On This Day: September 22

On This Day, for September 22, by Britannica. I'm Kurt Heintz.

Today we’re looking at:
• Some civil unrest that might be described as “foxy,”
• the start of a war, and
• regretting being able to die only once.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters flocked to London on this day in 2002 to defend something they felt was related to their rural, traditional way of life: foxhunting.

Called the “Liberty and Livelihood” march, the protest was largely in response to a proposed ban on foxhunting. But the protesters—around 400,000 of them in total—also brought forth other rural issues: lack of affordable housing, inaccessible transit, unemployment, and the financial loss suffered by farmers following the previous year’s outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, which required millions of sheep and cattle to be killed for fear of infection. David Gaunt, a marcher from the village of Priors Hardwick, told Reuters news agency, “We have no services, we have no post office, we have no shop, we never see a policeman.…The great British phlegm of the stiff upper lip is to put up with it all, but we’ve had enough.”

The vast majority of the protesters’ complaints came from people lacking resources. Foxhunting is a sport that is associated with the upper class—rich gentlemen going to the countryside to hunt and then leaving to work, eat, sleep, and live elsewhere. Advocates of the ban accused pro hunting demonstrators of hijacking legitimate rural issues to get their own, more selfish point across. For some, foxhunting was a clear case of animal cruelty. For others, it was a hobby, even a privilege, that they would like to continue enjoying.

But for Britain’s lower- and middle-class rural communities, the proposed ban on foxhunting represented something bigger. Not only would it eliminate jobs (around 8,000, according to the government’s estimate), but it would show, as had been shown before, that those governing from London were forgetting those who lived anywhere else.

The “Liberty and Livelihood” march made some noise, but it didn’t stop the inevitable. The House of Commons banned foxhunting in England and Wales two years later.

Let’s turn to a more military kind of conflict. The Iran-Iraq War began on this day in 1980 when Iraqi armed forces invaded western Iran along the countries’ joint border. (Just a quick disclaimer, though: The anniversary may be contested in some parts of the world. Iraq claims the war began earlier in the month, when Iran shelled several border posts.)

In late September the Iraqi army took its time, advancing carefully along a broad front into the Iranian border region of Khuzestan so it could take Iran by surprise. Iraqi troops captured the city of Khorramshahr but failed to take a nearby oil-refining center, and by December they had gotten bogged down by Iranian resistance. When Iran pushed back and recaptured Khorramshahr, Iraq withdrew its troops.

There was talk of a peace agreement as early as 1982—as soon as Iraq pulled out its troops—but Iran continued its counteroffensive. Both countries engaged in air and missile attacks plus attacks on oil tankers, which threatened much of the oil supply to the rest of the world. The United States and several western European countries stationed warships in the Persian Gulf to protect that oil supply—a move that foreshadowed later U.S. involvement in this portion of the Middle East. Fighting ended with a cease-fire in 1988, but a formal peace agreement wasn’t signed until August 16, 1990.

No one knows the exact number of combatants or casualties on either side, but estimates of total casualties on both sides range from one million to twice that number. By the end of the war, most men of a certain age in both countries had served in the military. Some were untrained, unarmed conscripts, including many young boys who had been snatched from the street.

And now, some Fast Facts for September 22. I’m Emily Goldstein.

Usually we have a slew of birthdays for each On This Day program. But today’s episode has almost the opposite situation: abundant deaths. And here we go!

New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra died on this day in 2015 at age 90. He was known for his unintentionally amusing non sequiturs (one example credited to him is, “It’s déjà vu all over again”) and his contribution to winning a record 10 World Series. And just in case you’re wondering, it was Yogi Berra, not Yogi Bear, who came first. Berra was born in 1925; the cartoon bear didn’t make his debut until 1958.

Composer Irving Berlin also died on this day, but in 1989 at the age of 101. Berlin was one of the most enduring American songwriters, celebrated especially for his part in creating what is called “the American songbook”—a set of classic songs that have appeared in Broadway musicals and Hollywood movies. He wrote the scores for Annie Get Your Gun, White Christmas, and Holiday Inn, and, before the end of his career, he had written (am I reading this right?!) over 800 songs.

And now for our final obituary for today: Pope Felix IV (also called Saint Felix IV) died on this day in 530 CE in Rome. Before his passing he had named an archdeacon to succeed him as Pope Boniface II, hoping to avoid a disputed line of succession.

Let’s move on. On this day in 1920 a Chicago grand jury met to investigate claims of cheating during the 1919 World Series. Eight White Sox players stood accused of having thrown the series in exchange for a payout.

Theoretical physicist Chen Ning Yang, co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1957, was born on this day in 1922. His research showed (and bear with me, those of you without a head for physics) that parity, the symmetry between physical phenomena occurring in right-handed and left-handed coordinate systems, is violated when certain elementary particles decay. Before his discovery, physicists assumed parity was a universal law, like the conservation of energy or electric charge.

The first independent labor union in a country of the Soviet bloc was founded on this day in 1980 in Poland. The union, named Solidarity, quickly became a hotbed of resistance to Soviet control and was often suppressed by the Polish communist government. But in 1989 Solidarity reemerged to become the first opposition movement to participate in free elections in a Soviet-bloc country since the 1940s. Once it had formed a coalition government with Poland’s United Workers Party, its leaders dominated the national government.

“So no one told you life was gonna be this way….” The beloved sitcom Friends, featuring a ragtag group of 20-something friends living in New York City in waaay bigger apartments than real-life 20-somethings could afford, debuted on this day in 1994. Time for a re-watch, perhaps?

We warned you that this episode would have a lot of deathly anniversaries. Nathan Hale, an American colonial officer in the Revolutionary War, was executed on this day in 1776 after being caught attempting to spy on the British army.

Hale joined a Connecticut revolutionary regiment in 1775, just a few years after he graduated from Yale and began working as a schoolteacher. He may have first seen action in the Siege of Boston, where colonial militiamen—who would later become part of the Continental Army—laid siege to the city, making British regulars there realize that, with revolutionary forces completely surrounding them on land, the city was virtually indefensible. (And here we must take a moment to acknowledge conflicting histories. Though many claim that Hale was active during the Siege of Boston, some scholars believe that he was still working as a teacher at the time and that his regiment participated without him. Either way, he was commissioned as a captain shortly afterward, in 1776.)

Despite the colonial rebels’ success at Boston, the Continental Army was in for a rocky few years. While based in New York, the army was under continual attack. Its defeat at Brooklyn Heights in 1776 pushed it into Manhattan while the British army took Brooklyn and Long Island. Without real information on British plans, Continental Army General George Washington knew the odds of the Revolution’s success would be even slimmer. He began asking for volunteers to enter enemy territory.

Spying was considered a dishonorable path, especially for a gentleman and a college graduate. It was also against the law, and spies were often executed without trial by both the Continental Army and the British army. (For example, a few years later revolutionary commander-turned-loyalist Benedict Arnold’s British army contact, John André, was captured and executed by the Continental Army—something you can hear more about in yesterday’s episode).

Still, Nathan Hale volunteered to be a spy. He left the American camp at Harlem on September 12, 1776, pretending to look for work as a teacher. When he heard of the British attack on Washington’s troops in Harlem, Hale began to make his way back to New York City. His current mission didn’t matter anymore. The British were already planning their next attack.

It is unclear who turned Hale in to his enemies. It may have been his cousin Samuel, a loyalist working for the British army. It may have been British Lieutenant Colonel Robert Rogers, who may have recognized Hale in a New York tavern. In any case, Hale was captured, sent to British headquarters, and quickly pinned as a spy.

Legend has it that Hale’s last words were, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” One thing we know for certain is that Hale met his death calmly. A British officer present at the execution wrote in his diary that Hale “behaved with great composure and resolution,” so sure he was of the cause he was sacrificing himself for.

That’s it for this episode of On This Day. If you’re still interested in foxhunting, the Iran-Iraq War, or Nathan Hale, there’s always more to learn at Britannica.com. We have the balanced and researched stories.

Thanks for listening. Our program was written by Meg Matthias and edited by yours truly. For Britannica, I’m Kurt Heintz. And I’m Emily Goldstein.

This program is copyrighted by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.