Historical Easter Eggs – Today in History – Page 15 – "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."

July 16, 1979 Yellow Dirt

To this day the spill at Church Rock remains the US’ worst nuclear disaster, and best kept secret.

They call themselves Diné, (din neh) meaning literally, “the people”. Originally a hunter/gatherer culture, the Diné are believed to have migrated from northwestern Canada and eastern Alaska long before there were such place names, around the year 1400. Mostly hunters and gatherers at this time, they lived in a region known as Dinétah, occupying parts of the modern American states of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico.

Over time, the Diné adopted the farming methods of the Pueblo peoples, mainly the “three sisters” of corn, squash and beans. They acquired livestock, sheep and goats mostly, the animals becoming not only food sources but also symbols of wealth, and status. Tewa-speaking pueblo groups called them Navahu, meaning large areas of cultivated land. Spanish settlers knew them as, Navajo.

In the 21st century, many Navajos live a traditional lifestyle including language, religious practices a social structure based on kinship, and locality of residence. Despite the legacy of bitterness resulting from 19th century conflicts between first nations and relative newcomers to the North American continent, Navajos have volunteered for military service in numbers disproportionate to their population.

Shiprock (Navajo: Tsé Bitʼaʼí, “rock with wings” ), located in traditional Dinétah territory (northwestern New Mexico). – H/T Wikipedia

During World War 1 some 10,000 “Indians” including Navajo served the United States armed services both as volunteers, and conscripts. Navajo “code talkers” served a pivotal role during World War 2, building on the work of the Choctaw during the “Great War” and producing secret communications based on native languages, indecipherable to the adversary.

The number four is sacred to the Navajo people. The four cardinal directions of north, south, east and west. The four seasons. The four original clans and the creation story, of four worlds. Four mountains mark the land given to the people of Navajo lore, by the creator. The four day-parts of dawn, day, dusk and night. Four colors correspond to each of four mountains marking the land: the color white for shell, the blue of turquoise, the shimmering black of obsidian and the color yellow, representing but one shade of the multi-colored abalone.

A yellow that most assuredly DOES NOT symbolize, Uranium.

In August 1939, a letter written by physicist Leó Szilárd and signed by Albert Einstein warned President Franklin Roosevelt that Nazi Germany was working to develop a war-winning super weapon. A bomb, capable of obliterating entire cities in a single blast. The American-led effort to produce such a weapon began in 1942, the US Army component of the team at first headquartered in Manhattan. So began the ultra-secret “Manhattan Project” culminating in the Trinity test blast of July 16, 1945 and that famous line from the “father of the atomic bomb” J. Robert Oppenheimer, quoting from the Bhagavad Gita:

“Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds“.

First used during WW1 to harden the steel hulls of ocean-going vessels, vanadium is often bound with oxygen and other substances in a lemon yellow, radioactive mineral called carnotite. One of the substances contained in this “yellow dirt”, is Uranium.

First identified by German chemist Martin Klaproth in 1789, Uranium is 40 times as common as silver but only rarely found, in concentration. The ancient Romans used the stuff in its natural oxide form as early as the year 79, to add a yellow hue to ceramic glazes.

The Navajo were no strangers to the yellow rocks of the Dinetah, possessed as it is of one of the highest concentrations of such minerals, on the planet. Fed by the need to defeat Nazi Germany, the 1942 “discovery” of yellow dirt on Navajo lands set off a feeding frenzy from which the people, have yet to recover.

Such concentrations were well suited to the work of men and wheelbarrows and Navajo men went to work, as miners. That the stuff was dangerous in high concentrations was well known to mining corporations, military and government officials alike, but no matter. There was a war going on.

The squared-off contours of blasted rock it turned out, made for very fine building material. The by-products of Uranium mines could be used in a cement nearly the equal of concrete, so these unstable, mildly radioactive minerals were concentrated not only in the lives of Navajo miners but also in their homes, in which they built masonry additions. The ovens in which they cooked their bread were often built, using yellow rocks. The clothing of Navajo children playing outside were stained by yellow dust.

Even among those not in daily contact with dangerous minerals many lacked running water, on the reservation. Water resources themselves were often contaminated.

“Susan Black, who lost her son Sylvester Stanley to Navajo neuropathy, drank from the open pits during her pregnancy while sheep herding. The grazing territory had been so parched at times they drank from puddles in depressions of the sandstone less than a mile from the mine where uranium residue was everywhere”. Hat tip TeenVogue, and Gail Fisher

World War 2 gave way to the “cold war” but the need for uranium, seemed without end. Sickness and death occurred among the Navajo in numbers disproportionate, to their population. Cancers of the liver, kidney, stomach and lungs. A mélange of symptoms affecting mostly (but not entirely) children received a name, hitherto unheard of: “Navajo Neuropathy“.

“William McCray, 4, overlooks a clean up operation of radium and uranium contaminated soils near his home on Oct. 9, 2009. Uranium mining from the mid-1900s left over 500 unregulated mines scattered once mining stopped in 1986. Photo by Teddy Nez” – H/T indiearizona.com

Helen Nez is but one person, among many. For most of her adult life she drank from a spring located on Navajo lands, in northeastern Arizona. Uranium levels were at least five times greater than safe drinking water standards, but who knew? The stuff has no odor. It has no taste. Helen Nez gave birth, ten times. Four of her children died, as toddlers. Three died as young adults, their bellies bloated, their eyes, turned gray. The last three are all adults now. All of them have serious health problems.

There is barely a parent alive who doesn’t dread the death of their child. Helen Nez lost seven. Thanks to Helen Nez herself and northcountrypublicradio.org for this image

Four generations of Navajo have come and gone since that first discovery, in 1942. Activist types have come, and they went home. Mining company commitments to restore the land to its original form, failed to materialize. Elected officials conducted hearings. Congressmen with familiar names like Waxman and Udall showed seemingly genuine concern, but little came of it. Bureaucratic Washington offered bland and infuriatingly meaningless responses to pointed questions. The EPA even refused assistance to one family whose hilltop home was the victim of “natural” radiation. Until their “hill” was demonstrated to be a pile of mine waste.

By 1977, the discarded by-products of Uranium mines formed piles large enough climb and enjoy the view, but I wouldn’t recommend it. That was the year United Nuclear Corporation took a different approach. A pond.

Mining and crushing up to 4,000 tons of ore daily leaves a prodigious amount of waste. “Yellowcake” is extracted leaving a sandy sludge, called tailings. These may contain up to 85% of the radioactivity, of the original ore. Another byproduct of the acid leach solvent extraction process is called “liquor”, a witches brew containing Thorium-230, Radium-222, Lead-210 and other isotopes.

A 20-foot breach in the Church Rock tailings dam opened around 5:30 on the morning of July 16, 1979 H/T Wikipedia

At 5:30am on July 16, 1979, the dam holding back the Church Rock tailings pond, gave way . A thousand tons of Uranium mill waste and 93 million gallons of acidic, radioactive tailings solution gushed through an ever-widening breach in the dam, down the pipeline arroyo and into the Puerco River, a tributary to the Little Colorado River.

A little perspective on what 93 million gallons looks like.

Was there anyone alive on March 28, 1979, who didn’t hear about Three Mile Island? The New York-Washington media corridor went wall to wall with coverage as they tend to do, with stories that effect them personally.

And yet, the Church Rock nuclear release four months later far exceeded that of Three Mile Island. Ever hear of Church Rock? Don’t feel bad if the answer is no. The “News” just wasn’t that into it. The Navajo Nation requested a disaster declaration from New Mexico Governor Bruce King, in order to facilitate federal assistance with the cleanup. For reasons which remain unclear, the governor refused such a declaration.

Between 1944 and 1986 some 521 mines extracted 30 million tons of Uranium ore from Navajo lands. Most of that was sold to the United States Atomic Energy Commission, until 1966, the only customer.

To this day the spill at Church Rock remains the US’ worst nuclear disaster, and best kept secret.

In 1990, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) was passed into law establishing an administrative framework for compensating victims of radiation, whether from atmospheric nuclear testing or employment in uranium mining. As of April 20 2018, 34,372 claims have been approved with total compensation amounting to $2,243,205,380. On June 7, 2022, the president signed into law the RECA Extension Act of 2022. This law extends the termination of the RECA Trust Fund and the filing deadline for all claims for two years from its date of enactment.

Thus far, several Navajo have received the maximum compensation allowed under the act, of $100,000. Even so. It’s difficult to understand how something like this remains to torment so few, for so many years. All that really matters is results. Everything else is excuses.

Afterward

“The 2020-2029 Ten-Year Plan continues the effort of the previous Five-Year Plans and identifies the next steps in addressing the human health and environmental risks associated with the legacy of uranium mining on the Navajo Nation. The Ten-Year Plan was developed in cooperation with multiple federal partner agencies including Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department of Energy, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Navajo Area Indian Health Service, and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry to incorporate goals and milestones for achieving assessment and cleanup actions”.
EPA.gov

Special hat tip to LA Times journalist Judy Pasternak for her disturbing and important new book, Yellow Dirt. Much of the material in this essay is based on her work.

July 15, 1799 Rosetta Stone

Two centuries after its discovery, the term Rosetta Stone is still used to describe that first clue, leading to new levels of human understanding.

In geologic time, the Holocene epoch refers roughly to the last 11,700 years, a time delineated by the retreat of massive formations which, together, constitute the last of eight glacial periods to occur over the last 740,000 years.

The north of Africa was once wetter than it is now, a vast, green savannah of grasses, lakes and trees with abundant herds of ungulates. The geologic record reflects some of the earliest attempts at agriculture and animal husbandry in this region sometime around the sixth millennium, BC.

The gradual end of this “African humid period” led great numbers of small nomadic and tribal cultures to settle in the fertile Nile River valley where predictable, seasonal flooding supported a cessation of hunter/gatherer sustenance and increased reliance on the growing of food and the raising of domesticated livestock.

This inevitably led to trade among and competition between the various tribes and the growth of some, often at the expense of others. And then at last, there were two.

In the third century BC the Egyptian priest Manetho grouped a long succession of Kings over a period of thirty dynasties, beginning with the mythical King Menes. It is he who united what was then the two kingdoms of upper and lower Egypt.

This early dynastic period gave way to the first of three relatively stable periods in ancient Egypt, separated by long intermediate periods of chaos. These were the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms.

Taken as a whole, ancient Egypt created a system of mathematics, the earliest known peace treaty and a lasting legacy of art, and literature. Innovations in quarrying and construction led to monumental temples, pyramids and statuary inspiring scientific and archeological investigation which lasts, to this day.

It is often forgotten or overlooked in the modern era that, since the time of Alexander, the Ptolemaic rulers of ancient Egypt, were Greek. Ptolemy V rose to power at the age of six (r. 205-180BC) on the death of his father, Ptolemy IV.

The most successful of several violent uprisings against this foreign rule began in upper Egypt in 206BC and lasted for 20 years under the leadership of the last of the Egyptian Pharoahs, Hyrgonaphor (Haronnophris) and Chaonnophris.

Full restoration of the Ptolomaic dynasty occurred around 196BC, when Ptolomy V was only fourteen. A royal decree was issued by the high priests of Memphis, proclaiming the glorious victory of the young ruler and proclaiming the royal cult of King Ptolomy V Epiphanes. This Memphis Decree was inscribed on a black stone slab believed to measure some 4-feet 11-inches in length, one of several such carved stone stelas erected throughout the region, of the late revolt. Three renditions of the proclamation were carved into the granodiorite stela, the same text rendered in Hieroglyphic, Greek and Demotic script, the ‘language of the people’ itself derived from the much older, Hieratic script.

The Ptolomaic dynasty came to an end with the death of Cleopatra, the Macedonian queen who spoke Egyptian, along with several other languages. There followed in Egypt nearly 700 years of Roman and later Byzantine rule, ending with the Arab Conquests of 639 – 646.

Within three hundred years or so the old language, was dead. These were the Heiratic cursive script most often drawn out with brush and ink on papyrus and the Hieroglyphic system comprising some 900 symbols representing words and sentences most often used for permanent inscription, on stone. The scholar viewing the ancient texts throughout much of the first 2,000 years of the modern era, had no idea what he was looking at.

Rosetta stone superimposed on an artist’s conception of what the original, may have looked like.

French forces led by Napoleon Bonaparte invaded the Ottoman territories of Egypt and Syria in 1798, with an ultimate intention of joining forces with the Indian ruler Tipu Sultan to drive the British from the Indian subcontinent. It was the French Captain Pierre-François Bouchard who discovered this first among a handful of bilingual Hieroglyphic scripts on July 15, 1799 near the ancient city of Rashid (Rosetta) from which the stele derives its name.

The long work of translation began with that of Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy who first deciphered the 32 lines of Demotic script, in the middle.

The work was performed thanks to a knowledge of the Coptic language derived from the ancient Egyptian tongue, and fortified by reference to readily identifiable aspects of the ancient Greek text.

“In the ancient city of Thmuis, at Tell Timai in the Nile Delta of northern Egypt, archaeologists have encountered the first tangible evidence corresponding to the time and events of the Great Revolt alluded to on the Rosetta Stone. There, in a layer characterized by broad devastation, a number of pottery kilns (left) were systematically destroyed and later built over. This unburied male human skeleton (right) was discovered lying amid the rubble. It bears unmistakable signs of a violent death“. – Hat tip archaeology.org

On September 27, 1822, French scholar Jean-François Champollion announced the successful translation, of the Rosetta Stone.

Today, large pieces of the original stele are broken away. Much of the original text is lost. Other bilingual and even trilingual inscriptions have since been discovered but this was the first time western scholars were able to peep through that small keyhole into one of the great civilizations, of antiquity.

The Rosetta Stone by The British Museum on Sketchfab – H/T Archaeology.org

Two centuries later the term “Rosetta Stone“ still describes that first clue, leading to new levels of human understanding.

July 14, 1933 Willy Hitler, USN

Drafted into the Navy, the induction officer asked his name. The reply came back, “Hitler”. “Glad to see you Hitler,” the officer replied, “My name’s Hess.”

Suppose for a moment that Gallup or Ipsos were to conduct a survey, naming the top ten bad guys in history. One name on the top of such a list, would be that of the Nazi party leader, Adolf Hitler.

Hitler himself wouldn’t have the term, “Nazi”. That was bitter insult, coined long before the rise of the Nazi party. Hitler himself used the term, Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei for the National Socialist German Workers ‘ Party or NSDAP for short.

Alois Johann was born on June 7, 1837 to the 42-year-old unmarried peasant woman, Maria Schicklgruber. The boy’s father was known to her, but the priest wrote “illegitimate” on the baptismal certificate. So it was the boy took the surname Schicklgruber, after his mother.

Johann Georg Hiedler married Maria when Alois was five. By age ten, the boy was sent to live with Heidler’s brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler. Three years later, Alois Schicklgruber moved to Vienna where he worked as a cobbler’s apprentice, finally becoming a low level civil servant in the Austrian Finance Ministry.

There are plenty of variations on the Hiedler family surname. ‘Hiedler’ apparently derives from an Austro-Bavarian dialect, meaning one who lives by a Hiedl, or underground spring. Other derivations come from the German Hutte (hut), as in “one who lives in a hut”. Be that as it may, the variations appear to have been interchangeable. Common variations included Hitler, Hiedler, Hüttler, Hytler, and Hittler.

There are plenty of tales regarding the man’s paternity, but none are any more than that. Alois Schicklgruber ‘legitimized’ himself in 1877, adopting a variant on the name of his stepfather and calling himself ‘Hitler”.

Historian Alan Bullock has described Alois Hitler as “hard, unsympathetic and short-tempered”. He seems to have had a problem with marital fidelity, as well. Alois was thirty-six when he married Anna Glasl-Hörer, the 50-year-old, invalid daughter of a customs official. By age 43, he was carrying on with the 19-year-old servant girl, Franziska “Fanni” Matzelsberger, with whom he had an illegitimate son, Alois Jr.

Alois Sr. was for all intents and purposes ‘married’ to the Matzelsberger girl for the next two years, while his lawful wife Anna, sickened and died. Hitler, 45, married Matzelsberger, age 21 in May, 1883. The couple’s second child Angela, was born two months later.

Sixteen-year-old Klara Pölzl moved in years earlier as household servant, and no woman was going to do to the new Mrs. Hitler, that which she herself had done to another woman. Frau Hitler demanded that the “servant girl” be sent away but Pölzl would return the following year, as she too sickened and died.

170px-Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-1989-0322-506,_Adolf_Hitler,_Kinderbild_retouched — Adolf Hitler as an infant

Pölzl was by this time pregnant with the first of the couple’s four children, but there was a problem. There are many candidates for Alois (Schicklgruber) Hitler’s biological father. If Hitler’s step-father was in fact his real sire as implied by the name change, that made Klara Pölzl his first cousin once removed, at least by law. The couple was too close to marry.

Alois petitioned the church for a humanitarian waiver. The waiver was granted and Klara Pölzl became the third Frau Hitler in January 1885. The couple welcomed little Gustav into the world, four months later.

The future leader of the National Socialist Party was born four years later, by that time the only child born to his mother Klara. Her first three children Gustav, Ida and Otto, all died in childhood.

Alois Hitler, Sr. seems to have been a thoroughly unlikable man, lording it over neighbors and brutalizing his own family. Historian Robert Waite notes that, “Even one of his closest friends admitted that Alois was ‘awfully rough’ with his wife and ‘hardly ever spoke a word to her at home’.” The man would berate Klara and children alike and apparently beat them, on a regular basis. Alois Jr. left home never to return, following a violent argument with his father. The elder Alois swore that he would never give the boy a single mark of inheritance, over what the law required. The youngest, Adolf, grew up a frail and sickly child, doted on by his mother and often at the center of violent rages by his father.

Alois tried to browbeat his youngest into following him, into the civil service. The boy feared and detested his father, and wanted nothing to do with him. Adolf Hitler would follow the path which would bring him to that list of the great monsters of the 20th century, as his brother Alois Jr., made his own way in the world.

Some apples don’t fall far from the tree. Alois Hitler Jr. went to Ireland, where he met Bridget Dowling at the Dublin Horse Show. Nothing more than a poor kitchen porter at the Shelbourne Hotel, Hitler managed to convince her that he was, in fact, a wealthy hotelier, touring Europe. The couple eloped to London in June 1910. Bridget’s father William threatened to bring Hitler up on charges of kidnapping, and only relented when Bridget pleaded with him to stop.

It was a decision she would come to regret.

The couple had their only child in 1911, William Patrick Hitler. Alois left home in Liverpool in May 1914 to establish himself in the safety razor business. He had become violent by this time and begun to beat the boy. Bridget refused to go with William’s father and ended up, raising the boy alone.

War descended over Europe in 1914, when the elder Hitler met and (bigamously) married his second wife, Hedwig Heidemann.

heinz-640x462 — Heinz Hitler was captured by Soviet Forces in 1942, and tortured to death

Alois’ second marriage produced a son, Heinz, who went on to become a committed Nazi. In 1933, William moved to Germany, in an effort to take advantage of his uncle’s rise to power. He got a job at an Opel factory and later worked as a car salesman, but badgered his uncle for a better job. At last, he threatened to sell embarrassing family stories to the newspapers, if Uncle Adolf didn’t do something to improve his “personal circumstances”.

Ironically, Nazi party regulations precluded Adolf Hitler himself from proving his own “Aryan Purity”, based on his father’s unknown paternity. For years, Hitler was dogged by hushed speculation about “Jewish blood”. Quiet rumor became front-page headline this day in 1933, when Austrian newspapers published reports that the German Chancellor, sworn enemy of all things Jewish was himself, a Jew. That same day, July 14, all political parties but the Nazi party, were banned from Germany.

William-Patrick-Hitler — Pharmacists Mate William Patrick Hitler

Der Führer of the fledgling thousand-year Reich promised his nephew a “high ranking post” in 1938, in exchange for renunciation of his British citizenship. Suspecting a trap, the younger Hitler fled Germany, traveling to the United States in 1939. William Patrick Hitler petitioned President Roosevelt for permission to join the American side which he received, in 1944.

Drafted into the Navy, the induction officer asked his name. The reply came back, “Hitler”. “Glad to see you Hitler,” the officer replied, “My name’s Hess.”

William Patrick Hitler served honorably for the duration of the war, holding the rank of Pharmacists Mate (a designation later changed to Hospital Corpsman) and earning a purple heart in the process. The infamous dictator’s half-brother Heinz was captured by Soviet forces in 1942, and tortured to death. Their infamous uncle took his own life in 1945 and died, childless.

The younger Hitler’s childhood home in Liverpool was destroyed in the last air raid of the Liverpool Blitz, in 1942.Alexander

Wishing to live a life of anonymity, “Willy” Hitler changed his name to William Patrick Stuart-Houston at the end of the war, and married fellow German emigre Phyllis Jean-Jacques in 1947. The couple made a home in Patchogue, New York and raised four sons: Alexander Adolf (b. 1949), Louis (b. 1951), Howard Ronald (1957–1989), and Brian William (b. 1965).

William Patrick Stuart-Houston, nephew to one of the worst dictators in history, fought with honor on the side of his uncle’s mortal enemy and died July 14, 1987.

None of Willy and Phyllis’ four sons ever produced an heir. Much has been made of a pact to end the Hitler line. Alexander Adolf Stuart-Houston became an American social worker, and always dismissed such speculation. There was no such agreement among the last four boys in the family. It’s just the way things turned out.

July 8, 1776 The Liberty Bell

In Denver, a group of blind girls were allowed to touch the Bell. One of them wanted to read the letters. You could have heard a pin drop, as a hushed crowd heard a small, sightless girl, pronounce these words: “Proclaim…Liberty…throughout…all…the…land.”

For thousands of years, bells have rung out to announce religious and civic occasions, weddings, funerals and other public announcements. The rich tones of a well-cast bell is capable of carrying for miles. Great Britain has so many bells, the place has been called the “Ringing Isle”.

The first bell in the city of Philadelphia would ring out to alert citizens of civic events and proclamations, and to the occasional public danger. Originally hung from a tree near the Pennsylvania State House, (now known as Independence Hall), that first bell dates back as far as the city itself, around 1682.

Sesqui-bellpostcard001-501x800 — Eighty-foot-high replica of the Liberty Bell, built for the Sesquicentennial International Exposition in 1926

The “Liberty Bell” was ordered from the London bell foundry of Lester and Pack in 1752, (today the Whitechapel Bell Foundry), though that name wouldn’t come around until much later. Weighing in at 2,080 lbs, the bell arrived in August of that year. Written upon it was a passage from the Book of Leviticus, the third book of the Hebrew Bible; the third of five books of the Torah. “Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof”.

Mounted to a stand to test the sound, the first strike of the clapper cracked the bell’s rim. Authorities attempted to return it, but the ship’s master couldn’t take it on board. The bell was broken into pieces, melted down and re-cast by two local workmen, John Pass and John Stow.

The recast bell used 10% copper, making the metal less brittle. Pass and Snow bragged that the bell’s lettering was clearer on this second casting than the original. The newly re-cast bell was ready in March 1753, when City officials scheduled a public celebration to test the sound. There was free food and drink all around, but the crowd gasped and started to laugh when the bell was struck. It didn’t break this time, it was worse. Somebody said the thing sounded like two coal scuttles, banging together.

Humiliated, Pass and Stow hurriedly took the bell away, and once again broke it into pieces, and melted it down.

The whole performance was repeated, three months later. This time, most thought the sound to be satisfactory, and the bell was hung in the steeple of the State House. One who did not like the sound was Isaac Norris, speaker of the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly. Norris ordered a second bell in 1754 and attempted to return the old one for credit, but his efforts proved unsuccessful.

157d02a0f0a37536d64b750a91cce3b6 — Chief Little Bear with Liberty Bell, 1915

The new bell was attached to the tower clock, while the old one was, by vote of the Assembly, devoted “to such Uses as this House may hereafter appoint.” One of the earliest documented uses of the old bell comes to us in a letter from Benjamin Franklin to Catherine Ray, dated October 16, 1755: “Adieu. The Bell rings, and I must go among the Grave ones, and talk Politiks.”

Legends have grown around the bell, ringing in the public reading of the Declaration of independence on July 4, 1776. The story is a myth. There was no such reading on that day. The 2nd Continental Congress’ Declaration was announced to the public four days later on July 8, to a great ringing of bells. Whether the old bell itself rang on this day, remains uncertain. John C. Paige, author of an historical study of the bell for the National

Park Service, wrote “We do not know whether or not the steeple was still strong enough to permit the State House bell to ring on this day. If it could possibly be rung, we can assume it was. Whether or not it did, it has come to symbolize all of the bells throughout the United States which proclaimed Independence.”

Bells are easily melted down and recast as bullets, and the bell was removed for safekeeping before the British occupation of Philadelphia, in 1777. The distinctive large crack began to develop sometime in the early 19th century, around the time when abolitionist societies adopted the symbol and began calling it “The Liberty Bell”.

The Philadelphia Public Ledger reported the last clear note ever sounded by the Liberty Bell, in its February 26, 1846 edition:

“The old Independence Bell rang its last clear note on Monday last in honor of the birthday of Washington and now hangs in the great city steeple irreparably cracked and dumb. It had been cracked before but was set in order of that day by having the edges of the fracture filed so as not to vibrate against each other … It gave out clear notes and loud, and appeared to be in excellent condition until noon, when it received a sort of compound fracture in a zig-zag direction through one of its sides which put it completely out of tune and left it a mere wreck of what it was.”

The bell would periodically travel to expositions and celebrations, but souvenir hunters would break off pieces from the rim. Additional cracking developed after several of these trips, and the bell’s travels were sharply curtailed after its return from Chicago, in 1893.

With the 1915 World’s Fair about to open in San Francisco, there were discussions of sending the Liberty Bell to California. The bell had never been west of St. Louis at that time, and the Philadelphia establishment balked. Former Pennsylvania governor Samuel Pennypacker complained that “The Bell is injured every time it leaves…children have seen this sacred Metal at fairs associated with fat pigs and fancy furniture. They lose all the benefit of the associations that cling to Independence Hall, and the bell should, therefore, never be separated from [Philadelphia].”

With the California tour off for now, Philadelphia Mayor Rudolph Blankenburg offered the next best thing. Bell Telephone had just completed a new transcontinental line, 3,400 miles of wire suspended from 130,000 poles. Three hundred dignitaries gathered at Bell offices in Philadelphia and San Francisco on February 11, 1915. With Alexander Graham Bell himself listening in from his own private line in Washington DC, the Liberty bell was sounded at 5pm, with all of them listening in on candlestick phones.

The California trip gained fresh impetus following the May 7 sinking ofn the British liner Lusitania. A cross-country whistle stop tour was planned for the bell, using the “best cushioned” rail car, in history.

As the nation’s most prominent German-American, Mayor Blankenburg himself came along, delivering “loyalty lectures” to immigrant groups on the importance of devotion to their adopted home country. “It is important to prepare against a possible foe abroad“, he would say, “….Let us, therefore, abolish all distinctions that may lead to ill feeling and let us call ourselves, before the whole world, Americans, first, last and all the time.”

apr2017_k13_libertybell — “A quarter of the U.S. population (including a girl in Moline, Illinois) turned out for the Liberty Bell”. H/T Smithsonian

The Liberty Bell drew crowds beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. Fully one- quarter of the American population turned out to see the liberty bell, a generator rigged so the bell could be seen by day or night. In many cities, those on the train couldn’t see where the crowd ended.

“Big Jim” Quirk, one of the police officers assigned to the train, recalled “In Kansas City, an old colored man who had been a slave came to touch it—he was 100 years old.” When the train pulled into another town, “an aged Mammie hobbled to the door of her cabin near the tracks, raised her hands and with her eyes streaming tears called out, ‘God Bless the Bell! God Bless the Dear Bell!’ It got to us somehow.”

Liberty Bell, Atchison, Kansas — Liberty Bell 1915, Atchison, Kansas. H/T Smithsonian Magazine, for this image

The Liberty Bell was enlisted once again in 1917 as the United States prepared to send her soldiers “over there” in the first democratically financed war, in history. Americans hurried to buy up war bonds, far exceeding the national goal of $2 Billion.

Today, two other bells join the Liberty Bell in the Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, PA. Weighing in at 13,000lbs, a half-ton for every original colony, the Centennial Bell was cast for America’s 100th birthday in 1876. To this day, this enormous bell rings once an hour, in the tower at Independence Hall.

In 1976, the people of Great Britain presented a gift to the people of the United States, in recognition of the friendship between the former adversaries. Weighing in at six tons and cast at the same foundry which produced the original bell, the “Bicentennial Bell” was dedicated by her Royal Highness, Queen Elizabeth, II, on July 6, 1976. On the side of the bell are inscribed these words:

FOR THE
PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES
FROM THE
PEOPLE OF BRITAIN
4 JULY 1976
LET FREEDOM RING

Back in 1893, the Liberty Bell passed through Indianapolis. Former President Benjamin Harrison may have had the last word on the subject, a sentiment fit to be inscribed on the old bell itself, below that verse from the Torah. “This old bell was made in England”, Harrison said, “but it had to be re-cast in America before it was attuned to proclaim the right of self-government and the equal rights of men.”

July 1, 1863 Gettysburg

The “North” came up from the south that day, the “South” approached from the north. No one wanted the fight to be in Gettysburg, it was more of an accident.

After two years of civil war, the man his soldiers called “Marse Robert” sought to take the war to his adversary. Robert E. Lee intended to do enough damage to create overwhelming political pressure in the North, to end the war and let the South go its own way. Lee had his best cartographers draw up maps of the Pennsylvania countryside, all the way to Philadelphia.

One hundred and fifty-nine years ago today, the Union and the Confederacy met in the south central Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg.

Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker, to whom Lee contemptuously referred as “Mr. F.J. Hooker”, wanted to attack Richmond, but Lincoln ordered him to intercept Lee’s army to protect Washington DC. Hooker was replaced on the 28th by Major General George Gordon Meade, “that damn old goggle eyed snapping turtle” to his men, in a move that so surprised the general that he thought he was being arrested over army politics, when the messenger came to his tent.

The “North” came up from the south that day, the “South” approached from the north. No one wanted the fight to be in Gettysburg, it was more of an accident.

What started out as a skirmish turned into a general engagement as fighting cascaded through the town. Confederate forces held the town at the end of the day, with the two armies’ taking parallel positions along a three-mile-long “fishhook” from Cemetery Hill and Culp’s Hill to the north, toward two prominences known as Big and Little Round Top to the south.

Fighting would continue and prove inconclusive at Culp’s Hill on day two, as the two armies stretched their positions toward the Round Tops.

Dan Sickles, the Tammany Hall politician best known for murdering the nephew of Francis Scott Key (he would be the first in American legal history to plead temporary insanity), had been ordered to move his corps into position on cemetery ridge, anchored at Little Round Top. Instead he took his corps a mile forward, into a Peach Orchard, only to be torn apart in the Confederate assault. Some of the most savage fighting of the Civil War took place that day in places like Devil’s Den, the Wheat Field, and bloody run. Sickles himself lost a leg to a cannonball. There was a foot race to the top of Little Round Top, leading to as many as 15 attacks and counterattacks for control of this small prominence at the Union’s extreme left. At the end of the day, the positions of the Armies had not changed.

On day 3, the last day, Lee came up the middle. 13,000 Confederate soldiers came across 1¼ miles of open field, to attack the Union Center. The target was a position between a small copse of trees and a corner in a stone fence called the angle. Cannon fire from their left, right and center tore them apart as they pressed on. A battered remnant actually penetrated Union lines: the “high water mark” of the Confederacy. It’s anyone’s guess what would have happened, had 4,000 Confederate cavalry smashed into the Union rear at that point, as Lee seems to have intended. But a 23-year-old general named George Armstrong Custer had waded into them with his 450 Union cavalry, routing the much larger force and very possibly changing history.

Lee withdrew in the rain of the 4th, ending the largest battle of the civil war. Lincoln was convinced that the time had come to destroy the Army of Northern Virginia, but Meade and his battered army did not follow. Lee and his army slipped back across the line and returned to Confederate territory. The most lethal war in American history would continue for two more years.

Years before, then-Secretary of War Jefferson Davis brought some 75 camels into West Texas, to try the creatures out as pack animals. Davis’ camel experiment had been a flop but the King of Siam, (now Thailand), didn’t know that. Seeing the military advantage to the Confederacy, the King wrote to President Abraham Lincoln, proposing to send elephants to help the Union war effort. This “animal arms race” appears to have gotten no further than the King’s one letter to Lincoln but, the imagination runs wild, doesn’t it? What would war elephants have looked like, at Gettysburg?

June 28, 1981 Marathon of Hope

“The running I can do, even if I have to crawl every last mile. We need your help. The people in cancer clinics all over the world need people who believe in miracles. I am not a dreamer, and I am not saying that this will initiate any kind of definitive answer or cure to cancer. But I believe in miracles. I have to”. Terry Fox, letter to the Canadian Cancer Society, October 1979

We’ve all known a “natural”. Be it academics, sports or what-have-you, we’re talking about that person who is naturally wired for a task. Who just…”gets it”. Then there is a second type. One born without that natural talent whose success depends on guts, drive and determination to succeed.

When it came to sports, Terrance Stanley Fox was one of those.

The second child of four born to Betty and Rolland Fox, Terry arrived on July 28, 1958 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the family later moving to British Columbia, the westernmost province in Canada.

Terry’s best buddy Doug Alward was a basketball natural, starting for the Mary Hill Jr. High School Cobras. Fox loved the sport but basketball is difficult for a guy who stood barely five feet high in Jr. high. Coach Bob McGill suggested he go out for cross country which he did, but he never lost the desire to play hoops.

Fox would practice every morning before school and during the summers. He finally made the team in grade 8, dead last, and only played a single minute for the whole season. By grade 10 Fox and Alward were first string guards for the Port Coquitlam High School Ravens. Later that year the two shared the school’s Athlete of the Year award. Fox continued with cross-country running and also soccer and rugby. By grade 12 Fox was actually the better basketball player while Alward went on to distinguish himself, in long distance running.

The year was 1976. The year when Terry first noticed that pain, in his right leg.

Terry began college that year at Simon Fraser University where he tried out and won, a place on the schools Junior Varsity basketball squad. A car wreck later that year did little to help that sore knee. Terry worked through it but, a training run the following spring left him in so much pain he could barely move. Suspecting something more serious Rolly took his son to the family doctor.

Dr. Michael Piper suspected osteogenic sarcoma, an aggressive bone cancer which often begins in the knee. The diagnosis was confirmed on March 4. The only choice was amputation.

The night before his surgery, high school basketball coach Terri Fleming brought him an article. It was about an amputee named Dick Traum who went on to run the marathon, in New York city. “Someday” he told nurse Judith Ray the following morning, “I’m going to do something like that”. Doctors amputated the leg above the knee on March 9, 1977.

Terry was walking again in a few weeks, with the help of an artificial leg. There were chemotherapy sessions and physiotherapy. Golf dates with his father and through it all, a growing sense of…something. Yes his hair was falling out but Terry saw other cancer patients during this time and somehow, he felt like one of the lucky ones. Many of these people were destroyed by this disease, some were dying, but…Terry…he had a Future.

There were sixteen months of chemotherapy and, despite the nausea, Terry took up wheelchair basketball. His hands would blister and bleed as he struggled to master this new approach to an old game. Within two years he had made the national team.

But he never forgot that article, or his own sense of responsibility to those who, like himself, suffered from this terrible disease.

Fox began to train at night, first a half-mile, and then more. Prosthetist Ben Spencer helped with modifications to his artificial leg, making it easier to withstand the impact of running.

There was a half-marathon in 1979 in which he finished dead last but only ten minutes behind, the last two-legged runner. Around this time Terry had an idea that turned into an obsession. A fund raiser for cancer research. He would run across Canada in a “Marathon of Hope” and he would do it, the following spring. The goal to raise $24 million, representing a dollar from every person in Canada.

The marathon of hope got off to a wet, cold start on April 12, 1980, when Terry dipped his artificial leg in Atlantic waters, off of Newfoundland. He filled two bottles, one for a souvenir and the other, he would dump into the Pacific.

Terry Fox, Doug Alward and Darrell Fox near White river, Ontario. H/T the Canadian Encyclopedia

The response was disappointing throughout much of the maritime provinces. Little had been done to publicize the run. Very few even knew it was happening. Terry pushed on running about 42km a day, supported by Doug Alward in the van and later joined by Terry’s brother, Darrell.

Nothing whatever had been done to publicize the run throughout all of Quebec but that all changed in Ontario, with the help of businessman Isadore Sharp and Bill Vigars, of the Canadian Cancer Society. Journalist Leslie Scrivener of the Toronto Star began to write a weekly column on Fox’s run.

He became a national star in Ontario, gaining personal meetings with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, British actress Maggie Smith and NHL Greats Darryl Sittler and Bobby Orr.

For 143 days Fox ran ever westward covering a total of 5,373 kilometers, equivalent to over 128 full-length marathons. It all came to an end on September 1 in a place called Thunder bay.

The pain he could live with. Terry Fox had demonstrated that but the cough was relentless, and debilitating. The cancer had returned and now, it was in his lungs. He was airlifted on September 2.

STOCK Terry Fox. Published 19800903 with caption: Terry Fox’s mother and father are embraced by his companion Bill Vigars as ambulance attendants wheel Terry to jet for flight to British Columbia. Photo taken by David Cooper Sept. 2, 1980.

The CTV telethon airing later that week raised $6.5 million, for cancer research. Fox received the Companion to the Order of Canada two weeks later, becoming the youngest person ever to win Canada’s highest civilian honor. That December he won the Lou Marsh trophy as Canada’s Athlete of the Year.

Port Coquitlam High School was later renamed, in his honor.

Donations topped $24.17 million on February 1, 1981, achieving Terry’s goal of raising a dollar from every person in Canada. Terry Fox’s Marathon of Hope was a success. His struggle against that hideous disease which had taken his leg, was not.

There were long months of cancer treatments but this thing was relentless. In June 1981 Terry contracted pneumonia. He went into a coma on June 27. Terry Fox died at 4:35 am on June 28 at Royal Columbian Hospital. He would have been 23 in about a month.

Flags across all of Canada were lowered that day, to half-staff. Let Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau have the last word in this story as he himself spoke, before the House of Commons:

“It occurs very rarely in the life of a nation that the courageous spirit of one person unites all people in the celebration of his life and in the mourning of his death. Our profound gratitude for the gift which Terry gave to all of us, the gift of his own boundless courage and hope.”

June 25, 1876 Little Big Horn

No whites were to be permitted onto these territories but for Federal Government officials, but the rich resources of the Black Hills, first in timber and then in gold, made the provision near-impossible to enforce.

During the late summer of 1854, 4,000 natives of the Brulé and Oglala Sioux gathered in the future Wyoming territory, near the modern city of Torrington, WY. On August 17, visiting Miniconjou High Forehead killed a wandering cow, belonging to a Mormon traveling the nearby Oregon trail. The native camp accorded with the terms of the treaty of 1851 and the cow episode could have been amicably handled, but events quickly spun out of control.

Chief Conquering Bear attempted to negotiate recompense, offering a horse or cow from the tribe’s herd. The owner refused, demanding $25. That same treaty of 1851 specified that such matters would be handled by the local Indian agent, in this case one John Whitfield, scheduled to arrive within days with tribal annuities more than sufficient to settle the matter to everyone’s satisfaction.

Ignorant of this provision or deliberately choosing to ignore it, senior officer Lieutenant Hugh Fleming from nearby Fort Laramie requested that the Sioux Chief arrest High Forehead, and hand him over to the fort. Conquering Bear refused, not wanting to violate traditional rules of hospitality. Beside that, the Oglala Chief would’ve had no authority over a Miniconjou.

6th Infantry Regiment Second Lieutenant John Grattan arrived with a force of twenty-nine and a bad attitude, intent on arresting the cow’s killer. One Ft. Laramie commander later remarked, “There is no doubt that Lt. Grattan left this post with a desire to have a fight with the Indians, and that he had determined to take the man at all hazards.” French-Native interpreter Lucienne Auguste was contemptuous, taunting Sioux warriors as “women” and threatening that the soldiers had come not to talk, but to kill.

What followed was all but inevitable. Not to be thus denigrated, angry warriors took up flanking positions around the soldiers, one of whom panicked and fired, mortally wounding Conquering Bear. And then all hell broke out. When it was over all thirty soldiers were dead, their bodies ritually mutilated.

The Federal government was quick to respond to the “Gratton Massacre”, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis characterizing the incident as “the result of a deliberately formed plan.”

The first Sioux War of 1854 – ’56 became the first of seven major wars and countless skirmishes between the United States and various sub-groups of the Sioux people, culminating in the Ghost Dance War of 1890.

Diametrically opposite cultures steeped in mutual distrust engaged in savage cruelty each upon the other, often at the expense of innocents. There was even one major massacre of natives by other natives, when a war band of some 1,500 Oglala/Brulé Sioux attacked a much smaller group of Pawnee, during their summer buffalo hunt. Seventy-one Pawnee warriors were killed along with 102 of their women and children, their bodies horribly mutilated and scalped, some even set on fire.

Today, a 35-foot obelisk stands in mute witness to the horrors of “Massacre Canyon”.

Massacre_Canyon_monument_from_SW_1 — Massacre Canyon Monument

In the early eighteenth century, peoples of the Suhtai and Tsitsista tribes migrated across the northern Mississippi River, pushing the Kiowa to the southern plains and in turn being pushed westward, by the more numerous Lakota, or “Teton” Sioux. These were the first to adopt the horse culture of the northern plains, the two tribes merging in the early 19th century to become the northern Cheyenne.

The ten bands comprising the northern Cheyenne spread from the black hills of South Dakota, to the Platte Rivers of Colorado, at times antagonistic to and at others allied with all or part of the seven nations of the Sioux.

In 1866, the Lakota people went to war behind Chief Red Cloud, over Army encroachment onto the Powder River basin area in northeastern Wyoming. The war ended two years later with the Treaty of Fort Laramie, granting a Great Sioux Reservation to include the western half of South Dakota including the Black Hills, as well as a large, “unceded territory” in Wyoming and Montana and the Powder River Country, as Cheyenne and Lakota hunting grounds.

The Army attempted for a time to keep settlers out of Indian territories, while political pressure mounted on the Grant administration to take back the Black Hills from the Lakota. Delegations of Sioux Chieftains traveled to Washington, D.C. in an effort to persuade the President to honor existing treaties, and to stem the flow of miners into their territories. Congress offered $25,000 for the land, and for the tribes to relocate south to Indian Territory, in modern-day Oklahoma. Chief Spotted Tail spoke for the whole delegation: “You speak of another country, but it is not my country; it does not concern me, and I want nothing to do with it. I was not born there … If it is such a good country, you ought to send the white men now in our country there and let us alone.”

The government now determined to force the issue, and imposed a deadline of January 31. That many of the tribes even knew of such a time limit seems unlikely. The government’s response was unworthy of a Great Nation. On February 8, 1876, Major General Philip Sheridan ordered the commencement of military operations against those deemed “hostiles”.

The Great Sioux War of 1876-’77 began with a ham-fisted assault on the frigid morning of March 17, when Colonel Joseph Reynolds and six companies of cavalry attacked a village believed to that of the renegade Crazy Horse, but turned out to be a village of Northern Cheyenne.

800px-Little_Big_Horn — Cheyenne Artist’s Depiction of the Battle of Little bighorn

A second, far larger campaign was launched that Spring, when three columns were sent to converge on the Lakota hunting grounds. Brigadier General George Crook’s column was the first to make contact, resulting in the Battle of Rosebud Creek on June 17. While Crook claimed victory afterward, the native camp was vastly larger than expected, and Crook withdrew to camp and wait for reinforcements. He had just taken his force out of what was to come.

General Alfred Terry dispatched the 7th Cavalry, 31 officers and 566 enlisted men led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, to begin a reconnaissance in force along the Rosebud. Custer was given the option of departing from his orders and going on the offence, should there be “sufficient reason”. For a man possessed of physical bravery bordering on recklessness – Custer had proven that thirteen years earlier at Gettysburg – there was bound to be sufficient reason.

Custer divided his force into three detachments, more concerned about preventing the escape of the “hostiles” than with fighting them.

It was a big mistake.

The tale of those other two columns is worth a “Today in History” essay of their own if not an entire book, but this is a story about Little Big Horn. Suffice it to say that Major Marcus Reno‘s experience of this day was as grizzly and as shocking, as that moment when the brains and face of his Arikara scout Bloody Knife spattered across his own face. Reno’s detachment had entered a buzz saw and would have been annihilated altogether, had it not met up with that of captain Frederick Benteen.

To describe what followed as “Custer’s last stand“ is to conjure images of soldiers fighting back to back, or crouched behind dead and dying horses amidst a swirling tide of warriors. Later archaeological evidence reveals not piles of spent casings marking the site of each man’s last desperate stand, but rather a scattering of brass across the hillside. Like a handful of rice, tossed across a hardwood floor.

2,500 warriors swept down on 268. It was the worst defeat to American Arms since the disastrous rout at Bladensburg, 62 years earlier. There were no survivors.

CaptureTheFlag_LittleBighorn — Capture The Flag, at Little Bighorn

The Battle of Little Big Horn, the Natives called it the “Battle of the Greasy Grass”, may be more properly regarded as the Indian’s last stand. Custer’s detachment was destroyed, to a man. Within hours, an enormous encampment of 10,000 natives or more were returning to their reservations, leaving no more than 600 in their place.

Crook and Terry awaited reinforcements for nearly two months after the battle. Neither cared to venture out again, until there were at least 2,000 men.

June 24, 1535 The Cages of Münster

Jan van Leiden ruled over the city as the new King David, according to his own prophesy. He seemed to think he had a direct line “upstairs” and could conjure up fresh prophesy at a moment’s notice. The seventy-five hundred inhabitants of Münster, believed so as well.

A popular legend depicts the Augustinian monk Martin Luther nailing a parchment to the door of the Wittenberg Palace Church in 1517, his “ninety five theses” a direct challenge to the authority of the pope, and the Catholic church. It likely never happened that way. Luther had no intention of confronting the Church. Subsequent events would harden Luther’s attitudes toward the Church but for now, this was but ninety-five propositions, framed and submitted for scholarly debate.

Luther enclosed his “ninety five theses” in a letter to the Archbishop of Mainz on October 31, the date now regarded as the beginning, of the Protestant Reformation.

H/T Wikipedia

To the modern reader, theological issues such as the “moral bank account” of saints or the transubstantiation of the body and blood of Christ, may seem mere doctrinal interpretations. In the late middle and early modern ages, such issues were matters of life and death. The Czech theologian Jan Hus was burned at the stake for such heresy, in 1415. The English philosopher John Wycliffe, dead some forty-four years by this time was dug up and burned, his ashes cast upon the waters of the River Swift.

The European Reformation exploded with startling intensity, spawning a “peasant rebellion” in 1524 in which about a third of 300,000 poorly armed farmers, were slaughtered. There were any number of reformers, few more radical than the baker turned Anabaptist prophet, Jan Matthias.

Münster was a divided city in 1530, made even more so when the evangelical Lutheran minister Bernard Rothmann, began preaching against Catholic doctrine. Rothmann was tireless, vitriolic, a relentless stream of anti-Catholic invective both from the pulpit, and from a series of pamphlets financed and printed by his ally, the wealthy wool merchant Bernard Knipperdolling.

Word got back to Matthias and his followers, who came to see Münster as the “New Jerusalem”. Jan Matthias and his Anabaptist followers were radicals even among their fellow “protestants”, and Rothmann was happy to come along. Theirs was an extreme, radical egalitarian ideology with no use for childhood baptism. They believed that Jesus Christ would descend to earth that Easter and bring about the End of Time. The Apocalypse was nigh. All good Christians needed to prepare, and only adult baptism held the key to salvation.

Four years earlier, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V ordered that every Anabaptist “shall be brought from natural life to death with fire, sword, or the like.” Now Anabaptists poured into Münster, baptizing some 1,400 adults in the first week after their arrival, about 20 percent of the adult population.

Equal numbers fled the city, amid “share-the-wealth” economic policies that would make the most fervent communist, blush. Armed city employees warned those who refused adult baptism to flee: “Get out of here, you godless. God will punish you!”

Matthias demanded the execution of all Catholics and Lutherans, warning that “Everywhere we are surrounded by dogs and sorcerers and whores and killers and the godless and all who love lies and commit them!” Catholics and moderate Protestants were expelled from the city, about 2,000 of them, as equal numbers of Anabaptist radicals poured in from the countryside.

Matthias ordered every contract, account and ledger in town destroyed in a vain attempt to abolish all debt. Rothmann preached from the pulpit of St. Lambert’s: “Everything that Christian brothers and sisters have belongs to the one as well as to the other.”

Prince-Bishop of Münster Franz von Waldeck looked on with increasing alarm. Before long a mercenary army was assembled outside the city walls of Münster. The place was now under siege.

Easter Sunday arrived, April 5, 1534. Jesus, did not. With his apocalyptic prophesy thus shattered, Matthias claimed to have a new, divine vision. He would ride forth from the city walls and personally break von Waldeck’s siege of the city. So it was that the Anabaptist prophet saddled up and rode forth with an entourage of twelve, only to be run through with a spear, his head mounted on a pike for all the town to see.

Up stepped the dead prophet’s right-hand man, the charismatic twenty-five year old tailor Jan van Leiden, who delivered a speech reinterpreting the day’s events, and postponing doomsday.

Münster became heavily militarized as Waldeck’s besieging force cut off all access to the city. Jan van Leiden ruled over the city as the new King David, according to his own prophesy. He seemed to think he had a direct line “upstairs” and could conjure up fresh prophesy at a moment’s notice. The seventy-five hundred inhabitants of Münster, believed so as well.

The siege dragged on through 1534 and into the following year. In May 1535, the Anabaptist carpenter Heinrich Gresbeck attempted to escape, only to be caught. In exchange for his life, Gresbeck agreed to show Waldeck a lightly defended gate.

The prince-bishop’s forces fought their way through the streets of Münster on the evening of June 24, and into the early morning hours, killing some 600 Anabaptists before the city surrendered.

Jan van Leiden, “viceroy” Bernhard Knipperdolling and Anabaptist leader Bernhard Krechting were taken to the public square some six months later, chained to posts and literally torn to pieces with white-hot pliers.

Imagine the scene. The sentences encompassed precisely sixty minutes of such treatment. Two executioners and four sets of tongs lest the other two be out of the coals for too long. Leiden endured an hour of such treatment as first his flesh and then sinew, was torn from his frame. He never made a sound.

Knipperdolling struggled frantically against the spiked collar which held him fast for he knew, he was next. Finally it was Krechting’s turn. Should a man pass out from the agony the clock would be stopped and the prisoner, revived. Then the process would begin, anew. Sixty minutes with those white-hot tongs and not a moment, less.

Finally a dagger was thrust into each man’s heart to end his appointed hour. Three hideously mutilated corpses were placed in cages and hanged from the steeple of St. Lambert’s Church, as a warning to others.

Some fifty years later their bones were removed, but not those cages. In 1880 the old steeple was torn down and a new one built in its place. The cages were reinstalled.

On November 18, 1944, British bombs hit St. Lambert’s church, knocking the highest cage, van Leiden’s, to the ground. Another fell into the organ loft, leaving the third hanging only by a thread. The church rebuilt the tower, four years later. Workers repaired and replaced the cages, commenting favorably on their sturdy construction.

Three decades ago, St. Lambert’s church installed a small yellow bulb in each of those cages, a small concession “in memory of their departed souls.” The cages of Münster remain there, hanging from the steeple at St. Lambert’s, to this day.

June 23, 1865 Civil War – the Final Chapter

Editorial cartoons of the era satirized “Rip van Waddell” for continuing hostilities, long after the Civil War was over.

On April 9, General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia. President Lincoln was assassinated on the 14th. Confederate President Jefferson Davis was captured on the 10th of May.

The last fatality of the war between the states, the “war of northern aggression” to half the nation, occurred at the Battle of Palmito Ranch in Brownsville, TX over May 12–13, resulting in the death of Private John J. Williams of 34th Indiana regiment. He was the last man killed during the Civil War.

General Joseph E. Johnston surrendered the remains of three Confederate Armies to General William Tecumseh Sherman at Bennett Place on April 26. Organized resistance came to a full stop when Confederate General E. Kirby Smith surrendered his forces to General E. R. S. Canby in New Orleans on May 26.

And yet the last hostile action of the civil War was still nearly a month away.

Both sides long practiced economic warfare against the other. The federal “Anaconda Plan” sought to strangle the economy of the South while Confederate commerce raiders roamed the oceans of the world, destroying the other side’s merchant shipping.

Rip_Van_Waddell — Editorial cartoon satirizing “Rip Van Waddell” still engaged in combat after everyone else thought the Civil War was over.

The Confederate raider CSS Shenandoah, Lieutenant James Iredell Waddell Commanding, was in the Bering Sea hunting prizes at this time, between the coasts of Alaska and Siberia.

On June 22, the last round of the Civil War was a warning shot, fired across the bows of a whaler off the Aleutian Islands.

It must have been a sight, to see a wooden hulled Union whaler laden with oil, burned to the waterline under starlit skies amidst the ice floes of the Bering Sea.

Waddell learned of Lee’s surrender on June 23, along with Jeff Davis’ proclamation that the “war would be carried on with re-newed vigor”. Waddell elected to continue hostilities, capturing 21 more whalers in the waters just below the Arctic Circle. The last 11 were captured in the space of just 7 hours.

The only Confederate ship to circumnavigate the globe, Shenandoah traversed 58,000 miles in 12 months and 17 days at sea, capturing or sinking 38 merchant vessels, mostly whaling ships. The voyage had taken 1,000 prisoners without a single battle casualty on either side.

Waddell was on the way to attack San Francisco on August 2, when he learned in a chance meeting with the British Barque Barracouta, that the war was truly over.

Believing they would all be hanged as pirates, Captain Waddell aimed to surrender to neutral England. He took down his battle flag and put CSS Shenandoah through a radical alteration at sea. She was dismantled as a man-of-war; her battery dismounted and struck below, her hull repainted to resemble an ordinary merchant vessel.

There followed a 9,000 mile race down the coast of Mexico, around Cape Horn and across the Atlantic, with American vessels in constant pursuit. CSS Shenandoah made it to English territorial waters outside the Mersey, when the pilot refused to take the ship into Liverpool. He needed to know, under which flag this vessel sailed. The crew raised the Stainless Banner, the third and last official flag of the Confederacy.

CSS Shenandoah’s “Stainless Banner” displayed on the Sesquicentennial (150 year) anniversary of her final voyage

CSS Shenandoah sailed up the River Mersey with flag aloft, spectators lining both sides of the river. Captain Waddell surrendered to Captain James A. Paynter of HMS Donegal. The Stainless Banner was lowered for the last time at 10:00am on November 6, 1865, in front of CSS Shenandoah’s officers and crew, and the Royal Navy detachment who had boarded her.

The last official act of the Civil War occurred later that morning, when Captain Waddell walked up the steps of Liverpool Town Hall, presenting the letter by which he surrendered his vessel to the British government.

The officers and crew were unconditionally released following investigation, as they had done nothing to justify further detention. CSS Shenandoah was returned to the United States where the Government sold her to Majid bin Said, the first Sultan of Zanzibar. Bin Said renamed the vessel El Majidi, in honor of himself. The former CSS Shenandoah was blown ashore and wrecked in a hurricane, in 1872.

HMS Donegal survived longer than any other player in this story. Launched in 1858, she remained in service to the British Crown until 1925 when she was sold, and broken up for scrap. Some of Donegal’s timbers were used to build the front of the Prince of Wales public house in the town of Brighouse, in West Yorkshire. The place still operates to this day, as the Old Ship Inn.

The-Old-Ship-by-Humphrey-Bolton — The Old Ship pub in Brighouse was built from the timbers of the decommissioned HMS Donegal in 1926

June 22, 1807 The Chesapeake-Leopard affair

American public opinion was outraged over the humiliation, as the four men were transported to Halifax for trial. Federalists and Democratic-Republicans alike were united as never before. President Thomas Jefferson remarked “Never since the Battle of Lexington have I seen this country in such a state of exasperation as at present, and even that did not produce such unanimity.”

The Napoleonic Wars took place between 1799 and 1815, pitting a series of seven international coalitions against the forces of Napoleon Bonaparte and his Grande Armée. The former American colonies benefited from the European conflict, remaining on the sidelines and doing business with both sides. Within a ten-year period, the fledgling United States had become one of the world’s largest neutral shippers.

In 1807, two third-rate French warships were penned up in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay, blockaded by a number of English warships outside of the harbor.

4467229436_5635b36a0a — The American frigate, USS Chesapeake

London born Jenkin Ratford was an English sailor who deserted the British Navy and defected to the neutral United States. This story might have ended better for him had he not run his mouth, but that wasn’t this guy. Ratford couldn’t resist taunting British officers, boasting of his escape to the “land of liberty”

The USS Chesapeake was preparing for a Mediterranean cruise with Ratford aboard when she emerged from Norfolk, Virginia. Her decks were laden with supplies and stores of every kind and her guns, unwisely stored. Chesapeake was nowhere near combat ready when she was approached by the HMS Leopard on June 22.

The Chesapeake’s commander, Commodore James Barron, was unconcerned when Leopard, under the command of Captain Salusbury Pryce Humphreys, asked permission to board. Lieutenant John Meade of Her Majesty’s Navy presented Barron with a search warrant. Barron declined to submit, and the officer returned to the Leopard.

Humphreys then used a hailing trumpet and ordered the American ship to comply, to which Barron responded “I don’t hear what you say”. Humphreys then fired two rounds across Chesapeake’s bow, followed immediately by four broadsides.

Chesapeake fired only a single shot before striking colors and surrendering. Humphreys refused the surrender and boarded, taking Ratford and three American born sailors with them when they left.

There was but token resistance, and yet the “Chesapeake-Leopard Affair” left three American crewmembers dead, and 18 wounded.

The English court found all four guilty of desertion and hanged Ratford by the fore yardarm of his former vessel, HMS Halifax. The three Americans, David Martin, John Strachan, and William Ware, were sentenced to 500 lashes.

With the puny American navy deployed to the Mediterranean to check the Barbary pirates, President Jefferson’s options were limited to economic retaliation. The Embargo Act of 1807 intended to extract concessions from France and Great Britain, instead had the effect of imposing crippling setbacks on some industries, while others railed against government interference in the private economy. Many conclude that the only solution, lay in violence.

2661E817-FD9D-331B-F65F29408EE37509 — Political cartoon depicting merchants harassed cursing the “Ograbme”—“embargo” spelled backwards.

British envoys delivered proclamations reaffirming the practice of impressment, amounting to the kidnapping of sailors and forcing their labor aboard British ships. In total, the Royal Navy impressed over 9,000 sailors claiming to be American citizens, becoming the driving force behind the United States going to war with England, in 1812.

Despite being wounded, Barron was blamed for the “Chesapeake-Leopard Affair”. A court-martial suspended him from service for five years, without pay. Commodore Stephen Decatur was one of the presiding officers at the court-martial. In 1820, Barron challenged Decatur to a duel, killing his fellow Commodore over his comments concerning the 1807 incident.

Undergoing a refit in Boston Harbor in 1813, USS Chesapeake was challenged to single combat by Captain Philip Broke, commanding the British frigate HMS Shannon.

United States Naval Captain James Lawrence was eager to comply, confident in the wake of a number of American victories in single-ship actions.

It was a Big mistake.

All of Boston turned out that June day, to watch the fight. Cheers went out across the docks and from scores of private vessels across Boston Harbor, as Chesapeake slipped her moorings and glided out of the harbor.

Boston authorities reserved dock space in expectation of a prize. The arrival of a captured British frigate, was a foregone conclusion. Rooftops, hills and trees from Lynn to Malden and Cohasset to Scituate were crowded with spectators, come to watch the show.

The tale of the Battle of Boston Harbor must be a story for another day. Suffice it to say that USS Chesapeake ended her career as the British frigate HMS Chesapeake, before being sold for scrap, in 1819. Two-hundred years later, the ship’s timbers live on. Part of the Chesapeake Mill in the historic village of Wickham, in Hampshire, England.

A Trivial Matter: British manpower needs expanded exponentially following defeat at the battle of Saratoga and impending hostilities with Napoleonic France. Regular army enlistment swelled from 48,000 to 110,000. The Recruiting Acts of 1778 and 1779 alike reaffirmed the necessity of impressment. Some recruits went so far as to chop off their own thumb and forefinger of the right hand making it impossible to handle musket or sword, to avoid impressment.

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