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)
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