Once Upon A Day--July 30th

Two hundred and twelve days into Anno Domini MMXI, it is time to remember the past once again. Let us see what transpired in days of yore.

A.D. 1619—The first representative body in America, The Virginia House of Burgesses, convenes in Jamestown.

1818—Emily Bronte, the famous English author, is born.

1863—Henry Ford is born. He would create more bored employees than ever before with the principal introduction of the assembly line principle, and more vacation possibilities than ever before with the mass production of the Model T.

1864—The Battle of the Crater—during the Petersburg campaign of the War Between the States, Lt. Col. Henry Pleasents, a former Pennsylvania miner, came up with a plan to break the trench warfare stalemate by using the old tactic of mining to blow a hole in the Confederate lines. They drove the tunnel over 500 feet before packing it full of four tons of gunpowder. It was exploded at 0444 hours and threw the Confederates who survived into a panic. However, a last minute change in the attacking column from Ferrero’s division of Colored Troops to Leslie’s division meant the troops were untrained and uninformed. They bunched in the crater, as did the supporting forces of the second wave, and the steep sides trapped them. Confederate general Mahone later described the result as a “turkey shoot.” After 3,789 Yankee casualties and 1,419 Confederate, the situation of the siege remained unchanged. Grant later called it “the saddest affair I have witnessed in this war.”

1918—Joyce Kilmer, the poet most famous for Trees, is killed while serving with the 165^th RGT (“The Fighting 69^th”) during the 3^rd Battle of the Marne by a sniper bullet while scouting enemy lines.

1932—Flowers and Trees is premiered by Walt Disney—it is the first color cartoon short.

1971—Apollo 15—David Scott and Jim Irwin land on the moon, bringing the Lunar Rover and becoming the first men to drive on another planetary body. Presumably with a license. 

Once Upon A Day--September 13th

So, with 109 days left in Anno Domini 2015, let’s take a look at some of the fascinating occurrences of today! Be warned, there are a lot. To help incite you to reach the end, my personal preeminent past point will be produced at the posterior of this post. So read posthaste! ;-)

 

A.D. 81—Titus, the Roman emperor who conquered Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple, dies.

1501—Michelangelo begins work on his famous statue of David in Florence. It will take more than two years to complete. That’s a long time to chip on a rock…

1521—William Cecil, later the Baron Burghley, is born. He would become Elizabeth I’s treasurer, and along with her spymaster Walpole is one of the main reasons her reign was peaceful and solvent.

1541—John Calvin is recalled to Geneva after a three-year banishment by the town authorities. Who were, of course, all under his charismatic cultist thumb. Methodical as always, his sermon when he ascended the pulpit that Sunday was the consecutive passage from where he had left off three years before.

1592—Montaigne, the French philosopher, dies.

1609—Explorer Henry Hudson finds the river that would be named for him, in what would become New York.

1759—At the concluding battle of the Seven Year’s War (known in America as the French and Indian War) the British scale the impassable cliffs surrounding Quebec, the French citadel, and give battle on the Plains of Abraham. Although the British are victorious, their commander, James Wolfe, is mortally wounded.

1813—John Sedgwick, a Union Army corps commander in the War Between the States, is born.

Rockets and bombs glaring and bursting...

1814—During the War of 1812, the British attack Baltimore, which was defended from Ft. McHenry. The British bombarded the fort with shot, shell, and rockets on the night of the 13^th. On the morning of the 14^th, a young American lawyer arranging a prisoner transfer watched as the defiant garrison of McHenry raised their enormous fifteen-stars-and-fifteen-stripes flag. His name—Francis Scott Key. His poem in praise of the “star-spangled banner” would become the American national anthem in 1931.

1847—The Battle of Chapultepec results in Yankee victory during the Mexican-American War, paving the way for the capture of Mexico City. Chapultepec Castle was a strong point in the city’s defenses, but fell to American marines and soldiers with comparative ease; Santa Anna, the Mexican commander, is said to have exclaimed, “I believe if we were to plant our batteries in Hell, the d— Yankees would take them from us!” The battle involved several who would become famous in war twenty years later, including Lee, Jackson, Grant, Beauregard, Longstreet, and Pickett. The phrase in the Marine Hymn “From the Halls of Montezuma” is a reference to this fight.

Yes, I give kisses to blog readers...

1851—Walter Reed is born. He led the team that discovered yellow fever was transmitted by mosquitoes, allowing the completion of the Panama Canal.

1857—Milton Hershey, founder/inventor of Hershey’s Chocolate, is born.

1860—John J. Pershing is born. He served as the commander of America’s troops overseas, the Allied Expeditionary Force, in World War I.

1862—Two soldiers of the Union Army of the Potomac find Robert E. Lee’s Special Order 191 (detailing troop movements) wrapped around three lost cigars in a field, setting in motion the bloodiest single day of the War Between the States, the battle of Antietam/Sharpsburg.

1881—Ambrose Burnside, a Union Civil War general (and the man who gave his name to sideburns) dies.

1942—Marines of LTC M. Edson’s Raider Battalion continue to fight along a ridge protecting Henderson Airfield from Japanese counterattack on Guadalcanal. Eventually called the Battle of Bloody Ridge or Edson’s Ridge, it was the first defeat of a sizable Japanese land force and one of the tipping points of WWII in the Pacific.

Okay, this was difficult. But I think that the Battle for Fort McHenry is my favorite for today, mostly because I got to go visit that place with my family and help raise the flag. Which was this history nut's dream he didn't know he had! So thankful to live in the “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave!”

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.

Once Upon A Day--July 21st

It is my intention to occasionally post a few bits and pieces of history. Today seemed like a good day to start, because several disparate but fascinating events have occurred on the twenty-first day of the seventh month.  Here are a few of them:

"Great is Artemis of the Ephesians" really set Herostratus on fire for fame...

356 B.C.—Destruction of the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus

                Touted by Antipater as one of the “Seven Sights of the World” the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus was one of the great and beautiful feats of architecture that Greek culture produced. Herodotus says that Croesus, of “rich as” fame, partially funded its construction. Like most of the Seven Wonders, this one was destroyed. A man named Herostratus deliberately set it afire, so that through his arson his name would endure forever. In English, he gave us the phrase “herostratic fame” which is used for a person who deliberately did something heinous out of a desire for pure notoriety. Plutarch tells in his “Life of Alexander (the Great)”, somewhat wryly, that it burned down because Artemis was absent assisting in the birth of that great ruler. Which would, of course, make the 21^st the birthday of Alexander as well.

It was rebuilt by the Ephesians and would later serve again as one of the great attractions of that city. On account of it, Paul was nearly killed by a mob in Acts XIX, when Demetrius, who made silver shrines of Artemis, stirred up a tumult.

 

A.D. 1796—Death of Robert Burns

 

                Robert Burns (1759-1796) has been called one of the greatest of Scotland’s sons. He was a poet, writing in both Scots dialect and English. His works include “The Braes o’ Killiecrankie,” “Scots Wha Hae,” and of course, “Auld Lang Syne.” Talented and handsome, he was also a dissolute rake whose philandering lifestyle likely contributed to his early death at thirty-seven.

 

A.D. 1861—Battle of First Manassas

               

                In the rural countryside of Virginia on a hot day 154 years ago, the United States dissolved and began the bloodiest conflict ever waged on this continent.  Irvin McDowell led about 18,000 Union troops over Bull Run to collide with the combined forces of Confederates Joseph Johnston and P.G.T. Beauregard. Here Thomas Jackson and his men gained their famed sobriquet of “Stonewall” from General Bee, who called to his men, “Look at Jackson! There he stands like a stone wall. Rally behind the Virginians!” Here also Jackson exhorted the men of the Fourth Virginia Regiment, “When you charge, yell like furies!” birthing the famed Rebel Yell. Manassas was a Confederate victory, and signaled that the war would be anything but the quick contest the spectator politicians from Washington D.C. had anticipated. It would drag on for another four years until 1865.

 

A.D. 1925—Scopes Trial Concludes

 

                A mere ninety years ago today, substitute teacher John Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution in the public schools and fined $100, a fair sum in those days. The trial was far more of a media event than a pure trial, however. Scopes was unsure he had ever actually taught evolution, but plead guilty to provide a test case for the ACLU. Both sides brought in big names to plead their case: the Fundamentalists, three-time presidential candidate and former Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan. The ACLU brought in Clarence Darrow, a noted agnostic and the first lawyer to ever successfully use an “insanity plea” to get his clients out of a murder charge (Leopold-Loeb, 1924). Tiny Dayton, Tennessee was overrun with journalists and spectators; it was also the first trial to be broadcast on radio. While the Fundamentalists won that day in 1925, it was later overturned on a technicality and they were largely embarrassed by Darrow’s wit and greater knowledge. In retrospect, it marked the withdrawal in a great part of the religious fundamentalists from public life, until the Culture Wars began in the 70’s.

Destruction of a wonder, the death of a profligate poet, a battle that birthed a legend, and the beginning of the end for the public school system. And God put them all on the same day. Ain’t history grand?