History of Last Week: Sack of Rome, Plataea, Mother Teresa, Thermopylae, M.Collins, Bosworth &More
“In history, a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind,” observed British statesman Edmund Burke. Below are some of the important births, deaths, and events that occurred this past week in history.
August 19
14 AD - Caesar Augustus, brilliant but ruthless first emperor of Rome (and thus founder of the Roman Empire), dies.
1662 - French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal dies.
1871 - Orville Wright, co-inventor of the airplane, is born in Ohio.
1942 - WWII, Operation Jubilee into Nazi-occupied France: the Allied “raid on Dieppe was a disaster. Over half of the force was killed, wounded, or captured.”
1977 - Iconic comedian Groucho Marx, of the Marx Brothers, dies.
August 20
480 BC - Possible date of the Battle of Thermopylae between 300 Greek Spartans and thousands of Persians. “Ultimately the Persians took control of the pass, but the heroic defeat of Leonidas would assume legendary proportions for later generations of Greeks, and within a year the Persian invasion would be repulsed.”
1794 - “[250Years] The Battle of Fallen Timbers, was the last major battle of the Northwest Indian War, still against the British and Indians, August 20, 1794. Gen. Anthony Wayne's Legion and Gen. Charles Scott's Kentucky Militia were victorious over the British militia and Indians. Tecumseh, who would not sign the Greenville Treaty, would stir Indians up again in 15 years with the Battle of Tippecanoe.”
1823 - Pope Pius VII, reformer and kidnap victim of Napoleon’s, dies.
1864 - The Second Battle of Deep Bottom ends during the U.S. Civil War with a stalemate.
1905 - The “Tongmenghui (Chinese Revolutionary Alliance) was established at a gathering in Akasaka, Tokyo” to bring down China’s Qing Dynasty.
1940 - A Spanish Communist assassinates exiled Leon Trotsky, likely on orders from Trotsky’s rival, Soviet dictator Stalin.
1968 - Soviets invade Czechoslovakia to put down the “Prague Spring.”
2017 - American comedian Jerry Lewis dies.
August 21
1541 - A Habsburg army suffers a bloody defeat at Buda, Hungary, leaving the Ottoman Turks victorious and in control of central Hungary for the next 150 years.
1754 - Banastre “The Butcher” Tarleton, infamously brutal British officer and war criminal during the American Revolution, is born.
1772 - Gustav III completes his coup, ending the Swedish ‘Age of Liberty’ and installing himself as “enlightened despot.”
1959 - Hawaii becomes the 50th state.
August 22
1485 - The Battle of Bosworth Field ends the Wars of the Roses in England. Lancastrian claimant to the throne Henry Tudor’s troops defeated and killed Yorkist King Richard III. Richard’s crown was found on the field and placed on the head of Henry, who would go on to found the Tudor Dynasty after marrying Elizabeth of York.
1642 - The English Civil War begins between the Royalists and the Parliamentarian Roundheads.
1703 - Edirne Incident: insurrection that deposed Ottoman Sultan Mustafa II.
1838 - Howard B. Cushing, a soldier during the American Civil War and the Indian Wars, is born.
1862 - French composer Claude Debussy is born.
1922 - Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins is ambushed and assassinated by the Anti-Treaty IRA. Tens of thousands of mourners came to pay their respects to Collins’ body.
August 23
1305 - Scottish military hero William Wallace, “Braveheart,” is heinously and brutally executed in London.
1754 - King Louis XVI of France is born. Read more here.
1775 - British King George III, enraged by the Battles of Lexington and Concord and having ignored the Continental Congress’s Olive Branch Petition, declares the American colonies in “open rebellion.”
1912 - American actor and dancer Gene Kelly is born.
1942 - The Italian Cavalleria Savoia execute the last cavalry charge in history, against the Soviets.
1943 - WWII: The Battle of Kursk, “the largest tank battle in history,” ends with Nazi defeat.
August 24
410 - The Visigoths sack Rome, marking the beginning of the end for the Western Roman Empire. “The palaces of the aristocracy were looted, Romans who resisted were killed and women raped by the Visigoths or by slaves who took the opportunity to revenge themselves on their masters.”
1516 - The Ottomans defeat the Mamelukes at the Battle of Marj Dabiq.
1929 - Yasser Arafat, the vicious, genocidal, lustful, bloodthirsty, Jew-hating Islamic father of modern terrorism, is born.
1957 - British actor and writer Stephen Fry is born.
2014 - British actor and director Richard Attenborough dies.
August 25
1530 - Ivan the Terrible, first tsar of Russia, is born.
1609 - “Italian astronomer and philosopher Galilei Galileo showed Venetian merchants his new invention, a telescope.”
1718 - “Louisiana governor Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne of Bienville founded New Orleans on the west bank of the Mississippi…named …in honor of Duke Philip II of Orléans who then reigned over France as Regent.”
1930 - “James Bond” actor Sean Connery is born.
1944 - WWII: The Nazis surrender and Paris is liberated by the Allies, to the joy of Parisians. Nazi Gen. Dietrich von Choltitz surrendered, against the orders of Hitler, who told him to destroy Paris completely.
August 26
1071 - The Seljuq Turks defeat the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert.
1303 - “Alauddin Khilji of the Khilji Dynasty attacked and captured Chittorgarh” in India.
1346 - The Battle of Creçy is a decisive victory for King Edward III of England and his son, the Black Prince, against the King of France during the Hundred Years’ War.
1723 - Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Dutch father of microbiology, dies.
1789 - The radical “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen” is approved by the French Revolution’s National Assembly.
1910 - Mother Teresa, Albanian saint, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, and Nobel Prize winner, is born.
1914 - WWI: The Battle of Tannenberg begins, ultimately will be a German victory over the Russians.
1942 - The Nazi-controlled Vichy regime in France rounds up 6,000 Jews.
1974 - American aviator Charles Lindbergh, “the first aviator to complete a solo transatlantic flight,” dies.
2021 - Amidst Joe Biden’s catastrophic Afghanistan withdrawal, 13 U.S. service members and some 200 Afghanis are killed in a terrorist attack in Kabul.
August 27
479 BC - The Battle of Plataea “was the final clash of the second Persian invasion of Greece with the victory of the allied Greek forces putting a final end to the Persian empire’s expansion.” The Battle of Mycale, also a Greek victory, occurred the same day.
663 - The Battle of Baekgang in Korea is a victory for the Silla and Tang Chinese allies over the Baekje restoration and Yamato Japanese forces.
1883 - The island volcano Krakatoa erupts and triggers tsunamis that kill 36,000 people in Java and Sumatra.
1975 - Haile Selassie I, former emperor of Ethiopia, dies.
1979 - British Lord Louis Mountbatten, cousin of the Queen, is assassinated along with two kids by IRA terrorists.
“Hell is the delusion that some how you and God are separate from each other.” ~ St. Mother Teresa