Columns

This week, people everywhere disagree with each other. Results vary.

9 May, 1671: In an act of defiance against the English government, a guy called Thomas Blood dressed up as a clergyman and tried to steal the Crown Jewels. He’d already gotten into trouble for attempting to kidnap and assassinate a couple of people, but this didn’t deter him; he spent some time ingratiating himself with the jewel-keeper’s family and showed up one night to carry out his daring and nefarious plot. He and his accomplices subdued the jewel-keeper and proceeded with the theft: blood hammered a crown flat and hid it under his coat; one accomplice filed a sceptre in two and put it in his bag; and another put a jewelled orb down his trousers. They were caught soon after, but not before a few stones had become loose or missing, which might have been enough for someone of lesser ambition. Bizarrely, they were eventually pardoned by the King, and no one knows why.

6 May, 1889: The Eiffel Tower was officially opened to the public. It was originally built as the entrance arch for the 1889 World’s Fair, to the displeasure of lots of people who thought it was ugly. There was one important figure in the arts establishment who allegedly ate his lunch at the bottom of the Tower every day because that was the only place in Paris from which he could not see it. (The cliché that you can see it from almost any window in Paris, however, is not true given the size of the buildings these days.) The Tower was supposed to be dismantled in 1909, but proved to be useful for communications during World War I: there were transmitters fitted to it that jammed German signals and helped prevent the intended invasion, which is presumably one of the greater French military successes.

10 May, 1893: In what actually became a reasonably memorable case, the US Supreme Court ruled that the tomato was a vegetable. The whole thing started because there were customs regulations requiring that tax be paid on imported vegetables, but not fruit, so naturally some guys working at a port tried to claim back the duties they’d paid on tomatoes because they’re technically fruit. The Court essentially told them to lighten up, but only after lengthy arguments involving dictionaries, which one assumes were not unlike half of LAWS101 tutorials. It was eventually decided that the ordinary meaning should be used rather than the technical botanical one, so as not to confuse the general public who all thought tomatoes were vegetables anyway. There’s no word on what botanists thought about it.