64AD:TheGreat Fire of Rome; beginning in the residential area near the Circus Maximus, the fire becomes a firestorm that burns for five days before coming under control, then reignites and burns for four more days. 2/3 of the city is consumed by the flames. EmperorNero, away at a summer palace when the fire starts, is widely blamed for either setting it or ignoring it, fiddling- if you will- as Rome burned.
1203:Venetian armies of theFourth Crusadecapture Constantinople, driving the sultan into exile and setting into motion the eventual death of the Christian Byzantine Empire.
1545:Leading a major Royal Navy attack into the Solent against an invading French fleet, Henry VIII’s flagshipMary Roseheels suddenly to starboard from a gust of wind. Her open lower gun ports begin to take on water, exacerbating the heel, which then causes the portside cannons to break free, along with stores and ammunition careening to the leeward side. The ship completely capsizes and sinks into the turbulent waters of the Solent, in full view of the king himself and the two battling fleets. Of the nearly 400 crew aboard, only 35 escaped with their lives. Sporadic salvage efforts continue through 1549, until the deleterious effects of scouring sand, toredo worms, and general exposure finally cause the ship’s open timbers to collapse to be carried away by the current. But over 40 percent of the hull remained trapped in mud until the wreck was accidentally re-discovered in 1836. The site was re-confirmed in 1971, and a full salvage effort began in 1982. The entire remaining hull and thousands of artifacts are today on display at the Royal Dockyard in Portsmouth, England.
1606:Birth ofRembrandt van Rijn(d.1669). The Dutch painter was one of those rare artists who was both a commercial and critical success in his own lifetime, to say nothing of his stunning reputation and acclaim today. His masterpieces epitomize the dramatic use of light, composition and mood.
1692:Five women arehangedfor witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials.
1717:From a royal barge gliding down the Thames River, King George I and a small retinue hear the first performance ofGeorge Fredrick Handel’sWater Music.
1762:Catherine the Greatassumes the throne as Empress of all the Russias after the assassination of Peter III.
1769:FatherJunipero Serra, a Spanish Franciscan monk, foundsMission San Diego Alcala, the first of 21 Franciscan missions in Alta California. The missions are carefully sited approximately one long day’s ride (or a three day walk) from each other, and formed the nucleus of most of California’s early cities. The trail between them became known as theEl Camino Real(“The Royal Road”), which also became the first historically commemorated road* in the country. The only surviving original adobe mission structure remains atSan Juan Capistrano. The missions themselves run north between San Diego and Sonoma.
1792:American naval hero CaptainJohn Paul Jonesdies in Paris (b.1747). After his exploits in the American Revolution, he served briefly in Saint Petersburg as Catherine the Great’s naval advisor. His Russian tour complete, Jones was back in Paris awaiting his appointment letter as United States Consul to Algiers when he died. His mortal remains today rest in a crypt beneath the US Naval Academy chapel.
1793:Four days after sending Marat to his reward,Charlotte Cordayis executed via guillotine. Immediately after her head fell into the basket, the executioner’s associate pulled it out and slapped her cheek, and the Jacobin council ordered an autopsy to determine if she was a virgin (she was). France’s post-Revolutionary decades saw Corday’s legacy undergo a major revision: from being the she-devil incarnate and Enemy of the People, she became more widely known as a woman of integrity and virtue who sacrificed herself to halt the gross excesses ofle Terreur.In 1860 the French painter Paule Jacques Aime Baudry summarized her enduring reputation by altering the perspective of David’s famous painting, to show Corday as a principled heroine of the people of France (the map on the wall) against the monstrous Marat.
1799:In the Egyptian village of Rosetta (a.k.a. Rashid), French CaptainPierre-Francois Bouchardfinds a portion of an ancient stele, with inscriptions in three languages: Egyptian hieroglyphics, Egyptian Deotic script, and ancient Greek. The common inscriptions, written in honor of the 13-year-old Ptolemy V, provided the first viable translations of hieroglyphics. When the British army defeated the French in Egypt in 1801, they assumed possession of theRosetta Stoneas part of the Treaty of Alexandria. It was immediately put on display in the British Museum, where it remains to this day.
1815:Four weeks after his decisive loss at Waterloo,Napoleon Bonapartesurrenders himself aboard HMSBellerophon, which immediately transports him and a small retinue into permanent exile on the tiny island of Saint Helena, deep in the South Atlantic.
1843:Launch of the SSGreat Britain, the world’s first iron-hulled, screw-driven ship, which was also the largest vessel in the world at the time of her launch.
1848: Birth of Joeseph Lee. Boston-area entrepreneur Joseph Lee was apioneer in the automation of bread and breadcrumb makingduring the late 1800s. He invented machines for use in the hospitality industry that automated the mixing and kneading of bread dough and that created crumbs from day-old loaves.
1861:Two and a half months after the secession crisis degenerated into the Confederate firing on Fort Sumter, President Abraham Lincoln orders a Union army of 35,000 under Brigadier GeneralIrvin McDowellto begin a march into Virginia, with the object of defeating the gathering Confederate army and putting pressure on Richmond. McDowell heads west out of Washington, DC toward the Manassas junction, with the joyful cries of“On to Richmond!”from the press and fellow citizens ringing in the army’s ears.
1862:CaptainDavid Farragutis promoted to Rear Admiral, becoming the United States Navy’s first flag officer.
1863:The army’s first all-black military regiment, the54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantrymakes its combat debut, in a valiant but ultimately unsuccessful attack on Fort Wagner near Charleston, SC. Their leader,Colonel Robert Shaw, was killed in the attack and buried by the Confederate victors in a mass grave with his fallen men. The grave site no longer exists, washed into the sea by years of Atlantic storms.
1864: The New Orleans Tribune was the first daily Black newspaper to be published in English and French. Paul Trevigne Sr. was the associate editor.
1870:Georgia becomes the final former Confederate state re-admitted to the Union.
1870:The First Vatican Council issues theBull of papal infallibility.
1870:At the climax of a long series of diplomatic slights and under increasing pressure from a highly assertive Kingdom of Prussia, France declares war on the German state, opening theFranco-Prussian War. German ChancellorOtto von Bismarckhad conducted two earlier limited wars which expanded Prussia’s territories into southern Denmark and Austria’s Sudetenland, both of which had the salutary effect of bringing many smaller Germanic states under Prussia’s control. You will recall that Bismarck’s main political goal was the complete unification of German lands under the leadership of Prussia. He early on began to lay claim to the French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, which were populated nearly 80% with Germans, and not coincidentally contained a huge proportion of French heavy industry.
1917:Three years into WWI,King George Vissues a very British proclamation that his descendants will bear as their surname “Windsor,” after the castle in which the family lived, vice “von Saxe-Coberg and Gotha” which derived from Queen Victoria’s Germanic consort Prince Albert.
1923:Death ofJose Doroteo Arango Arambula(b.1878), the Mexican warlord more commonly known as Pancho Villa.
1925:Seven months after his release from Landsberg Prison,Adolf Hitlerpublishes hismagnum opus:Mien Kampf.
1929: Singer Jalacy Hawkins, best known as Screamin’ Jay Hawkins born in Cleveland, Ohio. He is most well known for the song “I Put a Spell on You”.
1936:TheSpanish Civil Warbegins. Two years after a wrenching election that installed its second left-wing socialist-Marxist government since 1931, Spain awakens to a widespread army revolt instigated from the Canary Islands byGeneral Francisco Franco. Government forces (the Republicans) quickly respond, but the army (the Nationalists) possess nearly overwhelming force against the chaotic efforts of the leftist ideologues running the government. Both sides consolidate their hold on territory by executing thousands; the viciousguerrillawar lasts through March 1939, leaving an estimated one million dead in its wake. Franco remainedCaudillo(lit: guardian; actually: dictator) of Spain until his death in 1975, after which the Bourbon monarchy was restored. Both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany used Spain as a live-fire testing ground for new military concepts (i.e.Blitzkriegcombined arms raids) and political instigation.
1936:TheMontreux Conventionis signed in Switzerland, allowing Turkey to fortify the Bosporus and Dardanelles. The treatyalso stipulatesfree passage of all ships (there are stipulations for military vessels) in peacetime.
1938:After a solo transcontinental flight from Long Beach to Floyd Bennett Field in New York in an airplane of his own design, aviation mechanic, pilot, handy-man and barnstormerDouglas Corrigantakes off again through cloud cover on a flight plan filed for a return trip to California. He lands instead, in Ireland, and earns everlasting public acclaim as “Wrong-Way Corrigan.”
1941: The first black pilot school, the 99th Pursuit Squadron was activated at Chanute Field in Rantoul, Illinois. This evolved into the 99th Fighter Squadron at the Tuskegee Institute, in Tuskegee, Alabama.
1942:Opening guns of the German army’s assault on Stalingrad. On this week the German assault got underway: the siege lasted nearly a full year through a bitter winter of inadequate clothing, sniping and counter-assaults by the Red Army.
1944:GeneralHideiki Tojoresigns as Prime Minister of Japan. He was hung in 1948 for war crimes.
1944:German Chancellor Adolf Hitler survives an assassination attempt led by ColonelClaus von Stauffenberg.
1948:Death of General of the ArmiesJohn J. Pershing(b.1860).
1941:The New York Yankee’s“Joltin’ Joe”DiMaggiohits safely for his 56th consecutive game, a recordthat stands to this day.
1945(a):Prime MinisterWinston Churchill, Soviet PremierJoseph Stalin, and PresidentHarry S. Trumanmeet in Potsdam, in the outskirts of the ruined capital of Berlin, to discuss and decide on the fate of post-war Germany and the rest of Allied-occupied Europe.
1945(b):Scientists from theManhattan Projectdetonate the world’s first atomic blast, code-namedTrinity, in the desert wastes of White Sands, New Mexico. President Truman, notified of the successful test during his summit meeting in Potsdam, told Stalin on the 25th“We havea new weapon of unusually destructive force.” Stalin, showing no emotion during the exchange, privately held his own explosion with his aides and American interlocutors that he was not told of it sooner.
1955:Opening day forDisneyland, a world of dreams, built from scratch in a parcel of distant orange groves in Anaheim, California.
1960:USSGeorge Washington(SSBN-598) conducts the first underwater launch of a ballistic missile, thePolaris A1.
1963:Test pilotJoe Walkerflies an X-15 rocket plane to 347,800 feet of altitude on the 90thflight of the program. Having gone more than 100 km up, it qualifies as a manned spaceflight.
1967 : More than one thousand people attended the first Black Power Conference in Newark, New Jersey.
1969:Apollo 11launches to the moon with astronautsNeil Armstrong,Buzz Aldrin,Mike Collins.
1969:SenatorEdward M. Kennedycareens his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island. He survives the watery crash.Mary Joe Kopechnedoes not.
1975:First docking between American and Russian spacecraft. TheApollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP)tested the limits of Soviet-American cooperation in each nation’s premier technology demonstration project. In addition to fundamental issues of trust and language compatibility, technical hurdles included differing measuring systems, different spacecraft and therefore different mating adapters and docking systems, different air pressures and different gas mixtures. That the program worked at all is a testament to the determination of the engineers who pulled it all together.
1976:Atlanta Braves sluggerHank Aaronsmacks his 755thand final home run.
1979:The Cold War–Sandinista rebels underDaniel Ortegacapture Managua, Nicaragua and institute a Marxist regime in Central America.
1982:The Pittsburgh Pirates’ great first baseman & left fielderWillie Stargellnails his final home run, number 475, ranking 30th on the all-time list, tied with Stan Musial and right behind Lou Gherig’s 493.
1996:Paris-boundTWA flight #800explodes 12 minutes after takeoff from JFK International Airport, killing all 230 souls on board. After a four-month investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board issues a finding that the most likely cause was a fuel explosion in the center fuselage tank.
