On this day in 1374, an outbreak of choreomania, in which people began to dance until they dropped from exhaustion, began in the city of Aachen. From there it spread through much of Europe, and the plague did not cease until Xavier Cugat was taken into custody by the Inquisition.

In today’s lesson we learn a bit of geography, history, and political science, all by comparing the number 1 with the number 130.

By population, the two largest counties in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are Philadelphia County in the east and Allegheny County in the west.

These two urbanized counties are in roughly the same population range. There are about a million and a half people in Philadelphia County, and Allegheny County is not far behind with about a million and a quarter.

In Philadelphia County, the larger of the two, there is one self-governing municipality: the city of Philadelphia, which is coextensive with Philadelphia County.

In Allegheny County, there are 130 self-governing municipalities. The city of Pittsburgh is the largest, but even Pittsburgh makes up less than a quarter of the population of Allegheny County. One of those other self-governing municipalities is a medium-sized townhouse development, Pennsbury Village, that formed a borough of its own after residents had a dispute with the township they lived in. The villagers, having taken up their torches and pitchforks, issued a Declaration of Secession explaining “that we can govern our affairs more effectively and equitable [sic] than a distant and disinterested authority.” (The authority, Robinson Township, had its municipal building 3¼ miles from Pennsbury Village—pretty much equivalent to the Atlantic Ocean between them.) That is the fourth-smallest municipality in Allegheny County. The smallest is Haysville, consisting of 36 houses with a total of 81 people in them, where presumably everyone, children and pets included, has to take shifts running the borough government.

Everything that is different about Pittsburgh from its rival to the east, both for better and for worse, can be explained by these two numbers: 130 and 1.

On this day in 1494, the Treaty of Tordesillas was signed, dividing all newly discovered lands between Spain to the west of a certain meridian and Portugal to the east of it. This treaty established an important principle of international law: that if you are a band of thugs intending to muscle in and take over already-inhabited countries, it is proper form first to make a gentlemanly agreement with any other thugs who might have their own plans for conquest and massacre in the same territories.

On this day in 1252, Alfonso the Wise became king of Castile and León, beginning Europe’s one and only experiment with wise kings—an experiment generally regarded as a failure that ought not to be repeated in the future.

Learned Hand.—Private correspondence reveals that Judge Learned Hand wrote an abominable schoolboy scrawl.

On this day in 1536, Ann Boleyn, the Queen of England, was arrested on charges of adultery, incest, treason, witchcraft, burglary, tax evasion, trespassing, failing to signal while changing lanes, insider trading, and simony. The court ultimately reduced the charges to loitering in the second degree, which was a capital offense.

On this day in 1886, Anita Loos and Ludwig Wittgenstein were born, striking a blow against the pseudoscience of astrology from which it would never fully recover.

Discovery of Brazil by Portuguese; discovery of Portuguese by Brazilians.

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On this day in 1500, the Portuguese under Pedro Álvares Cabral discovered Brazil. Brazil had been discovered about four months earlier by the Spaniard Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, but History has ruled that his discovery did not count. It had also been discovered about 11,000 years before Pinzón by people who were still living there when the Europeans arrived, but they did not count either. History has very exacting standards for discovery.

Sandwich.—The “sandwich” popular at delicatessens and fast-food restaurants was named for the Earl of Sandwich, who, marooned on one of the islands that now bear his name, was eaten by the natives between slices of bread.

On this day in 1606, the Virginia Company was incorporated in London for the purpose of exploiting the British possessions in North America. The most recent annual report cautions shareholders to brace themselves for a four hundred eighteenth consecutive unprofitable fiscal year.