History Notes this week of June 1

70AD: Roman legions, under the command of Titus, breach the middle wall of Jerusalem and commence to destroy the city.

1431: In the final act from her February trial, Joan of Arc is this day burned at the stake for heresy. In the years that follow her execution, the French peasantry attribute scores of miracles to her and she is eventually canonized as Saint Jean d’Arc.

1661: The young student Isaac Newton begins his studies at Trinity College.

1672: Birth of Peter the Great (d.1725). Peter I, better known as Peter the Great, was the Tsar of all Russia from 1682 and the first Emperor of all Russia from 1721 until his death in 1725. He reigned jointly with his half-brother Ivan V until 1696.

1738: Birth of George, Son of Frederick Prince of Wales and Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, in London (d.1820). In 1751 he will assume the British throne as George III.

1769: The Transit of Venus, predicted seven years earlier, sends multiple groups of scientists all around the world to make observations of Venus’ movement across the face of the sun from as many locations as possible. Captain James Cook was earlier sent to Tahiti in the South Pacific on the farthest-flung expedition, others of which include Hudson Bay, Baja California, Newfoundland, Madagascar and the Cape of Good Hope. The observations were used by the scientific community to confirm Earth’s diameter and distance from the sun (all by longhand).

1779: Colonel Benedict Arnold, hero of the attack on Quebec and multiple engagements throughout New England, is court-martialed for “malfeasance” including misuse of government wagons, illegal buying and selling of government goods. The trial is interrupted until December but the seeds of resentment are planted for his ultimate treason the following year.

1794: The first six captains of the United States Navy are appointed to superintend construction of the Six Ship Navy earlier authorized by Congress. Those of us with salt water in our veins will recognize the names of: John Barry, Samuel Nicholson, Silas Talbot, Joshua Barney, Richard Dale and Thomas Truxtun. They did good. Multiple USN ships bear or have borne their names.

1805: President and Mrs. John Adams move in as the first residents of the new presidential mansion, nicknamed the White House.

1813: In a short, sharp naval battle just offshore from Boston harbor, HMS Shannon decisively defeats  and captures USS Chesapeake. Chesapeake’s mortally wounded Captain James Lawrence is evacuated from the battle in a small boat. As he is lowered from the ship into the boat he utters what quickly becomes the Navy’s motto: “Don’t give up the ship!” But, they did.

1819: Birth of American poet Walt Whitman (d.1892). Walter Whitman Jr. is considered a central figure in American and world literature. He’s often called the “father of free verse” for his poetry style that disregarded traditional rhyme and meter. Whitman’s self-published Leaves of Grass collection, inspired by his travels and admiration for Ralph Waldo Emerson, went through eight editions during his lifetime. 

1846: Birth of Russian goldsmith, Peter Carl Faberge (d.1920). Peter Carl Gustavovich Fabergé was a Russian goldsmith and jeweller. He is best known for creating Fabergé eggs made in the style of genuine Easter eggs, but using precious metals and gemstones rather than more mundane materials. He was one of the sons of Gustav Fabergé, the founder of the House of Fabergé.

1854: In a bid to kick the slavery question down the road, Congress passes the Kansas-Nebraska Act, splitting the central portion of the Louisiana Purchase into proportional slave and free territories. One may question whether this compromise was reasonable and effective.

1864: First day of the two week long Battle of Cold Harbor, Virginia. The Battle of Cold Harbor was fought during the American Civil War near Mechanicsville, Virginia, from May 31 to June 12, 1864, with the most significant fighting occurring on June 3. It was one of the final battles of Union Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign, and is remembered as one of American history’s most lopsided battles. Thousands of Union soldiers were killed or wounded in the frontal assault of June 3 against the fortified positions of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s army, an event that compounded the image of Grant’s apparent disregard for high casualties.

1889: The Johnstown Flood- After several days of heavy rains, the privately maintained South Fork Dam collapses, releasing over 20 million tons of water down the narrow Conemaugh River valley. A 30 foot wall of debris-laden water tears through the northern half of the central Pennsylvania city, demolishing everything in its path. 2,209 people are killed and tens of thousands are left destitute. 

1902: The Peace of Vereeniging is signed, ending the Boer War. Southern Africa endured a century of simmering resentment beginning in 1806 when Great Britain seized the Dutch Cape Colony during the Napoleonic Wars. The native Dutch population, Afrikaners and Boers, eventually made a mass migration northward to get away from British rule and settled in the Transvaal and Orange Free State, creating the capital of Pretoria. A tenuous peace existed between the British and Dutch until diamonds and gold were discovered in the Boer lands in 1867. By 1899 increasingly deadly skirmishing broke out into open war; British forces quickly captured all major Boer cities and strategic sites, but the Boers kept fighting in a vicious guerrilla campaign. In 1901 the British shifted their strategy to a brutal search-and-destroy campaign against the guerrillas, reinforced by rounding up Boer families and holding them in concentration camps, the world’s first use of that method to control an enemy. The treaty signed this day ceded control of the Boer provinces to British military rule and established a political confederation known as the Union of South Africa.

1911: Roy Harroun wins the inaugural Indianapolis 500 mile race, driving his Marmon Wasp at an average speed of 74.6 mph. Sunday’s (5/25) winner, Spaniard 3-time series champion Alex Palou, winning his very first IndyCar oval race. with an average speed of 168.883 mph. Rookie Robert Shwartzman won this year’s pole position with a blistering speed of 232.790, 1.3 miles faster than last year’s pole, but still not up to the pace of Arie Luyendyk’s record-smashing 236.986 back in 1996.

1913: A peace treaty is signed ending the First Balkan War. The conflict aligned Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece against the Ottoman Turks in a successful attempt to separate Macedonia and Albania from Turkish control. A second Balkan war began a month later with Russian support. In response to Austrian moves designed to counter Russian influence in the region, Serbia increased its agitation against Germanic rule in favor of a pan-Slavism promoted by Russia. Strategic cooperation treaties begin to align the Great Powers into blocs. Serbia’s strategic planning for a third Balkan war looked to the summer of 1914 for its beginning.

1914: Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels issues General Order #99, prohibiting alcohol aboard naval vessels, navy yards and stations. He substitutes traditional spirits with mass produced coffee, giving rise to the angry (at the time) expression to “have a cup of Joe.”

1916: The Battle of Jutland, the largest naval battle of the Great War and the last naval battle conducted solely by gunfire, begins at 2:20 pm when the British Grand Fleet under Sir John Jellicoe and Vice Admiral David Beatty sights the German High Seas Fleet under Vice Admiral Franz von Hipper. Both fleets begin to maneuver to gain a firing advantage, and at 4:43 pm both sides open fire and continue the opening exchange for 55 minutes.Two British battle cruisers are destroyed in this first engagement, killing over 2000 sailors. Maneuvering and firing continues through the evening and into the next morning with a general engagement continuing throughout the next day. At 6:30 pm the German fleet executes a pre-planned disengagement back to Williamshaven. The German press exults and the British press sulks. But as with many naval battles, the difference between the bean count of ships lost and the strategic effect are inverted: German losses were 11 ships sunk, including a battleship and battle cruiser and 3,058 casualties. British losses were 14 ships sunk, including three battle cruisers and 6,784 casualties. However, because of damage sustained during the battle, on June 2nd the Germans would have only been able to sortie 10 of the participating ships against 23 available to the British.The German high command further recognized that their capability to conduct major fleet operations was now severely constrained, which led to the conscious decision to concentrate their efforts on unrestricted submarine warfare, the doctrine which did more than anything else to induce the United States to enter the war on the side of the Allied Powers.

1942: First day of the three-day Battle of Midway. Three U.S. Navy carriers USS Yorktown (CV-5), USS Enterprise (CV-6) and USS Hornet (CV-8), the sole operational carriers in the Pacific Fleet, follow up their nominal victory at the Battle of Coral Sea with a crushing victory against the combined Japanese battle fleet. The individual stories of the intelligence buildup to the U.S. rendezvous and attacks, the dramatic three day post-Coral Sea repairs to the Yorktown, the loss of Torpedo Squadron 8 and the luck that put LCDR Wade McClusky’s strike group right on top of the re-arming Japanese carriers are the stuff of legend and are fantastic in their own right. But the importance of the larger battle is strategically decisive. Despite the eventual loss of Yorktown, four front line Japanese carriers*, Kaga, Akagi, Soryu and Hiryu, are sunk, and as a result, Admiral Yamamoto cancels his plans for the invasion of Midway Island itself. Coming six months after Pearl Harbor, the battle halts the Japanese juggernaut in its tracks and turns initiative in the Pacific War to the United States. 

1944: The USS Guadalcanal (CVE-60) anti-submarine Hunter-Killer Group under the command of Captain Dan Gallery captures the German submarine U-505 in mid-Atlantic. It is the first capture of an enemy warship since the War of 1812 and provides a treasure trove of intelligence data that helps undercut the German wolfpack attacks on Atlantic convoys. 

1947: At Harvard University, Secretary of State George Marshall lays out his plan for the European Economic Recovery Program, eventually known world-wide as the Marshall Plan. Over the course of its existence, 1947-52, the United States invested over $13 billion (1948 GDP of $258b) in re-organizing the economies and industrial base of western Europe along the American model. The plan was offered as well to Russia, who rejected it, and by extension forced its rejection by the eastern European countries under Soviet occupation.

1967: After two years of PLO attacks and a continuing buildup of conventional forces along Israel’s border, King Hussein of Jordan and Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt sign a joint defense agreement. At the signing, Nasser was characteristically blunt: “Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight.”

1967: After months of Arab diplomatic saber-rattling and concurrent military buildup on its borders, the state of Israel launches a preemptive strike on Egyptian forces in Sinai. The attack expands into a decisive six-day rout of Arab armies on three fronts. Israel essentially tripled the land area under its control, taking all of the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank and Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. The Egyptian Air Forces loses over 300 of their 450 Soviet-built planes and the Syrians lose 2/3 of their air force as well. 

1968: Senator Robert Kennedy, stepping off the stage from his victory speech in the California Democratic primary, is shot and killed by Palestinian radical Sirhan Sirhan. After receiving the death sentence, Sirhan’s penalty is changed to life imprisonment.

1975: Eight years after its closure, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat re-opens the Suez Canal. 

1980: John Paul II makes the first papal visit to France since 1814.