History Notes this week of August 4

1305: Scottish patriot and nationalist William Wallace is captured near Glasgow and hauled off to London, where he is accused, tried, convicted and executed for treason against Edward I. As he faced his accusers, Wallace declared: “I could not be a traitor to Edward, for I was never his subject.” 

1492: Genovese mariner Christopher Columbus departs westward from Palos del la Frontera, Spain to prove a new ocean route to the Spice Islands of the Indies. His crew and his three ships- Nina, Pinta and the flagship Santa Maria– are financed by Queen Isabella I of Spain, who believed Columbus’ sales pitch that the earth was round and small enough that Spain would profit mightily from a new route to the riches of the east. Cortz and others would bring the riches and power from the west.

1576: The cornerstone is laid for an observatory designed by the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, whose careful and accurate observations of the motions of the heavenly bodies- comets and planets in particular- laid the foundation for the explosion of astronomical theory and science for the next three hundred years. His assistant, Johannes Kepler, carried on his work after Brahe’s death in 1601.

1607: First performance of William Shakespeare’s  Macbeth.

1620: The chartered merchant ship Mayflower, in company with the Speedwell, departs Southampton, England on its first attempt to reach North America with its Puritan passengers, who plan on colonizing “North Virginia” near the mouth of the Hudson River. After a very short day at sea, Speedwell develops severe leaks and the two ships return to port for repairs.

1742: Birth of Nathanael Greene (d.1786), who rose from Private of the Rhode Island militia to Major General of the Continental Army and became one of George Washington’s most trusted advisors and effective subordinate commanders.

1768: Completion of the first ascent of Mont Blanc, the tallest mountain in Europe, by Frenchmen Jacques Balmat and Michel-Gabriel Paccard.

1782: General George Washington orders the creation of the Badge of Military Merit to honor wounded soldiers who “has given of his blood in defense of his homeland…” The idea of the award was revived in 1927 and formally re-established as the Purple Heart in 1931 by Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur.

1794: President George Washington invokes the Militia Act of 1792 to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion, an increasingly violent anti-tax revolt that centered in western Pennsylvania.Nearly 400 whiskey rebels near Pittsburgh set fire to the home of John Neville, the regional tax collection supervisor. Left with little recourse and at the urgings of Secretary Hamilton, Washington organized a militia force of 12,950 men and led them towards Western Pennsylvania, warning locals “not to abet, aid, or comfort the Insurgents aforesaid, as they will answer the contrary at their peril.” Washington raised a federal militia (via a draft, because there weren’t enough volunteers) of 12,500 men under the command Virginia governor Henry “Lighthorse Harry” Lee.After a Presidential pass-in-review in Cumberland, Maryland, the army marched westward to regain control of the situation. As news of the army’s movement spread, the revolt collapsed before it could turn into an organized armed resistance. Washington’s actions during this affair are credited with confirming the federal government’s authority and willingness to exercise itself** as a national government.

1864: Rear Admiral David Farragut leads a US Navy flotilla into the fortified confines of Mobile Bay, with the mission of permanently closing the port to further trade and blockade running. During the previous year, while Farragut’s attentions were earlier turned to returning the Mississippi River to Union control, the Confederates fortified Mobile with three forts ashore and a minefield guarding the main channel into the bay. Farragut’s flotilla entered the bay at dawn, guns blazing, and overwhelmed the shoreward defenses. When one of his captains slowed his ship due to the threat of the mines (“torpedoes”), Farragut responded with “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!” Of note from the Confederate perspective was the single-handed fight of the ironclad ram CSS Tennessee against the entire Union fleet, which took three hours to finally force its surrender.

1876: Birth of Margaretha Geertruide Zelle MacLeod (d.1917), better known as Mata Hari, the sultry Dutch “courtesan” of multiple dozens of military and civilian leaders on both sides of the trenches during the Great War. In March of 1905 she opened her act as an exotic dancer on stage in Paris, becoming an overnight sensation, and was almost immediately taken in by a millionaire industrialist.
Her exploits kept her in the public limelight for a decade. With the Netherlands remaining neutral during the conflict, Mata Hari exploited her Dutch nationality to travel freely between Germany and France via Britain and Spain during the course of the war. At one point during an interview with British intelligence, she alluded to working for French intelligence, a relationship the French would neither confirm nor deny. After an intercepted German cable from Spain appeared to implicate her, Mata Hari was arrested by the French in February, 1917, charged and convicted of espionage, and executed by firing squad in October. She steadfastly denied the charge of being a double agent. At her execution she stood without blindfold, blew a kiss to her lawyer, with her last words being, “Merci, monsieur.” A more lurid account has her flinging open her chemise shouting “Harlot, yes, but traitor, never!” Neither account has a shred of evidence, but they reflect the intensity of public emotion that surrounded her case.

1889: At Auburn Prison in New York, the first execution by electrocution is conducted on convicted murderer William Kemmler. It took two jolts to do the job; the first 17 seconds of 770 volts blew a fuse before killing him. On the second attempt 1,030 volts were applied for two minutes. Power was shut off when smoke started emanating from his head. Dr. Albert Southwick, a dentist who was a strong advocate of electrocution as a more humane death declared, “We live in a higher civilization from this day on.” George Westinghouse, who actually put electrical power to practical application elsewhere, stated, “They would have done better with an axe.”

1900: Birth of war correspondent Ernie Pyle (d.1945), whose personalized reporting from the European Theater of Operations and later the Pacific Theater made him the most well-known name in journalism. He was killed by a burst of Japanese machine gun fire on Ie Shima, near Okinawa.

1908:  Wilbur Wright opens a European flying tour on the race course at Le Mans, France. The  French press is amazed by the skill and ease with which Wright pilots his aero-plane, and the man and his machine become the toast of the Continent. The European tour continues through the late Spring of 1909, concurrent with Orville’s series of stateside test flights for the US Army.

1914: WWI- Serbia declares war on Germany. Austria declares war on  on Russia. Germany sorties 10 Unterseeboten from their base in Helgoland on their first wartime patrols against the Royal Navy.

1926: Harry Houdini performs his most difficult escape, spending 91 minutes in a sealed tank before emerging unscathed.

1928: Birth of 1960’s pop artist Andy Warhol (d.1985). American visual artist, film director and producer. A leading figure in the pop art movement, Warhol is considered one of the most important American artists of the second half of the 20th century.

1930: Birth of Neil Armstrong (d.2012).

1936: American Jesse Owens wins the 100 meter dash at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

1940:  Nazi Germany annexes the French-German-French-German provinces of Alsace-Lorraine into the greater German Reich. 

1942: Six would-be German saboteurs are executed in Washington, DC, a mere 8 weeks after their arrests in Long Island, New York and Ponte Vedra, Florida. Hmm: enemy combatants, time of war, military tribunals… plus ca change, as they say, with a bit of a difference.

1945: At 8:15 AM, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb, named Little Boy, on Hiroshima, Japan from the B-29 bomber Enola Gay. The bomb weighed 9,000 pounds and was 28 inches in diameter, containing 26 million pounds of high explosives. It was a gun-type weapon that achieved nuclear fission when two parts of uranium-235 collided. The bombing killed an estimated 140,000 people, mostly civilians, and destroyed the city.

1946: First flight of the Convair B-36 “Peacemaker” strategic nuclear bomber, a hybrid behemoth that the soon-to-be independent USAF pitched to Congress as the sole answer to the problem of atomic weapons delivery. Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson eventually cancelled Navy’s construction of the USS United States (CVB-58) in favor of more B-36s. The B-36 was a technological tour de force, with huge sections of the fuselage fabricated from titanium, six rearward facing “pusher” engines for cruise, and eventually four jet engines added at the wingtips for extra takeoff thrust and dash capability.

1948: Former journalist and communist fellow-traveler Whittaker Chambers publicly accuses former State Department official Alger Hiss of being a Soviet spy. He was right, but you’d never know it if you talked to any of your left-wing buddies before the fall of the Soviet Union, when they admitted it themselves. It still jacks their little Lefty jaws to think about it.

1958: USS Nautilus (SSN-571), the world’s first nuclear-powered vessel, crosses the North Pole during its historic under-ice transit of the Arctic Ocean. The ship is now on permanent display in Groton, Connecticut. I had the pleasure of visiting the ship a couple years back. You climb down through the forward torpedo loading hatch (just behind the hull-painted 571 in the picture, and take a self-guided tour back to about the conning tower; upper level back to the control room, then returning lower level to the torpedo room. The reactors remain intact and serviceable after all these years.

1962: Death of Marilyn Monroe (b.1926).

1964: In the first response to the now-notorious Gulf of Tonkin Incident (DLH 8/2), aircraft from the carriers USS Ticonderoga (CVA-14) and USS Constellation (CVA-64) launch 60 sorties against the  North Vietnamese patrol boat base and oil storage facility, destroying 25 boats and eliminating their entire stock of fuel.

1988: For the first time in its history, lights are turned on for a night game at Wrigley Field in Chicago, the last field in the major leagues to do so.

1990: Four days after Iraq invades and occupies Kuwait, the United Nations Security Council orders a global trade embargo against Iraq.

1991: Faced with continually declining sales, French car maker Peugeot announces its intention to withdraw from the U.S. car market.