1314: First day of the two-day Battle of Bannockburn, a major victory of Robert the Bruce over England’s Edward II. Bruce distinguished himself at the outset of the battle when he was surveying the potential battleground alone on horseback, un-armoured and armed only with an axe. Paraphrasing from Wikipedia: “He was identified by Henry de Bohun, nephew of the Earl of Hereford, who immediately lowered his lance and charged the Scottish king. As the great war-horse thundered toward him, Bruce stood his ground, watched with mounting anxiety by his own army. With the Englishman only feet away, Bruce turned aside, stood in his stirrups and hit the knight so hard with his axe that he split his helmet and head in two. This small incident became in a sense a symbol of the war itself: the one side heavily armed but lacking agility; the other highly mobile and open to opportunity. Rebuked by his commanders for the enormous risk he had taken, the king only expressed regret that he had broken the shaft of his axe.”
1579: English explorer Sir Francis Drake lands somewhere on the northwest coast of North America and claims it for England in the name of Queen Elizabeth I, naming it Nova Albion. Drake’s royal mission was not only to harass the Spanish in the Pacific basin, but also to search out the western entrance to the (in)famous Northwest Passage. Drake’s coastal discoveries north of Spanish settlements were very much strategic state secrets to the British crown. Drake may, in fact, have worked his way far into Alaska’s inland passage and then back down the coast, where he eventually put into what we now know as Whale Cove on the central coast of Oregon.
1639: Birth of Massachusetts Puritan minister Increase Mather (d.1723), a key figure in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, where he preached moderation in the use of “spectral evidence” and other non-standard items in the increasingly frenzied trials.
1756: One hundred forty-six captured English and Anglo-Indian soldiers are stuffed into a stiflingly small guardroom in the old Fort William in Calcutta, where 123 of them die overnight of suffocation and heat stroke. The Black Hole of Calcutta galvanized the British public against the dangers of losing control of the Raj. On the Indian side, the memorial stones erected by the British became a cause célèbre as a central rallying point for nationalist agitation for independence from Britain.
1763: Birth of Wolfe Tone (d.1798), leader of the United Irishmen, widely considered the founding father of the Irish independence movement. He was one of the key conspirators in a scheme to allow revolutionary French armies to land in Ireland as a staging point for an invasion of England, but the plan foundered when the Irish people never rose in revolt against their English overlords. Tone was eventually arrested, tried at court-martial and convicted of treason, and sentenced to be hanged by the neck until dead. Rather than hang, he attempted suicide in his cell by cutting his throat with a pen knife. The doctor who bound his wound with a bandage warned him that if he talked at all, his wound would open and he’d bleed to death. Tome agreed: he said “So be it,” and did.
1775: Battle of Bunker Hill. Less than a week after British General Gage locks down Boston under martial law, a militia force of some 1,200 Minutemen under the command of William Prescott work their way under cover of darkness to set up redoubts on Breed’s and Bunker Hill, which dominate Charlestown’s landward approaches to occupied Boston. By daylight, the fortifications are seen by the British, and they mount an assault to clear the hills. Twice, however, the assaults fail with high British casualties, the American troops exhorted to “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes!” Late in the day, as the colonials run out of ammunition, the third British attack finally takes the ground, but the colonial force withdraws in good order to fight another day. The British commander General Clinton, wrote in his diary notes, “A few more such victories would have shortly put an end to British dominion in America.” American casualties included the death of Dr. Joseph Warren, one of the founders of the Sons of Liberty and Chief Executive of the Massachusetts Revolutionary Government.
1789: After the seating of the Estates General in France- after six weeks of bitter political wrangling, defections from one Estate to another, and dithering by King Louis XVI, the increasingly assertive Third Estate declares itself The National Assembly, a group “of the people” and declaring that they will govern with or without the participation of the other Estates.
1812: Having subdued virtually the entire continent of Europe under his rule, Napoleon invades Russia.
1812: The War of 1812– Under increasing pressure created by Parliament’s trade restrictions against Napoleonic France, Royal Navy impressments of American seamen, and British agitation of Indian tribes in the old Northwest Territories, Congress declares war on the United Kingdom. The two-year-long war was mostly fought at sea, with periodic sharp skirmishes along the frontier with Canada and in the Ohio River watershed. Britain made several strong raids into the former colonies, including an attack on Washington, DC that forced President Madison to flee the White House within the sound of the advancing British guns. The British sacked and burned both the White House and the Capitol before withdrawing back to their ships. For Great Britain, faced concurrently with essentially a catastrophic world war against Napoleon, this war with its former colonies remained something of a sideshow. From the American perspective though, it became a matter of life and death. It brought out the best in the American fighting spirit, including:
1) The successful defense of Fort McHenry in Baltimore that inspired our National Anthem;
2) Colonel Andrew Jackson’s successful defense of New Orleans late in the war, and;
3) Significant individual defeats of Royal Navy ships by the new, heavily-gunned American frigates Constitution, Congress, and United States, in addition to the smaller Essex. Constitution, in particular, distinguished herself with stunning defeats of HMS Java and HMS Guerrierre, earning the nickname “Old Ironsides” in the process. The RN followed these losses with a decree that the three American heavy frigates could only be engaged by a ship of the line, or with squadron-level numbers of smaller ships. The war ended with the Treaty of Ghent, which essentially returned territorial changes (primarily in Canada) to status quo ante, and did not address the trade and impressments issues, since they were mooted by the end of the fighting with France.
1815: Battle of Waterloo. Two days after the battles of Quatre Bras and Ligny, Napoleon Bonaparte continues on his northward march toward Brussels. His approach is halted, however, just outside the town of Waterloo, where the Duke of Wellington has arrayed a significant blocking force of artillery and massed infantry in defilade behind a low ridgeline south of town, straddling the main road. The defensive arrangement forces Napoleon into a predictable and narrowing line of approach, which Wellington exploits with well-directed artillery and flanking attacks on both sides of the French army. Late in the afternoon, Napoleon orders what should be the piece de resistance– a massed cavalry charge to overwhelm the Allied artillery. One observer reported that the horses were so tightly packed across the field that the ones in the center could not touch the ground. Wellington, for his part, countered by bringing out from defilade his crack infantry troops, which he formed up into squares, bayonets fixed outward in three ranks. With cavalry restricted to close-range sabers, and the natural refusal of horses to press into frieze of bayonets, the British infantry methodically from inside the squares shot the circling horses and riders until the attack completely collapsed. As the remaining cavalry withdrew, Napoleon ordered his crack Imperial Guard into the fray. But as the French approached the now-exhausted squares across a mile of the muddy battlefield, and with the approaching Prussian army of von Blucher in sight on his far left, Wellington unleashed a fresh division of infantry again out of defilade in a bayonet charge that shattered the Imperial Guard and triggered a general rout of the entire French army. Recognizing a major defeat, and with only his personal guards in company, Napoleon leaves the battlefield to return to Paris.
1830: The French Republic invades Algeria.
1837: 18-year-old Alexandrina Victoria ascends to assume the title, By the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Queen, Defender of the Faith, Empress of India. She reigns for 63 years and 7 months and until Elizabeth II in 2016, longer than any British monarch before or since, and the (now second-) longest-serving female monarch in history.
1840: Samuel F.B. Morse receives a patent for his electrical telegraph system.
1848: Beginning of the “June Days Uprising” in Paris, the culminating event in what is more widely recognized as the European Revolutions of 1848. The Paris revolts were characterized by left-wing students rioting in the streets, setting up barricades to fight the police and army troops sent in to break up the violence. The proximate trigger for the event was the government shutting down the “National Workshops,” make-work programs set up earlier in the year in response to radical agitating for a “right to work.” The uprising was eventually suppressed by a re-invigorated conservative government under Louis Napoleon, who deposed the constitutional monarch Louis XVIII and established the Second Empire under himself as Napoleon III. This revolt was the background for Victor Hugo’s novel Les Miserables.
1865: Two years after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves in Galveston, Texas are formally informed that they are free. They begin an annual celebration known as Juneteenth.
1897: Birth of Harry Moses Horowitz, better known as Moe Howard of the Three Stooges (d.1975).
1898: Three months into the “Splendid Little War” with Spain, the United States captures the Spanish Pacific island of Guam in a bloodless takeover. The US forces, led by Captain Henry Glass, USN, consisted of the cruiser USS Charleston and three auxiliary ships. Stopping in Honolulu en route between San Francisco and Manila, Captain Glass received the following sealed orders:
NAVY DEPARTMENT
Washington, May 10, 1898.
SIR:
Upon the receipt of this order, which is forwarded by the steamship City of Pekin to you at Honolulu, you will proceed, with the Charleston and the City of Pekin in company, to Manila, Philippine Islands. On your way, you are hereby directed to stop at the Spanish Island of Guam. You will use such force as may be necessary to capture the port of Guam, making prisoners of the governor and other officials and any armed force that may be there. You will also destroy any fortifications on said island and any Spanish naval vessels that may be there, or in the immediate vicinity. These operations at the Island of Guam should be very brief, and should not occupy more than one or two days. Should you find any coal at the Island of Guam, you will make such use of it as you consider desirable. It is left to your discretion whether or not you destroy it. From the Island of Guam, proceed to Manila and report to Rear-Admiral George Dewey, U.S.N., for duty in the squadron under his command.
Very respectfully,
JOHN D. LONG
Secretary
[to]Commanding Officer U.S.S. Charleston
Steaming into Apra harbor, Charleston fired 17 rounds at the Spanish fort guarding the entrance, and receiving no return fire, dropped anchor in preparation for a landing party. A boatload of Spanish officials immediately rowed out to the cruiser, apologizing for not having any powder with which to return the salutes. They were astonished to learn that the US and Spain were actually at war, their last communication with Spain having been in early April before hostilities began. The next day the governor and 67 officials surrendered and the US flag was raised over the fort. Captain Glass designated Guamanian native and naturalized American Francisco Portusach as Acting Governor. Portusach supervised the US ships’ complete re-bunkering with coal, and on the 22nd, the squadron steamed away to join Commodore Dewey in Manila.
1898: Continuing to acquire Spanish possessions from its shrinking empire, the U.S. Marines land in Cuba.
1905: Birth of Jean-Paul Sartre (d.1950), one of the key 20th-century expositors of the Existentialist philosophy.
1915: The battleship USS Arizona (BB-39) is launched at the New York Navy Yard in Brooklyn.
1916: Death of German fighter ace and innovator Max Immelmann (b.1890). The aerobatic maneuver that bears his name is a 180-degree change of direction, done vertically. It is basically half of a loop and was particularly useful during the early years of air combat, when the pilots were still learning to understand the dynamics of three-dimensional combat.
1919: German Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, after surrendering the German High Seas Fleet to the Royal Navy in Scapa Flow anchorage in the Orkney Islands, scuttles the entire fleet under the noses of the British. 52 of the 74 interned vessels go to the bottom, and 9 German sailors are killed by British fire as they try to halt the sinking.
1940: Near the eastern village of Compiegne, French government leaders are forced to sign an armistice with Nazi Germany in the same railroad car in which the Germans capitulated in November, 1918.
1940: General Charles du Gaulle broadcasts from London a radio address called L’Appel du 18 Juin, in which he declared that even though the Germans had signed an armistice with the French “Vichy” government of Marshall Petain, the war for France was not yet over and would continue as an underground resistance movement. The speech heralded the beginning of the French Resistance, which played a huge role in easing the preparations for the Normandy landings, among other anti-German works. It also made du Gaulle the presumed and de facto leader of any postwar French republic.
1940: After the collapse of France to the Germans, and with the reckoning of the Dunkirk evacuation in hand, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill gives his famous “Finest Hour” speech to the House of Commons. This is the third of the trilogy of defiant speeches over the course of the last month which would define both his Prime Ministership and the strategic vision of the British Empire. The first was, “I have nothing to offer you but blood, toil, tears and sweat…” on 13th May; the second, “We shall fight them on the beaches…” on 4th June as the German juggernaut cornered the Allied forces against the North Sea.
1941: The German army invades Russia in Operation Barbarossa.
1942: A Japanese submarine surfaces and fires multiple rounds at Fort Stevens, at the mouth of the Columbia River, one of a handful of such attacks on the US mainland during WWII.
1944: Second and final day of the Battle of the Philippine Sea. The U.S. Fifth Fleet under Admiral Raymond Spruance decimates the main striking force of the Imperial Japanese Navy, sinking three carriers and shooting down over 600 Japanese planes, with a corresponding American loss of 123 planes, 80 crew of which were recovered alive.
1945: Final day of the 82-day Battle of Okinawa, one of the most costly of all WWII battles in both theaters. Japanese casualties numbered over 100,000; Japanese civilian casualties numbered 142,000, with a large proportion being suicides induced by Japanese propaganda on the expected results of coming in contact with Americans. US casualties topped 50,000, including over 12,000 KIA. Okinawa also saw the use of large-scale kamikaze attacks: 1465 of them during this battle caused massive damage to the US fleet. The tenaciousness of the Japanese defenses and the scale of the casualties in taking this outlying Japanese home island figured strongly in the planning underway for Operation Olympic later in the year and Operation Coronet in 1946.
1930: President Herbert Hoover signs into law the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, ostensibly designed to protect American jobs and support economic growth.
1932: The Bonus March-The group of unemployed WWI vets who have been congregating on the mudflats of Anacostia, gather en masse on the steps of the Capitol as the Senate votes on a measure advancing the pay date of their Army bonuses. Although reasonable order is maintained, it is becoming clear that the Bonus March is turning into a Bonus Army, and that tensions will only continue to rise over the summer.
1942: Birth of Paul McCartney.
1943: Birth of Burt Rutan, the aeronautical engineer whose creations continue to stretch the boundaries of flight, including the Model 54 “Quickie” home-built; Voyager- around the world non-stop and un-refueled; White Knight (mother ship) carrying Starship 1- the first manned commercial aircraft in space; the chase aircraft is a Beech Starship, also designed by Rutan.
1969: In Cleveland, Ohio, the Cuyahoga River catches fire and burns. The blaze becomes emblematic of the pollution problems rampant during that period and spurred the passage of the Clean Water Act and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.
1972: Under the direction of President Nixon’s re-election chairman G. Gordon Liddy and CIA operative E. Howard Hunt, five men break into the Watergate apartment complex to bug the phone lines of the Democratic National Committee and steal McGovern campaign documents. They are discovered by security guard Frank Wills. Their cover stories quickly unravel, and the threads lead directly to the Oval Office.
1972: Talking together in the Oval Office less than a week after the Watergate break-in, President Richard Nixon and White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman discuss ways they might use the CIA to obstruct the FBI’s investigation. It is an interesting discussion, captured for posterity on tape, for all to hear.
2006: Death of Harriet (b.1830 ), the Galapagos tortoise collected by Charles Darwin on his famous voyage aboard Beagle, and a long-time resident of the Australia Zoo.
About the Author
No shame, at all.
You need therapy. You should be ashamed of your illness.
No, I just like the knee-jerk reactions you people provide. You sir, are a fool.
Isn't it interesting how these environmental experts and community organizers appear out of nowhere and suddenly become the last word…
Truth is obviously fixated on homosexuality and transvestites. He cannot control his urges, and relies on the internet to satisfy…