A Little Bit of History on Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine’s Day, to all of you.  Here’s a little bit to ponder while you’re having breakfast or walking the cat. Etiam beatus Lupercalia.

During the reign of Roman emperor Claudius II, a/k/a Claudius the Cruel, Claudius was having some difficulty persuading people to join the Roman Army, probably because they were more interested in staying with their families than going off to some foreign country and fighting barbarians. Does that sound familiar?  To handle the problem, Claudius banned all marriages and engagements in Rome. St.Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret.

When Valentine’s actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death. Valentine was arrested and dragged before the Prefect of Rome, who condemned him to be beaten to death with clubs and to have his head cut off. The sentence was carried out on February 14, on or about the year 270.

Legend also has it that while in jail, St. Valentine left a farewell note for the jailer’s daughter, who had become his friend, and signed it “From Your Valentine.” After his death, he was declared a saint.

The history is that there were three men named Valentine. One was a priest in Rome, the second one was a bishop of Interamna (now Terni, Italy) and the third St. Valentine was a martyr in the Roman province of Africa. All three men were martyred, according to the Catholic Encyclopaedia.  Valentine’s Day was associated with the pagan festival of Lupercalia, a bawdy Roman date night indeed, but since the Church of Rome detested everything pagan, the ‘festival’ was incorporated into its martyrs’ days as Valentine’s Day.

That’s the legend. Here are some other things that have happened on Valentine’s Day.

Feb. 14, 1779,  A Patriot militia force of 340 led by Colonel Andrew Pickens of South Carolina with Colonel John Dooly and Lieutenant Colonel Elijah Clarke of Georgia defeats a larger force of 700 Loyalist militia commanded by Colonel James Boyd at Kettle Creek, Georgia. I believe there’s a tourist attraction near Pensacola, FL, named after COL Pickens.

Feb. 14, 1779.  Captain James Cook, the great English explorer and navigator, is murdered by natives of Hawaii during his third visit to the Pacific island group. In 1768, Cook, a surveyor in the Royal Navy, was commissioned a lieutenant in command of the HMS Endeavor.

Feb. 14, 1864, Union General William T. Sherman enters Meridian, Mississippi, during a winter campaign that served as a precursor to Sherman’s March to the Sea campaign in Georgia. This often-overlooked Mississippi campaign was the first attempt by the Union at total warfare, not just a military strike but also aimed at breaking the will of the South.

Feb. 14, 1929. Sir Alexander Fleming was a young bacteriologist when an accidental discovery led to one of the great developments of modern medicine on this day in 1929. Having left a plate of staphylococcus bacteria uncovered, Fleming noticed that a mold that had fallen on the culture had killed many of the bacteria. He identified the mold as penicillium notatum, similar to the kind found on bread.

Feb. 14, 1929. Four men dressed as police officers enter gangster Bugs Moran’s headquarters, a garage on North Clark Street in Chicago, line seven of Moran’s henchmen against a wall, and shoot them to death. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, as it is now called, was the culmination of a gang war between arch rivals Al Capone and Bugs Moran. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre was the response by Capone to a $50,000 bounty placed on his head by Bugs Moran. A movie based on that event was filmed some years later. “Some Like It Hot” starred Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in drag, and Marilyn Monroe as Sugar Kane, a singer in an all-girl band.  If you haven’t seen that movie, do so. It’s one of Buster Keaton’s last movies, too.  When Jack Lemmon tells him ‘I’m a man,’ and pulls off his wig, Keaton’s response was ‘Nobody’s perfect.’

Feb. 14, 1943. German General Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps launch an offensive against an Allied defensive line in Tunisia, North Africa. The Kasserine Pass was the site of the United States’ first major battle defeat of the war.

GEN Rommel was dispatched to North Africa in February 1942, along with the new Afrika Korps, to prevent his Italian Axis partner from losing its territorial gains in the region to the British. Despite his skill, until this point Rommel had been unable to do much more than manage his own forces’ retreats, but the Battle of Kasserine Pass would finally display the “Desert Fox’s” strategic genius.

Feb. 14, 1962. President John F. Kennedy authorizes U.S. military advisers in Vietnam to return fire if fired upon. At a news conference, he said, “The training missions we have [in South Vietnam] have been instructed that if they are fired upon, they are of course to fire back, but we have not sent combat troops in [the] generally understood sense of the word.” In effect, Pres. Kennedy was acknowledging that U.S. forces were involved in the fighting, but he wished to downplay any appearance of increased American involvement in the war. The next day former Vice President Richard Nixon expressed hopes that President Kennedy would “step up the build-up and under no circumstances curtail it because of possible criticism.”  Yes, THAT Nixon.

Happy Valentine’s Day.  Movies recommended include Shakespeare in Love, Some Like It Hot, And Walt Disney’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’.

Thanks to History dot com for the general info.

Category: Geezer Alert!