History Notes this week of Feb 18

1473: Birth of Nicolas Copernicus (d.1543) in Torun, Poland. Polish astronomer and mathematician known as the father of modern astronomy. He was the first European scientist to propose that Earth and other planets revolve around the sun, the heliocentric theory of the solar system.

1621: The newly arrived Plimoth Colony elects Myles Standish as its Commander, a position to which he was repeatedly re-elected to the end of his life.

1732: Birth of Virginia planter, militia colonel, delegate to the Continental Congress, General in Chief of the Continental Army, and first President of the United States of America, George Washington (d.1799). His direct military successes during the Revolutionary War were mostly in the breach, but his widely spaced victories were all crucial to the strategic victory of American arms against the British. After independence, he could have easily assumed the title of King and no one would have objected, but his true humility set a distinctly American tone to the office which endures to this day. At his death, his Revolutionary colleague and fellow Virginian “Light-Horse Harry” Lee spoke his eulogy: “First in war, First in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen…

1778: The Prussian Baron Freidrich Wilhelm von Steuben arrives at the Continental Army’s winter encampment at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. He immediately begins training the rag-tag army in the fundamentals of professional military order and discipline. He is credited with being one of the fathers of the United States Army.

1801: After 35 ballots in the House of Representatives, and only 15 days before the inauguration, Thomas Jefferson is elected 3rd President of the United States, finally defeating his running mate, Aaron Burr (DLH 2/6). The November 4th general election gave both Burr and Jefferson 73 electoral votes each, thus sending the vote to the House. An electoral technicality- the winner needed a majority of state votes (9 needed (Jefferson had 8))- kept the election in turmoil for over three months. The logjam was broken when the Federalists reasoned that a peaceful turnover of power required that the majority party be allowed to have its choice for President. The following vote gave Jefferson 10 states, Burr 4, and two states voted “blank,” thus launching Jefferson into his highly eventful presidency.

1819: Spain cedes to the United States its last territorial claim (Oregon County) on remaining Florida territory.

1836: Opening guns of Mexican general Santa Anna’s siege of the Alamo.

1846: The United States Navy issues a General Order replacing the term “larboard” with “port.” 

1847: The first rescuers reach the remnants of the Donner Party, a group of pioneers who left the Midwest the previous July for the promise of California. In late October, they became stranded in the Sierra Nevada mountains by early snow, and the ensuing four months saw them reduced to cannibalism as all of their supplies and oxen were consumed during the brutal winter. Of the original 89 who set out, only 45 made it to the Golden State. Donner Pass and Donner Lake are named for the tragedy. Today’s Interstate 80 runs along the original route through the mountains. [In happier times; contemporary (post recovery) photo of some tree stumps felled by the party, giving a good indication of the snow depth that trapped them; Donner Pass today, with Donner Lake in the background.

1861: On the advice of his security chief Alan Pinkerton, President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrives in Washington under the cover of darkness and disguise. His party skipped a planned stop in Baltimore in response to the discovery of an active assassination plot by disgruntled secessionists.

1864: Under the command of Lieutenant George Dixon, and with a volunteer crew of seven others, the Confederate submarine CSS Hunley sinks USS Housatanic in Charleston harbor. After completing the attack, the hand-crank-powered sub mysteriously sank and remained unlocated until 1995. On recovery, her entire crew of 8 was found entombed on board. They were subsequently re-buried with full military honors in a Confederate cemetery in Charleston.

1865: General William Tecumseh Sherman’s army sacks Columbia, SC, creating havoc that consumes more than 2/3 of the city by fire. Commenting later, Sherman said, “Though I never ordered it and never wished it, I have never shed any tears over the event because I believe it hastened what we all fought for, the end of the War.”

1867: The first ship passes through the Suez Canal. 

1898: Birth of il Commendetore, Enzo Ferrari (d.1988), the Italian race car driver for Alfa Romeo, who went on to produce his own series of rolling and shrieking works of art that bear his name.

1902: Birth of photographer Ansel Adams (d.1984). His consistently spectacular work was the result of exceptional patience and a deep understanding of the interplay of light within both the scenes themselves and the emulsion of his film. Besides his superb eye for composition, his photos technically represent the ultimate depth, contrast, and clarity. His camera of choice was almost always large format (70mm) because of the negatives’ sharpness when enlarged.

1909: The Navy’s Great White Fleet returns right here to Hampton Roads after its famous voyage around the world.

1915: Gallipoli Campaign: Opening guns of what will become a futile 8-month Anglo-French campaign to capture Constantinople and secure the Bosporus and Dardanelles for transit of the Russian fleet. On this day, British warships begin shelling* Ottoman coastal artillery positions on the Gallipoli peninsula.

1930: Clyde W. Tombaugh [DLH 2/4], an astronomer working at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, discovers Pluto. The formerly 9^th planet’s average distance from the sun is 4 billion miles, and it takes 248 earth years to complete one orbit. The search for “Planet X” had been ongoing since 1906 under the guidance of the great mathematician and astronomer Percival Lowell. The search was a result of observed differences between the actual and predicted positions of the recently discovered planet Neptune, which itself was discovered by similar mathematical calculation (vice direct observation and discovery) in 1846. Tombaugh targeted the predicted position of Planet X with systematic exposures of discrete sky sections taken roughly two weeks apart. The images were then studied through a blink comparator, a device that flashed from one image to another to show motion, similar to the little cartoons you make when you flip the edges of a stack paper. Through this process, the fixed stars will- of course- stay fixed, but planetary motion will be exposed. The images below are the ones from which Tombaugh made his discovery. The International Astronomical Union in 2006 reclassified Pluto as a “dwarf planet” residing within the Kuiper Belt, which is similar to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

1936: Death of Army Air Service Brigadier General Billy Mitchell (b.1879), whom one might either call an “outspoken advocate” or a “grandstanding blowhard” over the nascent capabilities of air power as an arm of combat. He pretty much set the tone for future Air Force-Navy relationships throughout 1921, when both the Army and Navy were conducting tests on the vulnerability of battleships to aerial bombardment. By July, 1921, with the sinking of the ex-German battleship Ostfriesland, the public dispute between Mitchell & his acolytes and the leadership of the Navy and Army reached its nadir. He was court-martialed and convicted for insubordination in 1925, and suspended from active duty on half pay for five years. After his death, and with the rise of the actual viability of air power, Mitchell’s legacy was rehabilitated, including having the B-25 named after him. 

1942: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, ordering the forcible relocation of citizens of Japanese descent into remote internment camps. Nearly 120,000 were arrested in the ensuing dragnet. Great Britain issued a similar order for Canada on the 24^th of the month. 

1942: A Japanese submarine shells an oil refinery in Ellwood, California, near Santa Barbara. Damage was minimal, but coming so soon after the disaster at Pearl Harbor, the attack was directly responsible for renewed anti-Japanese panic and the accelerated internment of Japanese-Americans to camps Nevada.

1942: President Roosevelt orders General Douglas MacArthur to evacuate himself from the collapsing defense of the Philippines. MacArthur defies the President’s order for two weeks before turning over his Corregidor command to LTG Jonathan Wainwright.

1942: Lieutenant Commander Edward “Butch” O’Hare, flying on defensive Combat Air Patrol (CAP) from USS Lexington (CV-2), personally shoots down five Japanese “Betty” bombers in four minutes. His action earns him a Medal of Honor in addition to becoming the first U.S. fighter ace of WWII. He was lost at sea on a night combat mission in November of 1943. The Chicago airport bears his name.

1943: First day of the Battle of Kasserine Pass in Tunisia, the first major engagement of American units against German forces. The battle ended in a rout, with the combined Anglo-American force pushed back nearly fifty miles from their starting positions. The German commander, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, was contemptuous of the Americans but wary of their potential. In the aftermath of the defeat, General Eisenhower relieved the Corps commander and replaced him with Lieutenant General George S. Patton, who in short order proved Rommel right to be wary of American potential.

1945: American Marines raise the U.S. flag on Mount Surabachi, Iwo Jima.

1946: American Charge d’Affairs in Moscow George Kennan sends his famous Long Telegram to the State Department. The 800-word paper outlines the intellectual rationale for the policy of containment against the expansionist Soviet Union and was the basis of our national security policy until the collapse of the soviet state in 1991. Ambassador Kennan died in 2005 at the age of 101.

1959: Lee Petty wins the first Daytona 500.

1962: In the United States’ first orbital mission and Project Mercury’s third manned space flight, Marine LtCol John Glenn makes three orbits of the earth in his capsule “Friendship-7.” 

1963: The San Francisco Giants sign Willy Mays for a record $100,000 per year contract.

1967: Death of American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (b.1904), who served as head of the Manhattan Project in WWII. Following the war he served as chief advisor to the Atomic Energy Commission. He lost his security clearance in 1954, in part for opposing continuing development of the hydrogen bomb. The other part was his outspoken political opinion-making during the Red Scare, a position deemed inappropriate for someone in the AEC. After the 1945 Trinity detonation, Oppenheimer stated that one of the first things he thought of was a quote from the Hindu Bhagavad Gita: “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

1972: President Richard Nixon departs on his historic trip to Communist China.

1974: Newspaper heiress and debutante Patty Hearst is kidnapped by the Symbianese Liberation Army, a typically violent group of left-wing radicals bent on destroying American society. 

1976: President Gerald Ford rescinds Executive Order 9066 with Presidential Proclamation 4417, which opens the door for reparations to surviving Japanese internees.

1980: The Miracle on Ice. The US Olympic hockey team, made up of mostly college players with an average age of 22, defeated the Soviet Union team 4-3 in the silver medal round at the Lake Placid Olympics, and then went on to beat Finland for the gold medal. The team was earlier routed by the Soviets 10-2 at an exhibition game in Madison Square Garden. “Do you believe in Miracles??? Yes!!!!”

1991: American and coalition forces cross the line of departure in Saudi Arabia to begin the ground phase of the First Gulf War.

1997: The San Francisco Giants sign Willy Mays’ godson Barry Bonds for a record $22,900,000 per year contract.

1997: Birth of Dolly the sheep, the world’s first cloned mammal.