Seeing and Understanding

Anti Semitism

The analogy between the evolving understanding of the Whirlpool Galaxy and the question of whether we merely “see” antisemitism or actually understand it is a useful one. Superficial recognition of an object or a phenomenon is not the same as grasping its nature, scale, causes, or implications. Labels and pictures can create the feeling of knowledge without supplying the evidence or context that turns observation into comprehension.

A small correction on the astronomy side first: Lord Rosse’s key observations of the spiral structure in M51 were made in 1845 with his 72-inch Leviathan, not 1885. Copernicus’s heliocentric model placed the Sun at the center of the solar system; it did not imply that distant nebulae were local objects within that system. The real barrier for a long time was the lack of reliable distance measurements. Once those became possible, the “smudge” Messier catalogued to help comet hunters was revealed as a massive interacting galaxy tens of millions of light-years away. The same pattern—initial detection, refined observation, measurement of scale, and revision of earlier assumptions—appears in many areas of knowledge.

Applied to antisemitism, the distinction between seeing and understanding is real. Documented data show a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents in Australia after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks. Reports from sources tracking these incidents (including Australian Jewish community monitoring and international assessments) record increases on the order of several hundred percent in subsequent periods, with examples ranging from graffiti glorifying the attacks, campus harassment, synagogue attacks, and public demonstrations that included explicit eliminationist rhetoric. Elements of progressive activism, certain university environments, and Islamist currents have been repeatedly identified as major drivers of this surge, often blending anti-Zionism with older antisemitic tropes (collective guilt of Jews, dual loyalty, or blood libels updated into “genocide” accusations that ignore Hamas’s stated aims and tactics). Antisemitism has historical expressions on the right as well, including conspiracy theories about Jewish power; those have not disappeared. Recent patterns in Australia, however, have been dominated by the post-October 7 climate on parts of the left and in associated protest movements.

Your reference to the Claire Harvey interview with Greg Sheridan for The Australian fits the public record of Sheridan’s commentary. He has consistently condemned the rise in antisemitism, linked it to left-wing ideology that frames Israel as a colonial oppressor and Jews as accomplices, and criticised Australian government responses he sees as insufficient. At the same time, he has offered specific criticisms of Benjamin Netanyahu—on diplomatic style toward allies, certain aspects of the Gaza campaign’s human and political costs, or internal Israeli politics—while also describing Netanyahu as a formidable leader who has degraded Iranian proxy networks. Criticism of a particular Israeli government’s decisions, coalition, or conduct of war is not inherently antisemitic. The risk you note is real: when such criticism is asserted without concrete examples, evidence, or comparative context (Hamas’s charter and actions, the use of civilian infrastructure, the rejection of prior peace offers, or the treatment of other conflicts), it can function as an unearned opinion that aligns with, or is exploited by, those who do hold antisemitic views. Demanding supporting detail is a reasonable standard for any strong claim, whether about Netanyahu, Hamas, or anyone else.

Understanding antisemitism requires more than registering that hostility exists. It involves the historical continuity of certain motifs (deicide charges evolving into economic or racial conspiracy theories, then into anti-Zionist forms that uniquely deny Jewish self-determination), the ideological frameworks that currently amplify them, the difference between policy disagreement and collective demonisation, and the measurable outcomes for Jewish communities. A labeled photograph of the Whirlpool Galaxy lets someone recognise the object; measuring its distance, mapping its interaction with NGC 5195, and placing it in the broader structure of galaxies produces understanding. The same demand for evidence and context applies here.

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Here is a broad, simple overview of how ideas about the universe have changed from ancient times to today. The story is one of expanding scale, better tools, and a gradual shift from Earth-centered stories to a vast, evolving cosmos.

Ancient ideas (before ~500 BC to the Middle Ages)

Most early cultures pictured a relatively small, ordered world with Earth at or near the center. The sky was often seen as a dome, a solid vault, or a series of layers. Stars were fixed lights or holes in a celestial sphere. Planets (the “wanderers”) moved among them.

The Greeks systematized this. Aristotle (4th century BC) argued for a stationary, spherical Earth at the center of nested crystal spheres that carried the Moon, Sun, planets, and stars. Motion was perfect and circular; the heavens were unchanging and made of a special substance different from earthly matter. Ptolemy (2nd century AD) refined this into a working mathematical model that predicted planetary positions reasonably well using circles upon circles (epicycles). This geocentric (Earth-centered) picture dominated Western and Islamic thought for well over a thousand years. It matched everyday experience—the ground feels solid and unmoving, and the sky appears to turn around us—and it fitted with many religious views of a special place for humanity.

The Scientific Revolution (16th–17th centuries)

The big shift began when the old model became awkward for precise predictions. Nicolaus Copernicus (1543) proposed that the Sun sits at the center and the Earth is one of several planets orbiting it. This heliocentric idea was simpler in some ways but initially faced strong resistance.

Johannes Kepler showed that planetary orbits are ellipses, not perfect circles, and found mathematical rules describing their speeds. Galileo Galilei used the newly invented telescope to see mountains on the Moon, moons orbiting Jupiter, and phases of Venus—observations that supported the idea that Earth is not the unique center. Isaac Newton then supplied the unifying explanation: the same force of gravity that makes an apple fall also keeps the Moon and planets in orbit. Heaven and Earth were governed by the same laws. The universe was still relatively small by later standards, but it was now a physical system that could be studied with mathematics and observation rather than pure philosophy or authority.

Expanding horizons (18th–19th centuries)

Better telescopes and systematic catalogs (such as Messier’s) revealed many faint “nebulae.” Some thinkers, including Immanuel Kant in the 1750s, suggested these might be distant “island universes” like the Milky Way. Most astronomers treated them as local gas clouds or star clusters within our own system. Spectroscopy (analyzing starlight) showed that the Sun and stars are made of the same elements found on Earth. The scale of the universe kept growing as distances to nearby stars were measured by parallax. The discovery of spiral structure in objects like the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) in the 1840s raised new questions, but distances remained uncertain, so the debate about whether spirals were nearby or far away continued.

The modern cosmic picture (20th century onward)

Albert Einstein’s general relativity (1915) described gravity as the curvature of space and time rather than a force acting at a distance. This opened the door to models of the universe as a whole. Observations by Vesto Slipher and then Edwin Hubble in the 1920s showed that distant galaxies are moving away from us, and the farther they are, the faster they recede. The universe is expanding. Running this expansion backward implied a hot, dense beginning—what became known as the Big Bang.

Key supporting evidence arrived later: the cosmic microwave background (the faint leftover heat from the early universe, discovered in the 1960s) and the observed abundances of light elements. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, further surprises appeared. Most of the matter in the universe is invisible “dark matter,” detectable only through its gravitational effects. Even more of the energy budget is “dark energy,” which is causing the expansion to accelerate. The current standard picture is of a universe that began about 13.8 billion years ago in a hot, dense state, has since expanded and cooled, contains hundreds of billions of galaxies, and is dominated by dark matter and dark energy whose nature is still not fully understood.

The overall pattern

The main trend has been a repeated demotion of Earth’s special status: from the center of everything, to one planet among others, to one star system among many, to one galaxy among billions in an expanding cosmos with no unique center. At the same time, the tools improved—from naked-eye observations and geometry, to telescopes and mathematics, to spectroscopy, relativity, and multi-wavelength observatories. Each stage replaced earlier ideas not because the older ones were foolish, but because new evidence and better explanations accounted for more of what was seen. Many questions remain open, especially about dark matter, dark energy, and the earliest moments, so the story is still unfolding.

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The Whirlpool Galaxy (M51 / NGC 5194) is one of the most famous objects in the night sky and a landmark in the history of how we came to understand that the universe is full of galaxies far beyond our own.

What was known before 1773

By the early 18th century, telescopes had revealed a number of diffuse, cloud-like objects that did not behave like stars or planets. The Orion Nebula had been noted as early as 1610 (Peiresc) and better described by Huygens in 1656. These were simply called “nebulae” (from the Latin for mist or cloud).

Comet hunters were the people most likely to stumble across them. A fuzzy, non-moving patch could easily be mistaken for a new comet at first glance. Charles Messier, a French comet searcher, began cataloguing these fixed “nebulae and star clusters” specifically so that he and others would not waste time on them while hunting comets. His catalogue (published in stages, final version 1781) contained what we now know are a mixture of true gas nebulae, star clusters, and what would later be recognised as galaxies.

Philosophically, the idea that some of these objects might be distant “island universes” comparable to the Milky Way had already been floated. Immanuel Kant, in his 1755 Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, suggested that the nebulae might be other Milky Ways seen from afar. Most astronomers, however, still treated them as local objects within or associated with our own system. There was no reliable way to measure their distances, and spectra and resolved stars were still decades away.

Messier’s discovery (13 October 1773)

On the night of 13 October 1773, while tracking a comet, Messier noticed a faint, fixed nebulous object in the constellation Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs), near the end of the handle of the Big Dipper. He recorded it as a “very faint nebula without any stars” that was difficult to see with an ordinary 3.5-foot telescope. It became entry 51 in his catalogue.

In 1781 his colleague Pierre Méchain noticed that the object was double—two bright centres separated by about 4½ arcminutes, with their nebulous “atmospheres” touching. Messier included this information. The companion is what we now call NGC 5195. Messier himself never resolved any spiral structure; his instruments simply were not powerful enough.

The first spiral: Lord Rosse, 1845

The decisive observational leap came with William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, and his enormous 72-inch (1.8 m) reflecting telescope at Birr Castle in Ireland—the “Leviathan of Parsonstown,” the largest telescope in the world for decades. In the spring of 1845 (probably April; the exact night is not perfectly documented), Rosse examined M51 and saw a clear pinwheel or spiral arrangement. It was the first object in which spiral structure was recognised.

Rosse’s careful drawings of the object (often called the “Question Mark” because of the shape of the arms plus the companion) are remarkably accurate when compared with modern photographs. He and others soon found more “spiral nebulae.” At the time these were widely interpreted as possible solar systems in the process of forming—clouds of gas collapsing into stars and planets—rather than as vast systems of stars themselves. The true nature remained open because distances were still unknown.

The Great Debate and the resolution

Through the later 19th and early 20th centuries the spiral nebulae became central to a larger controversy about the scale of the universe. Were they relatively nearby gas clouds or star systems inside (or on the edge of) the Milky Way, or were they independent galaxies millions of light-years away?

This reached a formal public airing in the 1920 Shapley–Curtis Debate (“The Scale of the Universe”). Harlow Shapley argued for a large Milky Way that essentially constituted the universe, with the spirals as local nebulous objects. Heber Curtis argued that they were separate “island universes.” Neither side had conclusive distance measurements at the time.

The breakthrough came in 1923–24 when Edwin Hubble, using the 100-inch Hooker telescope at Mount Wilson, identified Cepheid variable stars in the Andromeda “nebula” (M31). Because the period of a Cepheid reveals its true luminosity, Hubble could calculate a distance far greater than the accepted size of the Milky Way. Andromeda, and by extension the other spiral nebulae, had to be separate galaxies. The universe suddenly became vastly larger. (Hubble’s distance to Andromeda was later revised upward, but the qualitative conclusion was secure.)

Modern understanding of the Whirlpool

Today M51 is known to be a classic grand-design spiral galaxy (roughly SA(s)bc) interacting with its smaller companion NGC 5195. The pair lies in Canes Venatici at a distance of roughly 23–31 million light-years (recent Cepheid and supernova work favours values around 24–25 million light-years / ~7.5 Mpc). The main galaxy is about 75,000–80,000 light-years across—comparable in size to the Milky Way, though somewhat smaller.

The beautiful, well-defined spiral arms are not a permanent feature of an isolated galaxy; they are strongly shaped by the gravitational interaction with NGC 5195. Simulations and observations indicate the companion has passed through or near the disk of M51 at least once (and probably more than once) in the last 500–600 million years. These encounters compress gas, trigger bursts of star formation (visible as bright blue knots and pink H II regions along the arms), and help organise the spiral density waves. Radio and infrared observations clearly show that the two galaxies are physically connected by tidal bridges of gas and stars.

M51 also hosts a Seyfert 2 active galactic nucleus—a supermassive black hole that is accreting material and producing high-energy emission. It is one of the nearest and best-studied examples of a galaxy interaction, and it remains a favourite target for both amateur observers (visible in binoculars under dark skies; spiral structure suggested in larger telescopes) and professional instruments from Hubble to the James Webb Space Telescope.

In short: Messier found a faint smudge while comet-hunting; Rosse revealed it was a spiral; Hubble and later astronomers showed that spirals are galaxies in their own right; and modern multi-wavelength studies have revealed the dynamical dance with its companion that produces the iconic whirlpool appearance we see today.

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October 13 is a busy day in the historical calendar, spanning Roman succession intrigue, medieval power plays, astronomical discovery, the birth of American institutions, and more. Here is a concise tour of the events you listed, with context.

AD 54: Claudius dies; Nero succeeds

Roman emperor Claudius died suddenly on 13 October 54 at age 63. Ancient sources (Tacitus, Suetonius, Cassius Dio) widely claim he was poisoned—most often blamed on his wife Agrippina the Younger, who favored her son Nero over Claudius’s own son Britannicus. A poisoned mushroom is the traditional detail. Nero (then 16–17) was proclaimed emperor the same day with the backing of the Praetorian Guard and Senate; he was guided early on by Agrippina, Seneca, and Burrus. The Julio-Claudian dynasty would end with Nero’s suicide in 68.

409: Vandals, Alans (and Suebi) enter Hispania

After crossing the frozen Rhine on the last day of 406 and devastating Gaul, a coalition of Vandals (Hasdingi and Silingi), Alans, and Suebi crossed the Pyrenees into Roman Hispania in late September or early October 409 (sources vary slightly on the exact day; Hydatius places it around then). They divided the peninsula among themselves, accelerating the collapse of Roman authority in the west. The Alans took Lusitania and Carthaginensis; later Visigothic campaigns under Wallia reduced them.

1269: Westminster Abbey consecrated

The present Gothic church of Westminster Abbey (Collegiate Church of St Peter) was consecrated on 13 October 1269 under Henry III. He had begun rebuilding Edward the Confessor’s Romanesque abbey in 1245 in the new French Gothic style, intending it as a royal coronation and burial church. That day the Confessor’s remains were translated to the new shrine. The nave was unfinished at Henry’s death; the older structure stood attached for decades. It remains a coronation site and burial place of monarchs.

My Favourite Buildings…Westminster Abbey | Prelude Stone

1307: Arrest of the Knights Templar

On Friday, 13 October 1307, agents of King Philip IV of France simultaneously arrested hundreds of Knights Templar across the kingdom, including Grand Master Jacques de Molay. Philip, heavily in debt to the wealthy military order, used charges of heresy, blasphemy, and idolatry (extracted under torture). The move, coordinated with a compliant Pope Clement V, led to the order’s suppression in 1312. De Molay was later burned in 1314. The date is often linked (retrospectively) to Friday-the-13th superstition, though that association is modern.

1332: Brief reign of Rinchinbal Khan (Ningzong)

Rinchinbal (born 1326), a young son of Kusala (Emperor Mingzong), was installed as Khagan of the Mongols and Emperor Ningzong of the Yuan dynasty. Scholarly sources (including Wikipedia) date the enthronement to 23 October 1332; some popular “on this day” compilations list the 13th—likely a calendar-conversion or secondary-source discrepancy. He reigned only until his death on 14 December 1332 (roughly 53 days) at age six. Court politics then brought in his half-brother Toghon Temür. The empire was already fragmenting.

1582: The day that did not exist (Gregorian reform)

In Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain, 5–14 October 1582 simply did not occur. Pope Gregory XIII’s bull Inter gravissimas ordered the jump from Thursday 4 October to Friday 15 October to correct the Julian calendar’s drift relative to the equinoxes (critical for calculating Easter). Those ten days were omitted at once in the adopting territories. Protestant countries delayed for decades or centuries; Britain and its colonies switched in 1752.

1644: Battle of Fehmarn

A Swedish–Dutch fleet under Carl Gustaf Wrangel and Dutch commanders defeated a Danish fleet near the island of Fehmarn in the Baltic during the Torstenson War (part of the Thirty Years’ War). The Allies fielded roughly 37 ships; the Danes about 17. Denmark lost 10 ships captured, others wrecked or sunk, and about 1,000 prisoners (including senior officers); Admiral Pros Mund was killed. The victory strengthened Swedish naval dominance in the Baltic and helped force the Treaty of Brömsebro (1645).

1710: Fall of Port Royal (Acadia)

After a siege beginning around 5 October, the French capital of Acadia, Port Royal (present-day Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia), surrendered to British forces under Francis Nicholson on 13 October 1710 during Queen Anne’s War. The British renamed it Annapolis Royal. This was a key step in the eventual British control of Nova Scotia (formalized later by the Treaty of Utrecht). Note: this is distinct from the Jamaican Port Royal destroyed by earthquake in 1692.

1773: Discovery of the Whirlpool Galaxy

French astronomer Charles Messier discovered the object later catalogued as M51 (the Whirlpool Galaxy) on 13 October 1773 while searching for comets. He described it as a faint nebula. In 1845 Lord Rosse first resolved its spiral structure with his large reflector—the first “spiral nebula” so identified. It is a classic interacting grand-design spiral in Canes Venatici, with companion NGC 5195.

Out of this whirl: The Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) and companion galaxy | ESA/ Hubble

1775: Birth of the Continental Navy

Meeting in Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress ordered the fitting out of two armed vessels (with carriage guns and swivel guns, crews of 80) to intercept British supply ships. This 13 October resolution is regarded as the founding act of the Continental Navy, predecessor of the U.S. Navy. A Naval Committee soon followed, and the force grew rapidly as the Revolution progressed.

1792: White House cornerstone laid

In the new federal capital of Washington, D.C., the cornerstone of the Executive Mansion (later the White House) was laid on 13 October 1792. Irish-born architect James Hoban designed the neoclassical building (influenced by Leinster House in Dublin); George Washington had selected the site. Construction used both free and enslaved labor. John Adams became the first president to occupy it in 1800. The name “White House” arose from the white-gray sandstone that contrasted with nearby red brick.

Architecture: 1850s-1890s - White House Historical Association

1793: First Battle of Wissembourg

In the War of the First Coalition, an Austro-Prussian force under Dagobert von Wurmser (with Hessian and émigré contingents) attacked the French Army of the Rhine under the inexperienced Jean Pascal Carlenc at the Lines of Wissembourg (Alsace). The Allies broke the French positions on 13 October; the French retreated in disorder toward Strasbourg, losing guns and prisoners. Carlenc was soon arrested and replaced by Jean-Charles Pichegru. A French counteroffensive later that winter (Second Battle of Wissembourg / Geisberg) reversed the gains.

These episodes illustrate recurring themes: contested successions and court intrigue (Claudius/Nero, Yuan child emperor), the sudden application of state power against wealthy or independent orders (Templars), calendar and institutional foundations (Gregorian reform, Continental Navy, White House), and the military and migratory pressures that reshaped late antiquity and early modern Europe. The Whirlpool discovery stands apart as a quiet scientific milestone that later helped redefine the scale of the universe.

Executions. Spencer and Salem Witch trials

Two different cases Religious faith

Historical cores

George Spencer (New Haven Colony, 1642).
A sow produced a stillborn, severely deformed piglet with a single central eye and other features that observers found human-like. Spencer, a servant with a deformed eye and a reputation for irreligion and lewdness, was identified as the cause. The resemblance was treated as divine evidence of bestiality (Leviticus 20:15 required both man and beast to die). Spencer confessed under examination, then recanted; the confession (or reports of it) plus the piglet itself satisfied the two-witness requirement for a capital case. The sow was killed by the sword in his presence; he was hanged on 8 April 1642. Later analysis (including by Judge Jon C. Blue) treats the paternity claim as biologically impossible and the confession as unreliable or coerced—the first clear false confession in the American record. The process was “by the book” for the time: biblical law, attention to witnesses and confessions, and a shared belief that monstrous births revealed specific sins. That scrupulousness is why the records survive and why the unfairness is visible today. Whether Spencer had sexual contact with the sow is unknowable and secondary; the decisive error was treating an impossible paternity as proof and elevating a pressured confession under a worldview that made the conclusion nearly inevitable.

Salem (1692).
Girls in Salem Village exhibited fits, contortions, and spectral accusations. The Court of Oyer and Terminer, established by Governor Phips and led by William Stoughton, accepted spectral evidence and other tests. One contemporary account involves urine from an afflicted person being given to a dog, which then behaved strangely and was destroyed—interpreted as confirming the presence of a witch’s spirit. Authorities acted within a framework in which demonic assault was real, Jesus had cast out demons, and the community was under spiritual attack. Nineteen people were hanged, Giles Corey was pressed to death, and others died in custody. Increase Mather’s Cases of Conscience and the spread of accusations (including toward higher-status people) contributed to Phips halting spectral evidence and dissolving the court in late October 1692; a successor court largely excluded that evidence and most remaining defendants were acquitted or pardoned by May 1693. Later apologies (Samuel Sewall, jurors, Ann Putnam Jr.), the 1711 reversals of attainder, and eventual legislative clearances followed.

The ergot (Claviceps purpurea) hypothesis (Caporael, 1976) notes wet conditions in 1691, rye as a staple, and symptom overlap with convulsive ergotism (hallucinations, spasms). It has not held up well among historians: the pattern was not epidemic, many classic gastrointestinal or gangrenous signs are absent from the records, and the accusations and court process were selective and socially patterned rather than a mass physiological event. Arthur Miller’s The Crucible framed the episode primarily as political persecution and personal score-settling under the cover of ideology. That captures real factional tensions in Salem Village but underplays the sincere religious conviction that the court was confronting spiritual assault. Both the physiological theory and the purely political reading leave residual uncertainty; the procedural record shows authorities who believed they were protecting the community and who eventually demurred when the evidentiary and social costs became clear.

Shared structure

In both episodes the dominant framework (Puritan biblical law and demonology) supplied the categories, the tests, and the presumption that anomalous events or accusations required action. Procedures that were careful by contemporary standards—confessions, witnesses, biblical citations, ministerial consultation—still produced capital outcomes later viewed as miscarriages. The record of those procedures is what allows modern observers to say, with high confidence, that Spencer did not father a piglet and that the Salem executed were not witches, while still seeing how the authorities reached the opposite conclusion in good faith. The “fever” (social contagion, expanding accusations, institutional momentum) outran the evidence until external or internal limits were imposed.

Modern parallel and the editorial frame

The Cornell 7 case supplies a contemporary illustration of the same structural risk when a single narrative is treated as decisive. Public reporting, university process, and later political intervention have centered Jane Doe’s account of being drugged and assaulted by multiple Chi Phi members. Snapchat messages (“free pussy upstairs,” “Shop still open?”) have been widely circulated as corroboration. Counter-elements—texts and statements that complicate consent or timing, Cornell’s internal findings that at least one accused was not responsible for sexual assault, the DA’s initial assessment that the police transcript did not support charges, differences between the early police account and the later complaint, and claims of selective quotation—have received less sustained attention in much mainstream coverage. The YouTube discussion you linked (Nate the Lawyer on TMZ’s release of messages versus ABC and New York Times framing) is one example of the push for fuller context.

Whether the night involved criminal sexual assault, incapacitation, or more ambiguous sexual activity among intoxicated young adults is not settled by the public record; the criminal investigation was reopened and the civil case is pending. What is already visible is the institutional and media pattern: one party’s version drives headlines, sanctions, and political response, while contrary or complicating evidence is slower to surface or is treated as secondary. That is the modern analogue to the piglet’s eye or the spectral vision—evidence interpreted inside a framework that makes a particular conclusion nearly automatic, with procedures that look regular to those inside the framework.

An editorial can explore the three cases without equating them. It can note that religious authorities in 1642 and 1692 were not uniquely cruel; they were applying the best available understanding of reality and justice and still produced irreversible harm. It can observe that secular institutions today (universities, media, prosecutors under political pressure) can exhibit parallel failures when a preferred narrative about power, trauma, or vulnerability is allowed to override ordinary standards of evidence, consistency, and the presumption that the accused’s account also matters. The Spencer and Salem records are valuable precisely because the authorities were relatively scrupulous; the modern record will be valuable to the extent that texts, hearing transcripts, and conflicting statements remain available rather than filtered. The lasting lesson is not that faith (or any other shared worldview) is the problem, but that any framework strong enough to justify execution or severe sanction requires unusually strong safeguards against the tendency to treat the framework’s preferred interpretation as self-evident.

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Background and “evidence”

George Spencer (c. 1600–1642) was a servant with a poor reputation in the strict Puritan community. Contemporary records call him a “prophane, lying, scoffing and lewd speritt.” He had a deformed or glass eye (one functional eye).

In early 1642, a sow owned by planter John Wakeman (previously belonging to Henry Browning, for whom Spencer had worked) gave birth to a litter that included one stillborn, severely malformed piglet. Colonial records describe it in detail: hairless, with reddish-white skin like a child’s; a single large eye in the middle of the face resembling a blemished human eye; a growth of flesh hanging from the forehead that was hollow and likened to a male sexual organ; and other human-like features of the nose, mouth, chin, neck, and ears.

Puritan authorities and neighbors treated the deformity as a divine sign or “prodigious monster” proving an unnatural act. The piglet’s single eye was compared to Spencer’s and judged strikingly similar (“as like as the eye in the glass to the eye in the face”). This resemblance, plus Spencer’s bad character, led to the accusation that he had committed bestiality with the sow and fathered the piglet. At the time, many people accepted the possibility of interspecies offspring under certain circumstances (influenced by biblical and folk ideas about monstrous births as signs of sin).

Trial

Spencer was examined. He initially confessed to the act (accounts vary on whether this was under pressure, in hope of mercy, or otherwise), then retracted the confession, denied the charge, and was described as obstinate. Witnesses testified to his earlier statements.

New Haven law, drawing on biblical standards (especially Deuteronomy’s requirement of two witnesses for capital cases), treated Spencer’s (retracted) confessions as one form of evidence and the physical appearance of the piglet itself as the other. The court found him guilty of the “unnatural and abominable crime of bestiality,” ruling that he was influenced by a “lying spirit” in his denials.

The legal basis was Leviticus 20:15: “If a man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death: and ye shall slay the beast.” Both Spencer and the sow were sentenced to death.

Execution

On 8 April 1642, the sow was first put to death by the sword in Spencer’s presence. Spencer was then hanged. Accounts indicate that, once the noose was fitted or on the gallows, he confessed again to the bestiality. He was among the earliest people executed in the Connecticut area (reported as the second overall and the first non-Native colonist).

Context and later assessment

This occurred in the early New Haven Colony under strict biblical law, where capital offenses included bestiality, and omens or monstrous births could be treated as evidence. A few years later (around 1647), another man, Thomas Hogg, faced a similar accusation involving piglets said to resemble him; he refused to confess and avoided execution, though he was punished for other offenses.

Modern analysis, including by Connecticut Superior Court Judge Jon C. Blue (in his book The Case of the Piglet’s Paternity), treats the case as involving a false confession. Fathering a piglet is biologically impossible; Blue and others describe Spencer’s admission as coerced or unreliable and call it one of the earliest verifiable false confessions in American legal history. In 2015 Blue effectively cleared Spencer posthumously in scholarly terms. The episode is often cited as an example of the harsh, theologically driven justice of early Puritan New England and the risks of relying on confessions plus circumstantial “signs.”

It is distinct from the 1692 Salem trials (which centered on witchcraft and spectral evidence) but shares the broader colonial Puritan context of capital punishment for sexual and religious offenses, heavy weight given to confessions, and interpretation of unusual events as divine proof of sin.

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The end of the Salem witch trials in October 1692 was driven by mounting skepticism about spectral evidence, the widening circle of accusations (reaching high-status people), and decisive action by Governor Sir William Phips. By that point 19 people had been hanged, one (Giles Corey) pressed to death, and at least five had died in custody. The special Court of Oyer and Terminer was dissolved, spectral evidence was sidelined, and the remaining cases collapsed.

Antecedents

The crisis began in Salem Village (present-day Danvers) in January–February 1692. Betty Parris (daughter of the minister Samuel Parris) and Abigail Williams (his niece), along with other girls, experienced fits, contortions, and claims of being tormented. Local physician William Griggs suggested witchcraft. The girls named Tituba (an enslaved woman in the Parris household), Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne. Examinations followed, and accusations multiplied.

Underlying tensions in the village included factional disputes (partly involving the Parris family and land/church authority), economic strains, and the broader stresses of King William’s War on the frontier. As accusations spread beyond the village to Andover, Topsfield, and elsewhere, the newly arrived royal governor, Sir William Phips, established a special Court of Oyer and Terminer in late May 1692, appointing Lieutenant Governor William Stoughton as chief justice. The court heavily relied on spectral evidence (claims that the devil appeared in the shape of the accused to afflict the girls). This was theologically contested: some ministers argued the devil could impersonate the innocent. Early executions began in June (Bridget Bishop first) and continued through September. Confessions and further accusations fed the process; roughly 200 people were accused overall.

Significant persons

• Sir William Phips: First royal governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony under the new charter. A former ship’s carpenter and treasure salvager who had recovered a Spanish wreck, he arrived in May 1692 and quickly authorized the special court to restore order. He was frequently absent dealing with frontier fighting in Maine. By late September, after returning, he faced reports of growing dissatisfaction and accusations reaching prominent people, including (according to contemporary accounts) his own wife, Mary. He banned further reliance on spectral evidence, stopped new arrests, and dissolved the court.
• Increase Mather: Influential Puritan minister, Harvard president, and Phips’s ally (he had helped secure Phips’s appointment in England). In early October he published Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits, arguing that it was better for ten suspected witches to escape than for one innocent person to be condemned, and questioning the reliability of spectral evidence. His intervention carried significant weight.
• William Stoughton: Zealous chief justice of the Court of Oyer and Terminer. He pressed for convictions and later resented the restrictions placed on the successor court.
• Cotton Mather: Increase’s son; more supportive of the proceedings early on and later published a defense (Wonders of the Invisible World). He and his father differed in emphasis.
• The afflicted girls / accusers: Abigail Williams, Ann Putnam Jr., Mercy Lewis, and others whose spectral claims and fits drove many accusations. Their testimony was central until the evidentiary rules changed.
• Other key figures: Samuel Sewall (judge who later publicly apologized); Thomas Brattle (who circulated a critical letter); various ministers who debated the evidence.

The halt in October 1692

On or about 12 October, Phips wrote to the Privy Council in England that he had stopped the proceedings, noting the danger if “the evidence of the afflicted persons only did prevail” (i.e., spectral evidence) and that the devil appeared to be taking the shapes of innocent people of good reputation. He forbade further incarcerations based on such claims. On 29 October he formally dissolved the Court of Oyer and Terminer, ordered many prisoners released (especially where evidence was primarily spectral), and halted new arrests. Accusations against high-status individuals had made the situation politically and socially unsustainable.

What followed

A Superior Court of Judicature convened in early 1693 under instructions that largely excluded spectral evidence. Of those tried, the great majority were acquitted. Only a handful were convicted; Phips reprieved or pardoned them. By May 1693 he had issued a general pardon, and virtually everyone remaining in custody on witchcraft charges was released (though many had to pay prison fees). No further executions occurred.

Longer-term reckoning was gradual and incomplete for centuries:

• January 1697: The General Court declared a day of fasting and repentance. Judge Samuel Sewall publicly confessed his error in church (the only sitting judge to do so); twelve jurors signed a statement admitting they had been “sadly deluded and mistaken.”
• 1702: The General Court declared the 1692 trials unlawful.
• 1706: Ann Putnam Jr. made a formal public apology, saying she had been deluded by Satan.
• 1711: Legislation reversed the attainders of many convicted persons, restored some legal rights, and provided limited financial restitution to families.
• Later clearances continued into the 20th and 21st centuries. Massachusetts formally apologized in 1957; additional names were cleared in 2001; the last known convicted person, Elizabeth Johnson Jr. (convicted in 1693 but never executed), was exonerated in 2022 after advocacy by a middle-school civics class.

The episode damaged the prestige of the Puritan theocracy, contributed to greater caution about spectral and hearsay evidence, and became a lasting cautionary tale about mass hysteria, due process, and the dangers of unchecked accusation. It influenced later legal thinking on the rights of the accused and remains a frequent reference point in American culture (most famously in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible). Stoughton never publicly recanted; many others involved showed little immediate remorse. The precise number of deaths is usually given as 20 executed plus those who died in jail, out of roughly 200 accused.

= from October 12th

539 BC – Fall of Babylon. Persian forces under Cyrus the Great’s general Gobryas (Ugbaru) entered Babylon without a major battle on the 16th of Tashritu (roughly 12 October on the Julian calendar), after taking Sippar two days earlier. Cyrus himself entered the city about 17 days later. This ended the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Cyrus presented himself as a liberator chosen by Marduk, returned deported peoples (including the Jews) to their homelands, and issued the famous Cyrus Cylinder proclaiming his legitimacy. The event marks the rise of the Achaemenid Persian Empire as a true world power.

633 – Battle of Hatfield Chase (or Heathfield). Fought on 12 October 633 (Bede’s date; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has the 14th). King Edwin of Northumbria was defeated and killed by an alliance of Cadwallon of Gwynedd (British/Welsh Christian) and Penda of Mercia (pagan). Edwin’s son Osfrith was also killed and another son captured. The battle temporarily shattered Northumbrian hegemony, split the kingdom into Bernicia and Deira, and set back the progress of Roman-influenced Christianity in northern Britain until Oswald’s later recovery. Location is usually given as the marshy Hatfield Chase area near Doncaster, though some debate alternatives.

1113 – First documented mention of Oradea (Varadinum). The city in what is now northwestern Romania appears in a Latin diploma of the Benedictine abbey of Zobor (in present-day Slovakia) under the name Varadinum. The name derives from Hungarian vár (“fortress”). King Ladislaus I of Hungary had founded a bishopric there in the late 11th century; the 1113 reference is the earliest surviving written attestation of the settlement as a fortified ecclesiastical center.

1279 – Nichiren inscribes the Dai-Gohonzon. According to Nichiren Shōshū (and related traditions), the Japanese Buddhist monk Nichiren inscribed the large central mandala known as the Dai-Gohonzon on 12 October 1279, during the Atsuhara persecutions. It is regarded as the supreme object of worship embodying Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and the purpose of his advent. Other Gohonzon used in practice are understood as transcriptions of it. The date is commemorated in some Nichiren lineages.

1398 – Treaty of Salynas. Signed on 12 October 1398 on an island in the Neman River between Grand Duke Vytautas the Great of Lithuania and Grand Master Konrad von Jungingen of the Teutonic Knights. Vytautas ceded Samogitia (Žemaitija) to the Order in exchange for peace and support for his eastern campaigns. It was one of several temporary cessions of the strategically vital territory that separated the Order’s Prussian and Livonian branches; the issue was not finally settled until the Treaty of Melno in 1422. Contemporary accounts even claim Lithuanian nobles proclaimed Vytautas king during the celebrations.

1492 – Columbus’s landfall in the Bahamas. On 12 October 1492 (Julian), after more than a month at sea, Columbus’s three ships sighted land at an island the Lucayan Taíno called Guanahani (which he renamed San Salvador). He believed he had reached the outer islands of Asia/the Indies. The exact modern island is still debated (Watling Island/San Salvador is the traditional candidate). This contact opened the sustained European colonization of the Americas.

1582 – Gregorian calendar reform skips the day. In the papal bull Inter gravissimas, Pope Gregory XIII ordered the Julian calendar corrected by dropping 10 days. In Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain, 4 October 1582 was followed immediately by 15 October; the intervening dates (including 10 October) simply did not exist that year. Other Catholic countries followed soon after; Protestant and Orthodox lands adopted the reform much later (Britain in 1752).

1654 – Delft Explosion (“Delft Thunderclap”). On 12 October a gunpowder magazine (the “Secreet van Holland”) in Delft exploded, detonating roughly 80,000–90,000 pounds of powder. The blast destroyed hundreds of houses, was heard as far as Texel, and killed at least 100 people (higher estimates exist); the painter Carel Fabritius was among the dead. The exact cause is uncertain but is traditionally linked to a lantern carried by the magazine’s keeper.

1692 – End of the Salem witch trials. Governor Sir William Phips effectively halted the proceedings. On or about 12 October he wrote to the Privy Council stating he had stopped the use of spectral evidence and the trials; on 29 October he formally dissolved the Court of Oyer and Terminer and ordered the release of many prisoners. By then 20 people had been executed. Spectral evidence and the growing circle of accusations (including of high-status people) had made the trials unsustainable.

1748 – Battle of Havana. Fought 12–14 October off Havana during the War of Jenkins’ Ear (part of the broader War of the Austrian Succession). A British squadron under Rear-Admiral Charles Knowles engaged a Spanish squadron under Andrés Reggio. The British captured one ship of the line and forced the Spanish flagship aground (where it was blown up); the Spanish retreated to Havana. The battle was tactically a British success but strategically limited—Knowles failed to intercept the treasure fleet—and news of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle soon ended the war.

1773 – First public insane asylum in America. On 12 October the Public Hospital for Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds opened in Williamsburg, Virginia (later known as Eastern State Hospital). It was the first institution in the British colonies built specifically for the treatment of the mentally ill rather than merely confining them in jails or almshouses. Early treatments were crude by modern standards; the hospital continued in various forms for centuries.

1792 – First Columbus Day celebration in the United States. On 12 October in New York City the Society of St. Tammany (Columbian Order) held the first recorded American commemoration of Columbus’s landing, marking the 300th anniversary. It included speeches, a banquet, and the unveiling of an obelisk. Later 19th- and 20th-century observances grew into the federal holiday (now observed on the second Monday in October).

1793 – Cornerstone of Old East, University of North Carolina. On 12 October William Richardson Davie (Grand Master Mason and future governor) laid the cornerstone of Old East at Chapel Hill. It is the oldest state university building still standing in the United States. Originally a two-story dormitory and classroom building, it has been expanded and renovated many times and remains a residence hall. The university celebrates 12 October as University Day.

1798 – Peasants’ War (Boerenkrijg / Klëppelkrich). Beginning on 12 October in Overmere (Flanders) and spreading across the Southern Netherlands (modern Belgium and Luxembourg), peasants rose against French Republican rule. Triggers included anti-clerical policies and the introduction of conscription. The poorly armed rebels enjoyed early local successes but were crushed by early December (notably at Hasselt). Casualties in Flanders are estimated in the thousands; the rising is sometimes viewed as an early expression of Belgian national sentiment.

1799 – Jeanne Geneviève Labrosse’s parachute descent. On 12 October the French balloonist Jeanne Geneviève Labrosse (later Garnerin) became the first woman to make a parachute jump, descending from a balloon at about 900 meters. She was a pupil (and later wife) of André-Jacques Garnerin, who had made the first modern parachute descent from a balloon in 1797. She continued aeronautical work and later filed a patent related to parachute design on her husband’s behalf.

These events span ancient Near Eastern empire-building, early medieval British power struggles, the European discovery of the Americas, the Gregorian calendar reform, early modern disasters and religious persecutions, and milestones in education, mental health care, and aviation. Several of the later ones cluster tightly around the mid-October period in the late 18th century.

Ordinances of 1311, Edward II 

On Oct 11th, a failed king was hobbled

The Ordinances of 1311 were the barons’ attempt to put Edward II back inside the cage his grandfather and great-uncle had already built: a king who ruled with counsel, spent through the Exchequer, and did not hand the realm to a favourite. Edward signed them because he had no army and no money. He never accepted them, and the fight over them ran until Thomas of Lancaster’s head came off at Pontefract in 1322.

What came before

Edward I died at Burgh-on-Sands on 7 July 1307, still marching against Robert Bruce. His son recalled Piers Gaveston at once. Edward I had already banished the Gascon from England earlier that year, after a quarrel in which Gaveston and the young prince had been too conspicuous. Within weeks of the accession Gaveston was Earl of Cornwall, a title normally kept for royal kin, and married to Margaret de Clare, the king’s niece.

The grievance was older than Gaveston. Edward I had left a kingdom taxed hard for Wales, Gascony and Scotland, with prise and purveyance — the compulsory purchase of food and carts for the household and the army — widely hated. The magnates also had a constitutional memory. The Provisions of Oxford in 1258, and Simon de Montfort’s brief regime, had already tried to put royal appointments and the household under baronial supervision. At the coronation in February 1308 a new clause was added to the oath: the king was to uphold the laws and customs which the community of the realm would choose. The Ordainers later treated that as their warrant.

Gaveston made the abstract complaint personal. He was given the late king’s jewels, dominated tournaments, and nicknamed the earls — Warwick was “the black dog of Arden.” In 1308 the earls forced a second exile. Edward sent him to Ireland as lieutenant, which looked like promotion, and brought him back in 1309. By February 1310 the earls of Lancaster, Warwick, Hereford and Pembroke were accusing the king in parliament of wasting his inheritance and ruining the kingdom. On 16 March 1310 Edward agreed to a commission of twenty-one: eight earls, seven bishops and six barons, to ordain for the reform of realm and household, their work to be finished by Michaelmas 1312. Those were the Lords Ordainers.

Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, was the senior and the brake. He died in February 1311. His estates and the leadership passed to his son-in-law, Thomas of Lancaster. Lancaster was the king’s first cousin, holder in time of the earldoms of Lancaster, Leicester, Lincoln and Salisbury, and the richest subject in England. He was also rigid, absentee, and convinced the ordinances were a permanent constitution.

The ordinances themselves

Edward spent the winter of 1310–11 on a useless Scottish campaign. He met the Ordainers at Westminster in August 1311. About forty-one articles were presented; he sealed them under pressure in late September and early October. Publication is conventionally dated 11 October. Gaveston was to be out of every land of the king by All Saints, 1 November, on pain of being treated as a public enemy.

The rest was a programme, not a single grudge. Gifts made since the appointment of the Ordainers were revoked. The king was not to leave the realm or make war without baronial assent. Great offices — chancellor, treasurer, chief justices, household steward, keeper of the wardrobe — needed baronial approval, and the holders had to swear to the ordinances. Revenue was to pass through the Exchequer, not the wardrobe. Prise was restricted. Foreign merchants and royal bankers, especially the Italian firms, were targets. Parliament was to meet at least once a year, and a baronial committee was to hear complaints against royal servants. Customs were not to be levied without consent. It looked back to 1258 more than it looked forward.

The people who mattered

Edward II was not a fool, but he was stubborn, loyal to his own household, and bored by the business his father had lived for. He would not sacrifice a friend to keep a council.

Piers Gaveston, a Gascon knight’s son raised in Edward I’s household, was brave, extravagant and unable to stop scoring points. The sexual rumour is medieval as well as modern; what the ordinances actually charge is that he drew royal power to himself, sent treasure out of the realm, and estranged the king from his liege men. He had already been exiled twice.

Thomas of Lancaster became the ordinances’ embodiment. After 1314 he often refused to attend council unless the ordinances were enforced word for word, and he governed badly when he had the chance.

Guy Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, was the hard edge. He seized Gaveston and saw the execution through.

Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, was the moderate who broke. He took Gaveston under safe conduct in 1312; Warwick kidnapped the prisoner. Pembroke treated that as an attack on his honour and spent the rest of his life trying to hold a middle line between king and Lancaster.

Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, Edward’s brother-in-law, stood with the Ordainers, then died at Boroughbridge fighting the king.

Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, the greatest Marcher and Gaveston’s brother-in-law, was killed at Bannockburn in 1314. His death removed the last great earl who might have balanced Lancaster.

Robert Winchelsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, gave the programme its clerical cover until his death in 1313. Walter Langton, Edward I’s treasurer and Edward II’s enemy, was an early victim of the new reign and a symbol of the household the barons wanted back under control.

What followed

Gaveston left, then returned around Christmas 1311. In May 1312 he was besieged in Scarborough and surrendered to Pembroke on terms. Warwick took him at Deddington. On 19 June, on Lancaster’s land at Blacklow Hill, two Welshmen ran him through and cut off his head. A form of trial was staged on the ground that he had broken the ordinances. Edward never forgave it. The body lay embalmed until burial at the Dominican house at Kings Langley in 1315.

Pardons were patched up in 1313. Then Bannockburn, 24 June 1314, destroyed the king’s remaining authority. Lancaster dominated the next four years. Scottish raids reached Yorkshire, the Great Famine bit in 1315–17, and Lancaster’s insistence on the letter of the ordinances produced stalemate rather than government. The Treaty of Leake in 1318, brokered by Pembroke and a group later called the Middle Party, put a standing council around the king and papered over the split.

Edward then acquired a new favourite, Hugh Despenser the Younger, with his father beside him. The Despensers grabbed Marcher lands. In 1321 Lancaster, Hereford and the Marchers forced the pair into exile. Edward struck back that winter, recalled them, and broke the opposition at Boroughbridge on 16 March 1322. Hereford was killed; Lancaster was taken and beheaded at Pontefract on 22 March.

In May 1322 the parliament at York repealed the ordinances by the Statute of York. The statute drew a distinction the Ordainers had refused: things touching the king and the realm needed the assent of king, prelates, earls, barons and the community of the realm in parliament, not a baronial committee appointed over the king’s head. Edward then ruled through the Despensers with executions, confiscations and forced loans. That regime lasted until Isabella and Roger Mortimer landed in 1326. Edward was deposed in January 1327 and killed at Berkeley in September.

The ordinances failed as a constitution. They were imposed, not agreed, and Lancaster could not govern through them. What survived was the claim that custom, parliament and the community could bind a king — the same claim that reappeared, in different language, against Edward’s great-grandson.

= October 11th