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).
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 the fatiguing reality that Harold’s army had just recently force-marched 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.
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 halebrids, pikes and long swords.
1764: During 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. Gibbon’s primary theme was that the Romans lost their edge, and eventually their imperial power, as a result 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.
1792: In the District of Columbia, the cornerstone is laid for the Executive Mansion, known today as the White House.
1793: Queen Marie Antoinette is tried and convicted by a revolutionary court of “justice.”
1863: The Confederate submarine CSS H.L. Hunley sinks (rather than submerges) during a test dive, drowning its inventor. After being raised and refurbished one more time, the 7-man submersible eventually makes the world’s first successful submarine attack on another warship (DLH 2/17). Hunley is currently on display in its restoration lab on the site of the former Naval Station Charleston.
1884: American inventor George Eastman receives a patent for a paper-strip photographic film.
1908: The Chicago Cubs win the World Series.
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.
1926: British author A.A. Milne introduces Winnie-the-Pooh.
1928: The 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.
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. If you had a big checkbook in early ’44, you could have had one for $44,892.00.
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.
1947: USAAF ace and former POW Captain Chuck Yeager, flying as a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base out in the Mojave Desert, makes the world’s first supersonic flight in the Bell X-1 rocket plane. The event was nicely depicted in the 1985 movie The Right Stuff, derived from Tom Wolf’s book of the same name, which rightly identified the Edwards test pilot cadre as the quintessence of America’s push into ever more expanded and dangerous flight regimes. After this flight, Yeager went continued to set altitude and speed records in an ongoing competition with fellow test pilot Scott Crossfield.
1951: First broadcast of I Love Lucy, starring Lucille Ball, Dezi Arnez, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley.
1962: A USAF U-2 reconnaissance plane returns from a flight over Cuba with photographic proof that the Soviet Union was installing ballistic missile launching facilities on the newly communist island.
1966: Inspired by ongoing Leftist dissent against the Vietnam War, black radicals Huey Newton and Bobby Seals form the Black Panther Party.
1997: The Thrust SSC, driven by British fighter pilot Anthony Green, sets a land speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats, marking the first time a wheeled vehicle passes the supersonic threshold.
2003: The Chicago Cubs, in Game 6 of the NL playoffs: Cubs 3 games to 2 over the Marlins; bottom of the 8th inning, Cubs ahead 3-0, 1 out, full count. Marlins 2nd baseman tags an easy pop fly to the Left Field line. Cubs LF Moises Alou runs over to catch it, which will put them only 4 outs away from their first World Series since 1945, let alone that 1908 record. Alou makes a leap toward the wall, and Cubs fan Steve Bartman also reaches out from his seat to snag the probable foul ball and tips it away from Alou’s glove. The inning therefore continues, the Cubs allow the Marlins to score 8 runs in the remaining at-bats to win the game and tie the playoffs. It stands to reason that the Marlins follow up with a win in game 7, and off they go to the World Series.
About the Author
With regard to the Italians in WWII, some wag whose name eludes me right now remarked that they never end up on the same side they started on, unless the war lasted long enough for them to change sides twice.
An excellent history on that subject is “The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944” by Rick Atkinson as part of his “The Liberation Trilogy.”
As to a navy for the United States of America after the conclusion of the Revolution, in FEDERALIST No. 24, “The Powers Necessary to the Common Defense Further Considered,” for the Independent Journal to the People of the State of New York by Alexander Hamilton circa December 1787, he states as follows:
If we mean to be a commercial people, or even to be secure on our Atlantic side, we must endeavor, as soon as possible, to have a navy.
To this purpose there must be dock-yards and arsenals; and for the defense of these, fortifications, and probably garrisons.
When a nation has become so powerful by sea that it can protect its dock-yards by its fleets, this supersedes the necessity of garrisons for that purpose; but where naval establishments are in their infancy, moderate garrisons will, in all likelihood, be found an indispensable security against descents for the destruction of the arsenals and dock-yards, and sometimes of the fleet itself.
And in FEDERALIST No. 34, “The Same Subject Continued (Concerning the General Power of Taxation)” from the New York Packet to the People of the State of New York by Alexander Hamilton on Friday, January 4, 1788, he comes back once again to the subject of the need for a navy, as follows:
In pursuing this inquiry, we must bear in mind that we are not to confine our view to the present period, but to look forward to remote futurity.
Constitutions of civil government are not to be framed upon a calculation of existing exigencies, but upon a combination of these with the probable exigencies of ages, according to the natural and tried course of human affairs.
Nothing, therefore, can be more fallacious than to infer the extent of any power, proper to be lodged in the national government, from an estimate of its immediate necessities.
There ought to be a CAPACITY to provide for future contingencies as they may happen; and as these are illimitable in their nature, it is impossible safely to limit that capacity.
Observations confined to the mere prospects of internal attacks can deserve no weight; though even these will admit of no satisfactory calculation: but if we mean to be a commercial people, it must form a part of our policy to be able one day to defend that commerce.
The support of a navy and of naval wars would involve contingencies that must baffle all the efforts of political arithmetic.
To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude that the fiery and destructive passions of war reign in the human breast with much more powerful sway than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace; and that to model our political systems upon speculations of lasting tranquillity, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.
What are the chief sources of expense in every government?
What has occasioned that enormous accumulation of debts with which several of the European nations are oppressed?
The answers plainly is, wars and rebellions; the support of those institutions which are necessary to guard the body politic against these two most mortal diseases of society.
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And actually, the subject of our having need of a navy comes up in FEDERALIST No. 11, “The Utility of the Union in Respect to Commercial Relations and a Navy” for the Independent Journal to the People of the State of New York by Alexander Hamilton circa 1787, as follows:
THE importance of the Union, in a commercial light, is one of those points about which there is least room to entertain a difference of opinion, and which has, in fact, commanded the most general assent of men who have any acquaintance with the subject.
This applies as well to our intercourse with foreign countries as with each other.
There are appearances to authorize a supposition that the adventurous spirit, which distinguishes the commercial character of America, has already excited uneasy sensations in several of the maritime powers of Europe.
They seem to be apprehensive of our too great interference in that carrying trade, which is the support of their navigation and the foundation of their naval strength.
Those of them which have colonies in America look forward to what this country is capable of becoming, with painful solicitude.
They foresee the dangers that may threaten their American dominions from the neighborhood of States, which have all the dispositions, and would possess all the means, requisite to the creation of a powerful marine.
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Clearly, Hamilton was a visionary looking ahead in time to what the United States of America, as we know them in our times, might be, and would need to be, which was a naval power equal to the of Great Britain, “Rule Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves!
Britons never, never, never shall be slaves,” as we see by returning to Federalist No. 11, as follows:
Suppose, for instance, we had a government in America, capable of excluding Great Britain (with whom we have at present no treaty of commerce) from all our ports; what would be the probable operation of this step upon her politics?
Would it not enable us to negotiate, with the fairest prospect of success, for commercial privileges of the most valuable and extensive kind, in the dominions of that kingdom?
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The only way a government in America back then could exclude Great Britain from all our ports, which we clearly could not do during the War of 1812 (Jemmy Madison’s War), was with a powerful navy, as again we see from Federalist No. 11, as follows:
A further resource for influencing the conduct of European nations toward us, in this respect, would arise from the establishment of a federal navy.
There can be no doubt that the continuance of the Union under an efficient government would put it in our power, at a period not very distant, to create a navy which, if it could not vie with those of the great maritime powers, would at least be of respectable weight if thrown into the scale of either of two contending parties.
This would be more peculiarly the case in relation to operations in the West Indies.
A few ships of the line, sent opportunely to the reinforcement of either side, would often be sufficient to decide the fate of a campaign, on the event of which interests of the greatest magnitude were suspended.
Our position is, in this respect, a most commanding one.
And if to this consideration we add that of the usefulness of supplies from this country, in the prosecution of military operations in the West Indies, it will readily be perceived that a situation so favorable would enable us to bargain with great advantage for commercial privileges.
A price would be set not only upon our friendship, but upon our neutrality.
By a steady adherence to the Union we may hope, ere long, to become the arbiter of Europe in America, and to be able to incline the balance of European competitions in this part of the world as our interest may dictate.
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As I say, Hamilton was a visionary with respect to the need for a powerful navy for political purposes, which is what it is today, which against takes us back to Federalist No. 11, as follows:
But in the reverse of this eligible situation, we shall discover that the rivalships of the parts would make them checks upon each other, and would frustrate all the tempting advantages which nature has kindly placed within our reach.
In a state so insignificant our commerce would be a prey to the wanton intermeddlings of all nations at war with each other; who, having nothing to fear from us, would with little scruple or remorse, supply their wants by depredations on our property as often as it fell in their way.
The rights of neutrality will only be respected when they are defended by an adequate power.
A nation, despicable by its weakness, forfeits even the privilege of being neutral.
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As to that last sentence, Hamilton certainly had a way with words, alright, which again takes us back to Federalist No. 11, as follows:
Under a vigorous national government, the natural strength and resources of the country, directed to a common interest, would baffle all the combinations of European jealousy to restrain our growth.
An active commerce, an extensive navigation, and a flourishing marine would then be the offspring of moral and physical necessity.
We might defy the little arts of the little politicians to control or vary the irresistible and unchangeable course of nature.
But in a state of disunion, these combinations might exist and might operate with success.
It would be in the power of the maritime nations, availing themselves of our universal impotence, to prescribe the conditions of our political existence; and as they have a common interest in being our carriers, and still more in preventing our becoming theirs, they would in all probability combine to embarrass our navigation in such a manner as would in effect destroy it, and confine us to a PASSIVE COMMERCE.
We should then be compelled to content ourselves with the first price of our commodities, and to see the profits of our trade snatched from us to enrich our enemies and persecutors.
That unequaled spirit of enterprise, which signalizes the genius of the American merchants and navigators, and which is in itself an inexhaustible mine of national wealth, would be stifled and lost, and poverty and disgrace would overspread a country which, with wisdom, might make herself the admiration and envy of the world.
France and Britain are concerned with us in the fisheries, and view them as of the utmost moment to their navigation.
They, of course, would hardly remain long indifferent to that decided mastery, of which experience has shown us to be possessed in this valuable branch of traffic, and by which we are able to undersell those nations in their own markets.
What more natural than that they should be disposed to exclude from the lists such dangerous competitors?
This branch of trade ought not to be considered as a partial benefit.
All the navigating States may, in different degrees, advantageously participate in it, and under circumstances of a greater extension of mercantile capital, would not be unlikely to do it.
As a nursery of seamen, it now is, or when time shall have more nearly assimilated the principles of navigation in the several States, will become, a universal resource.
To the establishment of a navy, it must be indispensable.
To this great national object, a NAVY, union will contribute in various ways.
Every institution will grow and flourish in proportion to the quantity and extent of the means concentred towards its formation and support.
A navy of the United States, as it would embrace the resources of all, is an object far less remote than a navy of any single State or partial confederacy, which would only embrace the resources of a single part.
It happens, indeed, that different portions of confederated America possess each some peculiar advantage for this essential establishment.
The more southern States furnish in greater abundance certain kinds of naval stores – tar, pitch, and turpentine.
Their wood for the construction of ships is also of a more solid and lasting texture.
The difference in the duration of the ships of which the navy might be composed, if chiefly constructed of Southern wood, would be of signal importance, either in the view of naval strength or of national economy.
Some of the Southern and of the Middle States yield a greater plenty of iron, and of better quality.
Seamen must chiefly be drawn from the Northern hive.
The necessity of naval protection to external or maritime commerce does not require a particular elucidation, no more than the conduciveness of that species of commerce to the prosperity of a navy.
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Hamilton certainly laid out the case for a navy quite well, I thought, which again takes us back to Federalist No. 11, as follows:
I shall briefly observe, that our situation invites and our interests prompt us to aim at an ascendant in the system of American affairs.
The world may politically, as well as geographically, be divided into four parts, each having a distinct set of interests.
Unhappily for the other three, Europe, by her arms and by her negotiations, by force and by fraud, has, in different degrees, extended her dominion over them all.
Africa, Asia, and America, have successively felt her domination.
The superiority she has long maintained has tempted her to plume herself as the Mistress of the World, and to consider the rest of mankind as created for her benefit.
Men admired as profound philosophers have, in direct terms, attributed to her inhabitants a physical superiority, and have gravely asserted that all animals, and with them the human species, degenerate in America, that even dogs cease to bark after having breathed awhile in our atmosphere.
Facts have too long supported these arrogant pretensions of the Europeans.
It belongs to us to vindicate the honor of the human race, and to teach that assuming brother, moderation.
Union will enable us to do it.
Disunion will will add another victim to his triumphs.
Let Americans disdain to be the instruments of European greatness!
Let the thirteen States, bound together in a strict and indissoluble Union, concur in erecting one great American system, superior to the control of all transatlantic force or influence, and able to dictate the terms of the connection between the old and the new world!
PUBLIUS.
Mussolini was not killed in ’43, he was rescued by German special forces abd lasted as a political figure until his execution in 1945,
Yes, indeed, the Gran Sasso raid, which Hauptsturmführer (SS captain) Otto Skorzeny took credit for, although the raid was actually planned and executed by Major Harald Mors, and approved by paratroop General Kurt Student, the overall commander of Germany’s Fallschirmjäger throughout WWII, who was personally ordered by Hitler, the rug-chewing madman to execute the raid on the Campo Imperatore Hotel, a ski resort at Campo Imperatore in Italy’s Gran Sasso massif, high in the Apennine Mountains. a raid that Winston Churchill himself described as “one of great daring”.
The Fallschirmjäger were Germany’s paratroopers, and they were perceived as the elite infantry units of the German military.
German Fallschirmjäger in World War II were the first paratroopers to be committed in large-scale airborne operations, and they came to be known as the “green devils” by the Allied forces they fought against.
Fallschirmjäger, which means “parachute hunter,” played a combat role in both Sicily and Italy during the Italian campaign in WWII.
As to the Gran Sasso raid, on 12 September 1943, Hauptsturmführer Otto Skorzeny and 16 SS troopers joined the Fallschirmjäger to rescue Mussolini in a high-risk glider mission.
Ten DFS 230 gliders, each carrying nine soldiers and a pilot, towed by Henschel Hs 126 planes started between 13:05 and 13:10 from the Pratica di Mare Air Base near Rome.
The leader of the airborne operation was paratrooper-Oberleutnant Georg Freiherr von Berlepsch, and he was in the first glider, while Skorzeny and his SS troopers sat in the fourth and fifth glider.
To gain height before crossing the close-by Alban Hills the leading three glider-towing plane units flew an additional loop. but all the following units considered this manoeuvre unnecessary and preferred not to endanger the given time of arrival at the target, which led Skorzeny’s two units arriving first over the target.
Around the same time, the valley station of the funicular railway leading to the Campo Imperatore was captured at 14:00 in a ground attack by two paratrooper companies led by Major Harald Mors, who was commander-in-chief of the whole raid, who also cut all telephone lines.
At 14:05 the airborne commandos landed their ten DFS 230 gliders on the mountain near the hotel with one crashing and causing injuries.
Once on the ground, the Fallschirmjäger and Skorzeny’s special troopers overwhelmed Mussolini’s captors, 200 well-equipped Carabinieri guards, without a single shot being fired, attributed to the fact that General Fernando Soleti of the Polizia dell Africana Italiana, who flew in with Skorzeny, told them to stand down.
Skorzeny attacked the radio operator and his equipment and stormed into the hotel, being followed by his SS troopers and the paratroopers.
Ten minutes after the beginning of the raid, Mussolini left the hotel, accompanied by the German soldiers.
At 14:45 Major Mors accessed the Hotel via the funicular railway and introduced himself to Mussolini.
Subsequently Mussolini was to be flown out by a Fieseler Fi 156 STOL plane.
Although under the given circumstances the small plane was overloaded, Skorzeny insisted to accompany Mussolini, thus endangering the success of the mission, but after an extremely dangerous but successful lift-off, they flew to Pratica di Mare, where they continued flying in a Heinkel He 111 to Vienna, where Mussolini stayed overnight at the Hotel Imperial.
The next day he was flown to Munich and on September 14 he met Hitler at Führer Headquarters Wolf’s Lair in near Rastenburg.
Mussolini was then made leader of the Italian Social Republic, which was a German puppet state consisting of the German-occupied portion of Italy.
The operation granted a rare late-war public relations opportunity to Hermann Göring, with German propaganda hailing the operation for months afterward.
As to history, the landing at Campo Imperatore was in fact led by First Lieutenant von Berlepsch, commanded by Major Mors and under orders from General Student, all of them Fallschirmjäger (German air force paratroop) officers.
But stealing the limelight, it was Skorzeny who stewarded the Italian leader in front of the cameras, proving politics exist even on the battlefield, and after a pro-SS propaganda coup at the behest of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, Skorzeny and his Special Forces (SS-Sonderverband z. b. V. “Friedenthal”) of the Waffen-SS were granted the majority of the credit for the operation, so that Skorzeny gained a large amount of success from this mission, and he received a promotion to Sturmbannführer, the award of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross and fame that led to his “most dangerous man in Europe” image.
Skorzeny, with a face full of what were said to be dueling scars, was a noted fencer as member of a German-national Burschenschaft as a university student in Vienna, engaging in fifteen personal combats, the tenth of which resulted in a wound that left a dramatic dueling scar—known in academic fencing as a Schmiss (German for “smite” or “hit”)—on his cheek.
As to his fate after WWII, Skorzeny escaped from an internment camp in 1948, and after hiding out on a Bavarian farm for 18 months, then spent time in Paris and Salzburg before eventually settling in Spain.
In 1953 he became a military advisor to Egyptian President Mohammed Naguib and recruited a staff of former SS and Wehrmacht officers to train the Egyptian Army, staying on to advise President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
In 1962, Skorzeny was recruited by the Mossad and conducted operations for the agency.
He spent time in Argentina, where he acted as an advisor to President Juan Perón and as a bodyguard for Eva Perón.
Skorzeny died of lung cancer on 5 July 1975 in Madrid at the age of 67.
And while it is not directly a subject of this thread, these words from FEDERALIST No. 34, “The Same Subject Continued (Concerning the General Power of Taxation)” from the New York Packet to the People of the State of New York by Alexander Hamilton on Friday, January 4, 1788 put paid to all that crap we hear being mouthed by all these hack politicians at the federal level as to “strict constructionism,” to wit:
In pursuing this inquiry, we must bear in mind that we are not to confine our view to the present period, but to look forward to remote futurity.
Constitutions of civil government are not to be framed upon a calculation of existing exigencies, but upon a combination of these with the probable exigencies of ages, according to the natural and tried course of human affairs.
Nothing, therefore, can be more fallacious than to infer the extent of any power, proper to be lodged in the national government, from an estimate of its immediate necessities.
There ought to be a CAPACITY to provide for future contingencies as they may happen; and as these are illimitable in their nature, it is impossible safely to limit that capacity.
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Quite clearly, from those words, and in my estimation, Hamilton had a lot better handle on the matter than do these hack politicians and mouth runners today, the United States Constitution was clearly intended to be a living document.