490BC: Athenian Hoplite warriors, using a highly developed phalanx formation, defeat the Persian army at the Battle of Marathon. The battle decisively halted the hitherto-inexorable advance of Darius I and his Persian army into the Doric peninsula, and brought an exceptional measure of confidence to the nascent city-state of Athens, which had long been under the shadow of the more militant Sparta. The rise of the Athenian Empire of the Classical period is dated from this victory.
122AD: Roman Emperor Hadrian begins construction of a massive wall across the borderlands between present-day Scotland and England.
1157: Birth of Richard I (d.1199), son of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II of England. His prowess in battle earned him the nickname of “Lionheart,” usually annotated Coeur de Lion due to his deep French roots.
1297: A Scottish army under the command of William Wallace defeats a numerically superior English army at the Battle of Sterling Bridge. In a dramatic case of using terrain for tactical advantage, the Scots established themselves on relatively high ground overlooking a narrow bridge over the River Forth, whose road was flanked on both sides by nearly impassable, boggy ground.
1504: After three years of labor, the 26 year old sculptor Michelangelo unveils his stunning rendition of David in the central piazza of Florence. A style note you may not have heard before: the Medici-commissioned statue was positioned such that his warning stare was aiming* straight at Rome. Photos don’t do it justice. I highly recommend a trip to Florence to see it.
1608: Just a little ways up-river from here, John Smith is elected Council President of the Jamestown colony. After the disastrous “starving time” winter of 1607-08, Smith set out on an extensive exploration of the Chesapeake Bay, where he found not only good hunting and fishing grounds, but also extensive trading relationships with many of the Indian tribes who lived and farmed nearby. On his accession to the Council, Smith was adamant that everyone must work- even the “gentlemen”- or they would not eat.
1609: Continuing his northerly exploration of the New World coastline (DLH 8/28), English explorer Henry Hudson, working for the Dutch East India company, discovers the island of Manhattan.
1776: American inventor David Bushnell’s Turtle makes the world’s first submarine attack in his one-man submersible, with Sergeant Ezra Lee at the controls. He hand-cranks his way out to HMS Eagle in New York harbor to affix a black powder time bomb to the hull of the ship, but the auger bit fails to penetrate the stout English oak. With dawn approaching, Lee abandons the attempt and makes good his escape.
1777: Battle of Brandywine– The Continental Army, under the command of George Washington, sets up a defense of Philadelphia along several fords of Brandywine creek, about 50 miles SW of the city. It looks like a strong defensive position against the recently landed forces of British General Lord William Howe, who transported his army by ship around the Eastern Shore in an attempt to make a less direct approach to the American capital than a frontal assault across the Delaware River. After analyzing Washington’s dispositions, Howe orders his Hessian General Wilhelm von Knyphauesen to create a demonstration across the entirety of Washington’s front. Howe, meanwhile, leads his 15,000 Redcoats wide around Washington’s right and attacks the American’s completely exposed flank. Quick responses by three American divisions prevent it from becoming a complete disaster, but by the end of the day the Continentals are a shattered force who could not hold the field. The decisive British victory meant the road to Philadelphia was wide open, and after a few days of desultory moves and counter-moves by the armies, the Continental Congress abandoned its capital, and Lord Howe continued his march northward to occupy the city.
1792: With both the French King and Queen now in prison, and the French Revolutionary government undergoing its usual machinations, a group of thieves break into the Garde-Meuble (the Royal Storehouse) and steal the crown jewels, including the famous 69 carat French Blue, a.k.a. the Hope Diamond. Although most of the other jewels were recovered, the French Blue was not. It vanishes from history until 1812, when a substantially smaller (45.5 carat) version surfaces in a London shop. I won’t detail all the forensics that tied the French Blue and Hope diamonds, but it is a pretty good story. Suffice it to say, it was stolen. Currently in the Smithsonian
1812: Napoleon Bonaparte achieves his final victory in the Russian campaign at the Battle of Borodino, but at a loss of over 35,000 of his own men, the single bloodiest day in the entire campaign. The Russian army under Marshall Mikhail Kutuzov not only suffers a similar casualty rate, but ends the day with shattered leadership and battlefield organization, making it ripe for a complete rout. Inexplicably, with the opportunity within his grasp, Napoleon fails to follow up on the nominal victory to completely destroy the Russians. Kutuzov and his men retreat into the deep Russian hinterland, forming the core of the force that will eventually drive the Grande Armee out of Russia.
1813: American Oliver Hazard Perry confronts and defeats a superior British naval squadron in the Battle of Lake Erie. He scratched out a victory message to General William Henry Harrison that was deliciously brief: “Dear General: We have met the enemy and they are ours. Two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop. Yours with great respect and esteem, O.H. Perry”
1816: Birth of Carl Zeiss (d.1888), who pioneered and perfected the art of wide-aperture lens making. His name still graces the best German optical instruments and equipment.
1818: Birth of Richard Gatling (d.1903), American firearms inventor, whose namesake gun I was privileged to shoot in both the A-7 and F-18.
1851: Birth of U.S. Army physician and biologist Walter Reed (d.1902), whose research and identification of tropical diseases, particularly mosquito-borne Yellow Fever, permitted substantial control of the disease and allowed the U.S. to continue work on the Panama Canal.
1862: Union Corporal Barton W. Mitchell of the 27th Indiana Volunteers, picking through debris in a recently abandoned Confederate encampment, finds three cigars wrapped in a sheet of paper. Unrolling it, he reads Special Order 191, from General Robert E. Lee, detailing for his Corps commanders their routes and objectives in the opening phases of the Maryland campaign. The order quickly makes its way into the hands of Union General George McClellan, who exclaims, “Now I know what to do!” He adds, “Here is a paper with which, if I cannot whip Bobby Lee, I will be willing to go home.” The intelligence gained from the order proves crucial in setting up the coming confrontation between the armies near Sharpsburg, Maryland.
1900: A category 4 (estimated) hurricane slams ashore at Galveston, Texas, obliterating virtually the entire city, and killing an estimated 8-12,000 residents.
1914: Two months into WWI, with Germany threatening the environs of Paris the Allied armies of France and Great Britain launched a massive counter-attack at the Marne River on the 5th of September that knocks the over-extended Germans into their own series of massive retreats. The week-long battle is known as the Battle of the Marne, or more popularly as the Miracle on the Marne, as it reversed for the first time the deadly efficiency of the Von Schlieffen Plan. A week into advance, the morning fog burned off to find the advancing Allies lightly dug in on exposed ground near the Aisne River, with the Germans occupying well-defended heights above. The First Battle of Aisne that opened this day raged for nearly two weeks, with neither side gaining an advantage, and both sides digging ever deeper into defensive trenches. By the 28th it was clear that the period of rapid movement of the Schlieffen plan, and the tactical flexibility of careful retreats and counter-attacks by the Allies, was permanently stalled. Both sides suddenly shifted their objectives toward attempts to outflank the other, which led to a period known as the Race to the Sea, which by November resulted in a continuous line of defensive trenches running from the Belgium’s North Sea coast all the way to the Swiss border, a line that would move little over the course of the next four years.
1919: A disgruntled and discharged Corporal Adolf Hitler of the Imperial German Army, joins the German Workers Party.
1922: First formal day governance in the British Mandate of Palestine. This particular offshoot of the Versailles Treaty had the full blessing of the “international community” through the auspices of the League of Nations.
1934: Enroute between Havana and NYC, a fire breaks out aboard the passenger ship SS Morro Castle. The crew fails to contain the fire and within 30 minutes the entire ship is ablaze, drifting without power off the New Jersey coast. 135 passengers and crew are killed out of 549 aboard. The burned out hulk eventually drifts ashore just off the Asbury Park Convention Center pier.
1935: US Senator from Louisiana, Huey “Kingfish” Long, is gunned down on the steps of the Louisiana capitol building.
1936: Birth of Yankee slugger Roger Maris (d.1985), who didn’t make many friends when he smacked his 61st home run in the 1961 season.
1938: Six months after the Austrian anschluss, and after six months of nationalist agitation, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler uses the language of Versailles in an incendiary speech demanding “self-determination” and “autonomy” for the German speaking population of the Sudetenland, a narrow two-part enclave of ethnic Germans inside the borders of the new Republic of Czechoslovakia. The Czech government responds by reinforcing its Bohemian border with Germany & Austria, but it is clear that a crisis is afoot.
1940: First night of what will end up become 76 consecutive nights of the London Blitz. By the time the German bombing campaign ends in May, 1941, over 43,000 civilians are killed, with a million houses destroyed, to say nothing of the infrastructure losses at the dockyards and factories in London and elsewhere.
1944: London hears for the first time a double sonic boom just prior to being hit by the first of 1,358 V-2 ballistic missiles launched from Nazi Germany between now and the end of the war the following May. The barrage ends up killing 2754 and injuring 6523 Britons. One laconic version of the casualty figures tagged it as “2 people per rocket,” although the same note went on to state that this number merges all of the zero casualty shots along with the more deadly ones, including an attack that killed nearly 550 when a machine fell into a theatre.
1948: Margaret Chase Smith is elected Senator from Maine, becoming the first woman to be both Representative and Senator.
1956: Introduction of the first computer disc storage system, IBM’s RAMAC 305.
1966: First broadcast of Star Trek, the great sci-fi series that creator Gene Roddenbury pitched to the suits as a “…western set in outer space,” .
1974: President Gerald Ford grants a full pardon to former president Richard Nixon for any crimes he may have committed while serving as President. This act of grace likely cost Ford the Presidency in the 1976 election.
2001: Islamic radicals, acting under the direction of Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, hijack four US airliners and precipitate the most deadly attack on US soil in history, with the expressed intent of triggering a war to re-establish the Islamic Caliphate over the West.
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