Browsing: Politics

A Brief History On February 4, 1555, English clergyman John Rogers became the first martyr burned at the stake under the rule of Queen Mary I of England, known better as Bloody Mary. Digging Deeper Rogers was a Protestant cleric in an England that had turned away from the Catholic Church under King Henry VIII, but when Henry’s daughter, Mary, a Catholic, assumed the throne in 1553, she did all she could to reinstall the supremacy of the Catholic Church and reverse the Reformation in England. During Mary’s 5 year reign, at least 280 religious dissenters were burned at the…

A Brief History On February 3, 1509, the Arabian Sea portion of the Indian Ocean witnessed a naval battle that had centuries of effects on the global balance of power when a Portuguese fleet defeated a combined fleet of Asian warships at the Battle of Diu, India. Digging Deeper The Portuguese put together a force of 18 warships along with 1200 soldiers to face a fleet of 46 warships and an additional 70 to 150 smaller war boats of the Sultan of Gujarat, the Mamlûk Burji Sultanate of Egypt, the Zamorin of Calicut, the Republic of Venice, and the Ottoman…

A Brief History On January 31, 1915, the German Army, in violation of the 1899 Hague Declaration Concerning Asphyxiating Gases, launched 18,000 artillery shells containing xylyl bromide tear gas against Russian positions, the first truly large scale use of poison gas in combat. Digging Deeper While people have used various poisons to deny the use of water wells as far back as 600 BC and to foul the air with toxic sulfur fumes in 479 BC, the 19th and 20th Centuries saw efforts to outlaw such use of poisons. In World War I, the first and most common use of…

A Brief History On January 29, 2002, US President George W. Bush coined a new phrase in his State of the Union Address to Congress, labeling Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as the “Axis of Evil.” Digging Deeper Bush accused these states of being “regimes that sponsor terror,” a highly charged topic in the US after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.  Bush apparently liked the sound of his new designation and used the phrase often in his remaining years in office. The allusion in the phrase to “Axis” would harken back to the “Axis Powers” of World War…

A Brief History On January 28, 1547, the 9-year-old son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, Edward VI, became King of England.  Not only did his ill-fated mother die shortly after his birth, Edward himself was fated to a reign of only 6 and half years, dying of an illness at the age of 15. Digging Deeper Edward VI is easily forgotten in the muddle of the successors that followed him, starting with his cousin, Lady Jane Grey, whom Edward had named his heir before he died.  Seen by Catholics as an attempt to prevent the reestablishment of Catholicism in…