History of the Week: Washington, Boston Tea Party, Beethoven, Christmas Carol, Valley Forge, Wright Flyer, Austen, Nero, Paine, & More
George Santayana, who was born this week in the 1860s, observed, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Below are some of the important events that occurred this past week in history.
December 14
1546 - Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe is born.
1774 - New Hampshire militia attack the British Fort William and Mary to confiscate the arsenal. Considered by some to be the first engagement of what would become the American Revolution.
1799 - George Washington, the first U.S. President and Father of Our Country, dies at his Mount Vernon home. The healthy 67-year-old had been out riding in bad weather, and stayed in wet clothes for dinner; that night, George told his wife Martha he was so ill he could scarcely breathe. Washington’s overseer bled him and then doctors “bled him four more times over the next eight hours, with a total blood loss of 40 percent.” On Dec. 14, Washington passed away, his final words being, “Do you understand me? . . . Tis well!” There is still hot debate over what illness actually killed Washington, with numerous theories being posited. Washington ensured in his will that all of his slaves would be freed. There is a debated story, based on the testimony of Washington’s own slaves and Jesuit annals, that Washington became a Catholic on his deathbed. He was certainly always very pro-Catholic (unusual among many Protestants of the time), for instance ending the Revolutionaries’ celebration of Guy Fawkes Day for its anti-Catholicism, and he owned a beautiful image of the Blessed Virgin which still remains on display at Mount Vernon today, in the room Washington built for social gatherings (see below).
1819 - Alabama becomes the 22nd American state.
1861 - Prince Albert, royal consort of Britain’s Queen Victoria, dies. His untimely death devastated Victoria, who wore black as a sign of her mourning for the rest of her life.
1896 - James Doolittle is born in California. He went on to lead the famous first aerial attack on the Japanese mainland, known as the “Doolittle Raid,” and served in various commander positions in the Army Air Corps during WWII. He received the Medal of Honor and became “the first person in Air Force Reserve history to wear four stars,” which were pinned on by Ronald Reagan.
1911 - “Norwegian Roald Amundsen becomes the first explorer to reach the South Pole.”
1939 - Soviet Russia is expelled from the League of Nations (precursor to the United Nations) for invading Finland.
1962 - America’s “Mariner 2 became the first successful mission to another planet when it flew by Venus on December 14, 1962.”
December 15
533 - Estimated date of the Battle of Tricamarum, a victory for the Byzantine general Belisarius against the Vandals. It was a key factor in allowing the Byzantine empire to make North Africa a province, which provided Belisarius a stage to prepare his reconquest of Italy.
37 AD - Future Roman emperor Nero is born. He was famous for his perverted and extravagant lifestyle, for his cruelty, for burning Rome (though there is some debate about his exact role in the conflagration), and for overseeing the worst Roman persecution of Christians.
1791 - The first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution—the Bill of Rights—come into force after being approved by three-fourths of state legislatures.
1832 - Gustave Eiffel is born in France. A civil engineer, he built the Eiffel Tower that has become such a famous landmark in Paris, and he also helped design the framework of the Statue of Liberty that France gifted to America.
1944 - The plane carrying very popular American band leader and musician Glenn Miller disappears over the English Channel. Miller was on his way to entertain U.S. troops in Paris.
1961 - Former Nazi official Adolf Eichmann is sentenced to death in Israel for his role as the architect of the “final solution of the Jewish question” in the Holocaust.
1966 - Hugely influential American artist and innovator Walt Disney dies. See my previous article on the creation of Walt’s most famous character, Mickey Mouse.
December 16
755 - An Lushan begins his Rebellion against China’s Tang dynasty, founding a rival Yan dynasty.
1485 - Catalina or Catherine of Aragon is born, to famous Spanish rulers Isabella and Ferdinand. Catherine became the first wife of Henry VIII, who later divorced her and became a heretic in pursuit of his goal to have a “legitimate” male heir. Catherine’s only child was the unfortunate Queen Mary I of England.
1598 - Reported date of the naval Battle of Noryang Point, in which the Koreans stopped the Japanese invasion of their country with the help of Chinese allies.
1653 - Vicious Puritan dictator Oliver Cromwell is sworn in as Lord Protector of Great Britain. He caused bloodshed in England, Scotland, and Ireland; in the latter alone, as much as 41% of the Irish population perished during anti-Catholic Cromwell’s reign.
1773 - The famous Boston Tea Party occurs, a major event leading up to the American Revolution. A group of over 100 men, some disguised as Mohawks and many from the “Sons of Liberty” group, board three tea ships and dump over 300 crates of tea into Boston Harbor in protest of the Tea Act, which colonists saw as part of the British government’s ongoing dictatorial overreach in ruling the American colonies. “No taxation without representation” was the cry. The whole proceeding was actually quite orderly and well-planned, with the colonists themselves ensuring no tea was stolen, no people were injured, and no property was destroyed but the tea. Below is Walt Disney’s musical tribute to the Boston Tea Party, from Johnny Tremain:
1775 - English authoress Jane Austen is born. Her novels—particularly Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, and Sense and Sensibility—are considered classics of English literature, and in modern times have spawned dozens of film and mini-series adaptions. Read my previous article for some of her witty quotes.
1863 - Philosopher and humanist George Santayana is born in Spain. His best-known quote is, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
1944 - The “Germans launch the last major offensive of [WWII], Operation Autumn Mist, also known as the Ardennes Offensive and the Battle of the Bulge, an attempt to push the Allied front line west from northern France to northwestern Belgium. The Battle of the Bulge, so-called because the Germans created a ‘bulge’ around the area of the Ardennes forest in pushing through the American defensive line, was the largest fought on the Western front [History.com].”
1998 - Start of Operation Desert Fox, in which America and Britain bombed targets in Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein from producing, storing, maintaining, or delivering Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). The reality about Iraq’s WMD program is still debated to this day.
December 17
1398 - The Battle of Delhi occurs between two Muslim rulers; Mongol-Turkish Timur (also known as Tamerlane) accused Sultan Nasiruddin Mahmud of Delhi in India of being too lenient to his Hindu subjects. The charge of Timur’s horsemen, and reportedly Timur’s use of camels with burning kindling amidst the Sultan’s elephants, helped secure Timur the victory. Timur then initiated a devastating sack of Delhi.
1538 - Pope Paul III excommunicates King Henry VIII of England, who had declared himself Head of the Church of England so he could illicitly divorce his wife Catherine in order to marry his mistress Anne Boleyn (whom he later executed).
1760 - Deborah Sampson, who later disguised herself as a man in 1782 and served in the American Revolutionary Army, is born.
1770 - Composer and musician Ludwig van Beethoven is baptized in Cologne. He is one of the most famous, inspiring, original, and influential composers in music history.
1903 - Near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, a seemingly impossible dream of mankind came true—a flying machine was a success! The Wright Brothers had initiated a new era with their invention. “Orville Wright completed the first powered flight of a heavier-than-air aircraft known as the Wright Flyer. The flight lasted just 12 seconds, traveled 120 feet, and reached a top speed of 6.8 miles per hour…highest altitude reached in any of the flights was about 10 feet [NASA.gov].” Orville and his brother Wilber completed four flights in all that day, taking turns as pilot, though the Flyer was wrecked beyond repair at the end of the fourth flight. The Flyer was restored and is now on display at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
1971 - A two-week war between India and Pakistan ends with the latter’s surrender to India.
2003 - The final installment of the film adaption of JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, “The Return of the King,” is released in theaters. The movie won a whopping 11 Academy Awards, including for Best Picture and Best Director.
December 18
218 BC - Estimated date of the Battle of the Trebia during the Second Punic War between Carthage and the Roman Republic. Carthaginian general Hannibal completely defeated the Romans.
1271 - Reported date of Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan renaming his empire “Yuan” for the start of the Yuan Dynasty in Mongolia and China.
1878 - Russian mass murderer and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin is born. Stalin was responsible for the deaths of between 20 and 60 million victims.
1892 - Premier of Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet “The Nutcracker.” While it was not a success at the time, it has since become a popular staple of the Christmas season.
1916 - The Battle of Verdun, the longest military engagement of WWI, finally ends. After ten months of bloody fighting, there were 377,000 French casualties and 330,000 German casualties, and the German effort had failed.
2019 - President Donald Trump is impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives (the Senate did not follow suit). The politically-fueled impeachment was an outrageous instance of injustice based on false accusations that he sought foreign election interference. In actuality, the Democrats were the ones who interfered with and stole the election from Trump. While Trump was accused of abusing his presidential power to investigate his thoroughly corrupt rival Joe Biden, it turns out that Democrat Barack Obama had really abused his presidential power to spy on then-candidate Trump’s campaign before the 2016 election.
December 19
1732 - Founding Father Benjamin Franklin’s first publication of the proverb collection Poor Richard’s Almanack. It became one of the most popular publications in the American colonies, with about 10,000 copies sold annually on average.
1776 - Thomas Paine’s “The American Crisis” is published to address the morale crisis among American Revolutionaries. “These are the times that try men’s souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph,” Paine began. Gen. George Washington had Paine’s message read to his dispirited and fast-shrinking Army, and the men rallied again under the inspiration of Paine’s words. They went on to the victories of the Trenton campaign starting on Christmas 1776.
1777 - The “ill-supplied Continental Army led by General George Washington arrived at Valley Forge after a tough season of campaigning against the British. The revolutionary army fought hard at Brandywine, Germantown, and Whitemarsh, but ultimately failed to prevent the British from occupying [the] capital city of Philadelphia [National Park Service].” About 12,000 soldiers and hundreds of civilians were part of the weary Army who settled in for a harsh winter in the Pennsylvania town.
1843 - Charles Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol is published in London. The tale of how the miser Scrooge becomes a jolly, generous man through the intervention of four spirits has become one of the most beloved and well-known Christmas tales. It had such an impact on the English-speaking world’s celebration of the birth of Christ that Dickens has been called “The Man Who Invented Christmas.”
1946 - Murderous Communist Vietnamese dictator Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh launches an attack against the French in Hanoi, the start of the First Indochina War, starting a series of conflicts including the Vietnam War Americans fought. The brutal Vietnamese Communists were supported by the even more brutal Chinese Communist Party during the conflicts.
1998 - Democrat U.S. President Bill Clinton is impeached by the House for perjury and obstruction of justice, becoming only the second impeached president. Unfortunately, the Senate acquitted Clinton, despite the president’s guilt.
Did I miss any important events? Let me know in the comments.