Let's Go Back Through the Listening Tube November 16-19

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Let's go back through the listening tube for this week in history.

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I'm Bob Woodley from the Listening Tube. This week in 534, a second and final revision of the Codex Justinianus is published. If the name Justinianus sounds familiar, it's because that's where the word justice comes from. Justinianus was a Roman emperor who waged wars and transformed politics. Most of his history is recounted in the battles he waged and the territories he conquered and those he lost. But throughout it all, he commissioned a committee to record all of the laws that had up to that point been created. Until then, laws were inconsistent and enforced differently in different territories of the empire. Justinianus wanted to correct that, and he took measures to do so. Not only did he compile laws, he also created them. After gathering all the laws on the books at the time and examining them in an academic fashion, discovering where the gaps were, he filled them in. Not only did he create and compile laws, he also created guidelines for politicians. The politicians had as many responsibilities as the citizens had laws to follow. The Codex Justinianus held everyone to a standard of behavior and became the basis for not just legal precedents, but also societal norms and even forms of government. This week in 1307, William Tell shoots an apple off his son's head. For those of you not familiar with this story, William Tell was arrested, along with his son, because Tell was disrespectful to a hat perched on a pole by an Austrian person with a fancy title. Both Tell and his son were to be executed for the slight, but was given a chance at redemption if Bill could shoot an apple off his son's head with a single shot from a crossbow. Legend has it that he did successfully shoot the apple from his son's head, and then went on to do a lot of other stuff of legend. But Britannica says that there's no evidence that William Tell ever existed. Yet he's credited with fighting for political and individual freedoms. This week in 1686, Charles Francois Felix operates on King Louis XIV of France's anal fistula after practicing the surgery on several peasants. Like I did upon hearing about this, you might be thinking, oh my god! And yeah, I get it. But this has to be just part of the story. I'm going to look that up.

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He's gonna look it up. He's really gonna do it. I want the truth! You can't handle the truth.

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As it turns out, the king had been suffering for a long time. Months. Physicians couldn't figure out what to do. They tried all kinds of treatments that often led to failure or even more pain and discomfort for the king. As you can imagine, medical science was in its adolescence, and surgery was still a frowned upon concept. But the king had run out of options. He agreed to surgery, as experimental as it was. But no one touched the king's anus without practice. So practice must be had not just practice on the surgery itself, but also the entire procedure and logistics of it. The few people privy to the occasion entered the castle from different entrances to keep suspicion low. Those on whom the procedure was practiced are to this day not identified, nor is their prognosis, or if they even survived.

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Well, that can't be right.

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There was no anesthesia for this operation. Instruments with specific duties had to be developed and created. Instruments with odd shapes that clearly had an extraordinary purpose. Probably not as scary as the hot iron used previously by the king's physicians. One instrument developed for the operation was literally called Le Bistori Royale, which translates to the royal probe. The brave king underwent the surgery sans anesthesia. Toward the end he said to have asked, Is it over, gentlemen? Finish. Do not treat me like a king. I want to recover as though I were a peasant. The surgery was successful, and the king recovered nicely. The surgeon was rewarded with a noble title, a palace, and money. As was common at the time, what the king did, people copied. There was a rush of people asking for their anal fistula to be removed. It was kind of like Oprah's favorite things. You get an anal fistula, and you get an anal fistula. Everybody, feel under your seats. I guarantee you'll find an anal fistula. But alas, those who didn't already have one were turned away. This week in 1926, George Bernard Shaw refuses to accept the money for his Nobel Prize in Literature, saying, I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize. He at first denied the prize at all, then agreed to accept the prize, but not the money that came with it, instead suggesting the money be used to translate another author's works into English. But why did he say that? How could a prize for quality writing be more destructive than dynamite? To a writer. If I won a Nobel Prize for Podcasting, I'd be like, Mom, you gotta rent me a tux. But George Bernard Shaw, who we're all familiar with, either consciously or unconsciously, displayed utter contempt for the entire concept, as if there should be no unsolicited award for exceptional work in one of a variety of fields and disciplines. It's one thing to say, I don't do it for the money, and another to prefer explosive destruction over saying thank you to someone who wants to recognize your accomplishment. I could find no interpretation of what George's motivations might have been, nor any explanation from him after his statement. I did find a comment from the chairman of the Nobel Committee on it. According to Wikipedia, in December of 1926, Per Holstrom said that George's somewhat abstract logical radicalism, combined with a ready wit, a complete absence of respect for any kind of convention, and the merriest humor, all gathered together in an extravagance which has scarcely ever before appeared in literature. That interpretation has all the hallmarks of Swiss neutrality. I'll bet I could even get 51 former or current intelligence experts to agree.

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Hey, if he says something smart, you can support the show from the homepage.

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This week in 1947, George VI of the United Kingdom creates Philip Mountbatten, the Duke of Edinburgh, in preparation for his wedding to George's eldest daughter, Princess Elizabeth, the next day. Phil Mountbatten has to be the luckiest guy in the history of the 20th century. Born into Greek and Danish royalty, he ends up relinquishing his right to thrones there because a princess in England fell in love with him. The fact that they're distant cousins doesn't seem to matter when it comes to royal bloodlines. But even though he came from royalty, it was still necessary that he have some kind of British title. So, just so it wouldn't look like his daughter Elizabeth was marrying some sort of street person, he was bestowed the title of Royal Highness and was created a Knight of the Garter, Baron Greenwich, Earl of Marioneth, and Duke of Edinburgh. There. Now you may marry the woman who will be Queen of England. Prince Philip would never be king, but he obviously loved his wife and his role. Being married to the Queen of England, and your job is to attend social functions, has to be a pretty good gig. Fine. I'll let the servants dress me and I'll attend the ball. Then I'll have sex with the Queen of the United Kingdom. Dude doesn't even need a paycheck.

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Send email to thelisteningtube at outlook.com.

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This week in 1963, the first push-button telephone goes into service. A lot of people today might wonder how you could make a telephone call without buttons. But there was another device that we used to make telephone calls far beyond the button phone's invention in 1963. Rotary dial phones were common as late as the 1970s, and I know a volunteer fire station in Cold Township, Pennsylvania that had a rotary phone long after you would have thought they were obsolete. The evolution of the phone has certainly come a long way. At first every call was operator assisted. Then came dialed direct. Then the rotary phone gave way to push button. There was a time when long distance calls were an additional charge, which meant you paid extra for any call outside of your area code. There was even a time when your house shared a phone number with another house. I know, right? And having a phone in your car? That was only for rich kids from Malibu. Or maybe in Sino. Today you can make a call to anywhere in the world from your car using only voice commands. Plus, you can even have the contents of the conversation scrambled so that only those in on the call, which can be multiple people at once, can understand it. You can even see them in real time. And there's no additional charge for it.

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And if that wasn't enough.

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This week in 1979, the Iran hostage crisis begins. Iranian leader Ayatollah Rohola Khomeini orders the release of 13 female and black American hostages being held at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. This is when the war with Iran started. Back in 1979, they took hostages at the American Embassy. They let the black people go because they didn't want them in the country. They let the women go because the plan was to cover up all the women anyway. The Islamic Revolution in Iran was beginning. President Trump has taken measures to neutralize the threat that Iran has posed since then, in a way far different from past presidents. Others tried to deal with Iran through capitulation, but that didn't work. It never would have. Iran is now dealing with the consequences of its actions, and the stubbornness of the regime is inflicting harm on the citizens there. Follow the listening tube at thelisteningtube.com, where you'll also find not the headlines and interviews with interesting people. While you're there, click on the green follow button or donate to the program by clicking on the Buy Me a Coffee link on the homepage. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. I'm your host, Bob Woodley, for Thou Ad Infinitum.