Major Mike | Today in History 05/11/17

The Prajna paramita, also called the Diamond Sutra (© Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

(868) Book printed in China

Pre-dating the Gutenberg Bible by almost six centuries, a copy of the Buddhist ‘Diamond Sutra’ is created by woodblock printing on a 16-foot-long scroll and affixed with an exact date. The work will survive to become the oldest known printed and dated text in existence.

The Diamond Sūtra is a Mahāyāna sūtra from the Prajñāpāramitā, or “Perfection of Wisdom” genre, and emphasizes the practice of non-abiding and non-attachment. The Diamond sutra is one of the most influential Mahayana sutras in East Asia, and is a key object of devotion and study in Zen Buddhism.

wiki/Diamond_Sutra

Portrait of Peter Stuyvesant (Stapleton Collection/Corbis)

(1647) Stuyvesant arrives to run North American Dutch settlement

Peter Stuyvesant, of The Dutch West India Company, arrives in the New Netherland colony to take up his position as Director-General. He will head projects that include precursors to Wall Street and Broadway before turning over the colony to the English in 1664, who then rename the colony ‘New York.’

Peter Stuyvesant served as the last Dutch director-general of the colony of New Netherland from 1647 until it was ceded provisionally to the English in 1664, after which it was renamed New York. He was a major figure in the early history of New York City and his name has been given to various landmarks and points of interest throughout the city.

Lived: 1612 – Aug 1672
Spouse: Judith Bayard (m. 1645 – 1672)
Education: University of Franeker
Children: Nicolas William Stuyvesant (Son) · Balthazar Lazarus Stuyvesant (Son)
Parents: Margaretha Hardenstein (Mother) · Balthazar Johannes Stuyvesant, ds. (Father) · Styntie (Steintje) Pieters (Mother) · Rev. Balthazar Johannes Stuyvesant (Father) · Margarethe Stuyvesant (Mother)
Previous office: Director of New Netherland (1647 – 1664)
Highlights
1645: In 1645, Stuyvesant married Judith Bayard (c. 1610–1687) of the Bayard family.

1645: A year later, in May 1645, Stuyvesant was selected by the Dutch West India Company to replace Willem Kieft as Director-General of the New Netherland colony, in present-day New York.

1647: In September 1647, he appointed an advisory council of nine men as representatives of the colonists on New Netherland.

1648: In 1648, a conflict started between him and Brant Aertzsz van Slechtenhorst, the commissary of the patroonship Rensselaerwijck, which surrounded Fort Orange (present-day Albany).

1649: In 1649, Stuyvesant marched to Fort Orange with a military escort and ordered bordering settlement houses to be razed to permit a better defense of the fort in case of an attack from the Native Americans.

1672: He died in August 1672 and his body was entombed in the east wall of St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, which sits on the site of Stuyvesant’s family chapel.

wiki/Peter_Stuyvesant

British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval (© Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

(1812) British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval assassinated

Spencer Perceval’s meteoric rise in politics ends as a lone gunman, angry over perceived governmental injustices, enters the British House of Commons lobby and kills the prime minister with a single shot to the chest. The assassin, John Bellingham, will be hanged a week later.

Spencer Perceval, KC, PC was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 4 October 1809 until his death on 11 May 1812. He is the only British prime minister to have been assassinated. He is also the only solicitor general or attorney general to have been prime minister, and the only prime minister until recent years whose entire lifetime was spent in the reign of the sovereign under which he held office, George III.

Lived: Nov 01, 1762 – May 11, 1812 (age 49)
Romance: Jane Perceval
Children: John Thomas Perceval (Son) · Spencer Perceval (Son)
Successor: Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool (Prime Minister)
Party: Tories
Previous offices: Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1809 – 1812) · Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (1809 – 1812) · First Lord of the Treasury (1809 – 1812) · Leader of the House of Commons (1809 – 1812) · Chancellor of the Exchequer (1807 – 1812) · Chancellor of the Exchequer (1807 – 1812) · Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (1807 – 1812) · Attorney General for England and Wales
Highlights
1782: After five years at Harrow he followed his older brother Charles to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he won the declamation prize in English and graduated in 1782.

1783: Perceval’s mother had died in 1783, and Perceval and his brother Charles, now Lord Arden, rented a house in Charlton, where they fell in love with two sisters who were living in the Percevals’ old childhood home.

1790: When Jane reached 21, in 1790, Perceval’s career was still not prospering, and Sir Thomas still opposed the marriage, so the couple eloped and married by special licence in East Grinstead.

1796: He studied law at Lincoln’s Inn, practised as a barrister on the Midland circuit and in 1796 became a King’s Counsel before entering politics at the age of 33 as a Member of Parliament for Northampton.

1801: He was appointed solicitor general in 1801 and attorney general the following year.

1804: He kept the position of attorney general when Addington resigned and Pitt formed his second ministry in 1804.

wiki/Spencer_Perceval

'Cats' marquee over New York's Winter Garden theater in 2000. (© Mitsu Yasukawa/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)

(1981) ‘Cats’ begins its memorable run

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical debuts in London, where it will run for 8,949 performances over 21 years. The following year it will open in New York, where it will win seven Tony Awards and become the longest-running Broadway show until 2006, when its record will be broken.

Cats is a musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot, and produced by Cameron Mackintosh. The musical tells the story of a tribe of cats called the Jellicles and the night they make what is known as “the Jellicle choice” and decide which cat will ascend to the Heaviside Layer and come back to a new life. Cats introduced the song standard “Memory”. The first performance of Cats was in 1981.