History: The Year is 1643

I've uploaded year 1643 to the TSP Wiki...

http://tspwiki.com/index.php?title=1643

Here are some one liners...


The War of the Three Kingdoms and Remembering the Alamo -- England, Scotland and Ireland are slugging it out. It's the beginnings of the Troubles. I also talk about the Alamo and how everyone knows the name of an historical event but often don't know anything about how it got started.

The White Slaves of Barbary and the Mark of the Nazarene -- 3,000 to 5,000 Englishmen have been taken taken into slavery by the Muslims. I talk about ISIS and how Christians are being redeemed by philanthropists and being criticized for doing so.

Some Critical Discoveries -- Just a list of well known places that have been discovered this year and last year.

The War of the Three Kingdoms and Remembering the Alamo

Every since the Bishops' War ended between Presbyterian Scots and Anglican English, the Irish Catholics have been feeling uncomfortable. Peace between the Scots and the English means turning their unused armies loose upon Ireland. Most Englishmen see Ireland as a wilderness populated with primitive, uncivilized people, so the English and the Scottish Protestants feel justified in civilizing it. But the Irish Catholics can't tell the difference between the process of "civilizing" and the process of stealing everything they have! With the ongoing British Civil War, the Catholics make a deal with King Charles the 1st to keep their lands. That frees up the royalist armies to fight in the civil war down south, but after King Charles loses that war, the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell will remember the Irish Catholics who sided with the King. By the end of the century only 14% of Ireland will remain in Catholic hands. ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]}

My Take by Alex Shrugged
Well...I made the Irish Catholics look better than they actually were. Certainly they were being taken advantage of and certainly their land was being confiscated. On the other hand, the Catholics massacred an enormous number of Protestants during the Irish Rebellion. The exact number is lost in competing claims but everyone agrees... it was a massacre. In the modern day if you asked most people when "The Troubles" in Ireland began, very few would point to the 1600s and the imposition of the (Protestant) Ulster Plantation on the Irish Catholics. But like the cries of "Remember the Alamo!" people rally to the call, even if they can't remember how the fight at the Alamo got started in the first place. (It was a pivotal battle in the Texas Revolution for independence from Mexico. FYI, Texas won.) ^{[8] [9] [10] [11]}

The White Slaves of Barbary and the Mark of the Nazarene

The Barbary Pirates have been devastating English shipping. At this point 3,000 to 5,000 men, women and children have been taken capture and sold as slaves by the local sultan. Even in the midst of the British Civil War, Parliament makes demands on the local churches to collect money to ransom their fellow Englishmen. It's going to take a lot of money to get this job done. On average a slave can be redeemed for about 150 pounds sterling or about $20,000 in modern dollars. ^{[12] [13] [14]}

My Take by Alex Shrugged
In the modern day I estimate redeeming a Christian in Syria costs a little over $6,000 so the price has gone down. As ISIS spreads across the Levant, and Syria collapses into chaos, Christians are being marked for death with a special symbol, the Mark of the Nazarene. This mark, spray-painted on one's home means, "A Christian lives here and will soon die here". Some philanthropists such as Lord Weidenfeld have arranged to fly Christians to Poland. Lord Weidenfeld is a Jew who was saved by Christians during the Holocaust, so he is returning the favor. The government of the United States turned away Jewish refugees escaping from Nazi Germany because it didn't want to anger the Germans. Now they are turning away Christian refugees because they don't want to anger the Muslims. This is why government should never be used as a vehicle for selfless do-gooding. Government is never selfless and it rarely does good except in very limited ways... like building roads and schools. ^{[15][16] [17] [18] [19]}

Some Critical Discoveries

* The Fiji Islands are discovered. (Truman from "The Truman Show" is happy.) ^{[20] [21]}

* Christmas Island is discovered. (Santa is happy.) ^[22]

* Tasmania was discovered last year by a guy named Tasman. What a coincidence!^[23]

* New Zealand was discovered by the same guy. He called it Staten Island. ^[24]

* Australia has long been discovered but the Dutch found in it 1606. ^[25]

This Year on Wikipedia

Year 1643, Wikipedia.