MLK

Martin Luther King Jr. was born on this day in 1929, in Atlanta. A soft-spoken man, conservatively-dressed in suit and tie, a Baptist minister, a believer in common ground and non-violence, King still managed to upset a lot of people. White people accustomed to the Jim Crow traditions of the South felt threatened by him. Even so, his protests were more like walks than marches. They sang hymns.

Martin preached the part in the Bible about turning the other cheek, about answering violence with gentle but firm persistence, even when the police got out the fire department's water cannons. He didn't believe in giving in though. Gentle firm persistence was met with more violence. J. Edgar Hoover set the FBI onto him to destroy his reputation. King was eventually murdered like others in the civil rights movement had been.

He came to national attention in 1955 after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery Alabama bus. King led the bus boycott that followed. He was 26. In 1963 he delivered his famous "I have a dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, and died in 1968 at the age of 39. Martin Luther King Jr. appears four times in A Book of Ages.

Guy Fawkes

Today is Guy Fawkes Day, celebrated in England with bonfires and with stuffed effigies that children use to extort money and sweets.

On November 5th 1605 Guy Fawkes was caught leaving a rented cellar adjacent to the Houses of Parliament where a subsequent search discovered 36 barrels of gunpowder, enough explosives to break all the windows within a kilometer's radius and exterminate the Mother of Parliaments and King James I during the State Opening scheduled for that day. The Catholic conspirators also planned to kidnap the royal children. They expected a popular uprising to follow that would restore the kingdom to the Catholic faith. If they had succeeded the King James Bible would, like the breed of spaniels, have been named after James's son Charles instead. Unless, of course, the kidnapping had succeeded as well; in that event, who knows. History is a mare's nest of causes and effects.

James I appears once in A Book of Ages. Charles I also appears once. Fawkes doesn't appear at all, but does feature prominently in the film "V for Vendetta." Some consider Guy Fawkes the patron saint of anarchists and pyromaniacs. What the anarchists couldn't achieve, Parliament achieved, at least partly, by legal means, when they beheaded Charles I in 1649.

Da Vinci & Lincoln

Today is the birthday of Leonardo Da Vinci, who was born in 1452 in the town of Vinci, hence the name. He was the quintessential Renaissance Man, doing a multitude of things and all of them well. At age 50 he was employed by the Borgias as a military engineer––a defense contractor, if you will; a year later he painted his serene masterpiece la Gioconda, better known today as the Mona Lisa. In difficult times it's good to be versatile. Da Vinci appears on pages 31, 190, 195 and 240 in A Book of Ages.

Abraham Lincoln was felled by an assassin's bullet on April 15, 1865. It's a story repeated often in history: the hero who isn't alive to enjoy the fruits of victory. Martin Luther King Jr., FDR, Bobby Kennedy, Admiral Horatio Nelson, Moses.

The eerie coincidences between the deaths of Lincoln and JFK have become folklore: Lincoln's assassin did the deed in a theater and was captured in a warehouse; Kennedy's assassin fired from a warehouse and was captured in a theater; Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy, Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln; both were succeeded by V.P.s named Johnson; etc. Famous stories are full of ironic details.

Writing about Lincoln's death in A Book of Ages I chose to describe the contents of his pockets, which, ironically enough, included a Confederate five dollar bill. Lincoln stories are told on pages 40, 49, 73, 135, 162-3, 189, 195, 199 and 210.