History Notes this week of Oct 16

312: At the Battle of Milvian Bridge (crossing the Tiber), the Emperor Constantine sees a Vision of the Cross, which inspired him to victory in the battle and began the process of his subsequent conversion to Christianity. 

1512: The Sistine Chapel in the Vatican opens for public visitation for the first time since the completion of the ceiling fresco by Michelangelo. 

1517: Augustinian monk Martin Luther makes public his objection to the sale of indulgences by posting on the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg a list of 95 “theses” which outlined a comprehensive, biblical-based dissent of papal authority, and set in motion the spiritual, intellectual and political upheaval we now know as the Protestant Reformation.

1520: Fifteen months after departing on his epic voyage of discovery, Ferdinand Magellan enters the narrow strait that now bears his name. The “shortcut” between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans cuts off significant distance from the more navigationally straightforward route around Cape Horn, and it avoids the ferocious westerlies and high sea states of the Horn passage. On the other hand, the narrowness of the channel and those same prevailing westerlies make the strait a particularly difficult passage in a sailing vessel, especially for a square-rigged design that does not go well to windward.

1587: Leiden University- the oldest university in the Netherlands- opens it library. After its initial founding in 1575, the university itself quickly became the intellectual hub of the Reformation period. 

1618: Death of Sir Walter Raleigh (b.1552), on the order of King James I of England, by beheading.  Raleigh was a nobleman-adventurer, a favorite of Queen Elizabeth I, who commissioned his self-financed but ill-fated attempt to colonize “Virginia” down in what we now know as Dare County, NC. Raleigh fell out of Elizabeth’s favorwhen he secretly married one of her (pregnant) ladies-in-waiting without the Queen’s permission. For this crime, he was arrested and held in the Tower of London for a short time before his wife was released from Royal service. In 1594 he read a Spanish report concerning Muana, a supposed city of gold in South America. A year later he led an expedition that explored the northeast coast of that continent, particularly in and around the region of Guiana. A year after his return he published an account of the voyage, exaggerating somewhat the lurid concept of the golden city, as yet still undiscovered, and now known as the famous El Dorado. But I digress. When the Protestant Elizabeth died in 1603, the Catholic James I had Raleigh arrested for treason based on circumstantial evidence linking him to an unsuccessful plot to overthrow the king. Back to the Tower he went, where he remained for thirteen years, writing prolifically, and where his son Crewe was conceived, although as a guilty traitor, Raleigh was legally “dead” during the conception. James authorized Raleigh’s release in 1616 to undertake another expedition to find El Dorado. Again, they didn’t find it, but during the trip they did take the opportunity to plunder the Spanish town of San Tome. News of this act infuriated the Spanish ambassador, and for the sake of the already tenuous relationship between England and Spain, James had Raleigh re-arrested and executed. Always ready for the next adventure, as Raleigh lay his head on the block waiting for the axe to fall, he called to the executioner, “Strike man! Strike!” 

1628: After 14 months of siege, the Huguenot seaport of La Rochelle surrenders to the forces of King Louis XIII and his Chief Minister, Cardinal Richelieu. La Rochelle was the center of French Protestantism, and despite having formal permission under the Edict of Nantes (1598) to worship as they chose, the Catholic restoration under Louis put the city- third largest in France at 30,000- in direct opposition to His Most Catholic Majesty. Richelieu’s determination to crush the Huguenots was the main force that consolidated central political power in the hands of the King, creating the concept of a strong, centralized state that defines nationhood to this day. The British, no surprise, made three significant attempts to intervene on behalf of La Rochelle, but were unable to sustain it by sea after the French fortified all the seaward approaches to the city. 

1634: The legislature of the Massachusetts Bay Colony establishes the charter for Harvard College, with the specific injunction later noted in a 1645 brochure: “To advance Learning and perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministery to the Churche.”

1704: Death of English philosopher John Locke (b.1632), whose writing on the nature of government, property, price theory and the life of the mind set the foundations for the Scottish Enlightenment and the Age of Reason.

1728: Birth of the great British explorer James Cook (d.1779). Also a cartographer and naval officer famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean and to New Zealand and Australia in particular.

1765: Continuing to pursue novel ways to get the American colonies to pay for the French and Indian War, Parliament passes the Stamp Act, a tax levied on every sheet of paper imported into the colonies, with payment proven by the presence of a royal stamp on the paper itself. Colonial leaders become highly agitated by this seemingly arbitrary ability of the government to tax its subjects without consultation. 

1776: Philadelphia printer and inventor Benjamin Franklin departs as the United States’ first Ambassador to France. His mission is to secure France’s support for the fledgling republic across the water, and he uses his utmost charm to engage the Crown on our behalf. 

1795: After six years of political turmoil, intentional terror against its own citizens, regicide and war against virtually all of Europe, France dissolves its National Convention (its third legislature since the revolution began) and establishes a bicameral legislature consisting of the Council of Ancients (upper house) and the Council of 500 (lower house), both of whom will today appoint a 5-member Directory as the Executive agency.

1810: The United States annexes the Republic of West Florida from Spain. What we now know as the Panhandle (between the Apalachicola and Perdido Rivers) was originally settled by Spain, was taken by Britain during French and Indian War, given back to Spain as part of the negotiations that ended the Revolution, and was briefly declared by its American settlers as an independent Republic in early 1810, under the “Bonney Blue Flag.”

1814: The Congress of Vienna meets to negotiate the form of European politics after the final defeat of Napoleon at the hands of the Sixth Coalition and 25 years of nearly continuous war. The resulting Treaty of Paris exiled the former emperor to tiny Elba off the south coast of France.

1825: Opening of the Erie Canal, connecting Albany, NY (and hence the port of NYC) to Lake Erie (and hence the agricultural riches of the Ohio valley). Not only did it eliminate the need for portage, it also cut shipping costs by 95%, which fueled an economic boom in western New York and points west. 

1858: Birth of Nobel Laureate, scholar, author, Rough Rider, Assistant Secretary of the Navy and 26^th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt (d.1919). 

1861: The day after General Winfield Scott resigns as Commanding General of the Army, President Lincoln appoints the young and ambitious George B. McClellan to replace him.

1863: Under the leadership of Swiss businessman Henry Dunant, a group of 18 nations meets in Geneva and agree to form an “International Committee for Relief to the Wounded” with the specific charter that centered on:
      1) The foundation of national relief societies for wounded soldiers;
      2) Neutrality and protection for wounded soldiers;
      3) Utilization of volunteer forces for relief assistance on the battlefield;
      4) Organization of additional conferences to enact these concepts in legally binding international treaties, and;
      5) The introduction of a common distinctive protection symbol for medical personnel in the field, namely a white armlet bearing a red cross.
      A year later, the Committee added two more requirements:
      6) The national society must be recognized by its own national government as a relief society according to the convention, and
      7) The national government of the respective country must be a state party to the Geneva Convention.

1864: Closing of the Second War of Schleswig, in which Denmark cedes the provinces of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg to Prussia. This war is one of three initiated by Prussia under the leadership of Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck, and is studied at the war colleges today as a prime example of Clausewitz’ dictum that war is “an extension of diplomacy by other means.” In Bismarck’s context, war was an acceptable and useful action in support of limited and carefully defined territorial and political goals. His other wars were a relatively minor but victorious clash with Austria that he declined to follow up with further conquests, and the Franco-Prussian War

1870: France suffers a second crippling defeat at Prussian hands at the siege of Metz, during the Franco-Prussian War. The collapse was a direct result of the earlier capture of an entire French army with the Emperor at Sedan in early September.

1877: Death of Nathan Bedford Forrest (b.1821), Confederate cavalry. When asked about his successes during the Civil War, he was widely credited with explaining it to people by “…being the fustest with the mostest.”

1881: Doc Holliday and the Earp Brothers kill 3, led by Ike Clanton, at the famous Shootout at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.

1887: Birth of Chiang Kai-sheck (d.1975), Nationalist Chinese leader who followed Dr. Sun Yat-sen in wrenching Chinese society away from its feudal dynastic roots during the Northern Expedition of the 1920s. After Sun Yat-sen’s death in 1927, Chiang became the de facto leader of the Republic of China, and strenuously opposed the rise of the Communists under Mao Tse-tung. After the Japanese defeat in World War II, the civil war that broke out in China eventually drove Chiang, a strong U.S. ally against the Japanese, to the island of Formosa (Taiwan), where he set up the Republic of China government in exile and ruled with an iron fist until his death.

1905: In an attempt to bring Russia politically into the 19^th century, Russian Tsar Nicolas II grants a constitutional creation of a national legislative assembly, the Duma.

1914: Birth of Jonas Salk (d.1995). American virologist and medical researcher who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines. He was born in New York City and attended the City College of New York and New York University School of Medicine.

1929: Wall Street suffers the original Black Monday, which finished two weeks of already-sagging stock prices that failed to rally from two earlier interventions. This one day’s losses amounted to a 13% drop in market value. On Tuesday, the market dropped another 12%, and the week ended with total losses of over $30,000,000,000.00 (In today’s dollars it is approximately $440,538,304,093.56).

1938: Radio impresario Orson Welles broadcasts a “live” report of H.G. Wells’ sci-fi thriller War of the Worlds. Unfortunately, aliens didn’t really stomp all over New Jersey, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

1940: First flight of the P-51 Mustang, widely considered the ultimate propeller-driven fighter plane.

1941: President Franklin Roosevelt signs into law the Lend-Lease Act that commits the U.S. to providing supplies and equipment to Great Britain and her allies in support of her war effort against Nazi Germany.

1941: USS Reuben James (DD-245), a WWI vintage “4-piper” destroyer on Neutrality Patrol in the northeastern Atlantic, is torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat, becoming the Navy’s first combat loss of WWII, with a loss of 105 of her 159 man crew. The sinking ignited high indignation in the United States, even spawning a folk song by Woodie Guthrie: “What were their names, tell me what were their names? Did you lose a friend on the good Reuben James?” 

1952: The United States detonates its first hydrogen bomb, Operation IVY MIKE, at Eniwetok Atoll. The blast came in at 10 megatons.

1956: First day of direct military action in the Suez Crisis of 1956. The dispute, centering on control of the Suez Canal, pitted a coalition of Britain, France and Israel against the United Arab Republic (Egypt) of President Gamal Abdul Nasser. The United States found itself in the awkward position of diplomatically opposing and militarily threatening its two closest Cold War and WWII allies in order to maintain its favorable position vis-à-vis its primary Arab ally, Saudi Arabia. The crisis had been playing out for the better part of 1956, with the nationalist Nasser overthrowing the pro-British King Farouk, followed by nationalizing the Canal itself, much to the dismay of Britain and France in particular. In a parallel slap to the United States, after the U.S. withdrew support for the Aswan High Dam project, Nasser took pains to also formally recognize Red China in defiance of the U.S. The secret Anglo-Franco-Israeli scheme was to have Israel capture the Sinai Peninsula and both sides of the Canal, after which Britain and France would call for UN disengagement between the Israeli and Egyptian forces, all the while they provided major air support from six aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean and three airfields on Cyprus. The expected end state was the restoration of British control over the Canal. On this week Israeli armed forces launched their attack to capture Mitla Pass and began a systematic destruction of Egyptian forces in the remainder of the Sinai. The actual end state was a highly successful Israeli military campaign, complemented by highly effective Anglo-French attacks on Egyptian infrastructure. For its part, the United States then itself quite effectively threatened the United Kingdom with bankruptcy if it persisted on its course, and re-positioned two U.S. carriers between the Anglo-French fleet and the coast of North Africa. The success of this threat underscored Britain’s (and to a lesser extent France’s) diminishing role on the international stage in the Cold War era

1958: Pan American World Airways makes the first commercial flight of the new Boeing 707 jetliner from New York to Paris.

1962: Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev announces the withdrawal of Russian SS-3 nuclear missiles from their new launching sites in Cuba, effectively ending the Cuban Missile Crisis. The United States, for its part, agreed publicly to not invade Cuba or allow anyone else to invade the island via U.S. assistance. Secretly, President Kennedy also agreed to withdraw our Jupiter missiles from Turkey and Italy, deployments that the Soviet leadership used to justify their installation of SS-3s in Cuba. In Soviet circles, Khrushchev was seen as having been disgraced by Kennedy, a situation that led to his dismissal as Party Secretary two years later.

1984: Death of Indian Prime Minister Indira Ghandi (b.1917), assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards four months after she ordered the Indian army to storm the Sikh temple of Harmandir Sahib to put down a nascent Sikh independence movement. The daughter of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, she became India’s first female PM, and legitimately earned her reputation as a ruthless consolidator of both India’s governing structures and its regional hegemony. 

1998: Space Shuttle Discovery launches into orbit on STS-95. One of the crew was 77 year old former Marine combat pilot, test pilot, astronaut and Senator, John Glenn. In the control room for his historic return to space was his Capsule Communicator for the riveting Friendship 7 mission at the dawn of American space flight, Scott Carpenter, who reprised for this launch his famous quote from the first one: “Godspeed John Glenn.”

1998: The Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein declares it will no longer cooperate with United Nations weapons inspectors.