With so many people working at home and meeting over videoconferences, kids have taken a more prominent role. Maybe not as prominent as some kids in the history of July 29, though. Take the year 238 in Rome. It was July 29 when the Praetorian Guard — the secret police of the Roman Emperors (think border patrol) — arrested the emperors there were at the time. In their place they installed a kid; Gordian III, who was just thirteen. It wasn’t his fault; he was the sixth emperor they had that year (and it was only July). He lasted out the year and more as emperor, but when he was 18 he joined the army to show he was really a grownup. He was probably killed in battle by 19, although there are some different opinions about what really happened. But it wasn’t his fault; he was just a kid.
Nearly four centuries later, but still on July 29, a twelve-year-old kid named Pakal was made the ruler of Palenque, a Mayan city. Things worked out better for him. He stayed in charge for the next 68 years, and became known as “Pakal the Great.” That wasn’t entirely his fault either; his mother seems to have been at least the power behind the throne — but only for the first 25 years.
It’s one thing to put a teen or a tween in charge of your society — I mean, at least they have SOME idea what’s going on. On July 29 in 1567, though, James VI was crowned King of Scotland. “Crowned” was probably a euphemism in that case; James was only 13 months old at the time. It should go without saying, but it really wasn’t his fault. His mother was Mary, Queen of Scots, and they made her abdicate, leaving her son…well, not exactly “in charge,” but they called him the king. To be fair, Mary probably saw nothing wrong with it; she’d become queen when she was only six days old.
When James VI grew up, he evidently handled the whole situation pretty well; he stayed the King of Scotland for nearly 58 years, and thanks to being the great-great-grandson of Henry VII, he was eventually king of England and Ireland too. For the England and Ireland part, though, he was James I, not VI. Even though it wasn’t his fault, they did name a whole era after him (the Jacobean Era), and whenever you hear about the “King James Bible”, he’s that guy. He commissioned the translation into English when he was about 40 years old.
By 1907, it was seeming like July 29 had done enough to kids, and maybe it was time to do something for them. So Robert Baden-Powell chose the date to set up the world’s first “scout camp” on an island just south of the English coast. His camp was just for boys, of course, but his sister Agnes founded the Girl Guides at about the same time. The Girl Guides turned into the Girl Scouts at the first “Scout Rally” that Baden-Powell held, in 1909. Apparently the girls themselves informed him that “Girl Scouts” was what they were.
Still in England, July 29 was the day Princess Diana and Prince Charles got married, in 1981. They had two kids, Prince William and Prince Harry. Even though the sad example of Gordian III was sitting right there in the history books for everybody to see, both William and Harry joined the military. William was part of a search and rescue team, but Harry actually served in Afghanistan. That’s a war that, at least in the US, is associated with Iraq — which is where at least one of the stories about Gordian III says he was killed, near what’s now Fallujah.
When July 29 arrived in 1996, it was clear that maybe too much had been done for kids, so a US court struck down the child protection part of the “Communications Decency Act.” Although to be fair, all that part of the law was really doing was trying to protect kids from bad words on the Internet.
It’s never quite clear when they’re talking about future July 29ths on Star Trek; it turns out the “Star Date” system can’t really be consistently interpreted. The instructions to writers for the original show were just “pick a combination of four numbers plus a decimal point.” It’s true, Star Dates were just random. But you have to think that they still knew — or will know — well whatever, July 29 is probably still around in Star Trek and they probably know it’s not always an auspicious date for children. So you’d hope they put an extra protective force field around their child star, Wil Wheaton, on that day in particular — it being his birthday and all.
