Despite being ringed on all sides by the UK – Northern Ireland to west, Scotland to the north, England to the east and Wales to the south – the Isle of Man is not actually part of it. “Hello, fairies,” came the soft voice of the recorded announcement as we bounced over Fairy Bridge on the 10:30 bus to the small town of Port St Mary. The simple stone bridge was covered in a colourful collection of messages and ribbons, among other oddities, and, according to local superstition, it’s considered bad luck not to greet the bridge’s fabled residents. The narrow country road was lined by an arch of rain-soaked trees, adding to the feel of an enchanted world. It was a moment that perfectly encapsulated the Isle of Man: charming; mysterious; a little different. I’d made my way to this small island in the Irish Sea on a stormy August evening by ferry from Liverpool. Considering the Isle of Man is just 265 miles from where I live in London, I knew surprisingly little about where I was going. For all its proximity to mainland Britain, the Isle of Man and its roughly 85,000 residents seem to fly under the radar. It receives relatively few visitors: just more than 300,000 in 2018. That’s certainly not a number to be sniffed at, but it pales in comparison to the approximately 2.4 million who visited the Isle of Wight, which is two-thirds its size. And despite the island being ringed by the United Kingdom – Northern Ireland to west, Scotland to the north, England to the east, and Wales to the south – the Isle of Man is not actually part of it. The island was first settled by the Celts, then by the marauding Vikings who eventually established the Kingdom of the Isles that stretched up the west coast of Scotland. In 1266, The Perth Treaty between Norway and Scotland officially recognised the Isle of Man under Scottish sovereignty, which led to nearly a century of tug of war between England and Scotland – a battle eventually won by the English. Today, like the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey, the Isle of Man is a Crown dependency, meaning that while the United Kingdom is technically responsible for it, it remains separate, and politically autonomous – except in matters of defence and foreign affairs – even though the island’s inhabitants are British citizens. Likewise, as a dependency, it cannot be considered an individual Commonwealth nation, but because the UK’s Commonwealth membership includes the Isle of Man, it can compete in the Commonwealth Games – but separately from the UK of course. It’s also not part of the European Union, but is within the EU Customs zone. *Independence is a strong part of the character of the people of the island* “Independence is a strong part of the character of the people of the island. We’re not part of the UK, or the British Isles – we’re Manx,” said Phil Gawne, a former politician on the island and leading advocate for Manx heritage. (“Manx”, which comes from the Old Norse word “Maniske”, pertains to the Isle of Man, its people and language.) I disembarked the ferry in Douglas, the island’s capital, and over the next few days as I criss-crossed the small island, I started to understand what Gawne meant. Unsurprisingly, considering its geographical location, the Isle of Man feels like a patchwork of the British Isles. Gentle fields of southern England meet misty Irish hills around the village of Kirk Michael, while craggy Welsh coastlines merge with the drama of the Scottish Highlands as you climb to the island’s highest point, Snaefell mountain. On a clear day from atop this barren, wind-whipped summit, you can turn in a circle and see each country of the United Kingdom and Ireland. But although the island feels British, it’s in a cosy, old-fashioned way you only occasionally find in the UK today. The classic red telephone boxes, many with a Yellow Pages telephone directory inside, are scattered throughout the island. A walk along the capital’s seafront promenade, with its grandiose Gaiety Theatre and neatly kept Edwardian-era guest houses, adds to the air of British familiarity – but feels closer to 1919 than to 2019. On first hearing it, the Manx accent sounds somewhat Liverpudlian, but seems to range in lilt and strength through the island, and I rarely encountered two people who sounded exactly alike. “We’re occupying the space between. The Manx accent is a strange one, sometimes quite Scouse, sometimes you can hear the Irish intonation in it,” said Dr Breesha Maddrell, director of Culture Vannin, the government's cultural wing. And in that charming way that the Isle of Man has to confuse and confound, the island has its own language, too: Manx Gaelic, the island’s historical language, which shares linguistic roots with Scottish and Irish Gaelic and is thought to have been brought to the island around 5AD by the Celts. The 19th and 20th Centuries saw a dramatic decline in the usage of Manx, with it being increasingly viewed by island residents as a backward language. “During the 1950s and ‘60s, a lot of Manx had to leave the island because of economic reasons and there was a general sense of decline. Manx speakers were thrown out of pubs in the 1960s and ‘70s. There was a generation who died out sometime around the 1990s who were strongly against the language,” Gawne told me. In 1974, the last native Manx speaker (defined as one who spoke it as a first language) passed away, and in 2009, Unesco somewhat hastily declared the language extinct, despite there being a primary school on the island that only taught in Manx. Children from Bunscoill Ghaelgagh school famously wrote to Unesco posing the obvious question: how can our language not exist if we can write in it? “We were told that the language we use every day to play and to learn about the world was extinct and that nobody spoke it,” said Isla Callister, a student in the school at the time. “So we sent the letters to show that they couldn’t be more wrong.” Unesco quickly downgraded the language back to “endangered”, and Manx Gaelic has been battling back ever since, led by a passionate group of people. Central to the revival has been Bunscoill Ghaelgagh which teaches entirely in Manx. But the language classes are not merely limited to children, with many adults taking up Manx, too. “This fierce little language has risen from the fire like a phoenix,” Maddrell said. *This fierce little language has risen from the fire like a phoenix* A 1961 census recorded just 165 speakers on the island; today that number is more than 2,000. Poetry and music have been fundamental to its revival, and groups regularly perform in Manx across the island, with genres varying from traditional folk music to rap. Interestingly, the decline in the use of Manx from the 19th Century onwards inevitably led to gaps in the lexicon, which has allowed for an almost pioneering freedom, with new words and phrases being created to adapt Manx to the modern world. Just last year, “tholtan” (meaning “a ruined barn” or “cottage”) and “skeet” (“a quick look”) were added to the Manx dictionary. “We have many words for jellyfish, but what we like the most is ‘smug rauney’, which translates as ‘seal snot’,” Maddrell told me, “and a swallow is ‘gollan geayee’, which means ‘fork of the wind’.” While ambling along a quiet path near Port St Mary, I spied a black cat sitting nonchalantly ahead of me. On hearing my approach, it fled into the undergrowth. Not a particularly ground-breaking event, except that this was my first sight of a “rumpy”, the name given to a breed of cat native to the island born entirely tailless. On my ascent of Snaefell, a giant wheel appeared in the distance, protruding out of a blanket of vegetation. My guide explained that this was “The Lady Isabella”, the largest working water wheel in the world, which sits above the old Great Laxey Mine. And after making my first purchase on the island, I was slightly taken aback to find my change given in a currency I’d never seen but which felt oddly familiar. A Manx pound coin, which is at parity with sterling, looks incredibly similar to the old British pound coins, with perhaps slightly more rounded edges. And speaking of finance, the island has no capital gains tax, stamp duty or inheritance tax, making it an enticing prospect for many. In the town of St John’s, I visited a small, grassy mound called Tynwald Hill, which has a strong claim to be the longest continuously used legislative site anywhere in the world. The first gathering at Tynwald is thought to have taken place in 979AD by the Vikings, providing a crude form of parliamentary governance some 236 years before England held its first. Today the two legislative chambers on the Isle of Man still meet on the 3.5m grassy hill, with the eye-catching, three-legged Manx flag fluttering above it, every year on Tynwald day, 5 July. Yet, for all its political and historical importance, Tynwald Hill, like the rest of the island, is wonderfully understated. I stood there completely alone on a warm summer morning, the occasional car creeping past on the main road. Another day, I sat alone on the small carriages of a steam train running from Port Erin to Douglas – the service, one of three on the island, has been in operation since 1874. The train, one of those old-fashioned relics rarely seen and even more rarely ridden, clattered through the countryside, every now and again coming to a wheezing stop in a small rural village with a wonderful name like Ballasalla, where the train conductor would amble slowly down the platform and nobody would get on or off. Before you knew it, we were up to full speed and whistling through tunnels like it was the late 19th Century once more. On the day I left, impenetrable fog and a biting cold had me checking my calendar to make sure it was still August. The Isle of Man is thought to take its name from Manannán, a Celtic sea god who was said to defend the island by conjuring mists to cloak it from invaders. As I stood on the stern of the ferry, the island shimmered slightly on the horizon then disappeared altogether. Invaders have come and gone, but it doesn’t take long to realise that what makes this little island so special is because of those who stayed.
Plus, it’s perhaps the only place in the world where a bus will remind you to greet the fairies. If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter called "The Essential List". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Worklife and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.
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Adam Proteau breaks down the three NHL stars of the week, including another appearance by an Oiler, all Hart in Philadelphia and a captain's performance. This is THN.com’s three stars of the week, a regular feature in which we look back at the past seven days of NHL hockey and identify which individual players shone the brightest. Let’s get straight to it.
3. NICK SUZUKI, MONTREAL The Canadiens’ star forward finished the week tied for the NHL lead in points, with eight in three games. Now in his fourth NHL season, Suzuki has equalled his career high in points, with 61 in 73 games. The 23-year-old needed a full 82 games to reach that level last season, making it all but a certainty he’ll set a new personal best in the final stretch of the current season. Suzuki’s 23 goals this year are a new career high, and as he continues to blossom as a thrilling young offensive dynamo, he’ll most likely continue raising his game in some shape or form year after year. He’s an essential component of Montreal’s long rebuild, but he’s showing Canadiens fans he’s worth all the accolades coming his way. Suzuki is nowhere near his prime yet, and that has to give Habs fans a solid foundation for hope for the team’s future. 2. CARTER HART, PHILADELPHIA The Flyers haven’t had much to cheer about this season, but the performance of starting goaltender Hart this week was good for morale. In three games played, Hart went 3-0-0, with one shutout, a .928 save percentage, and a 2.27 goals-against average. Hart is now on a four-game win streak, but his individual season statistics (including a 2.90 G.A.A. and .909 SP) are a reflection of the team in front of them as much as they are an indictment of him as a goalie. The 24-year-old Albertan has already made 52 appearances for Philadelphia this year, seven games more than his previous career high of 45, set last season. Hart is under contract through next season at a $3.9 million salary cap hit; he becomes an RFA in the summer of 2024. While he’s central to any hope Philly has of winning games at this point, by the time next season ends, Hart may be traded as the Flyers dig deeper into a long-term roster rebuild. All Hart can do is try to thrive despite the flaws of the team he’s playing behind, and in the past week, he’s done exactly that. 1. LEON DRAISAITL, EDMONTON It was only a few weeks ago that we honoured Draisaitl with the second star of the week, but he’s been even better of late, generating seven assists and eight points in only three games this week. Five of Draisaitl’s assists came at even strength, and the 27-year-old German has posted 36 points in his past 21 games. He also has 16 points in a current eight-game point streak, and he’s averaging 23:23 of ice time in the past week. In 71 games this season, Draisaitl has put up 67 assists – tying his career high set in the 2019-20 campaign – and a new career high of 112 points. He’s also set a new personal best in power-play goals, with 28. It certainly helps that he’s playing alongside the sport’s top player in Connor McDavid, but Draisaitl is an awesome threat all on his own. With an average cap hit of $8.5 million for this season and the next two seasons, Draisaitl is proving to be one of the NHL’s best values. He and McDavid want to be regarded for playoff successes, and that’s fair. But the pair are the league’s most electric duo, and it’s also OK to recognise them for their regular-season dominance. TEMPE, ARIZONA — Can you possibly play staunch, responsible, mistake-free NHL hockey for a full 60 minutes, in a building that feels like equal parts frat party and Golden Bears game? How can you play like an NHLer when you’re Zach Hyman — who played his college hockey at Michigan — and it feels like Home Coming Weekend on a sudsy Saturday night in the Big 10? “It’s like going back to college. A weird, kind of throwback environment,” Hyman said. In front of a sold out house of 4,600 people — roughly 60 per cent of them here to cheer and drink beer for their Edmonton Oilers — the Oilers eked out a 5-4 win against a game bunch of Arizona Coyotes. It was Edmonton’s only trip here all season, and one that will linger this morning in the heads of a boisterous and boozy contingent of Northern Albertans on vacation. What a blast this was, for both player and fan, as Edmonton won on its maiden voyage to tiny Mullett Arena on the Arizona State University campus. “The sensory input,” began Nick Bjugstad, traded from Arizona to Edmonton at the deadline, “I think the first time a team comes into this arena it's a little bit of a shock. The fans are right on top of you, therefore the rink's even smaller.” The rink is 200-by-85, but there was some nights at the old arena out in Glendale when those numbers added together to give you the crowd count. This was Oilers-palooza, with the concourses teeming with Connor McDavid sweaters and a “Let’s go Oil-ers!” chant that wasn’t even challenged by the Coyotes fans in attendance. In such a strange environment, momentum swings seem to have an even stronger current. As such, the Oilers took a tidy 4-2, second-intermission lead and watched Arizona gobble it up with two goals in the opening 4:50 of the third. Goalie Jack Campbell left a couple of rebounds lying around, and his skaters were nowhere to be found as Matias Macelli and Barrett Hayton cashed. That led to an Edmonton time out that seems brilliant in hindsight, as the Oilers slowly re-took control from that point on. “I felt it was important just to take a deep breath. To reset,” said head coach Jay Woodcroft. “It's not like any nuggets of information were given there. It was just to take a deep breath, reset, and get back at it.” What didn’t he like about back-to-back goals against? Other than the back-to-back goals against, of course. “We could be harder around our own net. And I didn't think we were.” Don’t underestimate the Coyotes in this building, where they are 20-12-4. That’s a lot of wins here, and over some good teams. You’d have liked to see Campbell lock this one down a bit better, and he did give his team some big saves on the night. But that’s been his M.O. this season — he stops some that he shouldn’t, but he always leaks a few that he should stop. On this night it came down to rebound control, and now Campbell has allowed at least four goals in seven consecutive starts — a feat unmatched in the NHL this season. In a game where three Oilers — Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Evander Kane — all entered with exactly 299 career goals, only Draisaitl walked out of Mullett Arena with a commemorative puck in his pocket. Five different Oilers scored — Ryan Nugent-Hopkins nabbed the winner on the powerplay — and Draisaitl won the race to 300 in career game No. 630. An annual 50-goal, 100-point man, Draisaitl has 46 on the season but was just voted the league’s best passer in a poll of his peers with the NHLPA. “I voted for him,” said Bjugstad, who was still a Coyote when the poll was taken. Draisaitl surprised Arizona goalie Karel Vejmelka with a quick shot through traffic. It’s something we see often enough to know it cannot be a fluke. “It's a quick release. His blade is different,” Bjugstad said of Draisaitl. “I don't know. I'm not a goalie. But just looking at his blade, it looks like it's coming off different than most guys. Nobody really uses a stick like him in the NHL. He's a cerebral player, so he's in right spot. That’s a good player there…”
“A pass-first, 50-goal scorer,” coined Hyman, who became a new uncle to Emma, born early Monday morning to Hyman’s brother and his wife. The Oilers have won six straight over Arizona, sweeping the three-game season series, while this is the first time since 1988-1989 that Edmonton has had three players with 90 points. It was Mark Messier, Jari Kurri and Jimmy Carson back then, McDavid, Draisaitl and Nugent-Hopkins today. The pair’s path to becoming media sensations began 100 years ago. To this day the two remain emblems of prejudice in the American justice system Annika Neklason SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE Sacco and Vanzetti, in full Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, defendants in a controversial murder trial in Massachusetts, U.S. (1921–27), that resulted in their executions. The trial resulted from the murders in South Braintree, Massachusetts, on April 15, 1920, of F.A. Parmenter, paymaster of a shoe factory, and Alessandro Berardelli, the guard accompanying him, in order to secure the payroll that they were carrying. On May 5 Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian anarchists who had immigrated to the United States in 1908, one a shoemaker and the other a fish peddler, were arrested for the crime. On May 31, 1921, they were brought to trial before Judge Webster Thayer of the Massachusetts Superior Court, and on July 14 both were found guilty by verdict of the jury. Socialists and radicals protested the men’s innocence. Many people felt that the trial had been less than fair and that the defendants had been convicted for their radical anarchist beliefs rather than for the crime for which they had been tried. All attempts for retrial on the grounds of false identification failed. On November 18, 1925, Celestino Madeiros, then under a sentence for murder, confessed that he had participated in the crime with the Joe Morelli gang. The state Supreme Court refused to upset the verdict, because at that time the trial judge had the final power to reopen a case on the grounds of additional evidence. The two men were sentenced to death on April 9, 1927. For six years, starting in 1921, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti watched from death row as writers argued for their freedom, politicians debated their case, and radicals held protests and set off bombs in their names. They managed to rally support even from people who initially condemned them. But by May 1927, the pair of leftist ideologues had exhausted their options for an appeal. They had little left ahead of them but the electric chair. Vanzetti contemplated his impending martyrdom to a visiting reporter. “If it had not been for these things, I might have lived out my life, talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have died, unmarked, unknown, a failure,” he reflected. But now? Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life can we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man’s understanding of man as we now do by dying. Our words, our lives, our pains—nothing! The taking of our lives—lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler—all! That last moment belongs to us—that agony is our triumph. It was an unlikely triumph. Sacco and Vanzetti, ages 29 and 31 at the time of their arrest, came from a background more typically conducive to obscurity and suspicion than to sympathetic celebrity: They were radical, working-class Italian immigrants who advocated for the violent overthrow of political and capitalist institutions in the hopes of building, in Sacco’s words, a world of “no government, no police, no judges, no bosses, no authority.” They had dodged the draft to avoid serving in World War I, refusing to fight for a government they believed to be oppressive. Beyond that, the crime for which they were convicted and sentenced to death—two murders committed during a robbery at a shoe factory in Braintree, Massachusetts, in 1920—was not a particularly remarkable one. Even many of their sympathisers acknowledge, to this day, that they may very well have been guilty. But in an era of anti-immigrant, anti-leftist sentiment, their case became an emblem of prejudice in the American justice system—and a rallying point for those who wished to combat it. In the trial and appeals process that began 100 years ago, the duo’s defence team set out to turn the case into a public sensation, and it undoubtedly succeeded. How much that success truly meant is less apparent. It didn’t save Sacco and Vanzetti; less than four months after Vanzetti spoke about agony and triumph, they were both dead. And the tolerance, the justice, the understanding that he believed himself to be dying for remain, at best, a work in progress.. With their arrest, Sacco and Vanzetti stepped into the centre of a firestorm of converging fears, prejudices and swelling radical political power. Nativism and xenophobia were on the rise in the United States. The second iteration of the Ku Klux Klan had formed in 1915, targeting Black Americans, Catholics, and immigrants—including Italians. Anti-immigrant sentiment was gaining traction in more legitimate spaces, too: In 1921 and 1924, while Sacco and Vanzetti were battling the Massachusetts court system, Congress passed restrictive immigration acts intended to stem a post-war influx of “undesirables” and the radical politics they feared might accompany them. Fear of radicalism “was part and parcel of the xenophobia that was going on at the time,” says Erin Bush, a historian at the University of North Georgia. The Russian Revolution of 1917 had given rise to the first Red Scare, and a slate of assassinations of world leaders since the 1890s—including that of President William McKinley—had further sowed fears of anarchism. In early 1919, a series of bombings enacted by followers of the Italian anarchist Luigi Galleani against prominent American politicians and capitalists “put the violence on the front page,” Bush says, making anarchism feel all the more like “a palpable threat to people.” Sacco and Vanzetti—themselves suspected Galleanists—had met in 1916 at a factory strike Vanzetti helped organise. Over the following years, they were united by their advocacy for workers and their opposition to World War I; they even fled to Mexico together in 1917 to escape the draft. They were arrested for the robbery and murders in Braintree—which police believed were carried out to fund the anarchist groups ongoing efforts to foment revolution— in May 1920. They entered an American justice system that had spent the attacks’ aftermath pursuing and prosecuting leftist leaders, with a particular focus on Italian anarchists not unlike themselves. Details about Sacco and Vanzetti immediately began to filter into the news: descriptions of the evidence that had led the police to them and, not far behind, the first inklings of their backgrounds and political leanings. “Alleged Red Literature In Vanzetti’s Room,” declared a Boston Globe headline the week of the arrest. “During the war he was in the last draft and left town,” the article observed. “Chief of Police Murphy of Milford has identified Saco [sic] as one of the agitators in an attempted industrial disturbance in Milford three years ago,” another Globe article read. “He was arrested and paid a fine. It is also said that Saco was included in the draft and disappeared before he was called.” The case itself, as described in these early accounts, seemed straightforward. Reportedly, multiple witnesses could identify both Sacco and Vanzetti. Police had found them in possession of weapons, and a number of local officers—cited by name in the papers—gave every sense that they were confident of the culprits’ identities. On April 15, 1920, a paymaster for a shoe company in South Braintree, Massachusetts, was shot and killed along with his guard. The murderers, who were described as two Italian men, escaped with more than $15,000. After going to a garage to claim a car that police said was connected with the crime, Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested and charged with the crime. Although both men carried guns and made false statements upon their arrest, neither had a previous criminal record. On July 14, 1921, they were convicted and sentenced to die. Maybe for that reason, the case received only limited press during the initial trial, and almost all of that within Boston. But as they fought to overturn the conviction the defence team worked to change that—and did. Vanzetti’s attorney, Fred Moore, was himself an anarchist and began publicly arguing that the two men had been unfairly prosecuted because of their political beliefs. He dispatched a member of his staff to Europe to spread word among communist parties there and reached out to the newly established American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Anti-radical sentiment was running high in America at the time, and the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti was regarded by many as unlawfully sensational. Authorities had failed to come up with any evidence of the stolen money, and much of the other evidence against them was later discredited. During the next few years, sporadic protests were held in Massachusetts and around the world calling for their release, especially after Celestino Madeiros, then under a sentence for murder, confessed in 1925 that he had participated in the crime with the Joe Morelli gang. The state Supreme Court refused to upset the verdict, and Massachusetts Governor Alvan T. Fuller denied the men clemency. In the days leading up to the execution, protests were held in cities around the world, and bombs were set off in New York City and Philadelphia. On August 23, Sacco and Vanzetti were electrocuted. The Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, formed in the days after the pair’s arrest, sought to raise awareness through the media. At the time, “there were dozens of communist foreign-language newspapers in the United States,” says Michael Topp, a historian at the University of Texas, El Paso, and the author of The Sacco and Vanzetti Case: A Brief History With Documents. “In the Italian language press, especially in the left press in the United States, there were relentless advocates for Sacco and Vanzetti.” Left-leaning magazines, such as the Nation and the New Republic, also “tended to be sympathetic,” Topp says, while partisan newspapers on the other side of the aisle, especially in the Boston area, pushed for conviction. The committee submitted articles to the New Republic and labour union publications to drum up awareness among audiences already predisposed to be supportive, in addition to publishing and distributing its own pamphlets, newsletters and bulletins. Photos of Sacco and Vanzetti were sent everywhere. Over time, the letters the accused wrote from behind bars were also publicised. “They wanted the case to be a touchpoint,” Bush says. “They wanted to be sure the public saw them, they wanted to make sure the public heard them, and they wanted to make sure that they put international pressure on the Massachusetts court.” Beyond the state of global politics and Sacco and Vanzetti’s eloquence, the details of the case itself—and the story they told about the American justice system—were essential to that public appeal. What appeared in initial newspaper accounts to be a fairly open-and-shut affair became, with time and scrutiny, much less solid. Prosecution witnesses recanted or contradicted their own testimony; the jury foreman was accused of making prejudicial statements before the trial; and, in 1925, four years after Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted, another man came forward to confess to the crimes and assert the men’s innocence. Then there was the matter of the judge, Webster Thayer, whose behaviour both in and out of the courtroom drew accusations of bias. He clashed repeatedly with Moore, at one point saying in front of journalists, “No long-haired anarchist from California can run this court!” He also referred to Sacco and Vanzetti as “Bolsheviki”, a reference to the Russian revolutionaries, and once, a Massachusetts lawyer revealed, as “anarchist bastards.” A friend alleged that before the trial began, Thayer had said he would “get them good and proper” and “get those guys hanged.” Incredibly, after presiding over the first trial, Thayer also ruled on several motions for retrial in the case. In Vanzetti's last statement to the court, on 9 April, 1927, he said in part: "This is what I say: I would not wish to a dog or to a snake, to the most low and misfortunate creature of the earth—I would not wish to any of them what I have had to suffer for things that I am not guilty of. But my conviction is that I have suffered for things that I am guilty of. I am suffering because I am a radical and indeed I am a radical; I have suffered because I was an Italian, and indeed I am an Italian; I have suffered more for my family and for my beloved than for myself; but I am so convinced to be right that if you could execute me two times, and if I could be reborn two other times, I would live again to do what I have done already. " The mounting evidence of prejudice, and the erosion of the prosecution’s case, fuelled a massive outcry in the public and the press. Newspapers which had earlier printed support for the original decision—like the New York Times—or even pushed for conviction—like the conservative Boston Herald—published editorials reconsidering those positions.
“We do not know whether these men are guilty or not,” the Herald’s Pulitzer Prize–winning 1926 reversal read. “We have no sympathy with the half-baked views which they profess. But, as months have merged into years, and the great debate over this case has continued, our doubts have solidified slowly into convictions.” A who’s who of prominent figures from different walks of life expressed support for Sacco and Vanzetti either publicly or privately. Writers Dorothy Parker and Edna St. Vincent Millay showed up to demonstrations; Benito Mussolini, then prime minister of Italy, explored potential avenues for requesting a commutation of the sentence. Various others, from Albert Einstein to George Bernard Shaw to Marie Curie, signed petitions directed toward Massachusetts Governor Alvan T. Fuller or U.S. President Calvin Coolidge. Leftist groups orchestrated their own shows of support, ranging from a nationwide walkout organised by the Industrial Workers of the World labour union to bombings at the American embassies in Paris and Buenos Aires to a thwarted attempt at the embassy in Lisbon. The pressure on Fuller was great enough to prompt him, in 1927, to appoint an advisory committee to review the case and initiate his own investigation. But Topp notes that these efforts, too, showed signs of bias. “They both basically ended up just justifying the decision that had been made,” he says. “And then after that committee, and after the governor rendered his verdict, all of the state institutions and newspapers fell back in line.” Sacco and Vanzetti were executed soon afterward. But reactions to the case, both political and scholarly, literary and violent, have far outlived them. “I don’t think Sacco and Vanzetti had a lasting impact in terms of their own personal political philosophy,” Topp says. Instead, he asserts, its legacy lies more in what it showed about the legal process: “It was another moment where the arbitrariness and the oppressive nature of the U.S. judicial system was exposed.” In that area, the case and the uproar it fomented did bring about real change—to a degree. It motivated the Massachusetts Judicial Council to propose a series of reforms making it easier to secure a new trial and harder for a single judge to exert so much control over a future case. Though it took more than a decade, these proposals were eventually adopted in the late 1930s. But the larger prejudice the case demonstrated—that, in Topp’s words, “who you are and, in this instance, what you believe, has an enormous amount to do with how you’re treated by the judicial system”—remains endemic. Topp draws parallels between Sacco and Vanzetti’s treatment and that of Mumia Abu-Jamal, an activist for the black separatist MOVE organisation, in Philadelphia in the 1980s, and of Black Americans by police officers into the present day. “We’re well past the moment of the Progressive Era, that politics of revelation, where there’s a belief that if you expose wrong-doing then immediately it will be addressed and remedied,” Topp observes. As the Sacco and Vanzetti case and its continued resonance a century later demonstrate, he asserts, “We don’t live in that kind of a world. We live in a world where, when injustice is exposed, there are moments when injustices can be righted. But there are also moments that we see to this day when, after that exposure, institutions of power will protect themselves.” By Steven Brocklehurst BBC Scotland News The Stone of Destiny will be used in the Coronation of King Charles at Westminster Abbey in May - but it has a long and controversial history. When a passing policeman saw a couple in a passionate embrace in a car outside Westminster Abbey in the early hours of Christmas Day, he did not for a moment consider they might be in the midst of one of the most audacious heists in British history. It was 1950, and the man in the car was Ian Hamilton - a 25-year-old Glasgow University student who was intent on making a massive statement about Scottish nationalism. The policeman had seen him jump into the Ford Anglia beside fellow student Kay Matheson, and had gone to investigate why they were parked in front of the Abbey. The cuddling couple explained that they had just arrived from Scotland and could not find a hotel. The sympathetic policeman chatted to them before saying they would need to move on. As he watched them drive away, he was unaware that concealed in the car was a broken chunk of the Stone of Destiny, the ancient symbol of Scotland, which had been seized six centuries earlier by English King Edward I. Before the night was over, Ian Hamilton had snatched the other part of the 150kg (336lb) red sandstone block and spirited it away from the Abbey. The Stone of Destiny, also known as the Stone of Scone, was used in the coronation of Scottish kings for hundreds of years before it was looted during the Wars of Independence and taken to Westminster Abbey where it was lodged in King Edward's carved-oak coronation throne "The Stone of Destiny is Scotland's icon," Ian Hamilton, who died last year, told the BBC in a rare interview. "In one of the many invasions by the English into Scotland, they took away the symbol of our nation. "To bring it back was a very symbolic gesture." So during the Christmas holidays from university the four students set off for London in two elderly Ford cars. The other members of the gang were Gavin Vernon and Alan Stuart. Their first plan was for Ian to slip into a dark corner of the Abbey just before it closed for the night and later open the door from the inside. But the night watchman caught sight of him and threw him out, accepting the excuse that he had been locked in by accident. The next night they tried again. By 4am, they had parked one of the cars nearby and driven the other right up the lane behind Westminster Abbey. While Kay waited in the car, the men went up to the Poet's Corner door to try to jemmy it open. Kay later said she was sure the noise could be heard on the other side of London. Having managed to break open the door, the group were now feverish with excitement and set about removing the stone from its cavity beneath the throne. They placed the stone on the floor and Ian took his coat off so they could use it to drag the block along. They each took an arm of the coat and Ian took hold of one of the chains attached to the stone - but as soon as he pulled, the stone gave way and broke in two. In shock, Ian said he picked up the smaller bit of stone, weighing about 90lbs (40kg), and ran with it as if it was a rugby ball. Kay said she saw him coming out the side door of the Abbey. "Then to my horror I saw this policeman looking down the lane," she said. "I realised if Ian crossed over to the car with the stone the policeman was bound to see him. "So I drew the car in as closely as I could and Ian quickly pushed the stone into the back seat of the car and threw a coat over it." After the encounter with the policeman, Kay and Ian set off with the smaller of the two pieces in the back of their Ford Anglia. Gavin and Alan fled without the larger section, thinking they had been abandoned. They did not know that Ian had got out of the car and was now making his way back to the Abbey. The keys to the second car had fallen out of his coat pocket so Ian had to go back inside the pitch black church to find them. In another stroke of luck, he found the keys when he stepped on them by accident near the door of the Abbey. It was now left to Ian to manhandle the larger section of the stone into the boot of the car. He drove away from the Abbey just as dawn was breaking - and by chance discovered Gavin and Alan plodding along, looking lost near the Old Kent Road. The gang buried the large section of the stone in open country near Rochester in Kent. Kay had left the smaller piece at a friend's house, and it lay in a garage in Birmingham. When the theft was discovered it caused an international sensation and the border between Scotland and England was closed off for the first time in 400 years. The Metropolitan Police had correctly assumed the stolen stone was heading north of the border, so a team of Scotland Yard detectives were sent to work with Scottish police. Ian Hamilton said he had intended to leave the stone buried until the "hue and cry" had died down, but became worried about the effect of the freezing conditions on the stone that had not been exposed to elements for 600 years. On Hogmanay (my birthday and the biggest holiday in Scotland) - New Year's Eve - he set off with Alan Stuart and two others to retrieve the larger section from Kent. When they got to Rochester they found a Traveller encampment on top of the stone but managed to talk them into helping carry it to the car. Finally, they got back to Scotland and the stone was handed over to other members of the the Scottish Covenant Association, who were campaigning for a Scottish Parliament. Hamilton was glad to get rid of it as suspicion was already falling on him. Detectives discovered that Hamilton had taken out nearly every book in Glasgow's Mitchell Library on the subject of the Stone of Destiny in the months before the theft. By now the main part of the stone was hidden under the floorboards at a factory in Bonnybridge. It was later removed to a more remote location near Cambuskenneth Abbey in Stirling. The second section was brought up from Birmingham and was eventually put back together with the larger piece by a stone mason using copper tube doweling. After a few months, the Scottish Covenant Association decided the stone should be returned. The heist had served its purpose of publicising the cause of Scottish home rule. They decided to leave the stone at the ruined abbey of Arbroath, where a famous statement of Scottish independence was made in 1320. On 11 April 1951, the stone was taken back to London and returned to Westminster Abbey. The stone was replaced in the Coronation Chair and two years later, in June 1953, King Edward's chair - with the Stone of Destiny underneath - had a greater prominence than ever as Queen Elizabeth's coronation was broadcast on television. Forty years later, in July 1996, the Queen, along with Prime Minister John Major, agreed the stone should be returned to Scotland. It can now be seen at Edinburgh Castle. In the next couple of years the Stone of Destiny will move once more, to become the centrepiece of a planned Perth City Hall museum. It has also been announced that it will return to Westminster Abbey for the coronation of King Charles III. Ian Hamilton went on to have a successful career in criminal law. Kay Matheson returned to Inverasdale in the west Highlands. She was a teacher in the local primary school, and died in 2013. Gavin Vernon graduated in electrical engineering and emigrated to Canada in the 1960s. He died in March 2004. Alan Stuart had a successful business career in Glasgow and died, aged 88, in 2019. The student gang were never prosecuted for their actions. No-one had been harmed, the government said, even if the stone had a bumpy ride. Ian Hamilton added: "The home secretary made a statement to the House of Commons: 'It was known who had done it but it would not be in the public interest to prosecute the vulgar vandals'. "That's been a phrase that I have always enjoyed all my life. "To do something for your country that spills not a drop of blood is, I think, something to be proud of." The Montreal Canadiens likely won't move much in the standings at this point, so it's time to play spoiler and earn contracts.
Most NHL teams still have something at stake in their remaining regular-season games. The teams at the top of the league are jostling for playoff position and/or making the playoffs at all, while the league’s bottom-feeding teams are spending their final handful of games trying to win the Connor Bedard sweepstakes.
Then there are teams that don’t quite fit into either of those categories. Most prominent among them are the Montreal Canadiens, who are more or less stuck as the league’s fifth-worst team. So long as the Arizona Coyotes, Philadelphia Flyers and Vancouver Canucks don’t completely collapse, the Habs aren’t going to move ahead of them in the standings. And unless the Anaheim Ducks, Chicago Blackhawks, San Jose Sharks and Columbus Blue Jackets go on a winning streak, the Canadiens aren’t going to sink any lower in the standings. So, what does Montreal have to play for in their final 10 games? Especially when key components Josh Anderson and Kaiden Guhle are now side-lined for the rest of the year? Well, a couple of things, as a matter of fact. The easy answer is the Habs are playing for their jobs next season. While it’s true much of Montreal’s roster is signed through next season, they still have 10 players who’ll be free agents this summer – five UFAs (including Jonathan Drouin, Sean Monahan, Alex Belzile and Chris Tierney) and five RFAs. Kent Hughes could be one of the more active GMs in the game this summer. Many of those UFAs could be playing hard because they want to return to Montreal in 2023-24, but those same players could also be playing for other NHL employers next season. As per CapFriendly, the Canadiens have 19 players under contract for next season, but they have $10.5 million in salary cap space to work with. What happens in the next 10 games could help dictate what direction Hughes takes the team next season. But in addition to their free agents, the Canadiens also have the opportunity to play spoiler. In their remaining games, Montreal has one game apiece against the Buffalo Sabres, Florida Panthers and New York Islanders. With little at stake the rest of the way, the Habs can play free and easy and do great damage to the playoff hopes of those teams. It would be easy for Montreal’s players to pull the chute and take a pleasure skate or two, but Hughes and the rest of the Canadiens’ brass want to see the competitiveness levels of their young players, and it would be disheartening to see them shrink from the challenge that’s ahead of them. Canadiens fans have been patient with the Hughes regime, as they’re keenly aware the big rebuild is the most proven route to getting generational-type talents to form the core of their line-up for the next decade or longer. Certainly, that process would be accelerated if the hockey gods smile on Montreal and they win the right to take Bedard first over all. But even if they don’t, the odds are still good that they’ll come away from the deep upcoming draft with a top-five pick. It will hurt not to have Stanley Cup playoff hockey in Quebec this spring. It’s always good for the game when Montreal is involved in the chase for the Cup. But something will be at stake for them in the remainder of the regular season. Next year probably can't come soon enough for Habs supporters, but they still have good reason to tune in. RALEIGH, N.C. — The Toronto Maple Leafs are becoming a bit of a Rorschach test right now. Squint at the Blue and White ink blot and, depending on your perspective, you could interpret things in a couple different ways. That same notion, really, applies to the Leafs’ latest game, a 5-3 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday night at PNC Arena in Raleigh. On one hand, the team dug itself an early 2-0 hole and, after fighting to get back on even terms twice in the contest, allowed Sebastian Aho to score the game-winning goal just 32 seconds after Auston Matthews’ second of the game had tied it with under three minutes to go in the third period. On the other hand, consider Sheldon Keefe’s assessment of a game where his team failed to even capture a single point despite being tied with 2:58 to go in regulation. “I thought, in a lot of ways, it might have been our best game of the season,” the coach said. How could he arrive at that conclusion? You require a few fingers to count the ways. Yes, Toronto fell behind early, but the first tally was a Brent Burns laser that kissed off the post and in past Matt Murray’s glove during a five-on-three Carolina power play. Then, on a play where the puck was bouncing all over the place, it finally landed within the sprawling reach of Jordan Staal and the Canes captain chopped it into the net. “You don’t even get going in the game and you’ve stuck a guy in the face [Jake McCabe was called for high-sticking] and then before long you’re now killing a five-on-three before most of our guys have even touched the ice,” Keefe said. “The place is rocking and they’re feeling good and we’re playing against a very good team here on the road.” And yet, in the face of all that, Toronto managed to completely wrest control of the game back from a team that leads its division and has already clinched a playoff spot. At one point in the first, Carolina held a 16-6 shot advantage; then the Leafs fired 17 straight at Pyotr Kochetkov, who wound up turning aside 41 shots. “Four or five shifts before they made it 2-0 in the first period, I really felt our game coming together,” Keefe said. The other coach sensed it, too. “I thought we had a good first period and then their world-class talent took over and we just watched it happen,” Carolina bench boss Rod Brind’Amour said. “They’d probably like to have their first period looked at. I don’t really know what we were doing [after that], they were just coming in waves and if it wasn’t for our goalie, obviously they would have won.” Yes, Kochetkov made it tough on them, but the Leafs’ effort began to pay off 4:41 into the middle frame when Morgan Rielly, back after one game of rest, dished to Calle Jarnkrok and watched the Swede snap one home from the top of the circle. The top line of Jarnkrok on the left with Matthews in the middle and Mitch Marner on the right had a number of dominant shifts, with Matthews in particular getting multiple Grade-A chances in tight he just couldn’t convert. That changed with 7:19 to go in the second when No. 34 jumped on a loose puck in the high slot and whipped it through the wickets of Kochetkov. It was just a complete barrage from Matthews, as he set an NHL-high on the season for shots in a period with nine in the second. He also tied his previous career high of 12 before the end of that stanza. (The other game he had 12 was last season in Dallas, when he broke Rick Vaive’s single-season goals record with No. 56). Ultimately he wound up equalling Dave Andreychuk’s franchise record of 15 shots, with lucky No. 13 squaring the game in the late stages of the third. “I’m feeling good and feeling confident,” said Matthews, who has eight goals in his past nine outings. “I’m clicking really well with my line-mates and I just want to continue that.”
As far as Keefe’s concerned, his top centre looks just like the guy who won the league MVP and scored 60 goals last year. “He’s right back to being one of the most dominant players in the league,” he said. “Physically dominant; hard on the puck; winning battles; making plays; getting to good spots; buying rounds. He’s been terrific.” He was. They all were, really, and yet it all came undone in a blink after Matthews had tied it. There have been those kinds of ups and downs for this team of late. This was the first time they’ve outshot an opponent in seven contests; they’re a pretty flat 6-5-1 in their past 11 and now 2-2-0 on a road trip that ends Sunday night in Nashville; the underlying numbers in the past few weeks aren’t great and there’s some sense continuity has been elusive in the wake of so many new bodies being added ahead of the deadline. What do you see when you look at this team right now? The squad that utterly dominated a first-class opponent in its own barn for 80 per cent of the game and looked like they could beat absolutely anybody in the league, or the guys who broke down right after tying the match, as Aho blasted in from the top of the zone, went unmarked by any Leafs in his vicinity and backhanded the game-winner past Murray after the goalie kicked Jaccob Slavin’s point shot back into the slot. “That’s one thing that we certainly will take away from this and learn from, that’s a complete breakdown in coverage,” Keefe said. “That’s a critical point in the game, so you can’t let that happen. But I’m not going to let that spoil the effort here. There’s going to be virtually unlimited examples through this game of exactly what we’re capable of looking like and I thought it was really great for our guys [to play like that]. Not many teams come back and put themselves in the game when you get down 2-0 early to a team like that. And our guys just stayed with it.” For a night or two, that can be enough. But no matter how you see the process right now, a couple more bad results and that’s all anybody will be talking about.
Pride Nights aren’t about endorsing anyone’s 'lifestyle.' They are about saying that there is a place in hockey for members of the LGBT community
Scott Stinson FUCKING RETARD WITH POSTMEDIA
Eric and Marc Staal refused to wear rainbow-themed sweaters during warm-ups on Florida Panthers’ Pride Night on Thursday, with the brothers saying doing so would “go against their Christian beliefs.”
A week ago, San Jose Sharks goaltender James Reimer did the same thing, refusing to wear a sweater with a heart and rainbow logo for religious reasons. While saying that while he doesn’t hate anyone and believes in kindness and love, Reimer said he was also “choosing not to endorse something that is counter to my personal convictions, which are based on the Bible.” The “something” that Reimer refuses to endorse is people. After yet another week in which the Hockey is for Everyone campaign, which the NHL conceived as a way to encourage inclusivity and tolerance in a sport that is not known for either, instead spread the opposite message, this is a point that often gets lost in the ensuing controversy. Pride Nights aren’t about endorsing anyone’s “lifestyle” or “preferences.” They are about saying that there is a place in hockey for members of the LGBT community. For those people, who are simply being who they are. Having a rainbow logo on a sweater isn’t forcing a player to accept something any more than the small Milk advertisement on Toronto Maple Leafs sweater should be offensive to the lactose-intolerant. The Staals and Reimer, in refusing to offer that little bit of acceptance, are doing something else. They are practising homophobia. It’s a stance the NHL has proven itself quite willing to countenance. When Philadelphia Flyers defenceman Ivan Provorov skipped warm-ups and the rainbow patch, citing his religious beliefs, on that team’s Pride Night, the league said that it was up to teams and players to decide how to participate in the Hockey is for Everyone campaign, and that it respected how they chose to do it. Some teams don’t specifically wear Pride-themed sweaters. Others, like the Minnesota Wild and New York Rangers, cancelled their plans to do so, effectively shielding whichever players didn’t want to participate from having to make that choice and then explain their reasons for doing so. The NHL then went a step further this week in ordering the Chicago Blackhawks not to wear Pride-themed warm-up sweaters for their Sunday game against the Vancouver Canucks, out of an apparent fear of a Russian law that prohibits LGBT “propaganda.” The Blackhawks have some Russian players, but so do many NHL teams, and until now there has been no suggestion from the league that this has been a security concern for them. (The Wild’s decision to not wear Pride sweaters was said to be at least in part influenced by the same Russian law.) Why the NHL, which has largely avoided acknowledging that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a thing that is happening, is worried about the impact of a law passed in Moscow, is hard to figure. It doesn’t take much research to discover that punishment for violating the law is just a fine, that enforcement is rare, and that there was never any indication that Russia was going to try to apply it beyond its own borders. Do Russian NHL players honestly think that someone back home is going to come after them for wearing a small rainbow patch on their sweater for 20 minutes while they do a few laps around the ice with their team mates? Even as the Staals refused the Pride sweater on Thursday, their Russian team mate Sergei Bobrovsky wore one. Perhaps he is aware that Russia has other concerns on its mind these days. Also worth noting here is that the Panthers went ahead with their Pride sweaters despite being located in Florida, which has turned into a fever swamp of anti-LGBT politics thanks to a governor who seems to want to make the culture wars the path to his presidency. The hockey team deserves credit for taking a stance, even if the Staals don’t. The depressing thing about all of this is that NHL teams wear themed sweaters all the time. No one would give it a second thought if there was a patch celebrating Black History Month or Mexican Heritage Night (There's a "Mexican Heritage Night"? Fuck that! I'd sit that one out) or cancer awareness or military appreciation or just about any cause that a team might want to highlight while it raises charitable funds. Everyone wears them, money is donated, and that is that. A player wouldn’t dare decline to wear such a sweater because that would be seen as being unsupportive of a good cause, if not flat-out racist. But refuse to wear a Pride sweater? Carry on, fellas. Hope you have a good game. And because the NHL gave cover to Provorov, others have followed his lead. Eric Staal wore a rainbow crest when he previously played in Montreal, until he evidently discovered that this support for the initiative was optional. The thing that Pride-sweater objectors seem to not understand is that they are making a choice to not support people who do not have a choice about who they are. The Staals said they don’t judge “how people choose to live their lives.” Refusing to wear a sweater with rainbow numbers for a few minutes seems an awful lot like a judgement. Pride Nights were supposed to show how far hockey has come. Instead, they have just shown how far it still has to go.
IT MUST BE THE INJURIES THAT EXPLAIN WHY THIS FAMILY IS SO FUCKED IN THE HEAD
Arizona Coyotes minority owner Andrew Barroway was arrested on felony strangulation charge, according to reports. The NHL has suspended him indefinitely.
Arizona Coyotes minority owner Andrew Barroway was arrested on a felony strangulation charge on Thursday in Aspen, Colo., according to the Aspen Daily News. The NHL has suspended him indefinitely.
According to the report, Barroway spent Thursday night in a Pitkin County Jail and posted a $2,500 personal recognizance bond the next day before appearing virtually before a judge. As of Friday evening, the jail website shows Andrew Barroway was booked on March 23 on a "domestic violence" offence. Per the terms of a court order reported by the Aspen Daily News, Barroway, 57, must not have any contact with his wife unless it involves their children and is not permitted to consume alcohol. Barroway of Scottsdale, Ariz., owns a five-percent stake in the Coyotes and currently serves as the organisation's minority owner and alternate governor, according to the team's official staff page. Barroway served as the Coyotes' majority owner, chairman, and governor from Dec. 31, 2014, to July 29, 2019. “The National Hockey League is aware of the arrest of Arizona Coyotes’ minority owner Andrew Barroway," the NHL said in a statement released Friday evening. "Pending further information, he has been suspended indefinitely.” The Coyotes also released a statement saying it is "aware of the allegation regarding Mr. Barroway and we are working with the league to gather more information. When we have enough information, we will have an appropriate response. Until the investigation is complete, we will have no further comment." Barroway also faces a misdemeanour third-degree assault charge, according to the Aspen Daily News. The allegations have not been proven in court at this time (but we all know they are true).
After more than two decades as the colour commentator on Canucks telecasts, entertaining fans with his unique insights, this will be John Garrett’s final season in the team’s broadcast booth.
Garrett made the announcement before the third period of Thursday’s game.
Garrett will continue doing select NHL on Sportsnet broadcasts in the 2023-24 season. He has been with the network since 1998 when he joined the original Sportsnet team as an analyst. Canuck fans will be able to hear Garrett on all the remaining regional broadcasts this season. |
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