1093 — Dedication of Winchester Cathedral, the nominal home of King Arthur’s Round Table. The cathedral took over 300 years to complete in its various phases, making it one of the longest-running construction projects in medieval England. It remains the longest cathedral in Europe at 556 feet.
1204 — Sack of Constantinople Armies of the Fourth Crusade enter the city and begin the Sack of Constantinople. The city that fell this day was the capital of the Byzantine Empire — 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 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. The looted treasures of Constantinople — including the famous bronze horses now at St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice — were carted back to Western Europe, where many remain to this day.
1388 — Battle of Nafels An army of Swiss soldiers, outnumbered 16:1, defeats a Hapsburg army of over 6,500 in the Battle of Nafels — an astounding rout by about 400 armed citizens of the cantonment of Glarus and a handful of knights from other parts of the Swiss Confederation. The battle was the final act in the long-running conflict between the ever-expansionist Hapsburg Empire and the ever-stubborn and independent-minded farmers and shopkeepers of the central Alps. After this battle, the Swiss kept their independence and the Emperor decided to leave them alone. The Swiss have commemorated the victory every year since with the “Näfelser Fahrt,” a procession still held on the first Thursday of April.
1413 — Henry V Crowned King of England After five years of increasingly bitter fighting with the Welsh, the 27-year-old Henry of Monmouth is crowned King Henry V of England on the death of his father, Henry IV. The young king almost immediately turned his attentions to regaining historic landholdings in France against the Valois dynasty, to say nothing of living out a life that inspired William Shakespeare to some of his finest work. His most famous victory, Agincourt (1415), saw a heavily outnumbered English force devastate the French nobility — the engagement immortalized in Shakespeare’s Henry V with the stirring “St. Crispin’s Day” speech.
1446 — Death of Filippo Brunelleschi 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. Among his many innovations was the invention of a hoisting machine purpose-built for the project — a design so elegant that Leonardo da Vinci later sketched it in his notebooks.
1492 — Columbus Signs Contract with Spain Genovese mariner Christopher Columbus signs a contract with the Spanish Court to find a direct ocean passage to the Indies. The agreement, known as the Capitulations of Santa Fe, granted Columbus the titles of Admiral, Viceroy, and Governor of any lands he discovered, along with ten percent of all revenues — terms the Spanish Crown would spend decades trying to wriggle out of after his voyages proved far more consequential than anyone anticipated.
1521 — Magellan Lands on Cebu Continuing his exploration of the Philippine archipelago, Ferdinand Magellan lands on the island of Cebu. His reception was initially cordial — he succeeded in converting the local chief, Rajah Humabon, to Christianity — but hubris led to his undoing when he intervened in a local inter-tribal conflict. He was killed days later at the Battle of Mactan, leaving his crew to complete the first circumnavigation of the globe without him.
1521 — Martin Luther Excommunicated at the Diet of Worms 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?” 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!” Luther was subsequently placed under Imperial ban, making it legal to kill him on sight — a fate he avoided only because the Elector of Saxony secretly whisked him away to Wartburg Castle, where he spent the next year translating the New Testament into German.
1534 — Thomas More Imprisoned in the Tower of London Sir Thomas More is imprisoned in the Tower of London. His crime was refusing to sign the Act of Succession acknowledging Henry VIII’s break with Rome and the legitimacy of his marriage to Anne Boleyn. More, the former Lord Chancellor and one of the most celebrated intellects in Europe, maintained a careful legal silence rather than openly opposing the king — but silence was not enough. He was beheaded in July 1535 and canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church in 1935.
1570 — Birth of Guy Fawkes 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 5th, 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.” Fawkes and his co-conspirators managed to secret 36 barrels of gunpowder into a cellar beneath the House of Lords before an anonymous tip led to his capture on the night of November 4th. He was tortured, tried, and executed in January 1606.
1585 — Raleigh’s Fleet Departs for Roanoke Departure from England of a five-ship fleet, organized and funded by Sir Walter Raleigh, to create a permanent English colony in the New World. The group eventually landed and set up camp on the shores of Roanoke Island on North Carolina’s Albemarle Sound. The little settlement maintained a tenuous toehold on the land; between conflict with the local Indian tribes and lack of a viable means to sustain their need for food, the success of the enterprise was very much on the edge. Raleigh commissioned his friend John White two years later to go back to Roanoke with a small fleet for re-supply and reinforcement, including 115 more colonists. When they arrived they found no one except a bleached-out skeleton. White stayed long enough to help the new group get re-established and promised to return with more supplies the following spring. Multiple delays — war, piracy, hurricanes — intervened, and when he finally stepped ashore in August of 1590, not a trace of the colony could be found. The only clue was the word “CROATOAN” carved into a tree, and the letters “CRO-” in another. The Lost Colony remains lost to this day, but it fuels a vibrant tourism economy down in the Outer Banks. After the English colonies actually did take hold up and down the coast, there were for years reports of blue-eyed Indians who inhabited the tidewater regions of North Carolina and Virginia, providing some degree of explanation about the fate of the little colony.
1606 — Virginia Company Charter Granted 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. The company would dispatch the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery the following year, leading to the founding of Jamestown in May 1607 — England’s first permanent settlement in the New World, though “permanent” would prove a generous term given the starvation and disease that nearly wiped it out in its first years.
1633 — Galileo Convicted by the Inquisition 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. Galileo spent the remaining nine years of his life under house arrest at his villa near Florence, during which time he managed to produce some of his most significant scientific work, completing Two New Sciences in 1638 — effectively laying the groundwork for classical mechanics.
1730 — Dedication of Shearith Israel Synagogue, New York City Dedication of Shearith Israel — the first synagogue in New York City. Founded by Sephardic Jewish immigrants, the congregation had actually been meeting since 1654, when the first Jewish settlers arrived in what was then New Amsterdam. The original Mill Street building was the only synagogue in all of colonial North America for much of the 18th century.
1739 — Death of Dick Turpin Death of the famous British highwayman Dick Turpin (b.1705). Turpin’s life of crime had him ranging up and down England’s eastern counties, eventually focusing his and his gang’s efforts in the Epping Forest of Essex. After his capture and execution (by short-drop hanging), his reputation continued to improve so that by the early 19th century he took on the character of a latter-day Robin Hood. His legendary horse “Black Bess” and the fictional overnight ride to York — popularized in William Harrison Ainsworth’s 1834 novel Rookwood — were largely invented after the fact, bearing little resemblance to the rather brutal reality of his criminal career.
1755 — Publication of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary 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. Johnson famously defined a lexicographer as “a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge” — a self-deprecating joke that masked the extraordinary intellectual achievement the work represented, as Johnson compiled it almost entirely on his own, relying on a small team of copyists but writing the 40,000-plus definitions himself.
1777 — Birth of Henry Clay Birth of Kentucky Congressman and Senator Henry Clay (d.1852). Clay served as Speaker of the House, Secretary of State, and three-time presidential candidate, but is perhaps best remembered as the “Great Compromiser” for his central role in brokering three major legislative agreements — the Missouri Compromise (1820), the Compromise Tariff of 1833, and the Compromise of 1850 — each of which temporarily defused sectional tensions that might otherwise have led to civil war decades earlier than they did.
1778 — John Paul Jones Raids the Irish Sea Commanding his brig USS Ranger, Captain John Paul Jones departs Brest, France on a raiding mission against British interests in the Irish Sea — the first offensive naval action of the American Revolution. The attacks take the British completely by surprise. In a particularly daring raid into his native Scotland, Jones sails into Kirkcudbright Bay with a view to abducting the Earl of Selkirk and holding 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. Jones later personally purchased the silver back and returned it to the countess with a gentlemanly letter of apology.
1789 — Washington Departs for His Inauguration George Washington leaves his Mount Vernon home, en route to New York City for his inauguration as the first President of the United States. He did not want the job. At virtually every stop along the road north, enormous crowds turned out to cheer him, which only deepened his private anxiety — he wrote to a friend that he felt like “a culprit going to his execution,” fully aware that every precedent he set would define the office for generations.
1790 — Death of Benjamin Franklin Death of Benjamin Franklin (b.1706), in Philadelphia at age 84. One of the most astonishing careers in American history: printer, inventor, postmaster, diplomat, scientist, and Founding Father all in one. His final public act was signing a petition to Congress urging the abolition of slavery — submitted just weeks before his death. Twenty thousand Philadelphians attended his funeral, at the time the largest public gathering in American history.
1794 — Birth of Commodore Matthew Perry Birth of Rear Admiral Matthew Perry (d.1858). Perry is best known for commanding the naval expedition that, in 1853–54, compelled Japan to open its ports to American trade after more than two centuries of self-imposed isolation — an event so seismic that the Japanese refer to it simply as the “Black Ships.” His success fundamentally altered the course of Japanese history, ultimately setting in motion the Meiji Restoration and Japan’s rapid modernization.
1795 — France Adopts the Meter As part of the new French Republic’s emphasis on rationalization, the French National Assembly accepts the meter as the basic measure of length. This is not as simple as it sounds. The process began within a year after the revolution and had something to do with extricating France from the navigational dominance of Great Britain — who had already defined the Prime Meridian as running through Greenwich and the nautical mile as 2,000 yards. France decided they needed a “rational” measure around three feet long: in 1790 it was defined as the length of a pendulum with a half-period of one second; in 1791, as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the north pole along the Paris meridian. It has gone through six further refinements, the latest in 2002. Today the meter is defined as the distance light travels in a vacuum in exactly 1/299,792,458 of a second — which is, one must admit, considerably more rational than twelve inches to the foot.
1814 — Napoleon Abdicates Napoleon Bonaparte abdicates as Emperor and departs for exile on the Mediterranean island of Elba. The abdication came after Allied armies entered Paris and the Napoleonic marshals, exhausted and out of options, refused to continue fighting. Napoleon’s exile lasted less than a year — he escaped in February 1815, rallied France behind him for the famous “Hundred Days,” and was only finally finished at Waterloo in June 1815, after which he was dispatched to the far more remote island of St. Helena, from which there would be no return.
1820 — Venus de Milo Discovered The Venus de Milo (b. ~130 BC) is discovered on the Greek island of Melos and is promptly transported to Paris for public display at the Louvre. The statue was found by a Greek farmer, Yorgos Kentrotas, in a buried niche near the ancient city ruins. The arms were intact at the time of discovery but were lost — possibly damaged, possibly sold off — during the scramble over ownership between French and Ottoman officials. Their absence has inspired speculation ever since.
1849 — Safety Pin Patented Walter Hunt of New York patents the safety pin. He later sells the rights for $100. Hunt invented it in a matter of hours to pay off a $15 debt, making it one of the more spectacular failures of commercial foresight in patent history. He also invented the first practical sewing machine but, fearing it would cause widespread unemployment among seamstresses, declined to patent it — leaving that fortune to Elias Howe and Isaac Singer.
1861 — Fort Sumter Fired Upon 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 4,000 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 — who, after Lee’s surrender in 1865 and upon concluding that Southern independence was truly finished, wrapped himself in a Confederate flag and shot himself through the head.
1861 — Colonel Robert E. Lee Resigns from the U.S. Army Colonel Robert E. Lee resigns from the United States Army. It was among the most consequential letters of resignation in American history. Lee had been offered field command of the Union armies by General-in-Chief Winfield Scott — almost certainly the most attractive military commission available — and turned it down, writing that though he opposed secession, he could not raise his hand against his family, his relatives, or his home state of Virginia, which had seceded the day prior.
1862 — Battle of Shiloh A year into the War Between the States, Union Major General U.S. Grant’s army meets Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston at the Battle of Shiloh in western Tennessee. The two-day battle looked like a potential Confederate victory as the first night fell, but Union troops physically reinforced their position in a low spot near Pittsburgh Landing and were further reinforced in numbers that evening by the arrival of MG Don Carlos Buell and his army. The Union counter-attack the next morning overwhelmed the Confederates, killing General Johnston and forcing his deputy, P.G.T. Beauregard, to withdraw before the slaughter became a complete rout. Shiloh was the bloodiest battle in the war to date, with over 13,000 Union and 11,000 Confederate casualties. Grant was highly criticized by the Union press for his performance on the first day, but was vindicated by President Lincoln, who, when flooded with calls for Grant’s sacking, declared: “I can’t spare this man. He fights.” The sheer scale of the casualties — greater than in all previous American wars combined — shocked both North and South and put to rest any lingering notion that the conflict would be brief.
1865 — Lee Meets Grant at Appomattox Confederate General Robert E. Lee meets with Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, ending — for all practical purposes — the War of Northern Aggression (or the Civil War, if you choose). Grant’s terms were notably generous: Confederate officers kept their sidearms, men who owned their horses could take them home for the spring plowing, and no one was to be prosecuted for treason. Lee remarked that the terms would do much to conciliate his people.
1865 — Lee Issues General Order #9 After his Appomattox meeting 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
Veterans who received the order reportedly wept openly. Many folded their copies and carried them for the rest of their lives.
1865 — Disarmament Ceremony 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. Chamberlain later wrote that Gordon, visibly moved, dipped his sword in salute and ordered his own men to return the honor.
1865 — Lincoln Shot at Ford’s Theatre Shouting “Sic Semper Tyrannis — the South is avenged!” actor John Wilkes Booth shoots President Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre. He breaks his left leg leaping from the Presidential box onto the stage but succeeds in escaping Washington D.C. After getting his leg set by Dr. Mudd (“your name is Mud”) he continues his flight but is cornered and killed in a burning barn near Bowling Green, Virginia. Lincoln dies the morning of the 15th at 7:22. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton is at the President’s bedside and declaims: “Now he belongs to the ages.” Lincoln was the first American president to be assassinated; the lack of any serious executive security apparatus at the time remains striking — Booth simply walked up to the door of the Presidential box and showed a card.
1867 — U.S. Purchases Alaska The United States Senate ratifies a treaty with Russia that purchases Alaska for $7,200,000 — approximately $0.02 per acre. 588,412 square miles, 640 acres per square mile, etc. Knock yourself out. Widely derided at the time as “Seward’s Folly” and “Seward’s Icebox” after the Secretary of State who brokered the deal, the purchase looks rather smarter in hindsight given Alaska’s eventual oil wealth, fisheries, and strategic position — to say nothing of the gold discovered in the Klondike just 30 years later.
1867 — Birth of Wilbur Wright Birth of Wilbur Wright (d.1912). Together with his brother Orville, Wilbur achieved the first powered, controlled, heavier-than-air flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903. Wilbur was arguably the more intellectually dominant of the two brothers and is believed to have been the primary author of the theoretical insights that made flight possible. He died of typhoid fever at just 45, leaving Orville to outlive him by 36 years and witness the dawn of the jet age.
1881 — Bat Masterson’s Last Shootout 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. Masterson later reinvented himself entirely, moving to New York City and becoming a celebrated sports journalist for the Morning Telegraph, writing a column until just hours before his death in 1921.
1891 — Death of P.T. Barnum Death of P.T. Barnum (b.1810), the circus impresario, author of the famous quip: “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Barnum was reportedly unconcerned about his own mortality, and in a characteristic stroke of showmanship, agreed to let the New York Evening Sun publish his obituary while he was still alive — so he could enjoy reading it. He died two weeks later. The quote, ironically, was almost certainly never said by Barnum at all — it is more reliably attributed to his competitor David Hannum, who said it in reference to the Cardiff Giant hoax, in which Barnum himself had been bamboozled.
1892 — Birth of Mary Pickford Birth of Mary Pickford (d.1979). Known popularly as “America’s Sweetheart,” she became one of the first stars of the new medium of motion pictures and parlayed her roles into a powerful defining influence on policies, procedures, and pay throughout the industry. In 1919 she was one of the co-founders of United Artists studio, along with Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, and Douglas Fairbanks. She was also one of the 36 founding members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and among the first women to wield genuine financial and creative power in Hollywood.
1892 — Birth of Arthur “Bomber” Harris Birth of Arthur Travers “Bomber” Harris (d.1984), Air Marshal and Commander-in-Chief of RAF Bomber Command during WWII. He was at the business end of executing the concept of massive area bombing of German cities, with such successes as the firestorm in Hamburg. Harris had many pithy quotes but is probably best remembered for his February 1945 expostulation: “I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier.” Controversial to this day, Harris remained convinced until his death that the strategic bombing campaign shortened the war and saved lives overall — a debate historians have never fully resolved.
1893 — Birth of Dean Acheson Birth of Dean Acheson (d.1971), Secretary of State for President Harry Truman and the man most deeply engaged in bringing the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and NATO into practical operation. Acheson’s patrician bearing and acerbic wit made him one of the most quotable diplomats of the 20th century — he once described his job as being “present at the creation” of the entire postwar international order, a phrase that became the title of his Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir.
1894 — Birth of Nikita Khrushchev Birth of Nikita Khrushchev (d.1971). The embodiment of the Soviet system throughout the 1950s and ’60s; one of Stalin and Beria’s thugs who outlived them long enough to denounce them and remake the Soviet “state” into his own image. Khrushchev is perhaps best remembered in the West for banging his shoe on a table at the UN in 1960 — though historians note the precise details of that incident have been heavily embellished — and for blinking first during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, withdrawing Soviet missiles from Cuba in exchange for a quiet American pledge not to invade.
1900 — U.S. Navy Accepts USS Holland The U.S. Navy accepts delivery of its first submarine, USS Holland (SS-1). Designed by Irish-American inventor John Philip Holland after years of privately funded experimentation, the Holland was 53 feet long, displaced 75 tons, and had a crew of six. The Navy paid $150,000 for it. Within two decades, the submarine would prove itself the most strategically disruptive naval weapon of the First World War, nearly strangling Britain into submission.
1902 — J.C. Penney Opens His First Store James C. Penney opens his first dry goods store in Kemmerer, Wyoming. He called it the “Golden Rule Store,” reflecting his philosophy of fair dealing with customers — a novel concept in an era of caveat emptor retail. The single store in Wyoming eventually grew into one of America’s largest department store chains, with over 1,600 locations at its peak.
1904 — Entente Cordiale Signed Great Britain and France sign a mostly secret Entente Cordiale which, although structured around their spheres of influence in their global empires, actually signaled the end of over a century of near-continuous hostility and occasional war between the two countries. Of more pertinence, the treaty solidified the obligations of one another against potential hostilities with the burgeoning Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, also treaty-bound by their own Triple Alliance. By 1907, Russia joined with France and Britain to create the Triple Entente. This process, my dear history students, is exactly what George Washington warned against when he spoke of the dangers of “entangling alliances” — as we shall see in July and August. The chain of obligations forged by this and subsequent agreements would pull the whole of Europe into war within a decade.
1912 — Birth of Sonja Henie Birth of Sonja Henie (d.1969), Norwegian figure skater who won 10 World Figure Skating Championships, 6 consecutive European Championships, and was three-time gold medalist at the Olympics, the third being in 1936. She went on to movie stardom through the 1950s. Henie transformed figure skating from a stiff athletic competition into an artistic performance, introducing short skirts, white boots, and theatrical choreography — essentially inventing the sport as it is practiced today.
1912 — RMS Titanic Departs Southampton RMS Titanic sets out from Southampton, England on her first transatlantic voyage. She carried 2,224 passengers and crew, was the largest ship afloat, and was popularly — though not officially — described as “unsinkable,” a reputation based on her double-hull and watertight compartment design. She had enough lifeboats for roughly half the souls on board, which was actually in excess of the legal requirement at the time — a fact that speaks volumes about contemporary assumptions of maritime safety.
1912 — Titanic Strikes the Iceberg Cruising through the darkness of a preternaturally calm North Atlantic at normal speed, RMS Titanic strikes an iceberg and sinks. Over 1,500 passengers drown in what remains the single biggest non-combat transportation disaster in history. The collision occurred at 11:40 PM; the ship sank at 2:20 AM — a 2 hour and 40 minute window that should have been sufficient to evacuate everyone aboard had the lifeboats been properly loaded. Most departed less than half full.
1912 — Death of Clara Barton 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. Barton also helped establish the principle, radical at the time, that relief organizations should serve soldiers on both sides of a conflict — a foundation of what would become the Geneva Conventions.
1913 — 17th Amendment Ratified Ratification of the 17th Amendment, specifying the direct election of Senators — a key political goal of the Progressive movement. Prior to this, Senators were appointed by state legislatures and represented the interests of the several States themselves, serving as a powerful check on Federal overreach. Given the scope of the federal government’s metastasis in the years since ratification, it is no surprise that there is a considered body of opinion exploring the ways the 17th Amendment may be repealed — not unlike how the 21st Amendment repealed the 18th.
1916 — Third German Surge at Verdun Two months into an increasingly ineffective campaign to dislodge the French from their border fortresses at Verdun, German Field Marshal Falkenhayn initiates a third major surge against the French lines, with near-constant artillery bombardment and repeated infantry assaults back and forth across the front. Falkenhayn’s original strategic concept — to “bleed France white” by drawing them into an attritional battle of his choosing — had by this point begun bleeding Germany equally white. The Battle of Verdun would grind on until December 1916, ultimately costing both sides a combined roughly 700,000 casualties for essentially no territorial change.
1917 — Battle of Vimy Ridge The Canadian Corps of the British Expeditionary Force opens its attack on Vimy Ridge, a German-controlled piece of high ground that had dominated the northern area of the British Arras Offensive and repulsed every previous Allied attempt to take it. The four-day battle achieved its objectives against ferocious resistance and its all-Canadian nature became a nationalistic touchstone for our northern cousins. The meticulous preparation — including rehearsals over full-scale replica terrain, tunnel networks, and detailed maps distributed to every soldier — made it a landmark example of modern combined-arms planning. Many Canadians regard Vimy Ridge as the moment their country truly came of age as a nation.
1918 — Douglas Campbell Becomes America’s First Ace San Francisco native Douglas Campbell (1896–1990) shoots down his fifth German aircraft to become the United States’ first combat ace. Flying with the 94th Aero Squadron — the famous “Hat-in-the-Ring” squadron — Campbell achieved his status just weeks after the U.S. entered combat operations on the Western Front. He was wounded shortly afterward and spent the rest of the war stateside, but lived to the remarkable age of 94.
1919 — Eugene Debs Imprisoned 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. His June 1918 anti-draft speech was the last straw: he was arrested and charged with 10 counts of sedition. He called no defense witnesses and spoke on his own behalf in a 2-hour statement. President Wilson wrote in subsequent clemency proceedings that Debs was “a traitor to his country and he will never be pardoned during my administration.” His 10-year sentence was eventually commuted by President Harding. In the 1920 presidential election — conducted while Debs was still in prison — he received nearly 1 million votes.
1931 — Birth of Dan Gurney Birth of Dan Gurney (d.2018), who not only raced in Formula 1 during the heyday of the 1960s but did it in a car of his own design. Gurney remained active in motorsports as a driver into the 1980s, and continued to influence the industry as a designer and sage through his All American Racers company. He is one of only two drivers ever to win Formula 1, IndyCar, NASCAR, and 24 Hours of Le Mans races — a record of versatility unmatched in motorsports history.
1933 — Prohibition Ends for 3.2% Beer Prohibition ends for the production and sale of 3.2% beer, eight months before final ratification of the 21st Amendment, which repealed the 18th — one of the Progressive movement’s crown jewels for forcing people to live healthier lives. The smuggling, racketeering, and criminality that accompanied Prohibition was, of course, an unintended consequence — it wasn’t the Progressive and Temperance Movement’s fault, not at all…they only had our best interests at heart. When the first legal beer trucks rolled out at midnight, enormous celebratory crowds gathered in cities across the country. President Roosevelt reportedly had a beer himself and remarked: “I think this would be a good time for a beer.”
1939 — Marian Anderson’s Lincoln Memorial Concert Contralto Marian Anderson sings an Easter concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before a crowd of over 75,000, plus a nationwide radio audience. The critically acclaimed concert came about after the D.A.R. refused to allow her to perform in their Constitution Hall. Anderson went on to a sterling career as a classical singer both in the U.S. and in Europe and was one of the leading lights of the post-war civil rights movement. Eleanor Roosevelt publicly resigned from the D.A.R. in protest of their decision, amplifying the controversy into a national conversation about racial segregation and helping turn the concert into a defining cultural moment.
1940 — Quisling Seizes Norway Norwegian politician Vidkun Quisling seizes control of the Norwegian government as the Nazi invasion tightens its grip on the country. He forms a collaborationist, pro-Nazi puppet government, serving as Minister-President under German control. After the war he is convicted and executed for high treason. His name has become synonymous with “traitor” ever since — one of the rare cases in which a proper name becomes a common noun almost immediately following the events that inspired it.
1943 — Discovery of 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. The Soviets steadfastly denied their culpability until 1990, when archival documents showed that Beria, Khrushchev, and Stalin himself had ordered the executions. The final tally includes over half the Polish officer corps — 14 generals, an admiral, and appropriate numbers of colonels and below, including doctors, police leadership, university professors, and members of the technical elite. The Soviet denial was actively supported by the wartime Western Allies — including the United States — who found it inconvenient to acknowledge what their indispensable ally had done.
1945 — IJN Yamato Sunk USN carrier aircraft from Task Force 58 under Admiral Marc Mitscher attack and sink Imperial Japan’s largest and most powerful battleship, IJN Yamato, during the opening stages of the Battle of Okinawa. In an operation called Ten-Go, Yamato and her task force of cruisers and destroyers were ordered into an intentional suicide defense of Okinawa, with the intent of blasting their way through the American invasion fleet, then running aground to function as a shore battery until finally destroyed. American reconnaissance submarines spotted their departure through the Bungo Strait and reported their position up the command chain. Admiral Spruance ordered a U.S. battleship force to intercept, but Mitscher mobilized and launched his aircraft first. With no defensive air cover, the Navy aircraft systematically attacked the Japanese force — torpedo bombers aligning their deliveries exclusively on Yamato’s port side to enhance the probability of uncontrolled capsizing. After two hours of nearly constant attack, Yamato began her final rollover, and at that moment her forward magazine detonated in a gigantic mushroom cloud visible over a hundred miles away. Yamato displaced 73,000 tons fully loaded and carried 18.1-inch guns — the largest naval guns ever fitted to a warship. She never fired them at an enemy surface ship.
1945 — Buchenwald Liberated The United States Third Army liberates the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald. General Patton, who accompanied the liberation force, was so disturbed by what he saw that he ordered the mayor of nearby Weimar — who claimed ignorance — to bring 1,000 local German civilians to tour the camp. Patton reportedly became physically ill during his visit. General Eisenhower similarly insisted on touring the camps personally and ordered extensive documentation, writing that he wanted irrefutable evidence for history because “the day will come when some son-of-a-bitch will say this never happened.”
1945 — FDR Dies President Franklin D. Roosevelt (b.1882) dies at his home in Warm Springs, Georgia, three months into his fourth term. He had been sitting for a portrait when he suddenly complained of a severe headache and lost consciousness — death from a cerebral hemorrhage came within hours. Roosevelt had so meticulously managed public perception of his declining health that his death came as a genuine shock to most of the country. Harry S. Truman, Vice President for only 82 days and largely kept out of the loop on major policy decisions, was now responsible for ending the war and managing the peace — including a weapon he barely knew existed.
1945 — Lt. Col. Pash Seizes Nazi Uranium 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, not only in the race for atomic weapons but because the Soviet “allies” could well have found it first. Pash led the Alsos Mission, a classified U.S. operation tasked specifically with tracking and neutralizing the German nuclear weapons program — and ensuring that its materials and scientists did not fall into Soviet hands.
1947 — Death of Henry Ford Death of Henry Ford (b.1863). Ford’s introduction of the moving assembly line in 1913 and the $5 workday — more than double the prevailing wage — not only democratized the automobile but fundamentally reshaped the relationship between labor, capital, and consumption in the 20th century. His legacy is complicated: a towering industrial genius, he was also a virulent antisemite whose writings were admired and quoted by Adolf Hitler. The two sides of that ledger have never been easy to reconcile.
1947 — Jackie Robinson’s First Major League Game Jackie Robinson opens his major league career with the Brooklyn Dodgers. His debut — before a crowd of 26,623 at Ebbets Field — was the culmination of years of deliberate strategy by Dodgers president Branch Rickey, who had searched for exactly the right man to break baseball’s color barrier: not just a talented player, but one disciplined enough to absorb abuse without retaliating. Robinson went 0-for-3 with a sacrifice bunt and scored a run. He was named Rookie of the Year and went on to a Hall of Fame career.
1947 — Birth of Tom Clancy Birth of former insurance salesman Tom Clancy (d.2013). His debut novel, The Hunt for Red October (1984), was rejected by every major publisher before being accepted by the Naval Institute Press — a small academic publisher that had never released a work of commercial fiction. It became a sensation, landing on the bestseller lists and reportedly prompting President Reagan to call it “the perfect yarn.” Clancy went on to define the techno-thriller as a genre. Remind me sometime to tell you about our “interview” when I met him back in 1994.
1947 — Birth of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Birth of Lew Alcindor, who later became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — holder of the NBA record for career points scored, six MVP awards, and six NBA championships. His signature shot, the “sky hook,” was so mechanically difficult to defend that it remained his primary weapon throughout a 20-year career. Abdul-Jabbar has been equally prominent off the court, as an author, cultural commentator, and ambassador for social justice causes since his retirement.
1951 — Truman Fires MacArthur President Truman fires General of the Army Douglas MacArthur from command of the forces fighting in Korea. MacArthur had made repeated calls to attack Red China if the communists would not lay down their arms. The President directly ordered MacArthur to cease making political statements. When the general ignored him and kept making public comments, Truman relieved him of command, saying: “The cause of world peace is more important than any individual.” MacArthur came home to a hero’s welcome and an address to a joint session of Congress, where he gave his famous “Old Soldiers never die…” speech. LTG Matthew Ridgway replaced him in Korea. Truman’s approval rating briefly dropped to 22% following the dismissal — a low that would not be matched for decades. History has generally judged the decision correct.
1951 — Mickey Mantle’s First Game Mickey Mantle steps on-field for his first game with the New York Yankees. He goes 1 for 4. Mantle had been called up as a 19-year-old phenom, wearing number 6 between numbers 3 (Babe Ruth), 4 (Lou Gehrig), and 7 (Joe DiMaggio) — a degree of expectation that would have crushed a lesser talent. He was briefly sent back to the minors after struggling in his first weeks, thought about quitting, and instead came back to become arguably the most gifted player in the history of the game — despite spending most of his career playing on a badly damaged knee that would have ended most careers.
1952 — First Flight of the B-52 Stratofortress First flight of Boeing’s B-52 Stratofortress. Designed as a long-range nuclear bomber for the Cold War, the B-52 has proven so adaptable and durable that it remains in front-line USAF service to this day — over 70 years after its first flight. The youngest B-52 pilots now fly aircraft that were built before their grandparents were born. Current projections have the B-52 in service through 2050, making it potentially a 100-year airframe.
1959 — NASA Announces the Mercury 7 NASA announces the first corps of United States astronauts — seven test pilots from the Navy and Air Force who will be at the pointy end of America’s first steps into outer space. If you were sentient at the time, you remember the absolutely riveting levels of national pride these men engendered, and they had yet to actually do anything except pass an excruciating set of physical and psychological screenings. But there they were: our Mercury 7. Author Tom Wolfe captures the mood beautifully in The Right Stuff (1979) — and maybe even more so in the 1983 film of the same name. All seven — Shepard, Grissom, Glenn, Carpenter, Schirra, Cooper, and Slayton — would have remarkable careers, though only Glenn would live to see the 21st century.
1961 — Eichmann Trial Begins The genocide trial of Adolf Eichmann begins in Tel Aviv. Eichmann had escaped from Allied control in 1945, resurfaced in Argentina in 1950, and was kidnapped by Israeli Mossad agents in 1960. He was found guilty in December 1961 and hanged the following June. Philosopher Hannah Arendt, covering the trial for The New Yorker, famously described Eichmann as embodying the “banality of evil” — arguing that he was not a monster but a mundane bureaucrat who had simply stopped thinking about the moral consequences of his orders. The phrase became one of the most debated in 20th-century political philosophy.
1961 — Yuri Gagarin Orbits the Earth 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 Moscow. Gagarin’s flight lasted 108 minutes and completed one orbit. When asked afterward what he saw, he reportedly said: “The Earth is blue. How wonderful. It is amazing.” His death at 34 robbed the space age of one of its most genuinely charismatic figures.
1961 — Bay of Pigs Invasion First day of the Bay of Pigs invasion — a CIA-trained force of approximately 1,400 Cuban exiles landing on the southern coast of Cuba with the aim of triggering a popular uprising against Fidel Castro. President Kennedy had inherited the plan from the Eisenhower administration and, fatally, approved a modified version while withdrawing crucial U.S. air support at the last minute. Without air cover, the invasion was rapidly overwhelmed. Within three days it was over, all 1,200 surviving invaders were captured, and Kennedy — barely three months into his presidency — had suffered a catastrophic foreign policy embarrassment. The debacle almost certainly stiffened Soviet resolve in the confrontations to come.
1963 — USS Thresher Sinks On a test dive after a hastily completed major overhaul, USS Thresher (SSN-593) sinks 220 miles off Cape Cod with the loss of all hands — 112 crew and 12 civilians. The disaster remains the deadliest submarine accident in U.S. Navy history. Investigation pointed to a catastrophic flooding event, likely caused by a failed sea-water pipe fitting, which then triggered an electrical failure that prevented emergency ballast blow. The loss of Thresher fundamentally changed submarine safety culture and gave rise to the SUBSAFE certification program — an intensive quality-control regime that has overseen zero loss-of-hull incidents in certified submarines since.
1964 — Sandy Koufax’s Masterful Control Sandy Koufax pitches his 9th complete game without allowing a walk. His wind-up was legendary, to say nothing of his fastball. In a career cut short by debilitating arthritis, Koufax managed to fit in four no-hitters (including a perfect game), five straight ERA titles, and three Cy Young Awards — retiring at just 30, at the absolute peak of his powers, because he feared permanent damage to his pitching arm. He remains the youngest inductee in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
1964 — Great Train Robbery Sentencing 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 in used English bank notes from a Glasgow-to-London mail train. The perpetrators received individual sentences ranging from 10 to 30 years. One of the robbers, Ronnie Biggs, escaped from Wandsworth Prison the following year and spent the next 35 years as an international fugitive, living openly in Brazil before voluntarily returning to Britain in 2001 to serve out the remainder of his sentence.
1965 — First Game at the Houston Astrodome Opening game of baseball in the Houston Astrodome — creating existential dilemmas such as: “Is plastic grass really grass?” and “How do you play an outside game, inside?” and “What is the matter with regular ball fields?” Astroturf — the solution to the first question — has pretty much fallen into the verbal category of something that seems real but isn’t. The dome itself was called the “Eighth Wonder of the World” on opening, and the first game was an exhibition between the Astros and the Yankees, with Mickey Mantle hitting the first indoor home run in major league history.
1970 — Apollo 13 Launches At 13:13 Eastern Time, Apollo 13 launches for the moon. The crew: Commander Jim Lovell, Command Module Pilot Jack Swigert (a late replacement for Ken Mattingly, pulled due to exposure to measles), and Lunar Module Pilot Fred Haise. What could go wrong? As it turned out, a great deal.
1970 — “Let It Be” Reaches #1 The Beatles’ last song, “Let It Be,” rises to a #1 rating, where it remains for two weeks. Recorded in January 1969 in an atmosphere of barely contained band disintegration, the song was written by Paul McCartney, who said he was inspired by a dream in which his late mother — “Mother Mary” — offered him words of comfort during a period of personal turmoil. The Let It Be album, released in May 1970, was effectively the group’s epitaph.
1970 — Apollo 13 Oxygen Tank Explodes 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. Jim Lovell’s understated report to Mission Control — “Houston, we’ve had a problem” — (misquoted ever after as “we have a problem”) became one of the most famous lines in space history. The explosion was later traced to damaged insulation in a stirring fan heater inside the oxygen tank — damage that had gone undetected through the entire pre-launch process.
1970 — Apollo 13 Splashdown 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). The mission — a total systems failure that became the most successful failure in NASA history — demonstrated the extraordinary ingenuity of the flight controllers on the ground and the cool professionalism of the crew. Gene Kranz, the lead Flight Director, later called it his finest hour.
1972 — Apollo 16 Launched 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 (the same Ken Mattingly bumped from Apollo 13 for measles he never actually caught) remained with the command module in lunar orbit. Young and Duke drove the lunar rover over 16 miles of the Descartes Highlands — the most geologically productive EVAs of the entire Apollo program.
1976 — Apple I Released Release of the Apple I personal computer. It went on sale in July for $666.66 (Steve Jobs reportedly liked repeating digits). Only 200 were built, of which reportedly only 40–50 remain. As a point of reference, in November 2010, serial number 82 sold at Christie’s for $178,000. The Apple I had no keyboard, no monitor, and no case — buyers had to supply their own. It was sold primarily through a single electronics shop in Mountain View, California, and is essentially the founding artifact of the personal computer revolution.
1981 — Death of General Omar Bradley Death of General of the Army Omar Bradley (b.1893), USMA class of 1915. The last five-star general officer in U.S. history, Bradley commanded the largest American field army ever assembled — over 1.3 million men in the 12th Army Group during the final push across Europe in 1944–45. Known as the “GI’s General” for his accessibility and care for enlisted men, he later served as the first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and presided over the early years of NATO. He and Eisenhower were the last surviving members of their class.
1986 — Operation Eldorado Canyon The U.S. launches air strikes on Libya, dubbed Operation Eldorado Canyon, in retaliation for the Libyan-sponsored bombing of a West Berlin disco that killed two American servicemen. The strike package flew from U.S. bases in England — denied overflight rights by France, the aircraft flew a 6,400-mile round trip around the Iberian Peninsula. Muammar Gaddafi survived; his infant adopted daughter did not. The operation is widely credited with significantly cooling Libyan state-sponsored terrorism for years afterward.
1988 — USS Samuel B. Roberts Strikes an Iranian Mine USS Samuel B. Roberts (FFG-58) strikes an Iranian mine floating free in international waters. The blast tears a fifteen-foot hole in the hull, breaks the keel, and floods an engine room. The crew fought fire and flooding for over five hours, decisively saving the ship from otherwise certain destruction. Roberts was eventually lifted aboard a Dutch heavy-lift barge, the Mighty Servant 2, and returned to the United States for repairs. After forensics proved a direct link from the mine to Iran, the Navy launched Operation Praying Mantis — a one-day retaliation that destroyed two Iranian oil platforms converted to command-and-control stations, sank an Iranian frigate, heavily damaged another, and sank three Iranian high-speed patrol boats. It was the largest surface naval engagement since WWII. None of Roberts’ crew was killed, though ten were injured.
1990 — Project Babylon Supergun Intercepted Disguised as “oil pipeline equipment,” several shipments of Gerald Bull-designed “Project Babylon” supergun parts are intercepted in Great Britain en route to Iraq. Bull himself was found murdered in Brussels a week prior to the discovery of the gun components. Bull was a brilliant and tragically compromised figure — a Canadian ballistics genius who, having been passed over by Western governments for his supergun concepts, eventually offered his services to Saddam Hussein. Project Babylon would have produced a gun capable of lobbing a shell — or a satellite — into orbit. Responsibility for Bull’s assassination has never been officially confirmed, though most analysts point to Mossad.
1991 — Georgia Declares Independence Georgia — the home of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin — declares its independence from the collapsing Soviet Union. The irony of Stalin’s birthplace being among the first republics to secede from the empire he built was not lost on historians. Georgia’s independence was among the most turbulent of the post-Soviet transitions, marked by civil war, ethnic conflict, and Russian military intervention in the years that followed.
1991 — Gulf War Ceasefire With ground combat essentially over, a ceasefire is declared in the Persian Gulf War. Note: the Persian Gulf War began in January 1991 with the “Shock and Awe” aerial assault that virtually eliminated Iraqi air defenses and command-and-control networks. The equally famous 100-hour ground combat phase ended by the first of March. The April 11th date refers to the UN Security Council’s passage of a formal ceasefire resolution. The decision not to push on to Baghdad — deliberately made by President George H.W. Bush and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell — was based on the terms of the UN coalition mandate and the assessment that occupying Iraq would be a strategic quagmire. That debate would be revisited with very different conclusions in 2003.
1997 — Tiger Woods Wins the Masters A much younger and healthier Tiger Woods becomes the youngest winner (at 21) of the Masters Tournament, setting a course record of -18. The record was very nearly broken in 2015 by American golfer Jordan Spieth, who tied Woods’ -18 score but was 155 days older at the time of his win. Woods’ victory margin of 12 strokes was also a Masters record and his performance was so dominant — he led by 9 shots entering the final round — that it prompted major equipment manufacturers to immediately begin redesigning clubs and balls in what was called the “Tiger-proofing” of the sport.
About the Author
Q: Are you actually an intelligence? AI: I am a large language model, trained by Google. I do not possess…
What is it that these young people are thinking? AI is nothing more than a tool, like a screwdriver, ratchet…
Many of us are glad to be left behind, particularly, from where you people seem to be headed. Stay Hydrated...Fools.
What about M1 Abrams tanks? Nothing was said about them.
:) You have already been left behind. Unsolicited advice? Pay off your debt and don't borrow any more.