10 januari

Iacta alea est. — The die is cast. The stream marked the edge of Caesar’s province, and bringing an army across it into Italy was treason. Suetonius gives the words in Latin; Plutarch says Caesar spoke them in Greek, quoting the playwright Menander. Which modern river is the Rubicon is still not…

With parish priests dead and none to replace them, Ralph of Shrewsbury, bishop of Bath and Wells, told his clergy that the dying could confess to a layman, and if no man could be found, even to a woman. The letter is dated 1348, by the English year that began on 25 March.

The Signoria ordered an altarpiece for the Chapel of St Bernard in its own palace. The contract is dated 10 January 1477: Florence began its year on 25 March, so that is January 1478 by modern count. He took an advance and never delivered; the job passed to Ghirlandaio and finally to Filippino…

James I’s ambassador reached the emperor’s court at Ajmer and spent three years seeking a treaty Jahangir never signed. He came away with trading concessions and some advice for the directors: seek profit at sea and in quiet trade, not garrisons on land. Roe dated the audience 10 January 1615,…

Thomas Paine, in America barely a year, attacked not just Parliament but monarchy itself, in plain language anyone could read aloud in a tavern. Paine claimed 120,000 copies in three months; historians think that is an exaggeration, but it was the best-seller of the Revolution.

At the Zoological Society, the ornithologist announced that Darwin’s assorted finches, wrens and grosbeaks were one new group of twelve species. In March he told Darwin the mockingbirds were three separate species, not varieties. Darwin, who had mixed up his finch labels, had to borrow FitzRoy’s.

The world’s first underground railway ran six kilometres from Paddington to Farringdon, dug by cut-and-cover beneath the streets and worked by steam engines that were meant to condense their smoke. About 38,000 passengers rode it on the first day.

The last shōgun, modernising his army with French advisers, held the title for less than a year. He lived quietly in Shizuoka afterwards, photographing and cycling, and outlived the Meiji emperor, dying in 1913.

Waldemar Haffkine, who had already tested a cholera vaccine on himself in Paris, injected himself with a killed plague vaccine in Bombay during the epidemic that began in 1896. Trials followed among prisoners at Byculla jail, and millions of Indians were given the vaccine in the next decade.

Two months for failing to register, served in the section of the Fort kept for Africans. After a fortnight Jan Smuts offered a compromise: voluntary registration, then repeal. When Gandhi went to register a Pathan follower, Mir Alam, beat him unconscious as a traitor.

Shackleton went ashore at Cape Royds and met six men with a sledge coming from Cape Evans. Of the ten left behind in May 1915, seven were alive. A search for Mackintosh and Hayward found nothing.

The National Woman’s Party picketed the White House six days a week, with banners asking “Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?” They kept on after the US entered the war; from June 1917 police arrested them for “obstructing traffic”.

The same aircraft that had opened jet service broke up at altitude, killing all 35 on board. After a second Comet, G-ALYY, was lost off Naples on 8 April with 21 people, the fleet was grounded. A whole Comet tested in a water tank at Farnborough found the cause: metal fatigue at a corner of a…

About sixty Black ministers met in Atlanta to spread Montgomery’s method across the South, and elected King president. The group took its final name, SCLC, later that year. Its motto: “To Redeem the Soul of America”.

See you round the clubs. — Harrison, leaving Tired of being told how to play and of having his songs passed over, Harrison walked out at lunchtime. At a meeting five days later he agreed to come back, on two conditions: no big live show, and a move out of Twickenham.

Ratan Tata promised a family car for one lakh rupees, about $2,500, for families who rode four to a scooter. Protests over farmland at Singur forced Tata to move the plant to Gujarat, and selling it as the cheapest car put buyers off; production ended in 2018.