799: King of the Franks, Charlemagne, grandson of the great Charles Martel holds an audience in the north-central German city of Paderborn with the embattled Pope Leo III, who fled Rome under persecution by the nobility of that city. Leo requested the protection of the powerful French king, and Charlemagne reciprocated with a vow of fealty to the papacy, which included a promise to forcibly re-install Leo in Rome. The meeting today began a chain of events that culminated in Leo’s re-installation as Pope, and him, in turn, proclaiming Charlemagne as the Protector of the Roman Empire. He thus became the first Holy Roman Emperor, a title that remained essentially intact through multiple dynasties over the course of 1,120 years, finally ending with the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, which stripped the Austrian Royal family of any lingering claim to the throne
1095: At the final convocation of the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II gives an impassioned speech to the assembled nobles and knights, outlining the plea for help from Byzantine Emperor Alexius I. After reviewing the depredations of Moslem armies as they spread into Christian territories, Urban declares a Crusade to turn back the Moslems from Anatolia and eventually to re-take the holy city of Jerusalem. He calls on the assembled knights to “take up the cross” and spend the upcoming winter months collecting the forces they will need for the unprecedented armed march. The crowd enthusiastically responds with cries of “Deus Vult!” (God wills it!).
1778: On his third Pacific voyage of exploration, Captain James Cook becomes the first European to land on Maui, in the Sandwich Islands chain.
1095: Following upon the call for Crusade, Pope Urban II formally appoints Count Raymond IV of Toulouse and Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy to lead the First Crusade, providing the papal imprimatur on the operation.
1466: Birth of Genovese Admiral Andrea Doria (d.1560), remembered not only for his exploits at sea against the Ottomans and Barbary pirates, but as the leading politician of the independent Genovese Republic.
1667: Birth of Irish novelist, satirist, political gadfly and eventual clergyman, Jonathan Swift (d.1745). His best known characters remain staples of contemporary political criticism: “Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships!”
1729: On the western fringes of colonial settlement, in this case the French territories along the Mississippi River basin, Natchez Indians massacre 138 Frenchmen, 35 French women and 56 children at Fort Rosalie. The fort was the seat of French authority and trade along the river. Relations between the French and the Indians were never entirely peaceful, and the 1720s saw periodic uprisings of increasing violence, culminating in the massacre today. Present-day Natchez, Mississippi, developed from the trade routes that converged on the fort.
1763: Dedication of the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, the oldest such assembly in the United States.
1775: Lieutenant John Paul Jones hoists the Grand Union Flag aboard USS Alfred, a Philadelphia-built merchantman, converted to a 10-gun warship under the command of John Barry. Jones, recently commissioned as First Lieutenant aboard Alfred, had the honor of ordering the new national flag raised on the new national warship.
1803: France and Spain execute a secret clause of the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso, transferring title of the Louisiana territory from Spain back to France.
1804: Just after his consolidation of dictatorial power as First Consul of the Directory, and from his recent gutting of a major Jacobin-inspired coup d’etat plot, Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself Emperor of the French, the first since the demise of the Charlemagne’s dynasty a thousand years earlier. Napoleon assumed the title and crown as a specific means to re-establish a hereditary monarchy without the complications of getting the Bourbons back in the mix. There remains widespread belief that Napoleon grabbed the crown from the hands of Pope Pius IV to negate the idea that the French monarch was subservient to the authority of the Church, but evidence to support the supposition remains apocryphal at best, although it is consistent with his character. Be that as it may, after crowing himself, the new Emperor then crowned as Empress, his wife Josephine.
1823: During his annual State of the Union address to Congress, President James Monroe outlines a new doctrine that asserts a fundamental change in the relationship between the United States and the nations of Europe:
1) European colonization of the Western Hemisphere is over, and the United States will actively resist any further European military intrusion on this side of the Atlantic, and;
2) The United States will remain studiously neutral across the full range of real and potential European conflicts. The Monroe Doctrine was essentially the bedrock foreign policy of the U.S. through the Great War and well into the 1930s.
1824: The 1824 presidential election is sent to the House of Representatives for decision under the terms of the 12th Amendment. Four men ran for the office: General Andrew Jackson of Tennessee; former Senator John Quincy Adams, son of President John Adams and long-serving envoy of the United States; former Senator William H. Crawford of Georgia; and Kentucky Representative Henry Clay, “The Great Compromiser” and Speaker of the House of Representatives. None of the men achieved a majority of Electoral votes, although Jackson received a plurality, with Adams a close second. You would be correct if you thought that between today and the time of the House vote, a great deal of politicking went on; when the vote finally came on February 9th, Adams won on the first ballot.
1833: Birth of gunman, lawman, and newspaperman, Bat Masterson (d. 1921). He achieved particular notoriety in 1881-83 as one of the good guys during the height of the lawlessness in Dodge City, and after cementing a reputation as a no-nonsense enforcer in the decreasingly Wild West, he began a career as a newspaper writer in Kansas, Denver, and eventually New York City, where President Theodore Roosevelt recruited him to be Deputy US Marshall for federal grand jury sessions.
1859: Death of American author Washington Irving (b.1783), best known for his depictions of colonial New York in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip van Winkle.
1859: Abolitionist John Brown is hanged by the neck until dead for his role in fomenting the bloody raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia back in October.
1864: A few miles south of Nashville, Confederate General John Bell Hood orders his troops into a Burnside-like frontal assault against entrenched Union positions on the high ground just outside the town of Franklin. Both sides begin the fighting with 27,000 troops. The Battle of Franklin becomes an unmitigated disaster for Hood, with over 6,200 casualties, 1750 of whom are killed. Union losses number 189 dead of their 2,300 total casualties. As night fell, the Union forces made an orderly withdrawal into the next layer of Nashville’s defensive works, completely foiling Hood’s strategy of breaking the Union lines. You can today visit the center of the Union line in Franklin. Several of the original farm buildings remain riddled with holes from the furious gunfire of the battle.
1866: Death of Colonel Sir George Everest (b.1790), Surveyor-General of India 1830-43. Yes, the mountain was named after him, much to his objection.
1874: Birth of the one of the Britain’s Prime Minister (WWII), Winston S. Churchill (d.1965).
1883: Death of abolitionist Sojouner Truth (b.1797), who achieved nation-wide fame for her outspoken advocacy of abolition and women’s rights, particularly her 1851 speech at a woman’s rights convention, where she peppered her extemporaneous review of basic human rights with the phrase, “Ain’t I a woman??” She was a major force in the recruitment of black soldiers for the Union Army, and met President Lincoln while working at the Freedman’s Hospital in Washington.
1885: The U.S. Patent Offices recognizes Dr Pepper as a commercial drink. It beat Coca-Cola by a year.
1895: Completion of the first American automobile race, 54 miles between Jackson Park in Chicago and Evanston, Illinois at an average speed of just over 7 mph. The victor, Charles Duryea, won in a motorized wagon of his own design. Second place went to a German car built by Karl Benz, who used it to win the Paris-Rouen race the year prior. Duryea, ever the entrepreneur, recognized the potential of automobile racing on future sales of his machine, immediately began marketing it on the basis of its proven speed and endurance. The old auto aphorism “Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday” began at the very dawn of the automobile age.
1901: Establishment of the U.S. Army War College in the garrison town of Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
1912: As part of Treaty of Fez, signed back in March, Spain assumes a Protectorate role over the northern shoreline of Morocco, sharing the role with France, who has overall responsibility for Morocco’s security. The treaty was of a piece with the great colonial African land grab of the late 19th Century. Morocco, in particular, became an early (1904-06) venue for Germany’s increasing assertiveness in European affairs, particularly regarding France’s claims over the North African kingdom.
1913: The nation’s first drive-in gasoline station- designed, owned and operated by the Gulf Refining Company- opens in Pittsburgh. Prior to its opening, gasoline was usually purchased at pharmacies or hardware stores. But now, dear motorist, you drive right up to the hose at a dedicated oil business, hand-crank a pump from the main tank, and drain the gasoline right into your automobile. Price at the time was $0.27/gal, or about $6.25/gal in current prices.
1917: The new communist government of Russia signs an armistice with the Central Powers. The cease-fire leads immediately to negotiations for a separate peace, ratified in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March, 1918. The cessation of hostilities allowed the Bolsheviks to concentrate their energies on their own increasingly civil war, and gave the Germans in particular a boost of forces back into the Western Front.
1922: Birth of cartoonist Charles Schultz (d.2000).
1934: A British steam locomotive nicknamed The Flying Scotsman becomes the first steam locomotive to officially be clocked at a speed over 100 mph. Although the train made a cameo appearance on the Island of Sodor (Thomas the Tank Engine), it only showed up on television in the person of its double tender configuration. The machine is maintained in operational condition at Britain’s National Railway Museum in Yorkshire.
1939: Birth of Anna Mae Bullock, better known as the singer Tina Turner.
1942: The French Navy in Toulon, largely intact, but idled by its status under the terms of the Vichy agreement with Nazi Germany, is scuttled by the French themselves when they learn of Germany’s attempt to seize the ships in response to the Allied invasion of French North Africa three weeks earlier. The scuttling included three battleships, four heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, thirty destroyers and torpedo boats, fifteen submarines, and a number of support vessels. For Germany, the loss merely confirmed the fecklessness of the Vichy government, and removed the usefulness of the French Navy as a fleet-in-being that had to be guarded against. For the Allies, the loss was also against the potential of transforming that fleet-in-being into an actual fighting force in support of the Free French under Charles De Gaulle.
1955: Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on the bus, and is subsequently arrested. Her run-in with white authorities was not the first of its kind, but it was carefully designed to force a confrontation and to present the problem of segregation to a national stage. Parks was Secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, and was deeply engaged in helping design actions that would bring attention to the plight of Blacks in the segregated South. Her bus ride this day was part of that larger design. It succeeded, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott in the months that followed.
1959: The Antarctic Treaty is signed by the 12 nations participating in the International Geophysical Year (IGY), opening it for ratification by member states and others who will abide by its provisions. Antarctica remains the only land mass on the planet that is considered non-sovereign, and thus is part and parcel of the Global Commons– the regions of earth and space that, by belonging to no-one, are free to be used and exploited by everyone. The other Commons are the high seas (including the airspace over the high seas), exo-atmospheric space, and increasingly, the realm of cyber-space. The latter presents some complications, as it does not exist with the physical realm, but is dependent on engineering protocols and physical equipment** to function. One of the interesting questions in this regard is whether the State in which a server operates bears liability for the data that passes through the server.
1961: Two years into his Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro notes that he was a Marxist-Leninist, and that Cuba under his rule would be built into a communist state.
1990: Napoleon Bonaparte’s cross-Channel dream comes true as “Chunnel” drilling machines from France and England meet 120 feet under the seabed of the English Channel (ou La Manche, si vous preferez).
Thank you for the repeat of history that I learned 70-plus years ago, beginning in 1937 in Cape Charles.
2022 : Cape Charles Pickle Ball riot claims six lives. Mayhem broke out at the town courts due to a disagreement over court availability and scheduling.
The Cape Charles Police fought gallantly to restore order but the fighting was to fierce for our brave men in uniform. A call to the Northampton Sheriffs office saved the day. They dispatched 20 officers in a matter of minutes.
Governor Youngkin was also apprised of the situation and he placed the Virginia National Guard on standby.
Sadly, two of the Sheriffs succumbed to eye injuries due to being hit by pickle balls.
One Cape Charles police officer was air lifted and admitted to Norfolk General Hospital for emergency buttocks surgery. Eyewitness reported having seen the officer face down on the court being held by two deranged pickle ballers all the while be spanked with a pickle ball paddle by an unknown assailant.
The Town Council had an emergency session one hour after the smoke cleared.
As of yet there has been no official statement released but it was overheard by many an un-named council member saying to another council member “Oh, the humanity!”
What exceptional and candid reportage that is on what is clearly an episode of contemporary history in the Commonwealth of Virginia that should be of grave concern to every LOYAL AMERICAN who believes in law and order and who therefore decry this kind of lawless, barbarian violence that the game, for can we really call it a sport, of pickle ball, is introducing into the very fabric of our society here in America, one town at a time, swallowing them up in its voracious maw as it has just happed right here in front of everybody’s face in Cape Charles, which town one would not usually associate with his level of violence so graphically reported on in here, which revelation a grateful nation needs to hear, as does the candid world, so they know what really is going on over here since Joe Biden became president and brought these strange and violent ways to our land.
Paul,
I am thanking you for your kind words. I am in august company when we have we enter into a proper online discourse. I, as you Sir; will propagate to the masses “Truth, Justice and the Cape Charles way.”
Now back to business. My operatives have informed me that there is a link back to Joe Biden regarding this pickle ball imbroglio. Our organization (Cape Charles Patriots) have in roads to the highest government officials, FBI, CIA, DEA, Senators, Congressman as well as Chip Watson.
In a matter or hours we have breached under cover the local Pickle Ball Regime. The information came in torrents. Now this is where it gets juicy and the Biden Administration comes in. Their nefarious plan has been years in the making. First, they took the statues. Secondly, they change the names of buildings and schools. Thirdly, they start giving away the money. And the list goes on.
Now they galvanize a bunch of Pickle Ballers to attack the very Democracy that protects them. Is there no shame. We have learned that the Pickle Ball court take over is just a start. Next will be the take over of the Town Council by force by flogging the council members with their pickle ball racquets. From there they need an army. They will take hostage the Cape Charles Police force and drug them into being henchman for their evil machinations. Sort of like the movie “The Manchurian Candidate”. Marshall law will rule the land.
Once the take over is complete and we will be mere subjects to the Pickle Ball Lives Matter Cape Charles Chapter. Lives will be crushed. Dreams will fade just like a fart in the wind. Crime will spiral to all time highs. Inflation will be out of control. There will be cats and dogs living together! Sounds familiar?
Once this new junta has taken full control they will bring their fearless leader in town. Joe Biden will land in Marine One in the park and most likely trip on the helicopter stairs while disembarking. He will regale us with stories of his past. How he defended us when the Germans attacked Pearl Harbor (Animal House!) as well as how he has 43 pairs of Ray Ban Aviator sunglasses which he thinks make him look cool.
Joe will then be made an honorary member of Cape Charles, kiss a few babies and then fly off into the sunset. But there is hope! The Cape Charles Patriots lead by the Cape Charles Volunteer Fire Department and the former Mayor Dora Sullivan will rise from the ashes and bring the fight to the new regime! And there will be a cry from the land so loud it will be heard all the way to Cheriton. So let it be written and so let it be done. To be continued………..
I was told that this “Regime” was behind the illegal removal of the rail tracks so as to slow down any arms flow as well as troops to the Cape Charles Patriots.
This situation reminds me of the movie Red Dawn staring Patrick Swayze. Where the United States was attacked by the Russians and Cuba. Do the Cape Charles Patriots have a battle cry just like in the movie, “Wolverines!”?
I would like to support the “Patriots” either financially or as a nurse to treat the wounded. Maybe set up a MASH unit at the Popcorn shop in town. It is a very nice shop and I really think it will have a calming effect for the wounded.
We must fight to the bitter end to eradicate this Pickle Ball tyranny. God Bless Cape Charles and God Bless our Patriots.
Belligerents,
I asking that both warring parties for an immediate cessation of hostilities. Lives must be saved.
I will gladly use my good auspices to hold Peace Talks so we can move towards peace in our wonderful Cape Charles.
I will demand immediately a No Fly Zone over the Pickle Ball Courts as well as the laying down of arms. Pickle Ball rackets, sling shots, BB Guns as well as any other weapons will be off limits to all combatants.
Also, any and all covert operations must cease immediately. Special Forces operations must come to a halt as well.
An immediate pull back of forces to each side of Monroe Ave. Pickle Ballers to the north and Patriots to the south.
I will meet with emissary’s this Monday 5:00 pm at Jelly’s Pub for initial talks.
As John Lennon sang…”Give peace a chance”
Patriots of Cape Charles unite!
Heed the clarion call!
Make Cape Charles Great Again (MCCGA)!
Stand up for your rights!
Don’t let pickle ball become the only game in town!
Turn out en masse with badmitten rackets and a copious supply of shuttlecocks so they can’t hit your balls, and take back the tennis courts from these barbarian pickleballers who are turning Cape Charles into a modern remake of “The Wild One!” where a peaceable town like Cape Charles is taken over by motorcycle rowdies instead of pickleballers in that case, but is there a difference?
That is the pressing existential question of the hour!
Here him! Hear him!
Breaking News!
A yellow crop duster was shot down the latter part of today over the no fly zone which was created over the Pickle Ball courts.
Luckily for the pilot he parachuted out to safety and landed in the Shanty parking lot where he then immediately proceeded straight to the bar. Upon downing three straight shots of Crown Royal he spoke these words. “Gosh fellers, a man can get killed around here!”
Immediately following the downing of the unarmed aircraft both sides blamed the other for the incident.
General George Patton Watson of the Cape Charles Patriots commented “We will not go gently into this good night!
Admiral Hunter Biden of the Pickle Regime commented “Hey, what’s the problem? Nobody got hurt. Has anybody seen my lap top?”
The cease fire in place immediately disintegrated and as of this writing an artillery battles rages on.
PATRIOTS OF THE WORLD!
And all the good people out there, if there any left!
How can the world just sit there and watch this very struggle for survival on-going in once safe and once placid Cape Charles, Viginia, where whole families were once able to enjoy a leisurely game of tennis without some literal barbarian horde hitting their balls, thus making for an unpleasant experience where once was found clean family fun!
Call down anathema on these heathen and barbarian pickleballers, and form a CRUSADE to FREE CAPE CHARLES, and MAKE CAPE CHARLES GREAT AGAIN, like it was before this awful tragedy of the invasion of pickleball changed life forever in Cape Charles!
You’ll feel good about yourself and all warm and squishy inside if you do, and that alone makes it worth doing, not to mention how you will be feted as heroes in Cape Charles afterwards and treated to a feast of beanburgers and clams courtesy of the grateful citizens of Cape Charles whose futures you have restored to them!
And for stark proof of the involvement of Joe Biden himself in this on-going struggle for the soul of America in Cape Charles, Virginia, the epicenter of the struggle, and people, a valiant struggle it is, with the balls of the beleaguered patriots of Cape Charles being battered by the barbarian pickleballers, and still they fight back, undeterred by the superior forces arranged, and undaunted by the sheer firepower the pickleballers can amass, as Joe tries by force to impose his ways and values on us, we need go no further than a Fox News article titled “Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act bucks are just a huge waste” by Steven Malanga on 12 December 2022, where the proof of Joe Biden’s nefarious plan to impose his ways on us using federal tax dollars as a bludgeon to force pickleball on the people of Cape Charles, to give the world an opportunity to see the immense odds these poor people are up against, and why they need your prayers and support, to wit:
Cities, counties, and towns are taking a chunk of their $350 billion in Biden Bucks for similar outlays on sports, leisure, and parks.
Communities are rushing to build courts for pickleball — a new sport that mixes tennis and other net games and is apparently storming the country.
East Lansing, Mich., is deploying COVID funds to build six new courts.
Passionate players in Sidney, Ohio, petitioned for new courts; officials are giving them what they want with Biden money.
A North Carolina county is also considering $345,000 in the federal funding for new pickleball courts.