ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY: October 5

A bunch of shit went down

1607
Most modern debunkers of bullshit fear little more than internet harassment, or just being ignored. Because people don’t like debunking. They like bunk. In the seventeenth century, however, the consequences of exposing hogwash were more dire. The pope might send assassins after you to get you to shut the fuck up. Paulo Sarpi, a historian and scientist living in Venice, was saying Pope Paul #5 is a dick and we need separation of church and state. And Paul Five said fuck that Sarpi shitass ima send some assassins. On October 5, 1607, the assassins knifed poor Paulo a bunch of times, but he said fuck you I’m gonna live and he lived another sixteen years and kept on doing heretical shit and pissing the pope right the fuck off.

1789
Speaking as a historian, I gotta say women are way underappreciated for how they’ve changed the world. October 5, 1789, was The Women’s March on Versailles. The previous July, the Bastille was stormed and a whole seven prisoners, four of them doing time for the heinous crime of forgery, were released. And that was cool and it got to be a national holiday my children need wine! But on this day women in Paris went fucking apoplectic over the price of bread, and it grew to an angry mom mob of several thousand. They besieged the Palace of Versailles, which I’ve been inside and holy fucking shit, and it spelled the end of royal authority in France.  

1970
People forget just how fucking crazy the 70s were. Like, even Canada had a homegrown terrorist organization that was kidnapping diplomats and politicians, and they murdered one of them. The “October Crisis” began with the kidnapping of a British diplomat by the Front de libération du Québec on October 5, 1970. Justin’s dad Pierre Trudeau wasn’t having it. He sent in the military.

1986
For such a tiny country, Israel sure has a lot of nukes. Not according to them. It’s a big secret. You’re not supposed to tell. So when one of their nuclear technicians did tell, to Britain’s The Sunday Times who published the story on October 5, 1986, about just how many of those fusion-kaboom toys the nation has, Israel lured him to Italy. There, Mossad agents drugged and abducted him and threw him in a hole. Mordechai Vanunu was put on secret trial and spent eighteen years in an Israeli prison, eleven of it in solitary confinement. And they kept on being dicks to him after they let him out.

Those who cannot remember the past … need a history teacher who says fuck a lot. Get the book On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down.

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