0527 Constantinople, History: The Emperor Justin, very ill, crowned his nephew Justinian as co-Emperor. Justinian became known as The Great and credited with never sleeping for his many actions and reforms over nearly forty years. One reform was to allow marriage between classes and races, and in that spirit he married Theodora who became a mainstay in his regime. His most famous and lasting change was Justinian’s Code that codified, revised, and simplified Roman law. I have read several of Eric Mayer and Mary Reed’s krimis set in this time and place.
1581 Plymouth, History: In absentia Queen Elizabeth I knighted Francis Drake after he circumnavigated the world plundering the Spanish. The treasure he returned with doubled the Crown’s income for that year. His privateering was an open secret and it continued.
1820 Sydney, Architecture: The foundation stone was laid for the building that became the Queen Victoria Building on George Street. It stands still and we have been in it many times after it was redeveloped in the latter 1980s as a retail mall.
1843 Hong Kong, History: In far away London Queen Victoria proclaimed it a British crown colony. after the First Opium War, in which England enforced the importation of opium from Afghanistan into China. We have been to Honkers several times but not lately.
1975 Albuquerque (NM), Technology: Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Micro-soft, a portmanteau word combing ‘micro’ from ‘microprocessors’ with ‘soft’ from ‘software.’ Their first and major client was the Altair 8800 computer made in Albuquerque at the time. The move to Seattle came in 1979. DOS and Windows came later still.
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