This Day in History

[Amnorix]

Today...

[Donger]

Nelson was sort of a prima donna.

[Rain Man]

I've seen the bullet that killed Nelson. I can't remember exactly where, though. It might have been in Windsor Castle.

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by Donger

Nelson was sort of a prima donna.

Not compared to Napoleon.

[MOhillbilly]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

I've seen the bullet that killed Nelson. I can't remember exactly where, though. It might have been in Windsor Castle.

ive seen the jacket,tomb, and victory.

[Amnorix]

Great, my Trafalgar book is, apparently, out on loan. :-( Oh well, I'll do what I can off internet sources.

[Otter]

It's the one year anniversary of balloon boy.

[Amnorix]

October 15

533. Byzantine General Belisarius enters Carthage after conquering it from the Vandals, essentially ending their time as a distinct ethnic/political unit.

1764. Edward Gibbon observes a group of friars singing hymns in the ruined Temple of Jupiter in Rome, inspiring him to begin writing the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.

1793. Marie Antoinette is tried, and condemned to death the next day.

1815. Napoleon begins his exile in Saint Helena.

1917. Dutch exotic dancer Mata Hari is executed by the French for (allegedly, at least) spying for the Germans.

1946. Condemned to die by hanging the next day pursuant to the judgment handed down at the Nuremberg trials, Hermann Goring commits suicide by swallowing poison, potassium cyanide, specifically. To avoid making them matyrs, the bodies of Goring and other high Nazi leaders were cremated. Goring's ashes were disposed of in the Isar river, near Munich. Goring, once he had sobered up and shaken off his addiction to the many medications he had previously taken, was reported an extremely intelligent and pleasant individual with a terrific sense of humor. He was unable to avoid, however, the massive documentary evidence that he was thoroughly involved in the Holocaust and various other war crimes.

Originally Posted by Hermann Goring

Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. ...voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country

[Donger]

Originally Posted by Amnorix

1946. Condemned to die by hanging the next day pursuant to the judgment handed down at the Nuremberg trials, Hermann Goring commits suicide by swallowing poison, potassium cyanide, specifically. To avoid making them matyrs, the bodies of Goring and other high Nazi leaders were cremated. Goring's ashes were disposed of in the Isar river, near Munich. Goring, once he had sobered up and shaken off his addiction to the many medications he had previously taken, was reported an extremely intelligent and pleasant individual with a terrific sense of humor. He was unable to avoid, however, the massive documentary evidence that he was thoroughly involved in the Holocaust and various other war crimes.

Goering befriended a US soldier while in prison (from Texas, I think) and he unwittingly helped Goering get his poison smuggled into jail.

[MOhillbilly]

Originally Posted by Amnorix

Great, my Trafalgar book is, apparently, out on loan. :-( Oh well, I'll do what I can off internet sources.

Dont remember the name. Picked it up at the library when i took the kids. If i see it again ill take a mental note and pass it on. Good book, maybe alittle lowbrow for you but i enjoyed it.

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by MOhillbilly

Dont remember the name. Picked it up at the library when i took the kids. If i see it again ill take a mental note and pass it on. Good book, maybe alittle lowbrow for you but i enjoyed it.

Eh, I'm not much of a book snob. I read Harry Potter and The Wheel of Time. I admit I don't do romance or anything, but I don't read Shakespeare or Voltaire either...

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Amnorix

1946. Condemned to die by hanging the next day pursuant to the judgment handed down at the Nuremberg trials, Hermann Goring commits suicide by swallowing poison, potassium cyanide, specifically. To avoid making them matyrs, the bodies of Goring and other high Nazi leaders were cremated. Goring's ashes were disposed of in the Isar river, near Munich. Goring, once he had sobered up and shaken off his addiction to the many medications he had previously taken, was reported an extremely intelligent and pleasant individual with a terrific sense of humor. He was unable to avoid, however, the massive documentary evidence that he was thoroughly involved in the Holocaust and various other war crimes.

Most people don't know this, but Goering was actually the one who invented the whole "In Soviet Russia, party find you" schtick.

[MOhillbilly]

Originally Posted by Amnorix

Eh, I'm not much of a book snob. I read Harry Potter and The Wheel of Time. I admit I don't do romance or anything, but I don't read Shakespeare or Voltaire either...

i mostly like books about football, & animal husbandry esp canine science or naval warfare type history stuff.

Dont read any fiction anymore.

[Amnorix]

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:

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:

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.

[Amnorix]

October 17

539 BC. Cyrus the Great, of Persia, in the midst of building one of the greatest empires of the ancient world, captures Babylon.

1346. Battle of Neville's Cross. Yet another in the seemingly endless battles between Scotland and England, King David II of Scotland (the son of Robert the Bruce) is captured, and will reside in the Tower of London, as a prisoner, for the next 11 years. Upon his death, the House of Bruce will end, as he died without issue.

1660. Upon the restoration of the English Monarchy, nine of the "Regicides" the men who participated in the trial and ordered the execution of King Charles I, are themselves hanged, drawn and quartered.

1781. General Lord Charles Cornwallis offers to surrender his troops at Yorktown, Virginia. This effectively ends the Revolutionary War.

1931. Al Capone is convicted of income tax evasion.

1973. OPEC starts an oil embargo against a number of countries, including the United States, deemed to have helped Israel in the Yom Kippur War. It would last until March 1974 and succeed in some of its goals of splintering Europe from the United States in terms of their policies in the Middle East, and trying to bring about an accord.

[Amnorix]

October 18

1009. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, one of the most famous churches in Christendom, believed by many to be the site of Golgotha, where Christ was crucified, and the destination of numerous pilgrims every year, is destroyed to its foundations by the Fatamid Caliph. Following negotiations between the Caliph's son and the Byzantine Empire, the church is rebuilt (at vast cost to Byzantium) in 1048.

1081. The Battle of Dyrrhachium, in Albania, results in a decisive Norman victory over the forces o fthe Byzantine Empire. I mention this not because this battle was particularly important, but rather because it is a fine example of the vast extent of the Norman "Empire" in the western European world. Normally thought of as being limited to Normandy, France (from which they of course originated and got their name) and their conquest of England, which was sudden and decisive, the Normans in fact exerted a strong influence over events throughout Europe and in particular int he Mediterranean during this time period, mostly through independent "adventurers" who at first worked as mercenaries and then became princes and dukes in their own right, often turning against their former employers in the process. This was especially true in the formation of the Kingdom fo Sicily, an entirely Norman kingdom, founded in Sicily and then spreading up the boot of Italy, over the course of several decades and involving numerous battles against a variety of opponents.

The Kingdom of Sicily at its height:



1767. The Mason-Dixon line, establishing the border between Pennsylvania and Delaware (to the north of the line) and Maryland and then-Virginia (later West Virginia) on the south, is completed.

1851. Moby Dick, originally called The Whale, is published.

1867. Alaska Day. The US takes possession of Alaska after purchasing it for $7.2 million.