History Notes this week of July 1

1054: A supernova appears in the sky, its presence recorded by both Chinese and Arab scholars. For several months it remained bright enough to be seen in daylight. Its remains are today known as the Crab Nebula.

1613: William Shakespeare’s beloved Globe Theatre burns to the ground, a victim of a malfunctioning stage cannon that ignited the building during a performance of Henry VIII.

1775: Three months after Britain clamped martial law on Boston and the Massachusetts Militia fought back at Lexington and Concord, General George Washington arrives at Cambridge to assume command of the Continental Army.

1775: Nearly four months after the breakout of open conflict, and a day after George Washington took command of what passed for a Continental Army, the Second Continental Congress approves the “Olive Branch Petition,” appealing to King George that the American colonies are not really seeking independence, and recommending that the Crown and colonies negotiate tax and trade policies in order to avoid war. John Adams is against it, reasoning that war is essentially inevitable, but the petition couldn’t hurt, so he didn’t block its passage.

1776: The Continental Congress receives and votes on the draft Declaration of Independence, produced over the last 17 days by the “Committee of Five” who were tasked to explain clearly and completely the rationale for the thirteen English colonies’ formal and irrevocable break with the mother country. The committee consisted of John Adams (MA), Benjamin Franklin (PA), Thomas Jefferson (VA), Robert Livingston (NY), and Roger Sherman (CT). Jefferson, as we all know, provided the bulk of the draft, including the stirring preamble and the intellectual underpinnings describing a free people creating a self-governing society. The vote on this day was 12 in favor and one abstention (NY- the government of which was nominally opposed to independence, but allowed for its delegation to abstain pending lack of instructions from Albany). The political maneuvering and deal-making had been going on since early June, when Virginian Richard Henry “Light Horse” Lee submitted the first- very terse– resolution of independence, from which the Committee of Five based much of their work. The Congress spent the next two days modifying the text of the Declaration, including removing a significant section on the British imposition of slavery, which bothered Jefferson greatly. The final version was approved and sent to the printers on the 4^th. John Adams believed that July 2^nd would be a day celebrated throughout history as our national birthday.

1776: The Continental Congress adopts the final draft of the Declaration of Independence. 56 leaders from all thirteen colonies sign their names to the formal parchment document, pledging their lives, their fortune, and their sacred honor on behalf of this new experiment in self-government. By the letter of the law, they had committed themselves- and by extension the rest of the colonies– to treason. Benjamin Franklin summarized their new plight: “We must, indeed, now all hang together, or assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

1782: An American force of 170 men aboard six privateer vessels slip out of Boston harbor under cover of darkness to raid Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, an important shipbuilding center in British Canada. They make a coordinated land and seaward attack, capturing one of the two blockhouses in town, including the leadership of the Lunenburg militia.  After looting the town and burning a cache of military stores, the Americans return to their ships and withdraw back to Boston just as a small British relief squadron arrives in the harbor. The privateers easily outrun the British ships.

1802: The United States Military Academy opens as an Army engineering school in West Point, New York.

1826: Death of Thomas Jefferson (b.1743), on the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of his magnum opus.

1826: Death of John Adams (b.1735), on the very same day. His dying words were, “Jefferson lives!” The two fathers of the American Revolution became estranged during the tumultuous presidency of Adams, but became reconciled after Jefferson’s retirement to Monticello. Their correspondence during their late years provides a treasure trove of insights into their dramatic lives and times.

1863: First day of the three-day Battle of Gettysburg. The clash between Confederate General Robert E. Lee and Union General George Meade was a continuation of Lee’s strategy of bringing the war home into the Northern states, the first iteration of which culminated in the Battle of Antietam near Sharpsburg, Maryland nine months earlier. Lee believed that if he could force the Army of the Potomac away from Washington to defend Union territory, he could weaken them enough and create enough civilian panic to strengthen the growing Northern anti-war movement and force the U.S. government to negotiate a peace with the Confederacy. After his victory in at Chancellorsville in early June, Lee saw his opportunity to move north. He was able to break contact with Joe Hooker’s Union forces on the 3^rd of June, and made a rapid march up the Shenandoah Valley, crossing the Potomac at mid-month to advance into Maryland and southern Pennsylvania, where his troops lived of the bounty of the yet-untouched farms and towns along the way. Union forces began a parallel movement north, but remained largely uninformed of the Confederate positions except by way of refugee reports. For his part, Lee lost close track of Union movements when his cavalry commander, J.E.B. Stuart made an excessively ambitious move eastward and was blocked by Federal infantry. This decision by his subordinate forced Lee to continue moving his army northward into unfamiliar territory, essentially blind. He realized though, that the two armies would eventually meet, and he chose the crossroads at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania as the place where he would make his stand.  Lee halted the march to allow his army to concentrate near Cashtown, just west of Gettysburg. Union cavalry under Brigadier General John Buford had similarly scouted Gettysburg as good ground for combat and established an initial defensive perimeter around the northern and western outskirts of the town. At 7:30 in the morning, Confederate corps under General A.P. Hill began attacking Buford along the Chambersburg Pike, and although the initial attack was repulsed, Confederate reinforcements continued to fill in along a semi-circle running west to north. Union reinforcements, arriving later in the afternoon, filled in the original defensive arc, but as the battle progressed they could not hold, retreating through city streets to a position on the higher ground of cemetery ridge on the southeast section of the town. Confederate General Richard Ewell chose not to pursue the Union forces, and as night settled over the battlefield, the two armies continued to fill in their defensive and offensive positions in anticipation of the fighting to come on July 2^nd.

1863:  Second day of the Battle of Gettysburg– after the initial combat of the 1^st and the Union’s southward withdrawal though town, the armies from both sides are this morning fully positioned and facing each other across a broad front. The Union army occupies a fishhook-shaped, reinforced line on high ground: from Culp’s Hill on the north (the Union right) running southward down Cemetery Ridge to an anchor position on the far left at Little Round Top, a steep and rocky slope over a mile away. Mead’s dispositions allow for relatively short internal lines of communication that permit quicker assignment of reserves to weakening spots along the line. Lee arrayed his substantial forces against the complete Union line in the hopes that a general assault would create a systemic collapse of the Union defenses. He also hoped to make a substantial turn against what he thought* was an unprotected Union left flank. General Longstreet’s brigades expected to move stealthily through a peach orchard and the rocks of Devil’s Den to sweep behind the Federals on Cemetery Ridge. But unknown to both Lee and Longstreet, the 20^th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment under Colonel Joshua Chamberlain was positioned at the very end of the Union line on flanks of Little Round Top, where they held commanding heights above both the peach orchard and Devil’s Den. In a particularly poignant scene from the book The Killer Angels, Chamberlain is instructed by General Sickles, “You must hold your position at all costs. You are the very end of the line- do I make myself clear? The very end of the line.” Furious fighting took place throughout the day along the entirety of the front, with most of the Confederate efforts against the end points: Culp’s Hill and Little Round Top. Chamberlain’s well-defended position held against two concerted attacks by Hood’s infantry, who were also being mauled in the orchard and the rocks of Devil’s Den. But after nearly five hours of continuous battle, the Mainers were essentially out of ammunition. When Chamberlain realized late in the afternoon that a third Confederate attack was coming back up the hill, he ordered his men to fix bayonets, and with an impeccable sense of timing, ordered a screaming bayonet charge directly into the face of the Southerners. The charge startled and shattered the Confederate offense and saved the weakening Union line from a devastating sweep of its rearward reserves and supporting forces. Similarly, the Culp’s Hill battle repeatedly blunted the Confederate assaults. Casualties were high on both sides, but neither side was defeated as night fell. Both sides again reinforced their positions, the Union filling in around both Little and Big Round Tops, and improving their artillery positions all along Cemetery Ridge, while the Confederates re-grouped behind a line of trees to the west of the Union line.

1863: Third and final day of the Battle of Gettysburg. The opening guns sounded at dawn, as Union artillery in the northern sector fired on Confederate positions on Culp’s hill, followed by repeated infantry attacks against the moderately reinforced sections of the Confederate lines.  The sudden intensity of the fighting forced Lee to alter his initial day’s strategy of following up yesterday’s unsuccessful attempt to turn the Union left at Little Round Top with a similar, but larger effort there accompanied by general assaults across the remainder of the Union line.  Accordingly, Lee shifted Longstreet’s command back to the north, to combine his troops with Major General George Pickett’s Virginia infantry, and to make a concentrated effort against the Union center on Cemetery Ridge. As the fighting at Culp’s Hill wound down late in the morning, Lee repositioned his artillery to support Longstreet’s expected movements. Knowing he was running low on artillery ammunition, Lee at 1:00 in the afternoon ordered a tightly coordinated barrage against the center of the Union defenses.  Union Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, who commanded the entire Union left, also sensed the parlous state of Confederate artillery and intentionally held back his counter-fire for fifteen minutes. The two-hour Confederate barrage was the largest to date, and survivors remembered how the already phenomenal noise rose to an unprecedented level when the Union artillery finally opened up in return.  Unfortunately for Lee, the noise did not translate into military effect, as the distance to the Union line was at the extreme range of his artillery. At 3:00 in the afternoon, Pickett’s division stepped out from behind the trees and formed into attacking formation. The Confederate fire then lifted, and the Virginians began their march across three quarters of a mile of open field, directly into the face of well-ranged Union artillery and infantry forces shielded behind a low stone wall. Compounding their vulnerability was interlocking crossfire from elevated Union artillery on the Round Tops. The 12,500 Confederates in nine brigades were under withering Federal fire from the moment they stepped out, hampered yet again about halfway across the ground by a rail fence that forced an entangling pause in their movements. In the end, they suffered over 50% casualties. A significant number of Virginians fought their way to an angle in the stone wall near the “little copse of trees” that was the initial goal of the assault. But Union forces quickly reinforced the gap and counter-charged against the deeply depleted and now retreating Rebel force. Lee, seated on Traveler, met the remnants of his once-powerful army as they straggled back to their staging ground. His repeated lament, “It is all my fault, It is all my fault” was met by cheers and denials by his men. But when he saw Pickett and ordered him to rally his division to stand against an expected Union counter-attack, Pickett replied, “General Lee, I have no division.” The fighting at the angle in the stone wall became known as “The High Water Mark of the Confederacy,” and their success there- such as it was- was a credit to the leadership of the mortally wounded Confederate Major General Lewis A. Armistead, who led from the front with his hat stuck on the point of his sword. On the Union side, the successful defense of Cemetery Ridge is credited to Armistead’s best friend, Union General Hancock who rallied his troops for the entirety of the fight from a highly exposed position on horseback. In one of the more memorable quotes from the battle, he was cautioned by one of his subordinates that, “General, the corps commander ought not to risk his life that way,” Hancock is said to have replied, “There are times when a corps commander’s life does not count.” 

1863: Aftermath of Gettysburg- Despite the devastating loss of the core of his army, Robert E. Lee is able to effect an unopposed withdrawal out of Pennsylvania to cross the Potomac River ahead of Meade’s desultory pursuit. On the battlefield itself, the Union victors and local townspeople begin the gruesome job of policing the battlefield of human corpses and dead horses, whose bodies are already decomposing in the 80-degree heat and humidity. Casualty figures from the battle underline the Civil War’s shockingly high bill: Union forces over 23,000 casualties- 3,155 killed, over 5,000 missing; Confederate casualties 23,231 casualties- 4,708 killed, 5,800 captured or missing.

1863: After 47 days of an increasingly bitter siege by Union forces under Major General Ulysses S. Grant, the river fortress of Vicksburg, Mississippi capitulates, thus opening the entire Mississippi River basin to Federal traffic. The news of the fall, coming the same day as reports of Lee’s withdrawal from his Pennsylvania campaign, electrified the North, coming particularly as it did after two years of pretty much continuous setbacks on the battlefield. 

1864: President Abraham Lincoln signs into law a bill setting aside Yosemite Valley in California for “…public use, resort and recreation,” creating the nation’s first national park, albeit without the National Park designation, which goes to Yellowstone several years later. The glacial valley was almost immediately inundated with tourists, and remains so today. 

1872: Birth of French aviation pioneer Louis Bleriot (d.1936), who became the first to fly across the English Channel in 1909.

1898: A week and a day after landing on Cuba, U.S. Army troops under the command of Major General William Shafter launch an attack on the Spanish-defended San Juan Heights above the city of Santiago de Cuba. 15,000 U.S. troops, which included two black infantry battalions, fought against 800 fortified Spanish soldiers in the blistering tropical heat. The eventual American victory came at the cost of 205 dead and over 1,100 wounded. At a crucial point in the fighting, the “Rough Riders” dismounted cavalry regiment under Colonel Theodore Roosevelt broke cover and charged into the teeth of Spanish fire to force them from the “Kettle Hill” section of the heights. 

1886: Birth of Raymond A. Spruance (d.1969). The USNA 1906 graduate went on to command the Navy’s 5^th Fleet in WWII. “The Quiet Warrior’s” unerring instincts were the key to the Navy’s strategic victory at Midway in June, 1942. 

1890: The state of Idaho is admitted as the 43^rd State of the Union. 

1908: A massive airborne explosion, later estimated the equivalent of ~15 megatons, sears the morning sky over a remote Siberian forest, completely flattening an estimated 80 million trees over 830 square miles of the Tunguska region. There are no known human casualties, but the blast and its immediate aftermath provide a singular shock to nearby tribesmen. Because of its remoteness and the social turmoil of the Great War, the Russian Revolution and the subsequent Russian Civil War, the first scientific expedition to the area isn’t made until 1927 by Leonoid Kulik.

1916: After a week of furious Allied artillery bombardment- over a million shells expended against the entrenched and fortified German positions- “Zero hour” of the Battle of the Somme comes with a sudden silence as artillery shifts its aim-points, and whistles sound up and down the trench lines to send British forces “over the top” in what was to become one of the largest battles in the history of warfare. The Germans, though battered by the artillery siege, rose from their highly reinforced fortifications to re-establish their defensive positions and systematically begin to savage the British offensive. On this day alone, British losses were 19,240 killed, 35,493 wounded, 2,152 missing and 585 captured for a total loss of 57,470…a full 20% of the entire British fighting force on the Continent.  The battle continued to rage for nearly five months until it finally ended from exhaustion, having failed to achieve any of its planned objectives.

1918: Taken to the basement of the house where they are being held, Czar Nicholas and his entire family- even Anastasia- are murdered by Bolshevik thugs, acting on Lenin’s orders. Their corpses are taken to a shallow pit in the woods outside Ekatrinanberg, where they are burned and buried. 

1934: Consolidating his position within the National Socialist Workers Party, the recently elected German Chancellor Adolf Hitler orders the arrest and execution of the entire leadership of the SA “Brownshirts,” the paramilitary thugs who catapulted him to power and provided a near-terrroristic backdrop to the accelerating implementation of the Nazi political program. Hitler personally arrested the head of the SA, his friend and colleague Ernst Rohm, and ordered him shot if he would not commit suicide. The purge became known as The Night of the Long Knives.

1937: Aviatrix Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan make their last radio transmission, somewhere in the South Pacific, presumably somewhere near Howland Island. They were never heard from again, nor was any trace of them found after an unprecedented Navy search. 

1937: The lunchmeat SPAM is introduced by Hormel meat packing company.

1941: German troops reach the shores of the Dnieper River, deep in the Soviet Union.

1942: Birth of deep-diving oceanographer Robert Ballard, discoverer of the sunken USS Scorpion, RMS Titanic, USS Yorktown, the German battleship Bismarck, and many other underwater treasures.

1943: First day of the Battle of Kursk, which will end up becoming the largest tank battle in history.

1946: The bikini “swimsuit” is introduced to the fashion world in Paris. French engineer Louis Reard and fashion designer Jacques Heim combine their talents for this event. Reard took credit for the name, likening the reaction to the swimsuit to the atomic explosions being tested on the Bikini atoll in the western Pacific.

1950: The 500 American soldiers Task Force Smith become the first U.S. troops to directly engage with 5,000 troops of  the onrushing North Korean army at the Battle of Osan, just south of Seoul. In a textbook example of how the Army no longer* does business, the commander of the battalion was issued the following orders:

“When you get to Pusan, head for Taejon. We want to stop the North Koreans as far from Pusan as we can. Block the main road as far north as possible. Make contact with General Church. If you can’t find him, go to Taejon and beyond if you can. Sorry I can’t give you more information—that’s all I’ve got. Good luck, and God bless you and your men!” –Major General William F. Dean’s orders to Colonel Smith.  They successfully blocked the Norks for over three hours before being overrun, buying critical time for the continuing U.S. troop debarkation at Pusan.

1952: The steamship SS United States, built at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, sets out on its maiden voyage from New York to Southampton, England. She shatters the transatlantic record, making the run between the Ambrose Light and Bishop Rock off Cornwall in 3 days, 12 hours and 12 minutes- an average speed of 35.59 knots (~41 mph). 

1964: President Lyndon Johnson signs into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

1972: The first “leap second” is added to the UTC, also known as Coordinated Universal Time, defined by the moment the sun reaches its zenith over the 0’00” meridian (which, you’ll recall, passes through the observatory at the Royal Dockyards in Greenwich, England.

1988: The USS Vincennes (CG-49), cruising in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war, shoots down Iran Air flight 655, killing all 290 souls aboard. 

1996: The Stone of Scone is returned to Scotland. The block of red sandstone was used for centuries as the coronation seat of Scottish kings. In 1296 the stone was captured by Edward I of England, who mounted it under the seat of his coronation chair, symbolizing England’s dominance over its northern rival. The stone’s history provides employment for a cottage industry of folklore enthusiasts, but the whole point of this entry is to say that England wanted to quit hurting Scottish feelings in the late 1990s, and they thus returned the stone to its “rightful” place in Edinburgh Castle.

1996: Birth of Dolly the sheep, the world’s first cloned mammal.

2002: Adventurer Steve Fosset becomes the first man to fly a balloon solo around the world. He died in a private airplane crash in September, 2007.

2007- On the anniversary date of Steve Wozniak’s applying power to his first Apple prototype computer, Forrest Gump’s “little fruit company,” Apple, Inc., releases its first I-phone.