On this date, Feb. 12 of 1935, the “flying aircraft carrier” U.S.S. Macon catastrophically failed to live up to its name by crashing, and sinking, off Monterey Bay. Now perhaps you didn’t know it ever existed. To which I can only say… neither did I. Maybe there’s a lesson there.

Macon (a.k.a. ZRS-5) and its sister U.S.S. Akron (ZRS-4) were, it turns out, the largest helium-filled blimps ever built. Is that the plural of blimp? I feel it should be blump or something, on the loose analogy of words like goose geese. Two blump appeared. But I digress.

Macon and Akron, less than twenty feet shorter than Hindenburg (and Hindenburg’s very slightly shorter sister Graf Zeppelin II), were considerably less flammable but otherwise no more airworthy. Akron was destroyed in a thunderstorm off the New Jersey coast on April 4 1933 killing 73 of 76 on board, the largest known loss of life in an airship crash. Macon lasted a bit longer and thanks partly to the coolness of its captain Herbert V. Wiley (a survivor of the Akron disaster who later commanded the battleship U.S.S. West Virginia in the last two years of World War II) in the final crisis only two lives were lost as it rose too high then sank slowly into the sea.

If you’re wondering why I called it an aircraft carrier, well, Macon could carry five single-seater Sparrowhawk scout planes. And if it and Akron hadn’t perished as they did, perhaps some day larger versions would have carried bombers, fighters etc. and… well, frankly, my guess is, have been shot down ignominiously.

Look, airships continue to have enthusiasts. And yes, the “Goodyear blimp” flies high. Non-rigid blump seem safer than the rigid kind. And I know early airplanes often crashed too, with even worse consequences, and sometimes still do. But the more I learn about the history of blimps the more convinced I am that if God had meant man to fly he would nevertheless have discouraged him from getting into this particular type of aircraft.

So yes, by all means build an aircraft. Just make sure it’s the kind that floats not the kind that flies… briefly.

There are all kinds of ways to draw a short straw at birth. You can be born in a war zone, or a disease-ravaged impoverished hell-hole, have a deadly congenital ailment or be the son of a Roman emperor,

Whoa, you say. The last one sounds pretty good. Slave girls peeling you grapes, obsequious centurions, marble everywhere. Well, yes. But also daggers, cords, poisons and relatives.

I have in mind in particular the hapless, or at least highly unfortunate “Britannicus,” formally Tiberius Claudius Caesar Britannicus, son of the emperor Claudius who, I indicated recently (in my January 25 2016 “It Happened Today”), I hope really was the clever and decent man described by Robert Graves and not the vicious half-wit his enemies depict. And his problem was that he was at an Imperial court so riven by intrigue that Claudius had to have his own wife executed for plotting to assassinate him. His third wife, that is.

This particular spouse, the evidently loathsome Valeria Messalina, had actually married someone else while still married to Claudius, one Gaius Sillius, and convinced Sillius to adopt Britannicus as part of a plot to do in Claudius then rule jointly as regents. (Who needs soap operas when you have this in real history, I ask?)

After Messalina and Sillius paid what seems a just price for their treacherous folly, Claudius himself felt obliged to marry again, because with Britannicus being about eight at this point Claudius’ lack of an adult son left him even more than usually vulnerable to being bumped off. His choice, in a tight spot, was the scheming and sinister Agrippina the Younger, great-granddaughter of Augustus and thus a relative of Julius Caesar himself, and to adopt her son, of whom you may have heard bad stuff. Nero.

Claudius made Nero joint-heir with Britannicus until the latter came of age, which among the Roman elite happened at 14. Guess who died at 13 on February 11 of 55 AD.

Right. Britannicus. Not four months after Claudius, both poisoned in a court whose intrigues, adulteries, betrayals and endless killings would have left the Borgias slack-jawed with envy. Agippina herself came to an obscure end generally blamed on Nero in accounts impossible to credit even given the times. But if she was indeed murdered by her own son, it served her right.

Like lots of people in this story she behaved very badly and like many of them she had at least some choices. As for poor Britannicus, as far as we can tell he played his part bravely and skilfully. But it was a hopeless part.

There are certainly worse starts to life than being the son of a Roman emperor. But sometimes it, too, can be an insurmountable disaster. So remember, if you weren’t born with a lot of advantages but did escape immediate catastrophe, consider summoning the shade of Britannicus to tell you it may have been a considerable blessing in disguise.

Ah, the wonders of the steam age. On this day in 1906, February 10, HMS Dreadnought was launched and very nearly sank its own fleet.

Not that there was anything wrong with Dreadnought. On the contrary, she was an astonishing technical achievement by the Royal Navy. The brainchild of Admiral Sir John “Jacky” Fisher, First Sea Lord, she carried only large main guns and as the first capital ship with steam turbines (told you) she was the fastest battleship in the world.

All good, right? Britannia rules the waves, pip pip. Except Dreadnought rendered all other major ships obsolete at a stroke, giving her name not just to a class but a type of ship. And, as Britain was the world’s leading naval power, hit her hardest. All the other powers had to do was copy Dreadnought successfully, match Britain in this new category of ship, and they’d have caught up with Britain (Der Tag, German naval officers called that great day which never quite came).

To say so is not to criticize Fisher. If he hadn’t done it someone else would have. There’s no stopping progress. Indeed mighty Dreadnought (the sixth Royal Navy vessel with that name but the only one we remember today) was already out of action, being refitted, during the only clash of “dreadnoughts” that ever happened, at Jutland in 1916. She was then assigned to coastal duties, rejoined the main fleet in 1918 and was put on reserve in 1919, sold for scrap in 1921 and actually scrapped in 1923.

To be sure, she retains the odd distinction of being the only battleship ever to sink an even more ominous weapon of the future, a submarine, by ramming it in 1915 after it surfaced after firing a torpedo at another dreadnought. But the main significance of the ship, apart from its incredibly cool name, is to underline how scary technological progress is in defence matters and how unstoppable. From revolutionary breakthrough to slag in 17 years. And it’s only gotten worse since.

Frankly it’s one more reason I miss the Middle Ages, when a trebuchet stayed a trebuchet for decades at a time. But we’ve gone through steam and gasoline to the nuclear age and are building military drones.

Don’t blink or you’re sunk. As you may well be anyway.

On this day in history, February 9, in 1825, John Quincy Adams was elected President of the United States. By the House of Representatives. Which might seem an odd way to choose Presidents but it has its points.

Now you may think Presidents are elected by the people. But while it is, ultimately, the popular will that makes a man president, the American Founding Fathers were not “democrats,” a term they associated with advocates of mob rule and the ability of demagogues to subvert the public good by appealing to private gain.

As John Marshall, a leading Federalist politician before becoming Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1801 (and remaining there until his death in 1835), “Between a republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.” So they put a number of layers of sober second thought between the public and important political offices. Indeed, not only is the president not directly elected to this day, but in the beginning there was no requirement that anyone cast even an indirect vote for the chief executive.

The Constitution merely says that “Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector.” So they were very concerned that no member of the executive or legislative branches have a say in the actual selection. But they were not concerned that any member of the public have one except indirectly via their votes for State legislators. And even then the Electoral College might, they supposed, refuse to select a candidate preferred by State legislators.

As it happens, two states had direct state-wide elections for Electors in the very first election, Pennsylvania and Maryland. By 1800 it was down to one. As late as 1820, more states chose electors in the legislature than by direct statewide election (9-8, with seven others using some other system of popular voting). And by 1824, it was 12-6-6. After that, statewide elections rapidly became the norm, with only South Carolina holding out until after the Civil War.

The Americans never got rid of the Electoral College in favour of direct presidential elections. And rightly not, in my view. Like our system of choosing as PM the person with the backing of the most MPs, it forces parties to appeal to a broad segment of the electorate instead of just piling up votes in favoured constituencies and ignoring large parts of the country, geographic and demographic. But what, you cry, has any of this to do with the House of Representatives.

Well, the Founders did not envision divisive partisan elections and they did not want them. They expected that sometimes opinion would coalesce around one clearly leading citizen, for instance Washington in 1788 and 1792 and, indeed, James Monroe in 1820; he won all but one electoral college vote. And other times they thought a variety of outstanding candidates would present themselves and no majority would be achieved in the electoral college. And if that were to happen, the election was to be decided by the House of Representatives, not between the top two but the top five finishers, and voting not as individual legislators but with one vote per state.

As another item in this series noted, the election of 1800 produced a highly undesirable and unexpected result, a partisan election and a tie in the Electoral College between the two candidates for the winning Democratic-Republican Party. As a result, the Constitution was amended so that Electors voted separately for President and Vice-President. (And it winnowed the number of candidates from whom the House would choose absent a majority to three.) But 1824 is the only other time there wasn’t a clear winner in the Electoral College, and it happened because the “First Party System” in the United States, between the Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans/Democratic-Republicans was breaking down along with the reasonable degree of elite consensus that underlay it.

Oddly, the Democratic-Republicans were the victims of their own success in 1820. Having no other party to fight, they started fighting each other, failed to agree on a nominee in 1824, and watched John Quincy Adams, William H. Crawford, Henry Clay and the insurgent Tennessee war hero Andrew Jackson battle to a semi-draw. Adams, son of the 2^nd President John Adams, won 84 electoral votes and 7 states. Crawford won 41 and 2. Clay won 73 and 3 and Jackson won 99 and 12.

With our modern democratic, not to say demagogic, spirit we would likely say Jackson won and should have been given the Presidency. But the political elite did not agree. Three of the four contenders were not Jackson and disliked and feared him and his rowdy political style even more than they disliked each other. Clay in particular loathed and feared Jackson (they would be lifelong adversaries in the Second Party System, with Jackson a Democrat and Clay a Whig). So he threw his support to Adams, who won the House vote 13-7 with Crawford getting four states. And it seemed a prudent judgement at the time.

Jackson’s supporters were outraged, especially as their candidate had been the most national one, winning some electors in every region while Adams dominated New England, Clay only won Western states and Crawford only southeastern ones. So they mobilized, and won the 1828 election outright. And it ushered in what was supposedly a more democratic era, though also clearly a far more vulgar and aggressively partisan one.

Since then no election has come close to going to the House, except the stolen election of 1876 where the issue was how to count Electoral College votes.

But before you utter a rousing cheer for Old Hickory, a hero to Democrats until quite recently when they realized his policies on slavery and aboriginals had been appalling, consider that a system that puts layers of judgement and sober second thought between voters and the White House, possibly preventing the choice of someone with a particular kind of demagogic appeal that renders them as unfit for the office as attractive to disgruntled citizens, might have a powerful argument in favour of it today.

Donald J. Trump.

On this date in history, February 8, in 1238, the Mongols burned Vladimir. Which sounds like hard luck for him even if he had done something to annoy them. But what of the rest of us?

Well, bear with me here. First, Vladimir isn’t a who, it’s a what. Specifically, it was an important city in medieval Russia. But then the Mongols came, slaughtering, burning, raping and otherwise destroying. Which was as bad as it sounds; not every evil historical reputation is undeserved.

What followed was worse. Not just for Vladimir, though it never really recovered, but for Russia and the world. Because the Mongols came to stay, and did stay for several centuries. And by the time they were gone the place was unrecognizable.

It’s hard to recall, or perhaps believe, but pre-Mongol Russia was very much oriented toward the West. Kievan Rus, founded by Vikings, had strong links to Western Europe. King Henri I of France married princess Anne of Kiev and apparently it was through their son that the name “Philip” became popular among Western royalty. So perhaps its political history could have been much less dismal despite its geographically exposed position which necessarily would have made national security and a strong state high priorities. But the Mongols put their stamp on its face in a singularly brutal way.

As Richard Pipes put it in his depressing Russia under the Old Regime, the Mongols were the first real government most parts of Russia ever experienced and provided rulers and citizens alike with a most unfortunate model. It taught the populace that the state “was arbitrary and violent, that it took what it could lay its hands on and have nothing in return, and that one had to obey it because it was strong; it taught the princes that governments collected tribute, maintained order and security, but had little responsibility to its people, and to regard political authority as inherently arbitrary.” And this lesson persisted and made the Russian state a menace to its own people and its neighbours to this day.

The fate of Vladimir was illustrative rather than decisive. But the destruction of city-states by the Mongols, imitated by the tsars as soon as they became independent, and the crushing of the idea as well as the fledgling institutions of political liberty, was a tragedy indeed, for Russia and the world.

Today was the first day you could land on Boardwalk with a hotel and go bust. I think. Monopoly was evidently copyrighted by Parker Brothers on February 7 but seems first to have been sold on February 6. The details of its origin can be confusing. But one thing is not in doubt. It’s about Henry George.

Huh? You thought I was going to say “You want the Oranges.” And you do. They are apparently the most landed on properties. And since the houses are relatively cheap, they become lethal fast. But it is also true that the game was originally invented to popularize the theories of Henry George. Which are about as useful as Baltic Avenue.

It has of course evolved enormously since the original “The Landlord’s Game” was patented by Henry George follower and militant suffragette Lizzie Magie, who then lived in Maryland although her father was an abolitionist who traveled around with Lincoln while he debated Stephen Douglas. (Yes, really.) She was trying to illustrate the idea, or obsession, of George, a Progressive-era political economist and crank, that a single tax on land would be more efficient and fair than the system where we tax income, sales, property and everything else that twitches or looks as if it might.

Without holding any brief for the current tax system, I must say this idea is about as useful as the Water Works. Land isn’t the only scarce thing and taxing only land would be highly distorted and insufficient. Though ironically Monopoly, the most commercially successful board game in U.S. history, has generated huge sums in tax revenue that would not have materialized had it succeeded in its ostensible purpose. But perhaps I waste my time critiquing “Georgism” or “Single-Tax” because its followers, though vocal to this day, are also as common as people who’ve won the game by owning the purples. Which are now brown. I know not why.

The game has undergone all sorts of refinements over the years, which are described in detail in various Wikipedia entries and elsewhere. The Income Tax used to be $300 apparently and I’d swear when I was a kid Luxury Tax was $75 not $100. (I checked. It was. Also you used to get $45 for sale of stock but I guess people found making change tedious so now it’s $50. That change was brought in in 2008 although oddly in that year due to the fiscal crisis you’d have been more likely to get 50 cents for sale of stock.) There have also been all sorts of variants, from a Canadian version (in the latest edition of which the most exclusive property is Robson Street!) to a Klingon version to Bond, Smurf, Simpsons and Zombie ones. Henry George would faint, or so I hope.

Clarence Darrow apparently really did play a major role in developing the game, although he also apparently swiped the concept from friends of his wife who never spoke to him or her again afterward. But it was one Ruth Hoskins who learned the game in Indianapolis but developed a version based on Atlantic City, where she lived, naming the various properties for streets where her friends happened to reside, thus creating the illusion that there are nice places to live in Atlantic City.

I could go on and on, as the game’s partisans have, for instance telling you that the British Secret Intelligence Service devised a version for POWs held by the Nazis in which were hidden items useful for escaping, which was distributed by fake charities. It’s amazing what has come of this game. And what has not.

Like anybody remembering its connection with Henry George or believing his theories because of it. And if you do, I’ll trade you your Marvin Gardens for my St. Charles.

On this day in history Charles II was declared King of Scotland in 1649. I’m not really sure why.

I mean, I do realize the Stuarts were a Scottish dynasty and that the Scots had supported his father Charles I. No. Wait. They had opposed him fiercely, going to war against him over his attempt to force Archbishop Laud’s crypto-Catholicism on the Church of Scotland, creating the fiscal crisis that forced Charles I to summon a Parliament that soon was also at war with him.

I also realize that eventually the English too wanted Charles II as king, after suffering through the unstable repression of Cromwell’s Commonwealth. But the English wanted him as a reasonable monarch and after exhausting the alternatives. And while Charles did live up to his commitments, albeit deviously, his brother James II reverted to inept tyrannical Stuart type and the English gave him the royal boot in the Glorious Revolution.

So why were the Scots in such a hurry on Charles II? And why did they cling to the idea that James II had been a gude and legitimate king (and that he’d been James VII) and support first his son James, the “Old Pretender” and alleged James III/VIII for whom they rose up in “the ’15” and then his son “Bonnie Prince Charlie” on whose behalf they rose up again in “the ‘45” that ended so bloodily at Culloden Moor?

I generalize here because clearly many Scots did not support the exiled Stuarts, certainly not to the point of taking up arms for them. But those who did not were generally obliged either to break with family and friends or pretend it was merely a matter of prudence. Somehow this political foolishness became a matter of national pride and national identity.

Yes, I see the romance of lost causes. And yes, I realize Scotland did not have the heritage of liberty under law that England did. Yes, they prized their liberty. But their parliament was a pale shadow of England’s, unable to defy the monarch, and they had no Magna Carta. Still, it all seems so silly and also sad.

They are not the first or last of whom this can be said. But when I look at the Scots’ support for the exiled Stuarts, I am convinced that such men and women deserved a better cause than that which they inexplicably embraced.

On this day in history, Feb. 5 of 1885, King Leopold II of Belgium established the Congo Free State. It is an episode as bizarre as it is horrible.

It is horrible because the Congo became a nightmare of repression rarely equaled in the annals of colonialism. The native population declined by as much as half in three decades, worked to death to produce rubber and slaughtered if they did not produce enough. There was nothing remotely resembling the rule of law, or decency. A private army that enforced rubber quotas, the Force Publique, was required to collect the severed hands of those they had killed for not producing enough rubber, and among other ghastly sidenotes to the main horror a trade arose in severed hands.

It is bizarre because Belgium was at the time a constitutional monarchy. It had parliamentary institutions and “progressive” social legislation. Yet the king somehow established the Congo Free State as a personal possession and got away with it. Screened by elaborate pretensions to humanitarian goals and institutions, validated by his fellow European rulers and recognized by the United States, the Congo Free State was neither free nor a state. It was a personal tyranny, a private hell on earth in which universal slavery was essentially introduced, as the inhabitants were obliged to provide rubber (and ivory) only to Leopold’s officials and were killed for not providing enough. Eventually the Belgian government took over the Congo Free State, in 1908, and things got somewhat better.

Leopold, meanwhile, destroyed the archives recording his deeds. And you can see why he’d be afraid to have them examined. The Congo Free State was quite literally the heart of darkness. It was the setting for Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness whose theme is moral relativism arising from modernity and whose setting is this ghastly example of unmatched horror arising from a superficially enlightened polity.

Imperialism gets a lot of bad press these days. But it is one of those abstractions that obscures more than it reveals. The British Empire had its bad moments and its bad attitudes. But on the whole it was, like the Roman Empire, a force for good in the world, often dramatically improving governance and even social customs where its flag was raised, and leaving its former colonies better off than areas conquered by other powers and, indeed, some of the few not conquered by anyone in the era of European expansion.

Belgium, on the other hand, produced this unspeakable horror. It is not immediately obvious why, given that Belgium itself was hardly a byword for repression or aggression. One might have expected, say, Imperial Germany or Russia, or the Mongols, to capture an area and mistreat it in this way. But Belgium?

It’s also weird that the power imbalance between Europe and areas of European settlement and everyone else was so great that the Belgian king could have seized a vast swath of Africa and done as he would with it. But that’s mostly a topic for another day. For now the strange, and dreadful, thing is what he chose to do with it.