February 5 in History

An earthquake hit Pompeii seventeen years before Vesuvius buried it. The tremors knocked down temples, cracked aqueducts, and collapsed the forum. Intensity IX to X on the Mercalli scale — buildings destroyed, ground cracked open, panic everywhere. The city was still rebuilding when the volcano erupted in 79 AD. Some historians think the quake was the first warning. The Romans didn't connect earthquakes to volcanoes. They rebuilt right where they were.

An Lushan commanded 164,000 troops — nearly half the Tang Dynasty's entire army. The emperor had given him that power. Trusted him completely. An Lushan was a foreign general who'd risen through charm and military skill, becoming one of the emperor's favorites. Then in 755, he marched those troops south toward the capital. By January 756, he declared himself emperor of a new state: Yan. The rebellion would kill 36 million people — roughly one-sixth of the world's population at the time. The Tang Dynasty survived, but it never recovered its strength. China fractured. The emperor who'd trusted An Lushan fled his own capital and never saw it again.

Henry of Navarre walked into a Catholic church in Tours and walked out Protestant again. Fourth time he'd switched religions. He'd been raised Protestant, forced Catholic after the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, kept Catholic to stay alive at the French court, and now — back. The Catholic nobles holding him hostage had finally loosened their grip. He rejoined the Huguenot forces the same day. Twenty years later, he'd switch one more time to become King of France. "Paris is worth a Mass," he'd say. The man who couldn't pick a church united a country that had been tearing itself apart over exactly that question.

Twenty-six Christians were crucified in Nagasaki on February 5, 1597. Six Franciscan missionaries and twenty Japanese converts. Toyotomi Hideyoshi had them marched 600 miles from Kyoto with their ears cut off. He'd welcomed missionaries at first — wanted trade with Spain and Portugal. Then he realized Christianity taught loyalty to God above the shogun. The converts sang hymns as they died. Japan sealed itself off from the West for the next 250 years.

Alexander John Cuza became ruler of both Wallachia and Moldavia on January 24, 1859. Two separate assemblies, meeting in two separate capitals, elected the same man on purpose. The Ottomans had forbidden unification. So the Romanians didn't unite the territories. They just happened to pick the same prince for both. Constantinople couldn't argue with two legal elections. Within seven years, Cuza merged the administrations, created a single capital at Bucharest, and abolished feudalism. The Ottomans watched their empire shrink by technicality. Romania exists because of the best loophole in diplomatic history.

Two miners were walking to work in Moliagul, Victoria. Their cart wheel hit something. They dug it up with their hands. 72 kilograms of gold. Pure alluvial gold, shaped like a flattened potato, too big for the town's scales. They had to break it into three pieces just to weigh it. Worth about $10 million today, but they sold it immediately to the Bank of Victoria. The bank melted it down within days. No photographs exist. The second-largest nugget ever found, the "Welcome," came from the same area two years earlier. After the Welcome Stranger, prospectors tore apart every creek bed in Victoria. Nobody found anything close.

The United States and Britain signed the first Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, granting America the right to build and operate a canal across Central America while requiring it to remain unfortified and open to all nations. The agreement superseded the fifty-year-old Clayton-Bulwer Treaty that had blocked unilateral American construction. A revised version the following year removed the neutralization clause, clearing the final diplomatic obstacle to building the Panama Canal.

J. P. Morgan paid $480 million for Andrew Carnegie's steel company. Carnegie wanted the check made out to him personally. Morgan handed him the largest personal check ever written. Carnegie later said he should have asked for $100 million more. Morgan probably would have paid it. The deal created U.S. Steel — the first billion-dollar corporation in history. It controlled 67% of American steel production. One company. Two-thirds of the market. Carnegie retired at 65 and spent the rest of his life giving the money away. He built 2,509 libraries. Morgan kept building. What Carnegie saw as an exit, Morgan saw as a beginning.

Baekeland was trying to make a better shellac. Shellac came from beetles — literally, the secretions of lac bugs in India. It took 15,000 beetles six months to make a pound of it. He mixed phenol and formaldehyde instead, expecting a sticky mess. What he got wouldn't melt, wouldn't dissolve, and could be molded into any shape. He called it Bakelite. Within five years it was in telephones, radios, jewelry, engine parts. The first material that didn't exist in nature. Everything plastic in your house traces back to a chemist who was just tired of waiting on beetles.

Baekeland mixed formaldehyde and phenol under heat and pressure, expecting another failed experiment. Instead he got a material that wouldn't burn, melt, or dissolve in any common solvent. He called it Bakelite. Within two years it was in telephones, radios, electrical insulators, jewelry, kitchenware, engine parts. The first fully synthetic plastic — meaning it didn't exist anywhere in nature until a chemist in Yonkers made it in 1907. He announced it publicly in 1909. Everything plastic you've ever touched descends from that batch. We now produce 400 million tons of plastic annually. Baekeland thought he'd invented a better insulator for wires.