The “Anne” sailed from England in November 1732. On board were 114 colonists including General James Oglethorpe, intending to found the Colony of Georgia. The group headed 
south after a brief stay in Charleston, South Carolina. Landing at Yamacraw bluff, Oglethorpe’s party was greeted by Chief Tomochichi of the Yamacraws, along with two Indian traders, John and Mary Musgrove.
The Province of Georgia and its Colonial Capital of Savannah were founded on that date, February 12, 1733. The friendship which developed between Oglethorpe and Tomochichi kept the fledgling colony out of the Indian conflicts, marking the founding of most of the other colonies.
Oglethorpe was something of a Utopian, founding his capital around four wards, each containing eight blocks situated around its own central square. This was a place of religious freedom. 40 Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal arrived in July, the largest such group to-date to enter any of the colonies. It was a place of religious freedom for all but Catholics, that is. It was feared that Catholics would be sympathetic with Spanish authorities in control of Florida at that time, so they were prohibited.
There were four such prohibitions, the others being that there would be no spirituous liquors (that wouldn’t last long), no lawyers (do I need to explain?), and no slaves.
The experiment came to an end in 1754, when Georgia became a Royal Colony.
The low marshes of Savannah’s coastline are ideally suited as wild rice fields. Rice had
originally come from its native Southeast Asia to West Africa, where the same strains were grown by European colonists. The rice industry failed in Africa, but the combination of English agricultural technology and African labor made the crop a mainstay of the early colonial economy.
In 1773, a slave named George Leile became the first black man to become a licensed Baptist preacher in Georgia. Leile’s master, himself a Baptist deacon, freed him before the Revolution and Leile preached to slaves on plantations along the Savannah River, from Georgia north into South Carolina.
Hundreds of blacks fled to occupied Savannah after the Revolution broke out, seeking safety behind British lines. Scores of them were transported to Nova Scotia or other colonies, and some to London. Leile and his family sailed with the British for freedom in Jamaica.
Andrew Bryan was the only one of the first three black Baptist preachers to stay, making his home in Savannah along with his wife, Hannah.
On January 20, 1788, Bryan brought official recognition to the First African Baptist Church and its 67 members, five years before the first “white” Baptist Church in Savannah. In 1802, Bryan founded the “Second Colored Baptist Church”, renamed the “Second African Baptist Church” in 1823.
General William Tecumseh Sherman read the Emancipation Proclamation to the citizens of Savannah from the steps of this church, promising “40 acres and a mule” to newly freed slaves.
The original church on Greene Square burned down in 1925. The church was completely rebuilt, and still contains its original pulpit, prayer benches and choir chairs.
“If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well. If you can’t be a pine at the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. Be the best little shrub on the side of the hill.
Be a bush if you can’t be a tree. If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail. If you can’t be a sun, be a star. For it isn’t by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are”. – Martin Luther King, Jr.
In 1961, a guest preacher delivered a sermon at the Second African Baptist Church which
he called “I have a Dream”. Two years later, the same speaker delivered his speech from the steps of the Lincoln memorial in Washington.
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr’s 91st birthday came and went last week, a date now remembered with its own national holiday. This August, the country will mark the 59th anniversary of his speech on the Mall.
While a sorry collection of racial arsonists attempt to divide Americans against one another for their own political advantage, permit me this reminder of other words, spoken by Reverend King at a time when it took real courage to be a “civil rights” leader.
“In a real sense we must all live together as brothers, or we will all perish together as fools”.
Feature Image, top of page: Wright Square Savannah, final resting place of Tomochichi, leader of the Yamacraw
Iva Ikuko Toguri was born in Los Angeles on July 4, 1916, the daughter of Japanese immigrants. She attended schools in Calexico and San Diego, returning to Los Angeles where she enrolled at UCLA, graduating in January, 1940 with a degree in zoology.
That November, Toguri was asked to become a broadcaster for Radio Tokyo on the “Zero Hour” program, part of a Japanese psychological warfare campaign designed to lower the morale of US Armed Forces. The name “Tokyo Rose” was in common use by this time, applied to as many as 12 different women broadcasting Japanese propaganda in English.
She called herself “Orphan Annie,” earning 150 yen per month (about $7.00 US). She wasn’t a professional radio personality, but many of those who recalled hearing her enjoyed the program, especially the music.
d’Aquino was sentenced to ten years and fined $10,000 for the crime of treason, only the seventh person in US history so convicted. She was released from the Federal Reformatory for Women at Alderson, West Virginia in 1956, having served six years and two months of her sentence.
Look up the Highest Paid Athlete of All Time and you’ll be rewarded with the knowledge that Michael Jordan amassed career earnings of $1.85 Billion, according to Forbes Magazine. Steve Forbes and Michael Jordan alike may be surprised to know. Spanish driver Gaius Appuleius Diocles amassed an astonishing 35,863,120 sesterces, equivalent to $15 Billion, today. Not bad for a man whose name suggests he probably began as a slave, freed by a guy named Gaius Appuleius.
The age of Constantine saw enormous expansion of the city which bore his name, including enlargement of the Hippodrome to an impressive 1,476-feet long by 427-feet wide with a seating capacity of 100,000. By way of comparison, the Empire State Building is 1,454-feet from sidewalk to the very tip of the spire. Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta, home of Super Bowl LIII, has a rated capacity of 71,000 spectators.
A raised median called a spina ran down the center, adorned with stone statuary and obelisks. Ganging up to drive opposing handlers into the stone median or the stands, whipping opponents and even hauling them out of their chariots was not only permitted, but encouraged.
Modern sport has seen its share of fan passion rising to violence, but the worst “futbol hooligan” pales into docility, compared with the crowd come to watch the chariot races. Imagine the worst fan violence of the modern era combined with aspects of street gangs and political organizations, each faction holding positions on the issues of the day and attempting to sway public policy by shouting slogans, between races.
With spine thus restored, Justinian formulated a plan. The popular eunuch Narses was sent with a bag of gold, into the lion’s den. Small and slight of build, unarmed but for those coins, Narses entered the Hippodrome and went directly to the Blue section. On this day in 562 Hypatius was in the very act of coronation when the eunuch spoke. Narses reminded the Blues that Hypatius was a Green while Justinian himself, supported their team.
Thus ends one of the great “backfires” in political history. Senator Hypatius was put to the sword and those who had supported the pretender, sent into exile. Justinian I would rule another 33 years, rebuilding Constantinople, muzzling the Senatorial Class which had caused him such grief and reconquering lost territories, in Italy.
During her service to the United States Navy, West Point was awarded the American Defense Service Medal, American Campaign Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, and World War II Victory Medal.
She was in terrible condition and her refit nowhere near complete when America set sail on her first cruise on June 30, 1978. There was rusted metal, oil soaked rags and backed up sewage. There were filthy mattresses and soiled linens. One woman later said, she was a “floating garbage can.” The angriest of customers actually got into fist fights with members of the crew. There were so many complaints the ship finally turned back, still within sight of the Statue of Liberty.
Sold yet again in 1993 and renamed the American Star, the new owners planned to convert her to a five-star hotel ship off Phuket, Thailand. A planned 100 day tow began on New Year’s Eve of 1993, but the lines broke. On January 17, 1994, the former SS America was adrift in foul seas, running aground in the Canary Islands the following day. Discussions of salvage operations were soon squashed, as the ship broke in two in the pounding surf.
The National WWII Museum in New Orleans reports on its website that the men and women who fought and won the great conflict are now passing at a rate of 550 per day. How many, I wonder, might think back and remember passage on the most successful troop transport of their day.
Patriot forces selected a site called Bemis Heights about 10 miles south of Saratoga, spending a week constructing defensive works with the help of Polish engineer Thaddeus Kosciusko. Theirs was a formidable position with mutually supporting cannon on overlapping ridges, with interlocking fields of fire.
The second and decisive battle for Saratoga, the Battle of Bemis Heights, occurred on October 7, 1777.
It would have been better in the chest, he said, than to have received such a wound in that leg.
“In memory of
Cornered in a washout under some railroad tracks Randall held off the attack single handed with his revolver, despite a gunshot wound to his shoulder and no fewer than 11 lance wounds.
The King James Bible teaches us, in John 15:13: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends“. After the war, Sommocolonia erected a Memorial. A tribute to nine brave soldiers who gave their lives that their brothers might live. Eight Italians and one American.
1st Sergeant Mark Matthews, the last of the Buffalo Soldiers, died of pneumonia on September 6, 2005 at the age of 111. A man who forged papers in order to join at age fifteen and once had to play taps from the woods, Matthews was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery, section 69, grave #4215.
Stripped of armor to increase range and carrying a full load of depth charges, the American anti-submarine bomber with its 10-man crew dove out of the clouds at 1,000 feet, throttles open and machine guns ablaze. The first Condor never came out of that diving turn, while machine gun fire from the second tore into the American bomber, shredding hydraulic systems and setting the right wing ablaze.
Maxwell had dubbed his B-24 “The Ark”, explaining that “it had a lot of strange animals aboard, and I hoped it would bring us through the deluge”. It must have worked. Seven out of ten crew members lived to be plucked from the water. The second Condor made it back to Bordeaux, where it crashed and burned on landing.
Ed seems to have had life-long problems with alcohol, often resulting in an inability to provide for his family. Amelia must have been a disciplined student despite it all, as she graduated with her high school class, on time, notwithstanding having attended six different schools.
Meeley and Pidge worked as nurse’s aids in Toronto, in 1919. There she met several wounded aviators and developed a strong admiration for these people. Amelia would spend much of her free time watching the Royal Flying Corps practice at a nearby airfield.
Following the end of the official search, Earhart’s husband and promoter George Palmer Putnam financed private searches of the Phoenix Islands, Christmas (Kiritimati) Island, Fanning (Tabuaeran) Island, the Gilbert and the Marshall Islands, but no trace of the aircraft or its occupants was ever found.
“Industrial alcohol” such as solvents, polishes and fuels were “denatured” and rendered distasteful by the addition of dyes and chemicals. The problem was, it wasn’t long before bootleggers figured out how to “renature” the stuff.
they called him “Charles”, or “Chuck”, that was a sure sign of the mere pretender. Schulz’ uncle called him “Sparky” as a boy, after the horse Spark Plug in Billy DeBeck’s comic strip, Barney Google. He always signed the strip “Schulz”, but friends and family knew him as Sparky, until the day he died.
A Charlie Brown Christmas has been a staple of the Christmas season since 1965, though Linus almost didn’t get to tell his famous story of the baby Jesus. ABC executives thought Linus’ recitation of the birth of Christ too overtly religious. The “suits” wanted a laugh track as well, but Schulz refused. “If we don’t do it, who will?” In the end, the scene remained. Perhaps the most memorable moment in cartoon history. The laugh track version was produced, but never aired.
Charlie Brown’s love interest in some of those TV specials, the “Little Red-Haired Girl”, was based on an accountant from that old job at Art Instruction, named Donna Mae Johnson. The couple had an office romance for a time, but she turned him down when Shulz proposed.
Over fifty years, Schulz drew nearly 18,000 strips, taking vacation only once in 1997 to celebrate his 75th birthday. In all those years, that five-week stretch was the only time the papers ever had Peanuts reruns.
Historical Easter Eggs - Today in History 
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