Today in History -
King Cnut of England, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden died on this date in 1035. (Cnut is better known to most Americans as King Canute, which offers fewer typographical hazards.)
Cnut was the son of Svein Forkbeard, son of Harald Bluetooth, son of Gorm. In 1013 Cnut's father conquered all of England from the Saxon King Aethelred but died anyway. This allowed Aethelred to take England back, which made it necessary for Cnut himself to reconquer England in 1016. He enjoyed this so much that he went on to conquer Scotland, Denmark, Norway, and part of Sweden, all of which came to be known collectively as Cnutland, perhaps explaining the region's subsequent popularity among European dyslexics.
November 12, 1912 -
The bodies of Captain Robert Scott and his men found on the Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica, frozen solid in one huge block of ice. So he had literally become Scott of the Antartic.
November 12, 1933 -
Hugh Gray of the British Aluminium Company took five pictures of the Loch Ness Monster, the first known photos. Four the the five exposures were blank, and the remaining photo was later proven to be a hoax. The brand of whiskey, Mr. Grey consumed has been lost in the ethers of time.
November 12, 1934 -
Charles Manson born in Cincinnati to a 16 year old heavy drinking prostitute and an unknown father. Manson's mother, allegedly once sold him for a pitcher of beer.
He grows up to do... interesting things.
Helter Skelter.
Early on the morning of November 12, 1942, Abe "Kid Twist" Reles, mob informer, then in protective custody, fell to his death from a hotel window. It is not known whether he was thrown or pushed out the window, or if he was trying to escape. The angle of trajectory suggests that he was in fact defenestrated (my favorite word).
Because of his mob status as a "stool pigeon" and the circumstances surrounding his death, Reles gained another moniker after his passing. In addition to "Kid Twist," Reles became known as "the canary who sang, but couldn't fly."
It was on this date in 1948 that former Japanese Prime Minister Hikedi Tojo and seven others were sentenced to hang.
(This was back in the quaint old days, when the world considered it legal not only to have enemies, but to kill them after they tried to kill you.)
And so it goes
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