There is an upcoming vacancy on the Planning Commission. There is one member with a term expiring on October 31, 2024. If you are interested in serving on the Planning Commission, please complete the Cape Charles Boards and Commission Application and return it to the Town Clerk at clerk@capecharles.org, or mail it to 2 Plum Street, Cape Charles, VA 23310. You can drop it in the drop box located just outside the front door of the Town Hall.
Time to Dance, Stretch and Move with Mara
Arts Enter is offering classes that will help you get out of the house and into a more flexible, in-shape body and lifestyle. Master instructor Mara Ifju classes in movement and tap dancing.
Stretch & Move with Mara Ifju
Tuesdays & Thursdays 9:00am – 10:00am
8 classes $80 | Drop-In $15
Stretching makes it possible for the body to move more freely, more smoothly, and more naturally at any age. In this class, the movements are done in sitting, lying, standing, and traveling positions. These movements are designed to improve breathing, enhance circulation, and increase joint mobility, flexibility, and muscular strength.
Adult Tap Dance Lessons
Tuesdays 10:15am – 11:15am
8 classes $80 | Drop-In $15
Adult tap class makes for great exercise. Helps tone the body while enjoying music and movement while stimulating the mind with rhythmic sounds. Tapping improves physical function and well-being. Come and have a taptastic time!
To register call 757-331-4327
Summer Vocal Lessons with Sunny Trippel
Local favorite and super talented singer Sunny Trippel is offering a special intro price for vocal lessons. If you are interested in scheduling a few sessions with me, let her know ASAP. She can also make up gift certificates if you would like to give the gift of song to a friend or family member.
All Ages, All Levels, All Online
Coaching For: Voice, Songwriting, Adaptive Music, Harmonies, Audition, and Performance Prep
Work On:
Tone, Breathing, Pitch, Vocal Care, Range, Audition Prep, Performance Prep, Blending, Switching, Runs, Harmonies, Diction, Style, Mastering Storytelling
Private Message or Email To Schedule: SunnyTrippel@Gmail.com
Video: Water Spout hits Smith Island
SMITH ISLAND, Md. — Residents of the small community of Rhodes Point on Smith Island, Maryland, are recovering after a waterspout came ashore during Thursday’s severe weather.
Video and photos of the waterspout were shared on social media. In a video shot by Amy Somers, the waterspout is seen moving across the water before moving onto land and appearing to take the roof off of a building. The National Weather Service still needs to conduct a survey to confirm whether a tornado struck the area, but posts on social media from people in the area showed some of the damage left behind.
Videos show the tornado rapidly swirling over the Chesapeake Bay toward Smith Island.
Residents Katherine Donaway and Tiffanie Woutila, who took the videos, can be heard repeatedly shouting “Oh no!” as they watch the violent scene unfold in front of them. As the waterspout reached the island, debris can be seen flying up into the air as it made contact with a building.
Houses were pulverized and debris littered front lawns after the waterspout passed through the unassuming island.
Rep. Luria and USDA Announce Nearly $1 Million Investment on Eastern Shore
VIRGINIA BEACH, VA. – On Monday, Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA) joined U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Under Secretary of Rural Development Xochitl Torres Small to announce a $988,300 investment on the Eastern Shore through the department’s Emergency Rural Health Care Grant.
The nearly $1 million will be used to purchase emergency medical services vehicles in Northampton County and upgrade the HVAC system at Occohannock Elementary School.
“This investment by the USDA through its rural health care program will be used to provide our first responders with the tools and equipment they need to save lives and ensure that the basic needs of our students are met,” Rep. Luria said. “We must continue to invest in our students and first responders, and I was proud to be on the Eastern Shore today to announce this critical funding.”
The USDA investment includes funding for emergency medical services vehicles, an ambulance, and quick response vehicle for first responders in Northampton County. With the purchase of new vehicles, the county will improve response times and have additional time for cleaning and decontaminating each unit in between calls.
The upgraded HVAC system at Occohannock Elementary School will improve air quality and reduce the risk of airborne transmission of COVID-19 and other viruses.
Department of Commerce Invests $11 million in Coastal Virginia Workforce Training Program
VIRGINIA BEACH, VA.— Rep. Elaine Luria (VA-02) joined U.S. Department of Commerce officials and Chairman Bobby Scott (VA-03) on Wednesday to announce an $11 million American Rescue Plan Good Jobs Challenge grant to Hampton Roads Workforce Council to build a talent pipeline in Coastal Virginia.
The program will bring together large employers and community-based organizations to create a training program and grow industries in Coastal Virginia. The program will also establish training pathways in coordination with Historically Black Colleges and Universities to increase career opportunities for workers in maritime engineering and robotics.
“This more than $11 million investment in Coastal Virginia will create opportunities and support jobs throughout Coastal Virginia, including for our veterans and military families,” Rep. Luria said. “I will continue to support federal investment in our workforce, and I want to congratulate the Hampton Roads Workforce Council on this award.”
This grant is funded through the American Rescue Plan Good Jobs Challenge. The program awarded grants to 32 worker-centered, industry-led workforce training partnerships across the country. The $500 million program is expanding opportunities for more Americans to access and secure good-paying jobs by investing in innovative approaches to advance worker-centered, industry-led workforce training partnerships.
“For years, the Hampton Roads Workforce Council has been a national leader in helping workers gain the basic skills they need to access new jobs. Now, through this $11 million investment, the Workforce Council will be able to move beyond the currently available entry-level programs by strengthening and expanding access to advanced job training,” said Congressman Bobby Scott (VA-03). “Simply put, the Good Jobs Challenge grant will help workers gain advanced skills that lead to long-term, rewarding careers, and ensure businesses have skilled professionals on the job. This is just one part of our shared commitment – from the Biden-Harris Administration and Congressional Democrats – to supporting America’s workforce development.”
New budget gives Virginia’s farmers record funding for soil and water conservation
Never-before-seen levels of conservation funding for Virginia’s farmers are included in the new state budget. Producers throughout the commonwealth will benefit from expanded cost-share and tax credit opportunities.
Changes to the application for much of this support will also streamline the process for many farmers.
“We are very excited about the historic level of cost-share funding for farmers in the new budget, and grateful to the General Assembly for providing it. The governor has prioritized meeting Virginia’s Bay water quality goals, and with this money comes the responsibility to provide meaningful results,” said Matt Wells, director of the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation.
“We also know that we cannot meet our goals without true partnerships with our Soil and Water Conservation Districts and the agricultural community. This includes engagement, open lines of communication and mutual trust. We look forward to working with all of our partners to support agricultural best management practices across the commonwealth.”
Increased cost-share and tax credits
The Virginia Agricultural Best Management Practices Cost-Share Program, or VACS, is funded at a record high for the 2022-2023 program year with $123 million.
VACS is the state program that helps farms implement a range of conservation practices that protect water quality. By improving animal and soil health and reducing nutrient waste, these practices also help increase farm profitability — a key issue for producers as inflation rises.
DCR administers the state cost-share program in partnership with Virginia’s 47 soil and water conservation districts.
“Virginia’s soil and water conservation districts are the one-stop shops for state cost-share signup and practice implementation,” said Dr. Kendall Tyree, executive director of the Virginia Association of Soil and Water Conservation Districts. “We applaud the governor and the General Assembly for this record show of support for voluntary conservation efforts and look forward to serving Virginia’s agricultural community in our district offices.”
Farmers may receive up to $300,000 in state cost-share reimbursement for more than 70 best management practices including:
- Cover crops
- Nutrient management plans
- Forested or herbaceous buffers
- Animal waste systems
- Livestock stream-exclusion systems
Many of these practices can often be funded through a combination of state and federal funds, reducing the farmer’s expense to less than 25% of the total cost.
Also available to Virginia’s farmers this year are:
Up to $25,000 in state tax credits for fully implemented agricultural best management practices.
Up to $50,000 in tax credits for best management practices on lands with an approved resource management plan.
To apply for funding or tax credits, farmers should contact their local soil and water conservation districts.
Streamlined paperwork for many producers
Farmers in many localities will now find it simpler to apply for funding to support multiple nutrient management and/or cover crop best practices.
Under what is sometimes called a “whole farm approach,” a producer only has to submit one cost-share application to cover all of the nutrient management practices, or all the cover crop practices, established on as much acreage as desired.
Previously, this program was only available to farmers in Essex, King and Queen and King William counties, and in the Chesapeake Bay watershed of the Eastern Shore.
This year, however, farmers in Carroll, Gloucester, Grayson, Halifax, Mathews, Middlesex, Page, Rockingham, Washington counties — and all of the Eastern Shore — may also participate.
More information on Virginia’s soil and water conservation programs can be found at https://www.dcr.virginia.gov/soil-and-water/.
The program year ends June 30, 2023.
Pet of the Week: Meet Sadie
Hi, I am Sadie. I am an 11-year-old female. I am looking for a place to spend the rest of my days getting “butt scratches”, my all-time favorite! I am short in stature but plump. I am a mix of Shar Pei and Boxer.
I have no problem voicing my needs, you just have to learn to decipher what they are.
I am house-trained and really prefer getting my outside breaks and coming right back in to curl up and take a nap, with lots of loving of course.
I was the only dog in the home for many years so I may not get along with other dogs. I also never was in a home with cats, so not really sure how I would do in a home with them.
I really do seem to love most people and will accept a good rubbing, and treat from them.
I was spayed many years ago, and am up to date on my vaccines. If you think you may be interested in adopting me you can email and request an application at shorespca@gmail.com.
You can use our website to print an application out at www.shorespca.com, and you can contact the shelter Tuesday-Saturday 10am-3pm at 757-787-7385
Bringing Animals Into the College Classroom: My Experience
By Karen Davis, PhD, President of United Poultry Concerns
In the 1980s I taught a writing course at the University of Maryland, College Park, designed for students in their sophomore year who planned to enter the nursing profession. One student wrote a paper on the case of the Silver Spring monkeys. In it she defended animal experimenter Dr. Edward Taub, whose treatment of the primates he used in nerve-severing experiments at the Institute for Behavioral Research in Silver Spring, Maryland, led to his arrest and conviction on cruelty charges in 1981. Unfortunately, in 1983, the Maryland Court of Appeals reversed his conviction, ruling that state anti-cruelty laws did not apply to research conducted under a federal program.
At the time, the names “Silver Spring monkeys” and “Dr. Taub” rang only a small bell in my head. The paper stirred, without satisfying, my curiosity concerning the case against Edward Taub. I told the student she would have to supply the missing evidence and arguments on the other side before I could assign a grade to her paper.
This incident put the issue of animal experimentation before the class. These were sophomores, mostly young women, who were already experimenting on live animals as part of their pre-nursing course requirements. The surge of emotion on the subject was tremendous. It quickly appeared that students were very upset over what they were required by their instructors to do to animals, just so they could earn a degree that would allow them to “help people,” as they put it.
One student, whose mother was a registered nurse, vehemently insisted upon the irrelevance, based on her mother’s 20-years’ experience, of knowledge gained from hurting and killing animals in classroom exercises.
In the following weeks our discussion expanded to the whole question of how much of humane and decent sentiments and behavior a person should have to sacrifice to the demands of “professionalism.” Is it true, they wanted to know, and as they felt they were being taught by their instructors, that commiserative emotions and gestures have little or no place in the “healing profession”? At the end of the semester, one student captured in an essay something of the frustration that had been voiced by members of the class over animal experiments and similar desensitizing behaviors endorsed by our medicalized cultural institutions: “I would like to be merciful but I have to be professional also.”
From then on, I brought an awareness of animals, together with the idea of animal rights, into my composition and literature classes. I included essays, poems, and fiction, while interspersing thoughts, illustrations, and comments throughout my teaching which made students aware of not only the ranges of injustice toward animals practiced by human society, but the ranges of loving and respectful treatment of animals.
As a teacher, I sought to get students to see that the idea of animal rights, far from being cranky and alien, is actually an opportunity for us to enrich our lives. I linked animal rights with other major historical and contemporary movements on behalf of peace, justice and a creative nonviolent life.
Whenever I tell people that I integrated an animal rights perspective into my classes, they ask: How did you do it, and how did the students respond? I will touch briefly on each of these questions, drawing upon my experience as an English teacher who was and will always be a dedicated animal rights advocate.
Pitfalls to Avoid
I avoided coming across as a single-issue person. Instead, I tried to raise students’ consciousness to a level where they could begin to see, with Chief Seattle, that “All things are connected.” The single-issue approach can be self-defeating because instead of focusing attention on the topic of concern, it shifts attention to the person who is making the pitch.
From talking with colleagues as well as from the years I spent in the classroom, I see two major pitfalls that a teacher with an “extracurricular” ethical passion should be on the lookout for. One is that your particular matter of ultimate concern could dominate the classroom atmosphere to the point where even sympathetic students would be justified in complaining that the course was being taught off track.
The other is that, caring deeply about an issue, you shun it from your teaching altogether, refusing even to allow students to deal with it as a topic of their own choice. A colleague of mine, who was a staunch antiabortion advocate, did just that. Though a specialist in rhetoric, the “art of persuasive discourse,” she insisted she could not discourse rationally about abortion or stand to hear it tolerated by others. She thus denied the use of her specialized teaching skills, while relinquishing her opportunity, responsibility and right as an educator, to “profess” her (presumably) mature values to her students.
Teachers have to be on guard against a tendency in education to represent mainly strategies and techniques to students at the expense of ideas and substantive thought. I’d say that at times it is necessary to be a martyr – a witness to truth – in the classroom. By accepting the distress that comes from encountering hostility to animals and animal rights, we demonstrate our conviction both to ourselves and the students while strengthening our fortitude.
Teaching by personal example is the opposite of private crankiness. Students will see the difference because we are presenting the case for animal rights as a reasoned imperative, one that is inextricably linked, moreover, to the ecological imperatives now confronting us. And we’re showing them this, as animal advocate Ed Duvin wrote in his newsletter Animalines, “not in a self-righteous manner, but through factual presentations that stimulate reflection and corrective action rather than defensive behavior or futility.”
I feel I’ve done something of what I set out to do in the classroom when a student says, “This course and the manner in which it was taught have broadened my ideas about life and my cohabitation on this planet.”
A Richer Vision of Life
This leads to the second question: How do students respond? What sense do I get about the receptivity of college students to the idea of animal rights?
When asked this question in an interview, animal rights philosopher Tom Regan replied, ambiguously: “They’ve got to be ready to go back to some sense of alternative meaning of life other than having a BMW and the latest Sony stereo.” The animal rights movement, he said, is “a great opportunity.” Which is to say that the opportunity lies within the students themselves, a growing number of whom are fed up with the selfish-minded careerism being foisted on them in colleges and universities.
Similarly, the opportunity lies within the animal-rights, ecosensitive educator, who is obliged to try to get students to open their eyes to a new human way of being in the world.
I believe the time is past for insisting that humanism, ecocentrism, and animal rights can never meet, practically or conceptually. Petrifying constructs have to mollify. As Ed Duvin wrote, “We need a larger and richer vision to chart our course for the future, one that incorporates all the intricate interrelationships on this tragic planet.”
More and more students, I hope, are attracted to this kind of thinking, which makes how we conceive and present our subject crucial. Just as ecology should not be viewed as “a sterile discipline filled with intimidating scientific jargon, but a joyous opportunity to explore the mystery and magic of life (Duvin), so should animal rights be viewed as the creative evolution that it is.
One way to bring this view into college English classes is to choose writings that describe an “existential encounter” with an animal or animals, entailing metaphysical and moral discovery in the human encounterer. Loren Eiseley’s essay “The Bird and the Machine,” from The Immense Journey; D.H. Lawrence’s poem “Snake”; and Sarah Orne Jewett’s story “The White Heron” are excellent examples, as is Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s narrative poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”; Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem “The Panther”; Isaac Bashevis’s story “The Slaughterer”; and Alice Walker’s story of a forlorn horse in her essay, “Am I Blue?.” Add to these Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s novel The Yearling; Clare Druce’s story of a battery-caged hen, Minny’s Dream; That Quail, Robert by Margaret Stanger; and Gone Forever: The Passenger Pigeon by Susan Dudley Morrison, When I assigned my essay, “Viva, the Chicken Hen,” to my honors course on Animals in Literature, in 1990, the students shared the deep and unexpected feelings my story evoked in them about Viva, a form of life – the life of a chicken – they said they had never thought about before.
These and many other writings featuring human-animal encounters and revelations create a wealth of opportunities for students to engage in critical and imaginative explorations of their own in a variety of ways.
My experience with my students convinced me it was time to form an animal rights organization on the University of Maryland College Park campus. In September 1989, the Animal Rights Club became an officially registered student group – the first of its kind at the university. Along with this, my proposal to teach a University Honors course on the role of animals in literature was approved for the 1990 spring semester.
Developed partly from themes set forth in philosopher Mary Midgley’s essay “The Concept of Beastliness,” in Animal Rights and Human Obligations, edited by Tom Regan and Peter Singer, the course examined the traditional Western concept of human nature, based on a supposed ineluctable contrast between humans and other animals.
We considered how far this supposed contrast is based on seeing other animals as they really are and how far it is based on seeing them as projections of human fears and desires. The question was raised: Have artists and philosophers been conceiving human nature with reference to a conception of “the beast” that is largely chimerical? If so, does there exist in our literary and philosophical heritage a healing Orphic strain1 that could help rescue ourselves and the animals along with the planet we are ruining?
These, then, are some of the ways I sought to bring the animal rights perspective into my classroom teaching. My experience inspired me to feel that the ethical blindness toward animals and nature that distorts our culture could be enlightened at the college level. I believe we can help students see, as one of my students said she learned from my class, that “we must become conscious of others’ feelings while trying to better the world, realizing that as an individual and as a species, the human is not the owner but an occupier of the earth along with many other creatures.” This, for me, is our true human heritage, without which the rest of pedagogy is dross.
1. The legendary Orpheus of Greek mythology was a mortal revered for the peace-bringing power of his music. Each morning, Orpheus greeted the sun with his song. His melodies attracted the birds and other wild creatures, and even the mountains and stones were moved by his music. Orpheus charmed animals, but he did not deceive them. He lured animals to himself, but he did not harm them. He welcomed his fellow earthlings.
KAREN DAVIS, PhD is the President and Founder of United Poultry Concerns, a nonprofit organization that promotes the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl including a sanctuary for chickens in Virginia. Inducted into the National Animal Rights Hall of Fame for Outstanding Contributions to Animal Liberation, Karen is the author of numerous books, essays, articles and campaigns. Her latest book is For the Birds – From Exploitation to Liberation: Essays on Chickens, Turkeys, and Other Domesticated Fowl published by Lantern Publishing & Media. Karen is also the speaker of a biweekly New Podcast Series: Thinking Like a Chicken – News & Views!
History Notes this week of Aug 1
30BC: Roman rebel general Mark Antony, in a desperate battle to save the breakaway province of Egypt with its Queen and his lover, Cleopatra, ekes out a brief tactical victory against Octavian in the Battle of Alexandria. This ends up being the last battle of the hundred-year-long Roman Civil War. At the end of the day, Antony’s army deserts en masse to join the strategically victorious legions under Octavian.
30BC: Death of Mark Antony (b.83BC). After his Pyrrhic victory in the Battle of Alexandria and the subsequent mass defection of his army to Octavian, Antony does the noble Roman thing and quite literally, falls on his sword. He does not die immediately, and works his way to Cleopatra’s chamber, where he explains the reality of the imminent collapse of their Eqypto-Roman mini-empire. In her grief, she clutches a poisonous asp to her breast, and both of them die. Octavian, meanwhile marches his army into Alexandria and establishes a new Roman administration reporting only to him. With the century-long Roman Civil War thus suppressed, Octavian changes his name to Augustus, and his role from Proconsul of the Republic to the first Caesar of the Roman Empire.
216BC: Continuing his invasion into the heart of the Roman Republic, Carthaginian general Hannibal meets and defeats in detail a massive Roman army nearly twice his strength in the Battle of Cannae, on the lower Adriatic coast of Italy. This is the third major engagement since his winter crossing of the Alps. After his first two victories, Hannibal’s army systematically pillaged their way down the Italian peninsula, creating a rising sense of panic in Rome itself. In response, the Senate ordered two proconsuls to combine their armies to stop the Carthaginians. On the field of battle, the Romans formed into a deep infantry wedge with supporting cavalry on the flanks. For his part, Hannibal stretched his infantry across a wide front, inviting a direct attack against his center. Two African divisions were held in reserve on both flanks, not connected to the basic line. When the attack began, Hannibal began carefully withdrawing his center until the Roman force became concentrated en masse deep inside a crescent of Carthaginian troops. As the Romans’ positions began to collapse from the rear, Hannibal ordered attacks from both flanks, essentially surrounding the entire Roman army, which degenerated into panic as the Carthaginians then reversed their withdrawal and began to slash their way through a Roman mob who had nowhere to go. Of the 86,000 Romans and their allies who began the battle, over 45,000 were killed outright, in addition to 4,500 captured infantry and cavalry. Of Hannibal’s 56,000 troops, his losses were between 5-7,000. The battle was remains a classic in the study of leadership and tactics, as Hannibal himself fought from the center, maintaining close control over every movement of his forces. The double-envelopment “pincer” movement remains a time-tested goal of ground combat (and air and sea for that matter) to this day.
70AD: Culminating their relentless Siege of Jerusalem, the Roman army under the command of Titus (later to be Titus Ceasar) loots, burns, and completely demolishes the Temple that had been the center of Jewish worship for a thousand years. The destruction is mourned annually as the fast of Tisha B’Av. Note: in the name of accuracy, the actual structure that fell this day was the Second Temple (also known as Herod’s Temple), which was a complete on-site rebuilding of 10th c. BC Solomon’s Temple eighty years prior to the Roman siege. The famous Western Wall which remains today is part of the retaining wall built by Herod to consolidate the entirety of the Temple Mount summit, and includes within its perimeter much of Solomon’s original foundation stones, as yet not exposed to daylight these two thousand years later.
781: The earliest recorded eruption of Mount Fuji. Still active, the beautiful mountain’s last eruption was in 1707-08. In more recent news, the mountain in 2001 was host to an earthquake swarm deep underground beneath its magma pool. In 2011, in likely consort with the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami, seismologists detected a 5.9 earthquake directly below the mountain, causing some level of changes in both its stress field and overall magma pressure.
1291: Foundation of the Swiss Confederation with the signing of the Federal Charter, which established rules for the facilitation of free trade throughout the mountain trade routes in the Alps. Note: You’ll see the letters CH or CHE in those oval stickers on European cars from Switzerland. It stands for Confoederatio Helvetica, Latin for a confederation of the Helvetii, a tribe of Gauls living on the Swiss plateau in pre-Roman times.
1305: Scottish patriot and nationalist William Wallace is captured near Glasgow and hauled off to London, where he is accused, tried, convicted and executed for treason against Edward I. As he faced his accusers, Wallace declared: “I could not be a traitor to Edward, for I was never his subject.”
1419: The First Defenestration of Prague. A Hussite procession headed by the priest Jan Želivský attacked the New Town Hall in Prague and threw the king’s representatives from the windows into the street.
1492: Genovese mariner Christopher Columbus departs westward from Palos del la Frontera, Spain to prove a new ocean route to the Spice Islands of the Indies. His crew and his three ships- Nina, Pinta and the flagship Santa Maria– are financed by Queen Isabella I of Spain, who believed Columbus’ sales pitch that the earth was round and small enough that Spain would profit mightily from a new route to the riches of the east. He was partly right, but the riches and power would come from the west.
1588: In May the Spanish Armada set sail from Lisbon on a mission to destroy the heretic Elizabeth I and re-take England as a vassal of Catholic Spain. During the intervening 8 weeks, the ships of the massive fleet worked their way toward the English Channel, making two sharp but inconclusive engagements with the Royal Navy. They finally made anchorage near Calais, where the fleet was expected to embark 50,000 pre-positioned soldiers for the invasion of England. It should come as no surprise that they weren’t ready: the army was indeed waiting, but it was was reduced to fewer than 16,000 by disease and desertion. Beyond that, they did not yet have the barges needed to move from shore to ship. The English, on the other hand were ready: at midnight on the 28th, with the wind at their backs, Sir Francis Drake launched 8 fire ships against the tightly packed Spanish fleet. The main Spanish warships held their positions, but the majority of the armada cut their cables and scattered in confusion. No Spanish ships were burned, but the Spaniard’s defensive formation was broken and Captain General Medina Sidonia was forced to attempt to re-form the armada downwind in the unprotected waters near Gravelines, a small seaport at the border between France and the Spanish Netherlands, beyond which were extensive shoals, recently and intentionally un-marked by their Dutch enemies.
This week the English fleet, maintaining the weather gauge (i.e. upwind) and mindful of the lessons from earlier battles*, pounced on the Spanish, destroying five ships outright and badly damaging many others, before halting fire at 4:00 in the afternoon as ammunition ran low throughout the fleet. The Battle of Gravelines thus ruined any further Spanish attempt to join with Parma’s army. The Armada itself, though, remained a threat-in-being to the English coast, and as the wind backed to the south, Medina Sidonia was able to leave the French coastline and make his way northward. He was pursued by the English fleet through the 12th of August, when they were near the Firth of Forth in Scotland. As Sidonia led his increasingly bedraggled Armada around the stormy coast of Scotland and Ireland, Drake and Howard returned to England as heroes.
1619: In Jamestown, Virginia, the House of Burgess meets for the first time. It is the first representative assembly in the English colonies.
1620: The chartered merchant ship Mayflower, in company with the Speedwell, departs Southampton, England on its first attempt to reach North America with its Puritan passengers, who plan on colonizing “North Virginia” near the mouth of the Hudson River. After a very short day at sea, Speedwell develops severe leaks and the two ships return to port for repairs.
1704: As part of the War of Spanish Succession, the Spanish peninsula of Gibraltar is captured by an Anglo-Dutch fleet commanded by Sir George Rooke. Eventually annexed into the British Empire.
1789: As their reform movement continues to gather momentum, the French National Assembly takes an oath to “end feudalism” and “abandon [their own] privileges”. France accelerates toward revolution.
1792: Birth of Percy Bysshe Shelley (d.1822), the English poet widely regarded as the greatest lyricist in English history. His most famous poem, Ozymandias, posits the inevitable decline of even the most powerful institutions of men. Shelley lived an “unconventional life” with and around fellow Romanticists Byron and Keates. His uncompromising idealism helped fuel the intellectual “-ism” movements of the mid-19th century, including Thoreau’s Transcendentalism and Marx’s Communism, among others. Shelley drowned under mysterious circumstances while sailing his schooner between Leghorn (Livorno) and Lerici in northern Italy. His second wife, Mary Shelley (1797-1851) was a noted author in her own right, best remembered for her Gothic novel, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus.
1803: Birth of John Ericsson (d.1889), Swedish engineer, inventor, and designer of USS Monitor.
1815: Birth of Richard Henry Dana, Jr. (d.1882), Harvard-trained lawyer, author and politician. After a sickly junior year in the Harvard Yard, he decided to take a sea voyage as a seaman aboard a cargo vessel, where he would learn to work and live in the harshest conditions. His memoirs, Two Years Before the Mast, describe in vivid detail a life at sea, sailing from Boston around Cape Horn and up and down the coast of Alta California, gathering and tanning hides aboard the ship Pilgrim, which would eventually return them to Boston. One phrase spoken by a Master’s Mate who joined him on the bowsprit one moonlit night while Dana was intently studying the well-trimmed jibs, immobile as the ship surged through the Pacific swell: “How silently they do their work…”
1819: Birth of Herman Melville (d.1891), author of Moby Dick, or The White Whale.
1864:Battle of the Crater. In an innovative effort to break the ever-hardening Union siege of Petersburg, Lt Col Henry Pleasants, a mining engineer in his civilian life, and Commanding Officer of the Pennsylvania 48th Infantry, proposed a scheme to dig a long tunnel to a point under a Confederate hard point, where they could detonate a huge underground mine to create a breach in the defenses. The plan was approved by his Corps commander, General Ambrose Burnside, and eventually by Grant himself, who figured if nothing else, the digging would keep the men occupied for a time, even if it came to naught. The Pennsylvanians completed the tunnel and packed the gallery under the Confederate Elliot’s Salient with 8000lb of gunpowder in 320 kegs, set the arming fuses and back-filled the tunnel to prevent blow-back. At 4:44 this morning, the charge was detonated, creating a massive plume of men, debris, weapons and dirt; at the time it was billed as the largest man-made explosion in history, which it probably was, and it worked as advertised, immediately killing over 300 Confederate defenders and turning the defensive works into a massive crater 170 feet long, 80 feet wide, and 30 feet deep Burnside had two divisions designated to make the assault through the breach, the primary being a division of well-trained US Colored Troops (USCT) under BG Edward Ferraro, who planned to go around both sides of the crater’s rim to the Confederate rear before they could mount a defense. The reserves were an un-trained division “led” by a drunken commander who gave them no briefing at all on what to expect. General Meade, lacking confidence in the plan from the start, ordered Burnside not to send the USCT in the first wave, since the expected failure would look like they were sacrificing the black troops to no good end. This command-level dithering allowed the coming of daylight to expose the Union force and also gave the Confederates time to get their collective act together and assemble the beginnings of an organized defense. Burnside then sent forward the un-trained division, who promptly walked into the crater itself, thinking it would be a good rifle pit, but the walls were too soft to climb back out. The Confederates quickly brought artillery pieces and hundreds of muskets to the rim and began to systematically slaughter the Union soldiers. Burnside, watching the debacle from a mile away, then ordered the USCT division into the fight, and they too went into the hole, never to come out. Union losses were 3798, including 504 killed, 1881 wounded, and 1413 captured or missing. Confederate losses were 1491, most of whom were from the initial blast. Grant finally cashiered Burnside from command after this debacle.
1864: Rear Admiral David Farragut leads a US Navy flotilla into the fortified confines of Mobile Bay, with the mission of permanently closing the port to further trade and blockade running. During the previous year, while Farragut’s attentions were earlier turned to returning the Mississippi River to Union control, the Confederates fortified Mobile with three forts ashore and a minefield guarding the main channel into the bay. Farragut’s flotilla entered the bay at dawn, guns blazing, and overwhelmed the shoreward defenses. When one of his captains slowed his ship due to the threat of the mines (“torpedoes”), Farragut responded with “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!” Of note from the Confederate perspective was the single-handed fight of the ironclad ram CSS Tennessee against the entire Union fleet, which took three hours to finally force its surrender.
1892: The parents of Lizzie Borden are found murdered in their Fall River, Massachusetts home. Lizzie is acquitted of the murders in the sensational trial that follows, but her notoriety remains to this day in the words of the famous jump-rope song: “Lizzie Borden took an axe…”
1900: Birth of war correspondent Ernie Pyle (d.1945), whose personalized reporting from the European Theater of Operations and later the Pacific Theater made him the most well-known name in journalism. He was killed by a burst of Japanese machine gun fire on Ie Shima, near Okinawa.
1914: Backing up their Austrian ally’s recently declared war on Serbia, Germany declares wa on Serbia’s ally, Russia.
1914: Germany declares war on France.
1914: After receiving a negative Belgian response to their request to cross their territory to attack France, the Imperial German army crosses the border anyway, meeting stiff resistance from the Belgian army. With their guarantee of Belgian neutrality at stake, not to mention their alliance with France in the Entente Cordiale, Great Britain declares war on Germany. The Wilson administration in United States declares an official policy of neutrality.
1930: Birth of Neil Armstrong (d.2012) X-15 pilot; Gemini-8 Commander; Apollo-11 Commander; Moon-explorer.
1934: Death of Paul von Hindenburg, hero of the Great War (victor of the Battle of Tannenburg), and twice elected President of the German Republic. The old war horse helped legitimize Adolf Hitler’s electoral rise to power in 1932. When he died, Hitler assumed the office of the Presidency in addition to the Chancellorship, formally assuming the powers as dictator of the German state.
1936: American Jesse Owens wins the 100 meter dash at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
1941: Under direction of Adolf Hitler, Reichmarschall Hermann Goering orders SS General Reinhard Heydrich to submit a plan for “the final solution to the Jewish question.”
1943: In the South Pacific, PT-109 is sliced in half and sunk by a Japanese destroyer. Its skipper, Lt John F. Kennedy, rallies his stricken crew to swim to a nearby island, saving all but two of them.
1944: Final diary entry of Anne Frank.
1944: Opening guns of the Warsaw Uprising, in which somewhere between 20,000 and 49,000 members of the underground Polish Army rose in revolt against their Nazi occupiers who were growing increasingly desperate from the accelerating pressure of the Red Army’s advances on the Eastern Front. The Polish rising was carefully timed to complement the entry of the Red Army into the eastern outskirts of the city, with a plan designed around expelling the remaining Germans and establishing a functioning Polish government in the city before the Russians had the opportunity to impose a communist interim government of their own. After a startling initial rollback across multiple fronts in the city, the Nazis began a furious counter-attack, obliterating entire blocks with artillery and dive-bombing in an attempt to snuff out what they realized was an organic Polish army that had grown up right under their noses. The Poles, anxious to establish real coordination with Red Army, failed repeatedly to make radio contact with their putative allies. As the fight wore on it became clear that the Russians were studiously ignoring any and all Polish attempts for help* and coordination. In fact, the Soviet leadership, aware of the Poles’ overall plans, realized that their own plans to install a communist puppet state could be thwarted by a functional Polish government brought to power by the force of Polish arms. The Red Army therefore, at the direction of Joseph Stalin, halted their offensive into the eastern portions of the city, took up defensive positions on high ground, and watched passively for the next 63 days as the Wehrmacht systematically bombed, shelled, burned, and crushed virtually the entirety of downtown Warsaw. With the final capitulation of the Polish army on October 2rd, and the subsequent evacuation of Warsaw’s entire civilian population, both the Germans and the Russians reasoned that there was little to be gained by fighting over the rubble, and there was no ground movement around the city until the final Russian overall offensive in January, 1945. The Polish army suffered over 16,000 deaths and 25,000 wounded. 15,000 were rounded up by the Nazis and interred as POWs until war’s end. Over 200,000 Warsaw civilians were forcibly displaced from their homes or killed during the fighting. The German army is estimated to have lost 6,000 dead and 9,000 wounded.
1944: Death of Antoine de Saint-Exupery (b.1900), French pilot and author of Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince), and two beautiful aviation books: Night Flight and Wind, Sand and Stars. On this week he launched from Corsica in a P-38 on a reconnaissance mission from which he never returned. His aircraft and personal effects were discovered in 1998.
1945: The Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-58 torpedoes and sinks USS Indianapolis (CA-35), which took only 12 minutes to go down. Of her crew of 1,196, only 317 survived the attack. Approximately 300 sailors went down immediately with the ship, while the other 880 endured an ordeal of exposure, dehydration and near-continuous shark attacks* for four and a half days before a patrol plane inadvertently spotted the wreckage and began a frantic rescue attempt. Although the ship sent out a distress signal, it was never received by the Navy command, and the fact that it overdue from her scheduled arrival in Leyte passed unremarked. The CO, Captain Charles McVay, survived the sinking and was court-martialed for “hazarding his ship by failing to zig-zag” his course after leaving Tinian** a few days earlier. Several attempts were made over the years to rehabilitate his reputation, beginning with Fleet Admiral Nimitz remitting the sentence of the Court-Martial and restoring him to active duty, from which he retired in 1949. However, the personal guilt he carried with him after surviving the ordeal eventually drove him to suicide in 1968, using his Navy-issued revolver.
1947: Birth of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
1948: Former journalist and communist fellow-traveler Whittaker Chambers publicly accuses former State Department official Alger Hiss of being a Soviet spy.
1954: First ascent of K2, the second tallest mountain in the Himalayas, by an Italian team led by Ardito Desio.
1958: USS Nautilus (SSN-571), the world’s first nuclear-powered vessel, crosses the North Pole during its historic under-ice transit of the Arctic Ocean. The ship is now on permanent display in Groton, Connecticut.
1961: Birth of 44th President of the United States Barack Hussein Obama.
1962: Birth of right-handed pitcher Roger “Rocket” Clemens, winner of seven Cy Young awards and one of only four pitchers to achieve more than 4,000 strikeouts in their careers.
1962: Death of Marilyn Monroe (b.1926).
1964: The Ranger-7 lunar probe transmits the first close-up photographs of the moon- four minutes of live television as it crashed into the lunar surface. [Itself; What it saw- the final image, made at 488m above the surface.
1964: On patrol in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of Vietnam, the US destroyer USS Maddox (DD-731), operating 28 miles offshore, is attacked by three North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The boats launched several torpedoes but were driven off by US gunfire, including strafing by F-8s from the USS Ticonderoga (CVA-14). Two days later, Maddox and USS C. Turner Joy (DD-951) were back on station around 11 miles offshore in heavy weather when they were allegedly attacked again by North Vietnamese gunboats. The second attack is dubious, mostly due to heavy weather and the understandably heightened alertness of the radar and sonar crews after the earlier attack. Fighter aircraft that launched immediately in defense of the ships saw nothing in the vicinity and reported as such. This fact did not dissuade President Johnson from asking Congress for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorizing him to use whatever conventional force necessary to assist any Southeast Asian state subject to communist aggression.
1964: In the first response to the now-notorious Gulf of Tonkin Incident, aircraft from the carriers USS Ticonderoga (CVA-14) and USS Constellation (CVA-64) launch 60 sorties against the North Vietnamese patrol boat base and oil storage facility, destroying 25 boats and eliminating their entire stock of fuel.
1965: Just days after doubling down on the US military commitment to South Vietnam, President Lyndon Johnson demonstrates to the country that we can have both guns AND butter by signing the Social Security Act of 1965, which, among other things, institutes COLA provisions to SS payments and establishes Medicare and Medicaid programs.
1971: Apollo 15 lands on the Moon near the famous Hadley Rille, a prominent valley in the lunar landscape. The flight is the first to use the Lunar Rover vehicle to expand the astronauts’ radius of exploration from the Lunar Excursion Module. The landing site was chosen not only for its scientific potential (which was very high, given the geography of the Hadley highlands) but also because it was likely to be the most beautiful region to be visited by the Apollo program. The all USAF crew was particularly well-trained in geology, with Dave Scott and Jim Irwin undergoing months in the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona, learning not only how to identify key geologic indicators, but also how to communicate their findings verbally through their interaction with fellow astronaut Capsule Communicators. The Command Module Pilot, Al Worden, also received geology recognition instruction, not from the surface, but in an airplane flying at an altitude that replicated the track crossing angular rates of the LM orbit around the moon. Worden operated a highly complex remote sensing package that made detailed surveys of the lunar surface using a panoramic camera, gamma ray spectrometer, mapping camera, laser altimeter and mass spectrometer. Scott and Irwin spent three days on the surface of the moon, logging over 18 hours of extravehicular activity in three separate excursions. Before climbing back into the LEM for their ascent, Scott proved Galileo’s theory that a feather and a hammer will drop at the same rate in a vacuum, which indeed, they did. Worden performed a deep-space EVA to retrieve the camera packs from his science package during the transit back to Earth.
1975: Teamsters Union boss Jimmy Hoffa disappears from a parking lot in suburban Detroit and is never heard from again.
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 194
- 195
- 196
- 197
- 198
- …
- 870
- Next Page »