Like any other day of the year, February 14th is rich in major historic occurrences. Among the most famous are the beheading of St. Valentine around 278 AD, and the massacre of 7 henchmen of the Bugs Moran gang in 1929. But what else has happened on Valentine's Day? What do we obscure with chocolate boxes and singing cards that may be of memorable historic significance. February the 14th is not all relationship breaking moments, depression, and gang warfare; a scouring of the internet can reveal a host of other major events.
Captain James Cook set off on his third major voyage in the Pacific in 1776. His previous excursions led to a much greater understanding of the region particularly in terms of geography, topography, and environment. Unfortunately, Cook, like most European explorers, was largely ignorant of native Polynesian culture. When Cook reached Hawaii in 1779, his arrival coincided with the festival of Makahiki; specifically, the stage of the festival in which the God Lono was to be worshipped. While he and his crew were deified at first as an incarnation of the God, their later return to fix their ships was upsetting as the a new season of worship had begun. The Hawaiians attacked the British marines as a result of these tensions as well as Cooks lack of diplomatic ability. Cook and 4 soldiers were killed in a St. Valentine's day massacre 150 years before the famous murders in Chicago; perhaps both the result of irreconcilable cultural differences and failed diplomacy.
On August, 18th 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified by all 48 states extending the vote to women. In anticipation of this historic event, Carrie Chapman Catt founded the League of Women Voters slightly over 6 months prior on February 14th. The league was founded as a nonpartisan organization to assist women with their newfound responsibility as electors. The LWV still claims to support no specific party, but does champion a number of issues, notably social equality and economic justice for all Americans. Though certainly not the ultimate achievement of the women's suffrage movement, the foundation of the LWV was a major milestone. The event is tinged with ideas of camaraderie and mutual aid that support and are supported by the values traditionally associated with Valentine's Day.
Throughout the western world, people call one another to say “Happy Valentine's Day” on February 14th. But in the months and years following Valentine's Day 1876, there was no love lost between the two nearly simultaneous inventors of the telephone Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell. Both Bell and Gray filed patents for their telephone designs on February 14, 1876, neither with the knowledge of the other's intentions. Bell was eventually awarded the patent for reasons that are still to this day unclear, but more controversy arose in the months that followed because Gray claimed that Bell's first successful test was with Gray's design. Perhaps we will never know who truly invented the telephone, but the patent controversy cannot obscure the major technological achievement. The ability to communicate electronically has continued to expand in the years since Gray and Bell raced to capitalized on their ingenuity, but on Valentine's Day nothing seems to beat cartoon characters on cardboard and messages of love on dry chalky candy.
Clearly none of these events are related in any direct way, and none reflect any new scholarship. On the other hand, the fact that these events are connected by a single strand of time flowing through 3rd century Rome as well as 20th century USA cannot help but conjure an almost spiritual importance. Certainly during the later events, all of the participating actors knew it was Valentine's Day. What similar connotations did this have for the gunmen of the massacre and the patent office agent who left Elisha Gray's form at the bottom of the basket? Was Captain Cook's crew celebrating the feast of St. Valentine at the same time as the native Hawaiians were celebrating the feast of Makahiki and worshiping the god Lono? Events involving people do not always need an explicit connection because people even those in disparate locations, times and cultures certainly must have some similar hopes dreams ideas and beliefs, and those bonds must be tighter on a widely celebrated holiday like Valentine's Day.
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