History Notes this week of April 19

753BC: Traditional date of the founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus, orphaned brothers, suckled by a she-wolf.

303 A.D.: Death of George of Lydda, who became revered as Saint George, patron saint of ten countries (we’re most familiar with England), no fewer than 19 cities (including Moscow, Russia), and numerous professions, most notably soldiers. Son of a Roman proconsul and his Palestinian wife, both Christians, George was a successful Roman soldier until ordered by the Emperor Diocletian to renounce his Christian faith and make sacrifice to the pagan gods. He refused, and the example of his bravery during the subsequent torture and execution provided strength for a host of subsequent Christian conversions, most notably the Empress herself and a pagan priest of the court.  His association with slaying the dragon stems from a legend where he came upon a dragon who made a nest over the water supply of the city of Silene. The citizens had to dislodge the beast draw water, so every day they offer a sacrifice of a sheep, or if none is available, a maiden. George appears as the maiden is about to be sacrificed; he gets between the dragon and the damsel and slays the beast, saving her life and ending the dragon’s hold on the city. The grateful citizens abandon their paganism and embrace Christianity.The Union Jack of the UK is designed around the Cross of St. George- the red cross on a white field, with St. Andrew’s cross (white X on blue field) and the Cross of St. Patrick (narrow red X on a white field).

1519: Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortes lands with a small army on the Mexican mainland near present-day Veracruz. To help motivate his men for the task of conquest ahead, he orders his ships scuttled. They are looking for glory and gold, and when they eventually reach the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan.

1529: Signing of the Treaty of Saragossa, which plays out as the third diplomatic act between Spain and Portugal, dividing the world into their “legal” spheres of influence and colonization. Portugal, you’ll recall, had a long history of seaborne exploration into the southern Atlantic and along the coast of Africa, working to find an oceanic path eastwards to the Spice Islands (then called the Moluccas, later the Dutch East Indies, now called Indonesia). Spain focused on the direct route westward, and after Columbus’ discoveries in 1492 both countries realized that some means was needed to assign sovereignty to future discoveries and colonial outposts.

1558: At age 16, Mary, Queen of Scots, marries the Dauphin of France. This is the first of three marriages for the Catholic monarch who, you will recall, created no end of intrigue and real and implied threat to the (Protestant) English throne of her cousin Elizabeth I. The dynastic wheelings and dealings around her would make your head hurt, so I won’t bother you with it all. Suffice it to say, despite her execution at age 45, in the end her son James VI of Scotland also became King James I of England, punctuating the extinction of the Tudor line when Elizabeth died.

1564: Birth of William Shakespeare (d.1616). English playwright, poet, actor, and theater entrepreneur. He’s often called England’s national poet and the “Bard of Avon”. Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s pre-eminent dramatist. His plays explore universal themes and the human condition, and are known for their insight into life, love, death, revenge, grief, jealousy, murder, magic, and mystery. 

1574: Death of Cosimo I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, one of the leading lights and great patrons of the Italian Renaissance in Florence.

1770: Captain James Cook in HMS Endeavour arrives at New South Wales and begins exploration and survey of the Great Barrier Reef.

1836: Battle of San Jacinto. Led by Sam Houston, the Army of Texas completely surprises and routs the Mexican army of General Santa Ana, who is also Mexican President. The short, sharp fight opens with the Texas army screaming from the woods adjacent to the Mexican camp with cries of “Remember the Alamo!” and, “Remember Goliad!” 18 minutes later, the fight is over, with over 700 Mexicans dead and what remains of Santa Ana’s army completely shattered and fleeing into the countryside. Santa Ana himself is captured, and Houston negotiates a complete Mexican withdrawal from Texas. Although Mexico does not recognize it until 1848, Santa Ana’s defeat effectively marks the beginning of Texas as an independent republic.

1856: Birth of Henri Philippe Petain (d.1951), Marshal of France during the Great War and hero of the 9-month long Battle of Verdun in 1916, where he is credited with the inspirational quote: “Ils ne passeront pas!” (They shall not pass!”). Petain’s reputation took a dive in June, 1940 when he refused to countenance continued resistance to the German onslaught across the northern tier of France. He signed an armistice with the Germans and was elected to head the collaborationist French government, headquartered in the city of Vichy. His latent Fascist instincts then took over as he set about abolishing what he considered the republican excesses and weaknesses of the Third Republic, which he believed led to the failure of the French army to halt the German’s Blitzkrieg at the Maginot Line.

1861: Union forces abandon and burn the Gosport Navy Yard in Portsmouth, Virginia. Confederate engineers poking through the smoldering wreckage are later able to salvage the lower hull of USS Merrimack and convert it into the ironclad gunboat CSS Virginia.

1861: Birth of General Edmund Allenby (d.1936). The British general fought in the Boer War, and at the outbreak of the Great War, fought on the Western Front. In June of 1917 he took command of the British Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) which fought the Ottoman Turks from Cairo in a campaign to dislodge them from their Middle Eastern empire. Allenby was the key supporter of Colonel T.E. Lawrence’s efforts with the Arabs in Sinai and the upper Arabian Peninsula. As Turkish resistance crumbled, Allenby specifically targeted the capture of Jerusalem as his key strategic goal, which he accomplished in December of 1917. Out of respect to the spiritual significance of the city, he and his staff entered through the Jaffa gate on foot, a display that paid huge dividends as he set about un-doing several centuries of Turkish domination.

1870: Birth of Vladimir Lenin (d.1924). Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until his death in 1924, and of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death.

1889: Birth of Adolf Hitler (d.1945), in the town of Braunau am Inn, in Austria-Hungary.

1889: The Oklahoma Land Rush, staged at high noon, opened the former Indian Territory for free settlement. Within hours, over 10,000 people coalesced in one spot and founded Oklahoma City. 

1898: Two months after the sinking of USS Maine, and one day after Congress declared war on Spain, the US Navy begins a blockade of Cuba.

1903: Birth of Eliot Ness (d.1957). The head of  “The Untouchables” of the nascent FBI, who finally nailed Chicago gangster Al Capone on Tax Evasion charges.

1910: Death of Samuel L. Clemens (b.1835), a.k.a. Mark Twain. He prophesied a year earlier:“I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.”He did.

1912: First publication of Pravda (“Truth”) as the official organ of the Russian Communist Party.

1916: The Easter Rising, a revolt against British rule in Ireland, begins in Dublin. The bombings and shootings are coordinated by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, precursors to the Irish Republican Army.

1916: British explorer Ernest Shackleton and a crew of 5 depart in an open lifeboat from Elephant Island, Antarctica, on a rescue mission for the crew of their ice-bound ship Endurance. They row and sail across 800 miles of the stormy Southern Ocean in a feat of astounding seamanship, navigation and endurance, landing safely on the southern shore of South Georgia Island. Knowing there is a whaling station on the north shore, Shackleton and one other man hike across the island to alert the station. They spend only three days recovering, and then lead a volunteer expedition back around the island by ship to pick up the rest of their party. Only days later, they take another volunteer party back to Elephant Island where all of the remaining Endurance crew is rescued from their survival huts (built from their overturned lifeboats).

1918: Death of Baron Manfred von Richthofen (b.1892), a.k.a. “The Red Baron.” The German fighter ace amassed 80 confirmed kills of Allied aircraft, leading his Jagdstaffel 2 squadron to consistent successes not by dramatic acrobatics, but by disciplined tactics and superb marksmanship. The RAF credited his shoot down this day to Canadian Captain Roy Brown, but much controversy surrounds this decision: Richthofen was killed by a single .303 bullet through his chest (shot with an upward trajectory) and he landed his Fokker Dreidecker virtually undamaged in a French field. After recovering his body, the British squadron gave him a funeral with full military honors.

1918: First direct tank-versus-tank combat, during the second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux, France: three British Mark IV fought three German A7Vs.

1920: The League of Nations recognizes the Balfour Declaration and creates the British Mandate of Palestine from lands ceded by the Ottoman Empire at the close of the Great War. 

1927: Mae West is sentenced to 10 days in jail for obscenity from her recent play Sex. She ended up serving 8 days, with 2 off for good behavior, and ate dinners with the warden, “…and I wore silk underwear while I was in jail.”

1945: Soldiers of the Red Army enter Berlin.

1947: Death of Willa Cather (b.1873), American author of frontier life on the Great Plains. Her most popular novels include O Pioneers, My Antonia and The Song of the Lark.

1955: Volkswagen opens its first U.S. dealership in Englewood, NJ. An invasion of Beetles follows. 

1960: Brazilia, an artificial city carved out of the jungle, is commissioned as the new capital of Brazil, replacing Rio de Janero. The governing idea was to build a functional city completely from scratch, with every aspect subject to strict design approval, and localized zones established for every manner of commercial and governmental function; banking sector, hotel sector, government sector, etc. It was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986 in recognition of its modernist architecture and “artistic” city planning. You can’t make this up

1970: The first “Earth Day”.

1972: Apollo 16 successfully lands on the Moon. The landing was delayed 7 hours when a control rocket failed in the command module just after Lunar Module (LM) separation. Rather than descend to the surface and risk missing the lunar ascent rendezvous, the LM crew of John Young and Charlie Duke flew formation on Ken Mattingly in the CM until the problem was solved. The delay cut from three to two the number of excursions taken in the lunar buggy but the instrumentation set up and 212 pound haul of lunar rocks made the mission an outstanding scientific success.

1978: A Korean Air Lines jetliner is forced down by the Soviet Air Force. Deviating with a sudden turn to the east from its normal Paris-Seoul polar flight route, the aircraft was intercepted crossing into Soviet airspace. Instead of landing at the airport indicated by the Soviet fighters, the crew put the plane down with a hard landing on a frozen lake south of Murmansk. Two passengers were killed and several others injured. 

1989: End of the first week of a student-led mourning period over the death of Chinese reformer Hu Yaobang, who earlier resigned in protest from the Chinese Central Committee in January. On this day, over 10,000 students poured into Tienanmen Square to not only mourn, but to protest the lack of reform promised by the government. The protests would continue to grow, but remained peaceful until early June, when the communist government began its crackdown. 

1989: A massive explosion in turret 2 of USS Iowa (BB-61) kills 47 sailors. The initial investigation did not conclusively determine the actual cause of the disaster, with potential theories ranging from a suicide by a disgruntled gunner, to unstable powder, to faulty training and procedures, to the usual leadership and management finger-pointing. A second investigation studied in great detail the condition of the powder in the silk bags, first milled in 1930’s, and came to the conclusion that improper powder storage during Iowa’s 1988 overhaul created conditions that generated highly flammable ether gas inside the bags. Iowa’s turret was cleaned and stabilized but was never fired again.

1993: Federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms storm the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas with Bradley fighting vehicles and tear gas, igniting the compound into an inferno that kills 77 U.S. citizens. Attorney General Janet Reno authorized and defended the action of the ATF agents.

1993: An IRA bomb explodes in the Bishopsgate section of London. The Bishopsgate bombing occurred when the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonated a powerful truck bomb on Bishopsgate, a major thoroughfare in London’s financial district, the City of London. Telephoned warnings were sent about an hour beforehand, but a news photographer was killed in the blast and 44 people were injured, with fatalities minimised due to its occurring on a Saturday. The blast destroyed the nearby St Ethelburga’s church and wrecked Liverpool Street station and the NatWest Tower

1994: Death of Richard Nixon (b.1913).

1995: A truck bomb devastates the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 U.S. citizens and injuring 680 others going about their business. Timothy McVey is later convicted and executed for the crime, which he freely admitted was timed to the Waco raid.

1999: The German Bundestag returns to Berlin, the first government to sit there since the Reichstag was dissolved in 1945.

2000: Federal Agents seize at gunpoint six year old Elian Gonzalez from his relative’s home in Miami and return him to communist Cuba. This action took place in the United States of America. Janet Reno, Attorney-General of the United States, directed this particular arrest and deportation.