The Darker Side of Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day may have been named in honor of a priest who was clubbed, stoned and then beheaded in the 3rd century for marrying young couples in contravention of Claudius II's edict forbidding marriage. Not all the sources agree so there may actually have been three martyred Valentines, there may have been two, there may only have been one, but whichever the case Saint Valentine was removed him from the calendar of celebrated saints' days in 1969. And it's only gotten worse for the old boy since then.

Here are 10 of the most truly horrible dates in the history of Valentine's Day:

1. 1382, England: The first known association of Valentine's Day with romantic love is in 1382's "Parlement of Foules" by Geoffrey Chaucer, but the earliest origins of the holiday can be found hundreds of years earlier. The date was likely named in honor of a priest who was clubbed, stoned and then beheaded in the 3rd century for marrying young couples in contravention of Claudius II's edict forbidding marriage.

2. 1537 England: King Henry VIII declared, by Royal Charter, that England would celebrate February 14th as "Saint Valentine's Day". The irony of a King, most remembered for having married six women, divorcing two and beheading another two, celebrating Valentine's Day doubtlessly escapes no one.

3. 1876 USA: For Elisha Gray, a professor at Oberlin College, who applied for a caveat of the telephone on the same day Alexander Graham Bell applied for his patent, Valentine's Day was not a cause for celebration. Bell's name was the fifth entry on the U.S. Patent Office's list for that day; Gray's was 39th. Holding the patent gave Bell the exclusive right to produce telephones in the USA for the next 19 years.

4. 1929 Chicago, USA: Arriving later actually made George "Bugs" Moran Valentine's Day a lot better. By the time he arrived at his garage on North Clark seven of his gang had been riddled by bullets fired by Al Capone's rival gang in an event known as the "St. Valentine's Day Massacre". Moran's men had admitted five of Capone's men to the garage probably because two of them were disguised as police officers and the car that they were driving looked like a squad car.

5. 1942 Singapore, Malaysia: Alexandra Hospital was the scene of a far greater massacre during the Battle of Singapore. The invading Japanese troops began by bayoneting Lt. Western, the British medical officer who surrendered to them with a white flag, and then killed more than 300 others: doctors, nurses and patients.


6. 1942 USA: Lt. General J. DeWitt, Commanding General of the Western Defense Command, sent a memorandum to the Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson recommending the removal of "Japanese and other subversive persons" from the West Coast area. In the memo he reasoned, "There are indications that the very fact that no sabotage has taken place to date is a disturbing and confirming indication that such action will be taken." Five days later President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, giving the War Department the authority to designate military zones "from which any or all persons may be excluded." The evictions from their homes and internment of those of Japanese lineage began on the 25th and continued until December of 1944. It would be 44 years before President Reagan granted the displaced and incarcerated Japanese-Americans reparations, and as Valentine Gifts go that was extremely overdue.



7. 1945 Dresden, Germany: British and American forces bombed Dresden for two days. Estimates as to how many died vary from 35,000 to 135,000 but there is no question that "precision saturation bombing" using incendiary bombs successfully created a firestorm. Each small fire joined with others until the city was ablaze; the oxygen being sucked into the fire created tornado like winds pulling everything, and everyone, into the white hot flames. Those who weren't burned to death were asphyxiated as the flames consumed all of the available oxygen.

8. 1965, New York City: Malcolm X's home is firebombed but no injuries are reported. After 15 years of involvement with the Nation of Islam X's approach to Black Nationalism varied from those of Elijah Muhammad to such an extent he announced the formation of his own Harlem-based organization. Malcolm X received a number of death threats as he became openly critical of the Nation of Islam and Elijah Muhammad's behavior in particular. Eleven days after the firebombing, in front of a crowd of hundreds including his pregnant wife and three of their children, he was assassinated by three men with ties to the Nation of Islam.

9. 1984 Mogopa, South Africa: Under the Native Administration Act of 1927 Section 5 the community at Mogopa, west of Johannesburg, had been designated a "Black spot". 300 homes and a cluster of community buildings were bulldozed over in the last of the forcible resettlements carried out by the military under Apartheid. It would be more than a decade before the courts returned all of their lands to those who had been "resettled".

10. 1989 Iran: Ayatollah Khomeini, Iman of Shia Muslims worldwide, broadcast a "fatwa" on Tehran Radio calling on Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie, author of "The Satanic Verses," a novel condemned as blasphemous. Rushdie remained "underground" until Iranian President Mohammed Khatami withdrew state support of the fatwa in 1998.



11. 1997 Abu-Dis, Palestine: The last of the remaining Jahalin Bedouin families were forcibly removed from an encampment which they had occupied for over 40 years so as to facilitate the expansion of the Ma'ale Adumim settlement. On May 28, 1996 the Israeli High Court of Justice had approved the eviction of the 3000 member Jahalin Bedouin tribe, in order to clear the area for Jewish settlement. The offered "relocation" site was 500 meters from a garbage dump, although Israeli law requires a minimum of 2000 meters.

12. 2003, Harare and Bulawayo Zimbabwe: Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) peace marches in Zimbabwe were broken up by baton-wielding police who arrested at least 88 of the protestors. WOZA was declared illegal under Zimbabwe's Public Order and Security Act, an act which limits free expression. Three years later in Bulawayo, WOZA's peaceful march against economic and social inequalities faced by Zimbabwean women was also broken up by armed police officers and 60 to 100 women were arrested.

13. 2004, Moscow: In a suburb of Moscow, Russia, the roof of the Transvaal water park collapses, killing 28 people and wounding more than 100 others with cuts from a thick shower of glass shards. The engineer who designed the structure claimed that terrorists must have attacked the attraction, but the true cause turned out to be his faulty design.

14. 2006, Washington, DC: Five women, members of the anti-war group, the Raging Grannies, were arrested at a protest outside a military recruitment office. The arrests occurred after the Grannies announced that they had come to enlist, chanting, "if someone must die in Iraq, let it be the old." The women were not charged but investigative news reports indicate that their organization has been under surveillance and the American Civil Liberties Union has commented on the "domestic spying".

Massacres, resettlement, police states, greed, war - it seemed the only cheery fact you might remember is that in the 1840s Esther Howland, a Mount Holyoke College graduate, set up a mini-assembly line to manufacture Valentine's Day cards of imported fine papers and lace. The Worcester valentines bore a small red "H" and sold for $5 to a reported $50 each. In her first year she made $5,000 in sales which doesn't seem like all that much until you adjust this amount to reflect current prices and the $5,000 in sales becomes $126,000. You have to admire a woman who was among the very first find a way to profit from the romanticism of others.

Here's hoping your next Valentine's Day is better than the aforementioned 14!