History Notes this week of May 18

337AD: Death of Constantine the Great, the first Roman emperor to embrace Christianity. He aggressively set about un-doing the persecutions carried out by his predecessor, Diocletian. In particular, he issued the Edict of Milan in 313, declaring religious tolerance throughout the Empire as the law of the land. He also rebuilt the ancient Turkish city of Byzantium, re-naming it Constantinople and making it the capital of the eastern portion of the Empire, a position it maintained for another thousand years.

577AD: Death of Saint Brendan the Navigator, the Irish monk whose legendary travels in a leather currach helped establish the idea of a lush and inhabited island across the sea from Europe. “St. Brendan’s Island” often shows up on early maps. One school of thought believes it indicates that Brendan was actually the first European to make landfall in North America. He remains the patron saint of sailors and navigators.

1471: Birth of German artist Albrecht Durer (d.1528), a man of extraordinary artistic and intellectual talent. Best known for his woodcuts, he also worked in oils and pencil. He was deeply engaged in the intellectual unrest of the early Reformation period, but remained loyal to the Roman Catholic church to his death. [Images: Self portrait; 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse; A Young Hare; Knight, Death and the Devil] Durer built a tremendous reputation in his own lifetime, and helped market himself through his distinctive signature logo, clearly seen on the hare portrait.

1499: Catherine of Aragon- the same Spanish royalty whom we keep reading about throughout the year- is married by proxy to Arthur, Prince of Wales, son of English King Henry VII. She is 14. He is 13. They have been legally betrothed* for ten years already, the Tudors of England and the Trastamaras of Aragon & Castile reasoning that a marriage of their two families would provide a solid diplomatic bulwark against the territorial claims on both countries by the Valois dynasty of France.

1532: Sir Thomas More resigns as England’s Lord High Chancellor, his second attempt to leave Henry VIII’s court over the issue of papal versus royal supremacy. The sovereign is not amused. More’s “season” approaches its end.

1536: Death of Anne Boleyn (b.1501), Queen Consort of King Henry VIII, beheaded after conviction on charges of adultery, high treason, and incest.

1568: Queen Elizabeth I of England orders the arrest of her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots.

1792: Opening bell on the New York Stock Exchange.

1795: Birth of Baltimore businessman and philanthropist Johns Hopkins (d.1873). One of the all-time wealthiest men in the United States, Hopkins was a keen businessman, parlaying a dry goods business into enough capital that he could invest in the nascent railroad industry, most notably the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, whose smashing success sealed his fortune. Fortunately for the rest of us, Hopkins left a huge endowment to the university and medical school that now bears his name, to say nothing of the rest of his artistic and cultural legacies. 

1801: Birth of William Seward (d.1872), Secretary of State in the Lincoln Administration, and the official at Lincoln’s deathbed who announced to the press, “Now he belongs to the ages.” During the Andrew Johnson Administration, Seward became the chief advocate of the United States’ purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. The popularly remembered “Seward’s Folly” cost the country $7,200,000.00, or 2 cents per acre. 

1802: Napoleon Bonaparte initiates the French Legion of Honor award. It is the France’s  highest decoration, available for military and civilians who exhibit extraordinary courage or accomplishment in the performance of their duties. It is specifically designed to not confer a title of nobility- the Revolution did away with all that- nor is it infused with any sense of religious legitimacy- the Revolution did away with all that, too. It is explicitly secular (using a 5-pointed star instead of a stylized cross) and based solely on merit, available to all, regardless of birth. The Legion remains active to this day as a functional body of the government, with the President as its head.

1860: Opening day of the Republican National Convention in Chicago. Springfield lawyer and former Member of Congress Abraham Lincoln defeats the front-runner New Yorker William Seward on the third ballot. 

1868: President Andrew Johnson is acquitted on his impeachment trial by a single vote in the U.S. Senate.

1878: Birth of Glenn Curtiss (d.1930), motorcycle builder and racer, aviation pioneer, and competitor of the Wright Brothers. Barred by the threat of patent infringement of the Wright’s wing warping principles and mechanism, Curtiss invented the aileron as a means of roll control in his airplanes. The Navy was an early purchaser of his machines, which were used for the first launches and recoveries from Navy ships.

1881: Birth of Mustafa Kemel Ataturk (d.1938), the First President of the Turkish Republic. General-Pasha of the Ottoman army during the Great War, he was in command of the Turkish forces that held the ANZAC invasion of Gallipoli (DLH 4/25) to nothing more than a toehold until they withdrew under fire nine months later. He then commanded Ottoman armies both in the Levant and on the northern reaches of Anatolia against the Russians.
After the war, he served as Aide-de-Camp in the Sublime Porte during the Allied occupation of Constantinople and Izmir as the British and French worked to divide up the outer reaches of the Ottoman Empire. By June of 1919, he had had enough of external meddling, and began a two-pronged Army revolt- both militarily and politically- that eventually led to the establishment in October, 1923 of the explicitly secular Turkish state as we know it today, or at least as we knew it until the current demi-Islamist party got voted into power a few years back. Ataturk is constitutionally the only person who will ever be permitted to assume that title, which means, “Father of Turkey.” 

1886: Death of John Deere (b.1804), American blacksmith who invented and successfully marketed the first cast steel plow.

1897: Birth of Phoenix. Arizona native Frank Luke (d.1918). World War I American fighter Ace and Medal of Honor winner, he was second only to the great Eddie Rickenbacker for the number of confirmed kills by an American pilot. Luke’s fearlessness and airmanship led him to focus on destroying German observation balloons, and earned him the moniker of “The Balloon Buster.” One would think that diving a screaming fighter in towards a huge, immobile gasbag would not be much of a challenge, but one would be gravely mistaken in that assumption: the balloons were not only surrounded by dozens of pre-loaded light artillery pieces aiming straight up, each one of their ascents was also covered by a flight of German fighter planes flying high cover overhead. Luke and his wingman perfected the technique of diving out of the sun and making repeated passes at the balloon until its hydrogen finally burst into flames and plunged to earth. His total count was 14 balloons and four aeroplanes, all shot down in the course of only 10 sorties over 8 days. Rickenbacker himself called Luke the “…the most daring aviator and the greatest fighter pilot of the entire war.” Luke Air Force Base in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale is named for him. 

1906: The Wright Brothers receive U.S. Patent number 821,393 for their “flying machine.” The patent is the result of the Wright’s extensive testing and refinement of aircraft control mechanisms on their basic 1903 design, and was indicative of their decision to leave the bicycle business and make a go of it in the nascent field of commercial aviation. This is the same patent I mentioned the other day that led Glenn Curtis and others to create work-arounds that would avoid patent infringement issues, although the patent fights between them would continue for years.

1915: Eruption of Northern California’s Mount Lassen, the only other U.S. volcano in the lower 48– besides Saint Helens– to blow in the 20^th century. This was the first of 107 separate eruptions that occurred during the next twelve months. Views of Lassen became a staple of the local postcard industry. 

1918: As a companion bill to its recently passed Espionage Act, Congress passes, and President Wilson signs, the Sedition Act. It makes it illegal to criticize, e.g.: to“…willfully utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the U.S. government during time of war. In addition to a $10,000 fine and 20 years in prison, the Postmaster General was tasked to halt mail deliveries to and from any person convicted or associated with a person convicted of the act. Over 1500 were charged and more than 1000 were convicted. Wilson’s Attorney General sought to keep a peacetime version in place after the war, but Congress repealed it in December, 1920. 

1921: The US Congress passes the Emergency Quota Act, limiting legal immigration to a small percentage of the current nationalities then residing in the country. The act effectively shut off the flow of immigrants who were streaming into the country from southern Europe and the Balkans.

1927: Thirty three and a half hours after his perilous launch from Roosevelt Field, Charles Lindbergh lands in Le Brouget Airport in Paris. Although he expected some level of fame for his accomplishment, the public acclaim that followed him made him one of the 20^th century’s first media superstars. As National Geographic put it, “he took off as an unknown boy from rural Minnesota and landed 33 1/2 hours later as the most famous man on earth… and sent the world into an unprecedented frenzy.”  When he was sighted in the morning crossing the coast of Ireland the news was immediately broadcast worldwide. Over 150,000 Parisians worked their way to his arrival airport to witness the historic event. He reached Paris in the gathering darkness, and spent several minutes circling the Eiffel Tower to get his bearings, during which time the crowds broke through the police lines protecting the landing area, creating a situation that Lindbergh called the most dangerous part of the entire flight. The crowds that surged around his machine as he rolled out cut swaths of fabric off the fuselage for souvenirs, and despite his fatigue he was forced into event after event with both French and American luminaries.

1932: After a 14 hour flight through turbulence, icing, and un-forecast winds, bad weather finally forces Amelia Earhart down into a farmer’s field near Derry, Ireland, and into history as the first woman to solo across the Atlantic. Although only two locals witnessed her touchdown, the media quickly picked up the story and “Lady Lindy” became the next media sensation. Her Lockheed Vega is on display in the National Air and Space Museum. 

1940: The end of the “Sitzkrieg.” Eight months after Germany invaded Poland and the immediate declarations of war that followed by the western Allied powers, neither Germany nor the Allies have made any significant military moves against each other. The period is known by many different names: Sitzkrieg was the German’s pun on their Blitzkrieg strategy; Churchill called it the Twilight War; Brits in general called it the Bore War (pun on the relatively recent Boer War in South Africa); the Poles, who were on the receiving end of it, called it the Strange War; and the French, anticipating what was to come, referred to it as the drole du guerre, the Bizarre War.  All this came to a sudden stop on the 10^th of May when Chamberlain resigned, Churchill became Prime Minister, and Germany began its advance west into the Low Countries. This week, the Nazi armies enter and occupy Brussels, Belgium, and concerns grow about the impending invasion of France.

1943: The B-17 Memphis Belle flies its 25^th combat mission over occupied Europe, a bomb run against German submarine pens at L’Orient, France. A documentary camera crew recorded the mission and the crew celebrations afterward, which became part of a full-length feature film. The aircraft and crew returned to the States and began a publicity tour around the country in support of War Bonds.

1943: A dramatic RAF raid by “The Dam Busters” smashes three dams in Germany’s industrial heartland. The crews trained in secret for three months perfecting the technique of “skip bombing” to get through German defenses.

1947: President Harry S. Truman signs into law an economic assistance act for Greece and Turkey that will become the foundation for the Truman Doctrine on controlling the spread of Communism.

1954: The Supreme Court hands down its decision in Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka, overturning the separate-but-equal doctrine previously codified by the Supreme Court’s 1896 Plessey vs. Ferguson decision.

1964: President Lyndon Baines Johnson announces the Great Society legislative program, in which he promises to “eliminate poverty and racial injustice in America.”

1968: USS Scorpion (SSN-589) suffers an explosion of unknown origin and sinks with 99 souls on board into 9,800 feet of water, 400 miles southwest of the Azores. The circumstances of its sinking remain partially classified, but all of the evidence points to an on-board malfunction of a torpedo. Nothing supports the undying conspiracy theories that she was intentionally torpedoed by the Russians in retaliation for our earlier salvage of a sunken Soviet Hotel class submarine off the coast of Hawaii. Interestingly, then-Captain Robert Ballard and the Woods Hole Institute used their search for the Titanic as cover for their actual search for the remains of Scorpion. The wreckage site is regularly monitored for radioactive contamination from its reactor and torpedoes.

1987: USS Stark (FFG-31) is struck by an Iraqi Exocet missile while monitoring shipping in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war. 37 sailors are killed, 21 wounded.