On this day in 1960, police opened fire on peaceful anti-apartheid protestors in the South African township of Sharpeville, killing 69. The over 5,000 strong crowd gathered at Sharpeville police station to protest the discriminatory pass laws, which they claimed were designed to limit their movement in designated white only areas. The laws required all black men and women to carry reference books with their name, tax code and employer details; those found without their book could be arrested and detained. The protest encouraged black South Africans to deliberately leave their pass books at home and present themselves at police stations for arrest, which would crowd prisons and lead to a labour shortage. Despite the protestors’ peaceful and non-violent intentions, police opened fire on the crowd. By the day’s end, 69 people were dead and 180 were wounded. A further 77 were arrested and questioned, though no police officer involved in the massacre was ever convicted as the government relieved all officials of any responsibility. The apartheid government responded to the massacre by banning public meetings, outlawing the African National Congress (ANC) and declaring a state of emergency. The incident convinced anti-apartheid leader and ANC member Nelson Mandela to abandon non-violence and organise paramilitary groups to fight the racist system of apartheid. In 1996, 36 years later, then President Mandela chose Sharpeville as the site at which he signed into law the country’s new post-apartheid constitution.
“People were running in all directions, some couldn’t believe that people had been shot, they thought they had heard firecrackers. Only when they saw the blood and dead people, did they see that the police meant business” - Tom Petrus, eyewitness to the Sharpeville massacre
On this day in 1852, American author Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published. Previously published as a serial in the anti-slavery periodical the National Era, Uncle Tom’s Cabin tells the story of a black slave and recounts the harsh reality of his enslavement. Stowe was an ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery, and wrote the novel in response to the passage of the controversial 1850 Fugitive Slave Act which was part of the Compromise of 1850. The Act ordered Northern citizens to assist in the return of runaway slaves from the South, thus forcing the generally anti-slavery North to become complicit in the continuance of the ‘peculiar institution’. The popular discontent over the slavery issue helped make Uncle Tom’s Cabin the best-selling novel of the nineteenth century and saw its translation into sixty languages. The novel helped keep the flames of anti-slavery sentiment alive, and is therefore sometimes attributed with helping start the American Civil War. While still hailed as a great anti-slavery work of its day, the novel falls short of modern expectations with its stereotypical portrayal of African-Americans.
“So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war” - what, according to legend, Abraham Lincoln said upon meeting Stowe in 1862
On this day in 1932, the Sydney Harbour Bridge was opened. There had been discussions of building a bridge to connect the northern and southern shores of Sydney Harbour for years. In 1924, the contract for the bridge was given to English firm Dorman Long and Co. Ltd. and work began on the bridge; work was overseen by J.J.C. Bradfield. There were fears that the two sides of the arch would not align properly, but in August 1930 the two halves met perfectly. Sixteen workers died during construction, most from unsafe working practices. The opening ceremony took place on March 19th 1932, and though the Premier of New South Wales Jack Lang was supposed to cut the ribbon, he was interrupted by an intruder who slashed the ribbon with his sword and declared the bridge open. The man was Francis de Groot, a member of a right-wing paramilitary group who opposed Lang’s leftist policies and the fact that a member of the Royal Family had not been invited to open the bridge. The ribbon was retied and Lang officially opened the bridge. The festivities to mark the opening included floats and a procession across the bridge by members of the public. Thousands of people turned out to see the opening of Sydney Harbour Bridge - a triumph over Depression times.
On this day in 1314, Jacques de Molay, the twenty-third and last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, was burned at the stake. The Templar knights were a major fighting unit of the Crusades, aiming to preserve Christendom and regain control of the Holy Land. After control the Holy Land was lost to Muslim forces, support for the Knights Templar started to fade. King Philip IV of France began to mistrust the group and wanted to free himself of his debts to the Templar; he thus had many leading Knights burned at the stake. Pope Clement V disbanded the group in 1312, and the hunt continued for remaining members. The Knights were tortured until they confessed to a range of crimes, including heresy, obscene rituals, and idolatry. De Molay had been forced to make such a confession, and despite retracting the confession, he was charged with heresy and burned at the stake. Pope Clement died a month later and King Philip died that year. With their leader gone, the remaining Templars were arrested or removed from the group and the Knights Templar were no more.
“God knows who is wrong and has sinned. Soon a calamity will occur to those who have condemned us to death" - De Molay’s words from the stake
On this day in 1959, Tenzin Gyatso - the fourteenth Dalai Lama, a central figure of Vajrayana Buddhism - fled Tibet for India. He fled following the 1959 Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule which broke out in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, where the Dalai Lama lived. Fearing for his safety, he and around twenty of his entourage fled Lhasa on March 17th and embarked on a 15 day journey on foot over the Himalayan mountains to Dharamsala in India where they had been offered asylum. No news was heard of the Dalai Lama, and many feared their spiritual and political leader had been killed during the arduous journey. However, on March 30th he crossed into India and people learned that he was safe. He was followed by around 80,000 Tibetans who settled in the same area of India, leading to it becoming known as ‘Little Lhasa’. This place became the home to the Tibetan government-in-exile. Tibet remains under Chinese rule, and the Dalai Lama continues to try to find a peaceful negotiation for Tibetan self rule.
On this day in 1912 Lawrence Oates, a member of Robert Falcon Scott’s British team to the South Pole, left his tent never to be seen again. Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition was his second attempt and aimed to become the first group to reach the South Pole. The group succeeded in reaching the Pole on January 17th 1912, only to discover that they had been beaten by Roald Amundsen’s Norwegian expedition. Sadly, Scott’s entire party of five men died on the return journey. Oates was one of those who died first. He was suffering from severe frostbite and, in an apparent act of self-sacrifice, simply walked out of his tent into a blizzard. He had asked them to leave him behind as his condition worsened, and it is likely he felt that he was holding his group back and limiting their chances for survival. Thus on March 16th he walked out of the tent saying: “I am just going outside and may be some time.” The others died soon after and their bodies were found by a search party in November, along with some of their equipment and personal effects. Oates’s body was never found, but he and his companions are remembered as brave men and national heroes.
“We knew that poor Oates was walking to his death, but though we tried to dissuade him, we knew it was the act of a brave man and an English gentleman.” - Entry in Scott’s diary about Oates
On this day in 1848, a revolution broke out in Hungary, one of many in the ‘Year of Revolutions’. There had been a growing reform movement in Hungary which demanded change and provisions for those who had been most affected by the economic downturn after the Napoleonic Wars. Journalist Lajos Kossuth became leader of this movement, and pushed for democracy and civil equality in Hungary. As it stood, the Hungarian elites did not pay tax but only they had the vote - the system was in dire need of change. The Habsburg monarchs tried to suppress the movement by blocking its legislation and arresting its leaders. The full revolution began with mass demonstrations and insurrections throughout Hungary. The powers-that-be acquiesced on some demands - passing reforms and establishing a new parliament. As the imperial government of Austria tied to halt the movement, the revolution soon evolved into a war of independence. Hungary lost the war, and the Austrians retained control over the kingdom.
The Death of Eleanor of Castile, Queen of England & the Eleanor Crosses
November 28, 1290
England [was] startled by the sudden, swift loss to illness of Edward’s wife, Eleanor of Castile. Edward was distraught and in the agony of his sorrow he arranged a funeral of historic dimensions. Eleanor of Castile’s body was carried in state from Lincoln to London, and Edward planned a series of exquisite crosses, reminiscent of those used to mark Louis IX’s burial procession, to be erected along the way. The king then had his wife buried in Westminster abbey, next to the tomb of his father.
“Four Queens,” Nancy Goldstone
*Of the 12 crosses built, only these three survive, although all three are missing the large crosses that once topped them.
16 November 1272, The Death of Henry III, King of England
Henry III died on November 16, 1272. He was sixty-five years old and had reigned for fifty-six years. In that more than half-century he, in combination with his wife and her family, had tried to reinvent England as a great European power. In this attempt, he and Eleanor failed, and nearly lost everything. But there had also been achievements, most notably the establishment of a firm peace with France which would outlast his reign. For a man who possessed no real ability for leadership, whose talents lay principally in the realm of aesthetic, who loved to live lavishly but had not the funds to do so, who was by turns generous, petulant, romantic, vindictive, pious, and partisan, Henry had done his best. He was buried with “all honor,” according to an English chronicler. His body was laid in state and dressed in coronation robes; he wore his crown. His funeral was attended by all the great men of the kingdom. But for the absence of his two sons [away on crusade], it was all as Henry would have wished.
The King was buried in Westminster Abbey, which had been recently and gloriously renovated, in the tomb formerly containing the relics of Edward the Confessor. Somewhere between the wars and the oaths, the intrigues and the disappointments, Henry had found the time to express his great love of architecture in this one church; the artistic vision was his and his alone; he devoted years to its magnificent redesign. It still stands today, the great gift of the reign of a troubled king.
“Remember, remember the fifth of November…“Guy Fawkes is said to have been carrying this iron lantern when he was arrested in the cellars underneath the Houses of Parliament on the night of 4–5 November 1605. Fawkes and his conspirators planned to ignite barrels of gunpowder concealed under firewood in the cellar during the state opening of Parliament, with the aim of blowing up the chamber and killing the Protestant King James I. Thanks to an anonymous warning, the cellars were searched, Fawkes was discovered and the plot failed.
Celebrating the fact that King James I had survived the attempt on his life, people lit bonfires around London, and later the introduction of the Observance of 5th November Act enforced an annual public day of thanksgiving for the plot’s failure.
Gifted to the University by Robert Heywood in 1641, the lantern joined the Ashmolean collection over two hundred years later in 1887. Guy Fawkes’ lantern is currently on display in our Ashmolean Story gallery on our lower ground floor.
On this day in 1997, Erykah Badu dropped her debut album “Baduizm”
Badu floated on this album but “Next Lifetime”, “On & On”, “Other Side Of The Game” and “Certainly” helped Baduizm be a commercial success debuting at number two on billboard
“Having been torn from my homeland during my adolescence, I am overwhelmed by the feeling of having been cast out from the womb… . My art is the way I reestablish the bonds that unite me to the Universe. It is a return to the maternal source.”
Remembering Ana Mendieta, born on this day in 1948. Mendieta’s performative “earth-body” works probed the primeval link between woman and nature. Born in Cuba, Mendieta was separated from her family as a child, growing up in foster care in the United States. In the deeply personal, transformative actions documented in her video works, Mendieta’s body becomes a nexus of performance, conceptual art, and spiritual transcendence.
See her work on view in Masterworks from the Hirshhorn Collection: “Corazón de Roca con Sangre (Rock Heart with Blood)” (1975)
Remembering Isamu Noguchi, born on this day in 1904. “Lunar Landscape”(1943-44) is drawn from the imagination of the artist after several months in a Japanese-American internment camp, isolated in the desert during WWII. Noguchi had a lifelong preference for stone as a medium (he had worked with Constantin Brancusi in Paris in the late 1920s), but he also worked with clay and paper and was well known as a designer of landscapes, stage sets, and furniture. This sculpture is a rare surviving example of the “Lunar” series, in which Noguchi used a new material, magnesite, to create abstract biomorphic forms.
