Killing the Irish II: Oliver Cromwell

August 30, 2026 RilalyLeave a comment

Oliver Cromwell was ON A MISSION FROM GOD to destroy Ireland. Historians don’t care for that word “destroy”. “He didn’t want to destroy Ireland,” they say. “It was a British colony. Why would he want to destroy a colony that enriched Britain? The word destroy involves hyperbolic, moralizing.” If destroy is an operative term to achieve a desired effect if destroy, what term should we use to describe the effort to deprive a citizenry of their religious practice, political power, farmland, and food? Oliver Cromwell was a bad guy who wanted to destroy a colony, but historians don’t care for such stark characterizations, because they’re oversimplified, icky terms used by nonerudite nonhistorians who lack academic knowledge or scholarly learning.

If Oliver Cromwell (O.C.) wasn’t a bad man, he was definitely a mad one. The primary driver of his hostility toward Ireland was to avenge the political and religious freedoms and the land gains they made in The 1641 Ulster Rebellion. That Rebellion appears to have begun as an attempt at diplomacy to achieve political and religious freedoms, and to negotiate for Irish land ownership in Ireland, but as history repeatedly shows, every serious quest for freedom eventually involves barrels of one kind or another. The Irish achieved de facto political/religious gains and land reoccupation in this Rebellion, but they were never securely legalized by Charles I.

Cromwell’s Revenge

Before King Charles I could codify these Irish gains, Cromwell played an instrumental role in having King Charles I beheaded, and the Irish Royalists further angered him by remaining royal subjects of the crown.

To presumably garner support, Cromwell politically framed The 1641 Ulster Rebellion as a “massacre” of the British Protestants living in Ireland. Cromwell considered reversing the unformalized freedoms gains the Irish made during The Ulster Rebellion a vital part of his mission from God, and he sought to return the unformalized land gains regained by Catholics to the Brits. He labeled Catholicism a security risk and a religious insult to the British empire. To complete his mission from God, Cromwell sought to impose the good, clean Puritan order to try to finally put an end to Irish cries for freedom.

Cromwell used these directives to invade Ireland (eight years after the Ulster Rebellion), as the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and general (commander) of the Parliamentarian army sent there. The Ulster Rebellion resulted in as many as 12,000 Protestant deaths (soldiers and civilian) in Ulster, be they through direct acts of violence, and the resultant deaths of exposure, starvation, and disease. To avenge those deaths, Cromwell’s invasion wiped out roughly 5,000–7,000 people (mostly soldiers, plus hundreds to low thousands of civilians). So, the vengeful element of his invasion fell somewhat short in pure numbers, when calculating the direct acts of violence alone. Yet, modern scholarly estimates put total population loss, resulting from the long-term consequences of Cromwell’s invasion at roughly 230,000–325,000 deaths, with the great majority being Irish Catholics (a modern estimate puts that number at 200,000 killed, of whom about 137,000 were civilians). Those larger numbers resulted from the long-term consequences of Cromwell’s invasion that include later commanders carrying out Cromwell’s vision by fighting the guerrilla resistance to that which Cromwell imposed on Ireland. Yet, Cromwell’s scorched earth tactics (slaughtering Irish livestock, burning their farm fields, forcing them off family farms, and blocking Irish ports importing food) played a significant role in destroying Ireland.

As horrific as these Cromwell’s actions were, the idea that he personally enriched himself as a result of the invasion might be more nefarious. After Cromwell seized the land The Ulster Rebellion unofficially secured for Irish Catholics, Cromwell not only took that land back from Irish control, he seized more land from Catholic Irish farmers. He seized the land to pay the soldiers of his New Model Army of which he was a senior commander, and as the senior commander, he was allocated Irish land, one plot of land was 5,225 acres. He also used the allocation of land to repay loans the “Adventurers” made to Parliament to fund the invasion, and of course Oliver Cromwell was one of those “Adventurers”. He was given 1,257 acres to repay his loan. He also drew substantial official pay and allowances as Lord Lieutenant and general (including a daily rate while in England and £2,000 per quarter while in Ireland, plus transport funds). So, not bad for a man purported to be on a mission from God.

I am not an academic or scholar of Irish history, it’s relationship with Britian, or the inner workings of the United Kingdom, but the limited research I’ve done for this article informs me that Cromwell was a leader who sought to slaughter the Irish for a religious differences, his own enrichment, and for a broader accumulation of his own power, but does that mean he was a bad guy? It might be hyperbolic, moralizing, overly simplistic, and lacking nuance to say so, but if I were to bullet point this all out on a chalkboard, or dry erase board, I would check, check, check my way to yes, and I don’t think I need letters after my name to arrive at that conclusion.

I think Oliver Cromwell cloaked himself in religiosity to convince Parliament, British citizens, and that image in the mirror that he was a righteous warrior as opposed to some simplistic notion of a bad guy. I also think the difference between the terms bad guy and warrior is relative to our respective eras, as the citizens of yesteryear were more apt to adorn a leader of men a warrior irrespective of the messy details that might lead modern men to consider that same leader a bad guy.

There were numerous bad guys who were declared warriors before Oliver Cromwell and since. What’s the difference, and how have those definitions changed and evolved over time? Norse mythology and historical accounts show that the Vikings and their ancestors valued empathy and sympathy as important virtues, but spiritual motivation of the Norse religion reinforced a mindset of aggression and conquest rather than mercy. The concept of bæðr (honor) meant that a warrior’s reputation and the honor of their kin were paramount, and killing an enemy was part of fulfilling that honor. Did Cromwell follow the same mindset, and does it diminish his bad guy qualities? What’s the difference between a righteous warrior who just happens to slaughter thousands and a bad guy who inflicts suffering with cinematic, maniacal laughter?

Although it may not stop most bad guys, modern man decided to codify the difference between righteous warriors and evil bad guys through Geneva Convention laws, Hague Regulations, Rome Statute, Protocols I and II, specific weapons treaties, human rights treaties, and customary law. This global legal network criminalizes and prohibits acts of barbarity in both war and peace, and it provides greater definition of good guys who happen to take military action versus the bad guys who act in barbarous ways. These instruments work together to try to provide some accountability for serious violations of international law. Whether or not these treaties and laws successfully deter barbarism is difficult to qualify or quantify, but my guess is a modern Oliver Cromwell would have a more difficult time promoting his mission from God to the Brits or these world bodies.

He would’ve had his defenders of course, defenders who echoed modern historian’s characterization, that he didn’t want to destroy Ireland, he just wanted to rip its heart out, so it would never make the mistake of thinking it could be a country again. He didn’t want to destroy Irish citizens. He just wanted to end their form of religious worship and any political dissent they may have considered in the future. Do we have any Catholic priests or political scientists in the audience? If we do, could you tell these modern historians that taking away a person’s political power and their religious practice tends to have an effect on their self-esteem? Modern historians say that suggesting Cromwell wanted to destroy Ireland is hyperbolic and moralizing, and he just wanted to end their food supply and steal their land. To do so, he knew he needed to slaughter their livestock, burn their farm fields, and block their ports to prevent food from getting in. I understand that historians prefer to view historical events from a dispassionate viewpoint, but how is that not an attempt to destroy a country? Do we have a biologist in the audience today? If we do, could you inform these historians that causing a famine tends to weaken a country from the inside out to the point of total destruction.

Killing the Irish: The Great Potato Famine

August 24, 2026August 30, 2026 RilalyLeave a comment

When The Great Potato Famine was over in 1852, one million people in Ireland were dead. Most of them were dead from the long, slow, and torturous death of starvation and the epidemics that followed. Roughly 1.5 million Irish residents watched their loved ones, friends, and fellow countrymen die in this manner, and they left, convinced the course their country was on would be irreversible. In those seven years, 1845-1852, twenty percent of Ireland’s 8.175 million people were simply gone, and famine scholars declare it one of the most severe famines of the modern era when measured by mortality rate. It devastated Ireland to such a degree that some argue it took generations for it to “recover” in a relative sense. And according to my stepdad, I compounded our mother country’s tragedy by missing a question about it on a World History test.

“You didn’t even know it happened?” he asked. “It was the worst thing that ever happened to our people, and we probably wouldn’t be here if our ancestors weren’t one of the lucky few to get out.”

“I’m sorry, but it was just so boring,” I said. “The whole subject of World History is just one long bore.” This further outraged my stepdad, and the fact that I still bring this exchange up shows that I still feel some shame. I feel better about it now, decades later, because I think about the ‘just the facts’ style of writing that occurs in World History textbooks. I understand that a comprehensive collection of the history of man requires a facts first presentation that complies with standards and curriculum, but the core of the word history is story. I think it would be a great idea for the team that puts History textbooks together to commission some creative writers to take the data and create a compelling narrative. I know my history now, because I’ve read some incredibly talented authors who wrote compelling books on the same material, and I’ve listened to podcasters who know how to bring history alive. We didn’t learn World History in the classes I took in high school. We memorized names and dates.

“What was the question you missed?” my stepdad asked after he cooled off a bit.

“It was something along the lines of, ‘This almost destroyed the country of Ireland.’ I guessed revolution, as in Oliver Cromwell, and all that.”

“It wasn’t Cromwell, it was a damned fungus eating up Ireland’s potatoes.”

It wasn’t a microscopic fungus that brought Ireland down. It was Phytophthora infestans—an oomycete, a water mold more closely related to algae than to true fungi.

A biology teacher once told us, “All fungal pathogens are fungi, but not all fungi are pathogens.” What did he say? A guy can’t say that once, and we’re all like, “Okay, got it. Interesting.” We need it repeated and broken down. The distinction sounds like one without a difference, like hair-splitting until you learned what it cost. That distinction, as it turned out, could’ve been everything to Irish potato farmers of 1845, but they only knew the first half of my biology teacher’s description, “All fungal pathogens are fungi.” After suffering the initial blight brought forth by this pathogen, Irish farmers turned to 19th century botanists for advice on how to fight fungi. They followed the botanist’s advice by burning their fields, sprinkling lime, and using sulfur compounds to destroy their harvest to prepare for the next, fungi free one. None of it worked, because fungicides do not reliably kill oomycetes, and that was the distinction.

The Great Potato Famine was caused by the phytophthora infestans, a microscopic organism more closely related to algae than true fungi. This tiny organism is called an oomycete, which is a water-mold. The idea that it was a water-mold played a direct role in prolonging the famine, because the 19th century botanists believed that that which ravaged the fields of Ireland was a dry-loving fungus, and they advised the Irish farmers to follow these measures to deprive the fungi of humidity, because humidity feeds a fungus. Water‑molds, such as the phytophthora infestans thrive in wet conditions, so the botanist’s advice proved worse than useless. Yet, modern investigations state that even if the botanists correctly diagnosed the pathogen, and Irish farmers followed their advice to the letter, this nation-wide blight probably would’ve happened anyway. It probably would’ve happened anyway because Ireland’s cool, wet, and humid climate produced long periods of leaf wetness that didn’t just allow the potato blight to spread; it supercharged it and made the resultant disease almost unstoppable.

One million deaths is difficult to grasp, and it’s just as difficult to confirm, because Ireland lacked comprehensive civil registration of deaths at the time. The scholarly estimates are anywhere between 800,000 and 1.5 million, with one million being the central consensus figure. One million is also a round number, and round numbers roll off the tongue so easily that they require perspective. The island nation Fiji, Djibouti, Cyprus, and the Soloman Islands all have populations of roughly one million residents. Fort Worth, Texas, the tenth largest population of the United States has a population of roughly one million citizens. Imagine reading that the entire population of Fort Worth, or Fiji or Djibouti suffered the slow, agonizing death of starvation.

The Great Potato Famine didn’t damage Ireland, it destroyed it, as evidenced by the fact that Ireland’s population was 8.18 million in the 1841 census, 4.2 million in the late 1920s, and 5.35 million in 2026. These more modern numbers include normal migration patterns, and non-famine related issues, but the point is that when a microscopic organism appeared in Ireland, in September 1845, it destroyed a country to the point that it has never fully recovered.

The Horror Story

Another reason I think I missed that question about the potato famine on my World History test was that my people, the Irish, love to tell stories. Ireland has produced some of the most influential storytellers in world literature, and I experienced that love of storytelling in my inner circle. One of primary elements a great storyteller needs is a big bad guy to whom we can all focus our anger, and The Great Potato Famine didn’t really have one. At some point in the grapevine storytelling I heard, a big, bad guy of history, named Oliver Cromwell, made his way into the oral history of The Great Potato Famine. Their “based on a true story” tale suggested that Oliver Cromwell somehow commandeered The Great Potato Famine to destroy Ireland. Only problem is Cromwell was born on the cusp of the 17th Century, and he ruled England and destroyed Ireland 200 years prior to The Great Potato Famine. Now, I’m sure the O.C. would’ve shed no tears over the devastation wrought upon my ancestors in the 19th Century, but he had nothing to do with it.

The Great Potato Famine was the result of an ecological accident amplified by the climate of Ireland and the country’s agricultural reliance on the potato. Yet, with different administrative policies the Brits could’ve prevented that natural disaster from turning into a catastrophe. It is believed that this whole mess began when ships from the Americas brought the phytophthora infestans to the ports of Europe. Some speculate that those ships first landed in Belgium ports, but it soon became irrelevant what exact port introduced the pathogen to Europe as it began reproducing at such a rapid rate that it spread throughout Europe causing some destruction along the way. It wasn’t until phytophthora infestans made its way to the cool, humid weather of Ireland that it experienced what historians call a reproductive explosion.

When Irish farmers planted their potatoes in their normal course of a day, the phytophthora infestans fed off the potato blackening them, liquefying their insides, and leaving them rotted in the ground within days. This, of course, didn’t just ruin some fields, or some portions of the fields. It resulted in a nationwide agricultural collapse of the potato; a vegetable Ireland was too dependent upon.

The population of Ireland was so reliant on the potato that parts of the Irish population experienced almost immediate mass starvation, disease, and death. It was a famine driven by famine-related epidemics: typhus, cholera, dysentery, and tuberculosis that drove Ireland’s mortality figures higher. As high as the death rate was, historians suggest that there was such a wide range of deaths that could’ve been related to the famine that precise counting of actual deaths due to starvation was nearly impossible. Many deaths also went unrecorded, especially in rural districts where entire families perished. One day those isolated, rural homes housed father, mother, daughter, and son families, and the next day those houses rotted with corpses in them, and no one checked in on them for years.

Saving the Bloodline

The World History textbook’s summation of why I exist is that my ancestor, we’ll call him Patrick, witnessed the utter devastation occurring in his homeland, and he left. Patrick packed his bags, walked to the nearest port, jumped on a ship, and made his way to America. End of story. That’s why I’m here today. Horray!

Again, I sympathize with the textbook’s writers need to summarize the history of man, but the textbook version leaves out the harrowing details of the story of Patrick’s travel to America, as illustrated by letters Irish emigrants, who made similar journeys. First, Patrick didn’t just wake up one day and say, “I’m outta here!” This was an agonizing decision that impacted everyone Patrick loved and the rest of his life. Patrick grew up on a family farm, and if you know anything about farmers, you know they don’t give up after a bad year, harsh years, or even punishing cycles. Their difficult lives are such that preparing for the worst of the worst is a part of their daily lives, and leaving the family farm isn’t a last resort; it isn’t even a consideration. For someone to leave a family farm, they must receive incontrovertible proof that they are going to die and end the bloodline with him if they stay.

By the time Patrick finally decided to leave the family farm, starvation and sickness weakened him. Those who were still alive on Patrick’s family farm were ravaged by starvation and disease. His disease-ridden sister, the dying father he revered as a role model, the mother who had sacrificed her own well-being for his happiness, the grandparents he expected to be dead before he reached America were all torn. They urged him to leave so the bloodline might survive, yet they were terrified of what would happen once the last able-bodied member of the family walked away. They all urged him to leave, but that didn’t mean leaving everyone he loved his whole life wasn’t the most difficult decision this young twenty-something had to make.

If Patrick had any money, and most of Irish emigrants didn’t, he probably had just enough to board a ship out of Ireland. He didn’t have enough money for food purchases along the way, so he likely carried some bread and cornmeal for a day or two of some nourishment along the way. He also may have traveled with a change of clothes, but that’s about it.

If he walked the average 3.2 miles an hour, it probably took him nine and a half hours to walk from the parish of Callan in Kilkenny County to Waterford, the nearest major port. Considering all the information of this route, in 1845, we can estimate that it was likely a multi-day journey for Patrick.

What Patrick witnessed on this perilous journey comes from letters written by Irish emigrants to America, Kilkenny Poor Law Union reports, and Waterford eyewitness accounts. He would’ve walked alongside “Walking skeletons” assuming he wasn’t one himself, children with swollen legs from edema, adults whose clothes hung off them “like rags on a stick” and people too weak to stand, lying in doorways.

Patrick witnessed so much death and sadness that it broke his heart to turn away from families with small children, desperately crying out for a small portion of whatever money, bread, or cornmeal he carried on his shoulders. Patrick also witnessed the worst of humanity, as starving parents resorted to violence to feed their children. “These people were not villains,” a Kilkenny relief officer later wrote to characterize what he saw. “They were starving.”

When Patrick survived the walk and managed to avoid the violent thieves and those so desperate that violence and murder were a means of survival, he probably walked up to the port of Waterford with just enough money to board the ship. The sight of the ship must have appeared momentarily glorious, as it stood as a symbol of his ability to survive the walk with the necessary money. That relief was short lived when he saw the dilapidated conditions of the ship before him, one that he knew would take anywhere from six to twelve weeks to complete the transatlantic voyage. Patrick knew that the mortality rates on the worst of these ships was between 20% to 30%, because priests read letters to their parishioners from survivors of those voyages. If he didn’t hear those letters on Sundays, he read them in the Irish newspapers. By the time Patrick spotted his vessel to freedom, he probably heard the “coffin ships” characterization of these ships hundreds of times.

Most of these “coffin ships” were almost criminally overcrowded, almost criminally ill-equipped for long transatlantic crossings, ridden with the famine-related diseases, and worked by inexperienced crews who hated the Irish. As daunting as all that was, Patrick also knew that –depending on the quality of the ship he was lucky to board— the ship might take twelve weeks to complete the transatlantic voyage.

Once Patrick survived the overwhelming odds of making the travel from Kilkenny County, Ireland to a port in America, likely New York, specifically Castle Garden –the main immigrant receiving station before Ellis Island—Patrick was not greeted with open arms. He was exhausted, malnourished, and confused, but finally seeing Castle Garden filled him with tears of joy and hope. The realization struck him that he not only survived one of the worst famines in human history, but a journey that killed tens of thousands, based on eyewitness accounts, and emigration records, and historians’ estimates on the path from Kilkenny County to New York.

When Patrick disembarked, he kissed the ground and almost immediately stepped into a port that in the 1840s–1850s was one of the most dangerous places an Irish immigrant could arrive. Patrick saw luggage stolen right off the dock and other forms of petty theft. He would’ve been shoved and threatened by the throng on the shore and fellow travelers, and he would’ve seen children separated from the parents in the chaos. “They tore my bundle from my hands, and I never saw it again,” one woman wrote home to Ireland.

Then, once he survived all that, he saw “No Irish Need Apply” signs in windows of factories and other workplaces. He later experienced Anti-Catholic violence, including church burnings, stereotyping that depicted Irish as lazy, drunk, criminal, or inferior in general, and Patrick faced political exclusion, with efforts to block Irish voting rights. And this didn’t just last as long as it took for the one million immigrants from Ireland to settle into their country, as some historical accounts suggest this many Irish immigrants experienced varying degrees of hatred that Irish lasted from Patrick’s arrival in America, in or around 1847, to the early 1900s, depending on the region they eventually called home. So, if Patrick was a twenty-two-year-old when he arrived in New York, he may have experienced intense discrimination in America for the rest of his life. But he did it.

He Did It

Patrick beat the odds by surviving the long perilous journey from Kilkenny County Ireland to America, and whatever joy he felt was surely dispelled by those he left behind, but he had no choice. I’m the reason Patrick, and his immediate family, made those painful sacrifices and tough choices, and they are the reason I’m here today, living in the greatest country in the history of man. How do you repay that? We’re fortunate to be here and alive, no doubt, but how do you appreciate it?

If there is an afterlife, and that afterlife has a screening room where we can view the painful sacrifices, tough choices, death-defying incidents, improbable survival of illnesses, and anything and everything the Patricks of our ancestry had to survive for as long as it took to have a child, I think we would all realize that it’s not just luck, though luck played a huge role, but it’s so far beyond luck that it’s almost an accident. Every person alive today has their ancestors to thank for the unbroken chain of good decisions, narrow escapes, and sheer chance for their life, but most of all they have good luck to thank.

My guess is Patrick’s tale was far more harrowing than I could possibly report. The horror he experienced lay in the details of the death-defying moments he experienced, and everything else he witnessed. We can also guess that when he finally settled down, Patrick probably found it difficult to smile or laugh in the aftermath. All things considered, he probably found the rest of his life unrewarding. Unless, Patrick saw it as his mission to live, survive, and thrive for those who made it possible for him to leave Ireland and pave the way for those of us who existed because of him. It was probably difficult for him to enjoy small talk, going to the beach, or any of the other useless things we do to relax when we’re not working, but if he learned how to use the opportunity they gave him, Patrick could show everyone, including himself, that they made the right choice.

How do we properly appreciate the gift of life? It’s such an overwhelming idea that we’ll never be able to find a fully adequate answer, so why try? Decades after missing that question on that World History test, I’ve found is to use the gift others bestowed upon me by doing what I do best; learning the story, researching it ad nauseum, and writing an article about it. It’s what I do, but in the course of doing it, I found another form of appreciation that might be more affirming to everything Patrick did to make sure I saw life, and that is reversing my decades old characterization of Patrick’s plight and The Great Potato Famine’s blight as boring.

Using the Force on Uranus

April 3, 2026May 28, 2026 RilalyLeave a comment

Most of the planets in our universe were discovered by some guy looking up saying, “Hey, lookee there.” And another guy saying, “That right there, that ain’t no star, Jed, that’s a damned planet.” That’s how most planets were first discovered, as far back as 1,000 BC. Neptune was different. Neptune is too faint to be seen by the naked eye. Neptune had to be theorized and mathematically predicted.

This probably reads like a perfunctory narrative at this point, because we now have the tools, technology, and gadgets needed to uncover numerous mysteries of the universe. It reads less like a “Whodunit?” and more of a “Who cares now?” story because it’s so over that it’s over now, but some of the my favorite stories from history aren’t necessarily about the event in question, but the mind over matter quest to achieve the unachievable. In 1845, they weren’t about what button should I push, they were about human ingenuity and/or the pushing themselves beyond what others could only imagine.

Two men used the science and all of the data available at the time, a pencil and paper, some mathematical theory, and little more than their brains to declare that there should be a planet should be … right about there! And they were wrong, initially, and then they were wrong by one degree! They laid in a bathtub with a pencil, paper, and some Mozart playing in the background while they uncovered the mysteries of the universe, and they were off by one degree. My takeaway from this story is this it illustrates the beautiful idea that every problem we face is one genius away from resolution.

When it comes to the discovery of planets, there’s basically two stories. There’s the story that we learn from the record and the one from the unofficial record. The hard-to-verify unofficial record involved some guy spotting what we call Saturn, but he was an ancient who didn’t know anything about “the record”. Once we went about establishing a record, some other guy beat all the other guys to get his name on the record for being the “first to spot Saturn.” We went back and checked the unofficial record and made some corrections, but sometimes we didn’t.

“Crock of stuff is what it is,” the naysayers say whenever we talk about the first to discover celestial bodies. “There was always someone who discovered it first, before the record existed, AND, and someone would’ve discovered all of these planets eventually. Most of these names we applaud and memorialize were just right time, right place opportunists. We’re not talking dots of light in the sky when we talk about planets. We’re talking about massive complex bodies that have their own geology, weather, and sometimes even their own atmosphere or moons. They’re huge honking worlds in their own right that would’ve eventually been discovered by someone. The whole idea behind celebrating the humans who first discovered a planet is so ridiculous that it’s hardly even worth talking about.

“It’s like talking about the guy who, according to the record, discovered the moon,” the naysayers continue. “You discovered the moon? That right there? You discovered that?”

On July 26, 1609, Thomas Harriot discovered the moon. There is no record of the laughter, derision, or humiliation that followed Harriot’s discovery, but Harriot became the first known person in history to look at the moon through a telescope and draw what he saw. He made multiple maps, including recognizable features. Mr. Harriot either forgot to put his name on the record for his discovery, or his friends started mocking him so ruthlessly for trying to be the first guy to spot the moon that he decided not to submit his name for the discovery.

The father of modern observational astronomy, Galileo Galilei didn’t give a crud about all that. He knew how to bite that apple. Galileo was an ambitious fella who knew how to get history to celebrate his name, so months later he published findings that mirrored Harriot’s, and he got his name on the official, historical record as the first person to discover the moon.

How many of you have heard the name Thomas Harriot? How many of you have heard of the name Galileo? Exactly. Thomas Harriot fell prey to the “publish or perish” dictum that haunts history’s otherwise anonymous names, by failing to publish his detailed maps of the moon, and he died anonymously. In fact, Harriot’s July 26, 1609 findings stayed hidden in notebooks for centuries, until he received proper accreditation in the 19th–20th centuries. The Thomas Harriot story might sound like a miscarriage of justice, unless you’re one of those “I’m pretty sure someone would’ve eventually discovered the moon” naysayers.

The Perturbing Force

On March 13, 1781, a man named Sir William Herschel used his trusty telescope to discover the planet we now call Uranus. His observations found that it wasn’t a comet, but a planet, and after his findings were listed on the official record, the society of astronomists pretty much thought “Ok, that’s it, Woo Hoo and all that, we’ve discovered the end of the universe.” There was one problem; the astronomists who used Herschel’s findings to spot Uranus, could not correctly plot point Uranus’ orbital positions based on mathematical projections. Uranus was so all over the place that it made no sense.

Using all of the technology and data available to him at the time, Astronomer Alexis Bouvard made seventy-seven projections on where Uranus should be at any given time of the year, but his fellow astronomers called him out. They told him all of his projections were wrong. We can guess that Bouvard called them ordures (French for trash), but he went through the projections versus the reality, and he found that they were right. Much to Bouvard’s humiliation, this occurred after he published his seventy-seven projections. He probably could’ve simply corrected the record and published again, but that would’ve meant finding his initial errors and correcting them.

We can only imagine how much time, sweat, and passion Bouvard put into creating those tables, and we can guess that he tried to save face by saying, “Hey, I didn’t just throw that out there. These were precise projections based on all the data I had at my disposal, coupled with Newtonian laws. I didn’t just guess, then publish those guesses to subject myself to this level of humiliation. There’s something more going on.” He initially blamed the data, but when that didn’t satisfy anyone, including himself, he came up with a “Perturbing Force” theory.

Bouvard’s Perturbing Force theory suggested that there was something beyond Uranus pulling and pushing on Uranus in a way that caused such irregularities in its orbital path. We can only guess that the astronomers enjoyed the errors of the esteemed astronomers errors so much that they initially listed his follow up explanations as excuses for imprecise projections. When Bouvard furthered that the perturbing force might be another planet, they probably laughed at him, thinking that it was evidence of Bouvard squirming. Unfortunate for the legacy of Alexis Bouvard, after he submitted the idea that Uranus might not be the end of the universe to the Paris Observatory, the member of the astronomical society who received that request for a follow up left his position soon after, and no one followed up on Bouvard’s submitted request for further findings. Furthering the unfortunate nature of Bouvard’s legacy, he died before anyone would substantiate his idea of a perturbing force gravitationally pulling and pushing Uranus off what should have been the precise data points dictating its orbit. Thus, we can only guess that Alexis Bouvard probably died believing himself a failure, or at the very least that everything he accomplished in life ended with a huge stain, in the form of an exclamation point, at the end.

Skeptics argued that since Bouvard’s projections relied on Isaac Newton’s theories, Newton’s theories must be flawed. Mathematicians, like John Couch Adams, insisted that Newton’s theories were sound and after studying Bouvard’s projections, Adams insisted that he could use Bouvard’s projections, and all of the data the man compiled, coupled with Newton’s laws to deduce the mass, position, and orbit to discover Bouvard’s perturbing force.

Couch Adams devoted four years of his life to studying, calculating, and projecting where a possible perturbing force could be, and he submitted that work to British Astronomer Royal George Biddell Airy. The esteemed Airy was understandably skeptical, as the mathematician submitting these findings was a twenty-four-year-old, and we can also guess that Airy was unwilling to put his reputation on the line without detailed computations. He did respond to Couch Adams, however, asking for greater precision, as Couch Adams’ findings turned out to be twelve degrees off, and unfortunate to the legacy of John Couch Adams he failed to respond. Some suggest that the failure to respond may have been due to Adams’s unprofessional demeanor, his nerves, procrastination, or that Adams did not have the numbers required for greater precision. Whatever the case was, Couch Adams’s failure to respond in a timely manner cost him sole credit on the official record for the discovery of the planet Neptune.

Some suggest that Frenchman, Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier, was unaware of John Couch Adams work, his subsequent submission, and his failure to complete the work, but Le Verrier was very aware of Alexis Bouvard’s work. He paid particular attention to Bouvard’s idea of a “perturbing force”, and it fascinated him. He thought he could find the missing link, and he thought he did. He thought he made the discovery of a lifetime, one that could make him famous.

He first sent those findings to the French Academy of Sciences in Paris, but due to bureaucratic inertia and a lack of proactive observation, the Academy did not follow up. They did not reject Le Verrier’s math, as they found it rigorous, but his findings did not translate into instant acceptance as a confirmed discovery because it remained theoretical until it could be observed. The Academy also had “other concerns”, and they may have lacked the capacity to immediately follow up. Whatever the case was, Le Verrier took some of the complaints The Academy had about the absolute precision of his findings, and he refined his coordinates and submitted them to Johann Gottfried Galle at the Berlin Observatory on September 18, 1846. Berlin had a powerful new refractor telescope, and they provided a more agile response, partly because Galle and his assistant Heinrich d’Arrest were eager to test the hypothesis.

On September 23, 1846 Galle confirmed, through Verrier’s detailed calculations, that the perturbing force affecting the orbit of Uranus was possibly and probably a planet that we now call Neptune. Galle’s confirmation did note, however, that Le Verrier’s detailed calculations were one degree off. Here we reach another “think about it, before we move on” moment. The Frenchman took Alexis Bouvard’s precise projections, based on pre-discovery data, and he joined Bouvard’s mathematical calculations on his errors, coupled with some theoretical notion of a perturbing force, pushing and pulling Uranus off what should be its orbit, and it should be right there! And those calculating his math,using nothing more than their own math(!), found that he was one degree off! [Note: The international astronomy community eventually decided to settle the international dispute by giving credit to both the British Adams and the French Urbain for Neptune’s discovery, even though Adams unofficially discovered it first.] Astronomy.com also states that “Adams [eventually] completed his calculations first, but Le Verrier published first. Le Verrier’s calculations were also more accurate.” The lesson here for you kids looking to submit astronomical findings to a governing body, when they approach you for detailed calculations to support your astronomical findings make sure you either respond immediately, or maybe you should have your detailed calculations ready before declaring your findings. 

The naysayers have a point when they say someone would’ve eventually discovered something as massive as a planet, but Neptune is different. Someone would’ve eventually discovered it, as the technology advanced, but a couple of guys, we’llsay three in total with Bouvard paving the way with his perturbing force theory, located Neptune by mathematically predicting where it would be based on the irregularities in Uranus’s orbit. Is that phenomenal? No? How about we put ourselves in their era and learn that when they went to the office to complete their theories, they road a horse on a dirt road to get there, if they were lucky enough and rich enough to own a horse. Also, their definition of the heart of the city was often just a bunch of wooden store fronts, like the recreations we see on the old HBO show Deadwood. Most of what these 19th century astronomers and mathematicians saw in the nighttime sky is what we can see by stepping outside and looking up into the sky. They had some technological assistance back then, in the form of relatively weak telescopes, and some theorize that astronomers, like Galileo Galilei in 1613, Jerome Lalande in 1795, and John Herschel in 1830 may have used this technology to spot Neptune first, but they didn’t know they were seeing a planet, because their telescopes were not powerful enough for them to know that. Those of us who write articles about such topics and the geniuses who made ingenious discoveries or theories that proved slightly incorrect or somewhat flawed should asterisk our modern critiques by saying, “I am smart. No, really I am, really, really smart, but as ingenious as I am, I don’t know if I could’ve done what they did with the primitive technology they had, primitive when compared to ours. So, before I go about correcting and critiquing their findings with the technology I have at my disposal, thanks to those who developed it for me, I’d like to say how impressive it is that they came so close that it’s impressive that they did what they did with what they had.”