Tag: history

On this day in 1889, The Eiffel Tower is officially opened to the public at the Universal Exposition in Paris. The tower was designed by Gustave Eiffel to commemorate the centennial of the French Revolution. It is the tallest structure in Paris at 1,063 ft. and the most visited paid monument in the world. It is locate in the 7th arrondissement on the Champs de mars next to the Seine.

The tower was not without its controversy, a letter of 300 names, including those of Maupassant, Emile Zola, Charles Garnier (architect of the Opéra Garnier), and Dumas the Younger, protested its construction, calling it an “eye sore”. Eiffel had a 20 year permit for the Tower with dismantling schedules for 1909. The Tower reverted to the City of Paris and was decided that because of its value for radio communications it would remain. During World War 1 the Tower became crucial for communications and played a roll in the capture of the infamous spy Mata Hari.

The Eiffel Tower remains today as the symbol of Paris, the City of Light. It is one of the primary tourist attractions of the city. There are stairs and lifts to the upper levels and observation decks and two restaurants. Recently an ice skating rink opens on the first floor in the winter and in the summer at the street level a swimming pool.  

Cinco de Mayo is not Mexico’s independence day, that’s September 16. It isn’t even a federal holiday in Mexico and is only celebrated regionally in Puebla. Cinco de Mayo commemorates the victory of the Mexican army over French  forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, under the leadership of Mexican General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín. In 1861, Benito Juarez stopped making interest payments on money it owed and was attacked by France. The battle really only slowed the French down and they continued to march towards Mexico City. One year later, Mexico was occupied by France and installed Maximilion I as Emperor. 5 years after the battle of Puebla, Juarez overthrew Maximilion and executed him.

The reasons that this battle is significant is first 4,000 Mexican soldiers, who were greatly outnumbered defeated the well-equipped French army of 8,000 that had not been defeated for almost 50 years. Second, since the battle of Puebla, no country in the Americas has been invaded by an army from another continent.

It is a celebration of Mexican pride and heritage. Although mostly ignored by Mexico, Cinco de Mayo has been celebrated continuously in California since 1863. Other places outside the US and Mexico that celebrate are in Vancouver, Canada where there is a sky diving event. In the Cayman Islands there is an air guitar festival and in Malta, every one is encouraged to drink Mexican beer.

On this day in 1970, At Kent State University, 100 National Guardsmen fire their rifles into a group of students, killing four and wounding 11. This incident occurred in the aftermath of President Richard Nixon’s April 30 announcement that U.S. and South Vietnamese forces had been ordered to execute an “incursion” into Cambodia to destroy North Vietnamese bases there. In protest, a wave of demonstrations and disturbances erupted on college campuses across the country.

There were no warnings when the Guardsmen opened fire. 60 rounds were fire into the crowd of demonstrators. After an investigation, all the charges were dropped against the National Guard in 1974.

New audio from the day of the shootings has been released on a website dubbed KentState1970.org. The site also features images of the historic day’s tragic events.

On this day in 1919, Pete Seeger, folk singer, activist, environmentalist was born in NYC.

On July 26, 1956, the House of Representatives voted 373 to 9 to cite Pete Seeger and seven others (including playwright Arthur Miller) for contempt, as they failed to cooperate with House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in their attempts to investigate alleged subversives and communists. Pete Seeger testified before the HUAC in 1955.

In one of Pete’s darkest moments, when his personal freedom, his career, and his safety were in jeopardy, a flash of inspiration ignited this song. The song was stirred by a passage from Mikhail Sholokhov’s novel “And Quie Flows the Don”. Around the world the song traveled and in 1962 at a UNICEF concert in Germany, Marlene Dietrich, Academy Award-nominated German-born American actress, first performed the song in French, as “Qui peut dire ou vont les fleurs?” Shortly after she sang it in German. The song’s impact in Germany just after WWII was shattering. It’s universal message, “let there be peace in the world” did not get lost in its translation. To the contrary, the combination of the language, the setting, and the great lyrics has had a profound effect on people all around the world. May it have the same effect today and bring renewed awareness to all that hear it.

On this day in 1933, Loch Ness Monster sighted Although legend of a monster living in the Loch Ness had existed for over 1500 years, the earliest account from 500 A.D., it was a news report in the Inverness Courier that sparked the modern day legend. The Loch is the largest body of fresh water in Great Britain that has a depth of 800 ft and is 23 miles long. In 1933, a new road had been built around the lake with great views. The story of a couple who had observed “an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface”, that was fueled by the Courier using the word “monster” and a reward of 20,000 pound sterling, sparked a media darling. In 1934, a photograph of a creature with a long neck surfaced, again, increasing speculation that this creature was a survivor of long extinct aquatic plesiosaurs. The photo was revealed to be a hoax in 1994.

Since then there have been both amateur and professional sightings and studies. The have been inconclusive yet tantalizing reports of large unidentifiable objects moving on the bottom of the lake. Using sonar and photography in 19, the Boston’s Academy of Applied Science produced a photo that ‘appeared to show the giant flipper of a plesiosaur-like creature”.  

Today in history, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro debuted in Vienna, Austria.

1803 – Louisiana Purchase: The United States purchases the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million, more than doubling the size of the young nation. With this acquisition President Thomas Jefferson secured the Port of New Orleans, free access to the Mississippi River and opened expansion of US territory westward to the Rocky Mountains.

Originally the purchase was for the port of new Orleans, portions of the east bank of the Mississippi, and free navigation of the river for U.S. commerce but at the last minute, on April 11, the French Minister Talleyrand was ordered by Napoleon to offer the entire territory to US Minster, Robert Livingston. This was mostly due to France’s difficulties in the Caribbean. Napoleons’ inability to secure Santo Domingo made the granaries of Louisiana useless without the the sugar. Considering his other difficulties with Spain and the temperament of the Americans, Napoleon threw in the entire territory for less than 5 cents an acre.

1812 – The Territory of Orleans becomes the 18th U.S. state under the name Louisiana.

As a previous editor of the Classic Progressive Historians, I was trying to get a historian I had met on line to post there. He was in Mexico and as we corresponded, he told me that at least 80% of “Mexicans” are Lipan Apache. Who is Arizona wanting to “send back to where they came from?”

http://www.indiancountrytoday….

The privileges of citizenship were slow to come for Indians while the responsibilities came right away. It’s hard not to think of the island-hopping campaign in the Pacific, some of the toughest combat of WWII. The Navajo code talkers served though that campaign at a time when Arizona was still denying them the vote. Now, it appears that Arizona Indians who visit the cities will have to be careful about being brown in a no-brown zone, whether or not they are veterans.

On this day in 1945, Dachau was liberated by American troops of the U.S. Seventh Army’s 45th Infantry Division, headed by Gen, George Patton, and subdivision of the camp by the 42nd Rainbow Division. There were 123 sub-camps and factories in the vicinity of the town.

Dachau was the first concentration camp opened by the Nazi regime in 1933 on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory less than 10 miles northeast of Munich. The camp was established 5 weeks after Adolf Hitler took power as chancellor and was used to house political prisoners, In 1938, the camp was primarily occupied by Jews. The camp served as a training center for the SS guards at other camps, medical experiments and forced labor.

Thousands of inmates died or were executed at Dachau, and thousands more were transferred to a Nazi extermination center near Linz, Austria, when they became too sick or weak to work. In 1944, to increase war production, the main camp was supplemented by dozens of satellite camps established near armaments factories in southern Germany and Austria. These camps were administered by the main camp and collectively called Dachau.

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As they neared the camp, the Americans found more than 30 railroad cars filled with bodies in various states of decomposition. Inside the camp there were more bodies and 30,000 survivors, most severely emaciated. Some of the American troops who liberated Dachau were so appalled by conditions at the camp that they machine-gunned at least two groups of captured German guards. It is officially reported that 30 SS guards were killed in this fashion, but conspiracy theorists have alleged that more than 10 times that number were executed by the American liberators. The German citizens of the town of Dachau were later forced to bury the 9,000 dead inmates found at the camp.

On this day, two events occurred involving the South Pacific. Separated by 158 years, one was a mutiny, the other a grand adventure.

Apr 28, 1789: Mutiny on the HMS Bounty Mutiny on the Bounty: The mutiny  was led by Fletcher Christian against the commanding officer, William Bligh. The sailors were attracted to the idyllic life on the Pacific island, and repelled by the alleged cruelty of their captain. Captain Bligh and 18 sailors were set a drift in the South Pacific, near the island of Tonga. Christian along with some of the mutineers and native Tahitians eventually settled on Pitcairn Island an uninhabited volcanic island about 1000 miles south of Tahiti. The mutineers who remained behind on Tahiti were eventually arrested and returned to England where three were hanged. The British never found Christian and the others. Captain Bligh and the 18 others eventually arrived in Timor.

Years later on 1808. am American whaling vessel discovered the colony of women and children led by the sole surviving mutineer, John Adams. The Bounty had been stripped and burned. Christian and the other 8 mutineers were dead. Adams was eventually granted amnesty and remained the patriarch of Pitcairn Island until his death in 1829.

1947 Thor Heyerdahl and five crew mates set out from Peru on the Kon-Tiki to prove that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia. His crew of six fellow Norwegians set sail from Peru on a raft constructed from balsa logs and other materials that were indigenous to the region at the time of the Spanish Conquistadors. After 101 days crossing over 400 miles they crashed into a reef at Raroia  in the Tuamotu Islands on August 7, 1947. Heyerdahl’s book, “The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft Across the South Seas”, became a best seller, the documentary won an Academy Award in 1951. The original raft is on display in the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo. Heyerdahl died April 18, 2002 in Italy.

On this day in 1805, Naval Agent to the Barbary States, William Eaton, the former consul to Tunis, led an small expeditionary force of Marines, commanded by First Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon, and Berber mercenaries from Alexandria, across 500 miles to the port of Derna in Tripoli. Supported by US Naval gunfire, the port was captured by the end of the day, overthrowing Yusuf Karamanli, the ruling pasha of Tripoli, who had seized power from his brother, Hamet Karamanli, a pasha who was sympathetic to the United States.

Lt. O’Bannon raised the US flag over the port, the first time the US flag had flown over a foreign battlefield. He had performed so valiantly that newly restored Pasha Hamet Karamanli presented him with an elaborately designed sword that now serves as the pattern for the swords carried by Marine officers. The words “To the shores of Tripoli” in the Marine Corps official song commemorate the battle.

Sources:

History.com

On This Day

About.com