Codex Sinaiticus identified / M62 coach bombing - February 4

Constantin von Tischendorf identified the Codex Sinaiticus, or Sinai Bible, on this day in 1859. / On this day in 1974, twelve people were killed in a bombing on the M62 motorway in northern England.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, y'all, Eve's here. Today's episode contains not just one,
but two nuggets of history. Consider it a double feature.
Enjoy the show. Hi, I'm Eves, and welcome to This
Day in History Class, a show that uncovers a little
bit more about history every day. The day was February four,

(00:33):
eighteen thirty six. German biblical scholar Constantine von Tisiendorff was
on his third visit to St. Catherine's Monastery at Mount
Sinai in Egypt. He was on this trip to the
monastery under the patronage of Russian Czar Alexander the Second.

(00:54):
In his previous visits, Titiendorff have found parts of the
Codex Sonida Kiss, an ancient handwritten Greek Bible. But this
time the scholar first saw three dred and forty seven
leaves of the Codex. A leaf is basically a single
sheet bound in a book, and one leaf can make

(01:15):
two pages. Years later, Titiendorff wrote the following about this
crucial discovery. On the afternoon of this day, I was
taking a walk with the steward of the convent in
the neighborhood, and as we returned towards sunset, he begged
me to take some refreshment with him in his cell.

(01:37):
Scarcely had he entered the room. When resuming our former
subject of conversation, he said, and I too have read
the Septuagint. I eat a copy of the Greek translation
made by the seventy and so saying, he took down
from the corner of the room a bulky kind of volume,
wrapped up in a red cloth, and laid it before me.

(02:02):
I enrolled the cover and discovered, to my great surprise,
not only those fragments which fifteen years before I had
taken out of the basket, but also other parts of
the Old Testament, the New Testament complete, and in addition
the Epistle of Barnabas and a part of the Pastor
of Hermus. The Codex Snidkus or Sinai Book is one

(02:29):
of the two earliest known manuscripts of the Christian Bible.
The other is the Codex Vaticanists, which was the gold
standard for the New Testament in Greek text until the
Codex Snydkus was discovered. The fourth century Codex Snikus is
so significant because it contains a complete copy of the

(02:51):
New Testament, handwritten in an old Greek vernacular language called Kyne.
It also can us the Septuagint, which is the version
of the Old Testament adopted by Greek speaking early Christians.
The distinctive sequence of books in the codex is also notable,

(03:12):
as it gives insight into the history of the Bible's construction,
and no other early version of the Christian Bible was
corrected as extensively as the Codex Snidicus has been. The
codex also demonstrated that large bound books could be produced. Basically,

(03:33):
the Codex is a marvel of biblical history and bookmaking itself.
Since it was discovered, it has been valuable to scholars
who study biblical texts. But when Titiendorff first visited St.
Catherine's Monastery in eighteen forty four, he didn't know he
would make a discovery of such magnitude. There's record that

(03:56):
an Italian visitor named Vitaliana do Nazi saw the Codex
at St. Catherine's Monastery in seventeen sixty one, but it
wasn't until nearly a century later, in eighteen forty four,
when the monks at St. Catherine's showed Titiendorff a hundred
and twenty nine leaves of the Old Testament part of

(04:18):
the Codex. Titiendorff got forty three of those leaves, then
went back to Leipzig, Germany, where he was from, and
published the leaves in eighteen forty six. He didn't tell
anyone where he found the text, and in eighteen forty
five Russian archimandright Porphyrious us Pinsky saw three hundred and

(04:42):
forty seven leaves of the Codex, including the eighty six
Titiendorff had left behind on his first trip. Us Pinsky
took three fragments from two pages of the codex back
to Russia, and in eighteen fifty three Titiandorf went back
to the monastery, where he found other biblical manuscripts, but

(05:05):
only a fragment of a leaf of the codex. But
the third time was the charm. At first, Titiendorff thought
his visit to the monastery in eighteen fifty nine would
prove fruitless, but right before he was about to leave,
he was shown the three d and forty seven leaves.

(05:26):
The codex was soon sent to Cairo, where Titiendorff transcribed
it in eighteen sixty two. After he studied the codex
more in Russia, Titiendorff published a fact simily edition or
an identical copy of the text, and presented it to
Tzar Alexander the Second. The original manuscript remained in the

(05:48):
Ministry of Foreign Affairs in St. Petersburg until eighteen sixty nine,
when it was moved to the Imperial Library and donated
to the Czar. The codex stay at the Russian National
Library until nineteen thirty three, when the Soviet government sold
it to the British Museum, but there is controversy over

(06:09):
exactly how the manuscript got out of the monks and
into the Czar's hands in the first place. The monastery
has since accused Titiandorff of theft, while some scholars argue
those allegations are unfounded. More parts of the codex have
been found since eighteen fifty nine, and though most of

(06:30):
the first part of the manuscript is missing, more than
four hundred livres of the codex survive. Parts of the
codex are spread across four places, the British Library, the
Library of the University of Leipzig, the National Library of
Russia in St. Petersburg, and the Holy Monastery of the

(06:51):
got Trodden Mount Sinai, also known as St. Catharine's. The
four sections of the codex are also available in a
did Ties version online. I'm Eve Stephcote and hopefully you
know a little more about history today than you did yesterday.

(07:11):
You can subscribe to This Day in History Class on
Apple Podcasts, the I Heart Radio app, or wherever you
get your podcasts. We'll be back with more history tomorrow.
M greetings. I'm Eves and welcome to This Day in

(07:38):
History Class, a show that believes no day in history
is a slow day. The day was February four, nine four.
Twelve people were killed in a bombing on the M

(07:58):
sixty two motorway in northern England. That Monday. A private
coach was carrying more than fifty military personnel and their
family members as they traveled along the M sixty two.
Just after midnight, a bomb exploded in the coach's luggage compartment.
The explosion could be heard for miles. Eleven people were

(08:18):
killed on the scene, and one person died a few
days later. Among the deceased were nine soldiers, a woman
and two children. At the time, people suspected that the
Irish Republican Army or i r A, was responsible for
the bombing. The previous several years had seen the i
r A carry out a series of deadly bomb attacks

(08:40):
in Britain. Politicians in the press immediately began blaming the
paramilitary organization. A quick investigation of the attack led to
the arrest of Judith Ward. Authorities knew that she attended
sin Fayne Marches shin fag Is, a left wing Irish
Republican political party, and forensic tests on the explosives done

(09:00):
by forensic scientists Frank Excuse supposedly linked her to the bombing.
The grease tests found that she had nitroglycerin on her hands.
Van and bag Ward was arrested just ten days after
the bombing when she was in Liverpool waiting on a
ferry to Ireland. She even had a notebook on her
with ira A slogans in it. After a couple of

(09:23):
days of questioning, Ward admitted to committing the bombing. The
police planned on charging her with putting the bomb at
the bus station, but when it became clear that she
was nowhere near the bus station at the time of
the bombing, they decided to charge her with planning and
organizing the explosion. She went to child in October of
nineteen seventy four, though she had a history of mental illness.

(09:46):
This information and the potential that she was not fit
to inter aply, was concealed at trial. She had also changed, retracted,
and made contradictory statements in her confessions, which were made
under disorienting condition ends. She confessed to two other bombings
besides the M sixty two one. Her confessions and the

(10:06):
forensic evidence were used to convict her of murder, and
in November she was sentenced to twelve concurrent life sentences,
one for every person who died in the bombing. The
media portrayed her as a dangerous criminal. Later, the method
that Skews used to test the explosives was discredited. The
test could show up positive with harmless materials that had

(10:28):
nothing to do with the bomb, and the forensic scientists
involved in Ward's case could have manipulated their interpretation of
the evidence. Plus, the prosecution did not reveal that Ward
had a record of confessing to crimes she did not commit.
The Court of Appeal determined that her confessions were unreliable
and quashed her criminal convictions. Wards spent eighteen years in

(10:50):
prison before she was freed on unconditional bail In nine.
I'm Eve Jeff Coote and hopefully you know a little
more about history today than you did yesterday. Know any
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(11:12):
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