History Notes for this week of Aug 15

43 BC — Octavian and the Second Triumvirate

Octavian—you remember him from the Battle of Alexandria a couple weeks back—exercises his influence to get himself elected as part of the Second Triumvirate (i.e., three-way dictatorship) of the Roman Senate. Interesting tidbit on his name: he was born into a noble household as Gaius Octavius Thurinus; adopted in 44 BC by Julius Caesar, he became known as Gaius Julius Caesar, and after the battle in Egypt, Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus. To keep things straight, historians use a three-part shorthand to designate the phases of his life: Octavius (64-44), Octavian (44-27), and Augustus (27 BC-14 AD).

Octavian ultimately defeated his fellow triumvir Mark Antony and Cleopatra and emerged as Rome’s dominant ruler, receiving the title Augustus in 27 BC and becoming Rome’s first emperor.

778 — Death of Roland

Death of Roland, the historic Frankish captain and governor of the Breton March (under Emperor Charlemagne) at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in the Pyrenees. The battle occurred after Charlemagne defeated the Saxons in a long-running campaign through Frankish lands into the Iberian Peninsula. The fighting began during the return march, when the Frankish army passed through a narrow defile where they were obliged to proceed single-file. Unfortunately for this victorious but tired army, this was in Basque country, and the Basques ambushed them as Roland’s section brought up the rear of the column. Roland and scores of others were killed, but the remainder of Charlemagne’s army made it out.

From this point the legend begins, eventually morphing during the 12th Century into Le Chanson de Roland (The Song of Roland), a tale that focused on the noble knight sacrificing himself for the greater good of his sovereign. The Song is the oldest surviving piece of French literature, and its various iterations cemented Roland’s position as the noble defender all across Europe.

The historical ambush involved Basque attackers, but the later Song of Roland transformed the enemy into a Muslim army, turning a relatively obscure military setback into one of medieval Europe’s great heroic legends.

927 — Capture of Taranto

A Saracen raiding army led by Slavic Sabir conquers the strategic Greco-Roman seaport of Taranto, completely reducing it to rubble and carrying all survivors off to slavery in North Africa.

Taranto’s location on the heel of the Italian peninsula made it strategically valuable to Byzantine, Lombard and Muslim powers competing for control of southern Italy and Mediterranean trade routes.

1227 — Death of Genghis Khan

Traditional date for the death of Genghis Khan (b. circa 1162), the great Mongol warlord and leader of an empire that spread from China’s coastal plains, across the steppes of central Asia to the banks of the Dnieper River and the gates of Kiev. He is credited on the positive side with consolidating the Silk Road into a peaceful trading confederation, for instituting a nominal level of meritocracy in his governmental postings, and for creating a unifying political structure across a fractious region. On the other hand, he is also correctly portrayed as a brutal conqueror who gained most of his distant territories through genocide and random murder. As a military commander he had no peer during his lifetime.

Genghis Khan’s death did not halt Mongol expansion. His sons and grandsons continued the conquests, eventually creating the largest contiguous land empire in recorded history.

1248 — Cologne Cathedral

Laying of the foundation stone for the magnificent Cologne Cathedral, construction of which was completed in 1880. Yes, a 632-year-long project. It is widely recognized as the ultimate expression of Gothic architecture, and was miraculously spared destruction during the WWII firebombing of that city.

Construction largely stopped during the 16th century and did not resume in earnest until the 1800s, when renewed German interest in medieval architecture helped revive the enormous project.

1473 — Birth of Richard, Duke of York

Birth of Richard, Duke of York, one of the two “Princes in the Tower” (with his brother Edward, Prince of Wales) whose arrest and mysterious disappearance made the way clear for their uncle to assume the throne of England as Richard III. It is an ugly, ugly story, made more famous by the Bard, William Shakespeare, in his play, Richard III. All references to the two young heirs end without a trace sometime in 1483.

The fate of the Princes remains one of England’s enduring historical mysteries, and no conclusive evidence has established exactly when, how or on whose orders the boys died.

1587 — Birth of Virginia Dare

Birth of Virginia Dare, granddaughter of the governor Roanoke Colony, John White. Miss Dare was the first English child born in the Americas. One of our DLH colleagues recently suggested that she was the first “anchor baby,” but we won’t go there.

Virginia Dare disappeared along with the other members of the Roanoke settlement, creating the enduring mystery of the “Lost Colony.”

1754 — Birth of Banastre Tarleton

Birth of Banastre Tarleton (d.1833), the British Lieutenant-Colonel who distinguished himself during the American Revolution as an exceptionally brutal commander during the British Southern Campaign. His actions in that theater earned him the nickname of “Bloody Ban,” a result of the mass killing of American militia who were in the act of surrendering at the Battle of Waxhaw Creek in North Carolina. The action inflamed the rest of the colonies and led to the battle cry of “Tarleton’s Quarter!” when Americans came back into contact with the Redcoat army.

Tarleton later commanded British cavalry at the Battle of Cowpens in 1781, where Daniel Morgan’s American force inflicted one of the Southern Campaign’s most important defeats on the British.

1774 — Birth of Meriwether Lewis

Birth of Meriwether Lewis (d.1809), the other half of the leadership team that surveyed the new Louisiana Territory in the great Corps of Discovery expedition of 1803.

President Thomas Jefferson selected Lewis to lead the expedition, and Lewis in turn chose William Clark as his co-commander for the journey to the Pacific and back.

1777 — Battle of Bennington

An American militia force, under the leadership of General John Stark, completely routs a detachment of British General Burgoyne’s army who were tasked with rounding up horses and other supplies in the area. The Battle of Bennington decisively weakened Burgoyne’s strength in upper New England, providing bracing encouragement to the nascent United States, and helped lay the groundwork for France’s eventual alliance against Great Britain.

Burgoyne’s losses at Bennington contributed to his deteriorating position and eventual surrender at Saratoga less than two months later, a turning point in the Revolutionary War.

1780 — Battle of Camden

Battle of Camden (SC). Between the improving prospects of the American revolutionaries in the northern colonies and France’s recent alliance with America, Britain decides to execute a “Southern Strategy” to crush the relatively weak Southern militias and consolidate the larger Southern Tory political factions behind the Crown.

The British under Lord Cornwallis had already re-taken Savannah and Charleston, and now made plans to subdue the interior by capturing Camden, South Carolina, which was a major crossroads for inland travel. In response, the Continental Army began to re-form in Charlotte, North Carolina under General Horatio Gates, the hero of the American victory in Saratoga, NY.

Before his army and militia was fully formed, Gates ordered an immediate deployment down to Camden to meet Cornwallis’ army before it could take the town. The haste was his undoing; on the morning of the battle, the poorly organized and worse disciplined left wing of the militia crumbled and ran after the first volleys. The adjacent militia subsequently turned and ran with Gates himself in company, even before they engaged, leaving the lone Continental regiment to be destroyed in detail by the British Regulars and the cavalry of the notorious Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton. For his part, Gates never held command again, but because of his earlier service he was never held to account for the disaster at Camden.

After the defeat, command of the Southern Department eventually passed to Nathanael Greene, whose strategy of exhausting Cornwallis helped reverse American fortunes in the South.

1786 — Birth of Davy Crockett

Birth of the Tennessee frontiersman, soldier, twice-elected Member of Congress, and hero of Battle of the Alamo, Davy Crockett (d.1836).

Crockett’s death at the Alamo transformed an already colorful frontiersman and politician into one of the most enduring folk heroes of the American West.

1812 — USS Constitution Defeats HMS Guerriere

Captain Issac Hull, commanding the frigate USS Constitution, engages the British heavy frigate HMS Guerriere off the coast of Nova Scotia and blasts her into a useless and splintered hulk, killing a third of her crew and sending shock waves throughout the Royal Navy and joy throughout the United States. Continuing to close through the Briton’s early cannonades, Hull withheld the order to fire back until they were a mere 25 yards off, at which point he ordered a shattering broadside that swept Guerriere’s decks and almost immediately began her dismasting. Though damaged in the rigging, Constitution comes out of the battle essentially intact. During the battle, Guerriere’s cannonballs were seen bouncing off the stout oaken sides of the Constitution, prompting the cry, “Huzzah! Her sides are made of iron!” You know the rest of the story.

The victory gave the young U.S. Navy an enormous morale boost early in the War of 1812 and helped give Constitution the nickname “Old Ironsides.”

1831 — Nat Turner’s Rebellion

Just down the road from here in Southampton County, the slave Nat Turner leads what he believes will be a God-inspired revolt to throw off the chains of slavery. After months of planning, he and a handful of compatriots during the night of 20-21st of August begin to gather an “army” by stealthily moving from farm to farm, killing the whites with knives, axes and blunt instruments, and enjoining the now-freed slaves to join them to continue the process until they have enough forces for an expected stand-up fight with the inevitable militia pursuit.

By the time militia formed up in the morning, Turner’s forces had killed 55 whites and swelled their own ranks to approximately 70 slaves and free blacks. The rebellion was quickly suppressed the day after it started, but Turner escaped the dragnet until October 30th, after which he was tried and executed on November 5th.

Turner’s Rebellion came to stand for all that was wrong with the slave system, between the moral and physical degradation of the practice, to the latent threat of this kind of uprising, to the expense of maintaining slaves during the long downturn in tobacco prices; the system had been for nearly ten years prior showing signs of collapse, particularly in the mid-Atlantic states.

Further emphasizing the point, the Liberian repatriation movement was already in full swing, but the brutality of the uprising, and the potential scope of a similar threat in the future led to a significant hardening of Southern attitudes, all of which figured in the development of the new cotton plantations in the Deep South and the burgeoning slave trade that supported that new labor market. It also represented the enslaved souls’ unending desire for freedom and a willingness to take action to gain that freedom.

In the rebellion’s aftermath, Virginia and other Southern states imposed additional restrictions on enslaved and free Black people, particularly concerning education, assembly and religious gatherings.

1838 — Wilkes Expedition

Wilkes Expedition. In a long-delayed follow up to the Corps of Discovery, six US Navy ships of the United States Exploring Expedition weigh anchor from right here in Hampton Roads to begin a four-year journey around the American continents and into the Pacific basin. Their mission was to create accurate surveys of newly found lands, promote American commerce abroad, and conduct scientific surveys of resources in previous discoveries. The expedition was under the command of Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, USN, for whom the expedition is named.

The expedition collected thousands of scientific specimens and produced maps and research that became important foundations for American science, navigation and the collections of the Smithsonian Institution.

1839 — Daguerreotype Made “Free to All”

The French government, after granting Louis Daguerre a lifetime pension for his invention, announces that the Daguerreotype photographic process is “Free to All.” This is great news except in England, where Daguerre filed a patent a year earlier, which limited the island to only one licensed photographer through the life of the patent.

Making the process publicly available helped photography spread extraordinarily quickly, with daguerreotype studios appearing across Europe and the United States within only a few years.

1848 — California Gold Discovery Reaches the East

Eight months after the discovery of loose gold near Coloma, California, the New York Herald becomes the first East Coast newspaper to announce the news to the rest of the world. The gold rush that began during this summer became a veritable flood of Easterners chartering clipper ships to San Francisco, which transformed the city from a sleepy fishing town and army post to a booming den of iniquity and gold-fueled wealth. Because of the one-way nature of the commerce, hundreds of ships were left abandoned on the San Francisco waterfront, where their remains are still excavated today during many construction projects.

President James K. Polk’s public confirmation of the California gold discoveries later in 1848 helped turn scattered reports into the enormous migration of “Forty-Niners” the following year.

1862 — J.E.B. Stuart

The flamboyant Virginia horseman J.E.B. Stuart is assigned command of the cavalry for the Army of Northern Virginia.

Stuart became one of the Confederacy’s best-known cavalry commanders, using reconnaissance, screening operations and highly publicized raids around Union armies to build his reputation.

1863 — Quantrill’s Raid

A carefully planned raid by rebel-Rebel gunmen, led by William Clark Quantrill, attacks the anti-slavery town of Lawrence, Kansas, burning a quarter of its buildings to the ground, killing over 200 military-aged men, and pillaging whatever remained. Quantrill’s Raid, also known as the Lawrence Massacre, became one of the bloodiest events in Kansas’ history, which had seen more than its share of abolitionist violence since the first Sack of Lawrence in 1856, and helped cement the title of “Bleeding Kansas” on that front line of the ongoing battle between expanding or restricting slavery in the western territories.

The massacre grew from years of exceptionally violent guerrilla warfare along the Kansas-Missouri border, where Civil War loyalties overlapped with conflicts dating back to “Bleeding Kansas.”

1882 — 1812 Overture

Debut performance of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece, the 1812 Overture.

Tchaikovsky composed the work to commemorate Russia’s resistance to Napoleon’s 1812 invasion; its famous finale calls for bells and actual cannon fire.

1893 — Birth of Mae West

Birth of the flamboyant actress Mae West (d.1980), whose spicy antics on film and in her public life provide a pretty good data point that the Boomer generation didn’t invent sex, the movie stars of the ’20s and ’30s did.

West had already become famous—and controversial—on the New York stage before reaching Hollywood, where her double entendres repeatedly challenged the era’s increasingly strict censorship rules.

1896 — Klondike Gold Discovery

A rich vein of Placer gold is found in the Rabbit Creek (now Bonanza Creek) tributary of the Klondike River in the Alaska Territory. The discovery was made by three prospecting partners, Skookum Jim Mason, Dawson Charlie and his nephew Patsy Henderson. Their discovery triggers the Klondike Gold Rush, that lasted only a few years, but yielded over twelve and half million ounces of gold since the discovery.

News of the discovery reached Seattle and San Francisco the following summer, triggering the famous 1897-98 stampede of prospectors toward the Klondike.

1914 — Panama Canal Opens

The Panama Canal opens to commercial traffic. Unfortunately for the people who labored for years on this engineering and construction masterpiece, the event is completely overshadowed by the opening guns of Great Power combat in Europe.

The canal dramatically shortened voyages between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, eliminating the long and hazardous trip around Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America.

1914 — Germans Occupy Brussels

Two weeks after Albert I, King of Belgium, denies the Imperial German Army passage into France, the Germans occupy Brussels.

Germany’s invasion of neutral Belgium brought Britain into World War I and became a central feature of Allied propaganda throughout the conflict.

1920 — Founding of the National Football League

Founding of the National Football League. I wonder how it went for them.

The organization began as the American Professional Football Association and adopted the name National Football League in 1922.

1929 — Riots in British Mandate Palestine

Riots begin in British Palestinian Mandate after the Mufti of Jerusalem gives a fiery sermon excoriating Jewish worshipers who erected a temporary screen between men and women at the Wailing Wall. The thinly-manned British police were unable to stop the violence. The rampage continued through the night, eventually leading to the stabbing death of a young Sephardic Jew named Abraham Mizrachi. His funeral, in turn, became a political rally, which further inflamed the Arab “street.” Flaming editorials were published in both Arab and Jewish newspapers, and the tensions led directly to further violence, including massacres at Hebron and Safed.

The 1929 violence marked a major deterioration in Arab-Jewish relations under the British Mandate and intensified disputes over access to and control of Jerusalem’s holy sites.

1935 — Deaths of Will Rogers and Wiley Post

Deaths of American humorist Will Rogers (b.1879) and aviation pioneer Wiley Post (b.1898) on takeoff in their float-plane near Fairbanks, Alaska. Post was on a mission to scout out potential float-plane routes between the United States and Russia, and Rogers invited himself along to gather more material for his newspaper columns.

Both men were nationally famous—Rogers as one of America’s most popular commentators and Post as the first pilot to fly solo around the world—making their deaths front-page news across the country.

1938 — Lou Gehrig’s 23rd Grand Slam

The “Iron Horse” of the New York Yankees, Lou Gehrig, smashes his 23rd grand slam home run, a record that stood until the former Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez hit his 24th in the 2013 season.

Gehrig’s remarkable career ended less than a year later when the symptoms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis forced him out of the Yankees’ lineup in 1939.

1940 — Birth of Jill St. John

Birth of one of the famous Bond Girls, Tiffany Case, a.k.a. Jill St. John, who was the female lead in Diamonds Are Forever.

St. John played Tiffany Case opposite Sean Connery in the 1971 Bond film, becoming the first American actress to play the principal Bond girl in the series.

1940 — Death of Leon Trotsky

Death of Leon Trotsky (b.1879), Vladimir Lenin’s right-hand man, organizer and commander of the Red Army, Commissar of Foreign Affairs who negotiated the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with Imperial Germany, and staunch opponent of Joseph Stalin’s rise to power in the Communist Party leadership.

Trotsky wrote passionately against Stalin after he was exiled to Mexico. On the night before today, NKVD agent Roman Mercader connived his way into Trotsky’s Mexican home and plunged an ice-axe into his head. Amazingly, it did not kill him immediately; after a futile surgery, Trotsky died the following day.

Trotsky had survived an earlier armed attack on his Mexican home in May 1940, but Stalin’s campaign to eliminate his exiled rival ultimately succeeded three months later.

1943 — Schweinfurt-Regensburg Raid

The United States Army Air Corps Eighth Air Force loses 60 B-17s, with severe damage to over 90 more aircraft during a combined raid on the Schweinfurt-Regensburg industrial complex deep in Germany. 376 bombers were assigned to the daylight mission.

The enormous losses demonstrated the vulnerability of unescorted heavy bombers and strengthened the case for developing long-range fighter escorts capable of accompanying them deep into Germany.

1943 — Patton Enters Messina

The U.S. Seventh Army under General George S. Patton enters the strategic city of Messina, Sicily, several hours ahead of the British Eighth Army under General Bernard Montgomery.

The capture of Messina effectively completed the Allied conquest of Sicily, although much of the German force had successfully evacuated across the Strait of Messina to mainland Italy.

1944 — Operation DRAGOON

Allied armies under the command of US Army Generals Jacob Devers, Alexander Patch and Lucian Truscott, land in southern France in Operation DRAGOON. This second front in the western theatre opens up the seaports of Marseille and Toulon to Allied supplies.

The rapid capture of Marseille and Toulon provided the Allies with major deep-water ports that became critical to supplying the armies advancing toward Germany.

1945 — Hirohito Announces Japan’s Surrender

Japanese Emperor Hirohito publicly announces via recorded radio transmission that he is prepared to accept the Allied terms of surrender.

The broadcast was the first time most Japanese citizens had ever heard their emperor’s voice and effectively announced the end of World War II, although the formal surrender was signed aboard USS Missouri on September 2.

1946 — Birth of Connie Chung

Birth of the completely un-biased newscaster, Connie Chung.

Chung became one of the most recognizable American television journalists of the late 20th century and, in 1993, became the second woman to co-anchor a major network’s national evening newscast.

1947 — Death of Ettore Bugatti

Death of Ettore Bugatti (b.1881), Italian engineer and automobile designer, who set up a French company bearing his name that produced some of the most successful and beautiful cars of the 1920s-30s.

Bugatti’s prewar automobiles combined engineering performance with distinctive styling, making models such as the Type 35 and Type 57 some of the most celebrated cars of their era.

1953 — Coup Against Mohammed Mosaddegh

In coordination with Great Britain’s MI-6, the CIA assists in the coup d’etat of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh, a virulent Persian nationalist who campaigned incessantly against Britain’s economic ties with Iran.

The coup restored Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s political dominance, while foreign involvement in Mosaddegh’s overthrow became an enduring source of resentment in Iranian-American relations.

1960 — Joseph Kittinger’s Record Jump

U.S. Air Force pilot Captain Joseph Kittinger leaps out of a balloon from 102,800 feet, and freefalls for over four minutes, reaching 614 mph. The jump was Kittinger’s third from high altitude as part of the Excelsior tests of high-altitude ejection parachute systems for modern jet aircraft.

More than half a century later, Kittinger served as mentor and capsule communicator for Felix Baumgartner’s 2012 Red Bull Stratos jump, which surpassed several of Kittinger’s records.

1968 — Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia

Increasingly concerned about the dangerous liberalism undertaken by Czech premier Alexander Dubcek, the Soviet Union invades Czechoslovakia in a vivid demonstration of the Brezhnev Doctrine, wherein the USSR retains the right to “protect the gains of the socialist revolution” in any country it could reach.

The invasion crushed the reform movement known as the Prague Spring, which had attempted to introduce greater political and cultural freedom while remaining within the communist system.

1969 — Woodstock

Opening acts of the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival.

Roughly 400,000 people ultimately converged on the festival site near Bethel, New York, turning what organizers expected to be a large concert into a defining cultural event of the 1960s.

1969 — Hurricane Camille

Hurricane Camille slams into the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The Category 5 storm kills 248 people and causes $1.5B in damage.

Camille was one of the most intense hurricanes ever to strike the continental United States and produced a devastating storm surge along the Mississippi coast.

1977 — Death of Groucho Marx

Death of Groucho Marx (b.1890), who famously quipped, among other famous quips, “Please accept my resignation. I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.”

Groucho’s death received less immediate public attention than might otherwise have occurred because Elvis Presley had died only three days earlier.

1981 — Gulf of Sidra Incident

Two F-14 Tomcats flying from USS Nimitz (CVN-68) shoot down two Libyan SU-22 Fitters during a Freedom of Navigation exercise in the Gulf of Sidra.

The confrontation grew from Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s claim that the entire Gulf of Sidra constituted Libyan territorial waters, a claim the United States rejected.

1987 — Death of Rudolf Hess

Death of Nazi Deputy Fuehrer Rudolf Hess (b.1894), who remains perhaps one of the most enigmatic figures of the World War II era. In May of 1941, Hess piloted an ME-110 fighter on an extended range, low level flight to Scotland, where he parachuted out and requested a meeting with the Duke of Hamilton, ostensibly to negotiate a separate peace with Great Britain.

At the Nuremburg Trials he was convicted of war crimes and crimes against the peace, and sentenced to life in Spandau Prison. Hess died in Spandau at age 93, the only prisoner at the facility for many years.

After Hess’s death, Spandau Prison was demolished so that the site could not become a gathering place or shrine for neo-Nazis.

1991 — August Coup

The August Coup—First full day of the coup attempt by Soviet hardliners against the reform government of Mikhail Gorbachev. On this day the Red Army was ordered into Moscow to shell the “White House” parliament building. Moscow mayor Boris Yeltsin climbs up onto a tank with a bullhorn and exhorts the crowd of over 100,000 to keep demonstrating for reform and freedom.

The coup collapsed within days, badly weakening both the Communist Party and Gorbachev while dramatically strengthening Boris Yeltsin’s political position.

1991 — Estonia Reasserts Independence

Estonia releases a statement re-asserting its status as an independent Baltic nation, in defiance of the Soviet Union’s 1941 annexation of it and its two sister republics.

Estonia’s restoration of independence came amid the collapsing Moscow coup and was followed shortly by broad international recognition as Soviet authority unraveled.

2007 — Death of Leona Helmsley

Death of hotel and real estate mogul Leona Helmsley (b.1920), the Queen of Mean, who famously declaimed at her tax-evasion trial: “Only the little people pay taxes.”

Helmsley’s 1989 tax-evasion conviction reinforced her notorious public image, while her later estate famously included a multimillion-dollar trust for her Maltese dog, Trouble.

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Wayne Creed

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