You know, if Ricimer hadn’t defeated Avitus back on this day in 456 — which, incidentally, was the Year of the Consulship of Avitus Without Colleague — then he wouldn’t have gone on to be the magister militum of the western Roman Empire for the next sixteen years. There were various emperors, of course, but Ricimer was really in charge.
Now, if you take 456 and double it, you get 912. And that’s the year when, on the very same October 16, Abd ar-Rahman III became the Emir of Cordoba — the very place that in 456 was part of the western Roman Empire. Clearly a nearly unimaginable series of connections makes those two events closely related. I mean, one thing leads to another, right? Things basically make sense.
Well, maybe October 16 sorts of things don’t make that much sense. After all, it’s also the day in 1384 that Jadwiga was crowned King of Poland. Nothing odd in that, until you find out that Jadwiga was a woman. Nobody could have predicted that.
But in 1736, WIlliam Whiston, a leading mathematician of the day, predicted that a comet would hit the earth on (guess which date). A close reading of history and examination of the geological record indicates that it never actually happened — although the failed prediction itself may have led to the rise in importance of Reason over the Hereditary Rights of Monarchs, which made enough people irritated enough that on October 16 in 1793, they beheaded Marie Antoinette. Although that may (arguably) have improved the average intelligence of that area of Paris, the broader goal of making France better, more egalitarian, and more peaceful was definitely not achieved.
I mean, look at the record of the October 16ths right around that time — on the same day Marie Antoinette lost the ability to eat cake, the War of the First Coalition was going on and French forces won the Battle of Wattignies. Then in 1805 Napoleon’s army surrounded the Austrian army at Ulm. Then a few coalitions later, in 1813, the Battle of Leipzig began. Napoleon lost that one, leading directly — or possibly indirectly — to the invention of quaternions by William Hamilton. That happened on October 16 in 1943, enabling Charlotte Bronte to publish “Jane Eyre” on the same date just four years later.
“Jane Eyre,” as everybody knows, is the story of a mathematical prodigy who employs quaternions to…no wait, maybe I’m thinking of the Jane Eyre who founded Girton College in Cambridge, the first residential college for women. Or no, that was Emily Davis. Well maybe Jane Eyre had something to do with founding Brigham Young University, which happened on October 16 in 1875. But how would she have gotten to Provo, Utah? Well, I’m sure we can figure it out.
I’m reliably informed that quaternions played no role in the founding of the Walt Disney Company in 1923, even though the date was probably chosen because it was the anniversary of the invention of those invaluable…oh, I forgot to mention what quaternions are, didn’t I? Well, to understand them you don’t need to know that October 16 was the day the Cuban Missile Crisis started in 1962, but now you do. You also don’t need to know that the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Henry Kissinger on this day in 1973, and to Desmond Tutu in 1984. But if you DO know that, then you probably understand how all these things fit together — except you still need one last keystone to see how the intricate three-dimensional structure of complex numbers interacts. And that last little bit you need is simply this: it’s Eugene O’Neill’s birthday. You know, the Eugene O’Neill who was born on exactly the same day — October 16, 1888 — as Paul Popenoe, the founder of (well, the pattern has come together so well that you certainly know this already, but just for closure…) marriage counseling. (Maybe I’m remembering Jane and Hott Eyre, the first couple to receive counseling? Nah, that must be someone else.)
