Also known as Gunpowder Day, November 5th is celebrated in England for the failed attempt by religious terrorists to take out the entirety of British Government that happened on this day in 1605.
The Gunpowder Plot, was a conspiracy that rumbled just beneath the surface of the conservative Protestant culture that came to the forefront of British politics and society with the crowning of King James I in 1603. Having rented the storage room beneath the House of Lords, a group of Catholics, led by nobleman Robert Catesby, filled the cellar with explosives with the intent to detonate them during an address to be made by James before a joint session of Parliament.
Responding to an anonymous tip, authorities searched the Parliament building in the early hours of the day the address was to take place and discovered Guy (aka Guido) Fawkes, a former mercenary who fought for Spain in the Eighty Years' War, babysitting 36 barrels of gunpowder. Fawkes was arrested, tortured, and was to be executed by the state - a sentence he avoided by jumping off the gallows he was to be hung from, breaking his neck in the fall, killing himself.
Read more about Guy Fawkes in Jacobean and Modern popular culture, go Back... to the Future!, bear witness to a strange connection between disparate pop stars, and learn more about today after the jump:
