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It is possible that talking about disasters a few days before Christmas may not seem entirely appropriate, but fortunately or, rather, unfortunately, catastrophes do not rest.
White Carrero. Carrero’s murder was a calamity for the Franco regime. Despite the speculation of these 50 years, unpublished documents indicate that the attack was not plotted by the CIA and that, in reality, it shocked Americans. However, Henry Kissinger, who had met the admiral the day before, said with dark humor: “Make sure that when I explode, I go higher than five stories. (…) We should not leave this record to the Spanish.”
The shipwreck of ‘La Belle’. At the end of the 17th century, a French expedition consisting of 400 men set out with the mission of founding an enclave at the mouth of the Mississippi, but like so many others it ended badly, with shipwrecks and mutinies. The operation put Charles II’s monarchy on guard against the threat posed by Louis XIV’s plans in the region. La Belle, the last of the French ships, was rescued at the end of the last century.
Unfortunate ideas. Inventions that have been very important in recent history have proven counterproductive over time despite the good intentions of their creators. Asbestos, DDT or lobotomy, for example, ended up causing serious environmental or public health problems. Even some weapons makers had the best of intentions, like Richard Gatling, inventor of the machine gun, who thought his ingenuity would end wars. He was wrong.
Another Christmas perspective. Christmas is approaching, a time when animals like the turkey acquire – before more than now – a special meaning. This article from the Comer channel of La Vanguardia explains how these birds were common on these days in the 1930s. Now, from the animal’s point of view these festivals had truly calamitous connotations.
Millennial engineering. This newsletter has already discussed on some occasions the videos of Isaac Moreno Gallo, who analyzes the great Roman infrastructures. In this it shows the route, construction and vicissitudes of the Appian Way. A true treatise on Roman engineering.
Lost books. It would be fascinating to be able to read the Chinese encyclopedia Y?nglè – of which only 400 of its 11,000 original volumes remain – or the History of the Franks – written by an Arab author at the time of the Crusades – but these are lost works. Medievalist.net collects seven examples of medieval texts that have disappeared today. (in English)
Eternal crisis. The Houthi attacks against ships transiting the Red Sea remind us of the vulnerability of this key route for global trade, through which 10% of the goods moving in the world transit. It is by no means the first time that this route has been threatened, what happens is that the problems did not occur at its southern end, in the Bab el Mandeb Strait, but to the north, in the Suez Canal.
Since its opening – the first ship passed through it in 1867 – this great infrastructure opened up enormous opportunities for trade, but that same importance also made it vulnerable, especially if the usual tension in the region is taken into account.
An example of this fragility was the Suez crisis (1956), which began as a result of the decision of the Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, to nationalize the canal. The response of the United Kingdom and France was a military operation to regain control of the pass that was a success from a military point of view but a political failure; The two superpowers aligned themselves against Franco-British intervention and control of the canal remained in Egyptian hands. Nasser had sunk several ships that blocked the passage for five months.
Years later, in the Six Day War (1967), Egypt again sank several ships in the canal to prevent Israel, which had conquered the Sinai Peninsula, from using that corridor. Circulation was not reestablished until eight years later. The last traffic interruption, in this case for a week, was caused by a poor maneuver by the Ever Given oil tanker (2021).