539 BC: Cyrus the Great of Persia captures Babylon, adding another huge swath of fertile territory to what became the largest unified empire on earth up to its time. Cyrus maintains an honored place in Western Civilization as one of the early progenitors of a centralized state managed by the rule of law. He integrated conquered peoples into the empire with a high degree of sensitivity to their customs, strengths and weaknesses, developing a system of local Satraps to administer the lands in the name of the King. Cyrus also has a place of honor in the Bible, being the referred to as “God’s anointed,” who not only freed the Jews from their Babylonian exile, but financed their return to their homeland.
70 BC: Birth of Roman poet Virgil (d.19 BC), author of the Ecolgues and the Aenid, among other works, whose legacy includes such pith as, Omnia vincit Amor (Love conquers all), Tempus Fugit* (time flies…), Latet anguis in herba (a snake in the grass), and Durate, et vosmet rebus servate secundis (Bear up, and live for happier days). I don’t know about you, but I think it is remarkable that for over 2,000 years, we moderns can instinctively recognize the VERITAS of the human condition, as recorded by this prolific and erudite writer.
680: Husayn ibn Ali, grandson of the prophet Mohammad, is decapitated in battle against the army of Caliph Yazid I. Ali’s death is one of the defining events in Islam’s great Sunni-Shi’a split. The core of the dispute centers on who rules as the legitimate successor to the prophet himself: blood heirs (Shi’a position) or political-scholarly leaders (Sunni position). The death is commemorated as the feast of Ashurah.
732: A Frankish army of 30,000 under the command of Charles “The Hammer” Martel, decisively defeats the invading Muslim army of Abdul Rahman al Ghafiqi at the Battle of Tours (also known as the Battle of Poitiers (pronounced “pwat’-teeaay”)). The Battle of Lepanto, this victory was one of three- many would say it was the most important- engagements that halted the militant spread of Islam in its tracks, and ensured that Europe would continue to develop as a collection of explicitly Christian kingdoms. The conventional wisdom over the last century or so is that had Martel’s army not been successful here, the tallest towers in the cities of Europe would have been minarets instead of church steeples.
1066: The last successful invasion of the British Isles takes place at the Battle of Hastings, where an invading French army under the command of the illegitimate son of the Duke of Normandy demolishes the army of England’s King Harold II. The victor changes his moniker from William the Bastard to William the Conqueror, and assumes the throne of England as William I. The victory was a credit to the discipline and morale of William’s army, aided by severe fatigue in Harold’s army, which had just recently force-marched themselves from the coastal north, where they repelled a Norse invasion on the 25th of September.
1307: King Philip the Fair of France, with the begrudging support of the Pope, sends out swarms of secret agents to arrest over 400 Knights Templar on charges of treason, blasphemy, and a dozen or so other spurious charges. The Last Grand Master of the order, Jacques de Molay was burned at the stake: this was the moment when Philip’s crusade against the Crusaders came to fruition, with torture, forced confessions and brutal executions following in the wake of this night.
1322: Robert the Bruce defeats the Earl of Richmond at the Battle of Old Byland- yet another nail in the coffin of British King Edward II’s subjugation of Scotland.
1492: Five weeks after heading west from the Canary Islands, Christopher Columbus makes landfall near Samana Cay in the southern region of the Bahamas Islands. He spends the next three months exploring primarily along the north coast of Cuba and the island of Hispaniola, trading with the natives, taking careful soundings, while all the while noting the locations of the harbors and availability of provisions for follow-on exploration.
1529: End of the first Siege of Vienna, where the heretofore unstoppable armies of Suleiman I (The Magnificent) were stopped after an exhausting march through the Balkans by the combination of Vienna’s walls, an early snowfall, and the determination and skill of the German Landsknets- a powerful mercenary force well trained in the use of halberds, pikes and long swords.
1654: A huge explosion in the beautiful Dutch city of Delft kills over a hundred people, injures hundreds more, and levels the central business district. The blast occurred during an inspection of a gunpowder magazine in the city center. Interestingly, the Delft University of Technology maintains an explicit and popular major in the science of explosions, a direct result of this tragedy.
1739: Birth of Grigory Potemkin (d.1791), Russian nobleman, military leader, and lifelong “favorite” of Empress Catherine the Great of Russia. The idiom that now bears his name came from his time as Governor-General of the newly annexed Crimea region. On the eve of renewed war with the Ottoman Empire, the Empress made an “unannounced” visit up the Dnieper River with her Court, multiple ambassadors, and a disguised Austrian Emperor Joseph II to show them the strength of her new territories. Potemkin painted up actual riverfront villages to make them look better, and also created a kind of mobile village that could be set up quickly and populated with members of his army and staff dressed up as peasants as the royal flotilla went by. It could just as quickly be knocked down and moved to the next location. There is, naturally, some controversy about the degree to which Potemkin was trying to deceive, although he was quite frank about wanting to put on the best front for his exalted guests.
1764: During a pause in his tour of Rome, British historian Edward Gibbon “[…] sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted fryars [sic] were singing Vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the City first started to my mind.” The idea germinated on this day eventually became six massive volumes of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, produced over a frenetic 12 years of nearly continuous research and writing. Gibbon was immediately catapulted to the top of Britain’s scholarly world. His primary theme was that the Romans lost their edge, and eventually their imperial power, as a result of the loss of civic virtue, i.e., an increasing unwillingness to hold onto a disciplined military-led culture, compounded by Christianity’s new emphasis on the eternal life of the spirit, which eased the temporal burdens of resistance to external aggression.
1775: The Continental Congress, recognizing the need to do something to protect American trade on the high seas, authorizes and purchases two vessels to act as the Continental Navy, progenitor of the United States Navy, which recognizes this date as its formal beginning. The tiny American fleet eventually grew to 65 vessels, mostly converted merchant ships, all of which provided the command and operational experiences for the cadre of captains who distinguished themselves in later naval conflicts with both France and Great Britain. 11 ships finished the war basically intact, with the final one, frigate Alliance, being sold off to a private buyer for $26,000 in 1785.
1780: A massive hurricane tears through the Lesser Antilles, creating a swath of destruction from the Grenadines to Bermuda that leaves 23,200 souls dead and no fewer than 65 naval vessels from France, the Netherlands and Great Britain lost at sea or smashed to splinters on a lee shore, to say nothing of the devastation ashore, where thousands of homes and business were swept away by the storm’s surge. The Great Hurricane of 1780 remains the single most destructive weather event in the history of the Atlantic Ocean.
1792: In the District of Columbia, the cornerstone is laid for the Executive Mansion, known today as the White House.
1793: French Queen Marie Antoinette is tried and convicted by a revolutionary court of “justice.” The verdict, you may rest assured, was never in doubt.
1793: Death of Marie Antoinette (b.1755), widow of the late King Louis XVI. After what passed for a trial a couple days before, the now-former queen maintained her composure during the hour long ride in a open oxcart between her jail cell and the guillotine erected in the Place de la Revolution (now the Place du Concorde). Her final words were, “Pardon me monsieur, I did not mean to do it, ” having accidentally stepped on the foot of the executioner on her way across the platform.
1810: Crown Prince Ludwig I of Bavaria invites all the citizens of Munich to a fair just outside the city gates to celebrate his wedding to Princess Therese of Saxe- Hildburghausen, celebrating in a meadow they named Threseinweise (Therese’s meadow), the same name as it has today. The celebration was such a hit, with an agricultural fair, horse races, fresh beer, and a general celebration of all things Bavarian, that the good citizens of Munich have continued it to this day.
1823: Scotsman Charles Macintosh patents and sells his first raincoat, a garment whose virtues are a direct result of Macintosh’s invention of a method to blend rubber into cotton and linen threads, thus finally creating a wearable outer shell that actually repels water.
1834: The Palaces of Westminster, home of the Kings of England since Medieval times, and of the Houses of Parliament since 1295, burn to the ground, with only a couple portions of the original structure remaining usable. The government opened an architectural competition began to re-build the structure, and construction began 6 years later, in 1840. Thirty years after that, Parliament moved back in. The final furnishings were not completed until early in the 20th century. There must be a lesson here about the efficacy of government contracting, but I’m not sure what it is. No, really.
1845: The first class of The Naval School is seated in Annapolis, Maryland; 50 midshipmen and 7 instructors begin the process of formalizing the training of nascent officers of the U.S. Navy.
1859: Abolitionist John Brown leads a team of 18 men on a raid of the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, planning on capturing the 10,000 rifles and ammunition in storage there with the expectation of leading a slave revolt in the southern states. They captured the arsenal fine, there being only one watchman on duty, but they were pretty much like the dog who finally captured the car it was chasing, trying to figure out what to do next when a regularly scheduled train arrived. Jumpy as they were, one of them shot Hayward Shepherd, the Baggage Master who was trying to hail them about something else. The irony of a free black man being the first victim of the purported slave revolt was likely lost on Brown. The train promptly continued on its way and telegraphed to the B&O RR headquarters that evil was afoot in Harper’s Ferry.
1863: The Confederate submarine CSS H.L. Hunley sinks (rather than submerges) during a test dive, drowning its inventor and the entire rest of the crew. After being raised and refurbished one more time, the 7-man submersible eventually makes the world’s first successful submarine attack on another warship. Hunley is currently on display in its restoration lab on the site of the former Naval Station Charleston.
1871: Three days after “Mrs. O’Leary’s cow” knocked over the lantern in the barn, The Great Chicago Fire finally burns itself out. The cataclysm took over 300 lives, left nearly three and a half square miles of the city center in cinders, and displaced over 100,000 people from their homes. The cow story, by the way, was fabricated by a journalist, knowing it would play well against the latent anti-Irish sentiment that infected much of Chicago society.
1884: American inventor George Eastman receives a patent for a paper-strip photographic film.
1893: Birth of silent screen siren Lillian Gish (d.1993), one of the pioneers of the film industry who helped define the term, “Movie Star.”
1909: Birth of Washington Post political cartoonist Herblock (d.2002), most of whose work I found disconcerting rather than thought-provoking.
1910: At Kinloch Field just west of Saint Louis, Theodore Roosevelt climbs aboard a Wright Model B aeroplane with pilot Archibald Hoxey and becomes the first (ex-)President to go flying.
1912: Former President Theodore Roosevelt, campaigning in Milwaukee as the head of the new Bull Moose party, is shot in the chest by a local saloon keeper. The bullet penetrated his steel eyeglass case and a 50 page copy of his manuscript before lodging in the muscle of his chest wall. Since he was not coughing up blood, TR knew that the wound was not mortal, so he went ahead and gave the speech with blood slowly oozing under his shirt and coat. He opened his comments with, “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose…the bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.” Afterwards, the doctors decided it would be safer to leave the bullet in place rather than remove it, and TR carried it with him until he died.
1914: Birth of Mohammad Zahir Shah (d.2007), the last King of Afghanistan.
1916: Progressive icon Margaret Sanger opens in Brooklyn the nation’s first contraception clinic, for which she was promptly arrested and put on trial.
1919: Birth of Doris Miller (d.1943), a cook aboard USS West Virginia (BB-48). During the attack on Pearl Harbor, Miller dashed up to the bridge after his normal General Quarters station was hit by a Japanese torpedo, and helped move his captain from the path of direct fire from the Japanese aircraft. Then, on his own initiative, he started firing one of the bridge machine guns at the attacking planes. He was presented the Navy Cross by Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz. His citation reads, in part:
““…[his] distinguished devotion to duty, extraordinary courage and disregard of his personal safety during the attack on the Fleet in Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. While at the side of his Captain on the bridge, Miller despite enemy strafing and bombing, and in the face of serious fire, assisted in moving his Captain, who had been mortally wounded, to a place of greater safety and later manned and operated a machine gun until ordered to leave the bridge.”
2020 Update: Last January the Navy announced that the newest nuclear aircraft carrier in the new Ford class will be named USS Doris Miller (CVN-81).
1923: Cartoonist Walt Disney incorporates the Walt Disney Company with his brother Roy Disney. If
1925: Birth of the Iron Lady, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain (d.2013)
1926: British author A.A. Milne introduces his most memorable character to the public with the publication of Winnie-the-Pooh.
1928: Three years after the death of his long-time mentor, Sun Yat Sen, General Chang Kai Shek becomes Chairman of the Republic of China
1928: First use of an Iron Lung for therapeutic respiration, at Children’s Hospital, in Boston.
1928: The massive rigid airship Graf Zepplin completes its first Trans-Atlantic crossing.
1934: The Soviet Republic of China- the nascent communist workers’ paradise- collapses as the Kuomintang army under Chaing Kai Shek triumphantly enters Ruijin, forcing the communists under Mao Tse Tung to begin their storied “Long March” to the mountain fastness of the interior, where they will re-organize and plot their eventual return to power.
1936: Birth of American Historian James McPherson, whose brilliant expostulation of the Late Unpleasantness, The Battle Cry of Freedom (1988), brought to life the depth, the strength, the beauty, the brutality, the hardship, the courage and the utter humanity of the tens of thousands of stories that have become our collective memory of the War Between the States.
1938: First flight of the Curtis P-40 Warhawk, the mainstay fighter of the Army Air Corps in the early years of WWII, with 13,738 produced before production ceased in 1944.
1940: The Nazi government of Germany, whose army spent the last six weeks obliterating Poland’s army and forcing the capitulation of the Polish government, establishes a closed ghetto in the heart of Warsaw as a place to concentrate the extensive Jewish population of the country pending further plans.
1941: Birth of singer-songwriter Paul Simon, one half of a pair quite possibly the most talented musicians of the 1960s & 70s.
1943: After running Il Duce out of office and putting his corpse on public display on a meat hook, the new government of suddenly non-Fascist Italy turns on their former Pact of Steel partner and joins the Allies against Nazi Germany. The occupying German army is not impressed, and fought a bitter and basically successful retrograde action up the Italian peninsula for the next two years, with the Germans still holding much of northern Italy when the war ended. The political reversal did not do any favors to the reputation of Italian fighting forces, a sting that lingered for decades.
1945: In the aftermath of the Japanese surrender, the Communist Chinese under Mao Tse Tung and the Kuomintang of Chang Kai Shek sign an agreement on the post-war future of China. The “Double Tenth” agreement confirmed that the Kuomintang was the de facto ruling party of China, and that the Communists were a legitimate opposition party.
1950: British author C.S. Lewis publishes The Chronicles of Narnia.
1960: At the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Premier Nikita Khrushchev, becomes incensed with statements made by the Philippine ambassador about the lack of political freedom in the nations of Eastern Europe. Khrushchev, furious, leaps to the podium to forcefully object to the statements, pounding his fist for emphasis, and as he continued, picked up his shoe and continued the diatribe until the embarrassed UN Chairman of the meeting declared the session over. In the U.S., the event became an iconographic shorthand for our view of the mercurial Soviet leader.
1962: Pope John XXIII convenes the Second Vatican Council, the first “summit conference” of the Roman Catholic Church since the First Vatican Council of 1878, and only the 21st Council since the beginning of Roman Christianity. Called with the specific intent of better aligning Catholic practice with the modern, post-World War II world, it remains a flashpoint of principled dissent within the traditional wing of the larger church body. Two primary arguments against the Council assert that:
1) Since there was no formal doctrinal statement supporting the dilution of longstanding traditions of the Church, those changes were therefore not binding for faithful Catholics, and;
2) Building even further on this thought, a small but intense school of thought believes that since the leadership of the Church broke with tradition with the work of the Council, the subsequent Popes have no canonical standing and cannot legitimately claim the papacy, thus legally rendering the office vacant.
Of particular note is the post-John XXIII fate of four of the participants of the Council: Cardinal Giovanni Montini (Paul VI), Bishop Albino Luciani (John Paul I), Bishop Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II), and Father Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI).
1967: The Outer Space Treaty goes into effect. The parties to the treaty agree to not place nuclear weapons into orbit, and to refrain from using the moon or other celestial bodies as military testing or staging areas. The treaty is often misconstrued as prohibiting the “militarization” of space, but this is not the case. It does provide a framework for consultation and non-interference between spacefaring nations; it considers space part of the global commons, and the moon and other celestial bodies as part of the “common heritage of mankind”.
1973: U.S. Vice-President Spiro T. Agnew resigns from office. The former Governor of Maryland was a lightning rod for the Left, acting as President Nixon’s verbal hatchet man, using mockery and incisive rhetoric to beat the radicals at their own game. What finally brought him down, as it did for Al Capone, was an eventual indictment for federal tax evasion. When faced with a potentially long and ugly public trial, Agnew did the correct thing and stepped aside, granting the Administration’s many enemies the first of several prominent heads to roll.
1984: Terrorists from the Provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army set off a massive time bomb at a hotel in Brighton, UK, where the Conservative Party is holding a conference. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was the explicit target of the blast, but she survived. 5 others were killed, and 31 wounded. Mrs. Thatcher took pains to hold the next day’s meetings on schedule in defiance of the terrorists.
1984: Long-time anti-apartheid activist, the Reverend Desmond Tutu is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
2000: During pierside refueling in the port of Aden, Yemen, two Islamic terrorists carefully moor what looks like a service barge alongside the USS Cole (DDG-67). They pass lines across to the sailors on deck, step back toward the center of their craft, smile and salute the Americans. Then they trigger a huge explosion that blows themselves to smithereens, also killing 17 American sailors, injuring 39, and opening a 40-foot gash in the side of the ship. Quick response from the ship’s damage control teams helped control the flooding and fire, saving the ship from what could easily have been a mortal wound. Cole was lifted back to the States for repairs and upgrades, and was back in service after 14 months. She is currently homeported in Norfolk, VA.
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