History: WWII Starts, Atlanta, Actium, Jerusalem, Treaty of Paris, Drogheda, Acre &More
The season of autumn has seen both some of the greatest triumphs and some of the greatest tragedies of history over the centuries. Below are a few of the important births, deaths, and events that occurred.
August 28
1189 - The Siege of Acre begins during the Third Crusade under Richard the Lionheart.
1609 - English explorer Henry Hudson sails into the Delaware’s Bay.
1774 - Elizabeth Ann Seton, later the first native-born American saint, is born.
1963 - Civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. delivers the famous “I Have a Dream” Speech. King plagiarized part of the speech from Archibald Carey Jr., but his delivery undoubtedly electrified the country.
August 29
1526 - The Ottomans conquer Hungary at the Battle of Mohács.
1842 - The Treaty of Nanjing ends the First Opium War between China and Britain.
1915 - Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman, star of iconic movie “Casablanca,” is born. She died the same day in 1982.
August 30
1363 - The Battle of Lake Poyang begins between the Ming (victors) and Han Chinese, one of history’s biggest naval battles.
1862 - The Second Battle of Bull Run ends with a Confederate victory.
1914 - WWI: The Battle of Tannenberg ends with Germans’ crushing defeat of the Russians.
August 31
12 AD - Crazy and infamously cruel Roman emperor Caligula is born.
1422 - English King Henry V, famous for his victory over the French at the Battle of Agincourt, dies.
1897 - Oscar-winning US actor Fredric March is born.
September 1
1715 - France’s King Louis XIV “the Sun King” dies, the longest-reigning monarch in European history (72 years). His decadent reign set the stage for the French Revolution.
1838 - William Clark, part of the famous U.S. Lewis and Clark expedition, dies.
1939 - Nazi Germany invades Poland, launching World War II.
1941 - Jews are required to wear yellow stars by the Nazi German government.
September 2
31 BC - Octavian (later known as Caesar Augustus) fights and wins the naval Battle of Actium against the combined forces of Roman Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII of Egypt. Octavian would become the first Roman emperor.
1792 - The bloody anti-Catholic, anti-royalist September Massacres begin during the French Revolution, which will leave 1,200 people (including hundreds of priests and religious) dead.
1864 - Civil War: Union Gen. Sherman takes Atlanta, a major victory against the traitorous Confederacy. “Atlanta is ours and fairly won,” Sherman telegraphed Washington, D.C. While white Confederates panicked or reacted with rage, white Union sympathizers in Atlanta and most particularly black slaves welcomed the Union troops. The coming of the “Yankees” brought the slaves their first real hope for freedom. “Bress de Lord,” one Massachusetts soldier remembered hearing some black Atlantans cry, “De Yanks am come, yah! Yah! Yah!”
1969 - Terrorist, mass-murdering, Communist dictator of Vietnam Ho Chi Minh dies.
1973 - “Lord of the Rings” author JRR Tolkien dies.
September 3
301 AD - Reportedly the date on which San Marino, a tiny country that is possibly the world’s oldest surviving republic, is founded by St. Marinus.
1649 - The Siege of Drogheda, ultimately a brutal massacre by Cromwell of Irish Catholics and English Royalists, begins. Read my full piece.
1658 - Vicious Puritan dictator Oliver Cromwell dies. He caused bloodshed in England, Scotland, and Ireland; in the latter alone, as much as 41% of the Irish population perished during anti-Catholic Cromwell’s reign.
1783 - The Treaty of Paris is signed, as Britain recognizes its former American colonies as an independent nation.
1777 - The official American flag flies in battle for the first time, in a skirmish in Delaware.
1939 - WWII: Britain and France declare war on Nazi Germany over its invasion of Poland.
September 4
476 - “Emperor Romulus Augustus (461 - 476 AD) who ruled over the Western Roman Empire, was deposed by Odoacer, the Germanic warlord.” End of the Western Roman Empire and the ancient Roman era.
1862 - Confederate Rebel Gen. Robert E. Lee invades Union states in the Maryland or Antietam Campaign. Fortunately, despite initial success, he was defeated at Antietam.
1990 - Oscar-winning US actress Irene Dunne dies.
September 5
1566 - Ottoman Sultan Suleiman, scourge of Christendom, dies.
1666 - The Great Fire of London ends, over 13,000 buildings destroyed.
1781 - “The Battle of the Chesapeake was a naval engagement pitting the French naval fleet under Admiral François Joseph Paul de Grasse against a British fleet under Admiral Sir Thomas Graves … a tactical French victory, effectively blocking the mouth of the Chesapeake and preventing British ships from reinforcing the besieged British Army at Yorktown. Without logistical support and reinforcements from the Chesapeake, the British Army was forced to surrender [to Americans] at Yorktown.”
1951 - U.S. actor Michael Keaton is born.
1972 - Palestinian terrorists kidnap and ultimately massacre eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.
September 6
1522 - The late Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition, now led by Elcano, arrives in Spain after successfully becoming the first to circumnavigate the globe.
1757 - Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, most famous for his aid in the American Revolution, is born in France.
1901 - President William McKinley dies as a result of bullet wounds caused by anarchist Leon Czolgosz.
1914 - WWI: The British and French launch the First Battle of the Marne expedition that will thwart German ambitions.
1966 - Rabidly racist eugenicist, Democrat, and Nazi sympathizer Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, dies. Sanger, who gave a speech to the KKK and supported forced sterilizations, said, “We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.”
September 7
70 AD - Future Roman Emperor Titus, having crushed a Jewish Revolt, devastates Jerusalem and levels the last Temple, thus destroying Judaism as it had previously existed, a Temple-centric religion.
1533 - Future Queen Elizabeth I is born. Though Protestants have long built around her the myth of “Good Queen Bess,” and she did support important exploratory efforts in the New World, English Catholics faced harsh and bloody persecution under her reign. Many more Catholics were killed in Ireland, including the great Irish hero Hugh O’Neill. Brilliant English authoress Jane Austen satirically described the universal corruption of Elizabeth I’s government: “It was the peculiar misfortune of this Woman to have bad Ministers — Since wicked as she herself was, she could not have committed such extensive mischief, had not these vile and abandoned Men connived at, and encouraged her in her Crimes.”
1812 - The Battle of Borodino ends with 70,000 casualties and a Pyrrhic victory for Napoleon against the Russians.
1822 - Pedro I, first emperor of Brazil, declares Brazil independent from Portugal.
1940 - WWII: The Nazi “Blitz” bombing of London begins.
Did I miss any important events? Let me know in the comments.