Diana Nyad's crossing proved that certain kinds of determination simply don't have an age limit. And the story of Castro is a reminder that being on the losing side of a papal grudge can be very thorough indeed.
On the morning of 2 September 2013, a 64-year-old woman walked out of the sea in Key West, having swum 177 kilometres from Cuba without a shark cage, a support swimmer, or apparently much regard for the concept of reasonable limits.
Diana Nyad had tried this crossing four times before. The 2013 attempt took 53 hours through shark-infested waters and jellyfish blooms, and she completed it unassisted, becoming the first person ever to do so. It is, by any measure, a completely unreasonable thing to have done. Which is presumably part of the point.
Eleven Days That Simply Disappeared
Meanwhile, 261 years earlier and somewhat less athletically, Britain also committed a decisive act on 2 September. In 1752, the country adopted the Gregorian calendar, which meant that the day after 2 September was not 3 September. It was 14 September. Eleven days, gone, just like that.
Britain had been running on the Julian calendar for roughly 170 years longer than most of Europe, accumulating a slow and ungainly drift in the process. The correction ended that drift. Whether anyone’s landlord was sympathetic about the resulting confusion over rent dates is, sadly, not recorded.
A Train Goes Extremely Fast
On the same date in 2006, a Siemens locomotive, the ES64U4, hit 357 kilometres per hour on a stretch of track between Nuremberg and Ingolstadt, setting a world speed record for conventional electric trains. That record, according to this episode, still stands.
It is not the most emotionally complex story in today’s collection. But 357 kilometres per hour is 357 kilometres per hour, and somebody at Siemens clearly had a very satisfying Tuesday.
The Pope Who Salted the Ground
And then there is Pope Innocent X, who on 2 September 1649 did something that most disputes about cities only manage metaphorically. He ordered the complete destruction of the Italian city of Castro: razed stone by stone, ground salted, and a column erected on the ruins bearing the inscription “Here was Castro.” The Wars of Castro ended there, largely because Castro did.
The column is doing a remarkable amount of work as a historical document. As a statement of intent, it is difficult to improve upon.
Four Stories, One Date
What this episode does rather elegantly is place four very different scales of human decisiveness side by side. One woman in the water for 53 hours. A bureaucratic correction to 170 years of accumulated calendar error. A speed record on a German railway line. A pope who concluded a territorial dispute with considerable thoroughness.
Same date. Different centuries. Entirely different orders of consequence. It’s ten minutes well spent.