History of the Week: Independence Day, Gettysburg, Somme, More’s Trial, Adrianople, Farragut, Monroe& More
“We hold these Truths to be self-evident,” says the Declaration of Independence, “that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.” It’s a truth under constant attack in our own day from dictators and Marxists, but we know from history how vital it is to defend liberty. Below are some of the important births, deaths, and events that occurred this past week in history.
July 1
69 - Troops declare Vespasian Roman Emperor during the Year of the Four Emperors.
1097 - Reportedly the date on which the 1st Crusaders defeat the Muslim Sultan at the Battle of Dorylaeum.
1200 - Sunglasses are invented in China.
1244 - Duke Frederick II of Austria issues a charter favorable to Jews.
1535 - Sir (now St.) Thomas More is convicted in a rigged trial for refusing to approve English King Henry VIII’s heresy and divorce. Read more here about Thomas More.
1646 - German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is born; he contributed to the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, logic, philosophy of religion, as well as mathematics, physics, geology, jurisprudence, and history.
1725 - Comte de Rochambeau, the French nobleman and military officer who commanded the French forces sent to aid the American Revolution, is born.
1867 - Canada is recognized by Great Britain as a self-governing state, the autonomous Dominion of Canada.
1896 - American authoress Harriet Beecher Stowe dies. Her anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin made a massive impact on American culture and helped spur the abolitionist movement. The novel was a major best-seller in both England and the U.S., with 300,000 copies sold just in the first year in America. When he met Stowe during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln is said to have commented, “So this is the little lady who started this Great War.”
1899 - Talented and versatile British actor and director Charles Laughton is born.
1916 - The First Battle of the Somme, a bloody and mostly unsuccessful WWI Allied offensive, begins with a day of appalling slaughter. By the end of the offensive in November, 420,000 British, 194,000 French, and 440,000 Germans were dead. A young British signal officer at the Somme, JRR Tolkien, lost all but one of his Oxford friends and incorporated his hellish experience into his fictional world of Middle Earth.
1916 - Olivia de Havilland, popular star of Hollywood’s Golden Age, is born.
1997 - The British hand control of Hong Kong to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This has proven a disaster for Hong Kong, where the CCP has since instituted a harsh religious and political crackdown.
2010 - Ilene Woods, the voice of Disney’s animated Cinderella, dies.
July 2
626 - A palace coup occurs in China, the Incident at Xuanwu Gate. Tang Dynasty's Prince Li Shimin and his followers assassinate Li Shimin’s brothers Crown Prince Li Jiancheng and Prince Li Yuanji. The ambush at the Xuanwu Gate of the imperial capital of Chang'an allowed Li Shimin to be installed as the crown prince, and to achieve the abdication of Emperor Gaozu, at which point Li Shimin became Emperor Taizong.
1779 - Infamous and brutal British Lt. Col. Banastre “The Butcher” Tarleton and his forces initially cause American troops under Col. Sheldon to retreat, but the Americans eventually become the attackers and pursuers. The British went in precipitate retreat, but not before burning various houses and stores in revenge. In fact, according to Pound Ridge Historical, Tarleton had “conquered, plundered, and burned much of the town.”
1776 - Caesar Rodney, delegate for Delaware, arrives exhausted after an 18-hour ride overnight in a storm to reach Philadelphia and the Continental Congress in time to break his state delegation’s tie and ensure that Delaware would vote for independence, thus ensuring passage of the Declaration of Independence. Read my full article for more details.
1823 - Bahia Independence from the Portuguese in Brazil, consolidating Brazil’s separation from Portugal.
1850 - Sir Robert Peel, influential Victorian British Prime Minister, dies after being thrown from his horse.
1925 - Mississippi NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers is born; he was later assassinated by a member of the terrorist KKK. WWII soldier, civil rights champion, and family man, Evers’s heroism inspired many others to fight racism and segregation. As he said, “You can kill a man, but you can’t kill an idea.”
1961 - Pulitzer Prize- and Nobel Prize-winning American writer Ernest Hemingway commits suicide.
1964 - President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act. In both the House and Senate, a majority of Democrats had voted against the Act, while an overwhelming majority of Republicans had voted for it; therefore, though rabidly racist Democrat Johnson got the credit for signing it (Johnson referred to the Act as the “n*gger bill”), it was an Act passed by Republicans in spite of most Congressional Democrats.
1997 - Talented and iconic American actor James Stewart dies. Among his memorable movies were “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “Rear Window,” “The Shop Around the Corner,” “Vertigo,” and “The Man Who Knew Too Much.”
July 3
324 - Constantine I and Licinius fight at the Battle of Adrianople, a resounding victory for Constantine, who would go on to be sole Emperor of the Roman Empire.
1608 - Reported date on which French explorer Samuel de Champlain founds Québec City.
1863 - The Battle of Gettysburg, one of the most important battles of the U.S. Civil War, ends with the failure of the Confederates’ assault (“Pickett’s Charge”) and a victory for the Union. A major failure of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s, and marked the end of his attempted invasion of Union territory. While this was a great victory for the Union to rejoice at, there were many casualties (3,155 Union dead, 3,903 Confederate dead) and the Confederates had also decimated the area’s free black population, rounding up every black Pennsylvanian they could to enslave and ship South. Read my full article for more details.
1971 - Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks journalist who exposed Hillary Clinton’s horrendous corruption in the infamous email cache, is born.
July 4
1054 - “Chinese and Japanese astronomers observed a new, iridescent yellow point of light in the constellation Taurus… this event was likely the supernova that created the Crab Nebula, one of the most spectacular and rare astronomical features in the known universe.”
1776 - The Declaration of Independence is officially approved and promulgated by the Continental Congress, celebrated as the date of American independence from Great Britain and the birthday of the United States.
1803 - U.S. President Jefferson announces the Louisiana Purchase, expanding U.S. territory by 827,000 square miles.
1804 - American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, famous for The Scarlet Letter and many short stories, is born.
1826 - Founding Fathers, signers of the Declaration of Independence, and former presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both die within hours of each other. They were alternately friends and foes throughout their lives, having been allies during the Revolution and later fiercely divided by politics during the early years of the American Republic’s existence. They did reconcile before death, and died on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration Jefferson had written and Adams had worked so hard to pass.
1831 - James Monroe dies. He had been a soldier during the American Revolution and then served in various political offices, including delegate to the Continental Congress, senator, governor of Virginia, minister to France and Great Britain, and most importantly as the fifth U.S. president. Politically aligned with Thomas Jefferson, Monroe “oversaw the major westward expansion of the U.S. and strengthened American foreign policy in 1823 with the Monroe Doctrine, a warning to European countries against further colonization and intervention in the Western Hemisphere.”
1847 - James Anthony Bailey, who made a great success of the Barnum & Bailey Circus, is born.
1878 - Performer and prolific songwriter George M. Cohan, responsible for such classics as “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy,” “Grand Old Flag,” “Mary’s a Grand Old Name,” “Over There,” and “Give My Regards to Broadway,” is born (his birth certificate said July 3, his parents said he was born July 4).
1934 - Leo Szilard files a patent application for the atomic bomb.
1934 - Marie Curie, French scientist who won two Nobel Prizes, dies.
1941 - Multiple mass killings by Nazis of Jews in different places: “Two thousand Jews from Lutsk, Ukraine, are transported to the Lubard Fortress and killed. Fifty-four Jews are killed at Vilna, Lithuania. Germans order Lithuanian militiamen to murder 416 Jewish men and 47 Jewish women at the Seventh Fort.”
1942 - The Soviets win a costly victory against the Nazis during WWII as the Siege of Sevastopol ends.
July 5
1687 - Isaac Newton’s revolutionary Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica is published, with his laws of motion and gravity.
1715 - Reportedly when the Siege of Corinth occurs, during which Turks slaughter a Venetian garrison.
1801 - U.S. Vice Admiral David Farragut is born. Most famous for his order during a Civil War naval battle. “At the time, Farragut was watching the battle while lashed to the rigging of his flagship (USS Hartford). Alarmed, Farragut shouted, ‘What’s the trouble?’ The USS Brooklyn answered, ‘Torpedoes!’ Farragut shouted back, ‘Damn the torpedoes! Four Bells! Captain Drayton, go ahead! Jouett, full speed!’ In the end, Farragut’s fleet defeated Confederate Admiral Franklin Buchanan and the last open seaport on the Gulf of Mexico fell to the Union.”
1810 - P.T. Barnum, who launched the Barnum & Bailey Circus (“The Greatest Show on Earth”), is born in Connecticut.
1850 - Former slave Frederick Douglass delivers his famous speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in New York. While leftists often cherry-pick sections of the speech that slam the hypocrisy of white Americans, and the inapplicability of Independence Day celebrations to those in slavery, it is more accurate to describe the speech as an eloquent argument for why all men, including slaves, should be allowed to share the marvelous freedom and equality the Founding Fathers said were granted to all men by God. Below are sections from Douglass’s speech:
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim…I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost…
There is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT.
1859 - What is now the Midway Atoll is discovered by Captain N.C. Brooks, who names them the Middlebrook Islands and claims them for the United States.
1862 - During the U.S. Civil War, the Battle of Jackson results in the Union successfully defending the Mississippi town, but the Confederates managed to destroy parts of a Union railroad.
1945 - “General Douglas MacArthur released a communique announcing that major combat operations in the Philippine Islands had concluded.” MacArthur had kept his promise to the Filipinos, and had returned and liberated their islands from the Japanese.
Did I miss any important events? Let me know in the comments!