#ThrowbackThursday – 29 June
When it comes to shapes, the circle is the most simple and most recognisable. Symbolically, it represents wholeness, totality, eternity, perpetual movement and completion. It’s reminiscent of the number zero, it represents birth and death in equal measure, and it encompasses both masculine and feminine energies.
Perhaps, as you take a gander at the following three events that went down in history on 29 June, you’ll find the circle making itself known!
1613 – All the Globe’s Aflame
Ah, the Globe Theatre. Opening in 1599 upon the River Thames in London, England, it is the site where many of William Shakespeare’s most famous plays such as “Hamlet”, “King Lear” and “Measure for Measure” debuted for the first time.
Well, the original Globe, at least.
In 1613, the theatre burned down during a performance of “King Henry VIII”. Its reed thatch-roof, bare of tiles and therefore exposed, had caught alight when one of the small cannons used during a scene misfired. Because the cannons were fired using gunpowder held down by wadding, a piece of the wadding led to the roof – and the rest of the building – being torched.
Within an hour, the Globe was destroyed. No one was hurt – one man whose breeches caught alight managed to escape death after a bystander doused them in beer – but it probably came as a huge blow to Shakespeare and his acting company to see their theatre go up in flames.
Still, the disaster gave them the opportunity to rebuild the Globe from the brick up. Built over the brick foundations of the first, the new theatre retained the original’s size and shape but was far more grander in appearance. It even sported a tiled roof!
2008 – Labour of Love
On this day 15 years ago, Thomas Beatie of Bend, Oregon welcomed his first child.
What’s so significant about this? Beatie was, in fact, the one who gave birth.
Assigned female at birth, Beatie underwent gender reassignment surgery in 2002. Although he underwent a double mastectomy, he still retained his female productive organs – nevertheless, Beatie was officially identified as a man. One year later, he married a woman named Nancy Gillespie, who previously had a hysterectomy (whereby she underwent a surgical procedure to have her uterus removed).
When they decided to start a family, Beatie himself chose to be the carrier. With the aid of artificial insemination, he gave birth to a baby girl named Susan on 29 June 2008. The pregnancy and subsequent birth made headlines around the globe, with reactions ranging from absolutely positive to downright negative.
“The world’s first pregnant man” went on to give birth to two more children with Gillespie, whom he divorced in 2012. Although the idea of transgender men giving birth is more acceptable today (and indeed, Beatie isn’t considered the first man to have given birth, as there have been others who’ve done so before, although they were still recognised as female), the very idea was still quite shocking for some.
“I am surprised that when my story did come out in 2008, how the world took it like it was such a foreign concept,” said Beatie in a 2022 interview. “There was so much resistance to the idea, and there was so much misunderstanding and even hostility toward the idea.
“When I put myself back in that time, I [felt] like I was living in a fishbowl. I was willingly speaking about my life in a public way. I didn’t seek to do that. But once it did happen, I felt an obligation to do that just for the sake of it. Just for the right of it, because I felt like what I was doing was important.”
To this day, Beatie is a staunch transgender advocate, author and motivational speaker who is happily raising his family with his second wife.
2012 – It’s a Wrap on TomKat
Remember when actors Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were the most popular couple to rival the likes of “Brangelina” in the mid-2000s? Well, that all ended on 29 June 2012 when they revealed that they were getting divorced.
“TomKat” first gathered momentum in April 2005 when it was revealed that Cruise and Holmes were dating – seven weeks later, they got engaged. The following year, they welcomed their daughter, Suri, and got hitched in a high-profile wedding ceremony in Italy.
Sounds all good to be true, right?
Unfortunately, no.
The marriage only lasted six years before Cruise and Holmes announced their split, one which was initiated by the latter in a New York court and which the former reportedly didn’t see coming (although sources at the time said she had told him so before the announcement was even made).
The reason behind the divorce was cited as “irreconcilable differences”, although “differences of religious beliefs” is apparently a better description: when they first started dating, Catholic-raised Holmes was inducted into the controversial world of the Church of Scientology, of which Cruise was, and continues to be, a prominent member.
Disliking their influence – particularly on six-year-old Suri, who at the time was enrolled at a Scientology-influenced school in California – Holmes specifically initiated the divorce proceedings in New York so that she would have a better of gaining sole custody of Suri and thus remove her from the school (and to get her as far away from the Scientology sect as possible).
The divorce was finalised on 9 July 2012. Today, Cruise is said to be mostly estranged from Suri (now 16), although he still continues to support her financially. Possible reasons regarding this estrangement ranges from Cruise’s stacked filming schedule to his being a Scientologist preventing him from interacting with ex-members.
As for Holmes, there have been rumours over the years that she has to be careful about dating other people, as it’s rumoured that she could lose custody of Suri if she flaunted her love-life in public, due to an alleged agreement made during the divorce settlement.
At least one thing is for certain: TomKat may be over marriage-wise, but as far as drama is concerned, it’s still going strong.
Image Credit: Source
