This Week in History: US Revolution, Mao, Marie Antoinette, John Brown, El Cid, Persian Shah, JPII, Zama, and More
This Week in History: US Revolution, Mao, Marie Antoinette, John Brown, El Cid, Persian Shah, JPII, Zama, and More
As the rumblings of World War III seem to be threatening the world, one cannot but recall the warning that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. This week is packed with important historical events, key parts of our past that can help us understand how we got here and where we should go in the future—avoiding the mistakes of the past, but taking note of our ancestors’ victories.
(Quotes in this article are from History Place or PeoPlaid or On This Day.)
October 16
1311 - The Catholic Church’s 15th ecumenical council, the Council of Vienne, opens.
1384 - Though a woman, St. Jadwiga is crowned King (or monarch) of Poland.
1758 - Founding Father Noah Webster, most famous for compiling the dictionary that bears his name, was born in Connecticut.
1793 - French Queen Marie Antoinette is executed under the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror. Contrary to legend, Marie Antoinette never said “Let them eat cake,” and she and her husband were actually democratically-minded monarchs; Louis, unfortunately too weak to stop the inevitable crisis after years of aristocratic and royal corruption, was attempting reforms.1 Marie Antoinette was a woman with a compassionate heart, a devoted mother to her children, and she certainly tried to help the poor:
“For example, she established a home for unwed mothers and gave food to the starving (presumably including the bread she was supposed to be unconcerned about). When a famine hit in 1787, she sold her own royal flatware to buy grain for those in need. At another time, when a man was accidentally struck by her carriage, she paid for his medical care and supported his family until he was in good health again. Other accounts attest to her taking care of a peasant who had been wounded by a wild animal, as well as taking in a young boy who had been orphaned. Even without the objective evidence that Marie Antoinette was not the origin of the ‘cake’ sentiment, actions like these make it clear such a statement wasn't in her nature.”
While her husband Louis undoubtedly committed mistakes (he seems to have been, unfortunately for him and his family, rather weak by nature), the murderous disaster of the French Revolution and its Reign of Terror proved that his opponents were, in the end, exponentially worse than he and Marie Antoinette were. Indeed, the evidence is that Marie Antoinette, who lived to see her husband and beloved children torn from her, was an exceptionally good-hearted woman—a woman who even had kind words for the vicious and inhuman brute who served as her executioner.
1853 - Crimean War begins, involving the Turkish Ottoman Empire, Russia, France, Britain, and parts of Italy.
1854 - Poet, playwright, and novelist Oscar Wilde is born in Dublin, Ireland.
1859 - “Fanatical abolitionist John Brown seized the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry with about 20 followers. Three days later, Brown was captured and the insurrection was put down by U.S. Marines under the command of Col. Robert E. Lee. Brown was convicted by the Commonwealth of Virginia of treason, murder, and inciting slaves to rebellion, and was hanged on December 2, 1859.” Ironically, the first victim of John Brown’s Raiders was a black man, Heyward Shepherd. Brown was kind and well-intentioned toward slaves, and he inspired many abolitionists and slaves seeking freedom, but he killed white men in brutal ways (see Pottawatomie Massacre), and he definitely displayed characteristics of crazy fanaticism; his character is still debated today, some calling him “hero,” some calling him “villain.” The tune for the great American hymn “Battle Hymn of the Republic” was borrowed from a song that served as a rallying cry for abolitionists and Union soldiers during the Civil War era: “John Brown’s Body.”
1863 - U.S. Grant, who would lead Union victory in the Civil War and go on to the presidency, is given command of Union forces in the West.
1886 - David Ben-Gurion, the “Father of the [modern] Nation” of Israel, is born in Poland.
1901 - Former slave, educator, and orator Booker T. Washington is invited to dinner at the White House with Republican President Theodore Roosevelt, sparking a flood of racist backlash.
1916 - Rabidly racist eugenicist, Democrat, and Nazi sympathizer Margaret Sanger opens the first U.S. “birth control clinic” in New York; she is the founder of abortion giant Planned Parenthood. Sanger, who gave a speech to the KKK and supported forced sterilizations, said (among other disturbing quotes), “We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.”
1923 - The Walt Disney Company, now one of the most influential media and entertainment companies in the world, is founded by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio.
1978 - “Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Poland was elected Pope. He was the first non-Italian Pope chosen in 456 years and took the name John Paul II.” While John Paul’s weak response to clerical sex scandals worsened a crisis, and he did some questionable actions (such as kissing the Islamic Quran, which blasphemes Christ), he was one of the world leaders instrumental in bringing about the fall of the Soviet Union, and he inspired millions of Catholics and Christians around the world in the practice of their faith.
October 17
1448 - “Second Battle of Kosovo, where the mainly Hungarian [Christian] army led by John Hunyadi [was] defeated by an Ottoman [Muslim] army led by Sultan Murad II.”
1777 - “During the American Revolutionary War, British General John Burgoyne and his entire army of 5,700 men surrendered to American General Horatio Gates after the Battle of Saratoga, the first big American victory.”
1912 - The future Pope John Paul I is born in Italy, as Albino Luciani.
1944 - “The Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in history, took place off the Philippine Islands, during World War II in the Pacific. The battle involved 216 U.S. warships and 64 Japanese ships and resulted in the destruction of the Japanese Navy including the Japanese Battleship Musashi, one of the largest ever built.”
1968 - “US men's 4 x 100m freestyle relay team of Zac Zorn, Stephen Rerych, Ken Walsh & Mark Spitz swim world record 3:31.7 to outclass the Soviet Union & Australia and win the gold medal at the Mexico City Olympics.” Mark Spitz held the record for most Olympic gold medals won at a single Olympics until surpassed by Michael Phelps in 2008.
1979 - Mother Teresa of Calcutta, now a canonized Catholic saint, is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
October 18
1009 - “The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is destroyed by the [Muslim] Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who hacks the Church's foundations down to bedrock.”
1016 - The Danes defeat the Saxons at the Battle of Assandun, establishing control over England.
1685 - King Louis XIV of France revokes the Edict of Nantes, thus ending full religious and civil liberties for Protestant Huguenots.
1776 - Polish engineer Tadeusz Kościuszko is commissioned in the American Continental Army; he became famous for his work helping the American cause.
1851 - Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick,” dubbed by many as the greatest American novel, is published.
1871 - President U.S. Grant “suspends habeas corpus in parts of South Carolina during prosecutions against Ku Klux Klan,” which had been executing one of the worst domestic terrorism campaigns in U.S. history against black citizens and also white Republicans.
1898 - “The United States takes possession of Puerto Rico from Spain by virtue of the Treaty of Paris.”
1918 - Czechoslovakia breaks away from Austro-Hungarian Empire.
1931 - Infamous gangster Al Capone convicted on tax evasion, which will send him to jail.
1945 - “The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial began with indictments against 24 former Nazi leaders including Hermann Göring and Albert Speer. The trial lasted 10 months, with delivery of the judgment completed on October 1, 1946. Twelve Nazis were sentenced to death by hanging, three to life imprisonment, four to lesser prison terms, and three were acquitted.”
1977 - The New York Yankees win their 21st World Championship; Reggie Jackson ties Babe Ruth’s record of 3 consecutive home runs.
October 19
202 BC - Scipio Africanus and the Romans defeat Hannibal and the Carthaginians at the Battle of Zama, ending the Second Punic War.
1781 - Following the Battle of Yorktown, Gen. Lord Cornwallis and the British surrender to the Americans after the American Revolutionaries and their French allies corner and defeat Cornwallis. While Yorktown did not mark the end of the Revolution, the resounding American victory would lead to the 1783 Treaty of Paris recognizing American independence from Great Britain. It would also help propel Gen. George Washington to head of the Constitutional Convention and then the U.S. Presidency.
1789 - Founding Father John Jay is sworn in, becoming the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
1813 - French Emperor Napoleon is defeated at the Battle of Leipzig, the biggest European pre-WWI battle.
1870 - The first black U.S. congressmen are elected.
1987 - “‘Black Monday’ occurred on Wall Street as stocks plunged a record 508 points or 22.6 per cent, the largest one-day drop in stock market history.”
1990 - As Soviet Russia’s economy erodes (in typical Communist fashion), President Mikhail Gorbachev gains parliamentary approval to change Russia to a market economy.
October 20
1632 - British architect Christopher Wren, the designer of St. Paul’s Cathedral and 52 other London churches, is born.
1803 - The U.S. Senate ratifies the Louisiana Purchase, bought from France, doubling the size of the United States of America.
1818 - The United States and Great Britain settle the U.S.-Canada border at the 49th parallel.
1935 - “Mao Zedong's 6,000 mile ‘Long March’ ended as his Communist forces arrived at Yanan, in northwest China, almost a year after fleeing Chiang Kai-shek's armies in the south.” Mao is history’s greatest single mass murderer, responsible for up to 65 million deaths, and the first dictator of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which still exercises a reign of terror in China.
1944 - During WWII, U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur fulfills his promise “I shall return” as he sets foot in the Philippines for the first time since his 1942 escape from there. Beginning of the liberation of the Philippines with the Battle of Leyte.
October 21
1094 - A “small force of Christian knights destroyed a massive Muslim horde in Spain, where the Jihad and Reconquista had been raging for years,” per PJ Media. It was a victory of the legendary Spanish knight Roderick Díaz, “El Cid,” who won though outnumbered 12-to-1 at the Battle of Cuarte.
1096 - The People’s Crusade to free the Holy Land from Muslim rule is defeated, and the majority of Crusaders wiped out.
1805 - The British Royal Navy wins a victory over the French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar, halting French Emperor Napoleon’s invasion of England. British naval hero Admiral Horatio Nelson is, however, mortally wounded on his ship Victory.
1879 - “Thomas Edison successfully tested an electric incandescent lamp with a carbonized filament at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, keeping it lit for over 13 hours.” He applied for a patent which he would receive in 1880.
1915 - The American Telephone and Telegraph Company successfully made the first transatlantic radio voice message, which went from Virginia, USA, to Paris, France.
1944 - American troops capture Aachen after a week of difficult fighting, the first big German city the Allies captured during WWII.
1954 - JRR Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, the first installment of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, is first published in America.
1969 - Coup of the Somalian government.
October 22
794 - “Emperor Kanmu relocates Japanese capital to Heiankyo (now Kyoto).”
1383 - Crisis in Portugal as the king dies without a male heir.
1734 - Legendary American frontiersman Daniel Boone is born.
1746 - The College of New Jersey, now Princeton University, receives its charter.
1897 - The world’s first car dealership opens in London.
1917 - Influential jazz musician, band leader, and composer Dizzy Gillespie is born.
1962 - U.S. President John Kennedy tells Americans via TV of Russian missiles in Cuba, and demands their removal, during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
1979 - “The exiled Shah of Iran arrived in the United States for medical treatment. A few weeks later, Iranian militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 66 Americans hostage. They demanded the return of the Shah for trial. The U.S. refused. The Shah died of cancer in July of 1980. The hostages were freed in January of 1981.” Unfortunately, disastrous Democrat U.S. President Jimmy Carter enabled the radical Islamic Revolution to topple the Shah’s government, marking the end of the Persian Empire (which had existed for 2500 years) and the beginning of a dictatorship from a terrorist-sponsoring regime the people of Iran protest against and suffer under to this day.
1811 - Composer and musician Franz Liszt is born in Hungary.
1836 - Inauguration of Sam Houston as the first President of the Republic of Texas. Both American Texans and Mexican Tejanos in the territory rebelled against Santa Anna’s authoritarian Mexican government, and the territory first broke away to become a separate Republic, and later a state in the United States.
Did I miss any important historic events? Let me know in the comments!
Louis XVI was in the process of instituting reforms, including giving the commoners more representation in the Estates General; and when the Third Estate (commoners), joined with some nobles (Second Estate) and clergy (Third Estate) formed the National Assembly, Louis initially though reluctantly attempted to work with the body, which rapidly turned into a radical entity and later a terroristic organization out for blood and every bit as—nay, more tyrannical than the monarchy had been. The French Revolution has been whitewashed and praised, but, in stark contrast to the American Revolution, it did little but destroy what came before it and slaughter anyone and everyone it could get its hands on. The French poor were worse off at the end and many innocent people, including holy priests, nuns, and poor people, were beheaded along with the aristocrats.