August 2021 – Page 3 – Historical Easter Eggs

August 7, 1933 Anatomy of Genocide

“Consider the case of a farmer who owns a flock of chickens. He kills them and this is his business. If you interfere, you are trespassing.”

Soghomon Tehlirian studied his quarry, for weeks. He even took an apartment near the man’s home at #4 Hardenbergstraße, to shadow the hated Talaat Pasha and learn his daily routine.

Then came the day. March 15, 1921. Tehlirian waited with his unsuspecting victim at a crosswalk, hurrying across only to turn and cross, once more. To look into the man’s eyes. Identity thus confirmed, the assassin wheeled on passing his victim, and raised the Luger. A single bullet in the nape of the neck.

The hated architect of the deportation and murder of so many of his people, of the extermination of 85 members of the assassin‘s own family, was dead before he hit the street. Tehlirian did not run. He waited patiently for the Polizei and surrendered, upon their arrival.

12 jurors of a Weimar Court pronounced Tehlirian not guilty of this, his second assassination. The first was that of Harutian Mgrditichian, that Judas to his own people who fed the Ottoman overlord the names and addresses, of its victims.

There was no term in 1921, for the Armenian genocide. International law was ambivalent, as to whether there was even a crime. When the Jewish/Polish law student Rafael Lemkin asked his professor why there was no law under which to prosecute Talaat, the professor replied “Consider the case of a farmer who owns a flock of chickens. He kills them and this is his business. If you interfere, you are trespassing.”

On November 26, 1935, the anti-Semitic and racist Nuremberg Laws added the Romani people as “enemies of the race-based state”, of Nazi Germany. Over the next ten years as many as three-quarters of the itinerant Indo-Aryan Roma and Sinti people, were wiped from the face of the earth. Two-thirds of all the Jews in Europe were systematically murdered by the Nazi regime along with untold numbers of smaller “undesirable” groups such as Jehova’s Witnesses, homosexuals, Germans with mental and physical disabilities and others. Six to ten percent of all the Polish gentiles in Nazi occupied Europe were destroyed along with three million Polish Jews.

“Czeslawa Kwoka. Auschwitz. 1942. Auschwitz photographer Wilhelm Brasse was deeply affected by seeing Czeslawa Kwoka beaten. “I felt as if I was being hit myself,” Brasse later said, “but I couldn’t interfere.”” Wikimedia Commons

Genocide was a crime without a name at this time. Germans called it Völkermord, (‘murder of a people’). Poles called it ludobójstwo, (‘killing of a people or nation’) and Winston Churchill, referring to the German invasion of the Soviet Union, spoke of “a crime without a name”. It was Rafael Lemkin in 1944 who coined the term ‘genocide’, from the Ancient Greek word génos (γένος, meaning “race” or “people”) and the Latin suffix caedere, meaning, “to kill”.

The term came into common usage during the Nuremberg trials but only as a descriptive. It wasn’t until the 1946 Polish Genocide trials of Arthur Greiser and Amon Leopold Goth that the term took on formal, legal meaning.

In 1996, research professor and founding Genocide Watch President Gregory Stanton presented a briefing paper to the United States Department of State, describing the “8 Stages of Genocide”. That was amended in 2012 to add two more, resulting in ten identifiable stages, of genocide:

Classification: People are divided into “them and us”. Between 1949 and 1961, Mao’s purges of China and Tibet killed an estimated 49 to 78 million souls

Symbolization: “When combined with hatred, symbols may be forced upon unwilling members of pariah groups…” On this day in 1933 the government of Iraq slaughtered over 3,000 Assyrians in the village of Sumail. To this day August 7 is known as, Assyrian Martyrs Day.

Discrimination: “Law or cultural power excludes groups from full civil rights: segregation or apartheid laws, denial of voting rights”. Josef Stalin killed 23 million between 1932 and 1939 in various purges and the politically orchestrated ‘famine’ called the Holodomor.
Dehumanization: “One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects, or diseases.” The Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler was responsible for 12 million civilian deaths in the concentration camps and pogroms of 1935 through 1945.
Organization: “Genocide is always organized… Special army units or militias are often trained and armed…” Leopold II of Belgium was responsible for the death of 8,000,000 between 1886 and 1908, in the Belgian Congo.
Polarization: “Hate groups broadcast polarizing propaganda…” Hideki Tojo is credited with the death of five million civilians, during World War 2
Preparation: “Mass killing is planned. Victims are identified and separated because of their ethnic or religious identity…” The genocide carried out by Ismail Enver of Turkey killed 1,200,000 Armenians, 350,000 Greek Pontians, 480,000 Anatolian Greeks and a half-million Assyrians between 1915 and 1920.

Persecution: “Expropriation, forced displacement, ghettos, concentration camps”. Between 1975 and 1979 the agrarian utopia of the Khmer Rouge led by a revolutionary cadre of 9 intellectuals called the Ang-ka murdered between a quarter and a third of their fellow Cambodians.
Extermination: “It is ‘extermination’ to the killers because they do not believe their victims to be fully human”. The worst genocides of the 20th century killed something like 160 million souls. A closer accounting is impossible when even the counters, are killed.

Denial: “The perpetrators… deny that they committed any crimes…”
Pol Pot, a self-described peaceful man who had done no wrong, died peacefully, in his sleep, in 1998.

Stanton’s ten steps may be taken in linear fashion, in any combination or all at once.

Here’s an interesting exercise. Keyword-search the term ‘country of poets and thinkers’ in the search engine, of your choice. They will all yield the same answer. Germany.

So, how does a culture known for all that, produce the Nazi Holocaust? How for that matter does the everyday Rwandan take up a machete and hack his countryman to bloody bits? How does the Cambodian farmer don the red & white scarf of the Khmer Rouge and bash in the skulls, of his neighbors? Off-duty photographs of SS officers depict not slavering monsters but smiling, everyday family members and neighbors, enjoying a pleasant outing with family, pets and friends.

The way it begins is that particular form of idiocy of which we are all guilty, every day. The classification of our fellow man not as individuals but as members, of a group.

August 6, 2011 Father and Son

“Tell me a fact, and I’ll learn. Tell me a truth, and I’ll believe. But tell me a story, and it will live in my heart, forever”

Edwin Milton “Ed” Sabol returned from World War 2 and took a job selling topcoats. He was good at it and provided a decent standard of living for his family, but his heart wasn’t in it. What Sabol liked more than anything else, was to watch his son Steve play high school football.

Sabol would take a motion picture camera, a wedding gift, and film Steve’s games. He found that he had a knack for it, and founded a small film production company called Blair Motion Pictures, named after his daughter, Blair.

In 1962, Sabol successfully bid for the rights to film the NFL championship game between the Green Bay Packers, and New York Giants. The game was played in cold so severe that camera operators suffered frostbite, and a wind so strong it blew the ball off the tee three times, before the opening kickoff. Despite all that, Sabol’s work on the game was impressive.

Commissioner Pete Rozelle proposed to buy out the filmmaker but the league’s 14 owners objected, instead giving Sabol $20,000 apiece in seed money to shoot all NFL games and produce a highlight reel, for each club.

Thus was born a storybook production company, called NFL Films. The production style was unmistakable: the “tight to the spiral” shot of the ball leaving the quarterback’s hand, the on-the-field close-ups and slow motion shots, all of it “mic’d up” in a way that let you hear every hit, every sound, as if you were personally, on the field.

Football fans of a certain age will remember the orchestral score and the stentorian tones of John Facenda’s narration, “the voice of God”: “They call it pro football. They play it under the autumn moon, in the heat of a Texas afternoon.” NFL Films became “the greatest in-house P.R. machine in pro sports history” according to Salon.com television critic Matt Zoller Seitz. “An outfit that could make even a tedious stalemate seem as momentous as the battle for the Alamo.”

NFL Films won 112 Sports Emmys. While the company’s $50 million earnings were small compared with the $18 billion in revenue NFL earns from television alone, the real value of NFL Films is how it promoted the sport. Many credit NFL Films as a key reason that the National Football League has become the most watched professional sports league in the United States.

Sabols, 2004 Sports Emmys — Steve and Ed Sabol at the 2004 Sports Emmys

Ed Sabol was inducted into the Professional Football Hall of Fame on this day in 2011. Steve was suffering inoperable brain cancer at the time, a condition which would take his life the following September. In delivering his tribute to his father, Steve Sabol explained the company’s operating philosophy. “Tell me a fact”, he said, “and I’ll learn. Tell me a truth, and I’ll believe. But tell me a story, and it will live in my heart, forever”.

August 5, 1864 Better Angels

“Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States, that by the accession of a Republican Administration, their property, and their peace, and personal security, are to be endangered.”

The election, was over. With a nation riven as never before the time was near, for the swearing-in. The 16th President-elect sat down in the back room of his brother-in-law’s store in Springfield Illinois, to write his acceptance speech.

“Fellow-citizens of the United States:
… I appear before you to address you briefly, and to take, in your presence, the oath prescribed by the Constitution of the United States…”

It was his first inaugural. The President-elect brought with him for the task of writing the address only four works, for reference: The United States Constitution. Webster’s 1830 reply to Hayne on the matter of States’ Rights. Henry Clay’s 1850 speech on Compromise and Andrew Jackson’s proclamation, against Nullification.

The speech was secretly printed by the Illinois State Journal and entrusted to the new president’s son Robert who proceeded to lose it for a time, causing a “minor uproar before it was found”.

“Resolved…[W]e denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.”

The speech was telegraphed from New York to Kearney Nebraska and taken by Pony Express to Folsom California and again telegraphed, this time to Sacramento, for publication.

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature”.
A. Lincoln, First Inaugural, March 4, 1861

Despite this appeal to the better angels of our nature the formerly United States were at war with themselves, within a month.

Within three years what was expected to be a brief police action at worst, had devolved into a Civil War which would kill more Americans than every war from the Revolution to the War on Terror, combined.

If the “better angels” of Lincoln’s 1st inaugural were to take human form one of those might resemble, General James Birdseye McPherson.

First in his class, West Point 1853, McPherson was superintending engineer constructing the defenses at Alcatraz Island at this time, in San Francisco. There he met Emily Hoffman, the daughter of a prominent Baltimore merchant who had come west, to help care for her sister’s children. The couple was soon engaged and a wedding was planned, but then came the Civil War. The wedding would have to wait.

And then there was John McAuley Palmer, a politician who was at one time a Democrat, a Free Soiler, a Republican, a Liberal Republican and a National Democrat. Whatever it takes, I guess.

Captain Mcpherson began his Civil War service in 1861 under Major General Henry Halleck, and the Corps of Engineers. He was a lieutenant colonel and chief engineer in the amy of Brigadier General Ulysses Grant during the capture of forts Henry and Donelson in February, 1862.

Political promotions were common enough in the military of 1861. John Palmer received his first one in 1861, entering Civil War service, as a Colonel. Palmer was promoted to Brigadier that December and went on to provide effective leadership at Chickamauga, and during the Chattanooga campaign. By the Summer of 1864 he was Major General John Palmer, commanding the 14^th corps under George Henry Thomas.

McPherson’s career followed the same trajectory during this time but his were no political appointments. He became a Brigadier based on his actions at Shiloh and Major General for bravery displayed, at Corinth. In March 1864 McPherson was given command of the Army of the Tennessee replacing William Tecumseh Sherman who was now Supreme Commander, in the west.

Around this time McPherson requested time to marry his sweetheart, in Baltimore. Leave was quickly granted but then rescinded. With the upcoming campaign for Atlanta, this man was indispensable. Emily Hoffman would have to wait. Again.

A series of sharp battles began that May and concluded in September. From Dalton to Chattahoochie first against the Confederate forces of General Joe Johnston and later, General John Bell Hood. Rocky Face Ridge. Marietta. Kennesaw Mountain.

The confusingly named single-day Battle of Atlanta took place on July 22, square in the middle of the Atlanta campaign. Sherman mistakenly believed that Hood’s Confederates had gathered to retreat while McPherson rightly understood. Hood was concentrating for the attack.

*General Sherman Observing The Siege of Atlanta*

McPherson was personally scouting the area when a line of grey-clad skirmishers emerged from the forest calling out, “HALT”! The General raised his hand as if to tip his hat and then wheeled his horse. There was no outrunning the bullets which then tore into his back. The second-highest ranking federal officer to lose his life in the Civil War, was dead. His killers asked who they had shot and McPherson’s aid replied, “You have killed the best man in the Army”.

If the warm praise of an adversary be the measure of a man then let McPherson’s West Point classmate John Bell Hood, declare his eulogy:

“Neither the years nor the difference of sentiment that had led us to range ourselves on opposite sides in the war had lessened my friendship; indeed the attachment formed in early youth was strengthened by my admiration and gratitude for his conduct toward our people in the vicinity of Vicksburg. His considerate and kind treatment of them stood in bright contrast to the course pursued by many Federal officers”.

On hearing what had happened General Sherman, openly wept. Emily Hoffman never recovered and spent the rest of her life, in secluded mourning.

The four months-long slugfest for Atlanta moved on to the Battle of Ezra Church and then Utoy Creek and John Palmer’s singular moment, of ignominy.

Sherman believed that only a major force was capable of taking the railroad south of Atlanta and bringing this bloodbath, to a conclusion. Major General John Schofield’s XXIII corps now situated on the extreme right of the federal position, was ideally placed to do so. Sherman placed General Palmer’s XIV Corps under Schofield’s operational control, to accomplish that objective.

Originally mislabeled “Potter house”, this was the home of Ephraim Ponder, a wealthy slave dealer in Atlanta used by confederate sharpshooters during the battle of Atlanta and heavily damaged by Union shellfire. The house was never rebuilt and abandoned, after the war. Henry Ossian Flipper, son of Festus Flipper and one of Ponder’s former slaves went on to become the first American of African ancestry to graduate from West Point, class of 1877.

That’s when the stuff hit the fan. The temper tantrum. With men facing a determined adversary and literally dying in the field John Palmer had a hissy fit, over seniority. He would NOT place the XIV under a general who had received his two stars, after himself.

Technical niceties as date of seniority are swell subjects for discussion over cigars in garrison but not in the midst of kinetic battle, against a lethal adversary.

Sherman’s letter of August 4, decided the matter:

“From the statements made by yourself and Gen. Schofield today, my decision is that he outranks you as a major general, being of the same date as present commission, by reason of his previous superior rank as brigadier general”.
William Tecumseh Sherman

Except, no. Sherman’s letter settled, nothing. With the Utoy Creek operation scheduled to begin the following day, August 5, Palmer rode out to Sherman’s headquarters to argue the case. Even entreaties that Palmer’s behavior might jeopardize his political career after the war, fell on deaf ears. In the end, Sherman suggested that Palmer needed to offer his resignation, to Schofield.

This he did, said resignation forwarded back to Sherman with the recommendation, that it be accepted. Palmer was sent back to Illinois to await further orders as XIV corps senior divisional commander Brig. Gen. Richard Johnson took his place and the war moved on.

How many ordinary soldiers were to lose their lives by this delay and the defensive advantage afforded entrenched Confederate forces, is difficult to ascertain. Ever the politician, the lesser angel that was John Palmer served out the remainder of the war as military governor of Kentucky and returned afterward to politics, serving as Illinois Governor, United States Senator and one-time Presidential candidate.

August 3, 1921 Banned from Baseball

Today, top players are paid the GDP of developing nations, but that wasn’t always the case. One-hundred years ago, much of that money failed to make its way to the players. Even the best, held second jobs.

From World Cup Soccer to the Superbowl, the professional sports world has little to compare with the race for the Pinnacle Trophy. The contest for Championship, in which entire economies slow to a crawl and even casual sports fans, are caught up in the spectacle.

For professional baseball, the “Fall Classic” began in 1903, a best-of-nine “World Series” played out between the Boston Braves and the Pittsburg Pirates. Boston won, in eight.

Excepting the boycott year of 1904 when there was no series at all, most World Series have been ‘best-of-seven”. That changed in 1919, when league owners agreed to play a nine-game series, to generate more revenue and increase the popularity of the sport.

This was the world in which Chicago White Sox owner Chuck Comiskey built the most powerful organization in professional baseball, despite a miserly reputation.

The 1919 “Black Sox” scandal began when Arnold “Chick” Gandil, White Sox first baseman with ties to the Chicago underworld, convinced his buddy and professional gambler Joseph “Sport” Sullivan, that he could throw the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds.

New York gangster Arnold Rothstein supplied the money through his right-hand man, former featherweight boxing champion, Abe Attell.

Pitchers Eddie Cicotte and Claude “Lefty” Williams were principally involved with throwing the series, along with outfielder Oscar “Hap” Felsch and shortstop Charles “Swede” Risberg. Third baseman George “Buck” Weaver attended a meeting where the fix was discussed, but decided not to participate. Weaver handed in some of his best statistics of the year during the 1919 post-season.

Star outfielder “Shoeless” Joe Jackson may have been a participant, though that involvement has been disputed. It seems that other players may have used his name in order to give themselves credibility. Utility infielder Fred McMullin was not involved in the planning, but threatened to report the others unless they cut him in, on the payoff.

The more “straight arrow” players on the club knew nothing about the fix. Second baseman Eddie Collins, catcher Ray Schalk and pitcher Red Faber had nothing to do with it, though the conspiracy received an unexpected boost, when Faber came down with the flu.

Rumors were flying as the series started on October 2. So much money was bet on Cincinnati, that the odds were flat. Gamblers complained that nothing was left on the table. Cicotte, who had shrewdly collected his $10,000 the night before, struck leadoff hitter Morrie Rath with his second pitch, a prearranged signal that “the fix was in”.

The plot began to unravel, the first night. Attell withheld the next installment of $20,000, to bet on the following game.

Game 2 starting pitcher Lefty Williams was still willing to go through with the fix, even though he hadn’t been paid. He’d go on to lose his three games in the best-of nine series, but by game 8, he wanted out.

The wheels came off in game three. Former Tigers pitcher and Rothstein intermediary Bill “Sleepy” Burns bet everything he had on Cincinnati, knowing the outcome in advance. Except, Rookie pitcher Dickie Kerr wasn’t in on the fix. He pitched a masterful game in game three, shutting Cincinnati out 3-0, and leaving Burns, flat broke.

Cicotte became angry in game 7, thinking that gamblers were trying to renege on their deal. The knuckle baller bore down to a White Sox win and the series stood, 4-3.

Williams was back on the mound in game 8. By this time he wanted out of the deal, but gangsters threatened to hurt him and his family if he didn’t lose the game. Williams threw nothing but mediocre fastballs, allowing four hits and three runs in the first. The White Sox went on to lose that Game 10-5, ending the series with a 3 – 5 Cincinnati win.

Rumors of the fix began immediately, and dogged the team throughout the 1920 season. Chicago Herald and Examiner baseball writer Hugh Fullerton, wrote that there should never be another World Series. A grand jury was convened that September. Two players, Eddie Cicotte and Shoeless Joe Jackson, testified on September 28, both confessing to participating in the scheme. Despite a virtual tie for first place at that time, Comiskey pulled the seven players then still in the majors. Gandil was back in the minors, at the time.

shoeless-joe-jackson-ftr-snjpg_1m7pjeo8s1d9a10801rklma0fo — “Shoeless” Joe Jackson

The reputation of professional baseball had suffered a major blow. Franchise owners appointed a man with the best “baseball name” in history, to help straighten out the mess. He was Major League Baseball’s first Commissioner, federal judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

The Black Sox trial began on July 18, 1921, in the Criminal Court in Cook County. Key evidence went missing before the trial, including both Cicotte’s and Jackson’s signed confessions. Both recanted and, in the end, all players were acquitted. The missing confessions reappeared several years later, in the possession of Comiskey’s lawyer. Funny how that works.

According to legend, a young boy approached Shoeless Joe Jackson one day as he came out of the courthouse. “Say it ain’t so, Joe”. There was no response.

The Commissioner was unforgiving, irrespective of the verdict. On August 3, the day of the verdict, Landis delivered the following statement:

“Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player who throws a ball game, no player who undertakes or promises to throw a ball game, no player who sits in confidence with a bunch of crooked ballplayers and gamblers, where the ways and means of throwing a game are discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball”.
Baseball Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis

Jackson, Cicotte, Gandil, Felsch, Weaver, Williams, Risberg, and McMullin are long dead now, but every one of them remains: Banned from Baseball.

For many, the 1919 scandal paved the way to the “Curse of the Black Sox”, a World Series championship drought lasting 88 years and ending only in 2005, with a White Sox sweep of the Houston Astros. Exactly one year after the Boston Red Sox ended their own 86-year drought, the “Curse of the Bambino”.

The Philadelphia Bulletin newspaper published a poem back on opening day, of the 1919 series. They would probably have taken it back, if only they could.

“Still, it really doesn’t matter, After all, who wins the flag.
Good clean sport is what we’re after, And we aim to make our brag.
To each near or distant nation, Whereon shines the sporting sun.
That of all our games gymnastic, Base ball is the cleanest one!”

August 2, 1864 Grandissima Ruina

In an age of hand-lit sputtering fuses and hand packed (to say nothing of hand-made) powder, even a millisecond difference in ignition will give one ball a head start, to be measured in feet.

In 1642, Italian gun maker Antonio Petrini conceived a double barrel cannon with tubes joined at 45° firing solid shot joined together, by a length of chain. This was the year of the “Great Rebellion“, the English Civil War, when King and Parliament raised armies to go to war – with each other. Petrini’s idea must have looked good to King Charles I of England. Imagine, a weapon capable of slicing through the ranks of his enemies, like grass before a scythe.

The idea was to fire both barrels simultaneously, but there was the rub. Wild ideas occur to the imagination of imperfect combustion, and a chained ball swinging around to take out its own gun crew. The King himself was mute on the subject and went on to lose his head, in 1649. Petrini’s manuscript resides to this day in the tower of London. There is no documented evidence that the weapon was ever fired, save for the designer’s own description of the ‘Grandissima Ruina’ left behind, by his own splendid creation.

Two-hundred years later the former British colonies across the Atlantic, were themselves embroiled in Civil War.

In the early days of independence, the Confederate Congress enacted a measure, allowing local cities and towns to form semi-military companies for the purpose of local defense. As the very flower of young southern manhood was called up and sent to the front, these “home guard” units often comprised themselves of middle-age and older gentlemen, and others for various reasons, unable to leave home and hearth.

Augustus Longstreet Hull was born 1847 in “The Classic City” of Athens Georgia, and enlisted in the Confederate Army on September 8, 1864.

After the war, Hull worked twenty-seven years as a banker before publishing the Annals of Athens, in 1906. In it, Mr. Hull writes with not a little biting wit, of his own home town home guard unit, Athens’ own, Mitchell Thunderbolts.

“From the name one might readily infer that it was a company made up of fierce and savage men, eager for the fray and ready at all times to ravage and slaughter; yet such was not the case, for in all their eventful career no harm was done to a human being, no property was seized and not one drop of blood stained their spotless escutcheon.

Named for one of it’s own private soldiers, the Mitchell Thunderbolts were not your standard military company. These guys were “organized strictly for home defense” and absolutely refused to take orders. From anyone. They recognized no superior officer and the right to criticism was reserved and freely exercised by everyone from that “splendid old gentleman” Colonel John Billups, down to the lowliest private.

800px-Middleton_P._Barrow_-_Brady-Handy — Georgia Senator Middleton Pope Barrow

General Howell Cobb sent the future United States Senator Captain Middleton Pope Barrow to Athens in 1864, to inspect the Thunderbolts. Having no intention of submitting to “inspection” by any mere stripling of a Captain, Dr. Henry Hull (Augustus’ father) “politely informed him that if he wished to inspect him, he would find him on his front porch at his home every morning at 9 o’clock“.

John Gilleland, 53, was a local dentist, builder and mechanic, and private soldier in good standing, of the Mitchell Thunderbolts. Gilleland must have liked Petrini’s idea because he took up a collection in 1862, and raised $350 to build the Confederate States of America’s own, double-barrel cannon.

Measuring 13 inches wide by 4-feet 8½” inches and weighing in at some 1,300 pounds, this monstrosity had two barrels diverging at 3° and equipped with three touch holes, one for each barrel and a third should anyone wish to fire the two, together. It was the secret “super weapon” of the age, two cannonballs connected by a chain and designed to “mow down the enemy somewhat as a scythe cuts wheat.”

Yeah. As Mr. Petrini could have told them, the insurmountable problem remained. In an age of hand-lit sputtering fuses and hand packed (to say nothing of hand-made) powder, even a millisecond difference in ignition will give one ball a head start, to be measured in feet. How to simultaneously fire two conjoined weapons remained a problem, even for so elite an outfit, as the Mitchell Thunderbolts.

The atmosphere was festive on April 22, 1862, when a crowd gathered to watch Gilleland test the Great Yankee Killer. Aimed at two poles stuck in the ground, uneven ignition and casting imperfections sent assorted spectators scrambling for cover as two balls spun wildly off to the side where they “plowed up about an acre of ground, tore up a cornfield, mowed down saplings, and then the chain broke, the two balls going in different directions“.

046_zps0a76b542 — Double Barrel Cannon model, H/T ModelExpo

On the second test, two chain-connected balls shot through the air and into a stand of trees. According to one witness, the “thicket of young pines at which it was aimed looked as if a narrow cyclone or a giant mowing machine had passed through“.

On the third firing, the chain snapped right out of the barrel. One ball tore into a nearby log cabin and destroyed the chimney, while the other spun off and killed a cow who wasn’t bothering anyone.

Gilleland considered all three tests successful, even though the only ones truly safe that day, were those two target posts.

The dentist went straight to the Confederate States’ arsenal in Augusta where Colonel George Rains subjected his creation to extensive testing, before reporting the thing too unreliable for military use. Outraged, an angry inventor wrote angry letters to Georgia Governor Joseph “Joe” Brown and to the Confederate government in Richmond, but to no avail.

At last, the contraption was stuck in front of the Athens town hall and used as a signal gun, to warn citizens of approaching Yankees.

There the thing remained until August 2, 1864, when the gun was hauled out to the hills west of town to meet the Federal troops of Brigadier General George Stoneman. The double-barrel cannon was positioned on a ridge near Barber’s Creek and loaded with canister shot, along with several conventional guns. Outnumbered home guards did little real damage but the noise was horrendous, and Stoneman’s raiders withdrew to quieter pastures.

There were other skirmishes in the area, all of them minor. In the end, Athens escaped the devastation of Sherman’s march to the sea and the Confederate superweapon weapon was moved, back to town.

Gilleland’s monstrosity was sold after the war and lost, for a time. The thing was recovered and restored back in 1891, and returned to the Athens City Hall where it remains to this day, a contributing property of the Downtown Athens Historic District. Come and see it if you’re ever in Athens, right there at the corner of Hancock and College Avenue. There you will find the thing, pointing north, at all those Damned Yankees. You know. Just in case.

800px-Doublebarreledcannonathensgeorgia-plaque

August 1, 1086 Day One

There were others with claims to the crown now belonging to Harold Godwinson, among them the new King’s brother Tostig, Earl of Northumbria. Tostig’s animosity for his older brother would alter the course of world history and prove fatal, for them both.

Edward the Confessor, King of England, died after a series of strokes on January 5, 1066, leaving no heir to the throne. Anglo-Saxon Kings didn’t normally pick their own successors, but several believed Edward had done just that. The king’s death touched off an international succession crisis. The events of the following months, would change the course of world history.

Edward’s brother-in-law Harold Godwinson was elected King by the Witenagemot, an early version of our own Town Meeting. There were others with claims of their own. One of these was Harold’s younger brother Tostig, Earl of Northumbria, whose animosity for his brother would prove fatal for them both.

After conducting a few inconclusive raids in the spring of that year, Tostig went to a Norman Duke called William “the Bastard”, looking for help. William had openly declared his intention to take the English throne, and had no use for the King’s little brother. Tostig then went to the King of Norway, King Harald III “Hardrada”, the name variously translated as “stern counsel”, or “hard ruler”.

Hardrada believed that he himself had claim to the English throne, and was dismayed at Godwinson’s succession. The two sailed for England at the head of a powerful fleet of 300 Viking ships and an army of 10,000 warriors, meeting the northern Earls Edwin and Morcar in battle at Fulford Gate on September 20.

The battle was a comprehensive defeat for the English. When Harald came to Stamford Bridge a week later, it was in expectation of formal capitulation and tribute.

Facts_Harald_Hardrada_Last_Great_Viking_5

Meanwhile, King Harold stood at the head of an army in the south, anticipating William’s invasion from Normandy. My military friends will appreciate what happened next. Harold marched his army north, traveling day and night and covering 190 miles in four days, on foot, completely surprising the Viking force waiting at Stamford Bridge. The Vikings must have looked at the horizon and wondered how a peace party could raise that much dust, only to face the “gleam of handsome shields and white coats-of-mail”.

Thinking they were there to accept submission, Harald’s army had left half its number behind to watch the ships. Worse still, many of Harald’s warriors had removed their heavy armor, and scattered over both sides of the River Derwent.

The English army charged through the loose ranks of Norwegians, as the rest struggled to form the skjaldborg (shield wall) on the opposite bank.

According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, one giant Viking warrior stood alone at the top of Stamford Bridge. Swinging the great two-handed Dane Axe. For a time this single warrior held back the entire English army, crowding onto the narrow choke point. 40 English soldiers lay mangled and dead in heaps around this beast, when an English soldier moved beneath the bridge and speared the Viking warrior, from below.

Facts_Harald_Hardrada_Last_Great_Viking_7

The savagery of the battle can only be imagined. This was before the age of industrialized warfare, when every injury was personally administered with a bladed weapon or heavy club, of some kind. 5,000 of King Harold’s soldiers would be dead before it was over, about a third of his force. Two thirds of King Harald’s Vikings died that day, about 6,000. In the end, Harald Hardrada invoked the berserkergang (the state of going berserk), and waded into his foe, madly hacking and slashing all about him until an arrow found his throat.

Thus ends the tale of the last ‘Great Viking’. Harald was dead, as was his ally Tostig. His reward in the words of King Harold, was “Seven feet of English soil, or as much more as he is taller than other men“.

Of 300 ships that had arrived on the 20th, the battered remnants of the Viking army required only 24, to sail away.

Meanwhile, William was in final preparations for his own channel crossing, a voyage many considered unlikely at that late time of year. The Norman landing Harold had waited for took place three days later, just as his battered army was disbanding and heading home for the Fall harvest.

A greatly diminished Anglo Saxon army marched south, meeting the Norman invader in October, 1066. History changed that day, when King Harold took an arrow to the eye, at a place called Hastings. The last of the Anglo Saxon Kings, was dead. William was crowned King of England that December. Henceforward and forever more, William the Bastard would be known as “William the Conqueror”.

In this age of mechanized warfare, isn’t it strange to think you could have eaten your lunch that day on a neighboring hill, and never heard a thing.

Main rivals to the new King were now gone, but William wouldn’t be secure on his throne for another six years. Lands were confiscated from resisting members of the English elite and from lords who had fought and died in service to Harold.

H/T By Amitchell125 at English Wikipedia

Such lands were enfeoffed, a process of the European middle ages through which land was granted in exchange for feudal allegiance, while the King retained ultimate title. Such confiscations led to revolts and further confiscations, as widows and daughters were forced into marriages with Norman barons.

Castles were built at an unprecedented rate, controlling military strongpoints across the land and, in the words of historian Robert Liddiard, “legitmizing a new elite”. Liddiard remarks that “to glance at the urban landscape of Norwich, Durham or Lincoln is to be forcibly reminded of the impact of the Norman invasion.”

Beginning in 1085, seven or eight panels of commissioners fanned out across the land, taking sworn statements in every shire and village. Elaborate records were compiled of all lands and estates held by the King through his tenants, down to every agricultural plot and fishpond, and its value in pounds.

It was all done for purposes of taxation, particularly to see what was owed during the reign of Edward the Confessor. You can imagine how that went over but, as always, history is written by the victor.

So complete was the Norman conquest that William himself was able to spend three-quarters of his time, defending his interests in France. According to these records, within twenty years, no more than five percent of all lands remained in English hands.

While exact dates are subject to dispute, the major part of the “Great Survey” is traditionally held to have been bound and presented to King William on this day in 1086, in Salisbury.

Late in the 12th century, King’s Treasurer Richard FitzNeal likened the Great Survey to the Book of Judgement, the book of “Domesday” (middle English for “Doomsday”), because its pronouncements were final and inviolate as the Last day of Judgement.

Nothing even remotely similar to the “Domesday Book” would again be attempted, until 1873. For most English towns and villages (most but not all – no Domesday records are known to survive for London or Winchester), the Domesday book stands as the final and dispositive arbiter of lands and titles held, across the British Isles. Day one, the starting point, of English history.

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