The Town currently has a vacancy on the Historic District Review Board. If you are a citizen of the Town of Cape Charles and are interested in serving on the Historic District Review Board or any of the town’s boards, please complete the Application for Boards and Commission and return it to Town Clerk Libby Hume at 2 Plum Street, Cape Charles, VA 23310 or email it to clerk@capecharles.org.

After a number of applications have been received, interviews will be scheduled with the Town Council prior to the Council making the appointment.

Thank you to all the members of the Town’s Boards and Planning Commission for volunteering their time to serve the community in this capacity! We value the knowledge that you bring to the group and your continued dedication to the Town.

On Saturday, January 9, 2021, 13 intrepid Cape Charles Yacht Club members braved the cool but sunny weather to clean up the roads around the harbor. 16 bags of trash were collected in the newly extended area for the road clean-up, which includes Old Cape Charles Road from Mason Avenue to Cassatt Parkway, Bayshore Road to Marina Road, Marina Road to the Harbor Master’s office, and all of Cassatt Parkway.

Those who helped out were Charlie Dickinson, BelindaWinn, Mark Henry, Bob Williams, Susan Carrigan, Bob Smith, Paul Strong, Steve Bunce, Jim Liepman, and Rob and Patsy Harris.

The dead of winter is upon us. As the town has changed over the years, there are many out-of-town property owners who use their Cape Charles houses as second homes.

With the freezing temperatures during the winter months, the chance of frozen and broken pipes can be a serious problem. If you do have a second home that is vacant this winter, you may opt to have the water
service temporarily disconnected.

This is one of the best ways to safeguard against frozen and broken pipes and potential water leaks that could cause severe property damage.

Notice: Many of the newer homes in Town and some of the older, remodeled homes, have interior water shut-off valves installed. If your home has a shut-off-valve, we urge you to shut off the water to your home if you are planning to be away for any length of time during the winter months. We also recommend draining the lines to any exterior faucets to prevent them from freezing.

If your home does not have an interior shut-off valve, you can contact the Utility Billing Department at 757-331-6901 to arrange to have your water service temporarily discontinued while you are away. There is a $25 fee for discontinuing the service and a $25 fee for reactivating the service. This is a small price to pay for the ease of mind that your pipes will not freeze and burst. (Town Code §70-45)

Please note that unless you have an interior water shut-off valve, it is unlawful for any person to turn the water service off at the street. There have been several instances where homeowners have attempted to turn off the water at the street and have damaged the valves which can cause serious leaks in the system. In order for the damages to be repaired, the water must be shut off for the entire street/block until the repairs can be made. The cost of repairs may be charged to the property owner causing the damage.

The Barrier Island Center will be hosting a Songbird Carving Class (3 Days) with Instructor PG Ross.

The class is scheduled for Saturday, February 6, 7, and 10 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. 

Cost: $125 per person (ages 16 and up).

Join local carver PG Ross and learn the basics of carving while making a songbird decoy. PG uses traditional tools and techniques based on characteristics of live birds, and is strongly influenced by both past and modern carvers.

Please bring a carving knife to class. If you do not have one, PG can purchase one for an additional $25 (order must be placed by January 9th).Sunday, February 7th, 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. Wednesday, February 10th, 6:00 – 7:00 p.m.

The Eastern Shore of Virginia Tourism Commission invites you to order take-out (and if you feel comfortable, dine in) once a week from February 1st through the 27th for a chance to win a $100 gift card to any local restaurant. Pick-up your order, plate it at home, or bring it to your favorite stargazing spot for a picnic date, just make sure you snap a picture and share it on Facebook and Instagram! All contestants that upload an image and tag @visitesva once a week from February 1st through the 27th will be entered to win the $100 gift card from any local restaurant of their choice. 

Head to VisitESVA.com and click Eat at the top to see updated business hours and special services including take-out, curbside services, delivery, outdoor seating, and more. You can click on their website to see a menu or contact the restaurant with any inquiries directly from VisitESVA’s website. If you know of a small business that has not updated their VisitESVA.com listing, encourage them to do so!

“We want to remind folks that local restaurants and their staff still need our support during these unprecedented times,” says Robie Marsh, the Tourism Commission’s Executive Director. “Supporting the community and all the innovative small business owners in the area continue to be our top priority at the Commission. We want to launch a fun challenge that will get people connecting with those in their households, folks online, and giving back to local businesses.”

“The most exciting part of this is giving people a chance to reconnect,” says Susannah Morey, Marketing Director of the Eastern Shore Tourism Commission. “During lockdown, businesses and non-profits alike sparked campaigns to encourage connection online. These are hard times for everyone, connecting with people safely makes the difference between feeling isolated and having a sense of community and fun.”

“Everything we do at the commission is for the benefit of our community,” states Christy Betz, Assistant Executive Director, and manager of the Eastern Shore of Virginia Welcome Center at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. “The Eastern Shore is such a loving community. We are all rooting each other on and doing everything we can to provide support. COVID-19 has thrown us all a challenge, but we’re well equipped to face it when we all work together!”

You can participate in the take-out giveaway from February 1st – 27th.  For updates, follow @visitesva on Instagram and Visit Eastern Shore, Virginia on Facebook.

1265: Convening in Westminster of the first English “Commons” Parliament, consisting of representatives from the boroughs who had no formal Royal authorization. The gathering lasted only through mid-February, but it established the legitimacy of a representative assembly as a viable and correct form of government. The expansion of governance in the Westminster Parliament began the process of transforming the British monarchy into the constitutional form we recognize today.

1287: King Alfonso III of Aragon invades the island of Menorca. Vindicating his judgment today, tens of thousands of northern Europeans annually invade the island (and its sister, Majorca) on holiday.

1502: Portuguese explorer Gaspar de Lemos begins a formal survey of the lands around the magnificent harbor of Guanabara Bay. His work will lay the foundation for the establishment of Rio de Janeiro in 1565.

1535: Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizzaro, newly named Royal Governor of the newly conquered Inca lands in Peru, selects a well-watered and wooded coastal site for his capital and dedicates it on this date. He initially names it Cuidad des los Reyes, later re-named Lima.

1584: Florentine explorer Gionvanni da Verrazzano sets sail from Madeira to find the so-far elusive ocean route to the Pacific. He explores much of the eastern coast of North America, mis-identifying Pamlico Sound as the Pacific Ocean, but discovering the entrance to New York harbor, and farther up the coast, Block Island. The narrows of NY harbor, and the bridge that spans it, bear his name.

1649: Marking the beginning of the end of the long struggle between British monarchs and their increasingly assertive Parliaments, King Charles I is put on trial for “high crimes.”

1670: In one of the final acts of a swashbuckling career spent plundering the Spanish Main, the British pirate Henry Morgan, captures and sacks the city of Panama, burning it to the ground after taking anything and everything of value. For nearly 10 years, multiple Royal Governors of Jamaica ignored repeated edicts from the Crown to suppress piracy. Instead, they encouraged Morgan to range throughout the Caribbean basin attacking Spanish ships and port cities under Jamaican Letters of Marque, which provided a veneer of legitimacy to his activities. Morgan kept his crews occupied with adventure and plunder, while enriching himself, his Governors, and the Crown itself with tremendous hauls of looted Spanish treasure. Today’s sack of Panama, however, was the last straw for Britain’s diplomatic dance with their Spanish counterparts: the country was formally at peace with Spain in 1670, and the Spanish Crown demanded Morgan’s head. In 1672 he was arrested for the act, and returned to England for an expected trial and hanging. Instead, King Charles II knighted him for Services to the Crown and appointed him Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica, where he served until 1683, living in pampered dissolution until his death in 1688. His grave in the pirate haven of Port Royal, Jamaica, disappeared beneath the sea in the great earthquake of 1692. (FYI- Morgan was renowned in his heyday for dressing in a scarlet jacket trimmed in gold during his recruiting drives, reinforcing his image as a highly successful privateer (which he was)), kind of like his image on the bottle of rum that bears his name.

1773: Captain James Cook, on his second voyage of discovery, sails below the Antarctic Circle for the first time, the first European explorer to do so. The Antarctic (and Arctic) Circle is the northernmost (southernmost) latitude where the sun does not rise at the winter solstice, June 21^st (December 21^st). It lies at 66 degrees 33 minutes South (North) latitude, about 650 nautical miles south of Cape Horn. Part of Cook’s mission was to survey the northern extent of the summer icepack as well as the iceberg zone. It’s important to note here that the Southern Ocean south of 40 degrees latitude is also completely unencumbered by any land masses to break up the prevailing westerly winds, creating a region sailors call the “Roaring 40s,” where it is not unusual for near-hurricane force winds to pipe up for weeks at a time, causing the seas themselves to build into towering breakers approaching fifty feet in height. All to say, one cannot overstate the risks inherent in making this survey from a wooden sailing ship, but they did it anyway.

1778: On his third Voyage of Discovery, Captain James Cook discovers a Central Pacific island chain he names the Sandwich Islands. They have since reverted to their native name, Hawaii. As an aside, the people who consider themselves the indigenous natives of the chain are working to further devolve the name into a near-phonetic transliteration of the Polynesian Hawai’i, which is itself derived from O-havai’i.

1783: Over two years after Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown, the British government signs the Treaty of Paris, formally recognizing its former American colonies as independent states.

1793: On 12/11, France’s King Louis XVI was paraded through the streets of Paris to stand trial for treason. On January 15^th the National Assembly voted on the charges: 693 found him guilty, 0 found him innocent, and 23 abstained. Given the overwhelming evidence of Louis’ collaboration with various foreign governments to invade France and put down the Revolution, the verdict was pretty much assured. What was not assured was what to do next. On the 16^th a voice roll-call vote was held on the penalty, and the closeness of the vote underscores the drama of the final decision: 361 voted for immediate execution, 288 voted against execution, and 72 voted for death in principle, but with modifications and delays built into their vote. In the end, the King was formally stripped of all titles, and Citizen Louis Capet mounted the scaffold on this day. He gave a brief speech forgiving his executioners and praying that other citizens of France would be spared his fate. Then the drums rolled, Louis knelt into the stocks, and the Guillotine ended his life in a single stroke. Regicide “has loomed as a shadow over French history” (re: the Wikipedia entry). French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard noted “[the regicide] was the starting point of all French thought, the memory of which acts as a reminder that French modernity began under the sign of a crime.”

1861: Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis resigns from the United States Senate.

1862: Death of the 10^th President of the United States, John Tyler (b.1790), who became the first to arrive at the office by succession from the Vice-Presidency, on the death of President William Henry Harrison. Tyler was born into the “Virginia aristocracy” but served out a relatively nondescript presidency, highlighted by his entire cabinet resigning in protest of particular veto, and a subsequent near-impeachment. Declining to run for a second term on his own, he retired back to his Virginia estate, Sherwood Forest, where he stayed away from politics until being elected to the Confederate House of Representatives in 1861. He died before being seated in Richmond, but his reputation was permanently stained by his overt association with the war.  2021: John Tyler’s grandson is alive today, and continues to manage the former president’s estate. The grandson is only two generations removed from the lives of the Founding Fathers. John Tyler- born in 1790- with his second wife fathers (at age 63) Lyon Tyler, who was born in 1853. Lyon, in turn, with his second wife, fathers (at age 75) Harrison Ruffin Tyler (b.1928), who was a successful Richmond businessman, now retired.

1871: As the Franco-Prussian War reaches is culmination with his armies having recently captured the French Emperor Napoleon III and with Paris under siege by German guns, King of Prussia Wilhelm I is proclaimed Emperor of the German Empire, beginning an era known as the Second Reich. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck exploits a newly available venue to publicly reinforce Germany’s position of dominance over its western rival: the proclamation ceremony is held in Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors, with virtually the entire leadership of Bismarck’s government, the General Staff and the Hohenzollern royal family in attendance.

1887: 18.3 inches of rain falls on Brisbane, Australia this day.

1899: The United States takes possession of Wake Island.

1911: Taking his naval aviation demonstrations to their next step (the first occurring with his takeoff from USS Birmingham (CL-2) here in Hampton Roads in November), Eugene Ely lands his Curtis Pusher aeroplane on a platform built aboard USS Pennsylvania (ACR-4), anchored in San Francisco Bay. After a light meal, and with the crew having turned the machine around, Ely fires up the engine and takes off again, demonstrating- at least in theory- a viable capability for launch and recovery of airplanes aboard ship.

1911: The first Monte Carlo Road Rally takes place in the tiny Principality. The grueling route was designed to test improvements and performance features in automobiles, and over the years it became one of the signature events of international motor racing.

1919: British aircraft engine manufacturer Walter Owen “WO” Bentley, founds Bentley Motors Limited. The company immediately begins production on series of cars that were notable for their speed and reliability. A group of “gentleman racers” coalesced around the Bentley marque and began winning races at Brooklands and soon thereafter, the great 24 Hours of Le Mans, where the Speed 6 model won the endurance classic four years in a row, 1927-30. The company went through several ownership periods, most notably by Rolls Royce in mid-century, who used the marque as a lower-cost alternative to its other models. In the late 1990s, both the Rolls Royce and Bentley companies were objects of a bidding war between Volkswagen and BMW. In the end, BMW took control of Rolls, and VW took control of Bentley. Bentley design today blends exceptionally high performance driving characteristics with the kind of luxurious accommodations one would expect at the top of the automotive spectrum. 

1921: Establishment of the First Turkish Constitution, the product of the vision and drive of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The constitution is built from 23 short articles, the core of which is that Turkish sovereignty belongs to the nation, not the Sultan. As the victorious Allies of the Great War dismembered the far-flung remains of the Ottoman Empire (ally of the Central Powers, you remember), Ataturk galvanized the core of Anatolian Turkey to stand up for its sovereign rights as an independent state, designed explicitly to be secular in order to negate all the negative influences of the old Moslem Caliphate, of which the Sultan was Caliph. Two years after adoption of the constitution, the Caliphate was formally ended; the Wikipedia entry puts the end very nicely: “Per the law of March 3, 1924, the last Ottoman Sultan, the last Caliph and all members of their imperial families had their citizenships revoked, were exiled forever from the new Republic and their descendants banned from ever setting foot in its territory. The same law also nationalized all the properties of the Imperial Crown without compensation.” You would be correct in that much of Turkey’s authoritarianism, including periodic military coups to restore the constitution, is a direct result of the Islamist elements of Turkish society recoiling at the thought of the former Caliphate functioning as a secular and constitutional republic. 

1924: Death of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as V.I. Lenin (b.1870)

1931: Birth of James Earl Jones, who voice then probably had a different level of projection then than it does today.

1942: Birth of Cassius Clay (d.2016).

1943: Start of the First Warsaw Uprising in the Jewish Ghetto. After four years of sullen acceptance at being crammed into a single ghetto, the Jews of Warsaw begin a clandestine revolt against their Nazi overseers. Armed only with a few pistols, rifles and Molotov cocktails, the fighters seek to forcibly oppose the renewed transports of the Jewish population to the death camps. The rising lasted through May, when the Germans make a full-on military operation against the rag-tag irregulars of the Ghetto.

1945(a): The Red Army captures what’s left of Warsaw, Poland. After six years of war, the city is reduced to essentially little more than heaps of rubble, with a population struggling for subsistence.

1945(b): With Soviet forces inexorably bearing down on them, the Nazi overlords of Auschwitz frantically- and futilely- begin to evacuate the death camp.

1945(c): The Soviet sweep into Eastern Europe, keeping its long-term political goals in the forefront of its decision-making, arrests Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg off the streets of Budapest, where he established a “Swedish Cultural Zone” to protect the Jews of Budapest from Nazi deportation.

1945 (d): An almost-defeated Germany begins a forced evacuation of its 1.8 million citizens from its lands in East Prussia. The evacuation was planned earlier by the General Staff with the understanding that East Prussia could not be defended against concentrated assault. The actual event was triggered by reports of Soviet atrocities as the Red Army plunged into its easternmost frontiers. As civilian panic set in, the orderly, planned evacuation turned into a general rout. The maritime portion of the evacuation used around a thousand vessels for nearly 15 weeks, transporting 350,000 soldiers and upwards of 800,000 civilian refugees to mainland Germany. One of the ships, the passenger liner SS Wilhelm Gustloff, was hit by three torpedoes from a Russian submarine and sank in less than 45 minutes, taking an estimated 7,000 lives to the bottom, the worst maritime disaster in history. After the armistice in May, the Soviets began their own forced expulsion of the remaining civilian Germans, resulting in even more misery, including an estimated 300,000 deaths from starvation and exposure. 

1950: Former State Department diplomat Alger Hiss is convicted of perjury. The Soviet files that have been released to date confirm evidence of the crime.

1954: USS Nautilus (SSN-571) is launched in Groton, Connecticut by First Lady Mamie Eisenhower. The modified “Guppy” class submarine was the first ship powered by nuclear energy. She went on to set a number of endurance records and set the stage for a revolution in submarine strategies worldwide.

1961: President Dwight D. Eisenhower gives his farewell address to the nation, in which he warns of the dangers of a Cold War spawned “military-industrial complex” becoming a self-perpetuating cycle of military requirements and defense contractors driving the public fisc into penury.

1961: Newly elected President John F. Kennedy gives his famous “ask not” inaugural address.

1966: An armed B-52 on a routine deterrent patrol suffers a mid-air collision with its KC-135 tanker over Palomares, Spain. Both planes break up in flight, and three of the four B-28 thermonuclear bombs on board the B-52 fall onto farmland near the tiny coastal Spanish town. Two of them detonate conventionally, spreading nuclear material over a wide area. Cleanup efforts involved removing some 1,400 tons of dirt, and transporting it back to the Savannah River Plant in the United States for burning and disposal. The fourth bomb fell into the sea just offshore, but remained unlocated for over three months. During the massive (34 Navy ships) search effort, which finally succeeded with the deep submersible Alvin, the regular U.S. press briefings degenerated into something like farce. Unable by security rules to confirm or deny the presence of nuclear weapons, at one point the spokesman carefully explained, “I don’t know of any missing bomb, but we have not positively identified what I think you think we are looking for.” 

1970: The head of Navy Nuclear Power, the legendary Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, sends a blistering letter up the Navy chain of command, excoriating the concept of applying pseudo-engineering principles to clearly non-engineering processes. He presciently noted, “…it will add another monstrosity to our already vast administrative burden…”, among other sins. He is clearly disgusted with the ability of a bureaucracy to metastasize.

1981: General Motors corporate refugee John DeLorean begins production of his stainless steel DMC-12 sports car in a new factory in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland.

1991: Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, attempting to negate politically the devastating air strikes of the Desert Storm coalition, orders the launch of eight SCUD missiles into Israel in a vain attempt to widen the war into a full-blown Arab-Israeli affair. Coalition members Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and Jordan do not take the bait.

Not sure if this is part of the new administration’s attempt at normalizing international relations, but a convoy of 40 trucks and armor vehicles is reported to have entered Syria from Iraq.

A large US military convoy entered northeastern Syria on Thursday, Syrian state news agency SANA reports, citing sources on the ground.

According to the report, the convoy included some 40 trucks and armored vehicles and was backed from the air by helicopters.

It entered Syria from Iraq via the al-Waleed crossing to bring arms and logistical equipment to the bases in Hasakeh and Deir Ezzor provinces.

Other local media report that such maneuvers are not unusual as the US often moves transfers equipment between Iraq and Syria.

At the same time, SANA also reports that some 200 US troops arrived in the Hasakeh province on helicopters.

Not suprisingly, the troops are set to deploy on the nearby oilfields, with Kurdish-controlled eastern Syria rich in energy resources.

The US-led coalition has been working closely with the Kurds during the campaign against the Islamic State terrorist group in Syria, with Kurdish forces often working as ground coordinators for coalition jets during airstrikes. 

In late 2020, then-US President Donald Trump ordered US troops withdrawn from the area to redeploy to Iraq.