A Look Back
We are already a quarter century into the new millennium. As July has always proved a pivotal month in the history of Gettysburg, it seemed an appropriate time to take a look back into the past years that also ended in the number 25. Here are a few pivotal events of the last 1400 years:
In the year 1925, particularly in July, the dreaded Adolf Hitler published his book Mein Kampf. He had dictated it to his compatriot Rudolf Hess while the pair were in prison for insurrection.
During that same month, the eastern United States witnessed a full solar eclipse the last few days of July. It had been the first total eclipse seen in the region in three hundred years. Also in that year, Nellie Taylor Ross served as the first female governor in the U.S., in Wyoming. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous work, The Great Gatsby, was published. And Vice President Charles Dawes, the son of a Gettysburg veteran, received the Nobel Peace Prize. He had developed The Dawes Plan, organizing financial stability with loans from the United States to Germany, in order to ease the burdens on that nation placed with the Treaty of Versailles, at the end of World War I.
In the year 1825 Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was first performed in Great Britain by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. As the great composer’s last full symphony, it had been completed in 1824. Beethoven, who was deaf by this time, was unable to lead the symphony in person. The symphony includes the popular Ode to Joy.
John Quincy Adams had been sworn in as the 6th President of the United States in March. By July, he was swimming daily in the Potomac River.
In July 1825, the Marquis de Lafayette, one of the aides to General Washington during the American Revolution, was now an aged visitor to the United States. Among the places he stopped was Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
In the year 1725 Catherine the Great became Empress of Russia. Alexander Pope translated Homer’s Odyssey into English. Louis XV ruled France. Johann Sebastian Bach was the most famous composer in Germany, while Georg Friedrich Handel was lauded in Great Britain, producing an opera that summer.
In the year 1625 Charles I became king of England after the death of his father, James I (the only son of Mary, Queen of Scots). In London, an Office for Colonial Affairs was opened to help finance and keep in order the growing colonies in America and the West Indies – the newest official acquisition that year being the island of Barbados. On the U.S. mainland, the Plymouth Colony was finally self-sufficient, welcoming more colonists that year. The pilgrims of Plymouth that summer worked in agriculture, fishing expeditions, and traded much of their surplus back to their native Great Britain.
Because of the trading, the Barbary Pirates began to threaten ships in the Atlantic, a problem that would exist for another two centuries.
In the year 1525 the Spanish Conquistadores took over all of the Mayan capitals by July. The Bubonic Plague in Europe, although decades past the original contagion, was still decimating the population from France to the Ottoman Empire. In England, Cardinal Wolsey, in an attempt to placate King Henry VIII, gave him Hampton Court as a gift. (It didn’t work – the king still executed him five years later). Sir William Tyndale, in hiding on the continent of Europe, secretly translated the New Testament in English. By that July, he had finished translating the Epistles of Peter.
In the year 1425 Joan of Arc, at age 13, had her vision about leading troops to victory against Great Britain – a secret she kept for most of her short life. There were many wars at the time, especially The Hundred Years War between England and France. War and unrest also occurred during that year in Bohemia – in what are today the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. On the American continent, Itzcoatl became the ruler of the Aztecs. In Peru, the city of Macchu Picchu was a flourishing society.
In the year 1325 The Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, an amazingly large metropolis built where the current Mexico City stands, was established officially by July of 1325. Marco Polo, the famous explorer, had recently died, but the pasta he brought to Italy from China became a popular staple, and was now a ubiquitous meal throughout the duchies of Italy. That same year, pedals were first added to pipe organs, bringing clamorous music to the cathedrals of Europe.
In the year 1225 Frederick the Great of Prussia proclaimed the beginning of the Sixth Crusade, in the ongoing religious conflict surrounding the Middle East and Europe. Frederick was deeply engrossed with military prowess, and spent much of his reign in military campaigns. In England, the third issuance of the Magna Carta – by then a decade in existence – was re-written. In Pennsylvania, the Delaware tribes were the main inhabitants of the time.
In the year 1125 the Crusades formed the main episodes of history in Europe, attempting to take Jerusalem from its Saracen rulers and instead making it an area of Christianity. The Battle of Azaz took place in June and July of that year.
In that same year, the first documentation of the use of a compass by mariners was recorded.
In the year 1025 Canute the Great ruled England and Scandinavia. He was considered a good ruler, and a surprisingly peaceful one. Boleslav I was the King of Poland. In North America, the Iroquois Nation flourished, and the Delaware tribes in Pennsylvania consisted mainly of small agrarian villages, rather than large cities to their north (in the future New England), and farther south in Mexico and the Yucatan Peninsula.
In China, the Song Dynasty brought an era of peace and prosperity. Art, trade, and music flourished with the emperor, who had come to power only a few years earlier.
In the year 925 Athelstan, the grandson of Alfred the Great (whom many believe was the personage exemplified in historical novels as King Arthur), took over the throne of England. In France, King Henry I took power in Lorraine. With the growth of Catholicism in Europe, the Passion Play became an annual event at Easter time.
In the year 825 Buddhism, already flourishing in China, had spread to Japan. The Saracens (a name used by Christians for the Arabs or Moors) settled on Crete. England, which was still a series of duchies and regions instead of a nation, endured the Battle of Ellendum, one of the great battles of the time, between the Duke of Wessex and the Duke of Mercia. It was pivotal in that it amassed a large region of the land for the victor, who was Wessex, preparing even then for a king over the entire country.
In the year 725 Arabs dominated the Iberian Peninsula, and cultivated that arid region, making it blossom. In North America, the city of Casa Grande was established in Arizona, with homes and buildings of cement. The people who built it left no evidence of their life there, and vanished as quickly as they came. Remnants of the casas are still extant south of Mesa, Arizona.
In the year 625 the earth, according to climatologists, was in the middle of what was termed a Little Ice Age. Multiple volcanic eruptions caused diminished sunlight and cooler temperatures – and this had been going on for decades. It made life difficult, and may be one reason this era has been termed The Dark Ages. One significant man-made event that transpired in 625 AD is worthy of mention. Mohammed began to dictate The Koran in that year – a book that remains in print, and is widely read, to this day.
It seems difficult to imagine civilizations thriving those many centuries past, but around the world it was the passage of the Dark Ages, with the Middle Ages on the cusp of history.
Interesting – and yet there are so many blanks to fill in.
Pass it on.
