History Notes this week of Dec 7

1282: The last native Prince of Wales is killed by the forces of England’s Edward I at the Battle of Orewin Bridge, earning himself the distinctive title of Llywelyn the Last. After this battle and a brief mopping up period, Edward solemnly and systematically dismembered all of Llywelyn’s royal trappings, including his wife’s jewels and crown, melting them down and fashioning them into a set of English royal diadems and chalices. With the extinction of the Welsh line of succession, Edward then assumed the title Prince of Wales for the heir of the British throne.

1492: Continuing his initial exploration of what he still thought were the Spice Islands of Southeast Asia, Christopher Columbus lands on the largest of the Windward Islands, which he names Hispaniola. In the subsequent colonial dash, the island was eventually split between Spain (Dominica (now Dominican Republic)) and France (Haiti). Over the course of the next ten years from this week, the Admiral of the Ocean Seas made three more voyages of discovery throughout the Caribbean basin and along the coast of Central America. His reputation was tarnished by administrative abuses committed in his name by the Spanish colonial authorities in Santo Domingo, of whom he was Governor of the Indies. That said, Columbus remains in my mind one of the greatest seamen of all time: a man whose vision, leadership, audacity and religious faith pointed the way to a fundamental re-ordering of how Europeans viewed the world. 

1520: Confirming his principled opposition to what he identified as the un-Biblical rule of the Pope, Augustinian monk Martin Luther publicly burns the Papal Bull Exsurge Domine, in which Pope Leo X demands from Luther a recantation of 41 “errors of the faith” derived from his 95 theses published three years earlier. As he burned his copy of the bull, Luther is reported to have said, “Because you have confounded the truth of God, today the Lord confounds you. Into the fire with you!”

1703: The Great Storm… A powerful extra-tropical cyclone lashes the south of England for three days, toppling thousands of chimneys in London, peeling the lead-shingled roof off of Westminster Abbey, tearing scores of ships from their moorings and onto the rocks of the lee shore, where they and their crews were destroyed by the pounding surf, suffering a loss of over 1,500 seamen. One Royal Navy flagship, HMS Association,  broke free at Harwich, on the east coast north of London, and was driven by the wind and wave across the North Sea all the way to Gothenburg, Sweden, before the crew could control the ship enough to turn around and make their way back to England.  Over 4,000 trees were downed in the New Forest. The original Eddystone Lighthouse was swept from its treacherous rocks, killing all six in residence, including its builder, Henry Winstanley, who intentionally made a trip out to the light the day prior in order to confirm its strength during a storm. It did not end well.

1725: Birth of Virginian George Mason (d.1792), a key intellectual partner of Patrick Henry, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, and a crucial voice of ensuring the rights of citizens during the development of a functioning, but limited republican government in the newly independent United States. Mason was the driving force for insisting on the inclusion of the Bill of Rights as integral to the Constitution.

1768: Publication in Edinburgh of the first edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, a systematic attempt to categorize and explain in English the world’s catalog of knowledge.

1775: The 25 year old bookseller, and recently commissioned Colonel in the Continental Army, Henry Knox arrives at Fort Ticonderoga to begin transporting its captured artillery to support General George Washington’s forces arrayed around Boston. Knox’s keen intellect and organizational skills accomplished this strategically crucial mission through the dead of a New England winter, arriving within a short ride of Washington’s camp on January 25^th. The Knox Expedition is also widely known as “The Noble Train of Artillery.” The estimable Wikipedia quotes historian Victor Brooks, who called the operation, “one of the most stupendous feats of logistics” in the entire Revolutionary War. 

1776: At College of William and Mary, the first college fraternity is chartered: Phi Beta Kappa.

1787: The sovereign state of Delaware ratifies the new Constitution of the United States of America, the first of the Several States to do so.

1790: The United States Congress moves the capital of the country from New York City to Philadelphia.

1792: French King Louis XVI, jailed since August, is paraded through Paris before appearing before the National Convention to hear the charges of Treason Against the State levied against him. You already know how this is going to turn out, but one cannot overstate the drama of this particular day, as all the symbolism of the three year old Revolution and the eternal Monarchy meet this day under the cold reality of treason. The packed Parisian streets were silent as their king passed by, and as the charges were read to Citizen Louis Capet, not King Louis the Sixteenth.

1815: Death of Michel Ney, Marshall of France (b.1769), one of the brightest of Napoleon’s team of brilliant subordinate commanders, whose loyalty to France and its leadership not only drove him to his greatest battlefield victories, but also to his final political defeat and execution on this day.  When one reads of Napoleon’s multiple victories across the continent, Ney is always in the thick of it. As a measure of France’s perpetual war with the other countries of Europe, ponder this: between 1787 and this day, 28 years on,  Ney fought in 36 major named battles across six “Coalition” wars, the Peninsular War in Spain and the invasion of Russia. It was Ney who led the massive but ultimately unsuccessful cavalry charges at Waterloo against Wellington’s infantry squares, actually having five (!) horses killed from under him. After Napoleon’s final exile to St. Helena, Ney was arrested and charged with high treason. Although his lawyer tried to prove Ney was actually a Prussian by birth, Ney interrupted and sealed his fate by declaiming, “I am French, and I will remain French.” Guilty. The estimable Wikipedia notes that at his execution, he refused to wear a blindfold, and was permitted to give the order to fire, saying: “Soldiers, when I give the command to fire, fire straight at my heart. Wait for the order. It will be my last to you. I protest against my condemnation. I have fought a hundred battles for France, and not one against her … Soldiers, fire!” They obeyed, one last time. 

1830: Birth of poet Emily Dickinson (d.1886), whose exalted position in the role of American Letters occurred only after her death, when the troves of her poems were finally cataloged and published under her own name.

1831: Former President John Quincy Adams takes his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, as the delegate from Massachusetts, serving seventeen years in 8 consecutive terms. In 1847 Adams met Abraham Lincoln when he came to the House for his sole term in Congress; he thus can be considered “the sole major figure in American history to have personally known [both] the Founders and Abraham Lincoln.” 

1862: Just outside the little farming community of Prairie Grove, Arkansas,  a substantial force of over 9,000 Union soldiers under the command of Brigadier General James Blunt squared off against some 11,000 Confederates under Major General Thomas Hindman in a short, sharp battle that saw the combined use of very accurate Union artillery fire against specific Confederate artillery batteries, followed by an infantry attack that was met by Confederate cavalry on one side and charging Rebel infantry on two other sides. The Federals retreated back towards their lines, where Union artillery was re-loaded with canister shot that devastated the Confederates. By nightfall, Union reinforcements began to arrive, and Hindman, recognizing his depleted ammunition supplies and exhausted troops could not withstand another similar day of battle, withdrew what remained of his forces towards Van Buren, Arkansas, essentially opening the door for the ultimate Union occupation and control of northwest Arkansas. Casualty count was 1,200 Union, 1,300 Confederate. With essentially no change in the opening positions, the battle was technically a draw, but in reality was a strategic victory for the Union.

1864: Four weeks after setting out from the ruins of Atlanta with an army made up solely of fighting men (i.e., no supply train), Union General William Sherman arrives at the perimeter defenses of Savannah, having left a massive swath of destruction in his wake.

1865: The legislature of the former Confederate State of Georgia votes to approve the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, providing the final ratification of the end of slavery in the Supreme Law of the Land. The State of Kentucky voted for ratification in 1976. The State of Mississippi approved it in 1995, but didn’t formally notify the Office of Federal Register until February, 2013 (correct). They were still subject to its conditions after Georgia sealed the ¾ of the Several States.

1869:  Jesse James robs his first bank, a branch in Gallatin, Missouri.

1876: Birth of Fred Duesenberg (d.1932), the man whose beautifully engineered cars not only set a standard of luxury and performance, but also became part of the English lexicon, i.e., “It’s a Doosey! 

1882: Birth of Firoello LaGuardia (d.1947), the fiery three-term mayor of NYC during the 30s and 40s. A “moderate Republican” with a strong populist bent, the 5’0” dynamo made an early name for himself when he launched a largely successful crusade to throw organized crime bosses out of the city. He leveraged federal largesse to build roads, subways, airports, city buildings and on and on.

1898: The Treaty of Paris formally ends the United States’ ten-month long “Splendid Little War” with Spain, ceding to the U.S. control of the islands of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Guam. Spain also cedes control over the Philippines for a payment of $20 million. Despite the popularity of the war with the public at large, Senate ratification was not a foregone conclusion, with much principled argument about how a constitutional republic of enumerated powers could become an imperial power over non-citizens in distant lands. The debate came to a final vote in February, 1899, and passed 57-27, one vote more than the 2/3 majority needed for ratification.

1904:  President Theodore Roosevelt issues what he calls a “corollary” to the Monroe doctrine, stating that it was the policy of the United States to affirmatively intervene in the affairs of Latin American governments if they show themselves incapable or unstable in their governance. The policy underlay the next three decades of U.S. military intervention in the multiple “banana wars” throughout the Caribbean and Central America.

1917: In Halifax, Nova Scotia, a French ammunition ship, SS Mont-Blanc, suffers a slow-speed collision with an empty Norwegian freighter, SS Imo, and catches fire. The crew is unable to contain the blaze, and they abandon ship, leaving the ship to drift toward the Richmond district of the city. Twenty minutes later, the cargo detonates and completely flattens everything within a half mile of what used to be the ship, and creates havoc throughout the rest of the city. The explosion remains the largest non-nuclear detonation in history, estimated at 2.6 kilotons of TNT. Over 2000 Halifax residents die in the blast and its immediate aftermath.

1921: The government of the United Kingdom and representatives of the nascent Republic of Ireland sign an agreement establishing the Irish Free State as a self-governing state within the British Commonwealth of Nations, and ending the shockingly vicious civil war that wracked the island for the previous five years.  The pact gives the counties of Ulster the right to opt out of the agreement, a right they immediately exercised in order to remain part of the United Kingdom.

1922: The Irish Free State is formally established per the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of the year prior. No surprise, the counties of Ulster re-affirmed their legal option to not be a part of the Irish state.

1933: Utah becomes the 33^rd of the Several States (i.e., putting the number over 75%) to ratify the 21^st Amendment to the Constitution, which repealed the 18^th Amendment. You’ll recall that the 18^th was the crown jewel in the Progressive Movement’s push to make the United States a more moral nation by prohibiting the production, importation, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States. Its enforcing mechanism, the Volsted Act, had the immediate effect of creating an overwhelming new criminal class: anyone in the country who wanted a drink and did something to get it. After 13 years good sense finally prevailed to un-do this particular Good Idea. You probably know the theme song of the repeal, “Happy days are here again…!”

1936: King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland signs the Instrument of Abdication*, with which he plunged the nation into a constitutional crises in order to marry Mrs. Wallis Simpson, “the woman I love,” recently divorced from her American husband. The two move out into the world as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. His little brother, now suddenly King George VI, and the larger Government of Great Britain left to the buildup and execution of World War II. 

1941: The Empire of Japan, intent on consolidating its hegemony over the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, launches a flawlessly planned and executed attack on the United States Navy’s Pacific Fleet moored in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Despite disparate indications that something was afoot, the attack comes as a complete surprise, and obliterates the main striking force of the Navy in a single stroke.

1941: In accordance with the terms of the Tripartite Pact with Japan, Germany and Italy declare war on the United States.

1941: Three days into their astonishing juggernaut, Japanese torpedo bombers attack and sink the Royal Navy battleships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse off the coast of Malaysia. The loss of the two ships sends an existential shock to Great Britain not unlike what happened to the United States just three days earlier.

1941: The Japanese army lands on Mindanao to begin the conquest of the Philippines.

1945: A U.S. Navy formation of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers, known by their callsign as Flight 19, vanishes without a trace on a routine navigation training mission flown from Naval Air Station Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Later in the day, one of the PBM-5 patrol aircraft sent up to search for the missing crews explodes in mid-air, killing all 13 on board, adding to the 14 lost from the TBM flight.  The mystery of the TBM’s disappearance has never been conclusively solved, although transcribed radio transmissions from the doomed flight suggest that soon after becoming lost, the flight lead mistakenly identified an island in the Bahamas chain as one in the Florida Keys, and made a decision to fly the formation northeasterly in order to find the Florida mainland. A northeasterly course from the Bahamas will take you into the central Atlantic and the Bermuda Triangle . Several attempts in recent years to find the lost flight have, in fact, recovered scores of crashed TBMs and other aircraft on Florida’s continental shelf, but none of them match the serial numbers of the five TBMs. 

1949: As the Chinese Civil War collapses under pressure from the communists of Mao Tse-Tung, the Nationalist government under Chiang Kai-Sheck abandons Nanjing and sets up its “provisional capital” in Taipei, on the Chinese island of Taiwan. 76 years later, they’re still there: They still claim to be the legitimate government of China, and the United States still promises to assist in the defense of the island in the event of an invasion by mainland forces, and there’s still a high level of anxiety any time it appears there’s a change in the status quo vis-a-vis the United States- witness the (2016) phone call by the President-elect.

1955: Death of the great shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Honus Wagner (b.1874), one of the first five players to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, along with Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth. He is also the featured player on the most valuable baseball card of all time, currently valued somewhere north of $2.8 million.

1956: Birth of the great Boston Celtic Larry Bird.

1972: Apollo 17 launches from the Kennedy Space Center. After cancellation of Apollo 18 for budgetary reasons, this flight becomes the United States’ final manned mission to the moon. NASA’s science community made a powerful and successful effort to re-arrange the crew flight assignments so that an actual geologist would make the trip to the moon’s surface, rather than another pilot trained in geology. Accordingly, the final crew became Flight Commander Gene Cernan, Command Module Pilot Ron Evans, and Lunar Module Pilot (and geologist) Harrison Schmidt. The planned landing area in the Tarus-Littrow Valley and the use of the lunar rover vehicle promised to return a wide variety of lunar rock and soil samples.

1972: Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmidt land in the Moon’s Tarus-Littrow Valley, to begin a three-day sojourn of geologic discovery that climaxes the Apollo program. Command Module pilot Richard Evans remained in orbit performing extensive survey and mapping tasks while his crewmates were on the surface. Apollo 17 became the last flight of the moon program with the earlier cancellation of the final two planned missions for budgetary reasons. 

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