1764 London, Politics: A majority of the House of Lords voted to expel John Wilkes because of his ‘Essay on Women’ which parodied Alexander Pope’s ‘An Essay on Man’ with its homage to the natural order. It was deemed obscene, libellous, and seditious and…. He promptly ran for a seat in the House of Commons and won. He seems to have lurched, often inebriated, from one cause célèbre to another in denouncing corruption in government and asserting populist causes. For a time he was Lord Mayor London. I have been unable to find out anything about the Essay except that it exists.
1848 Paris, Politics: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published ‘Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei’ (“Manifesto of the Communist Party”). It passed largely unnoticed until authorities began banning it. That free publicity caused it to be taken up by all manner of socialist, anarchist, dissident, and opposition groups throughout Europe. Sotheby’s sold a first edition like that pictured below last year for — sit down — £91,200.
1878 New Haven, Technology. The world’s first telephone book was issued, a single piece of cardboard listing fifty names and numbers.
1947 Boston, Technology: Harvard alumni Edwin Land demonstrated the first Polaroid camera at a meeting of the Optical Society. He had devised a film that used polarised light to develop itself. The first black and white prints took 60 seconds. It went on sale two years later. I used one for years to photograph students. It helped to learn their names. I also discovered that it was an ice breaker in interviews. Show someone a camera and they pose. It is learned behaviour.
1972 Shanghai (China), Politics: US President Richard Nixon landed in the People’s Republic of China for the first ever Presidential contact with the Communist Regime. The last American official in mainland China had left in 1949. Nixon had a strategic sense absent from nearly all later presidents. His rapprochement with the PRC was intended to confuse the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and it did. I chose the picture below because Nixon probably had extensive lessons on using chopsticks before he went. He was one for preparation and left nothing to chance. Garry Wills’s superb take on Nixon is discussed elsewhere on this blog.
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