1346: Nine years into the Hundred Years War, British Longbowmen create a decisive victory for King Edward III and a shattering defeat for French King Philip VI at the Battle of Cresy, just south of Calais, in northern France. The battle confirmed the validity of massed longbow attacks against armored knights, and is widely viewed as the beginning of the end of the period of classical chivalry since the 1500(+) French knights who fell were killed not in honorable hand-to-hand combat, but by randomly fired arrows puncturing their armor. After the battle the British also dispatched, rather than captured and treated, wounded French knights, another violation of the knightly code. In modern terms of the battle, it was organization, tactics and equipment that carried the day. Casualties (these are consensus numbers): British- 2 knights and approximately 300 soldiers killed. French- 11 noblemen (including King John of Bohemia), 1542 knights and 2300 Genoese crossbowmen killed, in addition to “several thousands” of infantry killed.
1498: Michelangelo receives a papal commission to carve the Pieta. The sculpture now sits in the first gallery on the right on entering St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
1577: Death of the great Italian Renaissance painter Titian (b.1488).
1609: Operating under contract to the Dutch East India Company, English explorer Henry Hudson discovers the Delaware Bay. The Company originally hired him to explore the route for the North-EAST passage to Asia, expecting he could find his way through the ice around the north of Russia to the riches of the Orient. After rounding the North Cape of Norway, the ice pack completely blocked his path.
Hudson then turned his ship Halve Mean (Half Moon) westward to search for the expected Northwest Passage. He made landfall in Nova Scotia in early July, and worked his way as far south as Cape Charles. Turning north without exploring the mouth of the Chesapeake, he then began his survey, entering on this day the Delaware Bay. He continued northward up the coast, eventually exploring the river that now bears his name all the way up to the site of present-day Albany. His trade with the natives and his careful charting of the coastline secured the Dutch claim to the region.
1645: Death of the great Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius (b.1583). A child prodigy who entered the University of Leiden at age 11, Grotius was one of the most influential thinkers who developed what we know now as the core principles of international law, including the law of war and the rights of belligerents on the high seas. Grotius’ most important accomplishment from this Navy man’s perspective was the codification of the idea of Mare Liberum, the Free Sea, published in 1609, whereby all nations are free to use the high seas as a pathway for trade as they see fit, a concept which became the foundation of what we now know as the global commons. Concurrent with this consensus was the definition of territorial waters as being under the sovereignty of a coastal state only to the extent that the state can actually control it. Using the “the fall of cannon shot” as the measure, it led to the long-running (over 300 years) acceptance of the three mile limit offshore as the boundary of a state’s territorial waters.
1748: Birth of painter Jacques-Louis David (d.1825), whose works defined the transition between 18th Century Rococo to the bold Neo-Classical composition and coloring of the Enlightenment movement. During the French Revolution, he became the de facto state artist. When Napoleon came to power he led the next transition into what is known as the Empire style, continuing the classical tradition, but in a contemporary context. His work kept him at the top of the art world until his death, and even afterward, as his legions of students maintained his influence well into the 19th Century.
1768: Captain James Cook, in HMS Endeavour, departs Plymouth on his first voyage of discovery. The ostensible reason for the voyage is to observe for the Royal Society the Transit of Venus across the face of the sun. In Cook’s case this will be from Tahiti, which is one of dozens of pre-planned locations around the globe to observe and record the event, with the eventual goal of using the data to determine the exact distance between the sun and the earth. Once the observation was completed the following April, Cook opened his sealed Admiralty orders, which directed him to map the unknown regions of the South Pacific, in particular to search for and claim for Great Britain the fabled Terra Australius, which had long been mapped but never seen.
1776: General George Washington and the Continental Army suffered a strategic defeat at Brooklyn Heights when the British army under General William Howe outflanks his defenses and almost completely encircles the American forces as they retreat to a prepared position on the heights. By late afternoon Washington recognizes they cannot hold the ground at Brooklyn and orders a retreat across the East River to Manhattan Island. While Howe is carefully digging in for a siege of the American redoubts, Washington evacuates the American army without further loss of life. Between the excellence of Howe’s forces and the strength of the British fleet that controls New York harbor, Washington eventually realizes he will have to completely evacuate New York. On the positive side, the successful evacuation from Brooklyn ensures that the entire Continental Army remains a viable force that the British will not be able to ignore as the war deepens.
1780: Birth of the great French painter Jean Ingres (d.1867). His work is distinctive for its subtle emphasis on “line,” not just the shapes of things themselves, but the movement of the line against- and in relation to– its background. He is also noted for the way his enamel-like colors enhance the “line” concept.
1789: The French National Assembly, in an intentionally symbolic moment, approves and orders published The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. It is designed around the principle of Natural Law, similar in concept to the preamble of our own Declaration of Independence, but focuses more on popular sovereignty as the antidote to the divine right of kings, and on individual rights and democracy. Although noble in intent, it nonetheless became associated with mob rule and many of the anarchistic and subversive movements of the 19th century.
1830: The first steam locomotive built in the United States, the Tom Thumb, performs a demonstration to convince investors of the viability of steam railroads.
1859: First commercial extraction of oil, from a well near Titusville, Pennsylvania. “Pennsylvania grade crude” and “Pennzoil” are a couple legacies of this event, as are Standard Oil & J.D. Rockefeller, among others.
1862: The Battle of Second Manassas (Second Bull Run)- after completely negating Union General George McLellan’s Peninsular Campaign, Confederate General Robert E. Lee takes the offensive against the Union Army of Virginia, now commanded by Major General John Pope, who has to react to Lee’s aggressive thrusts and parries in a northward campaign toward Washington, DC. When Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson captures a Union supply train at Manassas Junction, Pope believes he has trapped the Confederates (counter-intuitive, I know). What Pope doesn’t know is that Jackson is holding a reinforced position behind an unfinished railroad berm, and that James Longstreet has established his 25,000 men on Jackson’s right, completely unknown to Pope. The forces fought a mostly inconclusive battle on this day, but during the night Longstreet’s forces move into an attacking position. The fight that raged throughout the 30th forced the Union back along the same retreat route it had used 15 months earlier after the Battle of First Manassas.
1864: Union General William T. Sherman opens his assault on the strategic railroad crossroad of Atlanta, defended by Confederate General John Bell Hood. The crushing Union force overwhelms Hood’s defenses, forcing them to finally evacuate on September 2nd. On entering Atlanta, Sherman ordered all civilians to leave the city, an act that prompted the city council to appeal on behalf of the women, children, elderly, and those who had no bearing on the conduct of the war. Sherman’s response remains the quintessence of harsh realism tempered with what I used to call a ‘magisterial humility’ but after repeated verbal beatings from certain dearly beloved DLH friends, I will modify my preface to, “…tempered by a very real humanity:” “You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. But you cannot have peace and a division of our country. If the United States submits to a division now, it will not stop, but will go on until we reap the fate of Mexico, which is eternal war.[…] I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect and early success. But, my dear sirs, when peace does come, you may call on me for anything. Then will I share with you the last cracker, and watch with you to shield your homes and families against danger from every quarter.” In November, he ordered his troops to destroy every government and military building in the city, an act that quite literally burned Sherman’s image into Southern consciousness to this day. To get a fuller understanding of the siege and the context leading up to it, I highly recommend The Bonfire: The Siege and Burning of Atlanta, by Marc Wortman (2009). For example, part of Sherman’s professional context grew during the years he spend in Florida during the Second Seminole War. Another piece that defined much of Atlanta’s context in the war was the very fact of its existence. Hope these are good teasers- the book is very much worth the read.
1883: The Indonesian volcanic island of Krakatoa self-destructs in a paroxysm of explosions that caused the landmass to completely disappear beneath the waves of the Sunda Strait. The final explosion was heard distinctly in Perth, Australia (1,930 miles away) and on Rodrigues Island off the coast of Africa, over 3,000 miles across the Indian Ocean. The force of the detonation is nominally estimated at 200 Megatons, equivalent to about 13,000 “Little Boy” atomic bombs (Hiroshima). The explosion ejected into the atmosphere approximately 5 cubic MILES of pumice, rock, and ash, creating beautiful sunsets and cold winters around the world for several years. Since 1927 the volcano has been building a new island, named Anak Krakatau (Child of Krakatoa), which is growing about 5 meters a year.
1885: German engineer, designer, and handyman Gottlieb Daimler patent the world’s first motor-cycle, powered by a one-cylinder, one-horsepower gasoline engine he nicknamed the “grandfather clock engine.” You probably knew that he went on to join forces with his fellow small-engine junkie Wilhelm Maybach to form the motor company we now know as Mercedes-Benz.
1895: In Latrobe, Pennsylvania, kickoff for the nation’s first professional football game. The game was contested between the Latrobe YMCA team and a team from nearby Jeannette PA. Latrobe pays its quarterback John Brallier $10.00 for expenses. Latrobe won, 12-0, and claimed the offered prize money. Brailler prudently went on to a career in dentistry, but he was given lifetime passes for all National Football League games. He died in Latrobe in 1960 at age 83.
1896: The shortest war in history is fought between Great Britain and Zanzibar, a result of a dispute over the accession of the new Sultan of Zanzibar. With an ultimatum expiring to no effect at 0900, a British task force opened fire on the palace, setting it afire and destroying Zanzibar’s only artillery pieces, in addition to sinking a royal yacht. When the palace flag is finally hit and knocked down at 0940, the Brits cease fire, and a complex diplomatic dance between Germany, Zanzibar and Great Britain ensues, with the British choice for sultan eventually taking the throne. Total time in combat: 40 minutes.
1897: Inventor Thomas Alva Edison patents the Kinetoscope, the world’s first movie projector.
1899: Birth of British author Cecil Louis Troughton Smith, better known by his pen name, C.S. Forester (d.1966), from whose fertile mind came the eleven books detailing the life and times of Captain Horatio Hornblower, among other swashbuckling heroes, and the delightful anti-hero of Charlie Allnut of The African Queen (1935). He is also the author of The General (1936), a cold-eyed satire of a generic WWI British general, portraying for the first time the stereotype of a military leader as a hidebound and unimaginative dolt, insulated by the perks and prerogatives of his position.
1910: Birth of Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu (d.1997), the Albanian nun better known as Mother Teresa, who founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India in 1950. Her selfless work with the poor and destitute earned her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. She died in September, 1997, and was beatified by Pope John Paul II as Blessed Teresa of Calcutta.
1911: Ishi, the last Native American to make contact with American civilization, steps out of the woods near Mount Lassen in northern California to meet his destiny. He immediately became a sensation in anthropological circles, providing demonstrations of a former life completely independent of European influence. He lived at the University of California, San Francisco, until his death from tuberculosis in 1915.
1914: Battle of Heligoland Bight– the first naval engagement of the Great War, where the Royal Navy made a surprise attack against patrolling cruisers and destroyers of the German Imperial High Seas Fleet, sinking three light cruisers, a destroyer and two torpedo boats, and severely damaging six other cruisers and destroyers, at a cost of heavy damage to one light cruiser. By their own admission, the Brits got lucky, but the battle so unnerved the Kaiser that he restricted the German fleet from any further chance at engagement for nearly three months, creating a rift between him and the naval command that never healed.
1914: Only four weeks into the Great War, the Imperial German 8th Army of 166,000 under the command of Field Marshalls Paul von Hindenburg and Eric Ludendorf, decisively smashes the Russian 1st and 2nd Armies in the Battle of Tannenberg. The three-day fight in East Prussia saw Hindenburg take full advantage of the German railroad network to quickly move his forces to a position where Ludendorf could engage them as a singular unit against both Russian groups. Their adaptability and ability to concentrate against the Russian flanks* allowed them to completely dominate the battlefield, killing or wounding 78,000 and capturing 92,000 of the 416,000 total Russian force. Rather than report the loss to the Tsar, the Russian commander committed suicide. Over the next three years, Russia was never able to recoup from the shattering loss, and eventually sued for a separate peace.
1928: In one of the more obtuse pieces of diplomatic idealism ever to be ratified, the Kellogg-Briand Pact is signed by the United States and 14 other nations. The treaty, negotiated outside the jurisdiction of the League of Nations, essentially outlaws war as a legitimate diplomatic tool, except for self-defense. It is no stretch to say the treaty (which is actually still in force) is honored only in the breach, but it was the basis for the “crimes against the peace” that underlay the post WWII Nuremburg Trials.
1945: Birth of Sir George Ivan (Van) Morrison. The Irish singer-songwriter lived for a short time in my hometown of San Anselmo, California in the late 60s, during which he penned a piece called “Snow in San Anselmo“.
1949: The Soviet Union detonates its first atomic bomb. Despite a significant level of in-house development by Soviet scientists, the event was hastened by broad-based espionage from the Manhattan Project by Klaus Fuchs, who provided the Soviets significant details on gaseous diffusion of uranium isotopes, using plutonium instead of uranium in the fission device, techniques for extracting plutonium through a “uranium pipe,” confirmation of critical mass (determined after years of trial and error by the Manhattan Project), and a complete set of blueprints and schematics for our own atomic bomb.
1965: First flight of the B-377-SG/SGT Super Guppy airplane, designed to carry outsized cargo, and one of the dumbest looking machines* of all time. Only one remains flying, with NASA, to haul gigantic space station parts around the country.
1966: The Beatles perform their last concert for paying customers, held in San Francisco at Candlestick Park.
1974: Death of aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh (b.1902).
1997: Death of Diana, Princess of Wales; from injuries sustained in a Paris tunnel automobile crash, pursued and hounded by paparazzi right to the end.
2005: Hurricane Katrina slams into the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama. The minimum central pressure was 902 mb, or 26.64 in/hg. She took over 1,800 lives and caused $125,000,000,000.00 in property damage.
About the Author
I have read historical accounts of that battle.
The French were in many ways defeated by their arrogance and lack of organization.
And it was the horses as much as anything that helped defeat the French, and the English bowmen fired high into the sky so the arrows more or less were coming down vertically as opposed to horizontally, thus striking the horses where they weren’t protected, driving them crazy, which then disrupted the French formations.
As the French proceeded, the arrows then came in flatter, and fallen horses and knights made a barrier that those behind had to literally climb over or move around to proceed further.