October 14 in History

An RAF Avro Vulcan bomber exploded and plunged into the Maltese town of Zabbar after an aborted landing approach, killing all five crew members and one civilian on the ground. The crash of the nuclear-capable Cold War bomber prompted urgent reviews of flight safety procedures at Mediterranean military airfields.

Pope Callixtus I was thrown down a well by a mob in Trastevere. He'd been pope for five years and had enemies — he'd allowed Christians who'd committed adultery or murder to be readmitted to the church after penance. Rigorists thought this was heresy. The mob threw stones, then dragged him through the streets and dumped him in a well. He's venerated as a martyr. The well became a shrine.

Radu cel Frumos — Radu the Handsome — issued a writ from Bucharest in 1465. It's the first official document mentioning Bucharest as a residence of a Wallachian ruler. Radu was Vlad the Impaler's younger brother. The Ottomans backed Radu, Vlad's enemies backed Vlad. Radu won. He ruled for nine years. Bucharest was a minor fortress town then. It became the capital a century later.

October 5th was Thursday. October 15th was Friday. The ten days between didn't happen. Pope Gregory XIII's calendar reform deleted them to realign Easter with the spring equinox. People went to bed Thursday night and woke up Friday morning. Rents and wages were prorated. Nothing was lost but numbers. Protestant countries refused the change for 170 years, preferring astronomical error to papal authority.

Massachusetts made it illegal to be a Quaker. The fine was £100. Repeat offenders had their ears cut off. Quakers kept coming anyway. They believed in direct communion with God, no clergy needed. This terrified Puritan ministers whose authority rested on being God's interpreters. Four Quakers were hanged on Boston Common before the law was repealed. The Puritans had fled England to escape religious persecution.

The General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony bans Quakers from entering the colony and orders their immediate execution if they return. This harsh decree sparked a wave of executions that drew international condemnation and ultimately forced the Crown to revoke the colony's charter, ending its religious tyranny.

Poland created the world's first ministry of education, the Komisja Edukacji Narodowej. The country had just lost a third of its territory in the First Partition and was desperate to survive. The commission standardized curriculum, trained teachers, and opened schools to peasants. It lasted 21 years. Then Poland was partitioned again and erased from the map for 123 years. The schools outlasted the country.

The Commission of National Education was the world's first ministry of education. Poland created it in 1773, the same year Austria, Prussia, and Russia carved off pieces of Polish territory in the First Partition. The commission reformed schools, trained teachers, published textbooks, and made education secular. It lasted twenty years. Russia, Prussia, and Austria erased Poland from the map in 1795. The schools closed. The textbooks were burned.