February 8 in History

The Seventh Crusade failed because Louis IX of France couldn't resist a tactical opportunity. His brother Robert charged the Egyptian camp at Al Mansurah without waiting for the main army. The Mamluks let them in, then closed the gates. They slaughtered nearly every knight in the narrow streets. Louis lost his vanguard in a single morning. Two months later, he'd lose his entire army. And his freedom. The Egyptians captured a king because his brother couldn't wait three hours.

The Byzantine civil war ended when both sides ran out of money to pay their armies. John VI Kantakouzenos had hired Turkish mercenaries. John V Palaiologos had hired Serbs. Neither could afford them anymore. So they agreed to split the empire. Kantakouzenos would rule for ten years, then hand power to Palaiologos, who was technically still a teenager. They'd be co-emperors. The Turks Kantakouzenos brought in never left. They'd seen how weak Byzantium was. They started settling in Europe. Within a century, they'd conquer Constantinople itself. The civil war didn't end the empire, but the peace deal made the conquest inevitable.

William and Mary College got its charter in 1693 because a Virginia priest spent six years lobbying the English court. James Blair convinced the monarchs that Virginia planters' sons were "coarse" without proper education. The college was England's second in America, 57 years after Harvard. It taught surveying alongside Latin. George Washington never went to college, but he got his surveyor's license there at seventeen. Thomas Jefferson did attend. So did five other signers of the Declaration of Independence.

William & Mary got its charter in 1693 because a Virginia priest named James Blair spent six years lobbying the English crown. He promised the college would "civilize the natives" and train Anglican ministers. The king's attorney general opposed it. "Souls?" he said. "Damn your souls. Make tobacco." Blair went over his head. The college opened with one building, six students, and a president who also ran the local parish. It's still operating. Thomas Jefferson studied there. So did three other presidents. The attorney general was right about one thing: Virginia kept making tobacco.

Napoleon won at Eylau, but barely. He lost 25,000 men in a single day — more than Austerlitz and Jena combined. The snow was so thick soldiers couldn't see 20 paces. They bayoneted their own men by accident. One cavalry charge saved the French center: 10,000 horsemen straight through Russian lines. Murat led it himself. The Russians retreated, technically making it a French victory. Napoleon never mentioned Eylau in his memoirs.

Las Heras moved 3,200 men and 1,600 horses over 13,000-foot passes in January. Summer in the Southern Hemisphere, but still brutal. They took a different route than San Martín had used the year before — Spanish forces were watching the main crossings now. The column stretched for miles. Altitude sickness killed more soldiers than combat would. They reached the Chilean side in 22 days. San Martín was waiting with the rest of the Army of the Andes. Together they'd finish what Valparaíso started. Spain had controlled Chile for 277 years. It had eight months left.

Richard Johnson became Vice President because the Senate picked him. Not the electors. He'd won the popular vote but fallen one electoral vote short of the majority required. The Senate had never done this before. They chose him anyway. Johnson had killed Tecumseh in battle, or so he claimed. He also lived openly with an enslaved woman named Julia Chinn, which scandalized Washington. He called her his wife. The Senate still voted him in. He's the only VP ever selected this way.

Delaware voted against abolishing slavery on February 8, 1865. The war was ending. Lincoln would be dead in two months. Every other Union state had ratified the Thirteenth Amendment. Delaware had fewer than 2,000 enslaved people left — less than 2% of the population. They voted no anyway. Kept it legal for 36 more years on paper, though the amendment passed without them. Sometimes a state chooses to be on the wrong side even when it costs them nothing to switch.

Delaware voted no. February 8, 1865. The Thirteenth Amendment needed three-quarters of states to pass. Delaware wasn't required — enough other states ratified it by December. But the refusal wasn't symbolic protest. State legislators argued it violated property rights and would destabilize their economy. Delaware had fewer than 2,000 enslaved people left by then, down from 9,000 in 1790. Most had been sold south before the war. The state stayed loyal to the Union but never freed anyone. Thirty-six years later, on Lincoln's birthday, they finally ratified. Not because minds changed. Because everyone who'd voted no was dead.

Sandford Fleming missed a train in Ireland because the schedule said "5:35" but didn't specify morning or afternoon. He was a railroad engineer. He knew chaos when he saw it. So in 1879, he proposed dividing the world into 24 time zones, each exactly one hour apart. Before this, every city set its own clocks by the sun. Chicago was 11 minutes behind Detroit. Pittsburgh had six different times depending on which railroad you used. Fleming's system took five years to adopt. Now three billion people coordinate their lives by it daily.