February 17, 1776: "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" Is Published

Edward Gibbon

Common Sense by Thomas Paine wasn't the only important piece of writing to be published in 1776, the year of American independence -- which, of course, depended on an important piece of writing, which Common Sense helped to set up. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith turned out to be pretty important.

But that was for the present and the future. There was also a very important book about the past, which contained warnings for the present and the future. And it had the same publisher as The Wealth of Nations:

February 17, 1776: Volume I of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is published in London by Strahan and Cadell. It becomes the biggest-selling work of history in history.

It was reissued in a succession of 6 revised editions between 1776 and 1789. Volumes II and III appeared in 1781, and the final three volumes -- IV, V and VI -- were issued together in 1788.

Edward Gibbon was born on May 8, 1737 in Putney, then in Surrey, now a part of South-West London. He attended a boarding school run by Catherine Porten, known to her students as "Aunt Kitty." Gibbon later wrote that it was she who gave him "the first rudiments of knowledge, the first exercise of reason, and a taste for books which is still the pleasure and glory of my life."

Included among these books was An Universal history, from the earliest account of time. Compiled from original authors; and illustrated with maps, cuts, notes, &c. With a general index to the whole. This was a 65-volume universal history of the world published in London between 1747 and 1768. It was one of the first works to attempt to unify the history of Western Europe with the stories of the known world.

He enrolled at Oxford University, left without graduating, and spent time in France and Switzerland, where the only major romance of his life happened, with a woman named Suzanne Curchod. But his wealthy father, a staunch Protestant, threatened to cut him off if he married Suzanne, a Catholic. Edward wrote, "I sighed as a love, but I obeyed as a son." She later married an official in the French government, and died during, but not as a result of, the French Revolution.

Gibbon published a study of literature, establishing his reputation as a writer, and served in the Seven Years' War (known in America as the French and Indian War). This service gave him a greater understanding of military life, ancient as well as current. He visited Rome, and gave it the nickname by which it would be known thereafter: "The Eternal City." He wrote:

It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted fryars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the City first started to my mind.

He returned to London in June 1765, and inherited his father's vast estate in 1770. His literary output led him to meet the leading man of letters in Britain at the time, Dr. Samuel Johnson, joining his Literary Club; and also Johnson's publishers, Strahan and Cadell. William Strahan (1715-1785) was Scottish, served in Britain's House of Commons, and was a friend and correspondent of Benjamin Franklin. Thomas Cadell (1742-1802) was from Bristol, in England's West Country. Each man's son continued the family business for a while after the father's death.

In 1771, Strahan and Cadell published The Man of Feeling, a novel of moral philosophy by Henry Mackenzie, establishing their reputation as well as his, making it possible to take them seriously when they published the works of Gibbon, Smith, Johnson, Scottish philosopher David Hume, Scottish poet Robert Burns, and others. Cadell was quoted as saying, "I had rather risk my fortune with a few such Authors as Mr Gibbon, Dr Robertson, D Hume … than be the publisher of a hundred insipid publications."

In 1774, Gibbon was elected to Parliament from Liskeard, in Cornwall, in the West Country, and remained in that seat until losing in 1780. In 1781, he won a seat in Lymington, in Hampshire on the South Coast, and held that seat until 1784. (It Britain, it is hardly unusual for a Member of Parliament to represent different constituencies in his or her career. Winston Churchill, himself a historian when he wasn't politicking, had 5 different constituencies over his 64 years in the Commons.)

Gibbon's initial plan was to write a history "of the decline and fall of the city of Rome," and only later expanded his scope to the whole Roman Empire. He leaned heavily on the French writers who became usually known as Montesquieu (a baronial title) and Voltaire (a pen name).

Although he published other books, Gibbon devoted much of his life to this one work. His autobiography, published after his death as Memoirs of My Life and Writings, was devoted largely to his reflections on how the book virtually became his life. He compared the publication of each succeeding volume to a newborn child.

The six volumes cover, from AD 98 to 1590, the peak of the Roman Empire, the history of early Christianity and its ermergence as the Roman state religion in the early 4th Century AD, the fall of the Western Roman Empire in AD 476, the rise of Genghis Khan in the early 13th Century and Tamerlane in the late 14th Century, and the fall of Constantinople and thus the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire in 1453, which triggered the shifting of Europe's gaze from East to West, and thus the Age of Exploration.

(By concluding with 1590, it was as if someone in 2026 were writing about Gibbon's own time as the conclusion of a long study.)

According to Gibbon, the Roman Empire succumbed to "barbarian" invasions in large part due to the gradual loss of civic virtue among its citizens. He began an ongoing controversy about the role of Christianity, but he gave great weight to other causes of internal decline and to attacks from outside the Empire.

Like other Enlightenment thinkers, many of them not so enlightened on the subject of Roman Catholicism, Gibbon held in contempt the Middle Ages -- usually defined as the time from the fall of the Western Empire until the fall of Constantinople -- as a priest-ridden, superstitious Dark Age. It was not until his own era, the "Age of Reason," with its emphasis on rational thought, he believed, that human history could resume its progress.

Gibbon suffered from gout, and from a rather embarrassing condition that left him with enlarged and painful testicles. Surgery to correct this in 1794 failed, resulting in peritonitis, which killed him at the age of 56.

Many writers have used variations on the series title, usually shortened to "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," including using "Rise and Fall" in place of "Decline and Fall." These include William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and David Bowie's album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. (What Bowie made of what happened to Gibbon, only he knew.)

Yankees and Mets Under Presidents

April 17, 1956, Opening Day, Griffith Stadium in Washington:

President Dwight D. Eisenhower throws out the first ball,

as Yankee manager Casey Stengel and

Washington Senators owner Calvin Griffith look on.

The Yankees won, 10-4.

Today is Presidents Day. Or, as we should call it until we have a President again, the 3rd Monday in February.

The Curse of Ike? Since 1958, when Dwight D. Eisenhower was President, and the Yankees won the World Series:

Under Democratic Presidents, the Yankees have won 12 Pennants and 9 World Series.

Under Republican Presidents, the Yankees have won 5 Pennants and no World Series.

The Mets?

Under Republican Presidents, 5 postseason appearances (but none since 2006), 3 Pennants, 2 World Championships.

Under Democratic Presidents, 6 postseason appearances, 2 Pennants, no World Championships.

Make of this phenomenon what you want, but the facts are clear:

* If you want the Yankees to win, vote Democratic.

* If you want the Mets to win, vote Republican.

Actually, given economics, social policy, and foreign policy, the facts are clear:

* If you want Americans to be better off, vote Democratic.

* If you don't, vote Republican.

Elroy Face, 1928-2026

Before Elroy Face, relief pitching was a thing. But, aside from the New York Yankees, hardly anybody used it well. The man known as "The Baron of the Bullpen" helped to change that.

Elroy Leon Face was born on February 20, 1928 in Stephentown, New York, outside Albany. He learned to pitch by throwing stones at windows, breaking them. He was too young to be drafted into World War II, but served in the U.S. Army in 1946 and 1947. Before the 1949 season, the Philadelphia Phillies signed him. Despite a sensational minor league record, both starting and relieving, he was made eligible for the minor league draft. After the 1950 season, he was drafted by the Brooklyn Dodgers. After the 1952 season, he was drafted again, by the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The Pirates went 42-112 in 1952, one of the worst seasons in major league history. Singer-actor Bing Crosby was a part-owner, and, that year, in the film The Road to Bali, when Dorothy Lamour asked him, "Do they still have pirates in America?" he answered, "Yes, but they're usually in the basement."

It was the year that general manager Branch Rickey, having had so much success running the Dodgers, and before that running the St. Louis Cardinals, traded away the team's best player, Ralph Kiner, to save money and spend it on prospects, telling the best slugger in the National League, "We finished 8th with you, and we can finish 8th without you." It was the year that Ron Necciai struck out 27 batters and pitched a no-hitter for their Class D farm team, and then struck out 24 in a 2-hitter in his next start, only to be immediately called up to the Pirates, and go 1-6 with a 7.08 ERA in 55 innings, and never appeared in the major leagues again.

It was the year of which catcher Joe Garagiola said, "In an 8-team League, we should have finished 9th." Garagiola built his broadcasting career on telling stories on 3 subjects: Growing up in St. Louis across the street from Yogi Berra, playing on the Cardinals with Stan Musial, and the ineptitude of the early 1950s Pirates.

"Roy" Face made his major league debut on April 16, 1953, and he got shelled, allowing 3 runs on 4 hits, getting only 1 out. It was a wild game at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, and the Pirates beat the Chicago Cubs, 14-12. Wearing Number 26 and using a sidearm righthanded delivery, Face went 6-8 that season, mostly in relief.

He spent the 1954 season with the Pirates' Class AA team, the New Orleans Pelicans. The Pirates wanted him to learn an off-speed pitch. The one he chose was forkball, in which the pitcher holds the ball in the middle with his index and middle fingers. It was a precursor to the split-fingered fastball, first used by Bullet Joe Bush with the 1910s Boston Red Sox. Face learned it from Joe Page, the once-great Yankee reliever, who was playing out the string with the Pirates.

Face was called back up for 1955, and became the best relief pitcher in the National League. He led the NL in games pitched in 1956 and 1960; in games finished in 1958, 1960, 1961 and 1962; and, though it wouldn't be an official statistic until 1969, in saves in 1958, 1961 and 1962. He made the NL All-Star Team in 1959, 1960 and 1961.

In 1959, he had one of the greatest seasons any pitcher has had in the post-1920 Lively Ball Era. He went 18-1, his .947 winning percentage still a record for any pitcher with at least 13 decisions. His only loss was to the Los Angeles Dodgers on September 11. His ERA was 2.70, and he had 10 saves. He finished 7th in the voting for NL Most Valuable Player.

In 1960, he was a less-impressive 10-8, but helped the Pirates win the Pennant for the 1st time in 33 years. Against the Yankees in the World Series, he saved Games 1, 4 and 5, becoming the 1st pitcher to save 3 games in a single Series. But he pitched 3 innings in Game 7, blowing a save. Nevertheless, the Pirates won, 10-9, on Bill Mazeroski's home run in the bottom of the 9th inning, for their 1st World Championship in 35 years.

In 1961, Face went 6-12, but saved 17. In 1962, he set a major league record with 28 saves. He struggled a bit over the next 2 seasons, but rebounded over the next 3. In 1967, he surpassed Warren Spahn with the most games pitched in NL history.

Late in the 1968 season, his contract was purchased by the Detroit Tigers. However, at age 40, he made only 2 appearances, on September 2 and 3, and did not appear again. He was not included on the World Series roster, though the Tigers did go on to win. The Tigers released him just before the next season started. He was signed by the expansion Montreal Expos, appearing in 44 games, going 4-2 with 5 saves, but was released after his appearance on August 15, 1969, the weekend of Woodstock.

He never appeared in another major league game, although he pitched in 8 games for the Hawaii Islanders of the Class AAA Pacific Coast League in 1970. He retired with 846 games in NL play, a record which stood until a later Pirate reliever, Kent Tekulve, surpassed him in 1986. His record was 104-95, with a 3.48 ERA, and 191 saves, then 2nd only to the still-active Hoyt Wilhelm. As an NL record, it stood until 1982, surpassed by Bruce Sutter.

Although he has not been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and the Pirates have not retired his Number 26, they have elected him to their team Hall of Fame.

As generations of men in his family had before him, he worked as a carpenter in the off-season. For many years, he was the carpentry foreman at a State psychiatric hospital near his home in the Pittsburgh suburb of North Versailles, Pennsylvania.

He died this past Thursday, February 12, 2026, at home in North Versailles. He was 97 years old. He was survived by his daughters Michelle and Valerie, his son Elroy Jr., and his sister Jacqueline. He was predeceased by his wife, the former Roberta Williams, known as Bo Face.

With his death, there are now 4 surviving players from the 1960 World Champion Pittsburgh Pirates: Bill Mazeroski, Bob Skinner, Vernon Law and Bennie Daniels.

February 15, 1726: Abraham Clark, New Jersey Declaration Signer

February 15, 1726, 300 years ago: Abraham Clark is born in Elizabethtown, in the Province of New Jersey. In 1855, Elizabethtown was incorporated as the City of Elizabeth, the seat of the newly-created Union County.

Like George Washington, Clark was taught to be a surveyor. Like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, he became a lawyer. He became known as "the poor man's councilor," as he offered to defend poor men who could not afford a lawyer. He married Sarah Hatfield, and they had 10 children. Alas, as New Jersey was the last State in the North to abolish slavery, Clark was a slaveholder. (There was partial abolition in 1804, but full abolition only came with the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865.)

Clark was elected as Clerk of the Provincial Assembly, and then as High Sheriff of Essex County. In 1776, with New Jersey's delegates to the Continental Congress at Philadelphia divided on the issue of independence, new delegates were elected: Clark, John Hart, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson and Richard Stockton.

On July 2, 1776, they all voted in favor of independence. On July 4, 1776, the day the Declaration of Independence was officially approved, Clark wrote a letter to Colonel Elias Dayton, saying, "It is gone so far, that we must now be a free independent State, or a conquered country... We can die here but once."

Clark's signature on the Declaration

(Dayton, 1737-1807, was a fellow Elizabeth native, a merchant, who rose to the rank of Brigadier General. His son, Jonathan, became the youngest signer of the Constitution of the United States.)

Clark remained in the Continental Congress through 1778, when he was elected as Essex County's Member of the New Jersey Legislative Council. He had 2 sons fighting in the war, and they were captured by the British, and incarcerated on the prison ship HMS Jersey, docked at Wallabout Bay, which later became the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

He served in Congress again from 1780 to 1783, and from 1786 to 1788. At the Annapolis Convention of 1786, Clark was one of New Jersey's 3 representatives, and formally motioned for the Constitutional Convention, although he was not a delegate to it.

He ran for the U.S. Senate for the 1st Congress in 1788, but lost. He ran for the U.S. House of Representatives for the 2nd Congress in 1790, and won. He was still serving when he died on September 15, 1794, in Rahway, New Jersey, at the age of 68.

He is buried at Rahway Cemetery. The adjoining Township of Clark is named for him, and so is Abraham Clark High School in the neighboring Borough of Roselle, where he lived. His original house burned down, but in 1941, a replica was built on the site, at 101 West 9th Avenue.

February 14, 1976: Dorothy Hamill Wins a Gold Medal

February 14, 1976, 50 years ago: Dorothy Hamill wins the Gold Medal in ladies' figure skating at the Winter Olympics at Innsbruck, in the Austrian Alps.

A 19-year-old native of the New York suburb of Greenwich, Connecticut, she had won the Silver Medal at the World Championships in 1974 and 1975, and the Gold Medal a few weeks earlier. Still, in spite of previous U.S. Gold Medalists Tenley Albright, Carol Heiss and Peggy Fleming, she was not considered the favorite in Innsbruck. But she won, and became "America's Sweetheart."

Hamill was credited with developing a new skating move, a "camel spin" that turned into a "sit spin," which became known as the "Hamill camel." The bobbed hairstyle that she wore during her Olympic performance was created by stylist Yusuke Suga, and started a fad, known as the "short and sassy" look, leading to a contract with Clairol hair products.

The following year, the film Star Wars premiered, starring Mark Hamill. He and Dorothy are not related, and it appears they have never even met. 

She starred in the Ice Capades, and as late as 1993, a poll showed her tied with Olympic gymnast Mary Lou Retton as the most popular athlete in America, ahead of Michael Jordan, Joe Montana and Wayne Gretzky.

She has married 3 times, including to singer Dean Paul Martin (son of singer-actor Dean Martin), and had a daughter with her 2nd husband. As of 2025, she still appears in skating shows.

February 14, 1951: Boxing's St. Valentine's Day Massacre

February 14, 1951, 75 years ago: The Middleweight Championship of the World is contested at the Chicago Stadium. It is a brutal fight, one that brought up memories of a previous February 14, in 1929, when Chicago crime boss Al Capone had members of rival Bugs Moran's gang killed. Like that event, this fight gets the nickname "The St. Valentine's Day Massacre."

Walker Smith Jr., born in Georgia and raised in Manhattan's Harlem, fought under the name Sugar Ray Robinson. He fought professionally 75 times before first winning a title, the Welterweight Championship of the World, by beating Tommy Bell in 1946. In those 75 fights, he had only 1 loss and 1 draw.

Giacobbe LaMotta, nicknamed Jake, was born on Manhattan's Lower East Side, and grew up in The Bronx. "The Bronx Bull" had to fight even more times to get a title shot, going 72-13-3 before winning the Middleweight Championship of the World in 1949, beating French fighter Marcel Cerdan at Briggs Stadium in Detroit. (It was renamed Tiger Stadium in 1961.)

In 1970, LaMotta wrote a memoir, Raging Bull. In 1980, Martin Scorcese made a film of it, and Robert de Niro won an Academy Award for playing LaMotta, making him a star -- though hardly a role model -- to a new generation. He became a popular after-dinner speaker, with lines like, "I fought Sugar Ray so often, I almost got diabetes!"

They fought 6 times. Here were the 1st 5:

* 1. October 2, 1942, at the old Madison Square Garden. Robinson won a unanimous decision after 10 rounds.

* 2. February 5, 1943, at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit. Also a decision after 10 rounds, but, this time, LaMotta won. This would be the only defeat in Robinson's 1st 133 fights: Going in, he was 40-0.

* 3. February 26, 1943, also at the Olympia. Just 3 weeks later, it went the full 10 rounds, and Robinson was declared the winner.

* 4. February 23, 1945, at Madison Square Garden. Another 10-round win by decision for Robinson.

* 5. September 26, 1945, at Comiskey Park in Chicago. It went 12 rounds, and Robinson won by a split decision.

By February 14, 1951, LaMotta had defended the Middleweight Championship 6 times, and was 78-14-3. Robinson was 121-1-2, and had willingly given up the Welterweight Championship to move up in weight class and take the Middleweight title. To do it, he would have to fight LaMotta for a 6th time, at Chicago Stadium, home of the NHL's Chicago Black Hawks (the NBA's Bulls hadn't been founded yet), and already the site of some big fights.

The fight was not really a contest. Although LaMotta was one of the hardest hitters the fight game has ever known, Robinson was a smarter fighter. Some boxing historians have considered him to be "pound-for-pound, the greatest boxer who ever lived." They rank him ahead of Heavyweight Champions Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali; and ahead of the Welterweight and Middleweight Champions who dominated the early 1980s: Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hearns, Roberto Durán, and a man who would alter his real name to evoke memories of Robinson, Sugar Ray Leonard.

Robinson outboxed LaMotta for the first 10 rounds, then unleashed a series of savage combinations on LaMotta for 3 rounds. In the 13th round, he dealt LaMotta his 1st legitimate knockout loss in 95 professional bouts. (LaMotta had lost by knockout to Billy Fox earlier in his career. However, that fight was later ruled to have been fixed.) Because of the date, the location in Chicago, and its brutality, the fight became known as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

The people of France hated LaMotta for beating Cerdan, even more so when Cerdan, trying to fly back across the Atlantic Ocean for a rematch, was killed in a plane crash. Robinson went to Europe after beating LaMotta, bringing his pink Cadillac on the cruise ship with him, and was wildly cheered in Paris as the man who had avenged Cerdan.

It was a working vacation: He kept fighting. He fought in Paris, Zürich, Antwerp, Berlin and Turin. But on July 10, just 9 days after his Turin fight, and getting into the ring for the 7th time in as many weeks, Robinson took his 129-1-2 record into the Earl's Court Arena in London, and lost his title to British boxer Randy Turpin.

He got the title back from Turpin, 3 months later at the Polo Grounds in New York. He ended up winning and losing the Middleweight title 5 times. In 1952, he tried to move up to the Light Heavyweight Championship, but in a brutally hot Yankee Stadium, the Champion, Joey Maxim, defeated him. For the rest of his life, people told Maxim the only reason he lost is that Robinson couldn't handle the heat. "Maybe you think it wasn't hot for me," he told such people.

Sugar Ray Robinson last won a title fight in 1958, last lost one in 1961, and finally retired in 1965, at the age of 44, with a record of 174-19-6. He ran a restaurant in Harlem, but developed dementia, probably as a result of having had nearly 200 professional fights, and died in 1989.

Jake LaMotta never had another title fight after getting destroyed by Robinson in Chicago. He kept fighting until 1954, retiring with a record of 83-19-4. He ran a bar in Miami, and became an actor, before writing his memoir and going on the after-dinner circuit. He died in 2017.

February 14, 1946: ENIAC Begins Operation

February 14, 1946, 80 years ago: The 1st programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer goes online.

It is the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer, or ENIAC. It was built and operated by the University of Pennsylvania, at their Department of Computer and Information Science, at 3330 Walnut Street, in the University City section of West Philadelphia, just around the corner from Penn's basketball arena, The Palestra, and its football stadium, Franklin Field. The original building has been replaced by a new one, hosting Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. A historical marker denoting ENIAC is outside.

ENIAC cost $487,000 to build, or about $8.74 million today. It was 100 feet long, nearly 8 feet high, and nearly 3 feet deep, and contained 17,468 vacuum tubes. (The invention of the transistor was nearly 2 years away, 85 miles to the northeast in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey.) It was said to be able to make a calculation in 30 seconds that took a human being 20 hours.

As with so many other useful things, ENIAC's primary purpose was for use in warfare. It was designed to calculate artillery firing tables for the U.S. Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory. But its 1st program was a study of the feasibility of a thermonuclear weapon -- which, 3 years later, was successfully tested: The hydrogen bomb, or H-bomb.

In July 1946, Penn handed ENIAC over to the Army Ordnance Corps. On July 29, 1947, it was put into operation at the Aberdeen Proving Ground outside Aberdeen, Maryland. It remained in continuous use until October 2, 1955.

It was disassembled, and parts of it are on public display at several locations, including, among others, Penn, Aberdeen, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, and the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.