History Fun Facts September 12th

HISTORY FUN FACTS for SEPTEMBER 12th

On This Day In History in 1642, Henri Coiffier de Ruze, the Marquis de Cinq-Mars (you get extra points if you tried to pronounce all that correctly), died after he discovered a problem with his neck.

 

After a close inspection, Henri found his neck no longer had a head on it. This resulted in almost instant death. The Marquis de Cinq-Mars was heard to shout, as his head sat plonked on the floor staring at his neck from a few feet away, "Where the friggin hell is my head?"

 

He then realised what had happened and whispered, "This is going to take some serious conspiring to put right."

 

Which gets us to the reason he found his head detached from his body. Henri was one of many at the time who were conspiring against the infamous Cardinal Richelieu (the one the three Musketeers hated).

 

Henri's father was a very close friend of Cardinal Richelieu and after his father's death Henri was brought into the inner circle under the protection of Richelieu.

 

Richelieu thought Henri would be easily controlled and set him up with a blind date - the King of France. The cardinal's plan was to exercise control of the king through his special relationship with Henri.

 

However, Henri, Marquis Cinq-Mars, instead got the King to grant special favours to him. And he was almost so close it hurt to getting the King to execute Richelieu, which would have left D'Artagnan with time on his hands.

 

With all things considered, it's a surprise Henri didn't end up with a knife in his back. He kept winding the cardinal up something bad. A dig here, a barb there, and so many whispered insults they can't be counted.

 

Henri was then part of a failed coup, which royally peeved Richelieu, and the cardinal would get it. By coincidence, Henri had a nasty trip down a flight of stairs, which was just a coincidence. Henri was, after all, a very clumsy bloke.

 

Luckily he survived the fall. Talking of coincidences: Henri also survived a stampede of horses, a canon being fired in his direction, and a piano falling off the twentieth floor of a skyscraper. And also seventeen accidentally fired arrows, a barrel full of snakes being rolled into his bedroom, a bear hiding in his wardrobe, and a hedgehog in his pants.

 

The following year the straw that broke backed the mountain came when Richelieu caught Henri and the King's brother, Gaston in bed together ... in a conspiracy of elephant proportions. Something about secret web-cams and a rebellion involving Philip IV, the king of Spain.

 

Richelieu had Henri imprisoned, tortured, by way of listening to Justin Bieber for 24 hours a day, and then finally beheaded in the Place des Terreaux.

 

Even though the King's best friend had just been executed, the King didn't seem perplexed. He is rumoured to have shown no emotions and merely whispered, "Je voudrais bien voir la grimace qu'il fait à cette heure sur cet échafaud."

 

Which translates as, "I would like to see the grimace he is now making on this scaffold."

 

Quick History Facts:

In 490 BC The Athenians and their Plataean allies defeated the Persian invasion of Greece at the Battle of Marathon.

 

Sheesh, imagine if they had won. They would have changed the chocolate bar's name to something stupid.

 

In 372, Jin Ziaowudi, at the tender age of 10-years-old, became Emperor of the Eastern Jin dynasty after the death of his father, Jin Jianwendi.

 

In 1185, Emperor Andronikos Komnenos was brutally put to death in the Constantinople.

 

In 1609, Henry Hudson began his expedition up the Hudson River in an attempt to find a passage across America. He didn't find one. But, cheer up, he did find Albany instead. Yay!

 

In 1919, Adolf Hitler, the guy who ruined the Charlie Chaplin moustache, joined the German Workers' Party, which was later rebranded as the Nazi Party.

 

In 1953, the US Senator, and Future assassinated President, John F. Kennedy, married Jacqueline Lee Bouvier at St Mary's Church, Newport, Rhode Island.

 

In 1962, no longer a Senator, and now a President, per-assassination, John F. Kennedy, gave his promise in a speech that the United States of America will put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. And they did. In 1969.

 

Unless you believe "those" people, who think it was all an elaborate trick and the whole thing was staged somewhere in the backroom of a brothel in Maine.