October 16
1384. Jadwiga of Poland is crowned King, though she is a woman. She will later be canonized as Saint Hedwig, patron saint of queens. As queens regnant were rare in Europe in that time (as opposed to queens who were merely consorts), she was crowned as king to establish that she was ruler in her own right.
1793. Marie Antoinette is beheaded.
1859. John Brown, an ardent abolitionist, leads a raid on Harper's Ferry in Maryland. He and his men attack an armory with 100,000 rifles, in the hopes of using them to arm a slave revolt that will sweep through the slave states. The attack at first went extremely well -- they easily swept through the town, cut the telegraph lines and captured the armory. Then a Baltimore & Ohio train came through and everything started to fall apart. Brown's men ordered the train to stop, but after warning its passengers, the train barreled through. Brown's men fired, and the first casualty of the action was, ironically, a freed black man named Hayward Shepherd, the train's baggage master. The train eventually sent a telegraph message:
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by A.J. Phelps, Conductor
Monocacy, 7.05 A. M., October 17, 1859.
Express train bound east, under my charge, was stopped this morning at Harper's Ferry by armed abolitionists. They have possession of the bridge and the arms and armory of the United States. Myself and Baggage Master have been fired at, and Hayward, the colored porter, is wounded very severely, being shot through the body, the ball entering the body below the left shoulder blade and coming out under the left side.
|
Local men soon rallied, and then the US Army arrived, under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee. Army Lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart went under white flag to ask the men to surrender. Brown refused, and the army then assaulted the building Brown's men were defending. Many of his men, including two of his sons, were killed, and Brown was eventually hanged for his crimes. Perhaps most insightful, however, was Victor Hugo, who remarked in trying to obtain a pardon for Brown:
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Victor Hugo
"[...] Politically speaking, the murder of John Brown would be an uncorrectable sin. It would create in the Union a latent fissure that would in the long run dislocate it. Brown's agony might perhaps consolidate slavery in Virginia, but it would certainly shake the whole American democracy. You save your shame, but you kill your glory. Morally speaking, it seems a part of the human light would put itself out, that the very notion of justice and injustice would hide itself in darkness, on that day where one would see the assassination of Emancipation by Liberty itself. [...] Let America know and ponder on this: there is something more frightening than Cain killing Abel, and that is Washington killing Spartacus." |
1869. The "Cardiff Giant", one of the most famous hoaxes in American history, is "discovered". In Cardiff, New York, George Hull, an atheist annoyed with local Methodists about the truth of a passage in Genesis about giants walking the earth, carefully orchestrates a fraud. He orders the construction of a 10 foot tall "man" carved out of gypsum, and has it buried. He then hires some men to dig a well, and they "discover" the giant. Hull charges .25 for viewings, then later raises it to .50 after people come by the wagonload to see it. Hull sold his interest for $23,000 to a group of investors, including one David Hannum, who brought it to Syracuse, New York, for exhibition. PT Barnum tried to buy it from these men for $50,000, but was refused, so he of course hired some men to make a replica of the giant and put it on display in New York and declared his to be the real giant, and the other (original) one a fake. Hannum, in referring to the brouhaha and the people who paid to see Barnum's giant said "there's a sucker born every minute." Over time, the quote was attributed to Barnum himself, but that is incorrect.
Not everyone had been fooled, of course. A number of scientists and anthropologists immediately declared the giant to be a fake, but their words went unheeded.
By February 2, 1870, both giants had been declared fakes by a New York court.
1875. Brigham Young University is founded.
1923. Walt Disney Company is founded by Walt Disney and his brother, Roy.
1934. Chinese Communists begin the Long March. It will end a year and four days later with Mao Zedong returned to party chairman.
1939. First attack on British territory by the Luftwaffe.
1940. Benjamin O. Davis is the first African American in Army history to hold the title of Brigadier General.
1946. The Nazi leaders condemned to death in the Main Trial at Nuremberg are executed. As he had avoided execution by committing suicide the day before, Hermann Goring's body is openly displayed before the witnesses.
1968. US athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos are kicked off the US Olympic Team for participating in the black power salute at the Olympics.
1978. Pope John Paul II is elected to the papacy.