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.
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. Exercising exceptional discipline, the Scots held back their attack until about half of the English vanguard of knights and heavy infantry, with some cavalry, crossed the bridge (often only one or two wide due to its narrowness), and began to re-form for battle. Wallace then hurled his outnumbered Scots against the still-disorganized English, immediately capturing the bridge and thus cutting the enemy into two trapped elements. Without organization, without leadership, and without an escape route, the English were completely routed by the fiery Scottish partisans. Over half of the English infantry were killed outright, and while an unknown number of Scots perished, it was rightly celebrated as a resounding victory. It was also notable regarding the ability of the lightly armed Scots to overcome- by tactics and motivation- superior weights of numbers and armament of the English force.
1504: After three years of labor, the 26-year-old sculptor Michelangelo unveils his rendition of David in the central piazza of Florence. The Medici-commissioned statue was positioned such that his warning stare was aiming straight at Rome.
1608: 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. His leadership set the colony on the direct path to sustainability and growth.
1609: Continuing his northerly exploration of the New World coastline, English explorer Henry Hudson, working for the Dutch East India company, discovers the island of Manhattan.
1754: Birth of William Bligh (d.1817), Royal Navy sailing master under the tutelage of the great Captain James Cook; later commissioned Lieutenant and Commanding Lieutenant in command of HMS Bounty during her ill-fated 1789 voyage to the South Pacific. Bligh was an harsh leader who made up for his deficiencies of personality by the exercise of extraordinary seamanship capabilities. There was the 3600-mile post-mutiny journey in an open boat with himself and 18 loyal crew, only one of whom did not survive the six-week transit to Timor. After being exonerated by Court Martial, Bligh was promoted to Post Captain and went on to 10 individual ship commands and two turns as Commodore, retiring as Vice Admiral of the Blue in 1814.
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.
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 and into their graves.
1813: American sea-dog Oliver Hazard Perry confronts and defeats a superior British naval squadron in the Battle of Lake Erie. On the occasion of his death, 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”
1818: Birth of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy (d.1910).
1850: California, flush with fresh gold from the Sierra Nevada, is admitted as the 31st state of the Union.
1900: A category 4 (estimated) hurricane slams ashore at Galveston, Texas, obliterating virtually the entire city, and killing an estimated 8-12,000 residents.
1906: French (Brazilian emigre) aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont successfully flies his airplane 14-bis for the first time.
1919: A disgruntled and discharged Corporal Adolf Hitler of the Imperial German Army, joins the German Workers Party.
1921: Planned with the express intention to extend the summer season at the Jersey Shore, the first Miss America contest is held in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
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.
1929: Birth of the American golfer Arnold Palmer (d.2016).
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, where it becomes something of a macabre tourist attraction, even to the extent of postcards being made of the wreckage. It lingers as a pop culture touchstone through the 1940s. From the practical perspective, the disaster led to a number of mandated improvements to ship construction, damage control, and crew training. On the last point, it lead directly to the establishment of the US Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, NY.
1935: US Senator from Louisiana, Huey “Kingfish” Long, is gunned down on the steps of the Louisiana capitol building.
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.
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. The nightly raids severely tested the stiff upper lips of the population, many of whom evacuated to Scotland or set up residence in the Underground.
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. As the accuracy of the attacks became more evident, British intelligence leaked out word that the rockets were overshooting the city by a number of miles. The “information campaign” was sufficiently effective to create a long period where the rockets fell harmlessly short of their intended destinations. Norwich was the target for another 43 V-2s, and Ipswich absorbed another. England did not bear all of the attacks: 1664 flew against Belgium, 76 against France, and 19 against the Netherlands. The core of the V-2 design remains the basis for the widely exported SCUD missile systems today.
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,” with the added benefit of Swift-ian morality tales infused into the subtext.
1967: Under the terms of UN General Assembly Resolution 2070, the residents of the Gibraltar Peninsula conduct a plebiscite on whether or not to abrogate the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) and return to Spanish sovereignty. I’m sure the genius politicians* in the UN and Spain were shocked at the outcome: on this day, the British subjects of the British colony of Gibraltar vote to remain British subjects. 44 souls of the electorate (0.36%) voted in favor of the return, while 12,138 (99.19%) voted against; (55 ballots (.45%) were spoiled and not counted).
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.
1976: Death of Mao Tse Tung. Mao was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and political theorist who founded the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and led the country from its establishment until his death.
2001: Islamic radicals 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 infidel West.
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