History of the Week: Ben Franklin, Nika Riots, Hancock, Webster, Final Solution, Earp, Benedict Arnold, Galba, Pius V, & More
January can feel slow and dull after the holidays, but it was a tumultuous month in many countries throughout history—as well as a month chock-full of birthdays of key American figures! Below are a few of the important events and birthdays that occurred this past week.
January 12
1729 - Estimated date of the birth of influential Anglo-Irish politician and political theorist Edmund Burke.
1737 - John Hancock is born in Massachusetts. He went on to become the president of the Continental Congress, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and governor of Massachusetts.
1893 - Hermann Göring, Nazi commander of the Luftwaffe (German air force) during World War II, is born.
January 13
1929 - Wyatt Earp, iconic figure of the Wild West and hero of many stories then and since, dies. He is most famous for his role in taking out members of the Clanton-McLaury gang at the OK Corral shootout in 1881, about which you can read here.
2021 - The House of Representatives votes to impeach Donald Trump a second time on utterly bogus charges of inciting an insurrection, a flagrantly political demonstration.
January 14
1741 - Benedict Arnold is born. Though he served bravely on the side of the Patriots for the first part of the American Revolution, his ego and ambition infamously drove him to become a traitor, switching to the British side in the conflict.
1761 - The Afghanis defeat the Indian Marathas in the Third Battle of Panipat.
1943 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt arrives in Morocco for the start of a 10-day conference with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on the Allies’ plan for prosecuting World War II, including the requirement for “unconditional surrender” from the German Nazis and Imperial Japan.
January 15
588 BC - Estimated date of Babylon’s Nebuchadnezzar beginning his siege of Jerusalem, eventually leading to the Babylonian Captivity and the destruction of the glorious Temple built by Solomon (see 4 Kings 25).
69 AD - Roman Emperor Galba is assassinated by his former ally Otho, who, bitter at being passed over for Galba’s heir, bribed the Praetorian Guard to assist him. Galba had been the successor of infamous Emperor Nero.
1535 - King Henry VIII, having become a heretic by breaking with the Vatican so he could divorce his lawful wife, proclaims himself Head of the Church of England.
1929 - Martin Luther King Jr. is born. While he was an inspiring American civil rights leader, he also had serious moral flaws, including plagiarizing and serial adultery.
2009 - Pilot Captain Sullenberger accomplishes the “Miracle on the Hudson” when he safely lands his plan on NYC’s Hudson River after the engines failed.
January 16
27 BC - Reported as the date on which Octavian was given the title Augustus (“majestic”), under which he became famous as Augustus Caesar.
1547 - Reported date of the coronation of Ivan the Terrible, Russia’s first Czar (Tsar).
1901 - Hiram Revels, a Republican who had served as the first black American senator, dies.
1992 - El Salvador’s bloody 12-year civil war ends with the signing of a peace accord.
January 17
1504 - Antonio Ghislieri, the future Pope St. Pius V, is born. He would implement the reforms of the Council of Trent.
1706 - Benjamin Franklin is born in Boston. One of the most famous and influential of the American Founding Fathers, a “statesman, author, publisher, scientist, inventor and diplomat,” he helped draft the Declaration of Independence, negotiated the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolution, and was also a delegate to the Constitutional Convention.
1773 - Captain James Cook and his crew become the first to cross the Antarctic Circle in their ship.
1991 - America’s Operation Desert Storm begins against Iraq.
January 18
1778 - Captain Cook becomes the first European to discover the Sandwich Islands, better known now as Hawaii.
1782 - Daniel Webster is born. A famous American politician and subject of popular folklore—including “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” where Webster is depicted winning his case for a man’s soul against the Devil—he worked to save the Union amidst the increasingly violent and divisive slavery debate. While Webster compromised on slavery in politics, he personally helped liberate multiple slaves.
1882 - English author A.A. Milne is born. Milne created the iconic Winnie-the-Pooh stories, featuring his son Christopher Robin and the latter’s toy bear.
1904 - Iconic star of the Golden Age of Hollywood, Cary Grant, is born in England as Archibald Leach.
January 19
532 - Byzantine Empress Theodora refuses to let her husband Justinian flee Constinople amidst dangerous riots, started by the Green and Blue chariot racing factions after the attempted execution of two of their athletes. The Nika riots, named because of the racing chant Nika (“win!”), threatened to unseat and possibly kill Justinian as the angry mobs selected a new emperor. Gen. Belisarius and his troops ultimately invaded the Hippodrome amphitheater and massacred an estimated 30,000 people, or up to 10% of the city’s population. After that, Justinian and Theodora had little difficulty in resuming harsh control of the city.
1807 - Robert E. Lee is born. Born to a Revolutionary War hero and married to a descendent of Martha Washington, his service during the Mexican-American War and his leadership of West Point made him respected and famous. He turned traitor during the Civil War, however, putting loyalty to his state and its obsession with preserving slavery over loyalty to the country his father fought so hard to create. Though he had previously freed his own slaves, his top military position in the Confederate Army caused him to act in an increasingly racist and morally evil manner, and he enforced the egregious Confederate law that ordered the war crimes of the rounding up of every “slave” (i.e. every black person encountered by the Confederates, free or not), the enslavement or murder of every black Union soldier, and the execution of white Union officers of black troops. This culminated in Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Ft. Pillow massacre of hundreds of black and white Union troops who surrendered. It was after the massacre and Forrest’s boasting about it, at the end of the war, that Lee praised Forrest as his greatest general.
Lee also refused to include black Union troops who were claimed to be former slaves in prisoner exchanges, further declining to treat black POWs the same as white POWs, in accordance with the Confederate legislation. After the war, Lee strongly argued against giving black Americans the right to vote (which they originally had when the Constitution was first ratified) in Congressional testimony, saying of black Americans, “at this time, they cannot vote intelligently, and that giving them the right of suffrage would open the door to a great deal of demagogism, and lead to embarrassments in various ways.” Democrats actively terrorized black Americans to prevent them from voting, as the latter overwhelmingly voted Republican and disrupted the previous majority white Democrats had when their states’ substantial black population couldn’t vote.
1809 - Famous American writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe is born.
1812 - The Duke of Wellington and his British troops storm Ciudad Rodrigo during the Peninsular War.
January 20
1841 - China cedes Hong Kong to the British during the First Opium war.
1942 - “15 high-ranking Nazi Party and German government officials gathered at a villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee to discuss and coordinate the implementation of what they called the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Question.’ [Holocaust Encyclopedia]”
1945 - U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, dying but still desperate to cling to power, is inaugurated for an unprecedented fourth term. He died a few months later. A Constitutional amendment subsequently prevented any other president from serving more than two terms.
1955 - The Battle of Yijiangshan Islands concludes, a conflict which began with the Communist Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) unjustly attacking the Nationalist Chinese (Taiwanese), with much of the latter force being killed by the PLA.
1981 - After the economic and international crises of the Democrat Jimmy Carter administration, Republican Ronald Reagan is inaugurated as U.S. president. Reagan helped bring down the Soviet Union and reinvigorated America.
Did I miss any important events? Let me know in the comments.
This year it might 🐝 a blessing not to have made it into the stupor bowl. Trump would be wise to stay away this year. This Nika Bowl is ripe for a Sodom and Gomorrah statement to the Mobsters to play nice, even though they are being replaced by more violent MS-13, HamAss and Antifa/BLM thug street gangs.
From the BatMan (FauXi Corona Virus) movie The Dark Knight playbook, shock awe a football stadium with Bane’s (Mitt Romney’s) old Soviet signature Nuke we got from Ukraine. And let all the criminals in Gotham out on the streets.
The Nika Riots Bowl of 2024.
Nika sounds a whole lot like Nikki Nikkita. Jus sayin’, pray and gird your loins.