The More Things Change | Issue 07

The More Things Change | Issue 07

15 April - 21 April

This week one of the better-remembered Kings of England takes the throne, which makes up for not much else actually happening.

21 April, 1509: The 18-year-old Henry VIII ascended to the throne of England and started causing trouble. His first order of business was to change his mind about who he wanted to marry, which incited a fair amount of controversy, and turned out to be only the lead-up to the other five marriages he would have. Two of these ended in executions, which seemed to be Henry’s favoured way to get rid of people he didn’t like. He was apparently an educated and capable leader, but executing people all over the place wasn’t the only questionable thing he did: on two separate occasions he tried to invade France, and just ended up spending a lot of money and getting pretty much nowhere. The public image he left behind is not especially positive, but given his behaviour this isn’t really surprising. One time he tried to trick the Pope.

17 April, 1897: One of the earlier UFO incidents occurred in Aurora, Texas. A mysterious airship was spotted, and is reported to have hit a windmill and gone crashing to the ground. Locals said that, among the wreckage, they found the body of someone who was “not an inhabitant of this world”. They buried it in the local cemetery along with some of the debris, and the rest of the wreckage was thrown down a nearby well; some years later, someone claimed to have gotten severe arthritis from contaminated water at the site. There’s now a building on top of the well, and the cemetery has refused all exhumation requests. There was an alleged military cover-up, but the more compelling explanation is that the whole thing was a last-ditch effort to save the town from total anonymity. This would appear to be supported by Aurora’s town history book, calling it “the town that almost wasn’t”. Whether the plan worked or not is still uncertain.

18 April, 1930: According to BBC Radio, nothing happened. When it was time for the news bulletin, they gave the announcement, “Good evening. Today is Good Friday. There is no news,” and then played piano music for the remaining time allotted to the broadcast. They weren’t entirely wrong: the only significant birth, death, or other event of the day was the death of the first Latin American-born cardinal, which maybe the BBC thought wasn’t ideal for the Good Friday broadcast. Or maybe the reporters just wanted Good Friday off.
This article first appeared in Issue 7, 2013.
Posted 5:49pm Sunday 14th April 2013 by Jessica Bromell.