23 March 12022

☿   22 March 12022 is World Meteorological Day. For the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam it is Promised Messiah Day. And it’s Southern Africa Liberation Day (Angola), Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources Day (Azerbaijan), Day of the Sea (Bolivia), Day of Hungarian-Polish Friendship (Hungary), Birthday of the Sultan of Johor (Malaysia), Pakistan Day (Pakistan), Day of Hungarian-Polish Friendship (Poland), and Family Day (South Africa). On various calendars it is JD 2459662, 20 Veadar 5782, 20 Phalguna 2078, 10 (O.S.) or 23 (N.S.) March 2022, 14 Paremhat 1738, 19 Sha’ban 1443, and 3 Farvardin 1401. It’s Wernher von Braun’s birthday (the guy who shot for the moon and hit London, as somebody or other put it).

I have nothing listed for this date in history, but I’ll note that in 11775 Patrick Henry—a slaveholder—made his famous speech that allegedly included a phrase about preferring death to slavery. I say “allegedly” because the speech as we have it was reconstructed by William Wirt nearly forty years after it was spoken. Wirt was not a witness. Someone who was reported a couple of weeks later that “he called the K[ing] a Tyrant, a fool, a puppet, and a tool to the ministry. Said there was no Englishmen, no Scots, no Britons, but a set of wretches sunk in Luxury, that they had lost their native courage and (were) unable to look the brave Americans in the face…” None of that appeared in Wirt’s reconstruction. Another passage of a couple hundred words appeared in a communication to Wirt by St. George Tucker, who had been there while a young man. As his letter has disappeared it has been argued that the entire speech comes from him, but a biographer who saw it (and quotes from it) is explicit that only that passage comes from him. The biographer—Moses Coit Tyler—would like the entire speech to be derived from a witness, and tries to conjure up another potential informant, but based on the evidence we have, it really looks like William Wirt used his imagination to pad out the few scraps he had. The phrase “liberty or death” was in common use at the time; maybe that’s what Wirt had in mind. Or maybe he got his account orally, thus leaving nothing for us to see. Whatever. It still comes down to this—whatever his information, it came from someone recalling a speech made thirty to forty years before. It’s weak. At best. Preposterous at worst.