. About the size of a walnut, the Hope is estimated to be worth a quarter of a billion dollars. Today, it sits on display in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC. However, there are many who claim it also carries an ancient Hindu curse, leaving many of its owners tragically ruined or dead. How did the infamous blue gemstone get from India to America? And is the curse real or imagined?
The history of the famous diamond begins in 1666 when the French merchant, Jean Baptiste Tavernier, obtains a 112 carat blue diamond from the Kollur mines in Golconda (now Guntur), India. At the time, the stone was still rough in shape and rather crudely cut. In his catalog, Tavernier described its color as a “beautiful violet.”
The Hindus at the time believed that certain gemstones had powers that protected you from evil influences. The idea being that gems absorbed negative energy and kept them within the stone, like a Pandora’s Box. Indian Nawabs wore the biggest gems of all to provide the most protection. But what if you removed it from its native home?
Tavernier made multiple trips to India and brought hundreds of diamonds back for sale to European nobility. In 1668, he met with French King Louis XIV at the Versailles palace outside Paris. Louis XIV called himself The Sun King and during his reign, Versailles grew in size and grandeur to reflect it. Louis had the greatest collection of crown jewels in all of Europe. Tavernier sold the king the 112-carat blue diamond, along with about 200 others. And what was the merchant’s fate, if you believe in the curse?
Tavernier was supposedly later torn apart by a pack of wild dogs in Constantinople.
In 1673, the diamond was recut by the French court jeweler, resulting in a 67 carat stone. In the royal inventory, the Tavernier Blue became known as “le bleu de France.” It was set in gold and suspended on a silk neck ribbon, which the king wore at fetes and ceremonial occasions. The French Blue was valued at about 3.6 million (in today’s dollars).
What was the supposed effect of the cursed diamond on the powerful and vane Sun King? Well, Louis lived a long life, but all his legitimate children with the Queen died of illness before he did, including his grandson, leaving his great-grandson (Louis XV) as his successor. Coincidence? Perhaps.
The blue diamond eventually passed to his ill-fated heir, Louis XVI and his Queen Marie Antoinette. Both supposedly wore the French Blue as a pendant on numerous occasions at various ceremonies and festivities at Versailles. During the bloody French Revolution, Louis and Marie attempted to flee Paris, but were arrested and imprisoned. The jewels of the French Royal Treasury were seized by the rebels and turned over to the new Republic.
King Louis and Marie Antoinette ultimately faced the guillotine during the French Reign of Terror.
During a looting of the crown jewels in 1792, the French Blue disappears! When Napoleon later becomes Emperor of France, he swore to recover the crown jewels, including the blue diamond, but failed in his attempt.
As some possible curse-related collateral damage, Marie-Louise, Princess de Lamballe, was a Lady in Waiting to Marie Antoinette and is said to have once tried on the French Blue. She was killed by a mob during the French Revolution, her body stripped and disemboweled. Her head was decapitated, impaled on a pike, and carried to Marie Antoinette’s prison window for display!
The French Blue diamond went missing for over 2 decades. A slightly smaller 45-carat blue diamond turns up in London in 1812 in the possession Daniel Eliason, an English diamond merchant. Eliason sells the blue gemstone to another king, British King George IV, who used it as a trophy for defeating his despised French enemy, Napoleon. George however, spent wildly and almost bankrupts the throne. After his death in 1830, his executor sells the blue diamond to pay off his debts. The buyer was a diamond collector by the name of Henry Philip Hope.
Hope reset the diamond in a medallion with a hanging pearl. Following the death of Henry Hope in 1839, the stone passes to his nephew’s grandson, Lord Francis Hope. The Hope family was one of England’s wealthiest. They had land, castles, paintings, and other property. But in the course of just two generations, they lost that great wealth. Lord Francis gambled poorly on horses, his businesses, and an American actress wife, May Yohé. In 1901, Francis Hope had lost both his fortune and his wife AND had to sell the French Blue to help pay off his mounting debts.
The buyer this time was Joseph Frankels & Sons of New York City. The 1907 Recession however took its toll on the company. Frankel’s had the blue diamond, but was cash poor and going bankrupt as well. Frankel sells the diamond to Selim Habib, a wealthy Turkish diamond collector, on behalf of the Ottoman Sultan. However in 1909, the stone was auctioned off to settle Habib’s own mounting debts. Is there a pattern of ruin here, or just coincidence?
The first stories of the “Blue Diamond Curse” came in the New York Times.
Other newspapers then made the curse increasingly elaborate. They wrote of the sinister power of the blue stone, and the evil that it unleashed upon its pitiful owners. They blamed the blue diamond for the executions of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Hope’s bankruptcy and divorce, and Frankel’s collapse. The Dutch jeweler who last recut the diamond supposedly ended up murdered by his son, who then killed himself. A Turkish merchant who once help sell the diamond drove his car over a cliff and killed himself, his wife, and his child.
The blue diamond, now ironically known as the Hope Diamond, was then purchased in 1910 by Pierre Cartier, grandson of Louis-Francois Cartier, founder of the famous French jewelry brand. He took a huge chance and invested in the Hope. If he couldn’t sell it quickly though, the House of Cartier would too be left in debt. And yet Pierre felt the risk was worth taking.
Cartier exploited the curse’s story to entice wealthy buyers. He’d read the novel Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins. In it, a large, yellow diamond was the eye of a Hindu idol in an Indian temple. It was looted by a Muslim conqueror, who years later had his own treasury looted by British colonial soldiers, taking the diamond back to England. There, tragedy, murder, and insanity followed those who possessed the cursed gem. Cartier used that novel’s plot as a backstory for the Hope Diamond.
Though the Hope was a magnificent stone, it proved difficult to locate a buyer who could afford it AND be brave enough to disregard the curse. He knew of an American heiress who would relish the idea of parading the unique French Blue Hope in front of society.
Evalyn Walsh McLean couldn’t own enough jewels.
Her money came from her father, who owned one of the largest gold mines in the US. She had married 19-year-old Ned McLean, whose equally wealthy family owned the Washington Post newspaper.
“I cannot help it if I have a passion for jewels,” Evalyn once admitted. “They make me feel comfortable, and even happy.”
Evalyn Walsh McLean wearing Hope Diamond, 1914
The McLeans were among the richest families in America. They owned mines, banks, real estate, and the Washington Post. McLean, VA is named after the family. In addition to Washington DC, they had estates in Newport, Rhode Island, and Palm Beach, Florida. They exemplified the extravagant wealth of The Gilded Age, flaunting their gigantic fortunes.
Pierre Cartier met with Evalyn and Ned at their hotel in Paris. He placed a mysterious-looking package before them and proceeded to retrace the Hope’s infamous history. Cartier wove together different historical accounts, as well as stories from the newspapers and Moonstone. He attributed bankruptcy, deaths, even revolutions to the stone’s curse. By the time he unveiled the diamond, he had the couple on the edge of their seats.
Pierre had changed the setting of the stone for Evalyn to a frame of large white diamonds that enhanced the blue Hope in the center. He proposed that she keep the necklace for the weekend, knowing full well it would be impossible for her to return it. Evalyn took the bait and eventually the stone.
The McLeans bought the Hope in 1911 for $180,000 (about $5 million today).
After prolonged legal fees, the sale of the Hope Diamond wasn’t profitable for Pierre Cartier. And yet, there was no question the publicity around this single huge sale made House of Cartier a household name in the US. Add to that the curse, and the newspaper gossip columns were all abuzz. As the saying goes, there is no such thing as bad publicity.
Evalyn McLean, who loved the stone’s notoriety, never missed an opportunity to flaunt the Hope at lavish parties around Washington DC. She even had her great dane, Mike, wear the diamond around his large neck. She had it made into the pendant of a full diamond necklace, the one we know today. In the pendant, surrounding the Hope Diamond are Cartier’s 16 white diamonds. The necklace chain contains an additional 45 white diamonds.
Evalyn wasn’t convinced of the curse, but a previous wearer of the diamond, May Yohe (the ex-wife of Lord Hope), publicly warned her. She blamed the Hope bankruptcy and her failed marriage on the cursed diamond. Evalyn couldn’t help but be a little put off. She had the diamond blessed by a Monsignor in a Roman Catholic Church. The diamond sat on a velvet cushion, when lightning suddenly flashed outside and thunder shook the church!
“Ever since that day,” she declared, “I have worn my diamond as a charm.”
Evalyn owned the diamond till her death, and though she never fully believed the curse, she did suffer a fair amount of bad luck. Her husband, Ned, ran off with another woman, eventually went insane, and later died in a mental institution. Their family paper, The Washington Post, went bankrupt. Her 10 year old son was killed in a car accident. Her daughter Evie later died of a drug overdose of sleeping pills. Her two other children had a string of failed marriages. Her and Ned had an ugly divorce of their own.
When her son, Vinson, was killed by a car in Washington, DC, newspapers headlines proclaimed: THE CURSE HAS STRUCK AGAIN, and wondered WHO IS NEXT? The story resonated with other curse stories of the day, like the Curse of King Tut’s Tomb. Some felt that the family, who had flaunted their wealth, were now getting the punishment they deserved. Evalyn actually pawned the Hope Diamond during the Great Depression, only to later buy it back.
President Warren Harding and his wife were close friends of the McLeans, so of course his heart attack & death in office was attributed by the press to the curse. In her autobiography, she remained ambivalent towards her Hope Diamond, sometimes dismissing the curse and other times wondering if it was payback for the way in which she spent her life. Evalyn herself died in 1947 of pneumonia at the age of 60. Her estate then sold the Hope Diamond to Harry Winston, Inc.
Winstons of New York City in fact purchased Mrs. McLean’s entire jewelry collection, including the Hope, in 1949. For the next 10 years, Winston had the Hope Diamond shown at dozens of exhibits and charitable events worldwide.
In 1958, Harry Winston agreed to donate the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian Institution.
It would be the centerpiece of the National Gem Collection of theNational Museum of Natural History. He actually had it sent through the U.S. Mail in a simple cardboard box, wrapped in plain brown paper! He sent it as simple registered mail, insured for $1 million at a cost of $145.29, of which $2.44 was for the postage.
Almost immediately the famous Hope Diamond became the premier attraction. Of course, if the Smithsonian was the national museum, was then the entire US government cursed? This was the Cold War and the public was already high on anxiety. Many wrote letters to President Eisenhower to turn down the cursed diamond. Even the postman who delivered that package, James Todd, suffered a series of bad luck. His wife died, his leg was crushed, and his house burned down.
So what became of the curse? Well, for the Smithsonian, the Hope Diamond has been a source of surprising good luck. The blue diamond is on display in the Harry Winston Gallery and viewed by millions annually. Even the brown paper box is in the Smithsonian National Postal Museum, illustrating the trust the famous jeweler placed in the U.S. Postal Service.
So did the curse solely come from the imagination of newspaper reporters and Pierre Cartier?
Some of its many owners committed suicide, were murdered, or left penniless. Their families suffered failed marriages, dead children, addiction, and insanity. Still, was the Hope Curse more or less concocted to sell newspapers and the stone itself? Some instances, like Louis XVI’s and Marie Antoinette’s beheading by guillotine, were undoubtedly real.
Others argue the seemingly disastrous lives of the French Blue’s owners can be created by simply leafing through their history and picking anything bad that happened to them. Since nearly every family has something tragic happen at least once in their lifetime, it’s not difficult to collect a list of such bad events and blame it all on the Hope Diamond.
If there is perhaps one true curse of the blue gemstone, it is the cardinal sin of greed. It was said that only a person with a “pure heart” could escape the Hope’s terrible curse. Could this mean someone who did not profit from it, but rather gave it away philanthropically? If that is the case, the curse ended, not with its blessing by a priest, but rather when Harry Winston donated it to the Smithsonian Museum.
If you are ever in the U.S. capital, spend some time with the infamous Blue Diamond, if you dare.
Warehouse converted to emergency hospital for Spanish Flu patients
Before COVID, before Ebola and HIV, the 1918 Flu Pandemic killed more humans than all of World War I combined, over 50 Million people worldwide! In just over a year, the so-called ‘Spanish Flu’ would infect a fifth of the world’s population. It still remains to this day THE most devastating epidemic in recorded history. More people died in that deadly year than in 4 years of the Dark Ages’ dreaded Black Death (aka the Bubonic Plague).
By the fall of 1918, World War I was finally winding down in Europe and peace negotiations had begun. America had joined the war in 1917, tipping the balance in favor of the Allies (Britain, France and Russia) and against Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. Earlier in the year however, in small pockets across the globe, what was first thought to be very bad cases of the common cold began to erupt. What was not normal was that many of these cases resulted in death.
The exact origin of the 1918 Flu Pandemic is unknown. The virus is believed to have mutated in Europe – a new, rare influenza variant, H1N1, with almost no human immunity. At the time, some thought it was biological warfare spread by the Germans in the trenches of France and Belgium. It first appeared at the war front at a hospital camp in Etaples, France in late 1917. The first US cases appeared at Fort Riley, a Kansas army base, in the early spring of 1918. More than 100 soldiers fell sick in just one day. Few doctors paid attention to the flu however, in the middle of a raging world war. It was erroneously dubbed The Spanish Flu since some of the largest mortality rates were first seen in Spain.
By the winter of 1918 however, a global flu epidemic could not be ignored. Children in the streets would skip rope to a frightening new nursery rhyme:
“I had a little bird … Its name was Enza … I opened up the window … And in-flu-enza!”
Spanish Flu nursery rhyme
Thanks to fast, modern steamships, the epidemic methodically circled the globe along trade routes and shipping lines. Ironically, the outbreak swept the world even quicker due to the mass movements of army troops aboard those steam ships.
Doctor learned with horror that the Spanish Flu’s mortality rate was 20 times higher than previous recorded flus. Once people were struck with the disease they died rapid deaths, typically within 24 hours! Death came from a particularly vicious pneumonia until they literally turned blue and suffocated. The infected struggled to clear their fluid-filled lungs with the weak cough they could muster. A contagious, blood-tinged froth gushed from their nose and mouth with every attempt. Meanwhile, the relatively new science of infectious disease was helpless to treat it. There were no anti-viral drugs or flu vaccines in 1918.
Oddly, the Spanish flu was most lethal for those between 20 and 40, an unusual pattern since the flu usually killed young children and the elderly. Over one quarter of all Americans became infected causing 675,000 deaths, ten times as many as died in World War I. Young soldiers, men in their prime, were becoming ill in frighteningly large numbers. Of the U.S. troops who died in World War I, over half were from the flu, and not warfare in the trenches.
Ironically, the end of the war enabled a resurgence in the disease. As the world celebrated Armistice Day on November 11th, a second wave of the epidemic emerged as troops began returning home around the world, including the US, Canada, Russia, India and Australia. U.S. east coast ports reported sick soldiers in massive numbers, suffering with fevers as high as 105 degrees F (40.5 C). Within days, the disease had spread, via those sick men, westward by train, all the way to California.
With troops coming home having shrapnel wounds, amputations and mustard gas burns, hospitals were already taxed. Confronted with an acute shortage of hospital beds, schools had to be transformed into emergency hospitals. An instant doctor shortage occurred, forcing medical students to step up and act as interns, many of them getting sick as well. It was common for 1,000 victims to die A DAY in major global cities. Treatments of day like quinine, arsenic and strychnine were totally useless.
That terrible winter of 1918, millions more became infected and hundreds of thousands died.
As the disease spread across the countries of the world, schools and businesses closed. Telegraph and telephone service collapsed, garbage went uncollected on street curbs, the mail piled up in post offices. Where infections rose, quarantines were imposed on schools, theaters, and churches. Cities passed laws requiring people to wear cloths masks, even though they offered little protection from the infectious virus. Railroads would not accept passengers without a signed doctor’s certificate. Advertisements falsely suggested drinking alcohol prevented infection, causing a run on booze! Funerals were limited to 15 minutes and a quick burial. Corpses piled up with a shortage of coffins and gravediggers, resulting in the sad necessity of mass graves. Many families were forced to bury their own dead.
Graves of WWI soldiers who died of Spanish Flu in England
No one was left untouched by the pandemic. With one-fifth of the world infected, it was impossible to escape. Spain’s King Leopold died of the flu early on. Even US President Woodrow Wilson caught it in 1919, while negotiating the Treaty of Versailles at the end the World War 1. Former President Trump’s grandfather, Fredrich Trump, caught the Spanish Flu early in 1918 and died in New York City. Ironically, China was one of the least infected countries due to its isolation at the time.
A year later, by the spring of 1919, the Spanish Flu pandemic blessedly slowed to a halt, as those that were infected, but survived, developed the so-called herd immunity. The deadly H1N1 virus may have also rapidly muted to a less lethal strain. The global death toll sits officially at 50 million souls, but is believed by the US Centers for Disease Control to be as high as 100 MILLION, including the under-reported poorer nations.
With today’s jet airlines, high speed trains and cruise ships, such a deadly and highly contagious disease could jump the globe in a matter of hours, rather than weeks or months that it took for COVID. The earth’s human population is far greater, denser and more interconnected than it ever was in 1918. Ironically, facemask wearing and social distancing are resisted today, just as they were by our ancestors a hundred years ago.
As we have learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, governments are hesitant to lockdown their countries and close borders, then keep them that way for very long. Quarantines are slow to be enacted, and will therefore be less effective at halting the spread of a highly infectious and highly deadly virus. Vaccines can be developed quicker now, but are only effective in halting the spread if the majority of the global population is willing to get them. As we have seen from the COVID anti-vax movement, that simply does not happen. All sobering thoughts when contemplating our world’s next great pandemic yet to come.
The name Mata Hari is almost synonymous with femme fatale, or any wicked temptress who uses her sexual charms to seduce the hero of the day. In reality, Mata Hari was a professional exotic dancer and mistress, who ultimately became a spy for France during World War I. Suspected of being a double agent, she was executed by firing squad in 1917. While that might sound like the stuff of Hollywood movies, it was all true. But how did she get from exotic dancer to wartime spy?
Mata Hari was actually born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, in 1876. Her father was a haberdasher, or hat maker, who went bankrupt, and her mother died when Margaretha was 15. She and her three brothers were split up and sent to live with various relatives. At 18, desperate for a better life, she answered a newspaper ad for a wife. Knowing she was attractive, she sent a striking photo of herself. It worked. She married the much older (by 21 years) Dutch army Captain Rudolf MacLeod. His military career took the newlyweds to the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia).
There they had two children, but their unhappy marriage was plagued by frequent infidelity on her part and violent alcoholism on his. Following the death of their son, they moved back to Europe and divorced after 9 rocky years. She lost custody of her daughter and the 27-year-old Margaretha suddenly found herself impoverished. In 1903, she moved to Paris and looked to completely start her life over. “I wanted to live like a colorful butterfly in the sun,” she once said.
It was in the City of Lights that Margaretha Zelle reinvented herself as ‘an artist.’
She knew that, though Dutch, she possessed features granting her an exotic allure towards males. She became the mistress of a French diplomat who helped support her for a time. Drawing on her experiences in Indonesia, Margaretha created a dance routine and began performing under the name “Lady Gresha.” As part of each dance, she would cast off a series of colorful veils and silk robes until she was almost nude, a daring act for the time!
“I could never dance well,” she admitted. “People came to see me because I dared to strip naked.”
To add an aura of mystique, Margaretha changed her stage name to “Mata Hari,” or “Eye of the Dawn” in Malay, and claimed to be actually from India. Paris in 1905 tuned out to be the perfect time for her exotic looks and “temple dance” as the Far East was all the rage. She claimed that her provocative, undulating movements were part of an ancient Hindu temple rite. Her shows quickly became a sensation. Declared a “Star of Dance” by the press, Mata Hari spent the next several years traveling the European capitals, performing before sold out crowds.
Along the way, she helped turn the striptease into an art form and captivated even her staunched critics. A reporter in Vienna described Mata Hari with “the flexible grace of a wild animal.” Another enamored reviewer called her “so feline, feminine, and majestic. The hundred curves and movements of her body trembling in a hundred rhythms.” Ooh-la-la!
She also began affairs with a long list of wealthy aristocrats & military officers, many of whom showered her gifts.
“Tonight, I dine with Count A and tomorrow with Duke B,” she once quipped. After nine years on the road, however, Mata Hari’s looks and prestige began to fade. Younger copycat dancers took the stage and her bookings became fewer.
By 1914, her liaisons had become her primary source of income. Mata Hari was now 38, and her dancing career was stagnant. She was still charming, alluring and fluent in French, Dutch, English and German. She still was able to seduce the wealthy and powerful men of multiple nations.
At the outbreak of World War I, she had the freedom to move about as a neutral Dutch citizen, and took full advantage of it. In wartime however, Mata Hari’s cavalier travels and liaisons began to attract the attention of British and French intelligence. She rather foolishly knew no borders with her lovers, who included several German officers. Her suspicious behavior began to elicit suspicions of espionage.
Mata Hari’s true spy career began in 1915.
She was approached by Karl Kroemer, the German consul in Amsterdam. He offered her 20,000 francs to become a spy for Kaiser Wilhelm. The cash-strapped dancer accepted the money, seeing it as payback for when her German accounts were seized in Berlin at the start of the war. She was assigned the German codename: “H21.”
She sank deeper into wartime intrigue in 1916. French intelligence agent Georges Ladoux approached her in Paris with yet another offer—this time to spy for France. Mata Hari had fallen in love with an injured 21-year-old Russian captain, Vladimir de Masloff. Anxious to make enough money to start a new life with him, she accepted Ladoux’s deal. She agreed to seduce military secrets out of high-ranking Germans.
She had an affair with German attache Major Arnold Kalle and made an attempt to gain information from him. By the time she returned to Paris, a French wireless station had intercepted a coded message from Major Kalle to Berlin. The communiqués referred to agent “H21.” Kalle suspected Mata Hari was a French spy. In order to expose her, he purposely sent the telegram in an old code that the Germans knew the Allies had already cracked!
This was all the evidence the already suspicious Georges Ladoux needed to have her placed under arrest as a double agent. French authorities arrested the unsuspecting Mata Hari in a Paris hotel in 1917. “This is impossible! This is impossible!” she protested. They threw her in a cell at Paris’ infamous Prison Saint-Lazare. The neutral Dutch government did little to intervene on her behalf.
Mata Hari’s mug shot, Paris 1917
The once famous temple dancer spent the next several months in a rat & lice infested cell.
During the lengthy interrogation, Mata Hari, who’d long lived a career based on her own lies, could not convincingly defend her activities. She swore to investigators that she never actually fulfilled the bargain with the Germans, and always remained faithful to France.
“A courtesan, I admit it. A spy, never!” she defiantly told her interrogators.
While she freely acknowledged her promiscuous lifestyle, she was adamant that she’d never spied for any country other than France. While she admitted accepting money from the Germans, she denied passing them any secrets. Mata Hari’s low morals conspired against her though. The interrogators concluded, “Without scruples, accustomed to make use of men, she is the type of woman who is born to be a spy.”
At Mata Hari’s espionage trial, no evidence was produced that she provided useful information to any party.
Despite this, the prosecution pointed to her numerous German affairs as proof that she had been gathering intelligence for the enemy. “The evil that this immoral, shameless woman has done is incredible. This is perhaps the greatest woman spy of the century.” It took the military tribunal less than an hour to find her guilty and sentenced her to death. Some think France was simply looking for a scapegoat to blame after years of defeats on the battlefield.
At dawn on November 17, 1917, Mata Hari now 41, was driven to a field on the outskirts of Paris with two nuns. She refused a blindfold and was executed by a firing squad of 12 French soldiers. Ever the performer, she smiled and blew a kiss to the men moments before the shots rang out. Her remains were donated to the University of Paris Medical School for dissection. The true extent of her espionage, whether for France or Germany ,may never be known.
Mata Hari’s glamorous life and alleged time as a double agent, became the stuff of legend. Her amazing life and career has produced numerous biographies, movies, even a musical and ballet. The most famous film being the 1931 Mata Hari, starring Greta Garbo. Her legacy became that of the quintessential female spy. To this day, her very name evokes mystery, deception and seduction.
Simon Bolivar is the most famous political and military hero in Latin American history. He led revolutions against the Spanish Empire in no less than 6 South American countries. His short life and personal story is without doubt the stuff of legend. Yet today, outside of Latin America, where he’s still revered as El Libertador, his name is nearly forgotten. He was the George Washington (and more) of Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, AND Bolivia.
In each country, he was able to gain the people’s support for revolution and liberation from Spain. He succeeded in leading small armies of mixed units in defeating the larger, highly-trained Spanish forces. He wrote a constitution which developed the ideals of democracy and national identity amongst the Spanish colonies.
His amazing life is impossible to compress into a 10 minute read, so here are the key highlights of this heroic man.
Simón Bolívar was born Simón José Antonio de la Santísma Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios in Caracas in1783. He belonged to a wealthy, aristocratic family, owning gold and copper mines in Venezuela. His father died when he was only 3 and his mother when he was just 9. Young Simón was raised by an uncle, nurse and tutor. They sent him to a colonial academy, where he began to develop his keen affinity for military strategy.
At 16, his uncle sent Simón to Spain to complete his education. While in Madrid, he fell in love with the daughter of a Spanish nobleman, María Teresa Rodríguez. They fell in love, courted for 2 years and married in 1802. He eagerly took his beautiful new bride back to his home in Venezuela to begin a life together. Sadly, María quickly contracted yellow fever in Caracas, sickened, and died.
The 20-year-old Bolívar was emotionally crushed and vowed never to marry again. He returned to Europe and immersed himself in his studies. He visited Paris and became enamored with the bold French and American Revolutions. They planted in his mind the need for similar independence for Spanish Latin American. Simón met his old tutor in Madrid. He grasped his teacher’s hands, dropped to his knees, and vowed to not rest until he had freed his country as well.
At that time, the Viceroyalty of New Granada included Columbia, Panama, Venezuela and Ecuador. Bolívar returned to Venezuela in 1807 and found that the oppressed colonists were indeed ready for independence. Bolívar became heavily involved in the rebellion. He boldly spoke out passionately in public.
“Let us lay the cornerstone of American freedom without fear. To hesitate is to perish!“
Simon BolIvar
The Venezuela National Assembly declared independence from Spain in 1811. The new Republica de Venezuela became the 1st colony of the Spanish empire to begin a war for independence. Simón was thrilled and quickly joined the Venezuelan army. Though he had little formal military training, he was made a Lieutenant Colonel. He soon began to distinguish himself in early battles against the Spanish forces. It would be a long road to independence however.
By 1812, Spanish forces regained control of Venezuela. Bolívar and the revolutionary army fled to rebel-friendly New Granada (Columbia). There he wrote his famous, “El Manifesto de Cartagena” in which he urged Venezuelans not to give up and instead retake their independence.
“Not the Spanish, but our own disunity led us back into slavery. A strong government could have changed everything.”
Simon Bolivar
In 1813, he was given his first military command. He lead the revolutionary army back into Venezuela to begin the “Campaña Admirable” and liberate the country again. After numerous hard-fought battles against the Spaniards, he was able to reenter Caracas and establish the Second Venezuelan Republic. The people hailed Bolívar at only 30 as El Libertador and awarded him presidential powers.
However, this second republic was also to be short-lived.
The people were war-weary and turned against independence. Many still preferred Spanish colonial rule. A Civil War soon erupted, with Spain backing the loyalists. By 1815, half of Venezuela still belonged to Spain. Spanish led forces succeeded in driving Bolívar and his rebel army out of Venezuela a second time! He fled once again to Cartagena in New Granada.
A large Spanish army followed him, and Bolívar was forced to sail for Jamaica with only his officers. Never one to be discouraged, he simply planned for his return. The indefatigable Bolívar wrote his most famous essay, la Carta de Jamaica, directly to the Venezuelan people. He detailed his vision of a great federation of South American republics.
“I have been chosen by fate to break your chains. Misfortune is the ‘school of heroes.’ A people that love freedom will in the end be free!“
Simon Bolivar
A man of great energy and charisma, Bolívar set out to persuade the entire world to back his vision for an independent South America. He sought international support, but sadly both Great Britain and the U.S. declined. They were unwilling to anger the Spanish Empire and send aid of any kind.
Nevertheless, in 1816, his first expedition sailed with only 250 men and 7 ships, a force far too tiny to engage the 10,000-strong royal army. The Spanish were sure the foolish young rebel was finished this time. Bolívar began circulating proclamations, making up stories about supposed victories not yet achieved across the colony, building an image the invincible liberators in the people’s eyes.
“You are human beings, they are beasts. Fight, and you shall win! For God grants victory to perseverance.”
Simon Bolivar
Bolívar then conceived one of the most daring military campaigns in history.
It involved attacking not Caracas, but rather the capital of all New Grenada, Bogota. He’d been attacking on the eastern plains. On the western plains, Generals Francisco de Santander and Jose Paez were conducting similar guerrilla campaigns. During the rainy season, the plains turned to swamp and the Spanish troops withdrew.
Bolívar also knew the Spanish considered the Andes Mountains impassable during winter and lightly guarded that frontier. He called a War Council of his generals, all of them under 40 years of age, in a small hut without furniture, to discuss his daring plan to take Bogota.
In 1818, Bolívar’s 2,500 ragtag soldiers marched 350 miles through torrential rains, flooded plains, and swollen rivers. Half their cattle drowned. Nevertheless, Bolívar continually encouraged his tired men to push forward. In June, they began their ascent of the Andes. The army was woefully unprepared. By the time they were at 18,000 feet, their horses and cattle had died. The thinly uniformed men had little wood for fire. Nearly 1,000 men died of exposure on the perilous trek.
Those who made it were half-starved, but found a Columbian population eager to help. After Bolívar’s men had a few skirmishes with Spanish outposts, word reach the New Granada colonial commander Pablo Morillo. He prepared to meet the rebels in battle. At Boyaca near Bogata in August 1819, in a two-hour clash, Bolívar’s republic forces captured half of the 3,000 Spanish troops, the rest were either killed or fled.
It was the turning point for independence in South America.
The Spanish began to evacuate New Granada and the colonial empire started to collapse. Desertions from the royal army increased and citizens began supporting Bolívar. The legislature declared a new country of united provinces, the Republic of Gran Colombia consisting of New Granada (Colombia), Venezuela and Ecuador. The new government made Bolívar president and essentially a military dictator.
Now Bolívar also showed excellent political skills in negotiating the challenges of setting up a new republic, including writing a constitution. Bolívar and Morillo, the Spanish commander met in 1820 and signed a treaty. Bolívar did not rest on his laurels however. In 1821, he cleared the remaining Spanish forces from his beloved Venezuela.
Still, other Spanish forces remained entrenched far to the south.
With the help of his best commander, Antonio Jose de Sucre, he split the army, pushed south and attacked Quito from two sides, liberating Ecuador in 1822. It was in Quito that the Liberator met the second great love of his life, Manuela Sáenz. She was the illegitimate daughter of a Spanish nobleman and a zealous revolutionary. They never married, but she was his constant companion for the rest of his life.
This now left the remaining Spanish Viceroy of Peru to the south. The Argentine revolutionary General Jose de San Martin had successfully liberated parts of lower South America (first Argentina, then Chile). Between his army and Bolívar’s troops lay Peru, with 20,000 Spanish troops, the last in South America. San Martin’s troops marched over the Andes and took Lima on the coast in 1821. However, they’d not been able to push further inland and struggled to maintain independence. He sought out the help of Simón Bolívar.
In July 1822, San Martin and Bolívar met in Guayaquil, Ecuador.
They met alone and there are sadly no records of their conference. They had two vastly different visions for governing the continent. It’s believed San Martin was disheartened by Bolívar’s insistence that only his view would prevail. He must have felt that only Bolívar’s military and political strength would free Peru. Gran Colombia was proof of that. San Martin decided to resign on the spot, turned over his army and returned to Argentina. The fate of Peru was now in Bolívar’s hands!
In 1824, Bolívar led his combined armies up into the Andean plateaus. At the top, Bolívar reviewed his troops and told them:
“Soldiers, you are about to finish the greatest undertaking Heaven has confided to men–that of saving an entire world from slavery!”
Simon Bolivar
A cat and mouse game ensued through the mountains crossed by steep ravines and deep rivers. Bolivar’s forces out maneuvered the Spanish army, which had numbered 18,000, and they surrendered to General Sucre.
Sucre’s report to Bolívar proudly announced, “The war is ended. The liberation of Peru complete.”
The people of upper Peru decided to form a separate nation in 1825. They named it Bolivia in Bolívar’s honor. He eventually wrote its constitution and accepted the position of lifetime president.
Bolívar received a letter from the then-aged Marquis de Lafayette on behalf of the family of President George Washington. Along with a gold medallion coined after the British surrender at Yorktown, Virginia. It read: “To the second Washington of the New World.” Bolívar was deeply touched and cherished it the rest of his life.
He began vigorously rebuilding and administering the war-devastated new republic. He convened a congress of the republics in Panama in 1826. Bolívar felt that a union of states would be mutually beneficial. He envisioned a combined league of the young nations.
“Its principles should be the sovereignty of the people, division of powers, civil liberty, prohibition of slavery and the abolition of monarchy.”
Simon Bolivar
But alas, it was not to be. Bolívar had succeeded in freeing colonies into federations, but their governments were inexperienced and fragile. Despite his desire to create a union of republics, similar to the United States, he faced opposition from factions that pushed for independent nations.
Bolívar was now torn between his republican values and the need to maintain order. He loved democracy, but feared that only a strong leader could hold it together. Bickering between factions, political conflicts, and resentment of his rule caused his influence to wane. Bolívar took dictatorial powers in 1828 just to hold Gran Colombia together.
Then in September 1828, he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt.
Twenty six conspirators attacked the San Carlos Palace in Bogota at midnight. Bolívar’s life was saved by his mistress, Manuela Sáenz, who awakened him. He escaped by jumping out a window. Soldiers captured the conspirators who were all executed. It must have been a disheartening moment for Bolívar. He realized that he had become a dangerously polarizing figure in the same countries he freed.
In 1830, Bolívar resigned his presidency – turning down offers to become president for life. He preferred now to simply return to being an ordinary citizen. He planned to sail to Europe again and self-exile. But before he could set sail, he became gravely ill from tuberculosis. The treatment of the period was arsenic.
President Simon Bolivar
In December 1830, Simon Bolivar died at only 47 in Santa Marta, Colombia, losing his battle with tuberculosis. He is buried in his beloved Caracas, Venezuela. Bolívar was a visionary and charismatic leader. When the cause seemed lost, he always showed determination and courage. He had no desire for personal wealth. He began life wealthy, but ended it modestly. His legacy remains behind in the six countries he freed from Spanish colonial rule. To Latin Americans, Bolívar remains El Libertador, one of the greatest independence leaders in the history of the world.
“Colombians! My last wish is for the happiness of the patria. If my death contributes to the consolidation of the union, I shall be lowered in peace into my grave.”
Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (or HPB to her followers) was a controversial 19th century medium, psychic, author and co-founder of the Theosophical Society. She claimed to be in contact with the ‘The Masters’, astral beings of great psychic powers who bestowed upon her the ancient secret science of Theosophy. The society grew from a modest start in 1875 to become a multi-national organization with thousands of members and branches that still exist to this day. But who was she really?
Coffins of the Israeli Team killed at 1972 Munich Olympics
During the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, eight terrorists disguised in tracksuits, carrying gym bags filled with assault rifles and hand grenades, breached the Olympic Village security. Just before dawn on September 5th, Black September terrorists of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), managed to enter the building where Israeli athletes were sleeping. Once inside, they murdered one athlete and one coach, taking 9 others hostage.
Thanks to press coverage of the Olympics, audiences around the world watched in horror as the nightmare unfolded on live television. More than 900 million watched the terrorist attack unfold on their home TVs. Terrorists armed with assault weapons wearing black ski masks patrolled the apartment balcony. It was the first time a terrorist act took place during an Olympic games.
Black September demanded the release of 234 Arab prisoners held in Israeli jails, and negotiations took an agonizing 23 hours. When authorities finally attempted a botched rescue attempt, all nine hostages were killed by the terrorists, along with five Black September members and one West German police officer. How could such a thing have happened during an Olympics, the symbol of world peace through athletics?
The 1972 Munich Olympic Games were supposed to be joyous.
West Germany was set to celebrate an international sporting festival of peace. Over a quarter century after World War II had been unleashed by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, West Germany wanted to present itself as a modern, democratic state. Reminders of the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics, with its heavy Nazi propaganda, were a distant memory.
Less than 30 years after the Holocaust, when approximately 6 million Jews were murdered in Nazi Death Camps, Israel was going to the Munich Olympics with its biggest team ever. The significance was not lost on anyone. Several of the older team officials were Eastern Europeans, still bearing the arm tattoos from Nazi concentration camps.
The West German government wanted to downplay any military presence. Hailing the event as “The Games of Peace and Joy,” they avoided uniformed soldiers and police for unarmed guards. Israeli officials voiced concerns about the obvious lack of security at the Games. Nevertheless, Munich introduced the first-ever Olympic mascot, the dachshund “Waldi,” and its official motto, “The Cheerful Games.”
It certainly started out that way. American swimmer Mark Spitz, with his thick black mustache won 7 gold medals, setting world records in all seven of his events. He became the undisputed star of the Munich games. The image of Spitz with 7 gold medals on his bare chest was everywhere. It was a feat that stood for decades, surpassed only by American Michael Phelps at the 2008 Beijing Summer Games.
The excitement continued with the surprising Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut. The sixteen year old “Sparrow from Minsk” came out of nowhere and soared to three gold medals in the balance beam, floor exercise, and team competition. Her acrobatic and athletic show helped revolutionize women’s gymnastics, ushering in a new era of popularity. Every little girl in the world wanted to be Olga Korbut.
For 10 days, the Munich Summer Games continued and were indeed joyous and cheerful. But behind the scenes, there were still questions regarding lax security. The early 1970s were overshadowed by numerous airplane hijackings by terrorists. The Munich police could have been better prepared for what was to come.
The Summer Games came to an abrupt halt the morning of September 5th.
On Monday evening, the Israeli athletes enjoyed a night out, watching a performance of Fiddler on the Roof, then dining out with the Israeli star of the musical, before returning to the Olympic Village. At 4:35 am early Tuesday morning, 8 members of the Black September terrorist group, disguised as athletes, scaled a chain link fence and entered the village.
They forced their way into the Israeli athletes’ quarters, apartments 1 and 3. Two team members, weightlifter Yossef Romano and wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg, attempted to fight back, only to be shot and killed. The terrorists collected nine other Israeli team members as hostages, tightly binding their hands and feet. Following the shots, chaos erupted at the Olympic village and the Munich police were called.
Black September demanded the release of 234 Palestinians and Arabs imprisoned in Israeli jails. To prove their intent, they tossed the bullet-ridden body of Weinberg out the main door onto the street. They kept the bloody body of Romano at the feet of the athletes as a grim reminder to remain submissive. The terrorists set a 9AM deadline for release of the political prisoners. Failure to meet it, they said, would result in 1 hostage being executed every hour.
Thanks to the Olympic TV and press coverage, soon the entire world knew.
The image of black masked kidnappers with assault rifles quickly spread across the globe. Munich’s law enforcement was woefully unprepared. They were trained for everyday crimes, not military trained terrorists. With no counter-terror unit, the West German government took control of the negotiations, along with Munich’s Police Chief Manfred Schreiber. But they did not have a cohesive plan. Hours of negotiation ensued, with much of the drama unfolding on live television.
West German negotiators were inclined to give in to the terrorist demands, but Israel leaders in Tel Aviv adamantly refused, stating there would be absolutely NO negotiations.
“If we should give in, then no Israeli anywhere in the world can feel that his life is safe.”
Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir
At one point in the day, a Munich policewoman was used as an intermediary with the lead terrorist, Luttif Afif, who called himself ‘Issa.’ The two could be seen on live TV, Issa confidently standing in a doorway, leaning against the frame in a white hat and sunglasses. He shared cigarettes with the policewoman, dressed in civilian clothes, wearing a dress and sports jacket.
The terrorists rejected a German counteroffer of an unlimited amount of money. Responding back, ”Money and our lives mean nothing to us.” The Libyan and Tunisian ambassadors to Germany, as well as Egyptian members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) were brought in. They succeeded in getting Black September to extend their deadline a total of five times, without further deaths.
Black September terrorists at the Munich Olympic Village
At one point, two of the Israeli hostages were allowed to appear on a second floor window to prove they were still alive. But when one tried to answer a question from German police, a terrorist clubbed him in the head with the butt of his rifle. The rest of the Israeli team quickly left Munich, as did Jewish-American swimmer Mark Spitz.
At the same time, the media provided the terrorists with valuable information on TV. West German authorities forgot to switch off electricity to the apartments and failed to remove the foreign press contingent from the Olympic Village. That meant that the terrorists were able to watch on TV how the police and snipers were positioned all around them. The poor hostages, closely trapped with them, must have realized there was no hope for rescue or release.
Finally at 4:30 pm, a squad of Munich police arrived at the Olympic Village disguised in sweat suits.
Their plan was to crawl down from ventilation shafts and kill the terrorists. However, camera crews followed the officers and broadcast the images live on TV. The terrorists were able to watch the police preparation live from the couches in the apartments. Issa was furious and threatened to kill two of the hostages if they did not withdraw immediately. The police retreated.
With negotiations failing, Black September shifted their demands and asked for transport to Cairo with the hostages. It seemed as though German authorities agreed to the terrorists’ demands and it was here TV coverage ended. Two military transport helicopters were brought to the Village. They flew the terrorists and hostages 15 miles to the nearby Fürstenfeldbruck NATO Air Base, where a 727 jet airplane was waiting.
It was there a second rescue was attempted. Unfortunately, only five police snipers were deployed as the German authorities still didn’t know the exact number of PLO terrorists. The snipers were inadequately trained for such an operation, poorly equipped with the wrong rifles, and had no radio contact with each other. The two helicopters landed in the dark at 10:30pm. The Bavarian Interior Minister then ordered the snipers to open fire.
The terrorists scrambled beneath the helicopters and returned fire, killing Anton Fliegerbauer, a German sniper. The 2 helicopter pilots managed to escape in the melee. Armored personnel carriers had been stuck in traffic and arrived late. When the attack vehicles rolled in, Issa shouted in anger and threw a hand grenade into one of the helicopters. The explosion incinerated the still bound hostages and destroyed the aircraft. The terrorists then riddled the Israeli athletes bound in the other helicopter with bullets.
The nine victims were: wrestling referee Yossef Gutfreund, sharpshooting coach Kehat Shorr, track and field coach Amitzur Shapira, fencing master Andre Spitzer, weightlifting judge Yakov Springer, wrestlers Eliezer Halfin and Mark Slavin, and weightlifters David Berger and Ze’ev Friedman.
When the shooting ended, the leader Luttif Afif (Issa) and four other terrorists were also dead. Three surrendered and were captured alive by the police. West German spokesman Conrad Ahlers declared that the hostage operation had been a success. But hours later, the world found out the truth about the failed rescue attempt and the death of ALL 9 hostages.
Bombed Helicopter at the Munich airport
The tragedy cast a dark shadow over what had been the memorably “Cheerful Games.” The Summer Games were put on hold for 34 hours. A memorial ceremony, attended by 3,000 athletes and 80,000 spectators, was conducted at the Olympic Stadium on September 6th with all nation flags flying at half- mast. The IOC president, Avery Brundage, then proclaimed: “The Games must go on!“
The deadly operation gave the PLO a worldwide audience and made them a household name, ushering in a new era of bold global terrorism. Sadly, 3 weeks after the massacre, the 3 captured assassins were released as part of the hijack negotiations of German Lufthansa flight 615. The trio was flown to Libya where they received a hero’s welcome. In response, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir set up a covert unit within Israel’s Mossad agency to hunt down and eliminate all those involved in the Munich Massacre. She called it Operation Wrath of God.
Several terrorist suspects were assassinated in the coming months throughout Europe and the Middle East. Black September’s Head Ali Hassan Salameh, was assassinated by car bomb in 1979 in the operation’s final mission. Mohammed Daoud Odeh, who masterminded the deadly assault, fled to Syria and died of cancer in Damascus in 2010.
The way the terrorists were so easily able to access to the village would forever change Olympic security protocols. Four years later, at the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics, the Israeli team commemorated their fallen at the Olympic stadium Opening Ceremony when they entered carrying the Israeli flag adorned with 9 long, black ribbons.
The Munich Massacre has been the subject of a number of books and films, including one by Hollywood director Steven Spielberg, who used it, and the subsequent Mossad assassinations, in his 2005 film, “Munich.” Forty-four years later, the IOC finally commemorated the victims before the 2016 Rio Summer Games. We should do the same at ALL future Olympic Games.
We used to take vaccines for granted. After all, they’ve been around for decades. Some, like small pox and polio, were given to our grandparents and even great-grandparents. We all received our last round of childhood shots as kids. So much so, we were shocked by a modern pandemic in 2020. This was due in part to the lack of a ready COVID vaccine AND a surprisingly vocal anti-vaccine contingent. How could that be?
Norman Rockwell’s famous childhood vaccination depiction
