At 2.25 this morning in 1940, during the London Blitz, an 800-pound bomb landed on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral, buried itself 8 metres (26 feet) in the ground, and failed to explode. A team of Royal Engineers were not able to defuse the bomb, which led to a hair-raising, three day operation. The bomb was delicately dug out and raised to the surface, then quietly driven through the streets of London to Hackney Marshes, and there exploded, leaving a gigantic, 30 metre crater. When it was realised that the bomb would have destroyed the cathedral, the men who risked their lives were hailed as ‘the bomb squad which saved St Paul’s’. The image above shows damage to the north transept of the cathedral in 1941.
Today in 1891, Pope Leo XIII issued the encyclical Pastoralis Officii (‘Pastoral duty’), addressing the problem of duelling in the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires. He was against it.
‘There can be no obscurity or doubt in anyone’s mind that those who engage in battle privately and singly take upon themselves a double guilt, that of another’s destruction and the deliberate risk of their own lives.’ Pastoralis Officii, 1891
Haile Selassie, ruler of Ethiopia, oldest kingdom in the world, was deposed by a republican coup today in 1974. He was imprisoned in the Grand Palace, while his family were sent to the Addis Ababa prison known popularly as Alem Bekagne (‘I’ve had enough of this world’). Selassie traced his family tree back to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and the monarchy itself went back 18 centuries. His replacement lasted three years.
The American singer and songwriter Johnny Cash, ‘the Man in Black’, died today in 2003. A mesmerising performer with a powerful bass-baritone voice, Cash held audiences spellbound from the 1950s to the 2000s, with songs of love, pain, loss and redemption. Deeply flawed and deeply Christian, Cash died just four months after his wife, June Carter, recording songs until the end.
There’s a man goin’ ’round takin’ names.
An’ he decides who to free and who to blame.
Everybody won’t be treated all the same.
There’ll be a golden ladder reaching down.
When the man comes around.
Johnny Cash, ‘The Man Comes Around’
Ian Paisley, the Northern Ireland Protestant minister and loyalist politician, died today in 2014. A black and white contrarian in religion and politics alike, he was famous for his fiery denunciations of the Pope, modern Bible translations, the EU, ecumenism, the Irish Republic, Jesus Christ Superstar, homosexuality, Jesuits, and the Good Friday Agreement. Frequently faced with reporters asking tough questions, Paisley would sometimes retaliate by suggesting they might not be 100 per cent sober, asking, ‘Let me smell your breath’.
Image: IWM