History Notes this week of March 16

44BC: Julius Caesar, dictator of the Roman Republic, is stabbed to death by a cabal of Roman senators. According to Plutarch, Caesar was warned by a seer to be on his guard against a great peril on the Ides of March. On his way to the Theater of Pompey (where he would be assassinated), Caesar saw the seer and joked, “Well, the Ides of March have come,” to which the seer replied, “Ay, they have come, but they are not gone.”

37 A.D.: Caligula becomes Emperor of the Roman Empire upon the death of his great uncle, Tiberius.

460 A.D.: Death of Patrick of Ireland. Patrick was son of a deacon and grandson of a priest in Roman Britain. He was kidnapped by Irish brigands when he was 16, and was held as a slave in the western part of the island, until the voice of a dream [funny- my fingers originally wrote “dram”] told him to escape back to Britain and take orders as a priest. He did, and after a time he saw another vision, this time imploring him to return to Ireland to spread the Gospel. Patrick did his holy work among the pagan Celts, preaching and converting to Christianity people of all classes and stations. He used the shamrock as an aid to teach the doctrine of the Trinity, he baptized thousands of people, ordained priests, converted wealthy women and the sons of royalty. He lead what became the first bloodless conversion conversion of essentially an entire people to Christianity. This week’s celebration of his life began as a feast day in the early 17^th century, was first celebrated in the New World in Boston in 1737. The day also served as a one-day respite from Lent, the forty day period of fasting.

624: The Muslim army of Medina defeats the Quraysh of Mecca, an improbable victory credited to either divine intervention or the warlord genius of Mohammad. The spread of Islam by the sword continued.

1314: Death of Jacques de Molay (b.1243), the 23^rd and last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, burned at the stake. The Templars were a monastic military order that grew out of the First Crusade’s conquest of Jerusalem in 1096. Within a few years, Christian pilgrims again began arriving in the city, and two knights of the Crusade, Hughes de Payens and Godfrey de Saint-Omer proposed establishing a monastic order that could protect them. They established their headquarters in what is now the Al Asqa mosque, which they called the Temple of Solomon, built on the ruins of the original temple, and from which they derived their name. The order quickly grew and was formally recognized by the Pope in 1129. For nearly 200 years the Templars epitomized knightly Crusading virtues, in addition to growing very wealthy*. Templar orders throughout Europe began functioning as banks, and because of the financial hold they had over many of the royal houses in Europe, and the secrecy of their proceedings, their power began to be seen as a serious political threat. By 1306, King Philip IV of France, deeply in debt to the Templars as a result of his wars with England, began a systematic campaign to destroy the order. In concert with Philip, Pope Clement ordered all Christian monarchs to arrest the Orders and seize their assets. Philip devised a secret plan to arrest every Templar in France, including de Molay, and carried it out in a massive nighttime raid on Friday, the 13^th of October 1307. The Templars were charged with numerous acts, including apostasy, idolatry, heresy, obscene rituals, homosexuality, financial corruption, fraud and secrecy. Under torture, many confessed their alleged crimes, and after they recovered, most recanted. Those who recanted were thence burned at the stake for relapsing into apostasy. The elderly de Molay, who had confessed only under torture, eventually retracted his statement. His associate, the Preceptor of Normandy, followed de Molay’s example and insisted on his innocence. Both men were declared guilty of being relapsed heretics, and they were sentenced to be burned alive at the stake in Paris on March 18, 1314. De Molay reportedly remained defiant to the end, asking to be tied in such a way that he could face the Notre Dame Cathedral and hold his hands together in prayer. According to legend, he called out from the flames that both Pope Clement and King Philip would soon meet him before God. Pope Clement died only a month later, and King Philip died in a hunting accident before the end of the year.

1521: Three-quarters of the way around his historic circumnavigation, Ferdinand Magellan lands in the Philippines. 

1621: Only a few months into their colonial experience, the Pilgrim settlers of Plymouth, Massachusetts are startled by the appearance of an Abenaki Indian who walks boldly into their encampment and greets them with, “Welcome, Englishmen! My name is Samoset.” Samoset was a sagamore, or subordinate chief, of an Eastern Abenaki tribe that resided in Maine. An English fishing camp had been established in the Gulf of Maine, where Samoset learned some English from fishermen who came to fish off Monhegan Island, coming to know most local ship captains by name.

1751: Birth of James Madison (d.1836).  Best known as the “Father of the Constitution” for his pivotal role in drafting and promoting the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights, and for serving as the fourth President of the United States. 

1781: Battle of Guilford Courthouse. Near Greensboro, North Carolina a short (90 minutes) sharp battle between 1,900 British Regulars under General Cornwallis against 4,000 Continental soldiers under General Nathanael Greene. Because of ground lost (and held) the battle was a technical loss for the Americans. But with a quarter of the British force suffering casualties, prompting Whig party leader James Fox to declare, “Another such victory would ruin the British army.” Greene and his forces move south into South Carolina to un-do the earlier work of Cornwallis’ & Tarleton’s armies. Convinced he was still winning the war, Cornwallis advances into Virginia, where he eventually sets up his headquarters in Yorktown.

1776: South Carolina becomes the first colony to declare independence from Great Britain by establishing its own government.

1776: British forces complete their evacuation of Boston after George Washington’s stunning capture of Dorchester Heights a week prior. The event is celebrated in Boston as Evacuation Day.

1766: British parliament repeals the Stamp Act. Passed by the British Parliament on March 22, 1765, was a direct tax on the American colonies requiring a tax stamp on legal documents, newspapers, pamphlets, and other printed materials, sparking widespread colonial resistance and protests due to the colonists’ perceived lack of representation in Parliament.

1781: German-born British musician, composer, mathematician, and astronomer Frederick William Herschel discovers the planet Uranus, using a telescope of his own design and manufacture. The brilliant polymath had been studying and cataloging the rings of Saturn, and more particularly, the phenomenon of double stars, when he happened upon a non-stellar object that appeared to move in the planetary plane. This was the first discovery of a planet visible only through a telescope. Herschel followed this with subsequent discoveries of multiple moons of Saturn, and a large number of nebulae in deep space. 

1802: Alarmed by continuing threats from British Canada, Congress authorizes establishment of a military academy at West Point, New York.

1815: Prince Wilhelm of the house of Orange-Nassau, proclaims himself King of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, becoming the first constitutional monarch in the Low Countries. You would be correct it you reasoned that this proclamation came as a result of much diplomatic wheeling and dealing that accompanied the demise of France’s Napoleonic empire. Until they were conquered by Napoleon, the region was part of the Hapsburg Empire- as the Austrian Netherlands- and was often a pawn in the dynastic wars of the previous 300 years.

1845: A patent is issued to Stephen Perry of London, for the rubber band.

1850: Henry Wells and William Fargo start a new stagecoach line, called American Express.

1853: Death of Christian Doppler (b.1803). The Austrian mathematician and physicist is best known for his theory that the frequency of waves depends on the relative speed of the source and the observer. In astronomy this is known as a “red shift” (receding) or “blue shift” (approaching) in the motion of stars, and is at the heart of the Big Bang theory of a constantly expanding universe. You have of course heard train whistles and car horns and church bells all sounding a little off as you drive by- same thing, only audible.

1855: Birth of American astronomer Percival Lowell (d.1916), who became famous in the public imagination from his detailed observations of the surface of Mars, on which he surmised were the remains of a complex series of canals indicating the presence of a sentient civilization on the red planet. Although his canal theory has since been disproven, it remains a staple of science fiction writing to this day. Lowell’s mathematical modelling of the orbits of Uranus and Neptune set the conditions for the search for Planet-X, a search finally vindicated two decades later by Clyde Tombaugh (DLH 2/15), working at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff.

1858: Birth of Rudolf Diesel (d.1913). Born in Paris to a German family living in France, his family emigrated to London at the breakout of the Franco-Prussian war. After again emigrating back to Germany, the young Diesel at age 12 decided to become an engineer. He obviously did well in the discipline. Interestingly, besides inventing the internal combustion cycle that bears his name, his disappearance off of an English steamer at sea in September of 1913 remains an unsolved mystery

1865: The Confederate Congress authorizes the enlistment of black troops into the Confederate Army, with the promise of freedom as the primary motivation of the enlistment package. The law stipulated that the enlistment and release from slavery were contingent on the agreement of the slave’s master.

1865: The Confederate Congress adjourns for the last time. After 10 months of unrelenting pressure on Petersburg by Lt Gen Ulysses S. Grant, the Confederate government recognized it would be in mortal danger if it remained seated in Richmond. They began an orderly evacuation of the government to Mississippi, but the civilian retreat became a rout over the course of the next two weeks.

1863: Birth of Casey Jones (d.1900). The railroad engineer for the Illinois Central had already become well-known for his famous whistle and from his driving consistency to “get her there on the advertised,” i.e. the advertised time of arrival. On April 29^th, 1900 his train, Number 382 (photo) was “cannonballing” a load of passengers to New Orleans at over 70 mph when out of the fog there appeared the taillight of a stalled freight train. Jones ordered the fireman to jump as he immediately slammed the 382 into full reverse and laid on the whistle to warn of the impending impact. The train slowed to around 35 mph by the time it slammed through the caboose and two other freight cars before de-railing against the siding. Jones was killed, but his sacrificial actions that saved his passengers.

1879: Birth of Albert Einstein (d.1955). The German-born theoretical physicist and mathematician who developed the theory of relativity and made significant contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence formula, E = mc², is considered “the world’s most famous equation”. Einstein’s theories and vision of physics changed how people understand the universe. Although controversial at the time, his work overturned Newtonian gravitational theory. 

1883: Death of Karl Marx (b.1818). Karl Marx’s theory, known as Marxism, posits that history is driven by class struggle, specifically between the bourgeoisie (owners of the means of production) and the proletariat (the working class), ultimately leading to a communist revolution and a classless society. 

1905: Franklin Roosevelt marries his 5^th cousin, Eleanor, niece of Theodore Roosevelt.

1906: Death of Susan B. Anthony (b.1820), one of the leading forces of the Women’s Suffrage movement, and the first actual woman (as opposed to a stylized Liberty) to be featured on U.S. currency, the quarter-sized 1979 dollar coin.

1916: General John J. Pershing leads the 7^th and 10^th Cavalry Regiments across the border into Mexico in pursuit of Pancho Villa.

1917: Czar Nicholas II of Russia abdicates the throne of Russia in favor of his youngest brother, the Grand Duke Mikhail. With a provisional revolutionary government already consolidating power, the Grand Duke declines the honor until it can be ratified by the Duma, which declines to retain the monarchy. This period is known as the “February Revolution,” and marks the end of over 300 years of the Romanov dynasty.

1919: Birth of Nat King Cole (d.1965). American singer, jazz pianist, composer, and actor. Born Nathaniel Adams Coles in Montgomery, Alabama, he became a pioneer of the cocktail trio sound, influenced by Earl Hines’ swing. Though he had no vocal training, audiences loved his conversational baritone and warm ballads. He transitioned to a pop-jazz style, featuring big bands and orchestras, and recorded over 150 charting singles. 

1926: Robert Goddard launches the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket in Auburn, Massachusetts.

1933: Birth of Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (d.2020).

1940: German Furher Adolf Hitler and Italian Duce Benito Mussolini meet at the Brenner Pass to form the Pact of Steel against France and Great Britain.

1944: Just outside the city of bella Napoli, Mount Vesuvius erupts, killing 26. 

1954: Under the direction of General Vo Nguyn Giap, the communist Viet Minh army opens the siege of the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu.
 
1957: In Havana, Cuban student revolutionaries storm the presidential palace of President Fulgencio Bautista. 

1964: A Dallas, Texas jury convicts Jack Ruby for the murder of JFK’s presumed killer, Lee Harvey Oswald. 

1966: Launch of Gemini 8, the 12^th U.S. manned spaceflight, and the first to rendezvous and dock with another spacecraft, the Agena, and the first spaceflight to abort due to an in-flight emergency while in orbit. Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott noticed attitude control problems shortly after docking with the Agena, exacerbated by a rapid depletion of fuel for their thrusters. Un-docking from the Agena, their Gemini capsule then began an un-commanded roll, which Armstrong was initially able to stop with opposite thrusters. But as soon as he released the controls, thruster #8 began firing continuously on its own, sending the spacecraft into violent gyrations that threatened to incapacitate the crew. Armstrong shut off the orbital maneuvering system and brought the spacecraft back under control with the re-entry system. NASA ordered an immediate de-orbit, and the flight ended with a splashdown in the Pacific secondary recovery zone, around 500 miles east of Okinawa instead of the prime recovery zone in the Western Atlantic. Their ability to work under extreme pressure was key to their selection as commanders of Apollo 11 (Armstrong) and Apollos 9 & 15 (Scott).

1968: Acting on intelligence reports that a particular collection of tiny hamlets was a center of Viet Cong sympathy and resistance, two companies of US soldiers from the 20th and 3rd infantry regiments of the Americal Division performed a helicopter assault on the villages and systematically kill virtually every living soul in them, only one or two of whom were ever identified as actual VC. Civilian death estimates range from 347 (official US number) to 504 (official local government number). The My Lai Massacre remained publicly un-reported for nearly two years. 26 soldiers are initially charged with war crimes, but only one- 2nd Lt William Calley- is tried and convicted.

1968:The U.S. Congress repeals the requirement for a gold reserve to back U.S. currency.

1969: Golda Meir is seated as the first female Prime Minister of the State of Israel.

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Wayne Creed

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