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.
1096: In a ghastly beginning to the unauthorized crusade led by Peter the Hermit, his unruly mob swarms into the Jewish section of Worms, Germany and begins a pogrom that leaves over 900 dead.
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: Opening day Anne Boleyn’s trial for treason, adultery and incest. It does not go well for Henry VIII’s young queen.
1602: English navigator Bartholomew Gosnold discovers Cape Cod.
1643: Four year old Louis XIV ascends to the throne of France on the assassination of his father, Henry IV. Dubbed “The Sun King” by the media of the time, he famously responded when asked about the nature of the State, “L’etat, c’est moi! [I am the state]”
1792: Opening bell on the New York Stock Exchange.
1776: The Virginia Convention instructs its delegates to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia to propose a resolution of independence from Great Britain.
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.” In 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.
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.
1861: Opening shots in the Battle of Sewell’s Point. Two Federal gunboats from Fort Monroe are dispatched to investigate Confederate activity across the water at Sewell’s Point. When they see two artillery pieces and the beginnings of fortified breastworks, they open fire and scatter the men working there. USS Monticello remains in place overnight and re-commences firing in the morning. The Confederate battery answers back. There are no fatalities on either side. The Confederate position is abandoned a year later when Norfolk is evacuated.
1863: General U.S. Grant completely surrounds Vicksburg, Mississippi and begins to lay siege to the city.
1868: President Andrew Johnson is acquitted on his impeachment trial by a single vote in the U.S. Senate.
1886: Death of John Deere (b.1804), American blacksmith who invented and successfully marketed the first cast steel plow.
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.
1920: Birth of the late Polish theologian Karol Wojtyla (d.2005).
1928: Mickey Mouse makes his first appearance in a cartoon, the originally silent short Plane Crazy. The more popular Steamboat Willy came out in November.
1940: The submarine USS Sailfish (SS-192), is commissioned into the US Navy. The ship was formerly USS Squalus, which sank off the coast of Portsmouth, NH a year earlier on a test dive, shortly after her original commissioning. 26 sailors drowned in the sinking, but 33 survived in the forward compartments, communicating with a sister ship via an experimental emergency buoy, which riveted the nation during the course of a heroic rescue effort from 245 feet of water. The ship was later raised, with an engineering investigation conclusively determining the cause of the sinking. Re-designs were then incorporated throughout the new fleet boats. After repairs and re-fitting, the new Sailfish went on to a distinguished career in the Pacific war, earning 10 battle stars. During the war, the captain had standing orders that if anyone mentioned the name Squalus, he would be marooned in the next liberty port. Sailors being what they are, they began using the term, Squallfish, which didn’t sit any better with the CO.
1940: The end of the “Sitzkrieg.” Eight months after Germany’s invasion of Poland and the immediate declaration 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 uncomfortable humor came to a sudden stop on the 10th of May when Chamberlain resigned, Churchill became Prime Minister, and Germany began its advance west into the Low Countries. Today, 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 25th 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 Royal Air Force (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.
1944: After four months of bitter battle and near-continuous bombing and shelling that obliterated the medieval mountaintop monastery, the German redoubt at Monte Cassino is captured by the Allies. Polish forces lead the climb to the shattered Italian hilltop and raise their flag.
1944: Birth of filmmaker George Lucas, American Graffiti, Star Wars, Indiana Jones…
1948: With the expiration at midnight of the League of Nations mandate to British Palestine, David Ben-Gurion proclaims the State of Israel from a museum in Tel Aviv. Guns from Syria, Jordan and the United Arab Republic (Egypt) are already firing artillery in the background of his announcement.
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.
1957: Great Britain detonates its first hydrogen bomb, a high altitude air burst, over Christmas Island in the South Pacific.
1958: An F-104 Starfighter streaks to a new world speed record of 1404.19 mph (1221.7 knots).
1963: Last flight of Project Mercury, with Gordon Cooper completing 22 earth orbits over the course of a 34 hour flight. It’s probably worth noting that Cooper was the first astronaut to sleep in space, and the final American to go into orbit solo. His re-entry course landed him in the Pacific recovery zone only four miles from the prime recovery ship, USS Kearsarge (CVS-33).
1980: At 0832PDT, Mount St. Helens detonates with an eruption that lasts over 10 hours. The pyroclastic flow, landslides, ash, fire and earthquakes destroy 210 square miles of southwest Washington state wilderness. 57 people are killed, including Mr. Harry Randall Truman, 84 year old denizen of Spirit Lake, who refused repeated entreaties to leave his lodge in the months before the mountain blew. “If the mountain goes, I’m going with it…” His lodge was buried under 150 feet of ash and landslide debris.
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.
2006: A 300 foot slab of rock is growing out of the dome in the crater of Mount St. Helens. The rock is [was] growing at a rate of around 4-5 feet a day, providing a graphic demonstration of the incredible forces still at work under the surface. Raw magma has also been spilling out of the core, helping to rebuild the conical shape of the mountain. Volcanologists do not expect another massive eruption but they are quick to point out that “things can change.”
2022 Update: Nothing much beyond the 2018 update. If you’re game you can join the hundreds of climbers who hike to the summit every year. You’ll need a permit, so the Forest Service will know whom to contact when the mountain blows up again.
Leave a Reply