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This day in history: The Diet of Worms began on this day in 1521. The Diet [pronounced Dee-it] of Worms of 1521 was an imperial diet (a formal deliberative assembly) of the Holy Roman Empire called by Emperor Charles V and conducted in the Imperial Free City of Worms. Martin Luther was summoned to the Diet in order to renounce or reaffirm his views in response to a Papal bull of Pope Leo X. In answer to questioning, he defended these views and refused to recant them.
In June of the previous year, 1520, Pope Leo X issued the Papal bull Exsurge Domine ("Arise, O Lord"), outlining forty-one purported errors found in Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses and other writings related to or written by him. Luther was summoned by the emperor. Prince Frederick III, Elector of Saxony obtained an agreement that if Luther appeared he would be promised safe passage to and from the meeting. This guarantee was essential after the treatment of Jan Hus, who was tried and executed at the Council of Constance in 1415 despite a promise of safe conduct.
"A great Diet of the empire was convened at Worms, and thither Luther was summoned by the temporal power. He had a safe-conduct, which even so powerful a prince as Charles V. durst not violate. In April, 1521, the reformer appeared before the collected dignitaries of the German empire, both spiritual and temporal, and was called upon to recant his opinions as heretical in the eyes of the church, and dangerous to the peace of the empire. Before the most august assembly in the world, without a trace of embarrassment, he made his defence, and refused to recant. 'Unless,' said he, 'my errors can be demonstrated by texts from Scripture, I will not and cannot recant; for it is not safe for a man to go against his conscience. Here I am. I can do no otherwise. God help me! Amen.'
This declaration satisfied his friends, though it did not satisfy the members of the diet. Luther was permitted to retire. He had gained the confidence of the nation. From that time, he was its idol, and the acknowledged leader of the greatest insurrection of human intelligence which modern times have seen. The great principles of the reformation were declared. The great hero of the Beformution had planted his cause upon a rock. And yet his labors had but just commenced. Henceforth, his life was toil and vexation. New difficulties continually arose.
New questions had to be continually settled. Luther, by his letters, was every where. He commenced the translation of the Scriptures; he wrote endless controversial tracts; his correspondence was unparalleled; his efforts as a preacher were prodigious. But he was equal to it all; was wonderfully adapted to his age and circumstances."~John Lord
"Having received a twenty-one-day safe-conduct Luther set out for Wittenberg on April 26. The diet closed officially on May 25, and the next day, following a rump session of prejudiced nobles, the emperor signed the Edict of Worms. According to it, Luther was the devil himself in a monk’s habit. He was to be seized on sight and turned over to the emperor—an outlaw of the church and the state."~Carl Koppenhaver
At the end of the Diet, the Emperor issued the Edict of Worms, a decree which condemned Luther as "a notorious heretic" and banned citizens of the Empire from propagating his ideas.
The Edict decreed:
"For this reason we forbid anyone from this time forward to dare, either by words or by deeds, to receive, defend, sustain, or favor the said Martin Luther. On the contrary, we want him to be apprehended and punished as a notorious heretic, as he deserves, to be brought personally before us, or to be securely guarded until those who have captured him inform us, whereupon we will order the appropriate manner of proceeding against the said Luther. Those who will help in his capture will be rewarded generously for their good work."
The 1522 and 1524 Diets of Nuremberg attempted to execute the judgement of the Edict of Worms against Luther, but they failed.
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This Day in History: Georgetown College, the first Catholic university in the United States, was founded in Georgetown, Maryland on this day in 1789.
Historically however, America has has a strong anti-Catholic sentiment. The historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. characterized prejudice against Catholics as "the deepest bias in the history of the American people." The historian John Higham described anti-Catholicism as "the most luxuriant, tenacious tradition of paranoiac agitation in American history".
Anti-Catholic attitudes were brought to the Thirteen Colonies by Protestant immigrants. Two types of anti-Catholic rhetoric existed in colonial society and they continued to exist into the following centuries. The first type, derived from the theological heritage of the Protestant Reformation and the European wars of religion (16th-18th century), consisted of the biblical Anti-Christ and the Whore of Babylon variety and it dominated anti-Catholic thought until the late seventeenth century. The second type was a secular variety which was partially derived from xenophobic and ethnocentric nativist sentiments and distrust of increasing waves of Catholic immigrants, particularly from Ireland, Italy, Poland, Québec, and Mexico. It usually focused on the pope's control of bishops and priests.
This Anti-Catholic sentiment was popular enough that The Menace, a weekly newspaper with a virulently anti-Catholic stance, was founded in 1911 and quickly reached a nationwide circulation of 1.5 million.
Anti-Catholicism was widespread in the 1920s; anti-Catholics, including the Ku Klux Klan, believed that Catholicism was incompatible with democracy and that parochial schools encouraged separatism and kept Catholics from becoming loyal Americans. The Catholics responded to such prejudices by repeatedly asserting their rights as American citizens and by arguing that they, not the nativists (anti-Catholics), were true patriots since they believed in the right to freedom of religion.
With the rapid growth of the second Ku Klux Klan (KKK) 1921–25, anti-Catholic rhetoric intensified. The Catholic Church of the Little Flower was first built in 1925 in Royal Oak, Michigan, a largely Protestant town. Two weeks after it opened, the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross in front of the church.
Despite all of this, the Catholic Church is the largest Christian denomination in the United States. The top ten list being:
1. The Catholic Church
2. The Southern Baptist Convention
3. The United Methodist Church
4. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
5. The Church of God in Christ
6. National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.
7. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
8. National Baptist Convention of America
9. Presbyterian Church (USA)
10. Assemblies of God. Source
See also: A Candid History of the Jesuits - 50 Books on CDrom (or download)
This Day in History: The New York City "Mad Bomber", George P. Metesky, was arrested in Waterbury, Connecticut and charged with planting more than 30 bombs on this day in 1957.
George Peter Metesky (November 2, 1903 – May 23, 1994), better known as the Mad Bomber, was an American electrician and mechanic who terrorized New York City for 16 years in the 1940s and 1950s with explosives that he planted in theaters, terminals, libraries and offices. Bombs were left in phone booths, storage lockers and restrooms in public buildings, including Grand Central Terminal, Pennsylvania Station, Radio City Music Hall, the New York Public Library, the Port Authority Bus Terminal and the RCA Building, and in the New York City Subway. Metesky also bombed movie theaters, where he cut into seat upholstery and slipped his explosive devices inside.
Angry and resentful about events surrounding a workplace injury suffered years earlier, Metesky planted at least 33 bombs, of which 22 exploded, injuring 15 people. The hunt for the bomber enlisted an early use of offender profiling. He was apprehended based on clues given in letters he wrote to a newspaper. He was found legally insane and committed to a state mental hospital.
According to History & Headlines the top 10 most famous/infamous bombers are:
10. Richard Colvin Reid “The Shoe Bomber”
9. Edward Teller “The Father of the Hydrogen Bomb”
8. J. Robert Oppenheimer “The Father of The Atomic Bomb”
7. William Boeing (whose planes dropped more bombs than anyone else’s, ever, anywhere)
6. Alfred Nobel (the man that invented dynamite)
5. Tsarnaev Brothers (Boston Marathon bombers)
4. George P. Metesky (see above)
3. Timothy Mcveigh (Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing)
2. Guy Fawkes (Gun Powder plot)
1. Ted Kaczynski (Unabomber)
Forbidden Animation: Censored Cartoons and Blacklisted Animators in America
On this day in 2014, A Brazilian man, 52, identified only as J.R.N., attempted to commit bestiality with a female pig in Tapurah, Mato Grosso, but was attacked by the animals and wounded in the genitals. He died from a cardiac arrest. His arms and face were also mutilated by the animals. Initially police believed that the man was murdered and disposed of at the farm, but this was disproven as numerous pieces of evidence showed that the man drank alcohol, used a condom and was wearing only underwear. The man worked at the farm for two years.
Bestiality (Zoophilia) is a habit that is illegal in most countries, and generally frowned upon. This does not stop some from trying to commit this heinous act, often to the detriment of the victimizer.
In 2005. Kenneth P. was being videotaped having his way with a full-size stallions at a farm near the city of Enumclaw, Washington. During the July 2005 act he suffered a perforated colon, and later died of his injuries. The story was reported in the The Seattle Times and was one of that paper’s most read stories of 2005.
In the distant past, even the animal victim suffered as punishment for these acts as well.
In 1468, Jean Beisse, accused of bestiality with a cow on one occasion and a goat on another, was first hanged, then burned. The animals involved were also burned. In 1539, Guillaume Garnier, charged with intercourse with a female dog (described as "sodomy"), was ordered strangled after he confessed under torture. The dog was burned, along with the trial records which were "too horrible and potentially dangerous to be permitted to exist" (Masters). In 1601, Claudine de Culam, a young girl of sixteen, was convicted of copulating with a dog. Both the girl and the dog were first hanged, and finally burned.
This Day in History: The Saint Marcellus' flood killed at least 25,000 people on the shores of the North Sea on this day in 1362.
Over the years there have been many storm surges and floods in the Netherlands.
A series of devastating storm surges, more or less starting with the First All Saints' flood (Allerheiligenvloed) in 1170 washed away a large area of peat marshes, enlarging the Wadden Sea and connecting the previously existing Lake Almere in the middle of the country to the North Sea, thereby creating the Zuiderzee. It in itself would cause much trouble until the building of the Afsluitdijk in 1933.
Several storms starting in 1219 created the Dollart from the mouth of the river Ems. By 1520 the Dollart had reached its largest area. Reiderland, containing several towns and villages, was lost. Much of this land was later reclaimed.
In 1421 the St. Elizabeth's flood caused the loss of De Grote Waard in the southwest of the country. Particularly the digging of peat near the dike for salt production and neglect because of a civil war caused dikes to fail, which created the Biesbosch, now a valued nature reserve.
The more recent floodings of 1916 and 1953 gave rise to building the Afsluitdijk and Deltaworks respectively.
Flood control is an important issue for the Netherlands, as due to its low elevation, approximately two thirds of its area is vulnerable to flooding, while the country is densely populated. Natural sand dunes and constructed dikes, dams, and floodgates provide defense against storm surges from the sea. River dikes prevent flooding from water flowing into the country by the major rivers Rhine and Meuse, while a complicated system of drainage ditches, canals, and pumping stations (historically: windmills) keep the low-lying parts dry for habitation and agriculture. Water control boards are the independent local government bodies responsible for maintaining this system.
In modern times, flood disasters coupled with technological developments have led to large construction works to reduce the influence of the sea and prevent future floods. These have proved essential over the course of Dutch history, both geographically and militarily, and has greatly impacted the lives of many living in the cities affected, stimulating their economies through constant infrastructural improvement.