1611 London, Religion: Commissioned by the king in 1604, working from Hebrew texts, forty-seven savants completed a new translation of “THE HOLY BIBLE, Containing the Old Testament, AND THE NEW: Newly Translated out of the Original tongues: & with the former Translations diligently compared and revised, by his Majesties special Commandment.” Thomas Hobbes in 1651 (Leviathan) was one of the first to refer to it as the ‘King James Bible’ and that entered common parlance (without a possessive apostrophe, it must be said). This regally sanctioned edition is replete with emancipatory rhetoric that would be invoked in the French Revolution, by abolitionists, and many others attacking authority. It was the version favoured by the church school I attended. See the book pictured below for Enlightenment. I saw Bragg interviewed about this book by one of the darlings of ABC journalism who was uninformed, ignorant, and aggressive to compensate for being unprepared.
1670 Quebec, Commerce: The Hudson Bay Company (HBC) (Compagnie de la Baie d’Hudson), or The Bay, received a permanent royal charter granting it a monopoly trade in furs over the expanse shown below. Most of the members of the company at this time were French. It remains in business as a department store, having outlasted such rival European trading companies as the Dutch East India Company, the Dutch West India Company, the South Sea Company, Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company, the Royal African Company, and the mightiest of all, the East India Company. Shopped in more than one.
1829 Fremantle (WA), History: Captain Charles Fremantle of HMS Challenger hoisted the Union Jack and claimed the area for the crown of England. This is one of the last parts of Australia to be claimed. The Swan River had been so named by the Dutchman Willem de Vlamingh in 1697 because of the black swans he saw. Been there a few times.
1885 Holyoke (MA), Literature: Good Housekeeping debuted. It offered information about running a home supplemented with literary offerings, and solicitation of reader questions, suggestions, and contributions. In 1900 it began testing consumer goods. In 2006 there were 4.6 million paid subscriptions. Its authors have included Somerset Maugham, Edna St Vincent Millay, and Evelyn Waugh. Seen it in passing, of course, but never looked at one. My loss.
1989 Budapest, Politics: Hungarian border guards turned blind eyes on East Germans passing through Hungary to Austria: tens of thousands of them. The Berlin Wall was circumvented and the Iron Curtain lifted.
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