1282: The last native Prince of Wales is killed by the forces of England’s Edward I at the Battle of Orewin Bridge, earning himself the distinctive title of Llywelyn the Last. After this battle and a brief mopping up period, Edward solemnly and systematically dismembered all of Llywelyn’s royal trappings, including his wife’s jewels and crown, melting them down and fashioning them into a set of English royal diadems and chalices. With the extinction of the Welsh line of succession, Edward then assumed the title Prince of Wales for the heir of the British throne.
1520: Confirming his principled opposition to what he identified as the un-Biblical rule of the Pope, Augustinian monk Martin Luther publicly burns the Papal Bull Exsurge Domine, in which Pope Leo X demands from Luther a recantation of 41 “errors of the faith” derived from his 95 theses published three years earlier. As he burned his copy of the bull, Luther is reported to have said, “Because you have confounded the truth of God, today the Lord confounds you. Into the fire with you!” It should come as no surprise that Leo was not amused by this act.
1660: An actual woman- identity ambiguous between Margaret Hughes or Anne Marshall- appears on stage for the first time, in the role of Desdemona in Shakespeare’s Othello. Maybe you already knew this, but women’s roles before this date were played by men, in order to protect real women’s virtue. You can make your own value judgments here. Both women continued their stage careers for several decades after this day.
1725: Birth of Virginian George Mason (d.1792), a key intellectual partner of Patrick Henry, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, and a crucial voice of ensuring the rights of citizens during the development of a functioning, but limited republican government in the newly independent United States. Mason was the driving force for insisting on the inclusion of the Bill of Rights as integral to the Constitution.
1792: French King Louis XVI, jailed since August, is paraded through Paris before appearing before the National Convention to hear the charges of Treason Against the State levied against him. You already know how this is going to turn out, but one cannot overstate the drama of this particular day, as all the symbolism of the three year old Revolution and the eternal Monarchy meet this day under the cold reality of treason. The packed Parisian streets were silent as their king passed by, and as the charges were read to Citizen Louis Capet, not King Louis the Sixteenth, no-one could be in doubt that France had crossed a threshold from which it could not return.
1803: Birth of French composer Hector Berlioz (d.1869), a romanticist who pioneered the use of huge orchestras- upwards of 100 pieces (and once with over a thousand)- and dramatic musical themes that you immediately recognize. Take the 4th movement of his Symphonie Fantistique
1830: Birth of poet Emily Dickinson (d.1886), whose exalted position in the role of American Letters occurred only after her death, when the troves of her poetic jottings were finally cataloged and published under her own name.
1864: Four weeks after setting out from the ruins of Atlanta with an army made up solely of fighting men (i.e., no supply train), Union General William Sherman arrives at the perimeter defenses of Savannah, having left a massive swath of destruction in his wake.
1882: Birth of Firoello LaGuardia (d.1947), the fiery three-term mayor of NYC during the 30s and 40s. A “moderate Republican” with a strong populist bent, the 5’0” dynamo made an early name for himself when he launched a largely successful crusade to throw organized crime bosses out of the city. He milked federal largesse to build roads, subways, airports, city buildings and on and on.
1898: The Treaty of Paris formally ends the United States’ ten-month long “Splendid Little War” with Spain, ceding to the U.S. control of the islands of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Guam. Spain also cedes control over the Philippines for a payment of $20 million. Despite the popularity of the war with the public at large, ratification by the Senate was not a foregone conclusion, with much principled argument about how a constitutional republic of enumerated powers could become an imperial power over non-citizens in distant lands. The debate c
1912: The German Imperial War Council meets informally to talk through the tense military and diplomatic situation growing in Europe. Tensions were high over both the Balkans and ever-expanding “protectorate” –style colonialism along the North African coast, and Russia’s buildup of its “Great Military Program,” to say nothing of Britain’s overt concerns about Germany’s expanding High Seas Fleet and its traditional insistence on maintaining a balance of power on the Continent. Participants at this meeting included the Kaiser himself, his chiefs of the Army and Navy, and senior diplomats. The issue was the eventuality of war, and how to manage it to the advantage of Imperial Germany.
1917: After six months as commander in chief of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, Field Marshall Edmund Allenby reaches the climax of his campaign against the Ottoman Turks by defeating them in a series of short, sharp engagements that lead to the Turks’ surrender and evacuation of Jerusalem. Although fighting continued northward into the Levant and Syria, Jerusalem itself remained the crown jewel of the British-Allied conquest of Ottoman lands in the Middle East.
1936: King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland signs the Instrument of Abdication*, with which he plunged the nation into a constitutional crises in order to marry Mrs. Wallis Simpson, “the woman I love,” recently divorced from her American husband. The two move out into the world as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, causing no end of unease** to his little brother, now King George VI, and the larger Government of Great Britain during the buildup and execution of World War II.
1914: In an action far from the primary theater of the Great War, the Royal Navy tracks down and destroys a German cruiser fleet that was in position to make a raid on British supply depot at Port Stanley in the Falklands. Despite near-parity of the opposing forces, casualties in the Battle of the Falkland Islands were amazingly lopsided, with nearly 1,900 German sailors killed, 215 captured and four warships and two transports sent to the bottom. The Royal Navy suffered 10 killed and 19 wounded with otherwise minor damage to their ships.
1917: After six months as commander in chief of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, Field Marshall Edmund Allenby reaches the climax of his campaign against the Ottoman Turks by defeating them in a series of short, sharp engagements that lead to the Turks’ surrender and evacuation of Jerusalem. Although fighting continued northward into the Levant and Syria, Jerusalem itself remained the crown jewel of the British-Allied conquest of Ottoman lands in the Middle East.
1941- Japanese attack Pearl Harbor.
1941: Three days into their astonishing juggernaut, Japanese torpedo bombers attack and sink the Royal Navy battleships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse off the coast of Malaysia. The loss of the two ships sends an existential shock to Great Britain not unlike what happened to the United States just three days earlier.
1941: The Japanese army lands on Mindanao to begin the conquest of the Philippines.
1941: In accordance with the terms of the Tripartite Pact with Japan, Germany and Italy declare war on the United States.
1965: A huge fireball streaks across six states (first visible near Detroit) late in the afternoon, and SOMETHING- (queue up the creepy music)- in the shape of a huge acorn crashes into the woods near Kecksburg, Pennsylvania. Suddenly, the little town is swarming with Army troops and anonymous men in dark suits. When they finally depart, the official answer was: “It was a meteorite,” or “It was part of the Soviet Cosmos 96 satellite that crashed in Canada earlier in the day.”
1972:Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmidt land in the Moon’s Tarus-Littrow Valley, to begin a three-day sojourn of geologic discovery that climaxes the Apollo program. Command Module pilot Richard Evans remained in orbit performing extensive survey and mapping tasks while his crewmates were on the surface. Apollo 17 became the last flight of the moon program with the earlier cancellation of the final two planned missions for budgetary reasons.
1980: Death of former Beatle John Lennon (b.1940), gunned down by a deranged fan on the sidewalk in front of his apartment in NYC.
2016: Death John Glenn (b.1921), Marine fighter pilot, test pilot, American astronaut, long-serving U.S. Senator from the State of Ohio and husband of Annie Glenn for 74 years. For us Boomers who remember the riveting tensions and triumphs of the Space Race, John Glenn represented the quintessence of what makes America great: brave, buoyant, confident and living life to its fullest. He was my boyhood hero, and when I realized several years ago that I would have to miss an opportunity to personally get his autograph at a book signing here in Norfolk, I was really deflated. One of my family members, however, took the opportunity, and brought me a signed copy of his memoir that brought tears to my eyes. So did yesterday. Godspeed, John Glenn.
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