Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective

Connecting today with yesterday through scholarship and commentary.

[originsosu]

Everyone give it up for America’s favorite fighting Frenchman!

Happy Birthday to the Marquis de Lafayette, hero of both the American and French Revolutions, born September 6th, 1757.  

[originsosu]

The Hamilton-Burr Duel

July 11th, 1804: Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton and Vice PresidentAaron Burr faced off on a windy bluff overlooking the Hudson River in Weehawken, New Jersey, in the most infamous duel in modern political history. Two shots rang out. When it was all over, Hamilton was mortally wounded, Burr was a wanted man… and the world would never be the same.

Discover more about Hamilton and Burr here.

[originsosu]

Quick reminder: the determination of who is allowed to own and carry a gun in America has often had as much to do with race as with the Constitution:

In Dred Scott v. Sandford, the infamous 19th century Supreme Court case that ruled that free blacks were not American citizens, the Court cited gun ownership as a reason to deny blacks citizenship. If the law made black men citizens, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney warned, they would have the right “to keep and carry arms wherever they went.”

During the 1960s, the National Rifle Association and other “gun rights” activists advocated successfuly for California to pass extremely strict gun regulations after members of the Black Panther Party began advocating black gun ownership as a means of defense against state oppression.

In 2016, Philando Castile, a legal firearm owner was shot and killed during a police stop in Minnesota. The NRA was noticeably silent about the case.

Read More: History Top Ten - Gun Regulation

[originsosu]

This MLK Day, let’s remember the real Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: a passionate, even radical critic of capitalism, militarism, and racism.

In many ways, the man we celebrate on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is not the man who lost his life on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel fifty years ago.

Today, we celebrate Dr. King for his remarks at the 1963 March on Washington, but at the time he was denounced across the South as a communist sympathizer, and roundly criticized throughout the North for pushing for civil rights too hard and too fast. And in 1967, when he finally spoke out against the war in Vietnam, he was pilloried by liberals for not knowing his place – “stick to civil rights,” they said – and excoriated by southern segregationists and northern “law and order” conservatives for being a radical extremist.

By the time President Ronald Reagan signed the bill making Dr King's birthday a national holiday in 1983, the American prophet of nonviolence had been reduced to a handful of sound bites from the March on Washington and snippets from his Letter from Birmingham Jail.

[originsosu]

Dispatches from the Armenian Revolution

In April and May 2018, a series of anti-government protests in Armenia from April to May 2018 staged by political and civil groups resulted in a democratic transition of power and a replacement of the country’s prime minister. At a time of increasing authoritarianism around the world, the Armenian Revolution stands as an example of grassroots social change that opens the door for discussions on democratic development and economic justice throughout the region. Not only do Armenians feel empowered to make a difference, but people throughout post-Soviet Eurasia are watchingdevelopments in Yerevan with interest and a measure of envy.

Read More Here

[originsosu]

The fictional story of Wakanda has real historical origins in the struggle of the resource-rich Democratic Republic of the Congo to assert its independence from Western intervention. 

[originsosu]

One thing that a lot of people don’t realize is the connection between the neoliberal economic policies of the 1980s and the spread of HIV/AIDS.

From President Ronald Reagan in the United States to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, governments around the world scaled back their public sectors during this time, limiting funding for education and health care and in some cases requiring people to pay user fees to access them.

So when HIV/AIDS hit, vulnerable and economically marginal populations had less access to healthcare and  health education at the very moment they needed it most... with tragic consequences.

In short: the forces of globalization that were supposed to liberalize the economies around the world fanned the spread of HIV and hampered its control.

Learn more in “A Century of HIV.”

[originsosu]

This World AIDS Day, remember:

HIV/AIDS first gained public attention during the 1980s: a rapidly spreading, almost biblical plague with no cure and only limited, ineffective treatment methods.

In a climate of fear and ignorance, the same marginalized communities most ravaged by the disease were scapegoated for its spread: gay men, intravenous drug users, and Haitian immigrants.

But the real history of HIV/AIDS has much more to do with larger, structural forces and systems: European colonialism, Cold War rivalries, and economic globalization.

[originsosu]

Happy Birthday to Belgian Surrealist painter René Magritte, born November 21st, 1898!

[originsosu]

Think you “don’t need” to get a flu shot this year, or that it’s “just not worth it”? Think again.

One hundred years ago, as many as 50 million people died around the world in the influenza epidemic of 1918-1919. The so-called “Spanish flu” killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS killed in 24 years. More in a single year than the “Black Death” did throughout the entire 14th century.

In the United States, 28% of the population became infected, and over half a million people died. Cities up and down the country ran out of coffins. Cemeteries overflowed. In New York City, passengers who entered the subway in Brooklyn feeling fine? Died by the time they reached Manhattan. In Philadelphia, the dead were buried in mass graves, which are still being discovered to this day.

And just in case you think being young and able-bodied would have spared you, consider this: the death toll was highest for healthy young adults aged 20 to 40.

This is why the influenza vaccine was developed. This is the kind of horror that scientists spent the next five decades trying to prevent.

Get your flu shot.

(More info: here and here.)

[originsosu]

November 4th, 1922: Ancient mysteries were revealed when British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered King Tut's Tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. The final resting place of the young Pharoah Tutankhamun had lain undisturbed for more than 3,000 years.

[originsosu]

That very particular mix of theater geek, history nerd and 90s kid where you still can’t get over the fact that the high school in “Boy Meets World,” a show set in Philadelphia, was called John Adams High — in honor of William Daniels, who played Mr. Feeny on the show and who also played John Adams in the classic musical 1776... which also took place in Philadelphia.

(Happy birthday, John Adams — born October 30, 1735!)

[originsosu]

World heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson and his wife, Lucille.

In 1912, Jackson was arrested for violating the Mann Act and engaging in “white slavery”: a thinly veiled attack on a consenting interracial relationship. The couple fled the country and lived in exile for seven years.

[originsosu]

For more than a hundred years, the Canadian government removed 150,000 First Nation, Inuit and Métis children from their homes and forced them to attend “Indian Residential Schools."

Students at these schools were forcibly assimilated into White Canadian culture and discouraged from speaking their first language or practicing their native traditions. Many children were physically and sexually abused, in addition to the trauma of being removed from their families and communities. Indian Residential Schools have been linked to the high rates of post-traumatic stress, substance abuse, and suicide that exist in native communities to this day. (x)

[originsosu]

Giant Tortoise, Galapagos Islands

[originsosu]

Chichén Itzá, Mexico: the sacred heart of the ancient Mayan Empire.

[originsosu]

Giant asteroids traveling through space have the potential to destroy all life on the planet, and scientists have little confidence that we would see one coming in time to stop it.