History Notes this week of Oct 1

551 B.C: Birth of Chinese philosopher Confucius (d.479 B.C.).

480 B.C. At the Battle of Salamis, a fleet of about 360 Greek triremes destroys the hitherto unstoppable Xerxes and his invading Persian fleet of 1,207 triremes in the waters just south of Athens. Despite Persia’s earlier successes against the Greeks, including their nominal victory at the Battle of Thermopylae a short month earlier, the force was stretched to its limit, and needed to consolidate its land and sea forces before the oncoming winter ended the campaigning season. The Greek states, under the leadership of Themistocles, saw an opportunity for their heavily outnumbered fleet to limit the Persians’ maneuverability in the tight reaches near Salamis Island, and thence to individually destroy them on nearly equal terms. The lopsided victory completely un-did Persia’s earlier victories ashore, and sent the Xerxes and his forces back into Anatolia for a generation. Of note, the Persian general staff, confident in their overwhelming numbers, convinced Xerxes to set up a throne on a prominent hill near the expected battle, where he could personally watch the victory.

420 A.D: Death of Saint Jerome (b.347 A.D.), an early Christian scholar and one of the Doctors of the Church, who is best known for his seminal work of translating Hebrew and Greek biblical texts into a standardized Latin version, known as the Vulgate, in addition to a huge number of incisive commentaries on various books and letters contained in therein. He is recognized as a Saint by all the major High Church denominations. You’ll recognize him as the man pulling a thorn from the lion’s paw

935 A.D: Death of Prince Wenceslaus I (b. circa 907 A.D.), at the hand of his brother. Wenceslaus was the first Christian king of the Czechs, resisting multiple attempts to re-convert him to the local Bohemian paganism. He was the founder of the rotunda at Prague Castle, now consecrated as St. Vitus Cathedral. At his death, his remains were interred in the rotunda, and after his elevation to sainthood, they became holy relics on display. The photo shows his skull being honored as part of the celebration of the Czech Republic’s national day, which corresponds with the day of his martyrdom. The Christmas song is about this Wenceslaus, not the string of others who followed.

1187: After three weeks of siege, the Saracen warlord Saladin captures Jerusalem, ending 88 years of Crusader rule over the Holy City. In contrast to the Crusaders’ bloodletting and mayhem when they entered the city in 1092, Saladin permitted the option of an orderly departure of its citizens or a hefty dhimmi tax. Thirty days after the fall, Jerusalem’s gates were opened and the vast majority of the city left under Saladin’s guarantee of safe passage for Antioch and other Christian strongholds along the Levant coast.

1226: Death of the monk Francis of Assisi (b.1181), who renounced a life of wealth and soldiering in favor of a life of pious poverty and prayer. His Franciscan Order grew to be one of the most influential in Europe, with its ministry structured on the simple precept: “To follow the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ and to walk in his footsteps,” the injunction being drawn from Francis’ reading of Matthew 10:9. The current Bishop of Rome took Francis’ name when he ascended to the papacy in 2013.

1535: French explorer Jacques Cartier lays claim to the area now known as Montreal, Canada.

1553: On the death of her half-brother Edward VI, Mary I of England, the legitimate offspring of Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, is crowned Queen of England. Despite her father’s serial marriages and semi-Protestant breakaway from the Roman Catholic Church, she remained a lifelong Catholic, and within months of her coronation initiated a violent Catholic Restoration across the country that swept up many of the most notable men in the realm. The number of imprisonments and executions conducted under her hand earned her the lasting nickname of “Bloody Mary,” a reputation made worse by the glories of her half-sister Elizabeth I, who assumed the throne after Mary’s death in 1558. Despite her dark reputation, she is notable for being the first woman to successfully assume the throne of England, ironically paving the way for Elizabeth’s succession.

1574: Six years into what would become the Eighty Years War (also known as the Dutch War of Independence) a flat-bottomed fleet of boats and ships, collected and led by Prince William the Silent of the House of Orange, and manned by the Watergeuzen(known in English as the “Sea Beggars,” a name that grew from an earlier gathering of Dutch nobles who pledged to each other the defense of the Netherlands against the continuing deprivations of the Spanish Crown.  In 1566 the nobles petitioned en masse to the Spanish regent Margaret, Duchess of Parma, who was alarmed to see such a strong gathering of Dutchmen at her doorstep. One of her counselors saw the interaction and exclaimed, “What, madam, is your highness afraid of these beggars?” Those beggars heard it and adopted the epithet as their own title, complete with a coat of arms (a beggar’s bowl and purse). The term continued to be adopted and adapted throughout the Dutch Rebellion), lifting the Siege of Leiden, and saving the university city from certain desolation from the hand of the Spanish Duke of Alva. The city’s outstanding defensive dispositions- walls and moats- protected it from Alva’s first investment a couple of years earlier, and again during this siege. But the city’s situation also made them isolated from William’s relieving force. William finally sent a carrier pigeon into the city, telling them to hang on for three more months, at which point he would arrive by boat with a relieving force. To do so, he broke the dykes between the North Sea and Leiden, and systematically sailed his fleet across the flooded polderland, driving Alva’s forces from the field and relieving the city, eventually unloading tons of herring and white bread for the starving citizens. The event remains a Big Deal in the Dutch psyche and includes those odd little bits that you sometimes wonder about. For example, if Dutch children are bad at Christmastime, they are threatened with being fed to the Black Prince (Alva always wore black), or they are threatened with being sent off to Spain, which would have been a terrifying proposition in 1574.
        The day is celebrated today with meals of herring and white bread, and a carrot & onion stew called “Hutspot,” which was actually a Spanish meal, abandoned hot by the defending army at the sudden appearance of the rising waters that carried in the Watergeuzen. 

1770: Death of Christian evangelist and founder of Methodism, George Whitfield (b.1714), whose open-air sermons in the fields of England sparked a significant spiritual revival in that country. He first came over to the New World in 1738 and continued his custom of preaching the Gospel to huge crowds in outdoor venues. In 1740 he began preaching a series of revivals that lasted continuously for several months, beginning in New England and ending in Charleston, South Carolina. His work during this period and the explosive growth of churches throughout the colonies are now known as The Great Awakening. Whitfield’s voice, his crossed eyes, his charisma and his message made him one of the most recognized and celebrated men in the English colonies, widely admired by even the worldly Benjamin Franklin, who considered him a lifelong friend. He is buried in the Old South Church in Newburyport, Massachusetts. 

1780: Death of British spy John Andre (b.1750), hanged by the neck until dead. He was closely aligned with Benedict Arnold’s plan to turn over West Point to the British. Although he proclaimed his innocence of espionage, his plea was undone by having the plans for West Point tucked into his socks, which did not go over well with the military tribunal that sentenced him. Interestingly, everyone associated with him between his arrest and his hanging agreed that he remained the consummate gentleman, facing death like a true soldier, despite not being allowed a soldierly death by firing squad.

1789: President George Washington signs the first Thanksgiving Day proclamation.

1863: President Abraham Lincoln signs a proclamation designating the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day.

1871: Birth of Nobel Laureate Cordell Hull (d.1955), who carries the distinction of being the nation’s longest-serving Secretary of State- 11 years- during the administration of Franklin Roosevelt. He is credited with being the “Father of the United Nations,” a role for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945. In my mind, his best moment occurred on the morning of December 7^th, 1941, when he received word about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor at the very moment two Japanese diplomats were in his anteroom awaiting an audience regarding continuing negotiations. What happened next is deliciously described in Wikipedia:
        “Roosevelt advised him not to tell them about the raid but ‘to receive them formally and coolly bow them out’. After he had glanced at their copy of the fourteen-part message [Japan’s declaration that negotiations were at an end], Hull’s anger burst forth. ‘In all my fifty years of public service,’ he told the astonished diplomats, ‘I have never seen such a document that was more crowded with infamous falsehood and distortion.’ Nomura and Kurusu, who had not been told of the attack, bowed themselves out in an embarrassed fluster. A department official overheard Hull muttering under his breath as the door closed, ‘Scoundrels and piss-ants.’”

1881: Birth of Ludwig von Mises (d.1973), the Austrian economist who was particularly outspoken about the deadly effects of socialist economic models on both the economies and political lives of nations. His work and legacy became known as the Austrian School of economics, characterized by a deep understanding and broad-based endorsement of the efficacy of capitalism and free markets in the affairs of men and nations.

1882: American inventor Thomas Edison, creating the market infrastructure for his electrical inventiveness, opens his first commercial hydroelectric power station on the Fox River near Appleton, Wisconsin.

1890: Pushed  by naturalists Galen Clark and John Muir, and building on the Yosemite Grant signed by President Lincoln, Congress establishes Yosemite National Park, a spectacular glacial valley and wilderness area in the central Sierra Nevada range that defines the National Park system to this day.

1895: Death of Louis Pasteur (b.1822), one of the great minds of micro-biology, who helped develop and later proved the germ theory of disease, and whose name is forever attached to the process of ensuring milk and wine do not carry their traditional threat of illness. He also created the first vaccines for rabies and anthrax.

1901: Birth of the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi (d.1954), widely regarded as one of the greatest scientific minds of the 20^thCentury. In 1942 his most notable blend of theoretical physics with practical applications resulted in the world’s first controlled nuclear chain reaction, the Chicago Pile-1, an early proof-of-concept for the Manhattan Project. He also published incisive papers on quantum theory, particle physics and statistical mechanics. I can’t begin to explain them, but they are real, and Fermi’s was the mind that made the concepts accessible to the wider scientific community.

1908: Sale of the first Model T Ford, marketed for the unheard of price of $850.00, when most automobiles of the day cost well over $2,000. Henry Ford was determined to build a machine that virtually anyone could afford- including his factory workers. Between the initial start-up in 1908 and the end of the run in 1927, the Ford Motor Company built over 15,000,000 of them, a record only recently surpassed by the air-cooled Volkswagen Beetle.

1919: President Woodrow Wilson suffers a massive stroke that paralyzes the left side of his body, rendering him essentially incapacitated for the remainder of his Presidency. His wife Edith completely controlled his schedule and access to anyone outside the immediate White House circle, particularly the Vice President, the entire Cabinet, and visiting Members of Congress. After several months, she arranged for journalist Louis Sibold to write a false account of his health. Toward the end of his term, he would be wheeled into the Cabinet Room, where he would preside but only make the most perfunctory remarks.

1921: Birth of North American Aviation test pilot Scott Crossfield (d.2006), who alternated with fellow test pilot Chuck Yeager in setting altitude and speed records in increasingly spectacular and dangerous test aircraft during the 1950s. He was the first to reach Mach 2.0. He was intimately involved in the design and test flights of the X-15 rocket plane, flying the machine 14 times to verify systems and procedures, without making any record-breaking flights himself. His own X-15 records are Mach 2.97, and an altitude of 91,800 feet; not too shabby in any pilot’s logbook.

1927: Outfielder Babe Ruth of the New York Yankees smacks his 60^th home run of the season, a record that will stand until 1961.

1928: Birth of Nobel Laureate, Holocaust survivor and relentless Nazi-hunter, Elie Wiesel (d.2016).

1928: The Soviet Union announces its first Five Year Plan, setting production quotas, prices, distribution plans and work assignments for the entire country. Thirteen plans later, the system collapsed into a somewhat of a market-based system.

1935: Fascist Italy, governed by the internationally popular Progressive reformer Benito Mussolini, opens its invasion of Abyssinia, an eight month conflict that ended with the region’s annexation into the Italian Empire as Italian East Africa. The glory days were brief, as the colonies were stripped away from Italy by the Allies of World War II, and later granted independence as Ethiopia and Somalia. As if more evidence were needed, this war also underlined the futile efforts of the League of Nations to create a viable forum for settling international disputes. And for us language mavens, the independence of these two new countries (of itself a good thing) also foreclosed on two more of those East African place-names that are so entertaining to pronounce: Somaliland and Abyssinia.

1938: Three short weeks after Adolf Hitler’s incendiary speech (DLH 9/12) demanding “self-determination” for the German population living in Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland region, the leaders of France, Italy and Great Britain agree to permit Germany to annex the region into the Third Reich. The Munich Agreement, as the diplomatic initiative was known, exemplified the principle of appeasement as a means to prevent war. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was its most vocal advocate, pointedly refuting opposition leader Winston Churchill’s increasingly strident identification of the latent threat of continued German aggression and Britain’s woeful inability to militarily resist it. You’ll note that the principals at the conference did not include any Czech representation, nor anyone from the Soviet Union. Given Great Britain’s defense pact with Czechoslovakia, the Czechs refer to this settlement as the Munich Diktat.

1938: The League of Nations, perhaps sensing the true import of the Munich Pact, unanimously passes a resolution that outlaws “intentional bombing of civilian populations.”

1939: A month into Germany’s invasion of Poland, the Nazi and Soviet governments publicly agree to divide the country between themselves.

1941: In German-occupied Kiev, Ukraine, the SS commander orders the massacre of the city’s Jewish population, and over the course of two days, kills 33,771 civilians in a ravine named Babi Yar, just outside the city.

1947: First television broadcast of the World Series, the contest that year being between the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers.

1949: Chinese warlord Mao Tse Tung, adding a thick layer of untoward political brutality to the usual brutalities of civil war, proclaims the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. Those of us of a certain age will remember the startling images of thousands of newly “liberated” Chinese chanting slogans and waving the Little Red Book, filled with the sayings and non-negotiable demands of the new communist model of governance.

1950: First installment of the Peanuts cartoon strip, written and drawn by Charles Schultz.

1955: First television broadcast of Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse Club.

1960: First broadcast of The Flintstones, the first animated series to hold a prime-time slot on television. ABC ran the show for 166 episodes over six seasons. 

1962: Navy Commander Wally Schirra blasts into orbit aboard Sigma-7 the fifth flight of the Mercury space program. The six-orbit mission lasted a little over 9 hours. The Sigma-7 mission was distinctive from the engineering perspective as it tested the suitability of spacecraft systems for progressively longer duration missions. The tests did not make for much drama (other than the fact of orbiting in space), as Schirra spent much of the mission doing essentially nothing, either permitting the spacecraft automated flight controls to maintain its positioning, or shutting down the system entirely for hours at a time, and then seeing what happened when it was re-engaged. It provided proof-of-concept for the remaining Mercury flight (22 orbits) and the much more ambitious planning for the Gemini program.  Schirra was the only one of the original astronauts to fly on all three of the United States’ original space programs.

1966: The former British Protectorate of Bechuanaland declares its independence and changes its name to Botswana. It’s a shame about the name change, as it is one of those historic place-names, like Zanzibar and Tanganyika, that just feel good to pronounce out loud.
 
1968: At their plant in Everett, Washington, the Boeing Company rolls out the astonishing 747 airliner. 1,574 of them have been built to date, in no fewer than nine variants. 

1979: As the first step in implementation of the Carter-Torrijos Panama Canal Treaty, the United States formally released its sovereignty over the Canal Zone, changing its status to a tenant of the Panamanian government.

1990: The final day of existence for the German Democratic Republic.  

1995: The blood-soaked and shrunken leather glove didn’t fit, so Heisman Award winner O. J. Simpson is acquitted of murdering his wife and houseguest