In the early days of exploring and settling North America, several European nations claimed territories or colonies or areas as “property” of a sort. The territories were generally consolidated into independent countries: Canada, the US, and Mexico. But France still has a North American territory. Not everyone knows about the Overseas Collectivity of Saint Pierre and Miquelon — it consists of islands off the coast of Newfoundland.
The islands were first discovered by Europeans on October 21, 1520 when a Portuguese explorer, João Álvares Fagundes landed there. He named them the Eleven Thousand Virgins — not because eleven thousand virgins lived there (there probably weren’t any permanent inhabitants), and not because there were eleven thousand islands — there are just two, or possibly three at high tide.
The islands’ name is a bit of a puzzle until you know that October 21 is the feast day of St. Ursula in the Catholic religion. She supposedly traveled with a group of holy virgins. The story is that Ursula was a princess in Britain who embarked on a sailing voyage, along with 11,000 virgins who were her handmaids. She was traveling to join the man she was going to marry, the governor of Armorica, which is Normandy today. They made the trip in just one day, thanks to a miraculous storm, and Ursula decided that before her wedding, since she’d arrived ahead of schedule, she’d go traveling around Europe for a while. She and her handmaids ended up in Rome, where she met the Pope. Along with the Pope, the handmaids, and a spare bishop or two, Ursula set off for Cologne to continue her vacation (that’s right; she meets the Pope and he decides to go on vacation with her). That turned out to be a bad move, because when they arrived in Cologne they found out that the dreaded Huns were attacking the place. Being Huns, they killed Ursula and all the handmaids. And presumably the Pope and the Bishops too, although that part seems to be left out. Also left out is how many ships or wagons were needed to transport a posse of 11,000. But details, details, right?
There isn’t much historical evidence to support that story. “There isn’t much” is really just a polite way to say there isn’t any. Another point that might be important is that although Ursula was killed on October 21, 383 (compare that date with the number of ships…oh never mind), that story didn’t appear, as far as anyone can tell, until a few centuries later. In 848, a monk with the interesting name Wandlebert wrote a martyrology — a list of all the martyrs who’d been killed in the early days of Christianity — and although he didn’t mention Ursula, he did claim that “thousands of saints” were killed around Cologne. He claimed to base that on a written record (which hasn’t survived), but he might have misread it. In Latin, “undecimilia” means eleven, and “undicimilia” means eleven thousand. Besides that, “Undecimilia” was also sometimes used as a name at the time. So it’s possible that there was only one saint, and she was eleven. Or there might have been eleven thousand. Or, of course, there might have been eleven thousand all killed on the same day (by beheading, no less) and nobody thought to mention it for the next 500 years.
But 11,000 doesn’t make much sense. Let’s say there were as many as eleven executioners (which is a stretch, to be honest), and they could each behead one victim every, I dunno, five minutes? I mean, there’s a bit of a mess to be cleaned up each time, right? So that means it would take 83 hours, not counting lunch or rest breaks, even if everything worked perfectly. (And this is just a guess, but wouldn’t you have to sharpen the blades occasionally?) Anyway, it would probably have been more than a week of nonstop executions. Then there’s the problem of what you do with 11,000 dead bodies all at once…but back to the, um, “story.”
There’s a church in Cologne dedicated to St. Ursula. It’s said to contain the remains of the eleven thousand virgins and of Ursula herself, although there’s been some controversy about that for the past thousand years or so. They actually checked the tombs around the year 1183, and although there were plenty of skeletons there, they weren’t just adults; there were remains of infants and children as well. These were explained as “relatives of the eleven thousand,” although since the whole expedition had started in England, it’s not clear how the relatives would have gotten to Cologne. Later on a surgeon examined some of the skulls and pointed out that they weren’t even all human remains; there were also skulls of dogs and other animals. These were explained as…well, no, there wasn’t an explanation; they just kicked the surgeon out of Cologne and told him never to return. People hate it when facts get in the way of anything they’ve decided to believe.
In any case, ridiculous or not, the story carried some weight with the European explorers of the 1500s. Not only did Fagundas name the islands after them, but you’ve probably heard of the Virgin Islands. That same story is the source of that name too, which hasn’t been changed since Christopher Columbus came up with it in 1493. When Magellan sailed around a cape at the southern end of South America in 1520, he named it Cape Virgenes after the story. He chose the name because he sailed past it on October 21, which happened to be the same day he discovered what’s now called the Strait of Magellan.
Stories can be pretty powerful things, kind of regardless of whether they’re true or not. That’s certainly something Ursula LeGuin knew. She was a novelist, and might have gotten her name because she was born on October 21 — that same story again. LeGuin wrote science fiction and fantasy stories, and although her books never became as popular as the Harry Potter series, she pointed out that she had been the first to write a story about a young boy who’s sent to a boarding school to learn to be a wizard.
Thomas Edison was known as a real-life wizard; the Wizard of Menlo Park. He patented a ton of things, but he’s best known, of course, for his version of the incandescent light bulb. What isn’t as well known is that he applied for that very patent on October 21 in 1879. That was an important year in the history of materials — the most important innovation in Edison’s light bulb was the material he used for the filament. It had been common knowledge for decades that you could make a wire glow by sending enough electricity through it. The real problem was finding something that would glow brightly enough to be useful, and also last long enough to be practical. The material Edison settled on was carbon — specifically, carbonized bamboo.
Carbon was important in another development in 1879. That was the year that the first oceangoing steamships were built out of mild steel — and mild steel is also known as “low-carbon steel”. They’re still building ships out of similar material, although nowadays there are plenty of alternatives. One material that’s been used for boat and ship hulls is concrete. Specifically it’s concrete reinforced with — guess what, low-carbon steel. But the concrete itself is the same kind of material used for buildings that aren’t expected to float. Concrete is a mixture of some kind of “aggregate” — sand, for one — and Portland cement. Portland cement isn’t named after a place; it got its name because it looks like a kind of stone from the Isle of Portland in England. It got its name from the inventor, William Aspdin. Just like Thomas Edison, Aspdin patented his invention. On October 21, in fact. Concrete, like light bulbs, had been known for a long time; the Romans even used it. But Aspdin’s process using Portland cement was enough of a variation for the patent.
Ever since Aspdin came up with Portland cement, it’s been one of the most useful building materials we have. If you have some water to cross, you can build a boat hull with it, or you could use it to build a bridge. If you do the latter, then during the next war that comes along, somebody will probably try to blow up your bridge. That was what Robert Jordan was assigned to do in the Spanish Civil War — sort of. There really was a Spanish Civil War, of course, but really we’re talking about a powerful story here. Robert Jordan is the main character in the story — which is For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. It was published on October 21, 1940. Hemingway got the title from a poem by John Donne that ends “…never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.”
Donne was talking about the medieval tradition of slowly ringing the church bells when someone died — his point was that the tolling affects everyone. That was Hemingway’s point too. The Spanish Civil War transformed Spain from a democracy into a fascist dictatorship, and although the US hadn’t yet entered WWII, that war had already started in Europe. Hemingway wrote the book to point out that everyone was about to be affected by what was happening in Europe. Stories, you see, can be pretty powerful.
