The Zong massacre was the killing of approximately 142 enslaved
Africans by the crew of the slave ship Zong in the days following
29 November 1781. The Zong was owned by a Liverpool slave-trading
syndicate that had taken out insurance on the lives of the slaves. When
the ship ran low on water following navigational mistakes, the crew
drowned some of the slaves in the sea. The owners of the Zong made a
claim to their insurers for the loss of the slaves. When the insurers
refused to pay, the resulting court cases held that in some
circumstances the deliberate killing of slaves was legal, and that
insurers could be required to pay for the slaves' deaths. The hearings
brought the massacre to the attention of the anti-slavery campaigner
Granville Sharp, who tried unsuccessfully to have the ship's crew
prosecuted for murder. Reports of the massacre stimulated the nascent
abolitionist movement and became a powerful symbol of the horrors of the
Middle Passage of slaves to the New World. The massacre has also
inspired several works of art and literature, including The Slave Ship
by J. M. W. Turner (pictured).
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zong_massacre>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1533:
The Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer annulled
Henry VIII's marriage to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, beginning
of a chain of events that would culminate in the English Reformation.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Reformation>
1844:
Siyyid `Alí-Muhammad Shírází proclaimed that he was "the
Báb", after a Shi`a religious concept, marking the beginning of the
Bábí movement, the forerunner of the Bahá'í Faith.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A1bism>
1873:
The North West Mounted Police, the forerunner of the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police, was established to bring law and order to and
assert Canadian sovereignty over the Northwest Territories.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Canadian_Mounted_Police>
1934:
During a strike against the Electric Auto-Lite company in
Toledo, Ohio, US, a mob of nearly 10,000 began a riot and a five-day
running battle with the Ohio National Guard.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-Lite_strike>
2008:
To resolve a 29-year-old territorial dispute, the International
Court of Justice awarded Middle Rocks to Malaysia and Pedra Branca to
Singapore.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedra_Branca_dispute>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
thagomizer:
(anatomy) An arrangement of spikes found on the tails of various
stegosaurs.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/thagomizer>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
the greatest Grace we can aspire to is the strength to see the
wounded walk with the forgotten and pull ourselves from the screaming
blood of our losses to fight on undaunted all the more
--Jewel
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jewel_(singer)>