History Notes this week of Aug 23

79AD: On the feast day of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and blacksmiths, an earthquake is felt on Mount Vesuvius, along with a small plume of ash that does not linger. Revelers in Pompeii and Herculaneum continue the feast.

1346: Nine years into the Hundred Years War, British Longbowmen create a decisive victory for King Edward III and a shattering defeat for French King Philip VI at the Battle of Cresy, just south of Calais, in northern France. The battle confirmed the validity of massed longbow attacks against armoured knights, and is widely viewed as the beginning of the end of the period of classical chivalry, since the 1500(+) French knights who fell were killed not in honorable hand-to-hand combat, but by randomly fired arrows puncturing their armour. After the battle the British also dispatched, rather than captured and treated, wounded French knights, another violation of the knightly code. In modern terms of the battle, it was organization, tactics and equipment that carried the day. Casualties (these are consensus numbers): British- 2 knights and approximately 300 soldiers killed. French- 11 noblemen (including King John of Bohemia), 1542 knights and 2300 Genoese crossbowmen killed, in addition to “several thousands” of infantry killed. 

1498: Michelangelo receives a papal commission to carve the Pieta. The sculpture now sits in the first gallery on the right on entering St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

1577: Death of the great Italian Renaissance painter Titian (b.1488). Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1485–1576) was a prolific Italian Renaissance painter and printmaker who contributed to nearly every genre. He was a leading artist of 16th-century Venice, known for his skill with color and brushwork, and his emphasis on color over line. His work evolved from traditional Renaissance imagery to more energetic, dynamic, and impressionistic canvases.

1607: Death of Bartholomew Gosnold (b.1562). An early gentleman-explorer of the New World, he sailed with Walter Raleigh and was friends with Richard Hakluyt, who wrote extensive volumes on the early voyages of discovery. Gosnold pioneered a direct route to New England in 1602, touching in Maine, identifying and exploring Cape Cod, naming Martha’s Vineyard after his daughter, and returning back to England, where he became the prime mover and planner for the eventual Virginia Colony at Jamestown in 1607. He commanded the expedition’s ship Godspeed on the transit to the New World. Although opposing John Smith’s initial location of the colony on Jamestown island, he nevertheless took a strong leadership role in making it a permanent settlement. He died of dysentery only four months after the landing.  

1609: Operating under contract to the Dutch East India Company, English explorer Henry Hudson discovers the Delaware Bay. The Company originally hired him to explore the route for the North-EAST passage to Asia, expecting he could find his way through the ice around the north of Russia to the riches of the Orient. After rounding the North Cape of Norway, the ice pack completely blocked his path. On his own initiative, Hudson then turned his ship Halve Mean (Half Moon) westward to search for the expected Northwest Passage. He made landfall in Nova Scotia in early July, and worked his way as far south as Cape Charles. Turning north without exploring the mouth of the Chesapeake, he then began his survey, entering on this day the Delaware Bay. He continued northward up the coast, eventually exploring the river that now bears his name all the way up to the site of present-day Albany. His trade with the natives and his careful charting of the coastline secured the Dutch claim to the region.

1645: Death of the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius (b.1583). A child prodigy who entered the University of Leiden at age 11, Grotius was one of the most influential thinkers who developed what we know now as the core principles of international law, including the law of war and the rights of belligerents on the high seas. Grotius’ most important accomplishment was the codification of the idea of Mare Liberum, the Free Sea, published in 1609, whereby all nations are free to use the high seas as a pathway for trade as they see fit, a concept which became the foundation of what we now know as the global commons. Concurrent with this consensus was the definition of territorial waters as being under the sovereignty of a coastal state only to the extent that the state can actually control it. Using the “the fall of cannon shot” as the measure, it led to the long-running (over 300 years) acceptance of the three mile limit* offshore as the boundary of a state’s territorial waters.

1768: Captain James Cook, in HMS Endeavour, departs Plymouth on his first voyage of discovery.  The ostensible reason for the voyage is to observe for the Royal Society the Transit of Venus across the face of the sun. In Cook’s case this will be from Tahiti, which is one of dozens of pre-planned locations around the globe to observe and record the event, with the eventual goal of using the data to determine the exact distance between the sun and the earth. Once the observation was completed the following April, Cook opened his sealed Admiralty orders, which directed him to map the unknown regions of the South Pacific, in particular to search for and claim for Great Britain the fabled Terra Australius, which had long been mapped but never seen.

1776: General George Washington and the Continental Army suffer a strategic defeat at Brooklyn Heights when the British army under General William Howe outflanks his defenses and almost completely encircles the American forces as they retreat to prepared position on the heights. By late afternoon, Washington recognizes that they cannot hold the ground at Brooklyn and orders a retreat across the East River to Manhattan Island. While Howe is carefully digging in for a siege of the American redoubts, Washington evacuates the American army without further loss of life. Between the excellence of the Howe’s forces and the strength of the British fleet that controls New York harbor, Washington eventually realizes he will have to completely evacuate New York. On the positive side, the successful evacuation from Brooklyn ensures that the entire Continental Army remains a viable force-in-being that the British will not be able to ignore as the war deepens.

1780: Birth of the French painter Jean Ingres (d.1867). His work is distinctive for its subtle emphasis on “line,” not just the shapes of things themselves, but the movement of the line against- and in relation to– its background. He is also noted for the way his enamel-like colors enhance the “line” concept.

1789: The French National Assembly, in an intentionally symbolic moment, approves and orders published The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. It is designed around the principle of Natural Law, similar in concept to the preamble of our own Declaration of Independence, but focuses more on popular sovereignty as the antidote to the divine right of kings, and on individual rights and democracy. Although noble in intent, it nonetheless became associated with mob rule and many of the anarchistic and subversive movements of the 19^th century.

1793: The revolutionary French National Convention decrees a Levee en Masse, the first nation-wide military draft, in order to create an army large enough to fight the wars spawned by the overthrow of their monarchy. In defense of their own monarchies, Prussia and Austria declared war on France in April of 1792, By the summer of 1793 they were joined by Spain, Great Britain, Piedmont (Northern Italy), and the United Provinces (Netherlands The ensuing military threat to France was significant. The Levee developed under the concept that the new political rights of French citizens brought with it new obligations to the state, which included mobilization of essentially the whole of society in support of France’s war efforts. The result was the world’s first citizen-army, whose performance shocked the much smaller professional corps of the monarchies, and led to France’s eventual domination of the European continent.

1819: Death of Oliver Hazard Perry (b.1785), the hero of the Battle of Lake Erie, of malaria while surveying the Orinoco River in Venezuela. After his decisive defeat of British forces on the lake, his battle report was deliciously brief: “We have met the enemy and they are ours; two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop.” Perry’s younger brother was Commodore Matthew C. Perry, who opened Japan to US trade in 1854. Later generations of the family included Commander John Rogers, Naval Aviator #2, and Calbraith Perry Rogers, the first person to fly an airplane across the United States.

1830: The first steam locomotive built in the United States, the Tom Thumb, performs a demonstration to convince investors of the viability of steam railroads
 
1834: Birth of Samuel Pierpont Langley (d.1906), astronomer, physicist, and aviation pioneer, whose unsuccessful attempts at flying a man-carrying heavier-than-air machine spoiled an otherwise distinguished career in science and as head of the Smithsonian Institution. The Aerodrome on which he staked his professional reputation was overweight, under-powered and under-controllable; it nearly killed its pilot twice. Its catapult launch from the roof of houseboat on the Potomac River was described as having flight characteristics akin to “a shovelful of mortar” as its ballistic trajectory took it directly to a watery grave. The Smithsonian Institution spent years in a sometimes vicious campaign to prove Langley’s success ahead of the Wright Brothers, a campaign which they only recently conceded as false. 

1839: Great Britain captures and occupies Hong Kong Island as a staging base in preparation for the First Opium War.

1851: After sailing across the Atlantic to meet the gentleman’s challenge issued by the Royal Yacht Squadron, the New York-based racing yacht America competes in the 53-mile Around the Isle of Wight sailing race to decisively win the silver cup, the “Auld Mug” that now bears its name: America’s Cup. The New York Yacht Club brings the trophy back to the United States, where they hold onto it until 1983: 25 separate competitive regattas spanning 132 years, comprising the longest winning streak of any sport in history. Witnessing the race finish and listening to the dismay of her countrymen, Queen Victoria turned to the RYS commodore and asked who finished second. His famous reply: “There is no second, Your Majesty.” 

1859: First commercial extraction of oil, from a well near Titusville, Pennsylvania. “Pennsylvania grade crude” and “Pennzoil” are a couple of legacies of this event, as are Standard Oil & J.D. Rockefeller, among others.

1862: The Battle of Second Manassas (Second Bull Run)- after completely negating Union General George McLellan’s Peninsular Campaign, Confederate General Robert E. Lee takes the offensive against the Union Army of Virginia, now commanded by Major General John Pope, who has to react to Lee’s aggressive thrusts and parries in a northward campaign toward Washington, DC. When Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson captures a Union supply train at Manassas Junction, Pope believes he has trapped the Confederates (counter-intuitive, I know). What Pope doesn’t know is that Jackson is holding a reinforced position behind an unfinished railroad berm, and that James Longstreet has established his 25,000 men on Jackson’s right, completely unknown to Pope. The forces fought a mostly inconclusive battle on this day, but during the night Longstreet’s forces move into an attacking position. The fight that raged throughout the 30^th forced the Union back along the same retreat route it had used 15 months earlier after the Battle of First Manassas.

1883: The Indonesian volcanic island of Krakatoa self-destructs in a paroxysm of explosions that caused the landmass to completely disappear beneath the waves of the Sunda Strait. The final explosion was heard distinctly in Perth, Australia (1,930 miles away) and on Rodrigues Island off the coast of Africa, over 3,000 miles across the Indian Ocean. The force of the detonation is nominally estimated at 200 Megatons, equivalent to about 13,000 “Little Boy” atomic bombs (Hiroshima). The explosion ejected into the atmosphere approximately 5 cubic MILES of pumice, rock, and ash, creating beautiful sunsets and cold winters around the world for several years. Since 1927 the volcano has been building a new island, named Anak Krakatau (Child of Krakatoa), which is growing about 5 meters a year.

1885: German engineer, designer, and handyman Gottlieb Daimler patents the world’s first motorcycle, powered by a one-cylinder, one-horsepower gasoline engine he nicknamed the “grandfather clock engine.” He went on to join forces with his fellow small-engine inventor Wilhelm Maybach to form the motor company we now know as Mercedes-Benz

1896: The shortest war in history is fought between Great Britain and Zanzibar, a result of a dispute over the accession of the new Sultan of Zanzibar. With an ultimatum expiring to no effect at 0900, a British task force opened fire on the palace, setting it afire and destroying Zanzibar’s only artillery pieces, in addition to sinking a royal yacht. When the palace flag is finally hit and knocked down at 0940, the Brits cease fire, and a complex diplomatic dance between Germany, Zanzibar, and Great Britain ensues, with the British choice for sultan eventually taking the throne. Total time in combat: 40 minutes. 

1902: Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first US President to ride in an automobile.

1910: Birth of Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu (d.1997), the Albanian nun better known as Mother Teresa, who founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India in 1950. Her selfless work with the poor and destitute earned her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. She died in September, 1997, and was beatified by Pope John Paul II as Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. 

1911: Ishi, the last Native American to make contact with American civilization, steps out of the woods near Mount Lassen in northern California to meet his destiny. He immediately became a sensation in anthropological circles, providing demonstrations of a former life completely independent of European influence. He lived at the University of California, San Francisco, until his death from tuberculosis in 1915.

1914: The Battle of Mons (Belgium): after the declaration of war earlier this month, Great Britain began transporting their army across the Channel to Belgium with the mission to hold the left end of the French line. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) under General John French was only 80,000 strong, organized into two Corps, but they were by far the best trained professional army anywhere, known especially for the infantry’s skill in rapid-fire rifle marksmanship. After first contact between British bicycle scouts and German snipers on the 21^st, the BEF surged forward to defend the Mons-Conde Canal outside the city of Mons in order to prevent the German right from turning the French line. The BEF was outnumbered 3:1, but were able during the course of the battle to inflict tremendous casualties that halted the German advance in its tracks on its first assault. The Germans then regrouped into open formation and surged forward again, at which point the British position became increasingly untenable. During the night the BEF began an orderly retreat to a pre-established line where they expected to make their next stand, but with the concurrent retreat of the French, the new position could not be held.  The retreat continued for two weeks and eventually covered over 250 miles. The Battle of Mons is considered a tactical victory for the BEF, in that they properly held their positions for 24 hours, significantly delaying and inflicting severe casualties on the German advance.

1914: Battle of Heligoland Bight– the first naval engagement of WWI, where the Royal Navy made a surprise attack against patrolling cruisers and destroyers of the German Imperial High Seas Fleet, sinking three light cruisers, a destroyer and two torpedo boats, and severely damaging six other cruisers and destroyers, at a cost of heavy damage to one light cruiser. By their own admission, the Brits got lucky, but the battle so unnerved the Kaiser that he restricted the German fleet from any further chance at engagement for nearly three months, creating a rift between him and the naval command that never healed.

1927: Execution of Italian anarchists and convicted murderers Sacco and Vanzetti. Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian anarchist immigrants controversially convicted of armed robbery and murder in Massachusetts in 1921 and executed in 1927. Their trial occurred during the Red Scare, and many believed their radical political beliefs, rather than evidence, led to their conviction and execution. The case became a global cause célèbre, sparking protests and debates about justice, immigration, and political persecution. 

1928: The Kellogg-Briand Pact is signed by the United States and 14 other nations. The treaty, negotiated outside the jurisdiction of the League of Nations, essentially outlaws war as a legitimate diplomatic tool, except for self-defense. It is no stretch to say the treaty (which is actually still in force) is honored only in the breach, but it was the basis for the “crimes against the peace” that underlay the post-WWII Nuremberg Trials.

1939: The foreign ministers from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression treaty between the two dictatorships that conveniently contains a secret clause that divides between them the Baltic States, Finland, Romania and Poland. 

1942: Opening guns in the Battle of Stalingrad, putting permanently to rest the notion of the 1939 pact. The Nazi-Soviet Pact, or Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, was a non-aggression treaty signed by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union on August 23, 1939, that removed the threat of conflict between the two powers and paved the way for Germany to invade Poland on September 1, 1939, thereby igniting World War II. The pact also included a secret protocol dividing Eastern Europe into spheres of influence, a clause that allowed for the Soviet annexation of eastern Poland, the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), and parts of Romania.

1949: The Soviet Union detonates its first atomic bomb. Despite a significant level of in-house development by Soviet scientists, the event was hastened by broad-based espionage from the Manhattan Project by Klaus Fuchs, who provided the Soviets significant details on gaseous diffusion of uranium isotopes, using plutonium instead of uranium in the fission device, techniques for extracting plutonium through a “uranium pipe,” confirmation of critical mass (determined after years of trial and error by the Manhattan Project), and a complete set of blueprints and schematics for our own atomic bomb. 
 
1962: The technological tour de force NS Savannah completes her maiden voyage. The nuclear-powered merchant ship never made a cent, but remains a symbol of the potential for peaceful uses of the atom. After de-fueling her reactors in January, 1972, she became a museum ship in Charleston’s Patriot Point, but was transferred back to the supervision of the Maritime Administration in 1994. She remained in the inactive fleet up the James River until mid-2008, when she was towed to Baltimore for complete de-nuclearization, where she remains in preservation layup.

1966: The Beatles perform their last concert for paying customers, held in San Francisco at Candlestick Park.

 1968: At the Democratic National Convention taking place in Chicago, ten thousand anti-war protesters are goaded into violent action by Tom Hayden, triggering a violent counter-action by Chicago police and Illinois National Guard. The riot is remembered in popular folklore as a “police riot” despite the left-wing agitation that threatened the convention in the first place. In a summer of race rioting and anti-war protests all around the country, this one stands out for the callousness of the neo-communist organizers and the ham-handedness of the Chicago political machine, all of which was broadcast “live, in living color” for the nation to see. Hayden, Alinski, Hoffman, and Dorn still hold influence to this day.

1974: Death of aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh (b.1902).

2005: Hurricane Katrina slams into the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama, wreaking havoc. Minimum central pressure was 902 mb, or 26.64 in/hg.

About the Author

Wayne Creed

Administrator

View All Posts