480 B.C. At the Battle of Salamis, a fleet of about 360 Greek triremes destroys the hitherto unstoppable Xerxes and his invading Persian fleet of 1,207 triremes in the waters just south of Athens. Despite Persia’s earlier successes against the Greeks, including their nominal victory at the Battle of Thermopylae a short month earlier, the force was stretched to its limit, and needed to consolidate its land and sea forces before the oncoming winter ended the campaigning season. The Greek states, under the leadership of Themistocles, saw an opportunity for their heavily outnumbered fleet to limit the Persians’ maneuverability in the tight reaches near Salamis Island, and thence to individually destroy them on nearly equal terms. The lopsided victory completely un-did Persia’s earlier victories ashore, and sent the Xerxes and his forces back into Anatolia for a generation. Of note, the Persian general staff, confident in their overwhelming numbers, convinced Xerxes to set up a throne on a prominent hill near the expected battle, where he could personally watch the victory.
551 B.C: Birth of Chinese philosopher Confucius (d.479 B.C.). You probably remember some Confucius jokes from your childhood, like: “Confucius say, ‘Duck who fly upside-down have quack up.’”
935 A.D: Death of Prince Wenceslaus I (b. circa 907 A.D.), at the hand of his brother. Wenceslaus was the first Christian king of the Czechs, resisting multiple attempts to re-convert him to the local Bohemian paganism. He was the founder of the rotunda at Prague Castle, now consecrated as St. Vitus Cathedral. At his death his remains were interred in the rotunda, and after his elevation to sainthood, they became holy relics on display. The photo shows his skull being honored as part of the celebration of the Czech Republic’s national day, which corresponds with the day of his martyrdom. The Christmas song is about this Wenceslaus.
420 A.D: Death of Saint Jerome (b.347 A.D.), an early Christian scholar and one of the Doctors of the Church, who is best known for his seminal work of translating Hebrew and Greek biblical texts into a standardized Latin version, known as the Vulgate, in addition to a huge number of incisive commentaries on various books and letters contained in therein. He is recognized as a Saint by all the major High Church denominations. You’ll recognize his iconography as the wizened man pulling a thorn from the lion’s paw, or struggling with temptation in the desert, or most likely, writing in the midst of a pile of books while being attended by angels.
1187: After three weeks of siege, the Saracen warlord Saladin captures Jerusalem, ending 88 years of Crusader rule over the Holy City. In contrast to the Crusaders’ bloodletting and mayhem when they entered the city in 1092, Saladin permitted the option of an orderly departure of its citizens, or a hefty dhimmi tax. Thirty days after the fall, Jerusalem’s gates were opened and the vast majority of the city left under Saladin’s guarantee of safe passage for Antioch and other Christian strongholds along the Levant coast.
1529: The army of the Ottoman Turks, led by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, opens the Siege of Vienna with the objective of pulling that capital city and its vassal states into the Ottoman empire. Although the siege itself failed during this campaign, the Ottomans remained a significant threat to Hapsburg Germany’s continued rule over the eastern approaches of the Holy Roman Empire. The Turks were finally and conclusively thrown back into the southern Balkans and Anatolia at the Battle of Vienna in 1683.
1535: French explorer Jacques Cartier lays claim to the area now known as Montreal, Canada
1553: On the death of her half-brother Edward VI, Mary I of England, the legitimate offspring of Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, is crowned Queen of England. Despite her father’s serial marriages and semi-Protestant breakaway from the Roman Catholic Church, she remained a lifelong Catholic, and within months of her coronation initiated a violent Catholic Restoration across the country that swept up many of the most notable men in the realm. The numbers of imprisonments and executions conducted under her hand earned her the lasting nickname of “Bloody Mary,” a reputation made worse by the glories of her half-sister Elizabeth I, who assumed the throne after Mary’s death in 1558. Despite her dark reputation, she is notable for being the first woman to successfully assume the throne of England, ironically paving the way for Elizabeth’s succession.
1555: Emperor Charles V ratifies the Peace of Augsburg, which formalizes for the first time the principle of CUIUS REGIO, EIUS RELIGIO (lit: “Whose realm, his religion”).This principle, and the treaty in which it was expressed, provided the intellectual underpinnings for what will eventually become freedom of religious conscience in Western thought. It recognized, at least within the Holy Roman Empire, that many of the princes of the realm legitimately believed the new Lutheran theology, and that while their political differences with the Empire would remain, the spiritual reality that launched the Protestant Reformation demanded some kind of accommodation for the sake of peace. The Peace of Augsburg thus allowed for two different Christian denominations (Lutheran and Roman Catholic) to function within the Empire, based on the chosen religion of the Prince. For the Subjects themselves, it also permitted migration to a principality that suited their own religious beliefs. Of note, none of the other Reformed religions of the day (Calvinists and Anabaptists, among others) were included in this treaty.
1770: Death of Christian evangelist and founder of Methodism, George Whitfield (b.1714), whose open-air sermons in the fields of England sparked a significant spiritual revival in that country. He first came over to the New World in 1738 and continued his custom of preaching the Gospel to huge crowds in outdoor venues. In 1740 he began a preaching a series of revivals that lasted continuously for several months, beginning in New England and ending in Charleston, South Carolina. His work during this period, and the explosive growth of churches throughout the colonies are now known as The Great Awakening. Whitfield’s voice, his crossed eyes, his charisma and his message made him one of the most recognized and celebrated men in the English colonies, widely admired by even the worldly Benjamin Franklin, who considered him a lifelong friend. He is buried in the Old South Church in Newburyport, Massachusetts.
1774: Birth of John Chapman, more popularly known as Johnny Appleseed (d.1845), American missionary and nurseryman who spread the Gospel and apple trees throughout the Old Northwest during the early years of the United States.
1780: Death of British spy John Andre (b.1750), hanged by the neck until dead. He was closely aligned with Benedict Arnold’s plan to turn over West Point to the British. Although he proclaimed his innocence of espionage, his plea was undone by having the plans for West Point tucked into his socks. Everyone associated with him between his arrest and his hanging agreed that he remained the consummate gentleman, facing death like a true soldier, despite not being allowed a soldierly death by firing squad.
1789: Samuel Osgood is appointed the first United States Postmaster General. This day also sees the confirmation of the first Secretary of State, Chief Justice of the United States, and United States Attorney. How’d all that happen at the same time? Simple: he and all the other confirmations were a direct result of the recently concluded ratification of the U.S. Constitution in March of 1789. Osgood’s confirmation, and the confirmation of many others of George Washington’s cabinet took this long to get through the unprecedented first actions of the new Congress.
1846: Under the leadership of General Zachary “Old Rough and Ready” Taylor, the U.S. Army captures Monterrey, Mexico in the first large-scale urban battle of the Mexican War.
1871: Birth of Nobel Laureate Cordell Hull (d.1955), who carries the distinction of being the nation’s longest-serving Secretary of State- 11 years- during the administration of Franklin Roosevelt. He is credited with being the “Father of the United Nations,” a role for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945. In my mind, his best moment occurred on the morning of December 7th, 1941, when he received word about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor at the very moment two Japanese diplomats were in his anteroom awaiting an audience regarding continuing negotiations. What happened next is described in the Wikipedia: “Roosevelt advised him not to tell them about the raid but ‘to receive them formally and coolly bow them out’. After he had glanced at their copy of the fourteen-part message [Japan’s declaration that negotiations were at an end], Hull’s anger burst forth. ‘In all my fifty years of public service,’ he told the astonished diplomats, ‘I have never seen such a document that was more crowded with infamous falsehood and distortion.’ Nomura and Kurusu, who had not been told of the attack, bowed themselves out in an embarrassed fluster. A department official overheard Hull muttering under his breath as the door closed, ‘Scoundrels and piss-ants.’”
1881: Birth of Ludwig von Mises (d.1973), the Austrian economist who was particularly outspoken about the deadly effects of socialist economic models on both the economies and political lives of nations. His work and legacy became known as the Austrian School of economics, characterized by a deep understanding and broad-based endorsement of the efficacy of capitalism and free markets in the affairs of men and nations.
1882: American inventor Thomas Edison, creating the market infrastructure for his electrical inventiveness, opens his first commercial hydroelectric power station on the Fox River near Appleton, Wisconsin.
1890: Prodded by naturalists Galen Clark and John Muir, and building on the Yosemite Grant signed by President Lincoln, Congress establishes Yosemite National Park, a sglacial valley and wilderness area in the central Sierra Nevada range that defines the National Park system to this day.
1890: Congress authorizes the establishment of Sequoia National Park in California. It is adjacent to Kings Canyon National Park in California’s southern Sierra Nevada mountains. It’s known for its huge sequoia trees, notably the General Sherman Tree dominating the Giant Forest. The underground Crystal Cave features streams and striking rock formations. Moro Rock is a granite dome offering sweeping park views. Nearby is the Tunnel Tree, a toppled tree cut to accommodate the road.
1894: Birth of German fighter pilot Lothar von Richthofen (d.1922), Manfred’s little brother, and a fighter ace in his own right with 40 confirmed kills.
1895: Death of Louis Pasteur (b.1822), one of the great minds of micro-biology, who helped develop and later proved the germ theory of disease, and whose name is forever attached to the process of ensuring milk and wine do not carry their traditional threat of illness. He also created the first vaccines for rabies and anthrax.
1897: Birth of Nobel Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner William Faulkner (d.1962). Novelist and short story writer from Oxford, Mississippi. He’s considered one of the 20th century’s greatest writers, known for his innovative narrative techniques and characterization. His novels, including The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, are set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, which mirrors Lafayette County, Mississippi, where he lived
1898: Birth of Jacob Gershowitz, better known as George Gershwin (d.1937). The composer blended classical and popular styles to create a unique sound. He composed orchestral works like Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and An American in Paris (1928), Broadway musicals, and the opera Porgy and Bess (1935). Gershwin also wrote film scores, including Shall We Dance and Damsel in Distress.
1901: Birth of the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi (d.1954), widely regarded as one of the greatest scientific minds of the 20thCentury. In 1942 his most notable blend of theoretical physics with practical applications resulted in the world’s first controlled nuclear chain reaction, the Chicago Pile-1, an early proof-of-concept for the Manhattan Project. He also published incisive papers on quantum theory, particle physics and statistical mechanics. I can’t begin to explain them, but they are real, and Fermi’s was the mind that made the concepts accessible to the wider scientific community.
1903: Derailment of the Southern Railway’s “Old 97” at the Stillhouse trestle near Danville, Virginia. If you know the folk song, you’ll know that the engineer was trying to make up an hour and a quarter delay to get the mail in on time down in Spencer, North Carolina. They didn’t make it. The speeding train jumped the track on the turn leading to the trestle and plunged into the canyon below, killing 9 of the 18 men on board. The locomotive was re-built after the wreck and served until 1932.
1907: Birth of Gene Autry (d.1998), the most popular and widely recorded of the “singing cowboy” era of popular music in the 1940s and 50s.
1908: Sale of the first Model T Ford, marketed for the unheard of price of $850.00, when most automobiles of the day cost well over $2,000. Henry Ford was determined to build a machine that virtually anyone could afford- including his factory workers. Between the initial start-up in 1908 and the end of the run in 1927, the Ford Motor Company built over 15,000,000 of them, a record only recently surpassed by the air-cooled Volkswagen Beetle (which shut down production in Mexico just a couple years ago).
1918: Opening guns of the Muse-Argonne Campaign, the final Allied push against the Hindenburg Line, and the largest American battle in the Great War. Between this day and the armistice on November 11th, this continuous eight-week battle created 117,000 American casualties, the highest butcher’s bill of any battle in American history.
1919: President Woodrow Wilson suffers a massive stroke that paralyzes the left side of his body, rendering him essentially incapacitated for the remainder of his Presidency. His wife Edith completely controlled his schedule and access to anyone outside the immediate White House circle, particularly the Vice President, the entire Cabinet, and visiting Members of Congress. After several months, she arranged for journalist Louis Sibold to write a false account of his health. Toward the end of his term, he would be wheeled into the Cabinet Room, where he would preside but only make the most perfunctory remarks.
1921: Birth of North American Aviation test pilot Scott Crossfield (d.2006), who alternated with fellow test pilot Chuck Yeager in setting altitude and speed records in increasingly spectacular and dangerous test aircraft during the 1950s. He was the first to reach Mach 2.0. He was intimately involved in the design and test flights of the X-15 rocket plane, flying the machine 14 times to verify systems and procedures, without making any record-breaking flights himself. His own X-15 records are Mach 2.97, and an altitude of 91,800 feet.
1927: Outfielder Babe Ruth of the New York Yankees smacks his 60th home run of the season, a record that will stand until 1961, and again just a couple years ago by yet another Yankee.
1928: Birth of Nobel Laureate, Holocaust survivor and relentless Nazi-hunter, Elie Wiesel (d.2016). He authored 57 books, written mostly in French and English, including Night, which is based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz and Buchenwald during the Holocaust.
1928: The Soviet Union announces its first Five Year Plan, setting production quotas, prices, distribution plans and work assignments for the entire country. Thirteen plans later, the system collapsed into a similaricum of a market-based system, albeit deeply corrupted by the lingering fruits of communist cronyism.
1929: Air racer Jimmy Doolittle becomes the first pilot to takeoff, navigate and land an aircraft without reference outside the cockpit, using artificial horizon and navigation instruments he helped develop. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the development of dependable instrument flying capabilities and procedures- pioneered by Doolittle– remains the single most important development in aviation since 1903.
1934: Birth of Brigitte Bardot, former French actress, model, singer, and animal rights activist. A major sex symbol of the 1950s and 1960s, she was known for playing characters with hedonistic lifestyles. Bardot’s blonde hair, smoky eyes, and off-the-shoulder “Bardot neckline” made her a fashion icon. She recorded hits with Serge Gainsbourg and retired from acting in 1973 to live in St. Tropez.
1938: The League of Nations, perhaps sensing the true import of yesterday’s Munich Pact, unanimously passes a resolution that outlaws “intentional bombing of civilian populations.”
1939: A month into Germany’s invasion of Poland, the Nazi and Soviet governments publicly agree to divide the country between themselves (see DLH 8/23: Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact).
1938: Three short weeks after Adolf Hitler’s speech demanding “self-determination” for the German population living in Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland region, the leaders of France, Italy and Great Britain agree to permit Germany to annex the region into the Third Reich. The Munich Agreement, as the diplomatic initiative was known, exemplified the principle of appeasement as a means to prevent war. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was its most vocal advocate, pointedly refuting opposition leader Winston Churchill’s increasingly strident identification of the latent threat of continued German aggression and Britain’s woeful inability to militarily resist it. You’ll note that the principals at the conference did not include any Czech representation, nor anyone from the Soviet Union. Given Great Britain’s defense pact with Czechoslovakia, the Czechs refer to this settlement as the Munich Diktat.
Chamberlain, on his arrival back in England, held his precious umbrella in one hand and waved a piece of paper in the other, uttering a phrase that has become an iconic illustration of the dangers of an over-intellectualized bad idea put into practice: “…the settlement of the Czechoslovakian problem, which has now been achieved is, in my view, only the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace. This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine [waves paper to the crowd – receiving loud cheers and “Hear Hears”]. Some of you, perhaps, have already heard what it contains but I would just like to read it to you …
“My good friends, for the second time in our history a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time.” [Chamberlain’s reference is to Beaconsfield’s return from the Congress of Berlin in 1878]
Churchill noted in Parliament:
“We have suffered a total and unmitigated defeat…you will find that in a period of time which may be measured by years, but may be measured by months, Czechoslovakia will be engulfed in the Nazi régime. We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude…we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road…We have passed an awful milestone in our history, when the whole equilibrium of Europe has been deranged, and that the terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the Western democracies: “Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.” And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.”
Hitler… (from a speech to his generals in August, 1939):
“The enemy did not expect my great determination. Our enemies are little worms, I saw them at Munich. […] Now Poland is in the position I wanted. […] I am only afraid that some bastard will present me with a mediation plan at the last moment.”
1941: In German-occupied Kiev, Ukraine, the SS commander orders the massacre of the city’s Jewish population, and over the course of two days, kills 33,771 civilians in a ravine named Babi Yar, just outside the city.
1944: The final day of Operation Market Garden, a massive and bold Allied attempt to capture the Dutch bridges crossing the Meuse, Waal and Lower Rhine Rivers, particularly the bridges at Arnhem. Between the complexity of the multi-pronged assault, the unavailability of supporting fires (sounds more than a little like JDO (FYI- that’s an ‘insider’ reference to a not-to-be lamented project at JFCOM (RIP))), and the tenacious German defenses, the operation collapsed with the Allies failing to secure the primary road bridge at Arnhem. The battle became remembered by the wider public when Cornelius Ryan published his book “A Bridge Too Far” in 1974, followed by the epic movie of the same name in 1977.
1947: First television broadcast of the World Series, the contest that year being between the New York Yankees (there they are again!) and the Brooklyn Dodgers.
1949: Chinese warlord Mao Tse Tung proclaims the establishment of the People’s Republic of China.
1957: 1,200 U.S. Army troops of the 101st Airborne Division forcibly integrate 9 black students into Little Rock’s Central High School. 10,000 federalized* National Guard troops area also mobilized to provide a security perimeter around the school and in surrounding sections of the city.
1960: First broadcast of The Flintstones, the first animated series to hold a prime-time slot on television. ABC ran the show for 166 episodes over six seasons.
1968: The “rock opera” Hair opens in London, and runs for 1,998 performances.
1973: The Mach 2 airliner Concorde makes its first, record-breaking run across the Atlantic.
1979: As the first step in implementation of the Carter-Torrijos Panama Canal Treaty, the United States formally released its sovereignty over the Canal Zone, changing its status to a tenant of the Panamanian government.
About the Author
Racism is an attitude that takes place inside one's head. Discrimination is an overt act that takes place in the…
Over the years, I've noticed that quite often the people who shriek Racism! ...are actually, themselves racists.
Yes..... To all of that.
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How can this be applied to Illegal Aliens?