History of the Day: 11/18

In 1302, Pope Boniface VIII, who was engaged in a conflict with Phillip IV of France, issued the Papal Bull Unam Sanctam, or "The One Holy." In it, he made several assertions, including:

• outside of her (the Church) there is neither salvation nor the remission of sins
• of the one and only Church there is one body and one head, not two heads like a monster, and
• in this Church and in its power are two swords; namely, the spiritual and the temporal.

The last one is interesting, because it rests on the tradition that St. Peter was buried with the two swords which he surrendered at the arrest of Christ on Maundy Thursday.

In 1307, Austria had invaded Switzerland. The Austrian representative in a small, Swiss town had raised his hat on a pole and ordered all the citizens of the town to bow before it when they passed. Kind of a Pledge of Allegiance, but with a hat. On this day, William Tell, a Swiss Rosa Parks of sorts, refused to do so. He was ordered to shoot an apple off his own son's head, or his son would be put to death. Tell succeeded without killing his son. But the Austrian wanted to know why Tell had prepared two arrows. Tell replied (in the worlds of the play Wilhelm Tell by Schiller)

If that my hand had struck my darling child,
This second arrow I had aimed at you,
And, be assured, I should not then have miss'd.

This prompted a rebellion which led to the eventual founding of the Swiss Confederation. The legend became the inspiration for other works of art and other revolutionaries. The poem The Tale of William Tell by Hm. Ness summarizes the revolutionary spirit nicely:

The apple split with such a force-
No trace of apple could be found.
But all the country changed its course-
No longer serfs to lords were bound.
And freedom rose upon the shores
Because Sir William refused the lords.

The play by Schiller was praised by Hitler in Mein Kampf, until an assassin who tried to kill him was dubbed "a new William Tell." Then, it was banned. Another, less beloved assassin cited Tell as an inspiration as well, John Wilkes Booth. In a journal entry he wrote:

With every man's hand against me, I am here in despair. And why; For doing what Brutus was honored for and what made Tell a Hero. And yet I for striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew am looked upon as a common cutthroat.

The Schiller play also inspired Rossini's opera of the same name. The overture of that opera has been parodied a billion times, including The Mom Song by Anita Renfroe and The President's Song by the Animaniacs.

On this day in 1926, George Bernard Shaw refused the money for his Nobel Prize, saying:

I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.

Steamboat Willie was released on this day in 1928. Walt Disney has been happy to take our money ever since. Most versions of the cartoon have removed about thirty seconds which are believed to promote "animal cruelty." These instances include Mickey pulling a cat's tail and then swinging the cat by the tail above his head, picking up a nursing sow and "playing" its babies like an accordion keyboard, and using a goose as bagpipes. Sigh. Ten years later, Jim Jones practiced some "people cruelty" when he and his followers, the Peoples Temple, drank poisoned kool-aid in a mass murder-suicide that claimed 918 lives, including over 270 children.

Finally, on this day in 1976, Man Ray died at the age of 86. He was a photographer and artist whose work ... well ... how to describe it? He was friends with Salvador Dali. That should be sufficient.