Columns

Kia ora and welcome to “The More Things Change,” a sojourn into the coming week’s news per the annals of history. Formative moments of today’s affairs and milestones of the human race will abound, as well as a few things from which people have hopefully learned by now. If nothing else you might pick up some choice anecdotes, giving you the illusory air of a university education. So without further ado, this week in history:

February 28, 1815: Napoleon arrived back in France after escaping exile on the island of Elba, having been sent there for being “the sole obstacle to the restoration of peace in Europe.” Along with that catchy title, he’d been allowed to keep calling himself Emperor. You’d think most people might have been okay with hanging out on some island for a while to boss people around and let Europe get on with it. But Napoleon had bigger plans: he proceeded to gather his army and pit them against two others at the Battle of Waterloo, which has been widely regarded as a bad idea. (I was defeated, you won the war, etc.) All he could do after that was uphold the timeless French tradition of surrendering to the British and be sent back into exile. They didn’t let him keep his title the second time.

February 25, 1836: In a step forward for the Industrial Revolution and the age-old institution of ripping off other people’s ideas, Samuel Colt was granted a US patent for the Colt revolver. He never claimed to have actually invented it, only improved the previous design with the use of interchangeable parts (Critic does not endorse trying this excuse with a suspicious university assignment). Colt still died one of the richest men in America, and his company is in business to this day. Goes to show that you can do quite a lot with just a healthy dose of inspiration and an assembly line, even if you spent ten years using your company’s money to get potential clients drunk so you could sell them more guns.

February 28, 1954: The first colour TV sets became available for sale to the general public. One model was sold in New York for the equivalent of US$11,200, which is the rumoured cost of breathing in New York today. TV has generally been a triumph of modern technology, except for drawbacks like alleged negative effects on children’s brain development and the arguable descent of society into mindless addiction, and the fact that we still can’t send chocolate through a TV set like in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. That’s the real tragedy.