301A.D. Founding of the Principality of San Marino, by the stonecutter Marinus of Rab (Croatia). It is the third smallest micro-state in Europe (behind the Holy See and Monaco) but has the distinction of being the longest-lived republic in the world, with its 1600 constitution still in force.
1492: Italian navigator Christopher Columbus departs from La Gomera harbor in the Canary Islands. Largely self-educated, Columbus was knowledgeable in geography, astronomy, and history. He developed a plan to seek a western sea passage to the East Indies, hoping to profit from the lucrative spice trade.
1522: Three years after its departure as part of Ferdinand Magellan’s fleet of exploration, the Spanish ship Victoria makes port in San Lucar de Barrameda, Spain under the command of Sailing Master Juan Sebastian Elcano. He and only 17 others are the sole surviving members from the original five ships and 235 men.
1620: After completing nominal repairs to the Speedwell in Dartmouth and again in Plymouth, the Pilgrims finally sell the ship. They crowd onto the Mayflower and depart England, en route to the new Massachusetts Bay Colony.
1666: The Great Fire of London breaks out and burns for three days, destroying over 10,000 buildings, including Saint Paul’s Cathedral.
1698: In a dramatic and widely despised attempt to drag the Russian aristocracy into the modern age, Tsar Peter I imposes a tax on beards: more hair = more tax. Unlike more modern thinkers today, he instinctively understood that when you tax something, there will eventually be less of that something to tax.
1715: Death of The Sun King, Louis XIV (b.1638), ending a reign of over 72 years. Louis was the personification of the concept of an absolute monarch, who believed he was put into his position by divine right, and was not subject to any standard of law other than God’s. When asked once to define the nature of the state, he responded with the famous quip,“L’etat, c’est moi.” (I am the State). It was Louis quatorze who converted the royal hunting lodge outside of Paris into the Palais du Versailles, forcing the nobility by decree to reside in its apartments and live Court life isolated and distant from their own power bases in Paris and the other, more remote regions of France. Versailles put the final punctuation mark on the development of a centralized, unitary state on the European continent, with its glamour and opulence seducing the nobility away from their nominal political independence from the French crown.
1757: Birth of the Marquis de Lafayette (d.1834). Known in the United States as Lafayette, he was a French nobleman and military officer who volunteered to join the Continental Army, led by General George Washington, in the American Revolutionary War. Lafayette was ultimately permitted to command Continental Army troops in the decisive Siege of Yorktown in 1781, the Revolutionary War’s final major battle that secured American independence. After returning to France, Lafayette became a key figure in the French Revolution of 1789 and the July Revolution of 1830 and continues to be celebrated as a hero in both France and the United States.
1774: In response to the Intolerable Acts passed by Parliament, the First Continental Congress convenes in Philadelphia to debate a collective colonial response. The naming of the acts on both sides of the Atlantic reflected the steadily growing rift between the parties. Parliament referred to the acts as the Coercive Acts, not a friendly title, but reflective of Britain’s exasperation with the independent thinking and latent violence that was infecting her expensive New World colonies, particularly as it related to paying down the debt from the recent Seven Years War.Through the burgeoning Committees of Correspondence throughout the colonies, consensus grew that these Acts had dangerous ramifications for all of British America, not just Boston. There were five of them:
1) Boston Port Act, which closed the port to commerce until the value of the tea ruined by the Boston Tea Party was repaid in full;
2) Massachusetts Government Act, which unilaterally changed the status of all government positions from elected to appointed by the Governor or the King and severely limited the activities of Town Meetings;
3) Administration of Justice Act, permitted moving trials of royal officials to a different venue- including to England at crown expense- if they could not get a fair trial in Massachusetts. George Washington called this the “Murder Act” since it allowed officials to conduct their harassment of Americans and then escape justice;
4) Quartering Act, cited specifically in the Declaration of Independence, mandated colonial support for supporting the very soldiers who were suppressing them;
5) Quebec Act, although not directly related to the insurrection in Boston, it defined British interests in Quebec in a way that demonstrated disregard for the interests of the British colonies already in place in America.
1777: The Stars and Stripes fly in combat for the first time at the Battle of Cooch’s Bridge, the only Revolutionary War battle fought in Delaware.
1781: Battle of Virginia Capes– in the sixth year of our War of Independence, a French fleet of 24 ships of the line, under the command of Rear Admiral Francois Joseph Paul le Comte de Grasse, sails out from Lynnhaven anchorage* to meet and do battle with 19 Royal Navy ships under the Command of Rear Admiral Sir Thomas Gage. The battle was a classic slugfest between two Lines of Battle. Under northerly winds the two fleets headed east, coming together just outside Cape Henry around 15:00 in the afternoon and then pounded each other until sunset. The fleets maneuvered within sight of each other for two more days; de Grasse maneuvering his ships to ease the British ever-seaward in order to protect an expected French supply convoy coming up from the south, the very same convoy which Gage was tasked to find and destroy. After sighting one of the convoy ships late in the afternoon of the 7th, de Grasse abruptly after sunset broke off contact with the British and proceeded back to the Chesapeake, where the convoy was already re-supplying George Washington and the combined Franco-American forces besieging General Cornwallis’ army at Yorktown. Although the naval battle was only a tactical victory for the French, it was a strategic victory of highest importance for the fledgling United States, as it completely isolated the British in Yorktown from any expectation of relief or re-supply.
1783: After eight years of bitter warfare, the nascent United States of America and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign the Treaty of Paris, with Britain acknowledging the independence of its former 13 colonies and ceding all of its holdings west of the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River and south of the Great Lakes. Britain expected the States to become valuable trading partners with their growing territories, lands that will no longer require the expense of British arms to keep them secure. [Portrait of the U.S. delegation- The Treaty of Paris by Benjamin West (1783). L-R John Jay, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Laurens, and William Temple Franklin.
1792: Mobs throughout Paris go on a rampage known as the September Massacres. Like most mob actions, this one began with a rumor, although the rumor had some basis in fact: the Duke of Brunswick’s Prussian army had indeed invaded France just days prior, overpowering the border fortress of Verdun before continuing on toward Paris. The Paris mobs, essentially un-led by anything resembling a functioning government, concluded that the officers at Verdun must have been secret Royalists who turned the fortress over to the Prussians. Brunswick himself was unusually blunt in publicly stating his aims to restore the monarchy and the authority of the church from the anarchy of the revolution. Fearing an uprising of the monarchists imprisoned throughout the city, the mobs surged into those prisons, most notably Saint Germaine du Pres, and began slaughtering all the “monarchists” behind the bars. For good measure, they also attacked and killed over 500 Carmelite priests and a number of other clergy. Within weeks, over 1,200 had been murdered by the mob in the name of the Revolution and Reason.
1836: Sam Houston is elected the first President of the Republic of Texas.
1864: Union General William T. Sherman opens his assault on the strategic railroad crossroad of Atlanta, defended by Confederate General John Bell Hood. The crushing Union force overwhelms Hood’s defenses, forcing them to finally evacuate on September 2nd. On entering Atlanta, Sherman orders all civilians to leave the city, an act that prompted the city council to appeal on behalf of the women, children, elderly, and those who had no bearing on the conduct of the war. Sherman’s response remains the quintessence of harsh realism: “You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. But you cannot have peace and a division of our country. If the United States submits to a division now, it will not stop, but will go on until we reap the fate of Mexico, which is eternal war.[…] I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect and early success. But, my dear sirs, when peace does come, you may call on me for anything. Then will I share with you the last cracker, and watch with you to shield your homes and families against danger from every quarter.” In November, he ordered his troops to destroy every government and military building in the city.
1895: In Latrobe, Pennsylvania, kickoff for the nation’s first professional football game. The game was contested between the Latrobe YMCA team and a team from nearby Jeannette PA. Latrobe pays its quarterback John Brallier $10.00 for expenses. Latrobe won, 12-0, and claimed the offered prize money. Brailler prudently went on to a career in dentistry, but he was given lifetime passes for all National Football League games. He died in Latrobe in 1960 at age 83.
1897: Inventor Thomas Alva Edison patents the Kinetoscope, the world’s first movie projector.
1901: Vice President Theodore Roosevelt, speaking at the Minnesota State Fair, first uses the expression, “Speak softly, and carry a big stick.”
1905: Signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth (NH), an arbitration effort led by U.S President Theodore Roosevelt, which formally ended the Russo-Japanese war, and for which Roosevelt was recognized with a Nobel Prize.
1914: After retreating from the Battle of Mons, the combined Franco-British force launched its first major counter-offensive in what became known as the Battle of the Marne.
1939: Two days after Germany’s stunning invasion of Poland, and in accordance with longstanding defense treaties with that beleaguered nation, France, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia declare war on Germany. From this day until the following May, the “Allies” do virtually nothing to relieve the pressure on Poland, a period known now as the “Phony War” or “Sitzkrieg.”
1939: After finally using up all their diplomatic pretexts, and having neutered their Soviet adversaries with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact (DLH 8/23), Nazi Germany invades Poland, thus marking the start of World War II. The Poles put up a fierce resistance, but German Blitzkrieg tactics, refined in combat with the Condor Legions in Spain, overwhelm Poland’s defenses.
1960: American boxer Cassius Clay wins the Gold Medal at the Olympic Games in London.
1964: Death of Alvin York (b.1887). The World War I hero was a corporal during the Meuse-Argonne campaign when his battalion began to be mowed down by 32 German machine gun nests. As the firing let up, York realized it was only him and six others who could still function. He led the men behind the German machine gun line and began to systematically pick off the Germans one by one- (“And those machine guns were spitting fire and cutting down the undergrowth all around me something awful. And the Germans were yelling orders. You never heard such a racket in all of your life. I didn’t have time to dodge behind a tree or dive into the brush… As soon as the machine guns opened fire on me, I began to exchange shots with them. There were over thirty of them in continuous action, and all I could do was touch the Germans off just as fast as I could. I was sharp shooting… All the time I kept yelling at them to come down. I didn’t want to kill any more than I had to. But it was they or I. And I was giving them the best I had.) …until the commander closest to him surrendered the remaining 132 Germans to the seven Americans. York’s actions earned him the Medal of Honor and a battlefield promotion to Sergeant. The Tennessee native later explained that it was something like picking off squirrels, he started shooting at the back of the line so the ones in front didn’t know they were being cut down until it was too late.
1968: Swaziland becomes an independent kingdom. Present-day Eswatini, formally the Kingdom of Eswatini and also known by its former official name Swaziland and formerly the Kingdom of Swaziland, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. It is bordered by Mozambique to its northeast and South Africa to its north, west, south, and southeast. Eswatini’s independence from the United Kingdom in 1968 and its initial establishment as a constitutional monarchy under King Sobhuza II. In 2005, under King Mswati III, the country implemented a new constitution and now calls itself a “monarchical democracy.” In reality, political power remains almost entirely vested with the king and traditional structures. King Mswati III and Queen Mother Ntombi, the king’s mother, rule as co-monarchs and exercise ultimate authority over the cabinet, legislature, and judiciary.
1969: Death of Ho Chi Minh (b.1890). Hồ Chí Minh, colloquially known as Uncle Ho or just Uncle, and by other aliases and sobriquets, was a Vietnamese communist revolutionary, nationalist, and politician. He served as prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam from 1945 to 1955 and as president from 1945 until his death in 1969.
1970: Death of football legend Vince Lombardi (b.1913), for whom the Super Bowl trophy is named.
1972: In Reykjavik, Iceland, American chess wizard and political gadfly Bobby Fischer defeats Soviet chess master Boris Spassky to become the World Champion of Chess.
1972: At the Olympic Village in Munich, Palestinian terrorists from the “Black September” group first take hostage and then murder eleven Israeli athletes.
1974: The SR-71 sets a world-record flight time NYC-London in 1 hour 54 minutes 56 seconds; an average speed of 1,435.587 mph, Mach 2.68, which includes deceleration periods for in-flight refueling. The record still stands.
1976: Soviet Air Force pilot Victor Belenko lands his MiG-25 at Hakodata airbase in Japan and requests political asylum in the United States.
1978: Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat sign a peace treaty between their two countries, Egypt becoming the first Arab nation to do so. U.S. President Jimmy Carter overseas the negotiations at the Camp David presidential retreat, for which the accords are named in the popular press.
1981: Death of Hitler’s architect and industrial production wizard, Albert Speer (b.1905). After serving his full 20 year sentence in Spandau Prison, he published three books that gave a unique view of the political and bureaucratic machinations of the workings of the Third Reich.
1983: A Soviet SU-15 fighter shoots down Korean Airlines 747 en route from Anchorage to Seoul when it strayed into Soviet airspace over Sakhalin Island. All 269 on board, including US Congressman Lawrence McDonald, are killed.
1997: Death of Diana, Princess of Wales; from injuries sustained in a Paris tunnel automobile crash.
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