Month: April 2017

April 13, 1861, Sumter

Thousands of shells were fired at Fort Sumter over 34 hours. Federal forces fired back, though vastly outgunned. For all that, the only casualty was one Confederate mule.

South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860, after which the state government considered itself to be that of a sovereign nation. Six days later, US Army Major Robert Anderson quietly moved his small command from the Revolution-era Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island to the as-yet to be completed Fort Sumter, a brick fortification at the mouth of Charleston Harbor.

MoultriePresident James Buchanan attempted to reinforce and resupply Anderson, via the unarmed merchant vessel “Star of the West”. Shore batteries opened up on the effort on January 9, 1861, effectively trapping Anderson and his garrison inside the only federal property in the vicinity.

The newly founded Confederate States of America couldn’t tolerate the presence of an armed federal force at the mouth of Charleston harbor, while secessionists debated whether this was South Carolina’s problem, or that of the national government, in Mobile.

Meanwhile, the Federal government refused to recognize the Confederacy, as an independent state.  Neither side wanted to be seen as the aggressor, both needing the support of the border states.

fort_sumter_drawing

Political opinion was so sharply divided at that time, that brothers literally wound up fighting against brothers.  By the time the war got going, every seceding state but South Carolina sent regiments to fight for the Union.  Even that state contributed troops.  A surprising number of northern soldiers resigned commissions and fought for the south, including Barre, Massachusetts native Daniel Ruggles, Ohio Quaker Bushrod Johnson and New York native Samuel Cooper, to name a few.  But I’m getting ahead of the story.

Confederate Brigadier General Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard (I love that name) was placed in charge of Charleston in March, and immediately began to strengthen the batteries surrounding the harbor.

Fort Sumter was designed for a garrison of 650 in the service of 130 guns, most of them pointed outward, positioned to defend the harbor against threats from the sea. In April 1861 there were only 60 guns, too much for Major Anderson’s 85-man garrison, almost half of whom were non-combatants:  workmen or musicians.Battle-Sumter

When Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, the resupply of Fort Sumter became the first crisis for the new administration. Lincoln notified South Carolina Governor Francis Pickens that he was sending supply ships, resulting in Beauregard’s ultimatum:  the Federal garrison was to evacuate immediately, or Confederate batteries would open fire.

Major Anderson’s response lacking acceptable specificity, shore batteries opened fire at 4:30 am on April 12th, 4003 guns firing in counter-clockwise rotation. Abner Doubleday, Federal 2nd in command and the man erroneously credited with the invention of baseball, later wrote “The crashing of the shot, the bursting of the shells, the falling of the walls, and the roar of the flames, made a pandemonium of the fort.”

Two years later at Gettysburg, Norman Jonathan Hall would lose over 200 men from his brigade, in furious fighting at a critical breach in Union lines, near the”copse of trees”.  One day, a brass plaque would mark the spot of the “High Water Mark” of the Confederacy.  On this day, Lieutenant Hall raced through flames to rescue the colors, after a direct hit on the main flagpole knocked the flag to the ground.  His eyebrows were permanently burned off of his face, but Hall and two artillerymen were able to jury-rig the pole, so that once again, Old Glory flew over Fort Sumter.

Fort_sumter_1861
The Confederate flag flies over Fort Sumter, 1861

Thousands of shells were fired at Fort Sumter over 34 hours. Federal forces fired back, though vastly outgunned. For all that, the only casualty was one Confederate mule.

The only fatalities in the whole mess, occurred after the Union surrender on April 13. Firing a 100-gun salute while lowering the flag, one cannon misfired, mortally wounding privates Daniel Hough and Edward Galloway.

The following day, Colonel Robert E. Lee resigned his commission in the United States Army.

The Civil War had begun, but there didn’t seem to be a single individual who understood what kind of demons had just been unleashed. Robert Rhett, the rabble rousing editor of theFort_Sumter_storm_flag_1861 Charleston Mercury Newspaper, offered to personally eat the bodies of all the slain in the coming conflict. Not wanting to be outdone, former Senator James Chesnut, Jr. said “a lady’s thimble will hold all the blood that will be shed,” promising to personally drink any that might be spilled.

The war between the states would end the lives of more Americans than the Revolution, WWI, WWII, and the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, combined.

Charleston, 1861

 

April 12, 1955 Conquering Polio

Poliomyelitis tended to come out in the summer, disproportionately effecting children and young adults.

When I was a boy, I once asked my mother what polio was.  At the time, I didn’t understand the expression on her face.  What I saw that day, was her realization that her children would never have to fear a plague that had terrified her generation and those before it.

Imagine the impact of the AIDS virus. Now, instead of the well understood vectors by which that virus is transmitted, imagine all the terrifying finality of that disease combined with the randomness of the common cold.Wheelchair

The first major polio epidemic in the United States appeared in Vermont, when 132 cases were diagnosed in 1894. A larger outbreak killed 6,000 New York City residents in 1916, with over 27,000 cases diagnosed.

Poliomyelitis tended to come out in the summer, disproportionately effecting children and young adults. 58,000 cases were reported in the 1952 epidemic alone, 3,145 of them died and another 21,269 left with mild to disabling paralysis.

A President of the United States suffered from polio, as a younger man. The press did their best to treat the matter with delicacy, but the disease left him able to stand only with great pain and difficulty, dependent on a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

Others were doomed to 800lb monstrosities called “iron lungs”, seven-foot long, “negative pressure ventilators” which reproduced the movements of breathing.  The Smithsonian Institution estimated that 1,200 Americans were dependent on iron lungs in 1959.  Lattimore, North Carolina resident Martha Mason contracted polio at age 11, and spent 61 years in an iron lung before her passing in 2009.

Today, modern “biphasic” ventilators (alternating negative/positive pressure) are worn like the cuirass of the conquistadors, all but replacing the iron lung.  As of 2014, there were only ten individuals left, living their lives in one of the things.

Iron Lung

Early efforts to develop a vaccine, proved fruitless.  One New York University study produced no immunity whatever, at the cost of nine dead children.  Other vaccine trials used “volunteers” at state mental institutions.

Jonas Edward Salk was born on October 28, 1914, the son of Jewish immigrants of Irish descent. Daniel and Dora (Press) Salk were not themselves formally educated, but the Jonas-Salk-2couple kept their kids focused on school.

Salk attended City College of New York and New York University School of Medicine, taking the road less traveled on graduation from Med School. Instead of becoming a practicing physician, Salk went into medical research.

Salk accepted an appointment to the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in 1947, the following year beginning a project funded by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which later became the March of Dimes. The grant was funded to determine the number of polio types, but Salk took it several steps further. He saw it as an opportunity to develop a vaccine.

It’s not widely known that the American Revolution took place during a smallpox pandemic. George Washington himself was a proponent of vaccinating, which, as with rabies, was always done with live virus.Polio Trials

Live virus vaccination carries obvious risks, and Dr. Salk was interested in the way the body developed antibodies to killed virus. He and his team completed lab trials in 1954, when they injected themselves and a number of volunteers with inert virus. Having had no ill effects, they began field trials a short time later.

Field trials of Dr. Salk’s vaccine were some of the most extensive in history. 20,000 physicians and public health officials were involved in the trial, along with 64,000 school personnel, 220,000 volunteers, and over 1,800,000 school children.

News of the vaccine’s success was announced on April 12, 1955, and Jonas Salk was hailed as a miracle worker. David Oshinsky, history professor at New York University and author of Polio: An American Story, tells a story about that day. “The public was horribly and understandably frightened by polio,” he wrote. “There was no prevention and no cure. Everyone was at risk, especially children. There was nothing a parent could poliodo to protect the family. I grew up in this era. Each summer, polio would come like The Plague. Beaches and pools would close — because of the fear that the poliovirus was waterborne. Children had to stay away from crowds, so they often were banned from movie theaters, bowling alleys, and the like. My mother gave us all a ‘polio test’ each day: Could we touch our toes and put our chins to our chest? Every stomach ache or stiffness caused a panic. Was it polio? I remember the awful photos of children on crutches, in wheelchairs and iron lungs. And coming back to school in September to see the empty desks where the children hadn’t returned.”

Jonas Salk consumed over seven years of his life on his goal. When broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow asked him “who owns the patent on this vaccine”, Dr. Salk replied: “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”

All those years, all that time, work and effort, and even in the end the man took no personal financial interest in the result. A mortal virus afflicted the children of his generation, and he was going to lift heaven and earth, if he had to, to stop it.Salk

In the late 50s, Salk became interested in building his own research institute. He searched for a site for over a year, until he met San Diego Mayor Charles Dail, himself a polio survivor. Dail showed Salk 27 acres on a mesa in La Jolla, just west of the proposed site for the new UC campus then planned for San Diego. In June of 1960, the citizens of San Diego overwhelmingly voted “yes”, to donate the land for Salk’s dream. Construction began with initial funding from the National Foundation/March of Dimes, and completed in 1967.

Jonas Salk died on June 23, 1995, at the age of 80. A memorial at the Institute bearing his name reads: “Hope lies in dreams, in imagination and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality.”poliovaccina

By 1979, the disease was eradicated from the United States.  The worldwide effort to wipe out polio began in 1988, with the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.  20 million volunteers from virtually every country in the world have vaccinated over 2.5 billion children, at a cost of $11 billion. Worldwide, the incidence of new polio cases decreased by 99%.  Today, the only region where polio remains endemic, are northern Nigeria and the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

And so it is that those of us born after 1955 can go on in blissful ignorance, having no idea of the terrors our parents endured before us.

April 11, 1970  Houston, We’ve had a Problem

For four days and nights, the three-man crew lived aboard the cramped, freezing Aquarius, a landing module intended to support a crew of 2 for only 1½ days

Apollo 13 liftoffJack Swigert was supposed to be the backup pilot for the Command Module, (CM), officially joining the Apollo 13 mission only 48 hours earlier, when prime crew member Ken Mattingly was exposed to German measles. Jim Lovell was the world’s most traveled astronaut, a veteran of two Gemini missions and Apollo 8. By launch day, April 11, 1970, Lovell had racked up 572 space flight hours. For Fred Haise, former backup crew member on Apollo 8 and 11, this would be his first spaceflight.

The seventh manned mission in the Apollo space program was intended to be the third moon landing, launching at 13:13 central standard time, from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Apollo spacecraft comprised two separate vessels, separated by an airtight hatch. The crew lived in the Command/Service module, called “Odyssey”.  The Landing Module (LM) “Aquarius”, would perform the actual moon landing.

Apollo 13 Schematic

56 hours into the mission and 5½ hours from the Moon’s sphere of gravitational influence, Apollo crew members had just finished a live TV broadcast.  Haise was powering the LM down while Lovell stowed the TV camera.  Mission Control asked Swigert to activate stirring fans in the SM hydrogen and oxygen tank. Two minutes later, the astronauts heard a “loud bang”.

Spacecraft manufacturing and testing had both missed an exposed wire in an oxygen tank.  When Swigert flipped the switch for that routine procedure, a spark set the oxygen tank on fire. Alarm lights lit up all over Odyssey and in Mission Control.  The spacecraft shuddered as one oxygen tank tore itself apart and damaged another.  Power began to fluctuate.  Attitude control thrusters fired, and communications temporarily went dark. The crew could not have known it at the time, but the entire Sector 4 panel had just blown off.apollo-13-damage

The movie takes creative license with Commander James Lovell saying “Houston, we have a problem”.  On board the real Apollo 13 it was Jack Swigert who spoke, saying “Houston, we’ve had a problem”.

205,000 miles into deep space with life support systems shutting down, the Lunar Module became the only means of survival. There was no telling if the explosion had damaged Odyssey’s heat shields, but it didn’t matter. For now, the challenge was to remain, alive.  Haise and Lovell frantically worked to boot up Aquarius, while Swigert shut down systems aboard Odyssey, in order to preserve power for splashdown.

Apollo_13-insigniaThis situation had been suggested during an earlier training simulation, but had been considered unlikely. As it happened, the accident would have been fatal without access to the Lunar Module.

For four days and nights, the three-man crew lived aboard the cramped, freezing Aquarius, a landing module intended to support a crew of 2 for only 1½ days. Heat fell close to freezing and food became inedible, as mission control teams, spacecraft manufacturers and the crew itself worked around the clock to jury rig life support, navigational and propulsion systems.  This “lifeboat” would have to do what it was never intended to do.

Atmospheric re-entry alone, presented almost insurmountable challenges. The earth’s atmosphere is a dense fluid medium. If you reenter at too steep an angle, you may as well be jumping off a high bridge. As it is, the human frame can withstand deceleration forces no higher than 12 Gs, equivalent to 12 individuals identical to yourself, piled on top of you.  Even at that, you’re only going to survive a few minutes, at best.

Apollo_13_Prime_Crew
Left to right: Commander, James A. Lovell Jr., Command Module pilot, John L. Swigert Jr., Lunar Module pilot, Fred W. Haise Jr.

We all know what it is to skip a stone off the surface of a pond.  If you hit the atmosphere at too shallow an angle, the result is identical. There is no coming down a second time. You get one bounce and then nothing but the black void of space.

For four days, most of the country and much of the world held its breath, waiting for the latest update from newspaper and television news.  With communications down, TV commentators used models and illustrations, to describe the unfolding drama.  Onboard Odyssey, power was so low that voice-only transmissions became difficult. Visual communications with Mission Control were as impossible, as the idea that the stranded astronauts could walk home.

As Odyssey neared earth, engineers and crew jury-rigged a means of jettisoning the spent Service Module, to create enough separation for safe re-entry.Apollo_13_timeline

One last problem to be solved, was the crew’s final transfer from Lunar Module back to Command Module, prior to re-entry.  With the “reaction control system” dead, University of Toronto engineers had only slide rules and six hours, in which to devise a way to “blow” the LM, by pressurizing the tunnel connecting it with the CM.  Too much pressure might damage the hatch and its seal, too little wouldn’t provide enough separation between the two bodies.  The result of either failure, would have been identical to that of the “shooting stars”, you see at night.

Apollo 13 after it came back to Earth.
Apollo 13 after it came back to Earth.

By this time the Command Module had been in “cold soak” for days.  No one even knew for certain, if the thing would come back to life.

Crashing into the atmosphere at over 24,000mph, the capsule had 14 minutes in which to come to a full stop, splashing down in the waters of the Pacific Ocean. External temperatures on the CM reached 2,691° F, as the kinetic energy of re-entry was converted to heat.

The Apollo 13 mission ended safely with splashdown southeast of American Samoa on April 17, 1970, at 18:07:41 local time.  Exhausted and hungry, the entire crew had lost weight.  Haise had developed a kidney infection.  Total duration was 142 hours, 54 minutes and 41 seconds.

apollo-13-problem

April 10, 1869 SCOTUS

There have been fewer justices in Supreme Court history than you might think. The recent passing of Antonin Scalia made way for only number 113

ConstitutionThe Stuart King James had judges riding into the countryside once a year to hear cases, saving many of his subjects the arduous journey to London.  The custom carried “across the pond” and, from the earliest days of the American colonies, judges could be found “riding the circuit”.

Article III of the United States Constitution establishes the judiciary as a coequal branch of the federal government, “vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish”. That’s about it.

Congress passed the Federal Judiciary Act in 1789, creating a six justice Supreme Court, and signed into law by President George Washington on September 24.  Principally written by Senator Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, the act established the office of Attorney General, and largely laid out the Federal court system, as it exists today.

United States Circuit courts were established in each federal judicial district, exercising jurisdiction over both original (first instance) matters and appeals, until the creation of the Federal Court of Appeals, in 1912.

Judicial Districts map
2017 Judicial Districts map

Supreme Court justices were not exempt from Circuit court duty, each justice “riding the circuit” to hear cases in his own district, in addition to his caseload, back at the capital.

Smaller districts may occupy a single federal courthouse, while larger districts stretch across thousands of miles.  This duty became increasingly onerous, until finally abolished by the Judiciary Act of 1891. Yet, the vestiges of this system remain. Today, each justice hears certain provisional appeals from specific circuits, which he or she may decide unilaterally, or refer “en banc” to the entire Court.

Increasing caseloads led Congress to increase the number of judicial districts to seven in 1807, and nine in 1837, finally raising that to ten during the Civil War.  With each new district, came another justice.

In one of the political skirmishes leading to President Andrew Johnson’s impeachment in 1868, Congress passed the Judicial Circuits Act in 1866, shrinking the number of justices to seven, thus preventing Johnson from appointing any new justices.

Congress raised the number to nine circuits with nine justices on April 10, 1869.  Today there are eleven federal judicial districts, while the number of justices remain at nine.

Supreme_Court_cartoonIn 1937, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sought to increase the number of justices to 15. Then as now, the court was sharply divided along ideological lines, consisting of a four member conservative majority called the “four horsemen”, three liberals dubbed the “three musketeers” and two “swing votes”.

The conservative bloc became a roadblock to President Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, preferring the federal government take a hands off approach to the economy.

Buoyed by his landslide reelection in 1936, Roosevelt proposed to provide retirement at full pay for all justices over 70.  Any justice refusing retirement would be provided with an “assistant” with full voting rights, providing Roosevelt with an overwhelming liberal majority.

Not even vice president John Nance Garner would go along with Roosevelt’s aggressive and illegal “court packing scheme”, nor would a democrat-controlled congress. Yet Roosevelt’s effort had the desired result, as former swing vote Owen Roberts became a reliable vote for the liberal minority. By the time of his death 1945, Roosevelt had appointed every justice on the court, except Roberts himself.

supremecourtThere have been fewer justices in Supreme Court history than you might think.  The recent passing of Antonin Scalia made way for only number 113.

A proponent of “Judicial Originalism”, justice Scalia and his conservative allies on the court seek to decide on the constitutionality of the laws before them, based on what the framers of the constitution intended when they actually wrote the thing. In contrast, the liberal majority believes in a “living constitution”, a form of jurisprudence whose supporters believe the Constitution is a document which adapts to the times.  Detractors believe that amounts to law-making from the bench, a job more properly left the legislature.

With the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court hanging in the balance, President Obama and his allies pulled out all the stops to get his nominee confirmed and seated before the end of his presidency. The Republican controlled Senate invoked the “Biden Rule”, as described in the former Vice President’s 1992 speech on the Senate floor:  “It would be our pragmatic conclusion that once the political season is underway, and it is, action on a Supreme Court nomination must be put off until after the election campaign is over.”

Barack Obama himself tried to block the confirmation of Samuel Alito in 2006, saying Filibuster“There are some who believe that the president, having won the election, should have complete authority to appoint his nominee, that once you get beyond intellect and personal character, there should be no further question as to whether the judge should be confirmed. I disagree with this view”. The filibuster was joined by Senators Kennedy, Leahy, Durbin, Salazar, and Baucus.

In 2007, now-Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said “We should not confirm any Bush nominee to the Supreme Court, except in extraordinary circumstances”. That was 19 months before the next presidential inauguration.

The resulting conflict is great fodder for the bicker fest that passes for our national politics, from the legacy media and the talking heads of the punditocracy, to the endless and meaningless cage matches over the rhetorical anthills of Facebook.

CapitolSenator Schumer once said, “We have three branches of government. We have a house, we have a senate, we have a president.” He got that wrong, but he was part right.  We have three co-equal branches in our government, each having specific responsibilities as laid out in the Constitution.

The “advice and consent” clause contained in Article II grants the President authority to appoint judges to the Supreme Court, “by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate.”  The Senate, for its part, will do what the Senate will do.

Later today, Justice David Kennedy will administer the oath of office to his former law clerk, judge Neil Gorsuch.  The 113th justice of the United States Supreme Court, and the first in history to serve alongside the justice for whom he once clerked.

The week that was: April 2 – 9

In case you missed it.

April 2, 1722 Silence Dogood – In 1722, James Franklin felt that little brothers should be seen, and not heard.  16-year old Benjamin, thought differently

April 3, 1946 Bataan Death March – The POW received his prison number…the same he’d worn playing fullback, for Notre Dame.  #58. That was when he knew he’d make it

April 4, 1926  America’s 1st War Dog – America’s first war dog “Sgt. Stubby” got there by accident, serving 18 months ‘over there’.

April 5, 1761 Midnight Ride – “Listen my children and you shall hear”… the story of the female Paul Revere

April 6, 1917 Safe for Democracy – In the end, the German response to anticipated US action, brought about the very action it was trying to avoid

April 7, 1933 A Brief History of Beer – So it is that, from that day to this, April 6 is celebrated as “New Beer’s Eve”.  Sláinte.

April 8, 1740 War of Jenkins’ Ear – For the future colony of Georgia, the War of Jenkins’ Ear was an existential threat

April 9, 1974  Open Mouth, Insert Foot

At that moment a roar went up from the crowd, as a streaker jumped out of the stands and onto the field. That’s when he lost it.

The 1974 season opened on the road for the San Diego Padres, the series ending in a humiliating, 25-2 blowout at Dodger’s Stadium.

Padres’ new owner and McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc was anything but pleased with the 0-3 start, saying “They’re snake-bit, and they’ve got the yips. They’re overanxious, trying too hard, too tense”. Kroc was positive, though, at the home opener against the Houston Astros.  Stepping up to the field microphone, Kroc said to the crowd of 39,083 at San Diego Stadium, “With your help and God’s help, we’ll give ‘em hell tonight.”

The home opener at Jack Murphy (now Qualcomm) Stadium on April 9 was no better, ending in a 9 to 5 loss.  In the middle of the eighth, the Padres were well on their way to 0 and 4, when Ray Kroc opened the door of the public address booth and told announcer John DeMott he had something to say.

Kroc had bought the club only two months earlier, when San Diego was in danger of KrocRaylosing its National League team to Washington, DC.  Only moments before,  Padres’ President Buzzie Bavasi had to leave Kroc’s side to investigate concession area water in the clubhouse, when a leak was “promoted” to a flood.

Kroc had to have been cranky when he took the mic in the first place, but it quickly got worse.  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “I suffer with you.”  At that moment a roar went up from the crowd, as a streaker jumped out of the stands and onto the field.

That’s when he lost it.  “Get him out of here. Throw him in jail” Kroc shouted.  Then he continued.  “I have good news and bad news. The good news is that the Dodgers drew 31,000 for their opener and we’ve drawn 39,000 for ours. The bad news is that this is the most stupid baseball playing I’ve ever seen”.

Padres radio announcer Jerry Coleman didn’t know how to respond.  “Ladies and Gentlemen”, he said, “that was Padres owner, Ray Kroc”.

It was a bad idea.  Player representative Willie McCovey spoke for the club. “I wish Mr. Kroc hadn’t done that. I’ve never heard anything like that in my 19 years in baseball. None of us likes being called stupid. We’re pros and we’re doing the best we can. His words will ring in the players’ ears for a long time.”

Players were so angry they threatened to boycott the next game.  San Diego dentist Steve Arlin was the losing pitcher that night.  “We were all embarrassed by it,” he said. “We weren’t playing well, but we didn’t need to be reminded”.

Even opposing players jumped into the fray.  Houston player rep Denis Menke said, “That was in bad taste.”  Menke went on to protest Kroc’s comments to Marvin Miller, head of the players’ union.

Miller thought Kroc’s actions were unacceptable, too.  “Imagine what would have happened if a player, after being taken out of a game, made an announcement over the P.A. that his manager was stupid. The player would be fined or suspended. I see a direct parallel in the Kroc case.”

Astros’ third baseman Doug Rader said, “He thinks he’s in a sales convention dealing with a bunch of short-order cooks. That’s not the way to go about getting a winner. Somebody ought to sit him down and straighten him out.” Within two weeks Rader had received so many angry calls from short order cooks, that he had to make a public apology.

Houston SpatulaBuzzie Bavasi did the most to defuse the situation.  Taking a cue from Rader’s comments, Bavasi designated the next game in the Houston series “Short Order Cook’s Night”.  Any Padres fan who came wearing a chef’s hat, would be admitted into the game for free.  Rader, the Astro’s team captain, took the lineup card to home plate wearing an apron with a chef’s hat, slipping the card off a skillet with a spatula and handing it over to the home plate umpire, like a pancake.

Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn later forced Kroc to make a public apology, but Sporting News columnist Melvin Durslag wasn’t buying it. “The reason (he’d never seen such stupid baseball playing) was largely due to his inexperience at watching baseball.  He knows as much about the sport as Willie McCovey knows about an Egg McMuffin.”

San Diego went on to lose 102 games that year, 42 more than archrival LA Dodgers.  The season wasn’t halfway over, when the new owner wondered what he’d gotten himself into.  I bought the team to have some fun”, Kroc said.  “But it is proving to be about as enjoyable as a wake.  Your own”.

April 8, 1740, War of Jenkin’s Ear

In the smoke and confusion, the Spanish never did figure out how puny the forces were who opposed them

A series of escalating trade disputes had already taken place between British and Spanish forces, when the Spanish patrol boat La Isabela drew alongside the British brig Rebecca in 1731. After boarding, Commander Juan de León Fandiño accused the British commander of smuggling.  The discussion became heated, when Fandiño drew his sword and cut the left ear off of Captain Robert Jenkins.  “Go, and tell your King that I will do the same”, he said, “if he dares to do the same.”jenkins-ear-1

Seven years later, Jenkins was ordered to testify before Parliament where, according to some accounts, he produced the severed ear in a pickling jar, as part of his presentation. This and other incidents of “Spanish Depredations upon the British Subjects” were considered insults to the honor of the British nation and a provocation to war.

A squadron of three 70-gun British third-rates was patrolling off the coast of Cornwall on April 8, 1740, when a mast was sighted to the north.  What at first appeared to be a French vessel was revealed to be the 70 gun ship-of-the-line Princesa, when she struck her French colors and hoist the Spanish flag.  Outnumbered 3-to-1, Princesa put up a good fight, but the issue was never in doubt.  She was brought into Portsmouth for repairs, entering British service as HMS Princess in 1742.  What had once been described as “the finest ship in the Spanish Navy”, would serve Her Britannic Majesty for another 42 years.Princesa

For the future Georgia colony, the War of Jenkins Ear was an existential threat.  Spain had laid claim to Florida, when Ponce de Leon first mapped the territory in 1513.  The territory which later became North & South Carolina joined the British Colonies to the north in 1663, leaving the areas in-between in dispute.  James Oglethorpe founded the 13th colony of Georgia as a buffer to Spanish incursion, two years after Mr. Jenkins lost his ear. Battle of Bloody Marsh (Model)

By 1736, Oglethorpe established Fort Frederica on the barrier island of St. Simon, off the Savannah coast.  The Spanish landing force of 4,500 to 5,000 men arrived on St. Simon’s Island in July of 1742, opposed by only 950 British Rangers, Colonial Militia and Indian Allies.

Oglethorpe’s forces attacked a Spanish reconnaissance in force at the Battle of Gully Hole Creek in the early morning hours of July 7, followed by the ambush of a much larger force that afternoon, in what would be known as the Battle of Bloody Marsh.  In the smoke and confusion, the Spanish never did figure out how puny the forces were who opposed them.  These two victories were as big a boost to British morale as they were a blow to that of their adversary.  The last major Spanish offensive into Georgia ended with a complete withdrawal, a week later.

GullyHoleCreekSign

The conflict which began in 1739 ended in 1748, though major operations ceased in 1742 when the War of Jenkins Ear was subsumed by the greater War of Austrian Succession, involving most of the major powers of Europe at that time. Peace arrived with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748.

April 7, 1933 A Brief History of Beer

A team of draft horses hauled a wagon up Pennsylvania Avenue, to deliver a case of beer to the White House. It was the first public appearance of the Budweiser Clydesdales

Given the right combination of sugars, almost any cereal will undergo simple fermentation, due to the presence of wild yeasts in the air.  It seems likely our cave-dwelling ancestors experienced their first beer, as the result of this process.

Alulu_Beer_Receipt
From Wikipedia: “Alulu beer receipt – This records a purchase of “best” beer from a brewer, c. 2050 BC from the Sumerian city of Umma in ancient Iraq”.

Starch dusted stones were found with the remains of doum-palm and chamomile in the 18,000-year old Wadi Kubbaniya in upper Egypt.  While it’s difficult to confirm, University of Pennsylvania archaeologist Dr. Patrick McGovern says, “it’s very likely they were making beer there”.

Chemical analysis of pottery shards date the earliest barley beer to 3400BC, in the Zagros Mountains of Iran.

Wine seemed better suited to the sensibilities of the Roman palate, when Tacitus maligned the bitter brew of Germanic barbarians.  Nevertheless, the letters of Roman cavalry commanders from the Roman Britain period, c. 97-103 AD, include requests for more “cerevisia”, for the legionaries.

In North and South America, native peoples brewed fermented beverages from local ingredients, including agave sap, the first spring tips of the spruce tree, and maize.

beer-ingredients
“Ancient cultures used an array of ingredients to make their alcoholic beverages, including emmer wheat, wild yeast, chamomile, thyme and oregano. (Landon Nordeman)” H/T Smithsonian magazine

The Pilgrims left the Netherlands city of Leiden in 1620, hoping for rich farmland and congenial climate in the New World.  Not the frozen, rocky soil of New England.  Lookouts spotted the wind-swept shores of Cape Cod on November 9, 1620, and may have kept going, had they had enough beer.  One Mayflower passenger wrote in his diary: “We could not now take time for further search… our victuals being much spent, especially our beer…”

Prior to the invention of the drum roaster in 1817, malt was typically dried over wood, charcoal, or straw fires, leaving a smoky quality that would seem foreign to the modern beer drinker.  William Harrison wrote in his “Description of England” in 1577, “For the wood-dried malt, when it is brewed, beside that the drink is higher of colour, it doth hurt and annoy the head of him that is not used thereto, because of the smoke”.london-beer-flood

Smoky flavor didn’t trouble the true aficionado of the age.  When the Meux Brewery casks let go in 1814 spilling nearly 400,000 gallons onto the street, hundreds of Britons hurried to scoop it up in pots and pans.  Some even lapped it up, doggy-style.

1,389 were trampled to death and another 1,300 injured in a suds stampede, when someone thought the beer had run out at the coronation of Czar Nicholas II, in 1896.

The 18th amendment, better known as “prohibition”, went into effect at midnight, January 16, 1920. For thirteen years it was illegal to import, export, transport or sell liquor, wine or beer in the United States.

Prohibition PhotoPortable stills went on sale within a week, and organized smuggling was quick to follow. California grape growers increased acreage by over 700% over the first five years, selling dry blocks of grapes as “bricks of rhine” or “blocks of port”. The mayor of New York City sent instructions on wine making, to his constituents.

Smuggling operations became widespread, as cars were souped up to outrun “the law”. This would lead to competitive car racing, beginning first on the streets and back roads and later moving to dedicated race tracks.  It’s why we have NASCAR, today.

Organized crime became vastly more powerful due to the influx of enormous sums of cash.  The corruption of public officials was a national scandal.

MoonshineGaining convictions for breaking a law that everyone hated became increasingly difficult. There were over 7,000 prohibition related arrests in New York alone between 1921 and 1923.  Only 27 resulted in convictions.

Finally, even John D. Rockefeller, Jr., a lifelong teetotaler who contributed $350,000 to the Anti-Saloon League, had to announce his support for repeal.

It’s difficult to compare rates of alcohol consumption before and during prohibition.  If death by cirrhosis of the liver is any indication, alcohol consumption didn’t decrease by more than 10 to 20 per cent.

FDR signed the Cullen–Harrison Act into law on March 22, 1933, commenting “I think this would be a good time for a beer.”  The law went effect on April 7, allowing Americans to buy, sell and drink beer containing up to 3.2% alcohol.

A team of draft horses hauled a wagon up Pennsylvania Avenue, delivering a case of beer to the White House – the first public appearance of the Budweiser Clydesdales.

Clydesdale, Pennsylvania Ave“Dry” leaders tried to prohibit consumption of alcohol on military bases in 1941, but military authorities claimed it was good for morale. Brewers were required to allocate 15% of total annual production to be used by the armed forces. So essential were beer manufacturers to the war effort, that teamsters were ordered to end a labor strike against Minneapolis breweries.  Near the end of WWII, the army made plans to operate recaptured French breweries, to ensure adequate supplies for the troops.

Beer toast18 states continued prohibition at the state level after the national repeal, the last state finally dropping it in 1966. Almost 2/3rds of all states adopted some form of local option, enabling residents of political subdivisions to vote for or against local prohibition.  Some counties remain dry to this day.  Ironically, Lynchburg County, Tennessee, home to the Jack Daniel distillery, is one such dry county.

The night before Roosevelt’s law went into effect, April 6, 1933, beer lovers lined up at the doors of their favorite public houses, waiting for their first legal beer in thirteen years.  A million and a half barrels of the stuff were consumed on April 7, a date remembered today as “National Beer Day”.

So it is that, from that day to this, April 6 is celebrated as “New Beer’s Eve”.  Sláinte.

For every wound, a balm.
For every sorrow, cheer.
For every storm, a calm.
For every thirst, a beer.

timeline

April 6, 1917 Safe for Democracy

In 1916, German policy vacillated between strict adherence to prize rules and unrestricted submarine warfare. The first put their people and vessels at extreme risk, the second threatened to bring the United States into the war.

woodrow_wilsonIn the early days of WWI, Imperial Germany attempted to comply with standards of maritime warfare, as established by the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907.

Desperate to find an effective countermeasure to the German “Unterseeboot”, Great Britain introduced heavily armed merchant ships with concealed weaponry in 1915, phony merchantmen designed to lure submarines into making surface attacks. Britain called these secret countermeasures “Q-ships”, after their home base in Queenstown, in Ireland. German sailors called them U-Boot-Fälle. “U-boat traps”.

The “unprovoked” sinking of noncombatant vessels, including the famous Lusitania, in which 1,198 passengers lost their lives, became a primary justification for war.  The German Empire, for her part, insisted that many of these vessels carried munitions intended to kill Germans on European battlefields.

Underwater, the submarines of WWI were slow and blind, on the surface, vulnerable to attack.  In 1916, German policy vacillated between strict adherence to prize rules and unrestricted submarine warfare.  The first put their people and vessels at extreme risk, the second threatened to bring the United States into the war.q-ship-u-boat

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson won re-election with the slogan “He kept us out of war”, a conflict begun in Europe, two years earlier.

In a January 31, 1917 memorandum from German Ambassador Count Johann von Bernstorff to US Secretary of State Robert Lansing, the Ambassador stated that “sea traffic will be stopped with every available weapon and without further notice”, effective the following day. The German government was about to resume unrestricted submarine warfare.

Anticipating this resumption and expecting the decision to draw the United States into the war, German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann delivered a message to the German ambassador in Mexico, Heinrich von Eckardt. The telegram instructed Ambassador Eckardt that, if the United States seemed likely to enter the war, he was to approach the Mexican Government with a proposal for military alliance, promising “lost territory” in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona in exchange for a Mexican declaration of war against the United States.

Zimmerman noteThe “Zimmermann Telegram” was intercepted and decoded by British intelligence and revealed to the American government on February 24. The contents of the message outraged American public opinion and helped generate support for the United States’ declaration of war.

In the end, the German response to anticipated US action, brought about the very action it was trying to avoid.

President Woodrow Wilson delivered his war message to a joint session of Congress on April 2, saying that a declaration of war on Imperial Germany would make the world “safe for democracy”. Congress voted to support American entry into the war on April 6, 1917. The “Great War”, the “War to end all Wars”, had become a world war.

At the time, a secondary explosion within the hull of the Lusitania, caused many to believe the liner had been struck by a second torpedo.  In 1968, American businessman Gregg Bemis purchased the wreck of the Lusitania for $2,400, from the Liverpool & London War Risks Insurance Association.   In 2007 the Irish government granted Bemis a five-year license to conduct limited excavations at the site.   Lusitania, ammunition

Twelve miles off the Irish coast and 300’ down, a dive was conducted on the wreck in 2008.   Remote submersible operators discovered some 4,000,000 rounds of Remington .303 ammunition in the hold, proof of the German claim that Lusitania was, in fact, a legitimate target under international rules of war.  The UK Daily Mail quoted Bemis:  “There were literally tons and tons of stuff stored in unrefrigerated cargo holds that were dubiously marked cheese, butter and oysters’”.

Jeannette_Rankin
Jeannette Rankin

American historian, author and journalist Wade Hampton Sides accompanied the expedition.  “They are bullets that were expressly manufactured to kill Germans in World War I” he said, “bullets that British officials in Whitehall, and American officials in Washington, have long denied were aboard the Lusitania.'”

Montana Republican Jeannette Pickering Rankin, a life-long pacifist and the first woman elected to the United States Congress, would be one of only fifty votes against entering WWI.  She would be elected to her second (non-contiguous) term in 1940, in time to be the only vote against entering WWII, following the Japanese attack on the United States’ Pacific anchorage at Pearl Harbor.

April 5, 1761 Midnight Ride

The Dutchess County Militia had to be called up. The Colonel had one night to prepare for battle, and this rider was done. The job would have to go to Colonel Ludington’s first-born. His daughter, Sybil.

“Listen my children and you shall hear,
Of the midnight ride of”…Sybil Ludington.

Wait…What?

Midnight RidePaul Revere’s famous “midnight ride” began on the night of April 18, 1775.  Revere was one of two riders, soon joined by a third, fanning out from Boston to warn of an oncoming column of “regulars”, come to destroy the stockpile of gunpowder, ammunition, and cannon in Concord.

Revere himself covered barely 12 miles before being captured, his horse confiscated to replace the tired mount of a British sergeant.  Revere would finish his “ride” on foot, arriving at sunrise on the 19th to witness the last moments of the battle on Lexington Green.

Two years later, Patriot forces maintained a similar supply depot, in the southwest Connecticut town of Danbury.

William Tryon was the Royal Governor of New York, and long-standing advocate for attacks on civilian targets.  In 1777, he was also a major-general of the provincial army.  On April 25th, Tryon set sail for the Connecticut coast of Long Island Sound with a force of 1,800, intending to destroy Danbury.

Burning of DanburyPatriot Colonel Joseph Cooke’s small Danbury garrison was caught and quickly overpowered on the 26th, trying to remove food supplies, uniforms, and equipment.  Facing little if any opposition, Tryon’s forces went on a bender, burning homes, farms and storehouses.  Thousands of barrels of pork, beef, and flour were destroyed, along with 5,000 pairs of shoes, 2,000 bushels of grain, and 1,600 tents.

Colonel Henry Ludington was a farmer and father of 12, with a long military career.  A long-standing and loyal subject of the British crown, Ludington switched sides in 1773, joining the rebel cause and rising to command the 7th Regiment of the Dutchess County Militia, in New York’s Hudson Valley.

In April 1777, Ludington’s militia was disbanded for planting season, and spread across the countryside.  An exhausted rider arrived at the Ludington farm on a blown horse, on the evening of the 26th, asking for help.  15 miles away, British regulars and a force of loyalists were burning Danbury to the ground. Sybil Ludington

The Dutchess County Militia had to be called up.  The Colonel had one night to prepare for battle, and this rider was done.  The job would have to go to Colonel Ludington’s first-born, his daughter, Sybil.

Born April 5, 1761, Sybil Ludington was barely sixteen at the time of her ride.  From Poughkeepsie to what is now Putnam County and back, the “Female Paul Revere” rode across the lower Hudson River Valley, covering 40 miles in the pitch dark of night, alerting her father’s militia to the danger and urging them to come out and fight.  She’d use a stick to knock on doors, even using it once, to fight off a highway bandit.

By the time Sybil returned the next morning, cold, rain-soaked, and exhausted, most of 400 militia were ready to march.

BattleOfRidgefield
Battle of Ridgefield, from Wikipedia A: British movement to the coast B: American movements to pursue and harass the British C: Arnold’s position attempting to block the British return to the beach D: British return to New York

35 miles to the east of Danbury, General Benedict Arnold was gathering a force of 500 regular and irregular Connecticut militia, with Generals David Wooster and Gold Selleck Silliman.

Arnold’s forces arrived too late to save Danbury, but inflicted a nasty surprise on the British rearguard as the column approached nearby Ridgefield.  Never outnumbered by less than three-to-one, Connecticut militia was able to slow the British advance until Ludington’s New York Militia arrived on the following day.  The last phase of the action saw the same type of swarming harassment, as seen on the British retreat from Concord to Boston, early in the war.

Though the British operation was a tactical success, the mauling inflicted by these colonials ensured that this was the last hostile British landing on the Connecticut coast.

The British raid on Danbury destroyed at least 19 houses and 22 stores and barns.  Town officials submitted £16,000 in claims to Congress, for which town selectmen received £500 reimbursement.  Further claims were made to the General Assembly of Connecticut in 1787, for which Danbury was awarded land.  In Ohio.

Keeler_tavern_ridgefield_cannonball_2006
Keeler Tavern

The Keeler Tavern in Ridgefield is now a museum.  The British cannonball fired into the side of the building, remains there to this day.

At the time, Benedict Arnold planned to travel to Philadelphia, to protest the promotion of officers junior to himself, to Major General.  Arnold, who’d had two horses shot out from under him at Ridgefield, was promoted to Major General in recognition for his role in the battle.  Along with that promotion came a horse, “properly caparisoned as a token of … approbation of his gallant conduct … in the late enterprize to Danbury.”  For now, the pride which would one day be his undoing, was assuaged.

Henry Ludington would become Aide-de-Camp to General George Washington, and grandfather to Harrison Ludington, mayor of Milwaukee and 12th Governor of Wisconsin.

Gold Silliman was kidnapped with his son by a first marriage by Tory neighbors, and held for Nearly seven months at a New York farmhouse.  Having no hostage of equal rank with whom to exchange for the General, Patriot forces went out and kidnapped one of their own, in the person of Chief Justice Judge Thomas Jones, of Long Island.

Wooster Square
Archway at Wooster Square

Mary Silliman was left to run the farm, including caring for her own midwife, who was brutally raped by English forces for denying them the use of her home.  The 1993 made-for-TV movie “Mary Silliman’s War” tells the story of non-combatants, pregnant mothers and farm wives during the Revolution, as well as Mary’s own negotiations for her husband’s release from his Loyalist captors.

General David Wooster was mortally wounded at the Battle of Ridgefield, moments after shouting “Come on my boys! Never mind such random shots!”  Today, an archway marks the entrance to Wooster Square, in the East Rock Neighborhood of New Haven.  Sybil_Ludington_stamp

Sybil Ludington received the thanks of family and friends, even George Washington, and then stepped off the pages of history.

Paul Revere’s famous ride would likewise have faded into obscurity, but for the poetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  86 years later.