1057
To the poor of England, the Worcestershire man gave affordable pots and pans, and to all the world he gave the industrial revolution.
Seventeenth-century England’s industrial productivity had stalled. Her forests could no longer supply charcoal for smelting; iron was mostly imported from Russia and Sweden; fine metal kitchenware was a luxury of the rich. Government funded various barren initiatives, but Worcestershire entrepreneur Abraham Darby (1678-1717) made the breakthrough.
Picture: © Basher Eyre, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted August 12 2017
1058
After Louis XIV’s grandson Philip inherited the throne of Spain, the ‘Sun King’ began to entertain dreams of Europe-wide dominion.
The War of the Spanish Succession dragged on from 1702 to 1713, as the states of Europe scrambled to prevent France acquiring control not only over Spain but over territories and trade from Italy to the Netherlands. Indeed, the ‘Sun King’ Louis XIV tried to add England to his bag, which proved to be a serious mistake.
Picture: © ToucanWings, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0.. Source.
Posted August 9 2017
1059
Charles Dickens believed that Britain’s Saxon invaders gained power by force of arms – but not by weapons.
Whether or not the fifth-century Saxon warlords Hengist and Horsa were historical figures (St Bede and JRR Tolkien both thought so), the Saxon invasions, and General Flavius Aetius’s failure to respond to Roman Britain’s heartbreaking appeals in the late 440s, were quite real.
Picture: By Gabriel von Max (1840-1915), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted August 6 2017
1060
A tenth-century Greek monk is joined by a total stranger for Mattins.
In the days of St Dunstan (r. 959-988), Archbishop of Canterbury to King Ethelred the Unready, over in Greece an otherwise comfortably obscure fellow monk – we still do not know his name – was entertaining a guest of even greater royalty.
Picture: © José Luíz, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.. Source.
Posted August 5 2017
1061
Adam Smith asks employers to pay the most generous wages their finances will allow.
Adam Smith would not have liked the so-called Living Wage. ‘Law can never regulate wages properly,’ he wrote, ‘though it has often pretended to do so.’ But he did like generous wages, out of hard-headed business sense - an argument much more likely actually to raise wages than merely cost jobs.
Picture: © David Dixon, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted August 4 2017
1062
Adam Smith encourages employers to restrict working hours to reasonable limits, for humanity and for profit.
Adam Smith urges employers not to tempt their employees to overwork. It leads to burn-out and a loss of productivity; and in the worst case scenario, the grasping employer must invest wholly avoidable time and money in training up a replacement.
Picture: © Pauline E, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted August 4 2017