1580 – From back when the British had balls, Sir Francis Drake completes his circumnavigation of the globe. When he shows up back home, he’s got gold he captured from the Spanish in several engagements.
1777 – The British army launches a major offensive, capturing Philadelphia.
1786 – Protestors shut down the court in Springfield, Massachusetts in a military standoff that begins Shays’ Rebellion. It’s about the courts enforcing tax and debt collection.
1792 – Marc-David Lasource begins accusing Maximilien Robespierre of wanting a dictatorship for France. They get a dictatorship anyway, but Robespierre is executed in 1794. He’s a victim of the terror in France that he helped author.
1820 – Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson proved tomatoes weren’t poisonous by eating several on the steps of the courthouse in Salem, New Jersey. The news takes decades to be absorbed as far as Texas, which is why REAL chili doesn’t have tomatoes.
1918 – World War I: The Meuse-Argonne Offensive, the bloodiest single battle in American history, begins.
Paul von Hindenburg stated, “… without the American troops and despite a food blockade… the war could have ended in a sort of stalemate.”
1950 – General Douglas MacArthur’s American X Corps, fresh from the Inchon landing, links up with the U.S. Eighth Army after its breakout from the Pusan Perimeter, recaptures Seoul from the North Koreans. Seoul looks then like Detroit does today.
1960 – In Chicago, the first televised debate takes place between presidential candidates Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy. Nixon isn’t a cute as Kennedy and his poll numbers suffer…
1960 – Fidel Castro announces Cuba’s support for the U.S.S.R. Two words: “Communist bast*rd!” He makes the longest speech in UN history (4 hrs, 29 mins).
MC, Wow! Many great topics today.
1580 – From back when the British had balls, Sir Francis Drake completes his circumnavigation of the globe. When he shows up back home, he’s got gold he captured from the Spanish in several engagements.
Drake sailed with five ships, captured a sixth off the Cape Verde Islands, and returned with only one. But that one was loaded with gold.
Elizabeth I invested her own money — not England’s — in Drake’s venture. When she heard Drake’s ship (left England as the Pelican; rechristened in the Pacific as the Golden Hind) was sailing up the Thames, she hurried to the docks to board the ship and knight him Sir Francis. Was she excited by Drake’s courage? Nah. She knew he was a pirate and wanted to get aboard before he cooked the books and hid the loot and cheated her out of her share of the money.
1777 – The British army launches a major offensive, capturing Philadelphia.
Lord Cornwallis led the redcoats. General William Howe had command of all British forces in America, but it was Cornwallis who led the army against Philadelphia.
When the Brits marched into New Jersey earlier in 1777, the colony was evenly divided between rebels and loyalists. The Brits treated the inhabitants badly, did not discriminate between rebels and loyalists, and took food, fodder, wagons, and horses without compensation. In short, they made themselves hated bastards.
Washington lacked the force to fight the Brits, but he did have enough to deny them food and fodder. The redcoats starved in Philadelphia. General Sir Henry Clinton replaced Howe as overall commander and ordered Cornwallis to abandon Philadelphia. The Brits marched across New Jersey to New York City, harassed along the way by the Continental Army commanded by Washington.
How good was Washington? Frederick the Great of Prussia thought Washington was good. In 1785, Frederick sent Washington an elegant dress sword with the message “From the world’s oldest General to the world’s best General.” Frederick considered Washington’s New Jersey campaigns to be masterpieces of maneuver.
1786 – Protestors shut down the court in Springfield, Massachusetts in a military standoff that begins Shays’ Rebellion. It’s about the courts enforcing tax and debt collection.
Massachusetts paid with paper money but accepted only gold and silver coin in payment of taxes. The paper money was worth 10% of its face value in hard money.
The governor called on Congress and neighboring states for help to suppress the rebellion. Did not get any. And that put an end to the Articles of Confederation.