Most of you know that seven is my favorite number. I am the seventh child of seven. It is a good number.
But for old times sake, let’s play it again, Sam.
Seven days in the week, seven wonders of the world, the Seven Seas, seven deadly sins, and seven virtues, seventh heaven, and seven dwarfs. Never to forget that musically, there are seven notes in a traditional major or minor scale. Oh, and the Seven Samurai, the Seven Sisters, the Seven Hills of Rome, and the Seven Chakras.
I could go on, but that isn’t what I started out writing about. I truly dislike it when I digress, before I even get started. There’s gotten to be some kind of Syndrome for that. Which of course, I am painfully afflicted. (Digressing again. Dang it!)
Okay. I want to write about April 7th. Since the number is my favorite, and April may be my favorite month of the year, I thought I’d jump around in history….. on this very date. Four Seven.
Most notably, at least for the Christian readers, is this: Many scholars have asserted that Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem, by Roman Troops, on April 7th. In the year 30.
Jump ahead a couple of thousand. This is also the Internet’s symbolic birth date…. with the publication of RFC 1.
Coincidental? Maybe.
Here’s a good one too. In 1926….that mean old Italian Dictator, named Benito Mussolini is shot 3 times by Violet Gibson in Rome. Not the best shot. She only hit him in the nose. Twice. You see, he was in a car … in a parade-like-deal. She ran up to the car, and popped him. They bandaged up his minor wounds, and he continued in the parade. Violet, was shipped back to England, where she spent the rest of her life in an Insane Asylum.
But get this. Seventeen years later… in 1943…. Adolf Hitler & Benito Mussolini met for an Axis conference in Salzburg. The old Axis of Evil begins. Now…. I think they should have shipped Violet off to Shooting School, and given her another go of it.
Other good, and bad things from April 7th.
In 134,8 Prague University, became the very first university in central Europe. It was formed by Charles IV. It would have been better if it were Charles the VII.
Another first. In 1788… the first settlement in my home state of Ohio…. was founded. It is Marietta. (That would be a good name for a chicken, don’t you think?)
Twenty years after that…. on April 7, 1798…. the Mississippi Territory was organized. I guess it was a complete mess prior to that… totally disorganized. But in 1798…. it became organized.
Now here is a good one, for anyone who ever tried to light a cigarette, or a cannon in the rain. In 1827, the English chemist John Walker, invented wooden matches. Do you think he is the Scotch-on-the-rocks Johnny Walker?
Maybe somebody in Italy used wooden matches to light a fuse. Because in 1906….. Mount Vesuvius erupted and it completely devastated Naples. Okay. Maybe volcanoes don’t need wooden matches.
Speaking of eruptions, and explosions. In 1966….. uhhhhhnnnnn…. wellllllll … the US recovers a lost H-Bomb from Mediterranean floor. How do you misplace an H-Bomb is what I want to know.
Finally… back to Jesus. In 1978…. the Guttenberg bible sold for $2,000,000 in NYC. My guess is that it reads the same as any other bible. But moveable type and all… fetches the high price.
And speaking of the bible. You can add this one to the Creation Museum. In 1983, the oldest human skeleton….. which was aged 80,000 years…… was discovered in Egypt.
Very near one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Great Pyramids. It would have been even cooler if it had been found near the great Heptagons or Septagons of Egypt.
But we can’t have everything on such a busy day as this.
There is no wealth like knowledge, and no poverty like ignorance. — Buddha
It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world. — Aristotle