History Notes this week of Oct 26

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.

1415: An English army under the command of King Henry V decisively defeats a larger and better equipped French army at the Battle of Agincourt. The battle is notable for the effective use of English longbows and the high number of casualties among the French nobles who fought there. 

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 favor when 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. Thomas Jefferson considered Locke as one of the three “…greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception…”

1728: Birth of the great British explorer James Cook (d.1779). Captain James Cook was a British navigator and explorer who famously mapped the east coast of Australia, circumnavigated New Zealand, and made significant voyages to the Pacific Ocean. Born in 1728, he began his career in the merchant navy before joining the Royal Navy, where his skills as a cartographer and navigator led to him becoming one of the first men to rise from common seaman to captain. He was the first European to visit the Hawaiian Islands, but was killed there in 1779 after a confrontation with locals. 

1760: Upon the death of his father, George II, George III becomes King of Great Britain.

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. The Directory system will last for four years.

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.”

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. 

1854: In a crucial decision during the Crimean War, FizRoy Somerset, 1^st Baron Raglan, orders an unnecessary attack on Russian positions of unknown strength. It lead to the debacle of the Charge of the Light Brigade, who rode under the direct leadership of Lord Cardigan, who survived the battle* but who remained furious at the tendentiousness of the original order. The battle is best remembered, of course, by another brilliant bit of English poetry, this time from Alfred Lord Tennyson:
 
‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’ 
Was there a man dismay’d ? 

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).

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 into 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), known for his brilliance as a Confederate cavalry commander. 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: Birth of avant garde artist Pablo Picasso (d.1973).

1881: Doc Holliday and the Earp kill 3 of the 5, led by Ike Clanton, at the famous Shootout at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.

1891: Birth of radio preacher Father Charles Coughlin (d.1979), whose fiery populism originally supported, but later turned on the New Deal and the Roosevelt administration. His on-air and public shtick descended steadily into virulent anti-Semitism, which eventually led to an increasingly bitter battle between himself and broadcast regulators, finally causing him to be silenced from radio ministry in 1939.

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 Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (d.1953), author of the lament on his father’s death: “Do not go gentle into that good night…rage, rage, against the dying of the light…

1914: Birth of Jonas Salk (d.1995). American virologist and medical researcher who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines. 

1917: A Russian mob, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin and his Bolsheviks, storms and captures Tsar Nicholas II’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, thus creating the opening battle of the “October Revolution” phase of the larger Russian Revolution.

1929: Wall Street suffers the original Black Monday, which put the exclamation point on 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. 

1938: Radio impresario Orson Welles broadcasts a “live” report of H.G. Wells’ sci-fi thriller War of the Worlds. 

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.

1946: Birth of Hillary Rodham.

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 day 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.

1973: A UN-imposed ceasefire ends the 19 day Yom Kippur War, which opened on the 6^th October with a stunning surprise attack by the Egyptian Army to re-capture the east bank of the Suez Canal, which itself had been rolled up along with the entirety of the Sinai Peninsula by Israel during the 6 Day War in 1967. A coordinated attack by Syria on the Golan Heights was designed to put Israel into an Arab vise, and in the early days of the attacks the strategy looked viable. But three days of counter-attacks by Israel in the north pushed the Syrians back to their pre-war lines of departure, and another four days of Israeli offensive operations put their army within artillery range of Damascus.  At the canal, Egypt’s Second and Third armies crossed via pontoon bridges at three breached sections of Israel’s Bar Lev Line, having used water cannons to erode the 80 foot tall sand berms Israel built between reinforced concrete hard spots on the canal’s eastern shoreline. By the 9^th of October the Egyptians had established stabilized defensive positions between 5-10 km inland from the canal in mountainous terrain. The initial Israeli armored counter attack was thwarted by the unexpected appearance of Soviet provided RPGs and the very lethal Sagger wire-guided anti-tank missile. Meanwhile, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) quickly established a hard-fought air dominance campaign, including deep strikes against both Egyptian and Syrian reinforcements and strategic air defense nodes, close air support to their armored forces, and a stunning air-to-air posture that essentially destroyed the air forces of both Arab antagonists. The IAF kill ratio was shattering, ending with 334 Arab shoot downs to only 5 Israeli losses. Note: Israel did lose 90 aircraft to airfield attacks and some level of surface-to-air missile activity. Similar Arab aircraft losses added approximately another 150 to the accounting. The final week of battle saw Israeli armored forces lunging through the gap between Egypt’s Second and Third armies, re-crossing the canal in force, and occupying most of the western shoreline of the canal all the way to Suez, with vanguards continuing westward to within 40 miles of Cairo. More importantly, the Israeli army now completely encircled Egypt’s Third Army, their backs to the canal on the eastern shoreline. Israel armor completely blocked any ground communication into the Sinai, and Generals Sharon and Adan held all potential water crossings on the western bank. To say the ensuing peace negotiations were tense would an understatement. The negotiated disengagement lasted over two years, but eventually led to the 1978 Camp David Accords that formalized a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. 

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.”

About the Author

Wayne Creed

Administrator

View All Posts