History Notes this week of July 19

1099: Having subdued all lingering resistance and now controlling Jerusalem, the knights of the First Crusade elect Godfrey de Bouillon as the first Defender of the Holy Sepulchre, creating the first Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem. Godfrey could not bring himself to take the title of “King” in the Holy City- hence the awkward title- but he acted the part, forcing Acre and a dozen other cities to pay tribute to this nascent kingdom.

1545: Leading a major Royal Navy attack into the Solent against an invading French fleet, Henry VIII’s flagship Mary Rose heels suddenly to starboard from a gust of wind. Her open lower gun ports begin to take on water, exacerbating the heel, which then causes the portside cannons to break free, along with stores and ammunition careening to the leeward side. The ship completely capsizes and sinks into the turbulent waters of the Solent, in full view of the king himself and the two battling fleets. Of the nearly 400 crew aboard, only 35 escape with their lives. Sporadic salvage efforts continue through 1549, until the deleterious effects of scouring sand, toredo worms and general exposure finally cause the ship’s open timbers to collapse to be carried away by the current. But over 40 percent of the hull remained trapped in mud until the wreck was accidentally re-discovered in 1836. The site was re-confirmed in 1971, and a full salvage effort began in 1982.

1545: Following their inconclusive battle yesterday with the British fleet in the Solent, the French invasion fleet lands a small army on the Isle of Wight. The soldiers make a desultory attempt to conquer the island, but after looting and burning a few towns, they are repulsed by local militia. It remains the last direct French assault on the British Isles.

1692: Five women are hanged for witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials.

1715: A Spanish treasure fleet of 11 ships departs Havana, stuffed to the gunwales with gold, silver and precious stones from the New World. Seven days later, the entire fleet founders and is lost in a hurricane off the coast of southern Florida. Treasure hunters have long sought the wrecks, without success. This is not to be confused with entrepreneur and explorer Mel Fisher’s 1985 discovery and excavation of the wreck of the Senora de Atocha, which was not from this fleet, but was lost under similar circumstances in 1622.

1812: An Anglo-Portuguese army under the command of Arthur Wellesley (later the Duke of Wellington) defeats a French army in the Battle of Salamanca. The battle cemented Wellesley’s reputation for tactical genius, as he kept his own dispositions hidden from the French while remaining alert and disciplined to watch and wait for opportunities to exploit fleeting French tactical weaknesses. The British Peninsular Campaign remained a constant drain on French resources during Napoleon’s reign. Although neither side won a decisive strategic victory, the constant coalition pressure on the Iberian Peninsula eased French pressure against other coalition allies in the French eastern European campaigns, most notably the French drive deep into Russia.

1843: Launch of the SS Great Britain, the world’s first iron-hulled, screw-driven ship, which was also the largest vessel in the world at the time of her launch. 

1847: Mormon pioneers under the leadership of Brigham Young arrive in the Salt Lake Valley, where they end their flight from Illinois to create a new society in the Utah territory.

1849: Birth of American poet Emma Lazarus (d.1887), author of the poem inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor; your huddled masses yearning to breathe free; the wretched refuse of your teeming soil; bring these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me; I lift my lamp beside the Golden Door.”

1861: First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas)- After a two day march from Washington and a short bivouac at Centerville in the sultry July heat, the Union Army of Northeastern Virginia under Brigadier Irvin McDowell attacks the Confederate Army of the Potomac (correct army names, on both accounts) of General Joe Johnson at a stone bridge over Bull Run Creek near Manassas, Virginia. The fight brought to prominence Confederate Colonel Thomas Jackson, whose regiment came up from reserve to halt a Union advance against General Bee. When things were looking particularly bad, Bee turned to Jackson and exclaimed, “The Enemy are driving us!” Jackson turned to him and responded: “Then we shall give them the bayonet.” Suitably impressed with his taciturn subordinate, Bee then turned to his wavering men: “There stands Jackson like a stone wall…rally behind the Virginians!”  As the battle ebbs and flows around the Warrenton Turnpike it becomes increasingly clear to both sides that the nascent war will not be the simple game that so many voluptuaries expected. The mindset was so pervasive (“On to Richmond!”) that the upper crust of Washington society this morning drove hundreds of carriages to the high ground near the expected battlefield to watch the Bluecoats whip the Rebs while they enjoyed a picnic lunch. When the Union army began its otherwise orderly withdrawal from their defeat, the picnickers panicked and turned the escape route into a rout. The high casualty count sobered both sides into realizing this would be a long and hard-fought campaign. Union casualties: 2,896- 460 killed/1100 wounded/1300 missing; Confederate casualties: 1,982- 387 killed/1500 wounded. 

1870: At the climax of a long series of diplomatic slights and under increasing pressure from a highly assertive Kingdom of Prussia, France declares war on the German state, opening the Franco-Prussian War.  German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck had conducted two earlier limited wars which expanded Prussia’s territories into southern Denmark and Austria’s Sudetenland, both of which had the salutary effect of bringing many smaller Germanic states under Prussia’s control. You will recall that Bismarck’s main political goal was the complete unification of German lands under the leadership of Prussia. He early on began to lay claim to the French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, which were populated nearly 80% with Germans, and not coincidentally contained a huge proportion of French heavy industry. The war consisted of almost a year of closely sequential battles along the Rhine. The crucial battle was at Sedan, where brilliant German tactics and superior artillery allowed them to capture an entire French army, including the head of state, Napoleon III; German armies then advanced to the suburbs of Paris and put the city under siege. The armistice that silenced the guns was enforced by the Germans conducting a victory parade through Paris, after which they garrisoned themselves within sight of the city until France paid a 5 billion franc bill of reparations, in addition to ceding Alsace and Lorraine to Germany. The ware re-ignited the old rivalry between France and Prussia, with the results being the opposite of the Napoleonic era. The humiliating loss of Sedan and capture of the French Emperor fed a seething spirit of revanche (revenge) throughout the French body politic for the next 45 years, motivating their drive for military alliances with Great Britain (the Entente Cordiale) and Russia (the Triple Entente) with which they could surround and eventually crush the German state. Now, fast-forward your thinking to last month’s shooting of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo.

1897: A company of 20 black “Buffalo Soldier” infantrymen stationed in Fort Missoula, Montana, successfully arrive in Saint Louis after a grueling six week march- on bicycles- across the vastness of Montana (including a stop at Little Big Horn battlefield), Wyoming, Nebraska and Missouri. The bicycle corps was an experimental group formed a year earlier to test the military viability of bikes to speed infantry movements.

1903: The Ford Motor Company sells its first car, a “quadracycle.”

1914: The Empire of Austria-Hungary issues an ultimatum to the Republic of Serbia to allow Austria to conduct the investigation and trial of whomever it was that shot Archduke Ferdinand last month. To no-one’s surprise, Serbia rejects the demand, setting in motion Austrian plans that have been in place since 1912 to once and for all crush Serbian nationalism and its constant interference in Bosnia. During the post-assassination investigation, one of the conspirators spills his guts, leading not only to the arrest of several more conspirators, but also to six bombs built by the Serb arsenal, four pistols, training documentation, suicide pills, and a map, annotated with locations of the Gendarmerie and escape routes out of Sarajevo.  Leading up to this ultimatum were a series of diplomatic notes and tense diplomacy between Austria and Germany, the bottom line being that Germany needed to goad Austria into declaring war in order to trigger a wider war with France and Russia for which they were much better prepared than either. From the Austrian perspective, it was crucial to ensure Germany would support an Austrian mobilization for yet another Balkan war, particularly since Russia had signaled its support for Serbia. Germany, in fact, gave a Austria a famous diplomatic “Blank Cheque” to destroy Serbia. To help prop up the façade that Germany was caught completely unawares by the ultimatum, the entire General Staff, the Kaiser, and the majority of his ministers ostentatiously went on vacation on the 23^rd.

1923: Death of Jose Doroteo Arango Arambula (b.1878), the Mexican warlord more commonly known as Pancho Villa.

1929: The Fascist state of Italy bans the use of foreign words in the Italian language.

1935: Peak temperature for the Dust Bowl period- 109 degrees recorded in Chicago, 104 in Milwaukee. 

1942: The National Socialist German government opens the Treblinka extermination camp.

1944: German Chancellor Adolf Hitler survives an assassination attempt led by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. Believe it or not, Tom Cruise plays the role very well in the 2008 movie version of the conspiracy, Valkyrie.

1946: Jewish terrorists of the Irgun movement, including future Prime Minister Manachem Begin, bomb the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, headquarters of the civil and military administration of British Palestine.

1949: The United States Senate ratifies the North Atlantic Treaty, creating for the first time an entangling alliance warned about by President Washington.

1954: As the Battle of Dien Bien Phu continued to play out, the Geneva Conference on Indochina agrees to divide Vietnam into a northern zone governed by the Vietminh party of Ho Chi Minh, and a southern zone governed by the State of Vietnam, a nominal republic. The conference was attended by the USSR, United States, France, the UK and the Peoples Republic of China, none of whom were happy with the decision, especially since the going in position for all parties was a unified state. You will note that actual Vietnamese representation was not part of the decision matrix.

1961: Astronaut Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom makes the United States’ second flight into space aboard the Liberty Bell 7. His 15 minute sub-orbital flight reaches an apogee of 118 miles and lands 300 miles downrange from Cape Canaveral. After touchdown, the prototype explosive hatch on the capsule fires, opening the cockpit to seawater which nearly drowns Grissom. The recovery helicopter cannot keep the capsule from sinking and cuts it free as its wheels touch the water, after which they pluck the foundering astronaut* out of the water, his space suit filled with multiple gallons of the Atlantic. Grissom went on to be the first American to fly twice into space (Gemini 3, with John Young), and was commander of the first Apollo mission, in which he and fellow astronauts Ed White and Roger Chaffee died in a fire during a launch pad rehearsal in January, 1967.

1963: Test pilot Joe Walker flies an X-15 rocket plane to 347,800 feet of altitude on the 90^th flight of the program. Having gone more than 100 km up, it qualifies as a manned spaceflight.

1967: French President Charles de Gaulle, on an official State visit to Canada, gives a rousing speech to over 100,000 French Canadians in Montreal, during which he proclaims: “Vivre le Quebec libre!” (Long live Free Quebec!). The government of Canada is not amused.

1969: The crew of Apollo 11 splashes down in the Pacific Ocean, completing President Kennedy’s goal of sending a man to the moon and safely returning to Earth. In an odd display of the concept of “an abundance of caution” over an unknown threat of extraterrestrial infection, the crew are required to don Biological Isolation Garments before opening the hatch to the Command Module, and a disinfectant crew follows them all the way to an Airstream trailer outfitted as a biological isolation living space, where they remain ensconced with a flight surgeon for 21 days.

1973: Death of Eddie Rickenbacker (b.1890), pioneering race car driver, World War I fighter ace (26 confirmed kills), owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and CEO of Eastern Airlines. Rickenbacker also acted as President Roosevelt’s personal courier during World War II, commandeering a B-17 to transport him to meet with General Douglas MacArthur on a subject that remains unknown to this day.  During the trip across the Pacific, the crew became lost, and the pilot was forced to ditch the aircraft at sea, which led to an ordeal of survival for 26 days in a rubber raft. Rickenbacker would always credit God-directed miracles for their survival, most notably the time when a seagull alighted on his head and remained there for nearly an hour while Rickenbacker slowly reached up and captured it. They carefully divided all the parts evenly, which kept them alive for several more days. During his time at the helm of Eastern, he wrote in his autobiography what many of us in the aviation world believe is a fundamental truth: “I have never liked to use the word ‘safe’ in connection with either Eastern Airlines or the entire transportation field; I prefer the word ‘reliable.’” There’s something charming about that sentence, but I may be biased. His military awards include the Medal of Honor and Seven Distinguished Service Crosses.

1976: Atlanta Braves slugger Hank Aaron smacks his 755^th and final home run.

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Wayne Creed

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