History of the Week: D-Day, Belleau, N.Hale, Bill of Rights, Tiananmen, Dunkirk, Sack of Rome, 6 Day War& More
“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history,” observed George Orwell. It is vitally important to understand the past so we can understand and choose well in the present. Below are a few of the important births, deaths, and events that occurred this past week in history.
June 2
455 - The barbarian Vandals under Genseric begin the weeks-long sack of Rome, a pivotal historical moment as it spelled the beginning of the end of the Western Roman Empire.
1857 - English composer Edward Elgar is born.
1882 - Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi, who conquered Sicily and Naples with his guerilla Redshirts and thus furthered the unification of Italy, dies.
1896 - Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi files a patent for wireless telegraphy in England.
1940 - WWII: British Capt. William Tennant triumphantly radioes the Dover command post that the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) had been successfully evacuated. With Allied troops stranded in France, pinned down by the Nazis, Operation Dynamo was launched gathering every sort of small craft (including many civilian craft) available to evacuate the BEF across the English Channel. By June 4, the “Miracle of Dunkirk” had been achieved.
1941 - Yankee player and baseball Hall of Famer Lou Gehrig dies.
June 3
1098 - The Siege of Antioch during the First Crusade ends with the Crusaders capturing the city, a key event on the path to Christian victory over the Muslims.
1621 - The States-General of the Netherlands grants a charter to a group of Dutch merchants for the establishment of the Dutch West India Company, in its heyday a profitable and powerful company that controlled Dutch settlements and trafficked in African slaves.
1875 - Georges Bizet, French composer best known for his opera “Carmen,” dies.
1929 - The Treaty of Lima settles a territorial dispute between Peru and Chile.
1963 - Pope John XXIII, the pope who opened Vatican Council II and thus launched a disastrous movement in the Catholic Church, dies.
1989 - Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, radical Islamic cleric, leader of the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution, and mass murderer, dies.
June 4
1738 - King George III of Great Britain, the tyrannical and mentally ill monarch who lost the American colonies during the Revolution, is born.
1896 - “Henry Ford unveiled his first vehicle, the Quadricycle, in Detroit.” Its popularity eventually led to the founding of the Ford Motor Company.
1942 - Nazi Reinhard Heydrich dies due to complications following an assassination attempt. “Heydrich was one of the main architects of the ‘Final Solution.’ He was chief of the Reich Security Main Office, the SS and police agency most directly concerned with implementing the Nazi plan to murder Jews of Europe during World War II [Holocaust Encyclopedia].”
1989 - The culmination of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, when tens of thousands (the exact number is not known) of freedom protestors were slaughtered by the Chinese Communist Party. Read more here.
June 5
70 AD - Titus and his Roman legions, determined to stamp out Jewish rebellion against Roman rule, breach the middle wall of Jerusalem. The city would eventually be sacked, many of the inhabitants massacred, and the Temple destroyed.
1910 - Great American writer William Sydney Porter, better known as O. Henry, whose most famous short story is probably “The Gift of the Magi,” dies.
1947 - U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall sets forth the Marshall Plan for the post-WWII rebuilding of Europe, to be financed by American money.
1967 - Start of the Six Day War, an unjust attack of the Arab League on the Jewish state of Israel. The Muslim Arabs were determined that no Jewish nation should exist (they are equally determined today, as the ongoing conflict between Hamas and Israel shows). The Israelis were victorious and won back territory that should have belonged to them all along, as it was part of ancient Israel and had been previously and unjustly seized by the murderous Arabs. Though the war ended with Israeli victory, the Arabs would not agree to peace with Israel. They continue to wage jihad on Israel to this day.
1968 - Democrat Sen. Robert F. Kennedy is fatally shot after winning the California presidential primary.
2004 - Ronald Reagan, a popular actor and then one of the greatest U.S. presidents in history (whose accomplishments included kneecapping the Soviet Union), dies. Read my tribute to him here.
June 6
640 - A second Muslim Arab army arrives to besiege the Byzantine city of Heliopolis in Egypt; the ensuing battle was a major victory for the Muslims and marked the beginning of the end of Byzantine Christian rule in Egypt.
1513 - The Battle of Novara, the last great military victory for the Old Swiss Confederation, a victory over the French.
1755 - Nathan Hale is born in Connecticut. A daring soldier and spy in the American Revolutionary Army, his risky mission to gather intelligence behind enemy lines led to his capture and execution. His famous last words are, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”
1799 - Patrick Henry dies. ‘Patrick Henry was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and the first governor of Virginia. A gifted orator and major figure in the American Revolution, his rousing speeches—which included a 1775 speech to the Virginia legislature in which he famously declared, “Give me liberty, or give me death!”—fired up America’s fight for independence. An outspoken Anti-Federalist, Henry opposed the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, which he felt put too much power in the hands of a national government. His influence helped create the Bill of Rights, which guaranteed personal freedoms and set limits on the government’s constitutional power.’
1862 - The First Battle of Memphis occurs during the U.S. Civil War, a “crushing defeat” for the Confederates as the Union essentially wiped out Confederate naval presence on the strategically important Mississippi River.
1882 - “The Battle of Embabo was fought 6 June 1882, between the Shewan forces of Negus Menelik IIand the Gojjame forces of Negus Tekle Haymanot…. [it] led to Shewan supremacy over the rest of Ethiopia.”
1916 - Yuan Shikai, who had briefly declared himself emperor of China, dies.
1918 - The U.S. Marines launch what would become a famous attack into Belleau Wood in France during WWI. Despite the devastating casualties—more Marines died the first day of fighting than had previously died in over 140 years of the Marine Corps’ existence—it was a victory for the American Army and Marines over the Germans. It is said that, due to the Marines’ fierce fighting at Belleau, they were nicknamed “Teufel Hunden” by the Germans, or “Devil Dogs,” a nickname Marines still proudly claim to this day.
1944 - The WWII Allied D-Day invasion landings on the beaches and coastal towns of Nazi-controlled Normandy, marking the start of the campaign that would doom the Nazi regime to defeat in Europe. Read stories of heroism from the Normandy campaign here.
June 7
1329 - Robert the Bruce dies. He “was the king of Scotland (1306–29), who freed Scotland from English rule, winning the decisive Battle of Bannockburn (1314) and ultimately confirming Scottish independence in the Treaty of Northampton (1328).”
1494 - The Treaty of Tordesillas, following papal intervention, splits the Americas between Spain and Portugal.
1628 - The Petition of Right is approved, originally sent by Parliament to King Charles I, as a complaint against alleged royal breaches of law. “The petition sought recognition of four principles: no taxation without the consent of Parliament, no imprisonment without cause, no quartering of soldiers on subjects, and no martial law in peacetime [Britannica].”
1654 - Reported date on which Louis XIV, the “Sun King,” is crowned king of France. The excesses of Louis’s court were a contributing factor in the events that led to the French Revolution; unfortunately, Louis XIV being already dead, the Revolution claimed the lives of the Sun King’s innocent descendent Louis XVI and his family.
1906 - Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige, a trailblazing baseball pitcher first in the Negro Leagues and then in the Major League, is born in Alabama.
1917 - Italian-American singer and actor Dean Martin is born in Steubenville, Ohio.
1929 - Vatican City becomes an independent and sovereign state within Italy.
1942 - The historic and pivotal naval Battle of Midway, during which the Americans inflicted crippling losses on the Japanese fleet. It was a turning point in the Pacific theater of WWII. Read more here.
2015 - Award-winning English actor Christopher Lee dies. Appeared in many great films and cult classics, including the Lord of the Rings (as Saruman), Dracula, and Star Wars films.
June 8
452 - Reportedly the date on which Attila the Hun invaded Italy.
793 - Vikings come and plunder the great English monastery of Lindisfarne, home to the relics of St. Cuthbert. An Anglo-Saxon chronicle notes that “heathen men came and miserably destroyed God’s church on Lindisfarne, with plunder and slaughter.”
1191 - During the Third Crusade, King Richard I of England, famously known as Richard the Lionheart, arrives at the port of Acre in the Holy Land to join the crusaders fighting the Muslims in the Siege of Acre.
1376 - Edward the “Black Prince” of England, a key figure in the Hundred Years’ War between England and France, dies. “His military prowess and chivalric reputation made him an exemplar of medieval knighthood, embodying both the virtues and the violence of his era.” His tomb in Canterbury Cathedral, next to the spot where the shrine of Thomas a Becket once stood, remains a place of historic interest today (see below).
1783 - The Laki volcanic eruption in Iceland kills over 9,000 people. The ensuing famine then killed about 20,000; in all, one-third of Iceland’s population perished.
1789 - “[Constitution Center] James Madison addressed the House of Representatives and introduced a proposed Bill of Rights to the Constitution. More than three months later, Congress would finally agree on a final list of Rights to present to the states.” Madison’s proposed Bill of Rights was based on the Bill that Founder George Mason had proposed years earlier. While not all of Madison’s original proposals made it onto the final Bill of Rights, among those that did are such key rights as free speech, keeping and bearing arms, speedy trials, and religious freedom.
1809 - Thomas Paine, the writer whose work “American Crisis” saved the American Revolutionary cause during a period of near-despair, dies.
1810 - Romantic-era classical German composer Robert Schumann is born. His wife, Clara, was also a composer.
1845 - Andrew Jackson dies. A military hero of the War of 1812, he went on to become the first Democrat president, partly—or largely—by lying and deception. Among his egregious and unconstitutional acts was the Indian Removal Act, which resulted in the deaths of some 4,000 natives. As a corrupt, racist, anti-constitutional liar, Jackson set the tone for over 200 years of Democrat leadership.
1867 - Famous U.S. architect Frank Lloyd Wright is born.
1966 - U.S. pilot Joseph A. Walker, the first pilot to fly an airplane into space, is killed in an airplane collision.
Did I miss any important events? Let me know in the comments.