Alice Pemberton: In eighteen ninety-two, William 'Pudge' Heffelfinger takes five hundred dollars from the Allegheny Athletic Association and becomes American football's first professional. Alice Pemberton: In nineteen forty-two, the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal begins: the decisive clash between Allied and Japanese fleets in the Solomon Islands. Alice Pemberton: In nineteen ninety-nine, the Düzce earthquake kills more than eight hundred people in northwestern Turkey. Alice Pemberton: This is The Long Echo for the twelfth of November. I'm Alice Pemberton. History doesn't repeat itself — but it echoes. Alice Pemberton: In this edition: Edmund Cavendish on a town promised forever. Arthur Nightingale on a novelist's secret gift. Vivian Hale on three daughters and one yes. Judge Marion Calloway on a law that never raised its voice. And the last man off Ellis Island. Let's begin. Alice Pemberton: In fourteen thirty-nine, an English town was created for the first time by an Act of Parliament rather than a royal charter. Its name was Plymouth. For the front page, our professor of history, Edmund Cavendish. Edmund? Professor Edmund Cavendish: An Act of Parliament, for a place that until then didn't even have one name. It was Sutton Prior, the tithing of Sutton Raf, part of the hamlet of Sutton Vautort and a slice of Compton. The November parliament at Westminster stitched them all together. Alice Pemberton: What did the townsfolk actually ask for? Professor Edmund Cavendish: They wanted a corporation, and they wanted licence to fortify. The French had burned a manor there a century before. The commons carried their petition, and the roll asks that the town 'shall henceforth be a free borough, incorporated under one mayor and with one perpetual community, and shall be called the borough of Plymouth forever.' Alice Pemberton: 'Perpetual' is a big word for a harbour town. Professor Edmund Cavendish: That's the hinge. From then on, a town could exist because elected men at Westminster voted it into being, not because a monarch felt generous. Plymouth would go on to send ships against the Armada and wave the Pilgrim Fathers off to the New World. Kings have come and gone by the dozen since. 'Forever', so far, is holding. Alice Pemberton: In eighteen sixty-five, Elizabeth Gaskell bought a house in Hampshire with her own earnings and kept it secret from her husband. It was a surprise she never got to give. Our storyteller, Arthur Nightingale. Arthur? Arthur Nightingale: A surprise. Her life began with the opposite kind. Elizabeth Stevenson was the youngest of eight children born in Chelsea, and only she and her brother John survived infancy. Her mother died when the baby was a little over a year old, and she was sent north to an aunt in Knutsford, in Cheshire. Alice Pemberton: And Knutsford never left her. Arthur Nightingale: Knutsford became Cranford, the little town she made immortal. The deeper mark was left by John, who sent her books and letters from the sea. Then, on an expedition to India, he vanished. Alice Pemberton: Then marriage, and Manchester. Arthur Nightingale: Manchester made her a novelist. Married to a Unitarian minister, Elizabeth Gaskell put the lives of the very poor into Mary Barton. Later came North and South, and a Life of Charlotte Brontë that fixed the Brontës' fame. Their house stood, of all places, on Plymouth Grove. Alice Pemberton: And Hampshire? Arthur Nightingale: Elizabeth Gaskell bought The Lawn, at Holybourne near Alton, as a place for William to retire. On this Sunday he was preaching in Manchester, and she was at tea with three of their daughters. She fell into her daughter Meta's arms and was gone, at fifty-five. The Bury Times wrote: 'Mrs. Gaskell, the authoress and biographer, was suddenly struck by death on Sunday last, while in the act of reading to her daughters.' Arthur Nightingale: She had written William a home with her own pen, and he never saw her in it. Her last novel was still coming out in instalments. It was called Wives and Daughters. Alice Pemberton: In ten twenty-eight, a dying Byzantine emperor with no son chose his heir by choosing a son-in-law. On this day, his daughter Zoe took the throne beside that man. For the inflection point, our economist, Vivian Hale. Vivian? Vivian Hale: A son-in-law, because in Byzantium hereditary succession was a habit, never a rule. Constantine the Eighth had three daughters. Eudokia had taken the veil, Zoe was about fifty, and Theodora was the youngest. His man was Romanos Argyros, prefect of Constantinople and a distant cousin. Alice Pemberton: And one daughter said no. Vivian Hale: Theodora refused. The chroniclers split on why: perhaps the blood relation, perhaps the awkward fact that Romanos already had a wife who hadn't agreed to a divorce. Zoe said yes, and every obstacle melted. The Patriarch Alexios cleared the kinship, and the wife was sent to a convent. Alice Pemberton: How fast did it move? Vivian Hale: Inside a week. The wedding came days before the old emperor died, and the throne came the day after. A city prefect was seated as emperor on the strength of Zoe's yes. Alice Pemberton: And the first wife? Vivian Hale: Helena went into a convent under a new name, Maria. In the whole affair, hers was the one answer nobody needed. Alice Pemberton: In nineteen thirty-eight, Hermann Göring signed the Decree on the Elimination of Jews from Economic Life. With one entry in the Reich's law gazette, it outlawed Jewish shops and trades. For the archive, our jurist, Judge Marion Calloway. Judge? Judge Marion Calloway: One entry, on page fifteen-eighty. That's what chills a lawyer: it looks like law. The decree cites its authority, an earlier order for the Four-Year Plan, and Göring signs as that plan's Plenipotentiary. Alice Pemberton: What does it actually say? Judge Marion Calloway: I'll read it. 'From January 1, 1939, Jews … are forbidden to operate retail stores, mail-order houses, or sales agencies, or to carry on a trade independently.' And they are forbidden 'to offer for sale goods or services, to advertise these, or to accept orders at markets of all sorts, fairs or exhibitions.' Alice Pemberton: Not one word of violence in it. Judge Marion Calloway: None, and that's the craft. The decree defines who counts as a Jew by cross-reference to the citizenship law, so a whole people is pushed out of economic life by footnote. It never raises its voice. It simply makes earning a living a crime. Alice Pemberton: Did that paper ever come back to him? Judge Marion Calloway: It did. At Nuremberg, the decree was entered as prosecution document sixteen sixty-two PS. Hermann Göring had signed his own exhibit. Alice Pemberton: Five more from the twelfth of November. With me are our diplomacy hand, former ambassador Eleanor Shaw; for science and medicine, Doc Sullivan; and our culture correspondent, Beth Hartley. Eleanor, you've brought a line on a map. Eleanor Shaw: A line that's still argued over. In eighteen ninety-three in Kabul, Abdur Rahman Khan, the Iron Emir, signed the Durand Line agreement fixing Afghanistan's frontier with British India. Each side promised it 'will at no time exercise interference' beyond the line. And the British raised the Emir's subsidy. Doc Sullivan: So the frontier came with a pay rise. Eleanor Shaw: Most do. That line still runs between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and it's still disputed. Doc Sullivan: Mine is colder. In nineteen twelve, a search party led by the expedition surgeon found Captain Robert Falcon Scott's tent on the Ross Ice Shelf, eight months after the polar party died. Scott lay half out of his sleeping bag, his arm across Wilson. He was very likely the last to die. Beth Hartley: And they were eleven miles from One Ton Depot. Doc Sullivan: Then the water. In nineteen seventy, the Bhola cyclone struck East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. It was the deadliest tropical cyclone on record, and it came in on the high tide. In one district, Tazumuddin, a survey in The Lancet found almost half the people dead. Eleanor Shaw: And it broke a country. The military government was slow with relief. Within a month the Awami League swept the East, and the Liberation War followed. Beth Hartley: Here's something that stayed up. In nineteen thirty-six the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge opened, six months before the Golden Gate. Governor Frank Merriam didn't cut a ribbon. He took an acetylene torch to a gold link. Doc Sullivan: Then he announced, 'This bridge belongs to this generation. We built it and we shall pay for.' Eleanor Shaw: Spoken like a man standing beside a toll booth. Beth Hartley: And a door that closed. In nineteen fifty-four Ellis Island shut without ceremony, as its last detainee walked out. He was Arne Pettersen, a Norwegian seaman who'd overstayed his shore leave, and he left waving from the ferry. Doc Sullivan: Home to his family, then? Beth Hartley: He was given a deadline to leave the country and missed it. He was re-arrested and deported. The last man out of Ellis Island still couldn't leave on time. Alice Pemberton: A frontier, a tent, a tide, a toll and a ferry, and someone's paperwork in every one. Thank you, all three. Alice Pemberton: Well, that was the day that was — the twelfth of November — where in nineteen seventy-five the islands of the Comoros took their seat at the United Nations; where in eighteen forty-seven the Danish chemist William Christopher Zeise died, the man whose salt was one of the first organometallic compounds; and, more recently, where in nineteen ninety-seven Ramzi Yousef was found guilty of masterminding the first bombing of the World Trade Center. The echo never stops. Neither do we. See you tomorrow. Humphrey Thwaite: What they didn't tell you, Mortimer: in sixteen fourteen, the Treaty of Xanten ended the Jülich-Cleves succession crisis, which had nearly dragged Europe into war. It carved the duchies up between Brandenburg and Neuburg. Mortimer Finch: A probate dispute. Thrilling. Humphrey Thwaite: Brandenburg's slice was the first Hohenzollern land on the Rhine. It was the seed of the Prussian Rhineland. Mortimer Finch: So a dead duke's estate put Prussia on the Rhine, and they saved it for after the credits. Humphrey Thwaite: Everything good happens on the balcony, Mortimer.