Once Upon A Day--August 19th

On this august day :-) some of the following occurred among the sons of men:

A.D. 14—Death of Augustus, 1^st Imperator (Emperor) of the Romans.  This month bearing his name, August, was formerly called Sextilis (or the “sixth” month, before the addition of January and February) and renamed in his honor by the Roman Senate in 8 B.C.

1662—Death of Blaise Pascal. He was a pioneer mathematician and scientist, and an amateur philosopher. He is credited with the invention/discovery of the hydraulic press, the syringe, an early form of probability theory, and the fact that vacuums (contra Aristotle) actually exist. The SI unit of pressure is named for him.

1745—“Bonnie Prince Charlie” Charles Edward Stuart raises the standard of the Stuarts in Glenfinnan, beginning the second (and last) Jacobite rebellion against the House of Hanover, known as “the ’45.” His Highlander clans would follow to final defeat at the battle of Culloden eight months later.

1812—The USS Constitution  defeats HMS Guerriere off the coast of Nova Scotia, during which the British are amazed that their cannon fire merely bounces off the Constitution’s two-foot-thick oak sides. “Huzzah! Her sides are made of iron!” the American sailors exclaimed—leading to her nickname, “Old Ironsides”  half a century before the U.S. Navy actually commissioned an iron-constructed vessel. She serves today in Boston harbor, the oldest continually commissioned ship (since 1791) in the Navy. (A movie buff aside: the Constitution served as the model and historical basis for the Acheron, the enemy ship in Master and Commander.)

1843—Cyrus I. Scofield,  a minister and theologian of the Congregationalist denomination, is born. His Bible commentary in the Scofield Reference Bible did much to popularize dispensationalism.

1871—Orville Wright, of the famous Wright Brothers, is born in Dayton, Ohio.

1895—John Wesley Hardin, the former Texas gunfighter and outlaw, is murdered by being shot in the back of the head by John Selman in a saloon in El Paso.

1921—Gene Roddenberry, the original writer and founding force of Star Trek, is born.

1942—During WWII, Canadians amphibiously assault Nazi-occupied Dieppe on the coast of France. Although the operation is a failure, many lessons learned are carried over to the Normandy invasion two years later.

Once Upon A Day--August 18th

A few interesting tidbits concerning the eighteenth day of the eighth month.

A.D. 1227—death of Genghis Khan, one of the great warriors of history. He and his Mongol hordes conquered and ruled most of Asia during his lifetime.

1572—Marriage of Henry (III) of Navarre to Margaret of Valois in Paris, an event that helped lead to the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. Henry, although only nineteen, was a leading figure among the Protestant movement of France during the Wars of Religion and a close relative of the French king Henry II. The marriage to his cousin Margaret, Henry II’s daughter, was intended to cement an alliance between the Huguenots and Catholics during a period of peace. Many Huguenots came to Paris for the nuptials, creating a powder-keg situation in the vehemently Catholic city. It would erupt a week later on the 24^th in massacre. Henry would survive, fight a few more wars, convert to Catholicism, and eventually succeed to the throne as Henry IV, founder of the House of Bourbon.

1587—Birth of the first known baby of English descent in America, Virginia Dare, in Roanoke Colony.

1774—Birth of Meriwether Lewis, co-leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

1936—Birth of the actor Robert Redford.

And oddly, the date of the death of no less than four different popes, including Alexander VI in 1503, one of the most notably worldly popes of the Renaissance period. He had somewhere around ten (illegitimate, of course) children, most of whom he managed to put in positions of power through his influence, and thus founded the infamous Borgia family. Machiavelli cited him favorably as a model ruler in The Prince--not exactly a compliment for a pope.