Great Fire of Rome / Football War cease-fire - July 18

The Great Fire of Rome began on this day in the year 64. / On this day in 1969, a cease-fire was called in the so-called Football War, or Soccer War, between El Salvador and Honduras.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, history enthusiasts, you get not one, but two events
in history today. Heads up that you also might hear
two different hosts, me and Tracy V. Wilson. With that said,
on with the show, Welcome to this day in History class.
It's July today, in the year sixty four, a fire

(00:21):
broke out in Rome that would destroy a lot of
the city. It would also make the Emperor Nero infamous.
It's probably the thing people associate most with Nero today.
So Nero was the great grandson of Caesar Augustus. He
became emperor at the age of sixteen, and he was
very ambitious because also ran in the family. His mother
was also very ambitious, but he got her out of

(00:43):
the way, first by moving her to a different residence
and then allegedly by killing her. He also wanted to
build a giant palace complex of his own and call
it Neropolis. This fire, though it probably started near the
chariot stadium known as the Circus Maximus call see Him
that people think of today, was not yet built. The

(01:03):
wind spread the fire to wooden housing. Sometimes this housing
is described as slums, sometimes it's described as apartments. It
was basically densely packed wooden housing that allowed the fire
to spread very very quickly. Rome had fourteen districts at
the time. Three of them were totally destroyed in this fire.
Almost all of them also sustained some damage. Tacitus wrote

(01:27):
about this in his history, calling it a disaster that
was quote graver and more terrible than any other which
had befallen this city. He also said that people were
prevented from fighting the fire. There were definitely firefighters in
Rome at this point, but it's not clear why they
either couldn't or didn't fight the fire successfully. He did
not write this history when it happened, though he would

(01:50):
have been a child or maybe young teenager when the
fire actually occurred, and he wrote about it later. On
July twenty, people managed to create a fire break which
finely stopped the spread of the fire, but it started
up again a few days later. Overall, it was catastrophic
for Rome. Nero blamed it on Christians, and then he

(02:10):
used the fire as an excuse to persecute them, including
torturing and executing the Christian population of Rome. He also
used some of the land that had been cleared by
the fire to start building some of those fancy new
palaces that he had been so enthusiastic about. He also
implemented new building codes. He built other structures as well.

(02:31):
All of this uh contributed to the suspicion that he
had had something to do with the fire, or at
least hadn't tried very hard to stop it. And as
for probably the most frequently asked question, No, Nero did
not actually fiddle while Rome was burning. The fiddle wasn't
invented until much later on. He did like music and

(02:53):
play instruments, the instruments that he played were more like
a liar, and Tacitus did claim that as Rome was burning,
near performed a song about the burning of Troy on
his private stage. Even if you're thinking about the more
figurative term fiddle rather than actually playing the fiddle as
an instrument, it's not exactly that he just sat around

(03:15):
frivolously doing nothing while the fire was happening. Tacita sort
of implies that he did not come back until his
some of his personal property was at risk of the fire,
but once he was back, he set up shelters, he
distributed food, and those shelters and food distribution points included
on his own grounds Nero's power, as z Emberg did

(03:37):
eventually Wayne he died on June nine of the year
sixty eight, when he was facing arrest and a likely execution,
and he instead took his own life. Thanks to Christopher
Hasiotis for his research work on today's episode and Tatari Harrison,
who editson produces all these episodes. You can subscribe to
This Day in History Class on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,

(03:58):
and wherever else you get your podcas asks. You can
also tune in tomorrow for the story of a convention
that was the first of its kind. Hi again, welcome
to This Day in History Class, where history waits for
no one. The day was July nineteen sixty nine. The

(04:33):
Organization of American States called for a ceasefire in the
so called soccer War between El Salvador and Honduras. In
nineteen sixty nine, about three point five million people lived
in El Salvador, and a lot of the country was
owned by the landowning elite. At the same time, about
two point six million people lived in Honduras, a country

(04:54):
that shared a border with El Salvador but was much larger.
Honduras was also controlled by wealthy landowners but the prospect
of cheap land and of escaping and oppressive government drew
Salvadorans to the neighboring country. By that year, more than
three hundred thousand Salvadorans were living in Honduras. Landowners in

(05:15):
El Salvador supported the mass immigration, which freed up land
in their country, but Honduran peasants were not so happy
with the influx of immigrants, as they were already vuying
to get more land in their country. Landowners in Honduras
had formed a group called the National Federation of Farmers
and Live Stock Farmers of Honduras, and as they promoted

(05:36):
their own interests, they also encouraged Honduran nationalism. Already resentful
of Salvadoran migrants, Hondurans began beating, torturing, and even killing Salvadorans.
The Honduran government passed an agrarian land reformed law to
lessen the resentment that many Hondurans had for Salvadorans. It

(05:57):
called for Salvadoran immigrants to give up their land redistributed
among native born Hondurans, but that legislation wasn't really effective,
and the reform ended with Honduran President Oswaldo Lopez Arellano,
deporting thousands of Salvadorans. As the migrants returned to El Salvador,
the government struggled to deal with the influx of people,

(06:18):
and Salvadoran landowners called for military action. El Salvador began
claiming it owned the land that was taken from El
Salvador and immigrants in Honduras. On top of all that conflict,
other land and border disputes were underway in the region,
and El Salvador and Honduras were slated to compete in
the qualifying matches for the FIFA World Cup. The first

(06:41):
game was played in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, where
Honduras one one to zero in a game Instant Salvador
on June. El Salvador one three to zero. Honduras was
mocked and Hunduran fans were ridiculed at the game. The
designing match was set to take place on June, but

(07:03):
that same day Al Salvador announced that it was severing
diplomatic relations with Honduras. The deportation and immigration issues had
gotten so bad that El Salvador accused Honduras of committing
crimes that constitute genocide and not holding anyone responsible for it.
Tensions were already running high, but after El Salvador won

(07:23):
the Designing match three to two in Mexico, conflict at
the border intensified. On July fourteenth, El Salvador invaded Honduras
and began bombing it. The Honduran army was small and
El Salvador was stronger on the ground. In the air,
the Hundurans had the advantage in El Salvador. Honduran aircraft

(07:44):
targeted oil facilities. The Organization of American States called for
El Salvador to withdraw from Honduras. El Salvador refused to
withdraw unless Hunduras agreed to give reparations to displace Salvadorans
and not to harm Salvadorans and hunt Duras. A ceasefire
was arranged on July eighteenth, and it took effect on

(08:05):
the twentieth, but by that time somewhere around three thousand
people had died in the fighting and more were displaced.
El Salvador didn't leave Honduras until August two, when the
Honduran government promised not to mistreat Salvadoran's living in Honduras. Still,
the border remained in dispute. Trade between the two countries

(08:26):
was disrupted, affecting their economies and the Central American Common Market.
A peace treaty between El Salvador and Honduras was not
signed until nineteen eighty, though the conflict did not actually
start because of the soccer game, the name the Football
War or the Soccer War stuck. I'm Eve step Coote

(08:47):
and hopefully you know a little more about history today
than you did yesterday. And if you're so inclined, you
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history tomorrow. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit

(09:10):
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