History of the Week: Cannae, Young Ireland, Mark Antony, 3rd Ypres, Melville, Spanish Armada, St. Olaf &More
“The main thing is to make history, not to write it,” Otto von Bismarck said. But it is still necessary that someone write history so the heroes of tomorrow might understand what occurred yesterday to create our situation today. Below are some of the important births, deaths, and events that happened this past week in history.
July 29
1030 - King St. Olav Haraldsson or Olaf of Norway is killed at the Battle of Stiklestad by his own former nobles. Olaf was posthumously titled the “Eternal King of Norway.”
1588 - Spain’s “Invincible Armada” meet English naval forces off the coast of England; the Armada was subsequently defeated and Spanish hopes for invading the island nation dashed.
1848 - “[Irish Central] Young Ireland movement's attempt at a rebellion against the British came to an abrupt end, culminating in the arrest of its leader William [Smith O’Brien]…[after] the worst year of the Irish Great Hunger, Young Ireland were hoping to uprise and overthrow the British, but with the starving Irish just struggling to stay alive, dying, or emigrating in thousands, their revolutionary talk did little to act as a call to arms for the average Irish person…Smith [O’Brien] launched his rebellion but was quickly brought to heel in Co Tipperary, where a brief skirmish in a cabbage patch saw the attempt crushed by a government police detachment. This fight became known as the ‘Battle of Widow McCormack's Cabbage Patch.’
He was also sentenced to death for treason, but his sentence was commuted to transportation to the penal colony at Tasmania.”
1856 - German composer Robert Schumann dies.
1883 - Future Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini is born.
1890 - Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh dies.
1905 - U.S. Secretary of War William Howard Taft draws up a secret agreement with the Prime Minister of Japan, subsequently approved by President Theodore Roosevelt, which allows Japan to dominate Korea in exchange for Japan not objecting to U.S. control in the Philippines.
1921 - Adolf Hitler becomes the leader of the German National Socialist German Workers' Party, more famously known as the Nazis.
July 30
1419 - The First Defenestration of Prague occurs, as radical anti-Catholic Hussites throw seven city councilmen out a window to their deaths.
1619 - “[History] In Jamestown, Virginia, the first elected legislative assembly in the New World—the House of Burgesses—convenes in the choir of the town’s church.
1718 - William Penn, Quaker founder of Pennsylvania, dies.
1863 - The U.S. and the Northwestern Shoshones ratify the Treaty of Box Elder.
1898 - Otto von Bismarck, founder of the united German Empire, dies.
1937 - Soviet NKVD head Nikolai Yezhov issues Prikaz (Order) Number 00447 to expand the murderous “Great Terror” in the Soviet Union.
1961 - Actor Laurence Fishburne is born.
1996 - Oscar-winning actress Claudette Colbert dies.
1997 - Bảo Đại, last emperor of Vietnam, dies.
July 31
54 BC - Aurelia Cotta, mother of Julius Caesar, dies.
30 BC - The Battle of Alexandria, where Mark Antony has a minor victory over Octavian. Antony’s forces largely deserted, however, afterwards, and Antony later committed suicide.
1620 - The Pilgrims depart Leiden, the Netherlands, to sail to England.
1784 - Denis Diderot, French Enlightenment philosopher, dies.
1886 - Hungarian composer Franz Liszt dies.
1912 - Nobel Prize-winning U.S. economist Milton Friedman is born.
1917 - The Battle of Passchendaele occurs during WWI. It “served as a vivid symbol of the mud, madness, and senseless slaughter of the Western Front. The third and longest battle to take place at the Belgian city of Ypres, Passchendaele was ostensibly an Allied victory, but it was achieved at enormous cost for a piece of ground that would be vacated the following year.”
1929 - The first Mickey Mouse short where the character speaks is released, “The Karnival Kid.” Carl Stalling did the voice for Mickey, while Walt Disney provided the voice for Minnie Mouse!
1965 - British authoress JK Rowling, creator of “Harry Potter,” is born.
2007 - Operation Banner, the British Army’s occupation in Northern Ireland and its longest-running continuous operation, comes to an end.
August 1
30 BC - Possible date on which Roman Mark Antony, having lost his war with Octavian, commits suicide. Antony’s lover Queen Cleopatra of Egypt commits suicide soon after.
10 BC - Future Roman emperor Claudius is born. He was murdered by his wife Agrippina through poisoned mushrooms, so her son Nero could take the throne.
527 - Roman Emperor Justin I dies, making his nephew Justinian I sole ruler of the empire.
1085 - “[BBC] The Domesday survey and Domesday Book have generally been seen as the culmination of the Norman Conquest, and show the results of a great investigation, commissioned by William the Conqueror, of the lands over which he now ruled…[the final] draft was scheduled to be presented to King William at the Great Convocation of Salisbury, at Old Sarum, on 1 August 1085, at which all the magnates of the land would swear allegiance to him. However, it was not ready in time, and a copy of Little Domesday is believed to have been used instead.”
1096 - Peter the Hermit and his People’s Crusade arrive at Constantinople.
1498 - Explorer Christopher Columbus first sees South America.
1770 - William Clark, of the famous exploring team Lewis and Clark, is born in Virginia. Clark traveled thousands of miles to explore America’s newly-acquired Western lands.
1794 - Thousands of rebels gather in Pennsylvania to launch the Whiskey Rebellion, protesting an unpopular tax.
1819 - Herman Melville, author of the great American novel Moby-Dick, is born.
1834 - The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 comes into effect, ending slavery in the British Empire.
1914 - WWI: France mobilizes troops and Germany declares war on Russia.
August 2
338 BC - The Battle of Chaeronea is a victory for Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great over a coalition of Greek city-states, ensuring the Macedonians will dominate Greece.
216 BC - The Battle of Cannae occurs, a dark day for the Romans. “Republican Rome was pushed to the brink of collapse on August 2, 216 B.C., when the Carthaginian general Hannibal annihilated at least 50,000 of its legionaries at the Second Punic War’s Battle of Cannae.”
1776 - 56 delegates to the Continental Congress sign the official copy of the Declaration of Independence, which had been approved the month before.
1832 - The Battle of Bad Axe, Wisconsin, ends, and with it the Black Hawk War, a conflict between the Americans and native warriors. Also called the “Black Hawk Massacre” because a group of Indians were allegedly trying to retreat across a river when they were killed by the U.S. Army.
1858 - “Parliament passed the Government of India Act, transferring British power over India from the East India Company, whose ineptitude was primarily blamed for the mutiny, to the crown.”
1876 - James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok is murdered while playing cards. “Wild Bill Hickok is remembered for his services in Kansas as sheriff of Hays City and marshal of Abilene, where his ironhanded rule helped to tame two of the most lawless towns on the frontier. He is also remembered for the cards he was holding when he was shot dead – a pair of black aces and a pair of black eights – since known as the dead man's hand.”
1905 - Actress Myrna Loy, “Queen of the Movies,” is born in Montana.
1922 - Scottish-born American inventor of the telephone Alexander Graham Bell dies.
1932 - English actor Peter O’Toole, iconic star of “Lawrence of Arabia,” is born.
1934 - Paul von Hindenburg, German WWI commander and ineffective president of the Nazi-fied Weimar Republic, dies.
Did I miss any important events? Let me know in the comments.