NOT EVERYONE KNOWS THIS…

By John Chaput

John Chaput, born and raised in Montreal, eventually morphed into a Westerner. A retired writer and editor, he occupies much of his time as president of Regina Little Theatre.

MARCH 18, 1662

The world’s first bus service begins in Paris. In a project conducted – so to speak – by mathematician, philosopher, inventor and all-around smarty-pants Blaise Pascal, a network of regularly-scheduled carriages carrying up to eight passengers follow routes through the city. Pascal had conceived the idea, secured financing from friendly nobles and obtained permission from King Louis XIV to run the operation as a monopoly. Not everyone knows this, but although the service was enthusiastically received at first, the usage of the carosses à cinq sous (five-cent carriages) would gradually diminish and be discontinued by 1675 for a simple reason: the upper classes could ride them but not peasants and soldiers. In other words, they were available only to people who could afford their own horses or carriages anyway, and not to those who were most likely to use them. The concept of urban public transportation wouldn’t be revived until the 19th century in France, England and the United States.

MARCH 13, 1781

William Herschel, an accomplished German-English musician and astronomer, is continuing his years-long search and study of double stars (stars that appear to be close together as viewed from Earth) when he spots a disk-like celestial object that he initially believes to be a comet. Sharing his finding and data with other astronomers, it is soon determined that Herschel has actually become the first person to discover a planet. (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn had always been visible to the naked eye.) Naming the solar system’s seventh planet does not come so readily, however. Herschel wants to call it Georgium Sidis after English King George III, whose sanity would soon enter an even more remote orbit. Colleagues suggest “Herschel,” but eventually it is named after the mythological god Uranus, grandfather of Jupiter and father of Saturn. Not everyone knows this, but making jokes about the name (there’s a ring around Uranus, there’s a dark spot on Uranus, Uranus is a gas giant) is obvious, not clever. Cut it out.

MARCH 22, 1941

More than seven months before Pearl Harbor brings the United States into the Second World War, James Stewart is inducted into the Army Air Force on his second try. Not everyone knows this, but Stewart had tried to enlist in 1940, the same year he had performed in The Philadelphia Story and won the Academy Award for best performance by an actor. At 138 pounds, he was five pounds under the minimum requirement for a man standing 6-foot-3, so he spent the ensuing months packing on weight. Remaining under contract to MGM but on hiatus from acting, Stewart would fly 20 combat missions as a bomber pilot before war’s end and be gradually promoted from private to colonel, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Croix de Guerre among other honours. Deeply affected by witnessing so much death among friend and foe, he rarely spoke about his combat experience, but would remain in the Air Force Reserve and rise to the rank of brigadier general. How-how-how about that?

MARCH 31, 1949

Newfoundland officially joins the Dominion of Canada and becomes the country’s 10th province. After several years of debate as to whether Newfoundland should enter Canada, become an independent country, or form an association with the United States, a 1948 runoff referendum goes for the Canadian option by a margin of 52.3 to 47.7 per cent. (The first referendum had independent responsible government ahead of Canadian provincehood by 44.6 to 41.1.) Not everyone knows this – well, actually, most Canadians have caught on by now – but Newfoundlanders have been screwing with our heads ever since becoming one of us. The offby-a-half-hour time zone, that flag (what is going on there?), its domination of the CBC show This Hour Has 22 Minutes (which, with that time zone, suggests the show ends eight minutes before it starts), and the official addition to its name of “and Labrador,” which was done just to make Canadians stutter (“Newfoundland-and Labrador”) ... no wonder the Vikings cleared out.

MARCH 18, 1965

Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov executes the first “spacewalk.” Not everyone knows this (because the Soviet Union suppressed the details for years), but Leonov’s Vokshod 2 mission was every bit as harrowing and dangerous as Apollo 13’s flight five years later. His 12-minute excursion nearly ended in catastrophe when his spacesuit expanded due to the difference in air pressure between the capsule and the void of space. The suit ballooned so much that Leonov couldn’t get back into his ship. He opened a valve to deflate the suit, but had to hurry inside just before the resultant drop in pressure would have made him pass out and die. Just as a bonus, Vokshod 2 had a systems malfunction upon re-entry that caused it to go into a spin and miss the landing target by 2,000 kilometres. Leonov and shipmate Pavel Belyayev landed in the Ural mountains in snow two metres deep and spent two days shivering in their capsule before they were rescued.

MARCH 29. 1974

A squad of farmers in the Lintong district of Shaanzi, China, are on the fifth day of a well-digging project about 1 1/2 kilometres east of the burial mound of Qin Zhi Huang, the first emperor of China. Work comes to a halt when one of the men unearths a terra cotta statue of an ancient soldier. Word of the discovery gradually spreads to local authorities, journalists, and finally to the central Chinese government, which in July dispatches an archeological team to the site. It turns out that, buried beneath five metres and more than 2,200 years of soil buildup, is a virtual army of life-size terra cotta figurines including more than 8,000 soldiers and nearly 700 horses standing guard over Emperor Qin’s tomb. Not everyone knows this, but the soldiers are huddled in fairly tight formation, leading to recent concerns that the lack of social distancing might decimate their ranks – unless, of course, they’ve already been vaccinated.