Today in History, March 29: 1911 – The Colt Model M1911 .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol is adopted as the official sidearm of the US Army. The Navy and Marine Corps would follow suit in 1913. The legend had begun. The pistol would demonstrate it’s remarkable reliability in WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam, and all of the smaller conflicts between. The M1911 and it’s variants didn’t go out of general service until 1985, and is still used by many units.
Today in History, March 28: 1774 – The British Parliament enacts the Coercive Acts, or what were called the Intolerable Acts in the colonies. Since the end of the 7-years war, part of which was fought on the North American continent between Britain and France, the British Government was cash strapped. Part of their solution was to tax the American colonists, who did not have representation in Parliament. Taxation without representation led to increasing discontent in the colonies. After the Boston Tea party in December of 1773, parliament decided to punish the Massachusetts colony, in hopes that the recalcitrant colony would back down, and the other colonies would calm themselves and pressure Massachusetts to behave. The Boston Port Act closed the port of Boston until the colonials paid back the cost of the tea destroyed during the Tea Party to the East India Company, and until the King was satisfied that peace had been restored. The Massachusetts Government Act took governance of the colony out of American hands. All administrators would be appointed by the British Governor, or the King. Citizens would only be allowed to have one town meeting per year. The Administration of Justice Act allowed the Governor to move trials for royal officials accused of crimes to other colonies or Britain, effectively preventing witnesses from testifying in the trials. The Quartering Act ordered that American colonists provide housing for British troops. Most believe that this forced colonists to house troops in their homes, but that is not correct; they were to house them in public buildings or vacant buildings. Finally the Quebec Act drastically enlarged the territory of Quebec into lands previously considered to be part of the colonies. Aside from the obvious, the Protestant colonists believed the Roman Catholic French of Quebec were being primed for use against them. The Intolerable Acts had the opposite of the effect Parliament intended. They had underestimated the Americans. Rather than turn on Massachusetts, the other colonies shipped in supplies that Boston could no longer get by sea and agreed to defend Massachusetts should she be attacked. By September, the first Continental Congress had convened to organize a unified response.
Today in History, March 27: 1851 – “The grandeur of the scene was but softened by the haze that hung over the valley — light as gossamer — and by the clouds which partially dimmed the higher cliffs and mountains. This obscurity of vision but increased the awe with which I beheld it, and as I looked, a peculiar exalted sensation seemed to fill my whole being, and I found my eyes in tears with emotion.” – Dr. Lafayette Bunnell of the Mariposa Battalion upon first seeing Ahwahnee Valley for the first time from Old Inspiration Point. The Battalion was chasing Native Americans who’d had conflicts with gold miners. As they camped that night, they agreed with Dr. Bunnell’s suggestion to call the magnificent place “Yosemity”, which they thought was the Native American name for it (mistakenly). The Ahwahnechee they were pursuing had lived in the valley for as long as 7,000 years.
oday in History, March 26: 1937 – The Great Depression had devastated nearly every community in the Heartland of America. But not Crystal City, Texas. The small farming community had flourished growing a once unpopular veggie called Spinach. The grateful residents erected a monument to the “man” that had saved their community by proclaiming to the world that “I’m strong to the finish ’cause I eats me spinach, I’m Popeye the Sailor Man!”
Today in History, March 25: 1898 – Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt proposes that the Navy investigate the use of a flying machine being researched by Samuel Langley. As a result, congress authorized $50,000 to support Langley’s design. The Wright Brothers may have accomplished the first manned, powered flight, but many people had been working on the challenge for years. Langley’s, and Roosevelt’s insight was the beginning of US Naval Aviation. Check out this print by R.G. Smith, which portrays the 1st US aircraft carrier, the USS Langley (CV 1), and the nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) cruising together. Of course this is inspired imagination…Langley’s namesake ship was lost in WWII.
The Langley was converted from the Collier USS Jupiter in 1920. By WWII she had been converted to a seaplane tender, her larger subsequent sisters taking on the aircraft carrier role. Attempting to deliver p-40 fighter planes to Java, on February 27, 1942 she was attacked by Japanese aircraft and damaged so badly she had to be scuttled.
Today in History, March 25: 1948 – Major Ernest J. Fawbush. Capt. Robert C. Miller. On March 20th, a devastating tornado struck Oklahoma City, and Tinker Air Force Base in particular, causing the most destruction in Oklahoma history to that point; the impact still stands as the second most damaging storm in OK history. Two meteorologists on the base, Fawbush and Miller, sought to provide warning regarding storms and began studying the dynamics of the storm that created the devastating tornado. Within 5 days they got their wish, and were the first to provide early warning against tornadoes. On the morning of March 25th they observed that conditions were amazingly similar to those of March 20th, and they issued warnings not only for the base, but for the surrounding populace. Another tornado struck that night, and while the damage was still severe, expensive resources on the base were secured and civilians sought shelter. How many lives have been saved in the years since?
Today in History, March 24: 1927 – Gunboat Diplomacy. Chinese nationalists and communists had been struggling for control of the country. When the fight reached Nanking (Nanjing), the nationalist forces left the city. The communist soldiers that entered the city raided the consulates of western nations there; British and American citizens were injured and some killed. All of the western nations that had commercial interests in China had a Naval presence in the region. In response to the assaults, the Royal Navy and the United States Navy vessels on the Yangtze fired on the soldiers and civilians sacking the western sections of the city, driving them away. Marines evacuated the western civilians to ships that were then escorted out of the area. In the process, the escorting ships, mostly the USS William B. Preston, had to suppress fire from the shore several times. The Nationalist forces eventually took back the city. By the next year the government had apologized for the incident and the communist forces agreed to pay reparations.
Today in History, March 23: 1918 – At 7:20 AM the peace in Paris, France was shattered by an artillery barrage. The fire was from a new weapon designed by the Germans, the “Pariskanone”, a 210mm cannon with a 118 ft long barrel. The gun could fire a shell to an altitude of 25 miles; the cannons bombarding Paris were firing from safety 74 miles away. By the end of the assault on August 9, 260 Parisians had been killed.
Today in History, March 21: 1788 – Have you ever visited the French Quarter in New Orleans? Did you know that the vast majority of those buildings in the “French” Quarter are actually…Spanish? On this date in 1788 the Army Treasurer in New Orleans, Don Vincente Jose Nunez, and his family were celebrating Good Friday in their home less than a block from the Plaza de Armas (later Jackson Square). They apparently lit a few too many candles while immersed in prayer and caught their home on fire. Before the day was over, 856 of the 1,100 buildings in the city were destroyed, most of the city. Spain had control of Louisiana at that time, and during a subsequent fire in 1794 that took 212 buildings. So the structures that replaced those of wood that were lost were made of stucco or brick, and of Spanish architecture.
Louisiana Governor Miro’s report: If the imagination could describe what our senses enable us to feel from sight and touch, reason itself would recoil in horror, and it is no easy matter to say whether the sight of an entire city in flames was more horrible to behold than the suffering and pitiable condition in which everyone was involved. Mothers, in search of a sanctuary or refuge for their little ones, and abandoning – their earthly goods to the greed of the relentless enemy, would retire to out-of-the-way places rather than be witnesses of their utter ruin. Fathers and husbands were busy in saving whatever objects the rapidly spreading flames would permit them to bear off, while the general bewilderment was such as to prevent them from finding even for these a place of security. The obscurity of the night coming on threw its mantle for a while over the saddening spectacle; but more horrible still was the sight, when day began to dawn, of entire families pouring forth into the public highways, yielding to their lamentations and despair, who, but a few hours before, had been basking in the enjoyment of more than the ordinary comforts of life. The tears, the heartbreaking sobs and the pallid faces of the wretched people mirrored the dire fatality that had overcome a city, now in ruins, transformed within the space of five hours into an arid and fearful, desert. Such was the sad ending of a work of death, the result of seventy years of industry.
For some chronological relation, further east on our continent the nascent 13 nascent states spent the years of 1788 approving the US Constitution; two weeks after the disastrous fire, pioneering Americans established Marietta (later Ohio) as the first American settlement beyond the borders of “America.”
Today in History, March 20: 1852 – “So…you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!” President Abraham Lincoln greets Harriett Beecher Stowe at the Presidential Mansion in 1862, ten years after her novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was first published. I am amazed at the foresight and courage displayed by this woman, a school teacher turned author. By her own admission, in the epilogue of the book, for the first part of her life, she knew of slavery, disapproved of it, but being a Northerner, it was distant and she felt that the problem would be resolved eventually on it’s own. How many of today’s injustices do we see the same way? Between meeting some runaway slaves, becoming familiar with the Underground Railroad, and stories from her family and friends, and finally the Compromise of 1850 (in which the government promised to return runaway slaves in exchange for new limitations on slavery expansion), she became an avid abolitionist. She wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin to illustrate the aspects of slavery that most did not understand at that time. As slaves, a mother’s children were often sold off, never to be seen again. Women were sold into prostitution, to be used until their value had diminished. If a good and kindly “master” came on hard times, he might sell a good man “down the river” to cruel and harsh masters, as “Uncle Tom” was. With her novel, Mrs. Stowe humanized the slavery issue, brought it home to people and chastised them for not living up to their Christian values. The novel would become the best selling novel of the 19th century and would inspire abolitionist views amongst Americans. It was certainly far from the only cause of the Civil War…but the novel played it’s part in American History. One has to wonder if this “little woman” had any idea of the importance her words would have. If you haven’t read (or listened to) this novel, you should.
Mark Loves History! 