But wait, there's more.
One day in the second half of the ninth century, a poor young woman on her way to the market dropped her basket of eggs, breaking all of them.
The young woman knelt on the ground beside the fallen basket and began to weep.
The local bishop had been out for his morning stroll and happened to see the entire episode. He attempted to console the woman, but she was having none of it. Without the eggs, she had nothing to sell at market. Nothing to sell meant no money to sustain her family. Being unable to sustain her family meant, well, what it usually means: degradation, illness, and eventually death. Soothing words from a bishop weren't much help.
The bishop then prayed for her pain to be eased. When he was done praying, the woman looked into her basked and saw that all of the eggs had been made whole.
"Wot's all that about, then?" she asked.
"It is a sign of God's grace and compassion," the bishop said. "I am but his—"
"God fixed me eggs, what?"
"All things are possible with God," the bishop began, but the poor young woman interrupted again.
"All-powerful God? All-knowing God? I work meself to death eight days to the week, and when he finally comes through with a miracle—it's fixin' me eggs? What about a floor for me hut? What about clothes for me young-uns? What about—"
It is probably not necessary to record the full text of the woman's stirring solecism.
It's Dan Rowan's birthday (1922). And Thurgood Marshall's (1908). And Herman Hesse's (1877).
Here's your Today in History -
On July 2, 862, St Swithun died. He was the Bishop of Winchester and royal counselor to kings Egbert and Aethelwulf. History tells us very little about St Swithun, besides the fact that he died when he did, which is why I bring him up: someone ought to invent a life for the guy. Maybe he was raised by wolves. Maybe he was kidnapped by pirates. Maybe he found a genie in a bottle and was granted him three wishes. Or maybe he fell in love with the beautiful red-headed daughter of a rival landowner and they had a tempestuous love affair before tragedy struck her down and Swithun turned to religion for consolation. Who knows? Nobody. So make up a St Swithun you can live with.
127 years ago today, Charles J. Guiteau stood up in the lobby of the B&O Railroad Depot in Washington, DC, and yelled, "I am a stalwart and Arthur is President now!" The event might have passed without notice had Guiteau not been shooting President James Garfield at the time.
A wounded President Garfield lingered for 11 weeks, during which time surgeons attempted to find the bullet which had lodged in his back. The state-of-the-art technology for removing foreign objects from the body was at that time the hand. Dozens of physicians, nurses, and curious hangers-on probed Garfield's wound with their fingers in search of the bullet that had struck him. The inevitable infection of his wound killed him.
Charles Guiteau was hanged on June 30, 1882.
July 2, 1937 -
Attempting to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the globe in an airplane, Amelia Earhart disappears over the Pacific with her navigator, Fred Noonan.
47 years ago today Ernest Hemingway blew his brains out at his home in Ketchum, Idaho. Hemingway was a writer. He was also a man. He knew things about being a man. He also knew things about trying to be a man. He wrote about them, those things. He wrote love stories and stories about fishermen and soldiers. He liked to write. And in the end he blew his brains out. Maybe that means something. Maybe it doesn't. Either way, don't bother asking for whom the bell tolled.
It wasn't for you.
On this date in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, prohibiting racial discrimination. America remains a paragon of racial harmony to this very day.
July 2, 1998 -
The eternal flame at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, which has burned continuously since 1921 to commemorate the dead of World War I, is extinguished by an intoxicated soccer fan with his beer-enriched urine. Mexican national Rodrigo Rafael Ortega is arrested and charged with public drunkenness and offending the dead.
And so it goes.
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