All right, it happened today in 1215 but let me put the record straight once and for all. King John did not
sign the document called Magna Carta (never
the Magna Carta, children); he put his seal to it - the official, legal way of agreeing with what the document said (which he didn't, by the way). There is a memorial to JFK and western democracy in the field where all this took place (then called Runnymede or wet meadow, an island in the Thames). Why? Magna Carta had nothing whatsoever to do with
- America (which hadn't been invented in 1215)
- Democracy (even though the Greeks had already invented this, they had forgotten all about it by 1215)
- The rights of Englishmen (Englishmen - not to mention women and children - would remain downtrodden for the next six hundred years.
All Magna Carta was was a list of 63 gripes by the barons complaining that King John was trying to knock them into line.
Some things in history get distorted - live with it!
In other news ...
On this day in 1825, the Duke of York (who was pretty grand not to mention old, according to some accounts) laid the foundation stone of the new London Bridge. He was in Arizona at the time on a fact-finding tour of Third World Countries.
