This Day In History

[Mr. Scruffy]

July 23

1878 - Black Bart robs a Wells Fargo stagecoach in California. Wearing a flour sack over his head, the armed robber stole the small safe box with less than $400 and a passenger’s diamond ring and watch. When the empty box was recovered, a taunting poem signed “Black Bart” was found inside: "Here I lay me down to sleep to wait the coming morrow, perhaps success, perhaps defeat and everlasting sorrow. Yet come what will, I’ll try it once, my conditions can’t be worse, and if there’s money in that box, 'tis money in my purse."

1952 - In Egypt, the Society of Free Officers seizes control of the government in a military coup d’etat staged by Colonel Gamal Abdal Nasser’s Free Officers. King Farouk, whose rule had been criticized for its corruption and failures in the first Arab-Israeli war, was forced to abdicate and relinquish power to General Muhammad Naguib, the figurehead leader of the coup.

1967 - Detroit riots of 1967, among the bloodiest in American history, begin when the Detroit Police Department’s vice squad raided an illegal drinking establishment that was hosting a party for returning Vietnam War veterans in the early morning hours. The police activity drew a crowd of onlookers, and the situation rapidly deteriorated.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

July 24

1534 - On the shores of Gaspé Bay with a party of St. Lawrence Iroquoians, Jacques Cartier planted a cross to claim the land for France. The 10-metre cross bearing the words "Long Live the King of France" claimed possession of the territory in the King's name. Cartier was the first to document the name Canada to designate the territory on the shores of the St-Lawrence River.

1701 - Antoine de La Mothe-Cadillac founds Fort Pontchartrain and the parish of Sainte-Anne on the straits ("le détroit" in French).

1847 - After 17 months and many miles of travel, Brigham Young leads 148 pioneers into Utah’s Valley of the Great Salt Lake. Gazing over the parched earth of the remote location, Young declared, “This is the place,” and the pioneers began preparations for the thousands of followers of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as Mormons) who would soon come.

1911 - American archeologist Hiram Bingham gets his first look at the ruins of Machu Picchu, an ancient Inca settlement in Peru that is now one of the world’s top tourist destinations.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

July 27

1214 - The Battle of Bouvines was the concluding battle of the Anglo-French War of 1213–1214. A French army of approximately 7,000 men commanded by King Philip Augustus defeated an Allied army of approximately 9,000 commanded by Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV and King John of England. Philip's decisive victory was crucial to the political situation in England. The battle ended all hope of a restoration of the Angevin Empire. So weakened was the defeated King John that he soon needed to submit to his barons' demands and agree to the Magna Carta, limiting the power of the crown and establishing the basis for common law.

1794 - Maximilien Robespierre, the architect of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, is overthrown and arrested by the National Convention. As the leading member of the Committee of Public Safety from 1793, Robespierre encouraged the execution, mostly by guillotine, of more than 17,000 enemies of the Revolution. The day after his arrest, Robespierre and 21 of his followers were guillotined before a cheering mob in the Place de la Revolution in Paris.

1953 - After three years of a bloody and frustrating war, the United States, the People’s Republic of China, North Korea, and South Korea agree to an armistice, bringing the fighting of the Korean War to an end. The armistice ended America’s first experiment with the Cold War concept of “limited war.”

 

[MVeeI]

1967 - Detroit riots of 1967, among the bloodiest in American history, begin when the Detroit Police Department’s vice squad raided an illegal drinking establishment that was hosting a party for returning Vietnam War veterans in the early morning hours. The police activity drew a crowd of onlookers, and the situation rapidly deteriorated.
[/QUOTE]
From Gordon Lightfoot

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

July 30

101 BC - At the Battle of Vercellae (Battle of the Raudine Plain) a Germanic-Celtic confederation under the command of the Cimbric king Boiorix was defeated by a Roman army under the joint command of the consul Gaius Marius and the proconsul Quintus Lutatius Catulus. The battle marked the end of the Germanic threat to the Roman Republic.

1419 - The First Defenestration of Prague involved the killing of seven members of the city council by a crowd of Czech Hussites leading to the prolonged Hussite Wars. The group defenestrated the judge, the burgomaster, and several members of the town council. They were all killed by the fall.

1864 - At the Battle of the Crater, the Union Army’s ingenious attempt to break the Confederate lines at Petersburg, Virginia, by blowing up a tunnel that had been dug under the Rebel trenches fails. Although the explosion created a gap in the Confederate defenses, a poorly planned Yankee attack wasted the effort and the result was an eight-month continuation of the siege.

1965 - President Lyndon B. Johnson signs Medicare, a health insurance program for elderly Americans, into law. At the bill-signing ceremony, which took place at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, former President Harry Truman was enrolled as Medicare’s first beneficiary and received the first Medicare card.

 

[enrywivanh]

31st July 1917 - Start of the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele)

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

August 12

30 BC - Cleopatra, queen of Egypt and lover of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, takes her life following the defeat of her forces against Octavian, the future first emperor of Rome.

1099 - The crusader army led by Godfrey of Bouillon defeated and drove off a Fatimid army under vizier al-Afdal Shahanshah at The Battle of Ascalon, securing the safety of Jerusalem. Th battle is considered the last action of the First Crusade.

1676 - In colonial New England, King Philip’s War effectively comes to an end when Philip, chief of the Wampanoag tribe, is assassinated by a Native American in the service of the English. Philip’s body was drawn and quartered, his head publicly displayed on a stake in Plymouth. King Philip’s War, which was extremely costly to the colonists of southern New England, ended Native American dominance in the region and inaugurated a period of unimpeded colonial expansion.

1914 - Britain and France Declare War on Austria-Hungary. The Austro-Hungarian Empire's forces invaded Serbia on the same day.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

August 13

1521 - After a three-month siege, Spanish forces under Hernán Cortés capture Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec empire. Cortés’ men leveled the city and captured Cuauhtémoc, the Aztec emperor.

1961 - East German soldiers begin laying down barbed wire and bricks as a barrier between Soviet-controlled East Berlin and the democratic western section of the city. The wire was soon replaced by a six-foot-high, 96-mile-long wall of concrete blocks, complete with guard towers, machine gun posts and searchlights. East German officers known as Volkspolizei (“Volpos”) patrolled the Berlin Wall day and night.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

August 18

293 BC - The oldest known Roman temple to Venus is inaugurated.

1590 - John White, the governor of the Roanoke Island colony in present-day North Carolina, returns from a supply-trip to England to find the settlement deserted. White and his men found no trace of the 100 or so colonists he left behind, and there was no sign of violence. The only clue to their mysterious disappearance was the word “CROATOAN” carved into the palisade that had been built around the settlement. White took the letters to mean that the colonists had moved to Croatoan Island, some 50 miles away, but a later search of the island found none of the settlers.

1991 - Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is placed under house arrest during a coup by high-ranking members of his own government, military and police forces. The coup was carried out by the hard-line elements within Gorbachev’s own administration, as well as the heads of the Soviet army and the KGB, or secret police. Detained at his vacation villa in the Crimea, he was placed under house arrest and pressured to give his resignation, which he refused to do.

 

[enrywivanh]

28th August

1830 - Start of the Agricultural Riots in England.
Farm workers rioted, because of the introduction of Threshing Machines, poor working conditions and low wages.
19 of the rioters were executed, 644 imprisoned, and 505 were transported to Australia.

 

[Billski]

28th August

1830 - Start of the Agricultural Riots in England.
Farm workers rioted, because of the introduction of Threshing Machines, poor working conditions and low wages.
19 of the rioters were executed, 644 imprisoned, and 505 were transported to Australia.

England is very hard on farm workers?

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

August 28

476 - Orestes, father of Emperor Romulus Augustulus, is captured and executed by Odoacer, a Germanic mercenary soldier for the Roman army, and his followers. Romulus is forced into exile and Odoacer declares himself King of Italy marking the end of the Western Roman Empire.

1879 - King Cetshwayo, the last great ruler of Zululand, is captured by the British following his defeat in the British-Zulu War. He was subsequently sent into exile. Cetshwayo’s defiance of British rule in southern Africa led to Britain’s invasion of Zululand in 1879.

1955 - While visiting family in Money, Mississippi, 14-year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, is brutally murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman four days earlier.

 

[enrywivanh]

England is very hard on farm workers?

No, I was talking about 1830!
They, were hard then, not only Farm Workers, check Cotton Mills, Potteries, Mines, etc.

Also: ‘When I Was A Child’ by Charles Shaw. He was working 14 hour days when he was Seven Years old!

 

[Owen Bawn]

Today's the day Princess Diana died back in 1997.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

September 1

1715 - King Louis XIV of France dies after a reign of 72 years—the longest of any major European monarch. He came to the throne aged 4 and his rule established France as one of the pre-eminent powers of Europe, through early reforms, successful wars, creation of a French Empire and through his patronage of the arts.

1807 - Former U.S. vice president Aaron Burr is acquitted of plotting to annex parts of Louisiana and Spanish territory in Mexico to be used toward the establishment of an independent republic. He was acquitted on the grounds that, though he had conspired against the United States, he was not guilty of treason because he had not engaged in an “overt act,” a requirement of the law governing treason. Nevertheless, public opinion condemned him as a traitor, and he fled to Europe.

1939 - German forces under the control of Adolf Hitler bombard Poland on land and from the air. Germany invaded Poland to regain lost territory and ultimately rule their neighbor to the east. World War II had begun.

 

[Bakker1964]

September 1

1715 - King Louis XIV of France dies after a reign of 72 years—the longest of any major European monarch. He came to the throne aged 4 and his rule established France as one of the pre-eminent powers of Europe, through early reforms, successful wars, creation of a French Empire and through his patronage of the arts.

See bolded . . . I wonder if Elizabeth II may outlast him? She has reigned for 68 years (plus) and, at 94, still might have something left in the tank, considering her Mother's longevity.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

September 2

31 BC - At the Battle of Actium, a naval battle in the Ionian Sea near the promontory of Actium in Greece, the fleet of Octavian defeats the combined forces of Mark Antony and Queen Cleopatra of Egypt. Octavian's victory at Actium gave him sole and uncontested control of the Roman Mediterranean and he became "Augustus Caesar" and the "first citizen" of Rome. This victory, consolidating his power over every Roman institution, marked the transition of Rome from Republic to Empire.

1666 - The Great Fire of London sweeps through the central parts of the city from Sunday September 2 to Thursday September 6. It destroyed 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches, St Paul's Cathedral, and most of the buildings of the City authorities. It is estimated to have destroyed the homes of 70,000 of the city's 80,000 inhabitants.

1945 - Aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Japan formally surrenders to the Allies, bringing an end to World War II. Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signed on behalf of the Japanese government. General Yoshijiro Umezu then signed for the Japanese armed forces, and his aides wept as he made his signature. Supreme Commander Douglas MacArthur next signed, declaring, “It is my earnest hope and indeed the hope of all mankind that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past.”

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

September 3

301 - San Marino, one of the smallest nations in the world and the world's oldest republic still in existence, founded by Saint Marinus. It is one of only three countries in the world to be completely enclosed by another country (the others being Vatican City, also enclosed by Italy, and Lesotho, enclosed by South Africa). It is the third smallest country in Europe, after Vatican City and Monaco, and the fifth smallest country in the world.

1783 - The American Revolution officially comes to an end when representatives of the United States, Great Britain, Spain and France sign the Treaty of Paris. The signing signified America’s status as a free nation, as Britain formally recognized the independence of its 13 former American colonies, and the boundaries of the new republic were agreed upon: Florida north to the Great Lakes and the Atlantic coast west to the Mississippi River.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

September 11

1297 - The forces of Andrew Moray and William Wallace defeated the combined English forces of John de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey, and Hugh de Cressingham near Stirling, on the River Forth.

1777 - At the Battle of Brandywine, British forces routed the Continental Army and forced them to withdraw, first, to the City of Chester, Chester, Pennsylvania, and then northeast toward Philadelphia. More troops fought at Brandywine than any other battle of the American Revolution. It was also the longest single-day battle of the war, with continuous fighting for 11 hours.

1965 - 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) begins to arrive in South Vietnam at Qui Nhon, bringing U.S. troop strength in South Vietnam to more than 125,000. The unit, which had a long and storied history, was the first full U.S. Army division deployed to Vietnam.

1973 - Chilean President Salvador Allende is deposed in a military coup led by general Augusto Pinochet.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

September 14

1812 - Russian troops set fire to the city of Moscow just ahead of French Emperor Napoleon's vanguard troops entering the city after the Battle of Borodino. The fire all but destroyed the city, which had been mostly abandoned by its residents the previous month.

1814 - Francis Scott Key pens the poem "Defence of Fort M'Henry", later known as "The Star-Spangled Banner" while witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry from a ship in Baltimore harbor.

1869 - Young Tom Morris achieved the Open Championship tournament's first ever hole-in-one by holing out at the 166-yard 8th hole: the scorecard is on display in Prestwick's clubhouse.

1901 - Theodore Roosevelt is sworn in as the youngest man to serve as US President, after William McKinley finally dies after an anarchist shoots him in Buffalo.