1978 Penny Dean swims English Channel in record 7h40m
1978 Pioneer 11 transmits images of Saturn and
its rings.
1975 The Nigerian military government
of Gen. Yakubu Gowan is overthrown in a bloodless coup led by Brig. Murtala
Ramat Muhammad, with Colonel Joleph Garba (17 July 1943 – 01 June 2002)
and other middle-ranking army officers, in order to restore democracy within
4 years. In 1978 a National Constituent Assembly approves a new democratic
constitution. In 1979 elections Alhaji Shehu Shagari is elected federal
president and Dr. Alex Ekwueme vice president. But in 1983 a group of senior
military officers under Gen. Muhammadu Buhari seize power.
1974 Watergate: The House Judiciary Committee approves Article
II of impeachment by a vote of 28 to 10. The charge is systematic abuse
of power and violations of citizens' constitutional rights. Included in
this is mention(?) of the 1969-1971 wiretapping program.
1974 The first eleven women priests in the Episcopal Church are
ordained in Philadelphia's Church of the Advocate.
1973
Greek plebiscite chooses republic over monarchy
^
1972 Dovish Clark visits North Vietnam
Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark
visits North Vietnam as a member of the International Commission of
Inquiry into US War Crimes in Indochina. This commission was formed
to investigate alleged US bombing of non-military targets in North
Vietnam. Clark reported over Hanoi radio that he had seen damage to
hospitals, dikes, schools, and civilian areas. His visit stirred intense
controversy at home. Nothing ever came of Clark's claims, but he was
lauded by antiwar activists for pointing out the damage done by the
US bombing attacks. Others condemned Clark as a traitor to the United
States. |
1970 6 days of race rioting in Hartford Ct
1968
Senior leaders of Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union met at Cierna to try
and resolve their differences over Czech reforms.
^
1965 US 101st Airborne Division
arrives in Vietnam
The first 4000 paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division arrive
in Vietnam, landing at Cam Ranh Bay. They made a demonstration jump
immediately after arriving, observed by Gen. William Westmoreland
and outgoing Ambassador (formerly General) Maxwell Taylor. Taylor
and Westmoreland were both former commanders of the division, which
was known as the "Screaming Eagles." The 101st Airborne Division has
a long and storied history, including combat jumps during the invasion
of Normandy on 06 June 1944, and the subsequent Market-Garden airborne
operation in the Netherlands. Later, the division distinguished itself
by its defense of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. The 1st
Brigade fought as a separate brigade until 1967, when the remainder
of the division arrived in Vietnam.
The combat elements of the division consisted of 10 battalions of
airmobile infantry, six battalions of artillery, an aerial rocket
artillery unit armed with rocket-firing helicopters, and an air reconnaissance
unit. Another unique feature of the division was its aviation group,
which consisted of three aviation battalions of assault helicopters
and gunships. The majority of the 101st Airborne Division's tactical
operations were in the Central Highlands and in the A Shau Valley
farther north. Among its major operations was the brutal fight for
Ap Bia Mountain, known as the "Hamburger Hill" battle. The last Army
division to leave Vietnam, the remaining elements of the 101st Airborne
Division returned to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where today it is the
Army's only airmobile division. During the war, troopers from the
101st won 17 Medals of Honor for bravery in combat. The division suffered
almost 20,000 soldiers killed or wounded in action in Vietnam, over
twice as many as the 9,328 casualties it suffered in World War II.
|
1961 Wallis & Futuna Islands become a French overseas
territory
1958 Pres Eisenhower signs NASA & Space
Act of 1958
1957 International Atomic Energy Agency
established by UN
1956 Calypso of Yves-Jacques
Cousteau, 46, anchors in 7500 m of water (record)
1952
1st nonstop transpacific flight by a jet
^
1947 ENIAC back on, now with memory
ENIAC, one of the world's first digital
computers, is turned back on after receiving a memory implant. The
machine, built by a team of engineers headed by John Mauchly and Presper
Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania, had been accepted by the
Army in June 1946, then moved to army facilities in Aberdeen, Maryland.
Meanwhile, John Von Neumann had come up with a proposal to give the
machine rudimentary storage capacity, which the machine lacked. The
machine was shut off November 9, 1946, for refurbishment. After being
rebooted on 29 July 1947, the machine would remained on and in service
until October 2, 1955. |
1945 After delivering parts of the first atomic bomb to
the island of Tinian, the USS. Indianapolis is sunk by a Japanese submarine.
The survivors are adrift for two days before help arrives.
1936
RCA shows the 1st real TV program (dancing, film on locomotives,
Bonwit Teller fashion show & monologue from Tobacco Road & comedy)
^
1932 US Army chases veterans out
of Washington
The Great Depression sent poverty-stricken people in the US scrambling
for any available source of income. Veterans of World War I certainly
felt pinched, and cast about for ways to haul in cash, but, unlike
those who hadn't fought in the war, the veterans seemingly had a solution:
in the wake of the war, the government had promised to hand out handsome
cash bonuses to all servicemen. The catch was the bonuses were to
be paid out in 1945. In dire need of money, veterans called on legislators
during the spring and summer of 1932 to speed up payment of the bonuses.
In May, a group of veterans from Portland, Oregon, staged the "Bonus
March" and headed to Washington, D.C., to plead their case. The March
fast became a mini-movement, and by June a "Bonus Army" of 20'000
vets had set up shop in Washington.
At first all seemed to go well for the veterans, as the House of Representatives
passed the Patman Bonus Bill, which called for the early payment of
bonuses. The Senate, however, killed the Patman legislation. Though
part of the Bonus Army left Washington after the bill's defeat, some
veterans stayed on through late July. President Herbert Hoover ordered
the ousting of the vets who had camped on government grounds. When
the eviction proceedings turned ugly, and two veterans were killed,
Hoover called on the army to disperse the remaining Bonus protesters.
General Douglas MacArthur, and his
young assistant Dwight Eisenhower, marshaled troops, tanks and tear
gas in their war to send the stragglers home. Duly persuaded by this
gross show of force, the remaining members of the Bonus Army head
home on 29 July 1932. |
1930 46ºC, Holly Springs, Mississippi (state record)
1921 Adolf Hitler becomes the president of the
Nationalist Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazis).
1920
1st transcontinental airmail flight from NY to SF
1915 US Marines land at Port-au-Prince to protect US interests
in Haiti., stay until 1924
1914 First US transcontinental
telephone conversation (between New York and San Francisco).
^
1909 GM buys Cadillac, lock,
stock, and management
The Buick Motor Company acquires the Cadillac Motor Company on behalf
of General Motors for $4.5 million.
Cadillac was born from the ashes of the Henry Ford Company, a business
organized by William Murphy to produce a car by Henry Ford. Murphy
had been one of the original backers of the Detroit Automobile Company,
which had dissolved in 1901after Ford had failed to build a car he
was willing to put to market. Such faith did Murphy have in Ford that
he gave him another chance in the Henry Ford Company, opting to use
Ford’s name due to the recognition he had received from his recent
racing ventures.
Ford was so
wrapped up in racing that he again failed to produce and Murphy fired
him. He then asked Henry Leland, a partner in Detroit’s successful
Leland and Faulconer Machine shop, to appraise the business before
he sold it. Leland persuaded Murphy and his partners to stay in business,
promising them that he could design a car successful enough to make
it profitable. In August 1902, they formed the Cadillac Car Company.
Leland gradually took control of Cadillac’s daily operations and,
by the end of 1903, 2500 Cadillacs had been produced.
The founding of Cadillac helped solidify Detroit’s position as the
center of the automobile industry, and in 1904 Leland became president
and general manager of Cadillac and agreed to merge Cadillac with
Faulconer and Leland. Sales continued to rise and Cadillac established
a reputation for exacting quality under Leland’s detail-oriented supervision.
In a triumphant demonstration of the interchangeability of Cadillac’s
parts, in 1908 three Cadillacs were disassembled by the Royal Automobile
Club in England, reassembled at random, and driven away by the mechanics.
In November 1908, Benjamin Briscoe
made a bid for Cadillac, but he was unable to generate enough backing
to carry the deal. William Durant seized the opportunity to add the
valuable brand to his newly formed General Motors Corporation, and
arranged a deal of stock transfer with the Lelands, but the Lelands
ultimately refused it — they wanted cash. Finally, Durant got
the cash together and purchased Cadillac, through Buick, on behalf
of General Motors. Durant kept the Lelands on as management, saying,
“I want you to continue to run Cadillac exactly as though it were
still your own. You will receive no directions from anyone.” |
1875 Peasants in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Balkans
rebel against the Ottoman army.
1863 Queen Victoria
reconfirms British policy of neutrality in US Civil War.
1863
Siege of Fort Wagner, Charleston Harbor, South Carolina continues
1862 At Moore’s Mill in Missouri, the Confederates are
routed by Union guerrillas.
^
1862 Confederate woman spy captured
Confederate spy Marie Isabella "Belle"
Boyd is arrested by Union troops and detained at the Old Capitol Prison
in Washington, D.C. It was the first of three arrests for this skilled
spy who provided crucial information to the Confederates during the
war. The Virginian-born Boyd was just 17 when the war began. She was
from a prominent slaveholding family in Martinsburg, Virginia (now
West Virginia), in the Shenandoah Valley. In 1861, she shot and killed
a Union solider for insulting her mother and threatening to search
their house. Union officers investigated and decided the shooting
was justified. Soon after the shooting incident, Boyd began spying
for the Confederacy. She used her charms to engage Union soldiers
and officers in conversations and acquire information about Federal
military affairs. Suspecting her of spying, Union officers banished
Boyd further south in the Shenandoah, to Front Royal Virginia, in
March 1862.
Just two months
later, Boyd personally delivered crucial information to General Thomas
J. "Stonewall" Jackson during his campaign in the Valley that allowed
the Confederates to defeat General Nathaniel Banks's forces at the
Battle of Winchester. In another incident, Boyd turned two chivalrous
Union cavalrymen who had escorted her back home across Union lines
over to Confederate pickets as prisoners of war. Boyd was detained
on several occasions, and on 29 July she was placed in the Old Capitol
Prison in Washington. But her incarceration was evidently of limited
hardship. She was given many special considerations, and she became
engaged to a fellow prisoner. Upon her release one month later, she
was given a trousseau by the prison's superintendent and shipped under
a flag of truce to Richmond.
Boyd was arrested again in 1863 and held for three months. After this
second imprisonment, she became a courier of secret messages to Great
Britain. In 1864, her ship was captured off the coast of North Carolina,
and the ship and crew were taken to New York. Captain Samuel Hardinge
commanded the Union ship that captured Boyd's vessel, and the two
were seen shopping together in New York. He followed her to London,
and they were married soon after. Boyd was widowed soon after the
end of the war, but the union produced one child. Still just 21, Boyd
parlayed her spying experiences into a book and an acting career.
She died in Wisconsin in 1900. |
1858 Japan signs a treaty of commerce and friendship with
the United States. US citizens allowed to live anywhere in Japan
^
1848 Tipperary revolt ends in
failure
At the
height of the Potato
Famine in Ireland, an abortive nationalist revolt against English
rule is promptly crushed by a government police detachment in Tipperary.
In a brief skirmish in a cabbage patch, Irish nationalists under William
Smith O'Brien are overcome and arrested. The nationalists, members
of the Young Ireland movement, had planned to declare an independent
Irish republic, but they lacked support from the Irish peasantry,
who were occupied entirely with surviving the famine.
By the mid-nineteenth century, the Irish population, which suffered
under the system of absentee landlords, had been reduced to a subsistence
diet based largely on potatoes. When a potato blight struck the country
in the 1840s, disaster ensued. Between 1846 and 1851, more than one
million people starved to death, and some two million people left
the country, most to the US.
With the desperate times of the potato famine came an increased radicalism
in the Irish nationalist movement. In 1846, O'Brien formed the Irish
Confederation with John Mitchel, a branch of the Young Ireland movement
dedicated to freeing Ireland by direct action. By 1848, the group
was calling for open rebellion against the English, but Mitchel was
arrested, convicted for sedition, and transported to a prison colony
in Australia before the revolt could begin.
Aggravated by the worsening potato famine and Mitchel's arrest, O'Brien
launches an unsuccessful uprising on 29 July 1848. He is arrested
and sentenced to death for treason, but his sentence would be commuted
to transportation to the penal colony at Tasmania.
After the failure of the Young Ireland revolt, many embittered Irish
nationalists emigrated to the United States, Australia, and Canada,
where they redoubled their agitation against England. |
1835 First sugar plantation in Hawaii begins.
1830 Liberals led by the Marquis of Lafayette seize Paris in opposition
to the king's restrictions on citizens' rights.
1792 Robespierre
demande la déchéance du Roi.
^
1776 Escalante and Dominguez begin
expedition
Silvestre
de Escalante and Francisco Dominguez, two Spanish Franciscan priests,
leave Santa Fe for an epic journey through the Southwest. Escalante
and Dominguez hoped to blaze a trail from New Mexico to Monterey,
California, but their main goal was to visit with the native inhabitants
and convert as many as possible to the Catholic faith. On this day
the two priests and seven men leave the Spanish frontier town of Santa
Fe and head northwest into what is today the state of Colorado. They
continued north, exploring the rugged Great Bas
in and canyon land
country of Utah. Initially, the priests made good time, and by mid-September,
they had reached Utah Lake, just to the south of the Great Salt Lake
in northern Utah. There, they found Amerindians whom Domínguez
described as "the most docile and affable nation of all that have
been known in these regions." They quickly set about preaching the
Gospel, reportedly with "such happy results that they are awaiting
Spaniards so that they might become Christians."
By early October, winter was approaching. Traveling through high mountain
passes, Escalante and Dominguez began to encounter fierce snowstorms.
Accustomed to desert living, the priests were unequipped to deal with
snow and bitter cold, and they soon ran short of provisions. They
abandoned the goal of reaching California and headed back for Santa
Fe. During the long journey home, they very nearly starved to death.
The men ate their horses first. When the horseflesh was gone, they
ate only prickly pear cactus. On 02 January 1777, the exhausted men
staggered into Santa Fe. They had traveled nearly 2700 km in just
159 days through some of the roughest country in the southwest, yet
all nine members of the party made it home safely. Escalante and Domínguez
had failed in their goal of finding a route to Monterey, and to their
keen disappointment, the New Mexican missionaries showed little interest
in following up their initial proselytizing with the Utah Indians.
Nonetheless, the two intrepid priests were the first to explore extensively
the Great Basin country of the Southwest. Escalante's written account
of the expedition became an essential guide to future explorers. |
1775 The US Army Chaplaincy is founded, making it the
second oldest branch of that service, after the Infantry.
1715
10 Spanish treasure galleons sunk off Florida coast by hurricane
^
1588 Spanish Armada defeated
Off the coast of Gravelines, France,
Spain's so-called "Invincible Armada" is defeated by an English naval
force under the command of Lord Charles Howard and Sir Francis Drake.
After eight hours of furious fighting, a change in wind direction
prompts the Spanish to break off from the battle and retreat toward
the North Sea. Its hopes of invasion crushed, the remnants of the
Spanish Armada began a long and difficult journey back to Spain.
In the late 1580s, English raids against
Spanish commerce and Queen Elizabeth I's support of the Dutch rebels
in the Spanish Netherlands led King Philip II of Spain to plan the
conquest of England. Pope Sixtus V gave his blessing to what was called
"The Enterprise of England," which he hoped would bring the Protestant
isle back into the fold of Rome. A giant Spanish invasion fleet was
completed by 1587, but Sir Francis Drake's daring raid on the Armada's
supplies in the port of Cádiz delayed the Armada's departure until
May 1588.
On 19 May 1588, the
Invincible Armada set sail from Lisbon on a mission to secure control
of the English Channel and transport a Spanish army to the British
isle from Flanders. The fleet was under the command of the Duke of
Medina-Sidonia and consisted of 130 ships carrying 2500 guns, 8000
seamen, and almost 20'000 soldiers. The Spanish ships were slower
and less well armed than their English counterparts, but they planned
to force boarding actions if the English offered battle, and the superior
Spanish infantry would undoubtedly prevail.
Delayed by storms that temporarily forced it back to Spain, the Armada
did not reach the southern coast of England until 19 July, and by
that time, Elizabeth had prepared an adequate defense. On 21 July
the outnumbered English navy began bombarding the eleven-kilometer-long
line of Spanish ships from a safe distance, taking full advantage
of their superior long-range guns. Over the next week, the Spanish
Armada continued to advance, but its ranks were thinned considerably
by the English assault.
On 27
July, the retreating Armada anchored in exposed position off Calais,
France, and the Spanish army prepared to embark from Flanders. Without
control of the Channel, however, their passage to England would be
impossible.
Just after midnight
on 29 July, the English sent eight burning ships into the crowded
harbor at Calais. The panicked Spanish ships were forced to cut their
anchors and sail out to sea to avoid catching fire. Their attempt
to reach the Netherlands is thwarted by a small Dutch fleet. The disorganized
Spanish, completely out of formation, is attacked by the English off
Gravelines at dawn. In a decisive battle, the superior English guns
won the day, and the devastated Armada was forced to retreat north
to Scotland. The English navy pursued the Spanish as far as Scotland
and then turned back for want of supplies.
Battered by storms and suffering from a dire lack of supplies, the
Armada sailed on a hard journey back to Spain around Scotland and
Ireland. Some of the damaged ships foundered in the sea while others
were driven onto the coast of Ireland and wrecked. By the time the
last of the surviving fleet reached Spain in October, half of the
original Armada was lost and some 15'000 men had perished.
Queen Elizabeth's decisive defeat of the Invincible Armada made England
a world-class power and introduced effective long-range weapons into
naval warfare for the first time, ending the era of boarding and close-quarter
fighting. |
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