April 13th: Outlaws, Legends & Birthdays That Shaped History

Robert LeRoy Parker was born on April thirteenth, 1866. It’s a name that means almost nothing, a line in a dusty ledger in Beaver, Utah. But the alias he took—Butch Cassidy—that name became a legend, a ghost that still haunts the American West. And looking back, you realize the legend wasn’t about the man. It was about the moment. It was about a country changing so fast it was breaking its own heart, and the desperate, romantic, and violent attempt to hold on to a freedom that was already gone. What a journey this week has been. We've been walking through these strange, beautiful hallways of history together, and every single day has offered up some new surprise, some new connection that feels… electric.

April thirteenth is no exception. It’s a day of rebels and geniuses, of saints and sinners, all leaving their mark. For instance, on this day in 1963, Garry Kasparov was born. The man who would become arguably the greatest chess player of all time. We remember him for his ferocious, dominating style, but looking back from now, his true historical moment wasn't just winning championships. It was his battle against the machine. His 1997 match against IBM's Deep Blue computer was a turning point. We saw it then as man versus machine. But now? We see it as the very first conversation we had about what intelligence even is.

Kasparov lost the match, but he was the first human to truly grapple, in public, with an artificial mind that was both alien and brilliant. We are all living in the world that match created. And the birthdays keep coming! Ron Perlman, born 1950. An actor whose entire career is a testament to the power of transformation. From a noble beast in a fairy tale to the cigar-chomping demon Hellboy. He’s a character actor in the truest sense of the word, a craftsman of delightful strangeness. And Peabo Bryson, the singer, born 1951, whose voice basically defined the sound of the big, sweeping animated movie ballad for an entire generation.

If you grew up in the nineties, his voice is part of your DNA. But April thirteenth goes much, much deeper than that. The currents of power shift on this day. In 1111, Henry the Fifth is crowned Holy Roman Emperor. Not given the title. Crowned. You can almost feel the weight of the metal, the cold stone of the church, the silent transfer of immense, continent-spanning power. This wasn't just a ceremony. It was a declaration. A line drawn on the map of the world in ink and steel. This is how empires are solidified. One man, one crown, one moment where everyone in the room agrees on who holds the power.

At least for a little while. And then, just a few centuries earlier, you have the opposite. In 945, Hugues de Provence, the King of Italy, abdicates his throne in favor of his son. He just… gives it up. An emperor is crowned, a king steps down. Power is never static. It’s a tide, always coming in, always going out. And most of history is just us, standing on the shore, watching it happen. But the two stories from this day that I can’t shake… the two figures that seem to be speaking to each other across the centuries… are both outlaws. One is a saint. The other is a bank robber.

Let’s start with the one we think we know. Butch Cassidy. Robert LeRoy Parker. He leads a gang called the Wild Bunch. They are famous, charming, and very, very good at robbing trains and banks. They are the rock stars of their era. Newspapers print breathless accounts of their exploits. They even pose for a famous photograph, all dressed up in suits and bowler hats, looking more like bankers than the men who rob them. There is a genuine delight in their story, isn't there? A Robin Hood fantasy played out against the backdrop of the vast, empty American landscape.

But if we look back with the clarity of hindsight, what was actually happening? The world of the small rancher, the cowboy, the frontiersman… it was ending. The railroad, the telegraph, the barbed wire fence—they were carving up the open range and turning freedom into property. The banks and the railroad tycoons, men like E.H. Harriman, were the new emperors. They were consolidating power, not with a crown, but with stock certificates and legal documents. So when Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid robbed a Union Pacific train, they weren't just stealing money.

They were punching an empire in the nose. They were a rebellion. A futile one, a violent one, absolutely. But they were resisting a force that was crushing their way of life. And we romanticize them, I think, because we recognize the fight. We see a system becoming too big, too powerful, too impersonal, and we feel a thrill seeing someone, anyone, refuse to bow. We call him an outlaw, but what we’re really celebrating is the defiance. Now, let’s travel back another twelve hundred years. To the seventh century. The Byzantine Empire is the superpower of the world.

And the emperor, Constans the Second, has a problem. A theological one. A debate is raging about the nature of Christ, a heresy called Monothelitism. It’s complicated, but the short version is, the Emperor wants everyone to just shut up about it for the sake of political unity. He issues an edict. This debate is over. But the Pope in Rome, a man named Martin the First, refuses. He believes the Emperor is wrong, that this isn't a political issue to be solved by decree, but a fundamental truth of faith. So he calls a council, right in Rome, and formally condemns the Emperor's position.

He pokes the bear. He punches the empire in the nose. The Emperor’s response is swift and brutal. In the year 653, he sends soldiers to Rome. They kidnap the Pope from the altar of a basilica, drag him onto a ship, and haul him to Constantinople in chains. He's publicly humiliated, imprisoned, and eventually exiled to the Crimea, a forgotten edge of the empire. He dies there two years later from starvation and abuse. His last letters are heartbreaking, begging for food, abandoned by almost everyone. On April thirteenth, the church marks the feast day of Pope Saint Martin the First.

He was, by the laws of his time, an outlaw. A traitor who defied the direct order of the supreme ruler. He was crushed by the system. Utterly. So here they are. Our two April thirteenth outlaws. Butch Cassidy and Pope Martin. One who fought the system for money and a vanishing way of life, and became a romantic folk hero. The other fought the system for an idea about the nature of God, and became a martyr and a saint. From the vantage point of their own time, one was a common criminal, the other a political traitor. Their endings were bleak. Cassidy, likely killed in a shootout in Bolivia.

Martin, starved to death in exile. The empire always wins. Or does it? Because what’s remarkable, looking back now, is that we don't remember the railroad baron E.H. Harriman with any affection. And almost nobody remembers the Byzantine Emperor Constans the Second at all. But we tell stories about Butch Cassidy. We name churches after Saint Martin. History, it turns out, has a very long memory, and a very strange sense of justice. It’s not about who wins in the moment. It’s about whose story lasts. The stories that last are the ones about defiance. The ones that prove that even the most powerful empires, whether they're built on rails or on imperial edicts, have cracks.

And it’s in those cracks that the light gets in. It's in those moments of refusal, of saying "no," that we see the true shape of the human spirit. April thirteenth gives us the bank robber and the pope, the chess master and the actor, the crowning and the abdication. It’s a day that reminds us that history isn't a straight line of kings and dates. It's a chaotic, beautiful, and often hilarious collection of human beings who refused to do what they were told. They are the ones who show us the shape of the world.