May 16 in History

Monteverdi's 1640 opera Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria received its first modern staging in Paris, three centuries after its original Venetian premiere. The revival sparked a broader reassessment of early Baroque opera and demonstrated that Monteverdi's emotional intensity and dramatic storytelling could captivate 20th-century audiences as powerfully as contemporary works.

A grandmother in exile just handed her teenage grandson the Roman Empire. Julia Maesa didn't accept banishment quietly—the new emperor Macrinus thought sending her back to Syria would end the problem. Instead, she raised an army. Her grandson Elagabalus was fourteen, a Syrian priest who'd never commanded soldiers. Didn't matter. She had money, connections, and the Syrian legions still loyal to her murdered nephew Caracalla's bloodline. Within months, Macrinus was dead and a teenager ruled Rome. Sometimes the person who loses their title is more dangerous than the one who keeps it.

Suzaku was twenty-nine and already done. The youngest emperor to abdicate in two centuries, he'd spent thirteen years watching his own health crumble while courtiers whispered about his lack of heirs. His half-brother Murakami was twenty-two, strong, and already had children. The handover in 946 was remarkably smooth—no coup, no exile, just one emperor stepping aside for another. Suzaku would live another six years in retirement, long enough to see Murakami stabilize the throne. Sometimes the most important thing a ruler does is recognize when someone else should rule.

The commoner who couldn't read French beat France's enemies using a French army. Bertrand du Guesclin—Breton, illiterate, called the ugliest man in the kingdom—smashed Charles the Bad's forces at Cocherel with 1,500 men against superior numbers. He didn't fight like a noble. Ambushes. Feints. Dirty tactics that worked. Charles lost his Norman territories that day. And France finally had what it desperately needed: a commander who won battles instead of tournaments. The professional soldier had arrived in medieval warfare, whether the knights liked it or not.

The teenagers did it. When Charles V's army sacked Rome in May 1527, the Medici pope was suddenly powerless, and Florence's young radicals seized the moment. They threw out Alessandro de' Medici—just seventeen himself—and declared the republic restored. For three years, they actually made it work. Michelangelo designed their fortifications. Machiavelli had died just weeks earlier, missing the chaos he'd predicted. But republics built on someone else's catastrophe rarely last. When pope and emperor reconciled in 1530, they sent an army. The teenagers learned what Machiavelli already knew: ideals need more than enthusiasm.

Governor William Tryon ordered his militia to fire on fellow colonists—a full five years before Lexington and Concord. Twenty men died at Alamance Creek. The Regulators weren't fighting Britain. They were fighting North Carolina's own corrupt officials over unfair taxes and rigged courts. Tryon crushed them in two hours, then hanged six prisoners without trial. And here's the twist: many Regulators later sided with the British during the Revolution, remembering which government had actually listened to their grievances. Sometimes the enemy of your enemy isn't your friend. Sometimes they're just another enemy.

Button Gwinnett signed the Declaration of Independence with fifty-five others, but only he managed to get killed by a fellow Radical officer over a military promotion. The duel happened at dawn outside Savannah—both men hit their targets. Lachlan McIntosh took a bullet to the thigh and lived another thirty years. Gwinnett took one to the leg too, died three days later from gangrene. His signature on America's founding document became the rarest of all signers, worth more than any other. Scarcity through stupidity.

Button Gwinnett's signature on the Declaration of Independence is worth more than any other signer's—not because he was important, but because he died so quickly afterward that he barely signed anything else. The man who killed him, Lachlan McIntosh, was fighting on the same side in the Radical War. Their duel in Savannah came down to Georgia politics: Gwinnett wanted McIntosh's brother court-martialed for military failures. Both men fired. Both hit. McIntosh recovered in six weeks. Gwinnett died in three days. Same team, different grudges.