History Notes this week of April 12

1204: Armies of the Fourth Crusade enter the city and begin the Sack of Constantinople. DLH note: For all the quacking that goes on today about the Crusades, it is rare indeed to hear the complainers mention this particular Crusade, which has had greater long-term effects than all the others combined. The city that fell this day was the capital of the Byzantine Empire- stay with me- the Christian Byzantine Empire, headed by the Christian Emperor and the seat of the Christian Pope of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Plenty of infidel Moslems around, to be sure, but they were not (yet) anywhere near taking political power in Anatolia until the Christian Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade demolished the Emperor’s armies and gutted his city Once the Crusade left town and continued on their way to the Levant, the way was now clear for the ever-restless Ottoman Turks to establish a Moslem caliphate on the husks of what was for a thousand years, the beating heart of Christianity. 

1446: Death of Filippo Brunelleschi (b.1377), designer and chief engineer of the magnificent dome topping the Florence cathedral. The span and weight of the dome was orders of magnitude larger than ever previously attempted, and Brunelleschi’s innovative thinking and close supervision of the project ensured its successful completion. If you are the least bit interested in some of what made the Italian Renaissance such an astoundingly productive period, may I commend for your reading pleasure: Brunelleschi’s Dome; How a Renaissance Genius Re-Invented Architecture, by Ross King.

1452: Birth of Leonardo da Vinci (d.1519).

1492: Genovese mariner Christopher Columbus signs a contract with the Spanish Court to find a direct ocean passage to the Indies.

1521: At the Diet of Worms, the monk Martin Luther is excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church for heresy and denying the authority of the pope. During his cross-examination he is repeatedly asked,“Do you recant?” (i.e., from his writings on the nature of forgiveness). In his timeless reply, he firmly responds, “Unless I am convicted by scripture and plain reason – I do not accept the authority of the popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other – my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me, Amen!” The Diet of Worms was a formal imperial diet, or assembly, of the Holy Roman Empire held in Worms, Germany, in 1521. It’s most famous for Martin Luther’s appearance before the assembly to respond to charges of heresy after Pope Leo X had condemned his teachings. Despite being summoned to recant his views, Luther refused, marking a pivotal moment in the Protestant Reformation.

1534: Sir Thomas More is imprisoned in the Tower of London.He was found guilty of denying the king his rights as the most high-profile opponent of Henry’s claim to supremacy over the Church of England.

1570: Birth of Guy Fawkes, a key figure of the famous Gunpowder Plot to destroy Parliament in 1605. We’ll read more about the plot in November- the 5^th, to be exact, but for now we’ll ponder an anarchist’s description of him: “The only man ever to enter Parliament with honest intentions.”

1606: King James I grants a royal charter to the Virginia Company of London, a joint stock company that will finance British colonization of North America north of Cape Fear.

1633: Galileo Galilei is convicted and sent into house arrest by the Holy Inquisition for publishing and then not recanting that the earth revolved around the sun. Over 350 years later, Pope John Paul II overturns the conviction.

1755: Publication of Samuel Johnson’s  A Dictionary of the English Language. The project was contracted for three years, but took nine, and remained the standard for our native tongue until publication of the first Oxford English Dictionary in 1928.

1778: Commanding his brig USS Ranger, Captain John Paul Jones departs Brest, France on a raiding mission against British interests in the Irish Sea. It is the first offensive naval action of the American Revolution, and the attacks take the British completely by surprise. In a raid into his native Scotland, Jones sails into Kirkcudbright Bay with a view to abduct the Earl of Selkirk and hold him hostage for the release of American sailors held by the British. The earl is not at home but the crew takes the liberty to steal his silver, including his wife’s teapot, still warm and full of her morning tea. The raids continue for several more weeks, and after capturing HMS Duke, Jones returns to Brest where he will seek a larger ship and make plans for more raids as the year progresses.

1789: George Washington leaves his Mount Vernon home, enroute to New York City for his inauguration as the first President of the United States.

1790: Death of Benjamin Franklin (b.1706)

1849: Walter Hunt of New York patents the safety pin. He later sells the rights for $100.

1861: Under the command of P.G.T Beauregard, at 4:27 AM rebellious South Carolinians open fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor. 34 hours and over 4000 artillery and mortar shells later, United States Army Major Robert Anderson surrenders the fort. Two days later President Lincoln asks for 75,000 volunteers to put down the rebellion. The first lanyard of the Confederate barrage is pulled by the “rabid secessionist” Edmund Ruffin of Virginia.

1865: After his Appomattox meeting (DLH 4/9) with Union Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, General Robert E. Lee, CSA, issues General Order #9, his last:
        “After four years of arduous service, marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources. I need not tell the brave survivors of so many hard-fought battles, who have remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to the result from no distrust of them…I determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen…I bid you an affectionate farewell.”– Robert E. Lee

1865: At Appomattox, Confederate Major-General John Brown Gordon leads the march of the remnants of the Army of Northern Virginia through the drawn up ranks of Union soldiers under the command of Brigadier General Joshua Chamberlain, to stack their arms and return home. As General Gordon presents his lists to Chamberlain, the Union general calls his troops to attention and orders them to present arms as a mark of respect to their defeated foes. The ragged Confederates continue to march through the silent Union force until the disarming is complete, and the Civil War is over, four years to the day from when it began.

1867: Birth of Wilbur Wright (d.1912).

1881: Bat Masterson’s last shootout. In support of his brother James, sheriff of Dodge City, the elder Masterson travels from Tombstone, Arizona to confront and shoot two criminals who were terrorizing the Kansas cattle town. No one was killed, although several were injured. A jury reasoned that his actions were essentially in keeping with the laws of the city at the time but they fined him $8.00 for disturbing the peace.

1902: James C. Penney opens his first dry goods store in Kemmerer, Wyoming.

1912: RMS Titanic sets out from Southampton, England on her first transatlantic voyage.

1912: Death of Clara Barton (b.1821), who achieved notoriety during the Civil War as the “Angel of the Battlefield” for her efforts to ease the suffering of the wounded and dying. She went on to become the founder and first president of the American Red Cross in 1881. 

1919: Five time presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs is sent to prison under the sedition provisions of the Espionage Act of 1917. The fiery union man and leader of the Socialist Party, USA, earned the undying enmity of President Woodrow Wilson for his continuing series of speeches against U.S. participation in the Great War, and in particular against the draft. Debs’ June, 1918 anti-draft speech was the last straw: he was arrested and charged with 10 counts of sedition. He called no defense witness at his trial and spoke on his own behalf in a 2 hour statement that was called by “journalist” (I use the term loosely) Heywood Broun “…one of the most beautiful and moving passage in the English language. He was for that one afternoon touched with inspiration. If anyone told me that tongues of fire danced upon his shoulders as he spoke, I would believe it.”  During subsequent clemency proceedings, President Wilson wrote, “While the flower of American youth was pouring out its blood to vindicate the cause of civilization, this man, Debs, stood behind the lines sniping, attacking, and denouncing them….This man was a traitor to his country and he will never be pardoned during my administration.” Debs’ 10 year sentence was eventually commuted by President Harding. He died in 1926. 

1943: Katyn Forest Massacre: during their drive across Poland, the German army discovers a series of mass graves containing the bodies of over 20,000 Polish prisoners captured by the Soviets during the 1939 partition of that country. In a rare display of honest revulsion, the Nazis announce the finding to the world, convening an international panel of forensic experts and neutral journalists to document the breadth and scope of the massacre Joseph Goebbels was frank about using the findings for anti-Soviet propaganda purposes, recognizing that if they didn’t get the story out first, the Soviets would certainly turn it around on the Germans in the event of Russian re-occupation of the site. The Soviets steadfastly denied their culpability until 1990, with the release of archival documents that vividly show how Beria, Khrushchev, and Stalin himself recognized significant post-war opportunities for the communist movement if they could decapitate the leadership of Poland during the cover of war. The final tally of the murdered victims includes over half of the Polish officer corps, including 14 generals, an admiral, and appropriately higher numbers of colonels and below, including as well doctors, police leadership, university professors and members of the technical elite.

1945: President Franklin D. Roosevelt (b.1882) dies at his home in Warm Springs, Georgia, three months into his fourth term.

1945: Lieutenant Colonel Boris Pash, USA, seizes 1,100 tons of enriched uranium in Strassfurt, Germany. The Nazis were not collecting it to make glowing watch faces, but you probably deduced that part. It would be fair to say this capture was a close run thing in the race for atomic weapons, if not for the incipient Nazi threat, but also for the chance that our Soviet “allies” could have found it first.

1947: Jackie Robinson opens his major league career with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

1947: Birth of Lew Alcindor, who later became Kareem Abdul-Jabar, holder of the NBA record for points scored, six MVP awards and six NBA championships.

1952: First flight of Boeing’s B-52 Stratofortress. 

1961: After two years of secret training, the Soviet Union successfully launches Major Yuri Gagarin into orbit. He immediately becomes both an international hero and a propaganda icon for the Soviet state, too valuable to be allowed to make another space flight. He is killed under “suspicious circumstances” in a 1968 plane crash just outside of Moscow.

1961: First day of the Bay of Pigs invasion. The Bay of Pigs invasion was a failed attempt by the United States and Cuban exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro’s government in Cuba, which took place in April 1961. The CIA-backed operation involved some 1,400 Cuban exiles landing on Cuba’s southern coast, aiming to trigger a popular uprising against Castro. The invasion ended in a military disaster, with the exiles being quickly defeated by Castro’s forces.

1963: On a test dive after a hastily completed major overhaul, USS Thresher (SSN-593) sinks 220 miles off of Cape Cod with the loss of all hands (112 crew and 12 civilian).

1964: The British press sensationally reports sentencing of “307 Years!” for the 12 men involved in the August ’63 Great Train Robbery. The heist netted 2.6 million pounds in used English bank notes. The perpetrators received individual sentences ranging from 10 to 30 years.

1970: Two days after launch, and halfway between the Earth and the Moon, an oxygen tank in Apollo 13’s Service Module explodes, causing the entire system to lose power and forcing the crew to complete the flight using the Lunar Module as a “lifeboat” for electricity, oxygen and trans-lunar navigation.

1970: After a harrowing trip around the moon and manual course corrections made by sightings through the LM windows along the limb of the earth, Apollo 13 Commander Jim Lovell, and crew Fred Haise and Jack Swigert make a successful splashdown within sight of the recovery ship USS Iwo Jima (LPH-2).

1972: Launch of Apollo 16, the fifth of six total Apollo flights to land on the moon. Astronauts John Young and Charlie Duke spend just under three days on the surface and collect more than 200 pounds of rock samples. Thomas Mattingly remained with the command module in lunar orbit.

1975: The United States evacuates its last remaining personnel from the embassy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Genocide begins with the communist government rounding up its own citizens and ends close to 2,200,000 intentional deaths later. A strange silence descends over the very people who screamed loudest about disengaging the United States from Southeast Asia, including the freshly elected “Watergate Class” of anti-war Congressmen and Senators.

1981: The Space Shuttle program begins with the first launch of Columbia, piloted by astronauts John Young and Bob Crippen.

1997: Tiger Woods becomes the youngest winner (at 21) of the Masters Tournament. He scored -18.

1998: Death of Pol Pot (b.1925). Pol Pot was a political leader whose communist Khmer Rouge government led Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. During that time, an estimated 1.5 to 2 million Cambodians died of starvation, execution, disease or overwork. One detention center, S-21, was so notorious that only seven of the roughly 20,000 people imprisoned there are known to have survived. The Khmer Rouge, in their attempt to socially engineer a classless communist society, took particular aim at intellectuals, city residents, ethnic Vietnamese, civil servants and religious leaders. Some historians regard the Pol Pot regime as one of the most barbaric and murderous in recent history.