Historical Easter Eggs – Today in History – Page 104 – "Tell me a factand I'll learn. Tell me a truth, and I'll believe. But tell me a story, and it will live in my heart forever."

February 20, 1974 Holdout

Thus properly relieved of duty, Onada surrendered, turning over his sword, his rifle, 500 rounds of ammunition and a number of hand grenades, along with the dagger his mother had given him, to kill himself if he were ever captured. It was March 9, 1974.

On December 7, 1941, Imperial Japanese air forces attacked the US Pacific Naval anchorage at Pearl Harbor.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appeared before a joint session of Congress the following day, asking for a declaration of war. Little did they know, the war with Imperial Japan would rage for another 33 years.

Alright, not really. Representatives of the Empire of Japan signed the instruments of surrender aboard the USS Missouri on September 2, 1945, formally ending the war in the Pacific. Except, there were those who didn’t get the message.

Following the Battle of Saipan, June 15 – July 9, 1944, Captain Sakae Ōba and a company of 46 men took to carrying out guerrilla actions against American troops. The company surrendered on December 1, 1945, three months after the end of the war.

Navy Lieutenant Hideo Horiuchi was arrested on August 13, 1946, while recovering from wounds received in a battle with Dutch troops.

Lieutenant Ei Yamaguchi led 33 soldiers in an attack on an American Marine Corps detachment on Peleliu in March, 1947. Reinforcements were sent in, including a Japanese admiral who finally convinced these guys that the war was over. The group surrendered in April.

Two machine gunners from the Imperial Japanese Navy surrendered on Iwo Jima, on January 6, 1949.

Several went on to fight for the Viet Minh against French troops in Indochina.

Seaman Noburo Kinoshita hanged himself in the Luzon jungle, in 1955. Kinoshita had vowed never to “return to Japan in defeat”. I guess he meant it.

Private Bunzō Minagawa held out until May 1960, on the American territory of Guam. Minagawa’s immediate superior, Sergeant Masashi Itō, surrendered a few days later. Corporal Shoichi Yokoi, who also served under Itō, was captured twelve years later.

After the war, 2nd Lieutenant Hirō Onoda took to the mountains of Lubang Island in the Philippines, along with Private Yūichi Akatsu, Corporal Shōichi Shimada and Private First Class Kinshichi Kozuka, carrying out guerilla actions and engaging in shootouts with local police. Akatsu left the other three in 1949, and surrendered six months later. Shimada was killed by a search party in 1954. Kozuka was shot and killed by local police in 1972, while burning rice collected by farmers.

Onoda-suzuki — Suzuki returned to Japan with this photograph in February 1974, as proof of his encounter with Onada.

Two years later, the Japanese explorer and adventurer Norio Suzuki set out, looking for “Lieutenant Onoda, a wild panda, and the Abominable Snowman, in that order”. The pair met on February 20, 1974 when Suzuki nearly got shot for his troubles, but he was quick. “Onoda-san, the emperor and the people of Japan are worried about you.”

“I am a soldier” he said, “and remain true to my duties.” Onada would surrender when ordered to do so, by a superior officer. Suzuki returned to Japan and located Onoda’s commanding officer, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, who was working in a book store. The pair flew to Lubang, where Taniguchi issued the following orders:

In accordance with the Imperial command, the Fourteenth Area Army has ceased all combat activity.

In accordance with military Headquarters Command No. A-2003, the Special Squadron of Staff’s Headquarters is relieved of all military duties.

Units and individuals under the command of Special Squadron are to cease military activities and operations immediately and place themselves under the command of the nearest superior officer. When no officer can be found, they are to communicate with the American or Philippine forces and follow their directives.

Thus properly relieved of duty, Onada surrendered, turning over his sword, his rifle, 500 rounds of ammunition and a number of hand grenades, along with his kaiken, the dagger his mother had given him, to kill himself if he were ever captured. It was March 9, 1974.

Private Teruo Nakamura, born Attun Palalin to the aboriginal Amis people of Taiwan, was the last confirmed holdout of WW2. Nakamura, who spoke neither Japanese nor Chinese, was discovered by the Indonesian Air Force on Morotai, surrendering to a search patrol on December 18, 1974. The war was over. 29 years, 3 months, and 16 days after the Japanese Instrument of Surrender.

Years later, Hirō Onada described that first encounter: “This hippie boy Suzuki came to the island to listen to the feelings of a Japanese soldier. Suzuki asked me why I would not come out…” Norio Suzuki had found his Onada, and the wild panda was soon to follow. The explorer died in a Himalayan avalanche at age 37, still searching for the Abominable Snowman.

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February 19, 1945 The Crocodiles of Ramree

To the human participants in this story, this is a tale of four weeks’ combat for a tropical island. For the apex predator of the mangrove swamp, it was little more than a dinner bell.

500 ft. off the coast of Myanmar (formerly Burma), and across the Bay of Bengal from the Indian sub-continent, there lies the island of Ramree, about a third the size of New York’s Long Island.

In 1942, the Imperial Japanese Army aided by Thai forces and Burmese insurgents drove the British Empire and Chinese forces out of Burma, occupying much of the Burmese peninsula and with it, Ramree island. In January 1945, the allies came to take it back.

356-Squadron-RAF-after-bombing-Japanese-positions-on-Ramree-Island — RAF 356 Squadron after bombing Japanese positions on Ramree Island

The battle started out with Operation Matador on January 14, an amphibious assault designed to capture the strategic port of Kyaupyu, and it’s nearby airfield.

By early February, a mixed force of British Royal Marines and their Indian allies dislodged a force of some 980 Japanese defenders, who abandoned their base and marched inland to join a larger regiment of Japanese soldiers across the island.

The route took the retreating Japanese across 10 miles of marsh and mangrove swamp. Bogged down and trapped in the mire, the soldiers soon found themselves cut off and surrounded, alone with the snakes, the mosquitoes and the scorpions, of Ramree island.

On February 7, the 71st Infantry and supporting tanks reached Ramree town where they found determined Japanese resistance, the town falling two days later. Naval forces blockaded small tributaries called “chaungs”, which the retreating Japanese used in their flight to the mainland. A Japanese air raid damaged an allied destroyer on the 11th as a flotilla of small craft crossed the strait, to rescue survivors of the garrison. By February 17, Japanese resistance had come to an end.

Throughout the four-week battle for Ramree Island, the allied blockade inflicted heavy casualties on Japanese forces. The thousand men cut off in the swamp, had more immediate concerns.

article-2013816-0CF9D84B00000578-348_468x559 — :Lured by a tour guide dangling kangaroo meat from a pole, the 18ft, two-ton monster was, er, snapped by photographer Katrina Bridgeford, who was on the Adelaide River cruise with her family”. Tip of the Hat for this image, to the UK Daily Mail Note the missing right arm on this monster – probably eaten by one of his own kind.

NationalGeographic.com describes the Japanese’ problem, the nightmare predator, Crocodylus porosus: “Earth’s largest living crocodilian—and, some say, the animal most likely to eat a human—is the saltwater or estuarine crocodile. Average-size males reach 17 feet and 1,000 pounds, but specimens 23 feet long and weighing 2,200 pounds are not uncommon.

Classic opportunistic predators, they lurk patiently beneath the surface near the water’s edge, waiting for potential prey to stop for a sip of water. They’ll feed on anything they can get their jaws on, including water buffalo, monkeys, wild boar, and even sharks. Without warning, they explode from the water with a thrash of their powerful tails, grasp their victim, and drag it back in, holding it under until the animal drowns.

British naturalist Bruce Stanley Wright participated in the battle for Ramree, and gave the following account in his book, Wildlife Sketches Near and Far, published in 1962:

“That night [February 19, 1945] was the most horrible that any member of the M.L. [marine launch] crews ever experienced. The crocodiles, alerted by the din of warfare and the smell of blood, gathered among the mangroves, lying with their eyes above water, watchfully alert for their next meal. With the ebb of the tide, the crocodiles moved in on the dead, wounded, and uninjured men who had become mired in the mud.

The scattered rifle shots in the pitch black swamp punctured by the screams of wounded men crushed in the jaws of huge reptiles, and the blurred worrying sound of spinning crocodiles made a cacophony of hell that has rarely been duplicated on earth. At dawn the vultures arrived to clean up what the crocodiles had left…Of about 1,000 Japanese soldiers that entered the swamps of Ramree, only about 20 were found alive.

The crocodile attacks of Ramree are well documented, but there are those who question the numbers. Some accounts indicate as many as 400 escaping the swamp, while the Guinness Book of World Records credits the incident with the “Most Number of Fatalities in a Crocodile Attack.” Could there be so many of these creatures, as to wipe out nearly a thousand men? What was there to eat, to support such a large population?

map_cpor_800b — Current Distribution – Saltwater or Estuarine Crocodile (Crocodylus porosus)

The actual numbers can never be known, but consider this: Saltwater crocodiles are excellent swimmers, and are regularly spotted miles out to sea. Individuals have even been discovered in the relatively frigid Sea of Japan – thousands of miles from their native habitat. In 2016, Australian Rangers counted 120 “salties” in a 6-kilometer (3.7 mile) stretch of the East Alligator River, in the Northern Territory.

To the human participants in this story, this is a tale of four weeks’ combat for a tropical island. For the apex predator of the mangrove swamp, it was little more than a dinner bell.

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February 18, 1977 Plain of Jars

A map of the world is dotted with such ancient stone megaliths, from Easter Island in the South Pacific to the Carnac Stones of France, and the stone spheres of Costa Rica. Among all of them, there is no story more mysterious, or more tragic, than the Plain of Jars.

Yonaguni Island, the westernmost inhabited island of the Japanese archipelago, lies about 60 miles across the straits of Taiwan. The place is a popular dive destination, due to (or possibly despite) a large population of hammerhead sharks.

In 1987, divers discovered an enormous stone formation, with angles and straight lines seemingly too perfect to have been formed by nature. If this “Yonaguni Monument” is in fact a prehistoric stone megalith, it would have to have been carved 8,000 to 10,000 years ago when the area was last dry, radically changing current ideas about prehistoric construction.

Deep in the heart of the Indochinese peninsula of mainland Southeast Asia lies the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, (LPDR), informally known as Muang Lao or just Laos. To the north of the country lies the Xiangkhouang Plateau, known in French as Plateau du Tran-Ninh, situated between the Luang Prabang mountain range separating Laos from Thailand, and the Annamite Range along the Vietnamese border.

Twenty-five hundred to fifteen-hundred years ago, a now-vanished race of bronze and iron age craftsmen carved stone jars out of solid rock, ranging in size from 3 ft. to 9 ft. or more. There are thousands of these jars, located at 90 separate sites and containing between one and four hundred apiece.

Most of these jars have carved rims but few have lids, leading researchers to speculate that lids were formed from organic material such as wood or leather.

Lao legend has it that the jars belonged to a race of giants, who chiseled them out of sandstone, granite, conglomerate, limestone and breccia to hold “lau hai”, or rice beer. More likely they were part of some ancient funerary rite, where the dead and the about-to-die were inserted along with personal goods and ornaments such as beads made of glass and carnelian, cowrie shells and bronze bracelets and bells. There the deceased were “distilled” in a sitting position, later to be removed and cremated, their remains then going through secondary burial.

laosmap — Map of Laos showing Xieng Khouang province, location of the Plain of Jars

These “Plain of Jars” sites might be some of the oldest burial grounds in the world, but be careful if you go there. The place is the most dangerous archaeological site, on earth.

With the final French stand at Dien Bien Phu a short five months in the future, France signed the Franco–Lao Treaty of Amity and Association in 1953, establishing Laos as an independent member of the French Union. The Laotian Civil War broke out that same year between the Communist Pathet Lao and the Royal Lao Government, becoming a “proxy war” where both sides received heavy support from the global Cold War superpowers.

Concerned about a “domino effect” in Southeast Asia, US direct foreign aid to Laos began as early as 1950. Five years later the country suffered a catastrophic rice crop failure. The CIA-operated Civil Air Transport (CAT) flew over 200 missions to 25 drop zones, delivering 1,000 tons of emergency food. By 1959, the CIA “air proprietary” was operating fixed and rotary wing aircraft in Laos, under the renamed “Air America”.

The Geneva Convention of 1954 partitioned Vietnam at the 17th parallel, and guaranteed Laotian neutrality. North Vietnamese communists had no intention of withdrawing from the country or abandoning their Laotian communist allies, any more than they were going to abandon the drive for military reunification, with the south.

Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Arleigh Burke warned the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “If we lose Laos, we will probably lose Thailand and the rest of Southeast Asia. We will have demonstrated to the world that we cannot or will not stand when challenged”.

As the American war ramped up in Vietnam, the CIA fought a “Secret War” in Laos, in support of a growing force of Laotian highland tribesmen called the Hmong, fighting the leftist Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese communists.

Primitive footpaths had existed for centuries along the Laotian border with Vietnam, facilitating trade and travel. In 1959, Hanoi established the 559th Transportation Group under Colonel Võ Bẩm, improving these trails into a logistical system connecting the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the north, to the Republic of Vietnam in the south. At first just a means of infiltrating manpower, this “Hồ Chí Minh trail” through Laos and Cambodia soon morphed into a major logistical supply line.

In the last months of his life, President John F. Kennedy authorized the CIA to increase the size of the Hmong army. As many as 20,000 Highlanders took arms against far larger communist forces, acting as guerrillas, blowing up NVA supply depots, ambushing trucks and mining roads. The response was genocidal. As many as 18,000 – 20,000 Hmong tribesman were hunted down and murdered by Vietnamese and Laotian communists.

Air America helicopter pilot Dick Casterlin wrote to his parents that November, “The war is going great guns now. Don’t be misled [by reports] that I am only carrying rice on my missions as wars aren’t won by rice.”

The proxy war in Laos reached a new high in 1964, in what the agency itself calls “the largest paramilitary operations ever undertaken by the CIA.” In the period 1964-’73, the US flew some 580,344 bombing missions over the Hồ Chí Minh trail and Plain of Jars, dropping an estimated 262 million bomb. Two million tons, equivalent to a B-52 bomber full of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years. More bombs than US Army Air Forces dropped in all of WW2, making Laos the most heavily bombed country, per capita, in history.

Most were “cluster munitions”, bomb shells designed to open in flight, showering the earth with hundreds of “bomblets” intended to kill people and destroy vehicles. It’s been estimated that 30% of these munitions failed to explode, 80 million of them, (the locals call them “bombies”), set to go off with the weight of a foot, or a wheel, or the touch of a garden hoe.

1024px-BLU-26_cluster_sub-munition — Unexploded cluster sub-munition, probably a BLU-26 type. Plain of Jars, Laos

Since the end of the war, some 20,000 civilians have been killed or maimed by unexploded ordnance, called “UXO”. Four in ten of those, are children.

Removal of such vast quantities of UXO is an effort requiring considerable time and money and no small amount of personal risk. The American Mennonite community became pioneers in the effort in the years following the war, one of the few international Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) trusted by the habitually suspicious communist leadership of the LPDR.

On February 18, 1977, Murray Hiebert, now senior associate of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. summed up the situation in a letter to the Mennonite Central Committee, US: “…a formerly prosperous people still stunned and demoralized by the destruction of their villages, the annihilation of their livestock, the cratering of their fields, and the realization that every stroke of their hoes is potentially fatal.”

Years later, Unesco archaeologists worked to unlock the secrets of the Plain of Jars, working side by side with ordnance removal teams.

In 1996, United States Special Forces began a “train the trainer” program in UXO removal, at the invitation of the LPDR government. Even so, Western Embassy officials in the Laotian capitol of Vientiane believed that, at the current pace, total removal will take “several hundred years”.

In 2004, bomb metal fetched 7.5 Pence Sterling, per kilogram. That’s eleven cents, for just over two pounds. Unexploded ordnance brought in 50 Pence per kilogram in the communist state, inviting young and old alike to attempt the dismantling of an endless supply of BLU-26 cluster bomblets. For seventy cents apiece.

A boy digs for ant larvae to use in soup on a hillside overlooking the Plain of Jars. The area was intensively bombed and dozens of large craters can still be seen in the background.

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February 17, 1864 My life Preserver

Author and adventurer Clive Cussler found the sub in 1995, buried in silt under 32′ of water.

1200px-Scott-anaconda — Civil War-era cartoon depicts Winfield Scott’s “Great Snake”

In the 1850s, the economy of the southern United States was mostly agrarian. When civil war broke out in 1861, the Confederate states depended to a greater degree on imported manufactured goods, compared with the more industrialized states to the north. For the Union, there was strategic advantage in cutting off this flow of manufactured goods. So it was the “Anaconda Plan” was initiated, to choke off traffic to southern ports and harbors.

Few in the Confederacy understood the need to keep southern ports open, as well as the planter, legislator, and southern patriot Horace Lawson Hunley.

In 1861, Hunley joined forces with James McClintock and Baxter Watson to design and build a secret Super Weapon for the Confederacy. A submarine. The trio completed construction on its first effort, the Pioneer, that same year in New Orleans. The team went on to build two more submarines in Mobile, Alabama: the American Diver, and the last and most successful creation, the “Fishboat“, later renamed HL Hunley.

Conrad_Wise_Chapman_-_Submarine_Torpedo_Boat_H.L._Hunley,_Dec._6,_1863 — An oil painting by Conrad Wise Chapman, “Submarine Torpedo Boat H.L. Hunley, Dec. 6, 1863”

After a short sea trial in Mobile, the Hunley was put on a train and shipped up to Charleston, South Carolina, to help break the blockade. Arriving on August 12, 1863, she was 40′ long by 4′ wide, displacing about 7½ tons. She was designed for a crew of 8, with 7 operating a hand crank and the 8th steering the boat.

A test run on August 29 ended in disaster, when Skipper John A. Payne accidentally stepped on the lever controlling the diving planes, with the hatches open. Payne and two others escaped, but the other five crew members went to the bottom.

A second crew tested the submarine on October 15, this one including Horace Hunley himself. The submarine conducted a mock attack but failed to surface afterward, this time drowning all 8 crew members.

Despite those two disastrous test runs, there was no shortage of volunteers. Once again, the Hunley was fished up from the bottom.

The original plan was to tow a floating mine called a “torpedo”, with a contact fuse. They would dive beneath their victim and surface on the other side, pulling the torpedo into the side of the target.

Tide and current conditions in Charleston proved very different from those in Mobile. On several test runs, the torpedo floated out ahead of the sub. That wouldn’t do, so a spar was fashioned and mounted to the bow. At the end of the spar was a 137lb waterproof cask of powder, attached to a harpoon-like device with which Hunley would ram its target.

Hunley made her first live attack run four miles outside of Charleston Harbor, on the night of February 17, 1864. Lieutenant George Dixon and a crew of seven attacked USS Housatonic, a 1,240 ton steam powered sloop of war, embedding the spar torpedo into Housatonic’s hull. It must have been a sight to see. The torpedo ignited a 4,000 lb store of black powder in the hull of the ship, exploding with a deafening roar and a towering column of flame that lit up the night.

Housatonic was gone in three minutes, killing five sailors. What happened next, is a mystery. The first successful attack sub in history, vanished. The Hunley crew would not be seen again, for 136 years.

hunley-submarine-crew-facial-reconstruction — Forensic facial reconstructions techniques bring back the faces of the last crew of HL Hunley

Author and adventurer Clive Cussler found the sub in 1995, buried in silt under 32′ of water. A painstaking, five year effort was launched to bring Hunley to the surface, and on August 8, 2000, HL Hunley returned to the light of day. The sub was moved to the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in the Charleston Navy Yard, and submerged in 55,000 gallons of chilled, fresh water, where scientists and historians worked on unlocking its secrets.

There was an old rumor that Lt. Dixon left a girlfriend in Mobile, Alabama, a woman named Queenie Bennett. She had given him a $20 gold piece, a good luck charm and token of her affection. Dixon was shot in the hip at Shiloh, the story goes, a wound that should have killed him. If the bullet hadn’t struck the gold piece in his pocket.

No one knew if the story was true, until excavation started inside the sub. Senior Archaeologist Maria Jacobsen found the coin, next to the remains of George E. Dixon. “Some people may think this is a stroke of luck,” she said, “but perhaps it’s something else. They tell me that Lt. Dixon was a lady’s man, perhaps he winked at us yesterday to remind us that he still is”.

On the coin, clearly showing signs of having been struck by a bullet, are inscribed these words:

Shiloh

April 6, 1862

My life Preserver

G.E.D.

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February 16, 1804 The Most Daring Act of the Age

Even a former adversary couldn’t help but admire the feat. Days later, British Vice Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson called Decatur’s raid the “most bold and daring act of the age.”

Historic accounts differ as to the early success of the Islamic conquests. Contemporary Christian sources saw them as God’s punishment for the sins of fellow Christians. Early Muslim sources describe the rising empire as evidence of divine favor, reflections of the religious zeal of the conquerors.

Be that is it may, Islamic expansion enveloped the Arabian Peninsula in the last ten years of the life of Muhammad (622-632), at the expense of the Roman Byzantines and the Sassanid Empire of the Persians. Syria fell in 634, followed by Egypt, Mesopotamia and Persia. By 750, the Umayyad Caliphs had subjugated much of the Balkan states, part of the Indian sub-continent, all of North Africa, most of Spain, and parts of Southern France and Sicily. By the age of Columbus, the Mediterranean was a place where you traveled at your own risk.

Those of us of European ancestry owe our heritage, if not our existence, to the Christian warriors who defeated the Jihadist time after time. There was Pelagius, who stopped a military force of the Umayyad Caliphate at Covadonga in 722, without which there would be no Reconquista, no Ferdinand and Isabella, and we wouldn’t know the name of Christopher Columbus.

The father of Charlemagne, Charles “The Hammer” Martel, blocked the Muslim advance into Western Europe at the Battle of Tours, in 732.

If Marcantonio Bragadin is remembered at all, it is for being betrayed, tortured and skinned alive by Lala Mustafa Pasha. Yet, it is Bragadin’s stubborn defense of the eastern Mediterranean outpost of Famagusta in 1571, which gave European principalities time to assemble naval forces in numbers sufficient to defend the European coast, near a place called Lepanto.

The 1683 Siege of Vienna, at the crossroads of eastern and western Europe, was a hard fought contest which could have gone either way, until the arrival of a Polish army under King Jan Sobieski. The Ottomans were defeated and turned back from the conquest of Eastern Europe by the largest cavalry charge in all of history, 18,000 horsemen of the Polish King and the Holy Roman Emperor, thundering down the hill and into the lines of Mustafa Pasha.

Throughout the period, “Saracens” plundered everything that could be carried away: animals, provisions, fabrics, precious metals and money: especially men, women and children who could be sold for a good price at the slave markets. Redemption of captives being among the corporal works of mercy, the “Mathurins” Order of the Holy Trinity was founded in 1198 for the purpose of paying the ransom of Christians held captive by non-Christians, as a consequence of crusading and pirating along the southern European coastline.

Even Ireland, with its northern latitude, wasn’t immune to such raids. The renegade Dutchman-turned Barbary pirate Murat Reis attacked the village of Baltimore in County Cork, in 1631. With him were pirates from Algiers and armed troops of the Ottoman Empire, who captured all the villagers they could find, taking 107 away to the slave markets of North Africa. Years later, three women were ransomed and returned to Ireland. The rest lived out their lives as slaves, or locked away in harems or inside the walls of the sultan’s palace.

From-Baltimore-to-Barbary-the-1631-sack-of-Baltimore-2 — “Engraving of a Moorish slave auction from Pierre Dan’s Historie van Barbaryan en des zelfs Zee-Roovers (Amsterdam, 1684). There they were paraded, chained and nearly naked, while prospective buyers inspected the merchandise”. H/T Historyireland.com

Sidi Muhammad ibn Abdallah, Sultan of Morocco, opened his ports to trade with the fledgling United States in 1777, making Morocco the first country whose head of state publicly recognized the United States. Abdallah saw the future for his country in foreign trade, and actively sought a treaty relationship with the US, well before war ended with Great Britain. The treaty signed by Thomas Barclay and Sultan Muhammad III in 1786 and ratified by the Confederation Congress the following July is still in effect today, the longest continuous treaty relationship in United States history.

Diplomacy had succeeded with Morocco, but not with Algiers, Tunis or Tripoli, each of which demanded $660,000 in tribute.

Algeria captured the schooners Maria and Dauphin in 1785, the captured crews held in conditions of slavery for over a decade. The sum negotiated for their release exceeded $1 million, more than 1/6^th the entire budget of the United States. Eleven American ships were captured in 1793 alone, their crews and stores held for ransom.

Yusuf Karamanli, Pasha of Tripoli, demanded $225,000 in tribute on President Jefferson’s inauguration, in 1801. At this time, Federal revenues were barely over $10 million. Jefferson refused, resulting in the first Barbary War, a conflict memorialized in a line from the Marine Corps Hymn “From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli”.

USS-Enterprise-barbary-war — USS Enterprise, Barbary war

Limited to small confrontations for the first two years, more sustained combat began in June 1803 when a small American force attacked Tripoli Harbor in modern Libya.

While giving chase and firing on a pirate vessel, USS Philadelphia ran aground on an uncharted reef, two miles outside of Tripoli. Fearing the 1,240 ton, 36-gun frigate would be captured and added to the Tripolitan navy, Lieutenant Stephen Decatur led a daring expedition into Tripoli harbor to destroy the captured vessel.

On the evening of February 16, 1804, Decatur entered Tripoli Harbor with a force of 74 Marines. With them were five Sicilian volunteers, including pilot Salvador Catalano, who spoke fluent Arabic. Disguised as Maltese sailors and careful not to draw fire from shore batteries, Decatur’s force boarded the frigate, killing or capturing all but two of its Tripolitan crew. Decatur and his marines had hoped to sail Philadelphia out of harbor, but soon found she was in no condition to leave. Setting combustibles about the deck, they set the frigate ablaze. Ropes burned off, setting the Philadelphia adrift in the harbor. Loaded cannon cooked off as the blaze spread, firing random balls into the town. It must have been a sight, when gunpowder stores ignited and the entire ship exploded.

By that time Decatur and his men had slipped away, without the loss of a single man. Even a former adversary couldn’t help but admire the feat. Days later, British Vice Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson called Decatur’s raid the “most bold and daring act of the age.”

February 15, 1898 Yellow Journalism

We hear a lot today about “fake news”, but that’s nothing new. Circulation wars were white hot in those days, competing newspapers using anything possible to get an edge.

Mickey Dugan was born on February 17, 1895, on the wrong side of the tracks. A wise-cracking street urchin with a “sunny disposition”, Mickey was the kind of street kid you’d find in New York’s turn-of-the-century slums, maybe hawking newspapers. “Extra, Extra, read all about it!”

With his head shaved as if recently ridden of lice, Mickey was one of thousands of homeless street urchins roaming the back lots and tenements of the city, not as much an individual as an archetype. Mickey Dugan was a cartoon character, the child of artist and “Buster Brown” creator, Richard Outcault.

Outcault’s “Hogan’s Alley” strip, one of the first regular Sunday newspaper cartoons in the country, became colorized in May of 1895. For the first time, Mickey Dugan’s oversized, hand-me-down nightshirt was depicted in yellow. Soon, the character was simply known as “the Yellow kid”.

Outcault worked for Joseph Pulitzer in those days, owner of the New York World Newspaper. Archrival William Randolph Hearst hired the cartoonist away to work for Pulitzer’s cross-town competitor Journal American, but the pair soon learned that there was no copyright protection on the Yellow kid. Soon, the character was simultaneously appearing in competing newspaper strips, where he would remain for over a year.

We hear a lot today about “fake news”, but that’s nothing new. Circulation wars were white hot in those days, competing newspapers using anything possible to get an edge. Real-life street urchins hawked lurid headlines, heavy on scandal-mongering and light on verifiable fact. Whatever it took, to increase circulation.

The Yellow kid character had died away by 1898, but he lived on in a way, in the style of newspaper reporting which came to be called “yellow journalism”.

After two wars for independence from Spain, the Caribbean island of Cuba found its economy increasingly intertwined with that of the United States. From the Spanish perspective, Cuba was more of a province than a colony. They were not about to relinquish a foot of territory. When the Cuban Rebellion of 1895 broke out, Spanish colonial administrator don Valeriano Weyler’s brutal repressions killed thousands in Cuban concentration camps.

In America, some saw parallels between the “Cuba Libre” movement, and the United States’ own revolution of a hundred-odd years earlier. Fearing the economic repercussions of a drawn out conflict, shipping and other business interests put pressure on President McKinley to intervene. Meanwhile, the yellow papers kept the issue front page, whipping up popular fury with tales of the noble Cuban revolutionary and the barbaric Spaniard. There were even tales of American women being publicly strip searched, by Spanish authorities.

The armored cruiser USS Maine left Key West headed for Cuba in January 1898, to protect US interests and to emphasize the need for a quick resolution to the conflict. Anchored in Havana Harbor on February 15, a massive explosion of unknown origin rocked the Maine, sinking the cruiser within minutes and killing 268 of the 355 Americans on board.

The McKinley administration urged calm. Conditions in Cuba were bad enough, without front page headlines like “Spanish Murderers” and “Remember the Maine”, accompanied by sensationalized accounts of Spanish brutality. War became all but inevitable when US Navy findings were released that March, stating that the sinking had resulted from an external explosion.

1890s_Spanish_Misrule_Cartoon-Dalrymple-Puck — “Spanish Misrule,” Puck, 1890s, by Louis Dalrymple

The Spanish-American War began the following month, directly resulting in the Philippine-American war.

There is a story, that illustrator Frederic Remington said there was no war brewing in Cuba. Hearst is supposed to have replied. “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” The story may be apocryphal. Newspapers then couldn’t tell us what to think any more than today, but the media certainly controlled what the public thought ABOUT. For two years, Hearst and Pulitzer had clamored for war with Spain. Both were happy to take credit, when war came. Beside that, it was good for circulation. A week after the Spanish-American War began that April, Hearst’s American Journal ran the headline “How do you like the Journal’s war?” Front page. Above the fold.

It’s been said that you should never pick a fight with a guy who buys ink by the barrel. I disagree. I have broken that dictum myself and recommend the practice to anyone so inclined. For all the Wizard of Oz antics of the print and electronic media, there remains only the one man behind the curtain.

President Reagan once said of the Soviet Union, “doveryai no proveryai” (trust, but verify). He might have said the same of an information industry whose business model it is, to rent an audience to a sponsor.

In 1976, a team of American naval investigators concluded that the explosion aboard the USS Maine was likely caused by a fire which ignited ammunition stockpiles, not by Spanish mine or act of sabotage.

Concerning what to say to the families of the 20,603 dead, wounded and missing from the Spanish-American war, the newspapers were and remain, silent.

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February 14, 269, Valentine’s Day

The Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates Saint Valentine twice, first as a church elder on July 6, and again as a martyr on the 30th. That would suit the greeting card companies just fine, but don’t tell them. Once a year is enough for some of us to remember.

800px-Santa_Giulia_4 — Bronze likeness of Barbarian Emperor Claudius II, “The Cruel”

In the third century AD, Roman Emperor Claudius II was having trouble recruiting for his legions. To many he was “Claudius the Cruel” which may have had something to do with his problem, but that’s not how he saw it.

To Emperor Claudius, such reluctance could only mean that Roman men were excessively devoted to their wives and families. The solution was obvious – ban all engagements and marriages.

Valentinus was a Roman priest at this time, who wanted no part of such a silly decree. Valentinus continued to carry out marriages in secret until it was discovered, when he was dragged before the Prefect to answer for his crimes.

Claudius came to like his prisoner, for whom things could have gone much better, but for one critical mistake. He tried to convert the pagan Emperor to Christianity.

Valentinus was condemned to be beaten to death with clubs and beheaded, the sentence carried out on February 14 in the year AD269.

Legend has it that Valentinus befriended his jailers’ blind daughter, at one point miraculously restoring the girl’s sight. He is said to have penned a farewell note to her shortly before his execution, signing it “From Your Valentine.”

2,000-year-old history is necessarily clouded by legend, and there are different versions of this tale. It’s possible that Valentinus’ story never happened at all. Little or no evidence exists suggesting romantic celebrations on February 14, until Geoffrey Chaucer’s 1375 “Parliament of Foules,” in which the poet describes the mating habits, of birds: “For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne’s day, Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate”.

Yet, there is concrete archaeological proof that Valentinus lived. Pope Gelasius decreed February 14th to be a celebration in honor of his martyrdom, in 496.

The date is also significant of the pagan festival of Lupercalia, carried out from February 13-15 in honor of the goddess Februata Juno. Greek historian Plutarch of Chaeronea (46-c.120) described the occasion as follows: “Lupercalia, [when] many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs. And many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped in delivery, and the barren to pregnancy.”

It wasn’t the every-day guys of Rome who would run about oiled and naked, either. This was the upper crust of Roman society. Plutarch writes in chapter 61 of his Life of Julius Caesar, that Consul Mark Antony offered Caesar the diadem with the wreath of laurel during the festival of Lupercalia, and Antony was no spectator. He was taking part in the “sacred running”. Think about That, the next time your local drama club puts on a performance of Julius Caesar.

There are, in fact, about a dozen Saint Valentines, the most recently beatified being Saint.Valentine Berrio-Ochoa, a Dominican friar who served as bishop of Vietnam until his beheading in 1861. There was even a Pope Valentine, who served about 40 days, sometime around 827AD.

So, take your pick. With all those Saint Valentines, you can celebrate St. Valentine of Viterbo on November 3, or maybe you’d like to get a head start with St. Valentine of Raetia, on January 7. Perhaps you’d prefer the only female St. Valentine (Valentina), a virgin martyred in Palestine on July 25, in the year AD308.

The Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates Saint Valentine twice, first on July 6 as an elder of the church, and again as a martyr on the 30th. That would suit the greeting card companies just fine, but don’t tell them. Once a year is enough for some of us to remember.

February 13, 1542 Six Wives of Henry VIII

The science to prove or disprove the theory didn’t exist in the Tudor era, but it may not matter. Anyone attempting to bring that particularly bit of news to Henry VIII, very likely would have paid for it, with his head.

Catherine of Aragon, the youngest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, came to England to marry Arthur, the eldest son and heir to the throne of Henry VII, in 1501. Arthur died the following year and his younger brother took the throne, asking Catherine to marry him in 1509.

The Spanish princess-turned Queen Consort of England was by all accounts a devoted wife, but the marriage bore no sons. Henry came to believe, or said he believed, that it was punishment from God for marrying his brother’s wife. By this time the King had fallen hard for the daughter of Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, Anne. Henry was in a pickle. His wife wouldn’t agree to a divorce, and Anne Boleyn was not about to give it up as a mere mistress. She was going to be the King’s wife, or nothing.

The problem was, the Pope refused to grant the divorce. Henry launched the Reformation so that he could divorce his wife and marry this young girl from Kent, getting his divorce the following year and going on to become Supreme Head of the Church of England.

Catherine of Aragon died alone in a convent some three years later, the only Class Act in this whole, sorry story.

Catherine had been popular with the people, but this second wife was not. To many, she was ”the King’s whore”. Many believed Boleyn to be a witch who had cast a spell on the King. The marriage produced a daughter, Elizabeth, but again no sons.

On the day that Catherine of Aragon was buried at Peterborough Abbey, Anne miscarried a male child. The Savoyard ambassador Eustace Chapuys commented “She has miscarried of her saviour”. There would be no divorce this time. The King of England concocted a plot based on a rumor, and Anne was convicted of incest, adultery and treason. Anne Boleyn was executed by decapitation in 1536. She would not be the last.

Henry married Jane Seymour, 11 days later. Though she bore him a son, she died two weeks after the birth. Years later, Henry would request on his deathbed that he be buried next to her.

Anne of Cleaves would be wife #4, an arranged marriage with a German Princess intended to secure an alliance with the other major Protestant power on the continent, especially after England’s break with Rome over that first divorce. Henry was put off by her appearance however, apparently believing himself to be quite the prize. The marriage went unconsummated. They were amicably divorced after 6 months.

Catherine Howard was 19 and Henry 49 when she became wife #5. He was hugely fat by this time, with festering ulcers on his leg that never healed. Henry’s suits of armor reveal a waistline grown from 32″ to 54″. The man weighed 400lbs on his passing, five years later. Catherine was young and flirtatious, preferring the company of young courtiers to that of the fat old guy she was married to. She would be tried and convicted of adultery two years later. As with her predecessor, execution was by the headsman’s axe. Catherine Howard lost her head on, February 13, 1542.

Katherine Parr was the 6th and last wife of Henry VIII. Henry died in January 1547, Parr going on to marry Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron of Sudeley, six months later. Katherine died in September 1548, as the result of complications of childbirth.

Ironically, Henry himself may have been the problem, when it came to the inability to produce a male heir. Researchers revealed in 2011 that Henry’s blood group may have been “Kell positive”, a rare condition which would have initiated an auto-immune response in the mother’s body, targeting the body of the baby inside of her. It’s unlikely that first pregnancies would have been effected, but the mother’s antibodies would have attacked second and subsequent Kell-positive babies as foreign objects.

February 12, 1733 The Last Colony

Tomochichi presented a symbol of power to the King of England, a bald eagle feather, the first time this symbol of our nation was connected to the American colonies.

In 1727 England, the anonymously published book “The Sailor’s Advocate”, argued for improvements in the terrible working conditions, that sailors of the day were forced to endure.

The pamphlet’s “unknown” author was James Oglethorpe, a crusader, an idealist, and member of the British Parliament. Oglethorpe saw urbanization as the great evil of his day, the stripping of the productively employed from the countryside, while depositing them in cities with no opportunity for meaningful work.

Oglethorpe chaired a committee on prison reform the following year, calling attention to the horrendous conditions in English debtors’ prisons, and the hopeless plight of those released with no means of support.

To deal with the problem, Oglethorpe and others petitioned in 1730 to form a committee of trustees, to form the 13th Colony in America. They would call this new colony “Georgia”, a new start for the worthy poor, and a military buffer against Spanish Florida to the south, and French Louisiana to the west. The charter was signed by King George II on April 21, 1732.

Thousands applied to go, trustees narrowing the number down to an initial 114 colonists. Those who couldn’t pay their own way would be subject to a period of indenture, typically 5-7 years.

It was November of that year, when the first group of colonists left aboard the “Anne”, bound for the new world. James Oglethorpe and his 114 pilgrims scrambled up the 40′ banks of the Savannah River on February 12, 1733, there to establish the Province of Georgia and its Colonial Capital of Savannah.

tumblr_oeuwsvcOCx1s9fj4po1_500 — Artist’s depiction of Johnson Square, the earliest public square in Savannah

A personal friendship developed between Oglethorpe and native Chieftan Tomochichi, Mico (Leader) of the Yamacraw, a formal treaty of friendship signed in May of that year.

The Trustees obtained £10,000 for the Georgia colony that first year, the subsidy becoming smaller in the following years. Georgia was the only American colony thus dependent on a Parliamentary allowance.

Oglethorpe returned to England two years later along with several “goodwill ambassadors”, among them Chief Tomochichi himself, his wife Senauki, their nephew Toonahowi, and six other members of the Lower Creek tribes. Members of the Indian delegation were treated as celebrities, entertained by Trustees and personal guests of the King and Queen, after which the group became tourists, visiting the Tower of London, St. Paul’s Cathedral and enjoying a number of plays, from Shakespearean dramas to comic farces.

Tomochichi presented a symbol of power to the King of England, a bald eagle feather, the first time this symbol of our nation was connected to the American colonies.

m-1123 — “As the principal mediator between the native population and the new English settlers during the first years of Georgia’s settlement, Tomochichi (left) contributed much to the establishment of peaceful relations between the two groups and to the ultimate success of Georgia. His nephew, Toonahowi, is seated on the right in this engraving, circa 1734-35, by John Faber Jr.” – Hat tip for this image, to the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries

The home town to Oglethorpe’s Utopian experiment, Savannah, was founded around four wards, each containing eight blocks situated around its own central square. Established to help the poor and to produce materials like silk and olives for England, Georgia issued each colonist 50 acres of land – perfect for the yeoman farmer, but too small for major landholders. Its motto was “Non Sibi Sed Allis”. “Not for Themselves But for Others”. Oglethorpe outlined four by-laws for the Georgia province, four prohibitions forming the legal framework of his Utopian experiment.

1. No rum, Brandy or spirits were allowed in Georgia, though beer, wine and ale, were OK.
2. No African slaves were permitted, though they were occasionally “borrowed” for construction projects.
3. Oglethorpe believed that every man ought to be able to speak for himself. Hence, no lawyers were allowed.
4. No Catholics were allowed either, as it was feared that they’d be too sympathetic with co-religionist Spain, then in control of the Florida territory.

“If we allow slaves,” Oglethorpe had said, “we act against the very Principles by which we associated together, which was to relieve the distressed.”

Returning to England, Oglethorpe continued to serve on the Board of Trustees, though he often found himself outvoted. Despite his opposition, the Board of Trustees gradually relaxed their restrictions on land ownership, on hard liquor, and on slavery. By 1750, Georgia’s founding father was no longer involved with the board which had given it life. Oglethorpe’s grand experiment was over in 1754, when Trustees voted to dissolve their governing charter, making Georgia the 13th of Great Britain’s American colonies.

Tomochichis-Grave-in-Wright-Square — Mico Tomochichi’s monument, Wright Square, Savannah, Georgia

Chief Tomochichi died in 1739 at age 97, requesting that he be buried among his English friends. The Mico of the Yamacraw was interred in Wright Square, and saluted with cannon and musket fire. James Oglethorpe himself was one of the pall bearers. If you ever visit the city of my childhood, there you will find Wright Square and Tomochichi’s monument, dedicated on April 21, 1899. A bronze tablet is engraved with Cherokee roses and arrowheads, and inscribed with these words. “In memory of Tomochichi – the Mico of the Yamacraws – the companion of Oglethorpe – and the friend and ally of the Colony of Georgia”.

Featured image, top: LaFayette Square, Savannah, named for the Frenchman and Aide-de-Camp to General George Washington, Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette.

February 11, 1812 Gerry-mander

In 1842, Federal law required that voting districts be compact, and contiguous. That worked out for about a hot minute.

The dictionary defines “Gerrymander” as a verb: “To divide (a geographic area) into voting districts in a way that gives one party an unfair advantage in elections”. In the Old Country the practice goes way back, the earliest instance in the American colonies dates back to early 1700s, Pennsylvania.

In 1788, Virginia voted to ratify the Constitution and join the Union. Former Governor Patrick Henry persuaded the state legislature to reconfigure the 5th Congressional District, thereby forcing his political adversary James Madison to run against a powerful opponent named James Monroe. Henry’s redistricting tactic failed and Madison won, anyway. One day he would become the nation’s fourth president. All was not over for the loser, though. James Monroe would become #5.

Elbridge Gerry was born in 1744, in the north shore Massachusetts town of Marblehead. Gerry spent most of his adult life in public office, excepting a ten-year period in the family codfish packing business. First elected to the state legislature in 1772, Gerry died in office in 1814, while serving as Vice President under President James Madison.

Politics are as ugly these days as any time in living memory, but that’s nothing new. Back in 1812, parties were split between Federalists supporting strong central government and favoring business & industry, pitted against Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans, suspicious of centralized power and favoring small landowning family farmers to secure the well-being of the nation. Both parties believed the other would destroy the young nation, and campaigns were as nasty as they get.

Elbridge Gerry was elected Massachusetts Governor in 1810. Soon, his Democratic-Republican supporters were doing everything they could to get the man re-elected. The redistricting plan that emerged on February 11, 1812 confined Federalist precincts to a handful of congressional districts, while Democratic-Republican precincts were spread across many. In the end, 50,164 Democratic-Republican votes resulted in 29 seats in the state legislature and only 11 Federalist Party seats, despite a favorable vote tally of 51,766.

Benjamin Russell was a newspaper editor, and ardent Federalist. The painter Gilbert Stuart commented on the new district map hanging over Russell’s desk, saying “That will do for a salamander.” “Better say a Gerry-mander!” was Russell’s reply. A cartoonist added head, wings, and claws. The cartoon map and the name appeared in the Boston Gazette within the month.

Ever since, “gerrymandering” has been a bi-partisan favorite for keeping “public servants” firmly ensconced at the public trough.

In 1842, Federal law required that voting districts be compact, and contiguous. That worked out for about a hot minute. In the 1870s, Mississippi gerrymandered a “shoestring” district some 300 miles long and only 32 miles wide. Other states have “packed” voters into districts shaped like frying pans, dumbbells, and turkey feet.

In the 1960s, gerrymandering was used to “crack” the voting strength of black and urban voters. A 1962 Supreme Court decision ruled that electoral districts must reflect the principle of “one man, one vote”. A 1985 decision ruled it unconstitutional to alter election districts to favor of any political party.

These days, voting districts are intentionally drawn up to favor or disfavor parties, racial, and other “interest” groups, ensuring that we look on one another as “us and them”, rather than just, plain, fellow Americans. Talk about “the conduct of public affairs for private advantage”. (Hat tip to my favorite curmudgeon, Ambrose Bierce, for that one).

Here in the home of the Gerrymander, Barney Frank’s old 4th congressional district resembles nothing so much as a grasping hand. I’m not sure if the new congressional map is much of an improvement, but hey. It seems to work for the ruling class.

In 2000, California’s two major parties worked together to redraw state and Federal legislative districts, in such a way as to preserve the status quo, in perpetuity. It worked. 53 congressional, 20 state senate, and 80 state assembly seats were at risk in the 2004 election. Not one of them changed parties. 28th state senate district Senator Jenny Oropeza (D) won re-election in 2010. About a month, after she died.

If you enjoyed this “Today in History”, please feel free to re-blog, “like” & share on social media, so that others may find and enjoy it as well. Please click the “follow” button on the right, to receive email updates on new articles. Thank you for your interest, in the history we all share.

In accordance with the Imperial command, the Fourteenth Area Army has ceased all combat activity.

In accordance with military Headquarters Command No. A-2003, the Special Squadron of Staff’s Headquarters is relieved of all military duties.

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Featured image, top: LaFayette Square, Savannah, named for the Frenchman and Aide-de-Camp to General George Washington, Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette.

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