According to Wikipedia, on October 24, 1260, “Chartres Cathedral is dedicated in the presence of King Louis IX of France; the cathedral is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.” Perhaps they felt that this was a fitting elevation of the Cathedral to truly grand status. It does not feel that way to me.

The cathedral is a magnificent achievement of Gothic architecture, that stunning and enduring tribute to the vision of the Middle Ages. Nothing, it seems to me, has quite the magnificence of a medieval castle or cathedral. History is still regarded in some circles as a largely unbroken tale of progress, or perhaps a tale of progress with a long dismal medieval dip. But I can think of nothing in all of architecture to rival these sorts of buildings, and in my view most of the stuff that even comes close is older, like the Temple of Hatshepsut.

Chartres is remarkable for a number of reasons including the speed with which it was built, dramatically renovating an older building on a site on which five cathedrals have stood. Hence it does not have the sometimes excessive rambling of buildings put together over centuries with several compelling but not entirely compatible visions directing different parts of the work. It was done when Gothic was at its height and in full possession of its powers and its confidence. And it has survived largely intact.

True, one spire was smitten by lightning in 1506 and rebuilt in the “flamboyant” style that is, as you may guess, rather flamboyant. And it was almost sacked by a mob during the French Revolution before the Revolutionary Committee decided in Taliban-like fashion to blow it up, only to be deterred by a local architect saying the explosion would choke the streets with rubble for years. Then the radicals melted the roof for bullets before arguing that a building without a roof was an expensive hassle to maintain.

The stained glass was wisely removed before World War II and an American Army officer, Col. Welborn Barton Griffith, Jr. saved it from bombing during that conflict by personally scouting to make sure the Germans weren’t using it as an observation post. (He was killed the next day; perhaps God was so impressed He wanted to tell him to his face immediately.)

In 2009 the French Ministry of Culture decided on a major renovation including painting it on the theory that it would look like new. Others have condemned this notion in part because Gothic architecture ages well which you can’t say of the most of the disposable junk we build.

Which brings me to the UNESCO designation. The Cathedral was built as an expression of Roman Catholic religious faith and the civilization to which it had given rise. Something specific, proud and dynamic. The UNESCO designation, by a branch of the worthless-when-not-actively-harmful UN, is bland and anodyne, a grudging admission that it’s a nice relic of something people once thought, to be admired in a bland and ecumenical spirit that has no idea what true and false even are.

I know they meant it as a compliment. But it slides off a building this old, to which modernity has done so much in a militant or self-satisfied spirit that was not an improvement.

On this date in history the best-named war ever started. Well, maybe not the best. But certainly in the Top 5. Specifically the War of Jenkins’ Ear which started on October 23, 1739.

The details are not unimportant. It was among the struggles between a rising Britain and a fast-fading Spain that we should be glad the British won. And it wound up merging with the War of the Austrian Succession, a classic hostile takeover and by a war with a much more boring name. Which would you rather be told you’re going to study in history class?

It also matters that people died in it, no less horribly for the quaint name. Not including Jenkins. What did happen to him, years earlier, was that he was caught smuggling by the Spanish, tied to a mast, and Spanish Captain Julio León Fandiño sliced off his ear and contemptuously told him to warn King George II that he would suffer the same fate if caught.

Somehow Jenkins retained the ear, had it pickled, and displayed it before a sympathetic Parliamentary committee in 1738, leading to diplomatic threats and then war. Jenkins himself seems to have enjoyed a distinguished career before fading from history and, serves you right, Julio León Fandiño was captured by the British along with his ship in 1742.

There’s one other curious thing about this war. It was cited by Honoré Mirabeau in the French National Constituent Assembly in 1790 to argue against giving the legislature the power to declare war lest it be swayed by this sort of emotional appeal.

To my knowledge no subsequent war was ever triggered by the display of a pickled appendage before enflamed popular representatives. There were significant geopolitical and political reasons for war which this particular outrage merely served to focus.

Besides, executive authorities have not proved more restrained in the sorts of things that set them off including what’s his name, that Corsican French guy. They just don’t usually manage to send others to fight and die under such picturesque names.

If I confess to any familiarity whatsoever with “Monster High” what little credibility I might possess is liable to plummet ignominiously. But there is an episode in which several of the characters manage to get onto a reality TV show called “Or Die Trying” involving ever more hazardous challenges. And it reminds me of the history of invention.

For instance the guy who made the first recorded parachute jump on October 22, 1783. And as a plot spoiler, he invented the word “parachute” … two years later. So he survived.

His name was Louis-Sébastien Lenormand and he was French; they were very big on this “in the air” thing in those days (see for instance the September 24, 2016 It Happened Today). And what struck me initially as Lenormand plunged past was that he made the jump from 3,200 feet. Or rather, being French and all snootily metric, 1,000 metres.

That’s a long way up. And I thought man, you’ve gotta have some kind of confidence to do the first one from that height. Wouldn’t it be safer to kind of ease into it? But then I realized being killed in a 100 metre fall is no less lethal whereas succeeding is less spectacular. And you’d feel like a fool being killed from 100 metres because a parachute that would have worked from 1,000 didn’t have time to open. So I guess it was actually a nice, careful approach to hurling yourself into the void tied to something that might work. Maybe. Who knows?

Two years later, another Frenchman named Jean-Pierre Blanchard demonstrated the parachute as a practical way of escaping a failing hot-air balloon. With a great deal more prudence than most of the contestants in my version of “Or Die Trying: The Human Ingenuity Version” including Lenormand himself. You see, Blanchard threw his dog out with a parachute on rather than, say, jumping himself.

He later claimed to have done it for real himself in 1793 when his balloon ruptured but nobody saw that one. And don’t try this with your cat; a dog will thank you for letting him be part of the adventure while a cat will secretly claw your balloon in revenge.

Now at this point I should say that the whole parachute story shows rather more prudence than most of these let’s-put-a-steam-engine-under-some-hydrogen ventures in which people demonstrate that you can always find a new way to die. You see, it turns out there are sketches of parachutes going back to the 15th century including, you guessed it, one by Da Vinci. But in the “very dangerous, you go first” spirit that has struggled with “Or Die Trying” since somebody grunted “Hey, let’s tame fire” or even earlier, nobody actually tested their own parachute design or got conned into testing someone else’s for three entire centuries. And when someone finally did, he used sufficient skill and common sense that he improbably survived.

If anyone can use common sense and make the first ever parachute jump. I have my doubts. But Lenormand did make it, and instead of plummeting ignominiously got to name the working device years later. And thanks to him we’re all much safer today in hot air balloons. Even if we’re French dogs.

On this date in history, October 21, 1096, the “People’s Crusade” was crushed by the Turks at the Battle of Civetot. It’s one of those episodes that seems to prove religion can make you stupid, although a better lesson may be being human can make you stupid and if you expect God to provide you should try to meet Him half-way. It’s like asking God to rescue you from a flood then refusing to swim to safety as a mark of faith.

In case you haven’t been subjected to this particular outburst of foolish and unstructured religious enthusiasm, it happened as Pope Urban II was organizing the First Crusade, which was a proper military expedition with religious motives that paid attention to mundane things like logistics, weapons, knowing how to fight and having sensible leaders. But while it was brewing this clown called Peter the Hermit, a charismatic monk who claimed to have not only a commission from Christ but an actual letter, went around encouraging people to march on Jerusalem armed only with their faith.

A surprising number felt that this proposition made good sense, including women and children and a few actual soldiers including Walter Sans Avoir. He is often miscalled Walter the Penniless but in fact his name comes from being the lord of Boissy-sans-Avoir. Although common sense was one thing he did not apparently avoir and he died at Civetot when he acquired as many as seven arrows express delivery from the Turks.

The entire People’s Army lacked many other things, from food to sense to decency. Part of their plan to liberate Jerusalem from Muslims involved slaughtering Jews in Germany, something the Church tried hard to prevent them from doing. Then they wandered south-east, puzzling and plundering people who didn’t want to seem inhospitable or impious but also didn’t want these vagabonds eating all their food before falling in the river or having their heads cut off with scimitars.

It ended about the way you’d expect. They finally blundered into battle with the Turks in as tactically hapless a manner as you’d expect and were mostly slaughtered, although the victors generally spared women, children and those who surrendered (not spared in the sense of let them go, of course, but in the sense of let them be slaves) while a few thousand managed to hole up in an abandoned castle, withstand a siege and eventually be bailed out by Byzantine soldiers who knew what they were doing. As for Peter, he slipped away for more supplies and lived on for decades as an increasingly minor celebrity and died in obscurity.

So yes, religious enthusiasm without structure can lead to disaster both practical and moral. But nobody said God wanted you to be an idiot… except people who don’t believe in God. So don’t be an idiot.

Aaaaarrh, matey. Have ye ever been… hanged?

Perhaps it’s a rude question. But I bring it up because October 20 marks the capture of “Calico Jack” by the Royal Navy back in 1720. And that’s a great name for a pirate.

It gets even better. His real name was John “Jack” Rackham, which will necessarily put Tintin fans in mind of “Rackham the Red”. And he designed the classic Jolly Roger though some sources say his had crossed swords rather than bones beneath the skull. And he was a pioneering feminist, having two females among his crew including his lover Anne Bonny who he apparently pinched from her husband which seems quite a modern thing to do although I gather such incidents were not unknown before 1963 and possibly he was glad to see her go. But I digress.

The point is, that’s some kind of pirate. And he enjoyed a career of mayhem and so forth lasting… um… two years. Or maybe a bit longer. He first turns up as quartermaster on a pirate ship called the Ranger in 1718, the same year he led a mutiny that voted their current captain Charles Vane a coward and put Rackham in his place.

I should note that on a rather unpiratical note Vane was not cut down like so much pork, cruelly marooned or tossed to the sharks. Instead he and those who’d voted for him were given a smaller ship, plus ammunition and supplies.

A year after deposing Vane, Rackham accepted a pardon from the governor of the Bahamas, settled down, bounced back up and started messing with Anne, whose husband brought her before the governor to be whipped. Rackham offered to buy her in a “divorce by purchase” which she refused as demeaningly similar to a cattle sale, so Rackham kept the money and they eloped semi-romantically on a stolen ship.

The next year Rackham was captured while drunk, taken to Jamaica, tried and hanged. Bonny and her female co-pirate Mary Read both claimed to be pregnant to try to avoid immediate execution, which sounds a touch old-fashioned, and Read died the next year probably of complications from childbirth while Bonny’s fate is unknown.

Most of the rest of Rackham’s associates were swiftly executed. And as for Vane, well, he was hanged in 1721. Which isn’t surprising because if you look into the career of most pirates, you find yourself reading a short story that ends with a, hmnnn, twist.

The point is, piracy isn’t romantic. You may get cool clothes, a cool nickname and an extra-cool flag. But you also get to dance the “yardarm jig” and that right smartly. And “Hemp necktie Jack” just doesn’t have the same insouciant charm.

Here’s a weird one. And not out of keeping with the series, you may say. But what I have in mind this time is the October 19, 1469 union of Ferdinand and Isabella that didn’t create modern Spain.

If you’re wondering why it should have been expected to, or thinking a list of historical events that did not create modern Spain would be unreasonably long, I should note there that Ferdinand was heir to the kingdom of Aragon and Isabella to that of Castille; she duly succeeded when her brother died in 1474 and he in 1479.

Now Aragon and Castille were not formally merged into a single political unit until Philip V in the very early 18th century, by which time the once-mighty Spanish empire was on the skids and Spain was headed for stagnant irrelevance on the margins of Europe. Which you’re probably wondering how it could happen if there was, as I and the lawyers maintain, no Spain. Except that’s not quite what I said.

I said it didn’t create modern Spain. And I say it’s weird because Spain did have protoparliaments at that time, the Cortes. Aragon had one and so did Castille. And you’d think the decentralized structure of the Spanish country-like thing would be ideally suited to their development as effective checks on the power of the monarch.

Instead they were basically swept aside. Ferdinand and Isabella decided to limit the power of the bourgeoisie and the nobles so they did, essentially turning the Cortes into rubber stamps except, for a while, on taxes, where they had some capacity to resist. And the result was a Spain that was somehow glittering yet hollow, apparently modern and dynamic yet fundamentally stagnant and ineffective.

How can this be?

Rest assured, English monarchs would have loved to break or disperse Parliament. But they never could. It was too deeply embedded in the national, social as well as political fabric. And a major reason why is that it included the common people. But we could get into a kind of logical circle here, asking why in England it was impossible to exclude the common people and getting the answer that they were too firmly included and vice versa. Which takes us back into the “Dark Ages” and the fact that self-government in the Anglosphere has very deep roots in Anglo-Saxon-Jute habits of self-government laid atop the remarkable and in many ways unique culture of Roman Britain.

It also reminds us that self-government is not easy or natural. In retrospect historians can easily explain the growing power of the English parliament as natural given the rise of the bourgeoisie or some such. They can also easily explain the shrinking power of European parliaments as natural given the rise of the national state or some such. What calls out for explanation, and appreciation, is the two processes running parallel but in opposite directions on the continent and in the UK.

So this is the anniversary of the Edict of Paris, the Frankish equivalent of Magna Carta. Which tells you basically that there is no Frankish or any other equivalent of Magna Carta.

For starters, you never heard of it. Nor had I. For another, we’re not sure what year it was issued; probably 614 unless it was 615. (Magna Carta was definitely 1215.) How we know it was Oct. 18, if we really are sure, is anyone’s guess. (Magna Carta was definitely June 15.) For a third, it was only in force briefly. (Only three articles of Magna Carta still are, and so much the worse for us, but it trumped statute law for centuries and was incorporated into it for hundreds of years more.) For a fourth, we only have one surviving manuscript, made more than a century later so it can’t have been that important. (True, we have only four original 1215 Magna Cartas, but dozens of later amended versions). For a fifth, it came from King Clothar II voluntarily, and made other people more subordinate to the king. (Magna Carta was wrenched from the claws of Bad King John and put a serious brake on his aspiration to unchecked royal power.) For a sixth, it didn’t protect the common people. (Magna Carta is often called an elite deal but the text, and the consequences, show how unreasonable and rigidly “progressive” this forced interpretation is.)

Apart from that, yeah, pretty similar. And what’s even more depressing is that France, atrociously misgoverned through most of its history, was a lot better governed than most places. It was more prosperous, more lawful, more respectful of individuals and more reasonable. I know, I know, it’s the place with Philip the Fair, Louis XIV, Robespierre and Napoleon. And I sometimes think it was mostly fear of English mockery that kept them from being far worse. But for all that, if you couldn’t live in the Anglosphere, in most periods of history from the fall of Rome on you’d seriously consider France.

The very phrase “Magna Carta of the Frankish nobility” shows just how far it was from Magna Carta itself, with its guarantees for “every free man”. And just how precious our heritage is given its scarcity.

On this date in history something pretty horrible happened. Well, OK, on every day in history something pretty horrible happened. Repeatedly. Everywhere. Those who expect to construct a utopia of human material seem to me to be suffering a variety of serious delusions.

That broadside delivered, I want to zoom in on the hanging, drawing and quartering of nine English regicides on October 17, 1660. Yes, here we go again (see the Oct. 3, 2016 It Happened Today) with the strangling, disemboweling and worse and so on. In this case it was nine of the 51 people not amnestied over their involvement in the execution of Charles I eleven years earlier.

By 1660 people were pretty fed up with the Commonwealth, the dictatorial rule of Oliver Cromwell and political radicalism generally. They didn’t just bring back the Stuarts in the smooth, genial, totally smilingly dishonest person of the Merry Monarch Charles II. They sought revenge.

So they tried 27 people on a capital charge. Why 27? Because 24 had died. Of the 27, one was beheaded and nine were hanged, drawn and quartered on Oct. 17. Three more were HDQed (man, you don’t want that to be so common you have an acronym) two years later, 19 were given life in prison back when it meant something, some were pardoned, and some fled, including three to New England where they were never captured by the British authorities. New England was always singularly favourable to the Puritan cause in England as in the New World.

Not so the folks back home. I was going to say 24 of the 51 accused were excused on grounds of being dead. But it ain’t so. Three of these, including Cromwell, were dug up and killed a second time, being first hanged and then beheaded (so perhaps that makes three) and then the bulk of them hurled into a pit beneath the gallows while the heads were put on spikes facing the spot where Charles I had himself been executed.

I don’t get it. Did you want Charles back? Don’t you remember why the Civil War happened? And aren’t you a bit embarrassed to be hurling invective and inflicting indignities upon a decaying body part? Don’t you feel that in some sense it is your dignity not that of the departed that is diminished by this spectacle?

Ultimately people calmed down. A bit. Cromwell’s head was on display outside Westminster until 1685 by which time I cannot help thinking it would have been rather sadly disgusting. It was then carried off, publicly exhibited, sold or given several times and finally buried in 1960 in an undisclosed location in case people are still raging mad. But he does now have a statue of his entire body outside parliament instead of just a spike for a neck.

Look, I’m no fan of Cromwell. I can see killing him once if malaria hadn’t gotten there first. But at some point you have to take a few deep breaths and try to regain perspective. Including, surely, on just how horribly you want to kill people who, eleven years earlier, had decided with varying degrees of reluctance that a bad king had to become a dead one.

If the point is to put the unpleasantness behind you, how does it help to revel in an exhibit of it in front of you?