Category: History

10 years ago that a bomb was exploded outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City killing 168 people, and injuring 500.

Stylized chairs representing some of the public servants who lost their life that day (Oklahoma City National Memorial).

For more than a century, it has caused excitement and frustration in equal measure – a collection of Greek and Roman writings so vast it could redraw the map of classical civilisation. If only it was legible.

Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed.

In the past four days alone, Oxford’s classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia. They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels, the originals of which were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament.

The Independent

Albert Einstein died. He was 76.

Albert Einstein’s work laid the groundwork for many modern technologies including nuclear weapons and cosmic science.

After his death, Einstein’s brain was removed and preserved for scientific research by Canadian scientists.

It was found that the part of Einstein’s brain responsible for mathematical thought and the ability to think in terms of space and movement was 15% wider than average.

It also lacked a groove which normally runs through this region suggesting that the neurons were able to communicate.

In 1999 Albert Einstein was named “person of the century” by Time magazine.

BBC On This Day

At 5:12 A.M. on April 18, 1906, an 8.3 magnitude earthquake struck San Francisco. With thousands of un-reinforced brick buildings and closely-spaced wooden Victorian dwellings, the city was poorly prepared for the quake. Collapsed buildings, broken chimneys, and a shortage of water due to broken mains led to several large fires that soon coalesced into a city-wide holocaust. The fire raged for three days, sweeping over nearly a quarter of the city, including the entire downtown area.

Over 3,000 people are estimated to have died as a result of the disaster. For those who survived, the first few weeks were hard; as aid poured in from around the country, thousands slept in tents in city parks, and citizens were asked to do their cooking in the street. A severe shortage of public transportation made a taxicab out of anything on wheels. Numerous businesses relocated temporarily to Oakland, and many refugees found lodgings outside the city. Most of the cities of central California were badly damaged. However, reconstruction proceeded at a furious pace, and by 1908, San Francisco was well on the way to recovery.

The Library of Congress

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

Continue reading Paul Revere’s Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

died on this date in 1790. He was 84.

In his twenties Franklin had written an epitaph for himself:

By the age of 84 he wished for something simpler. The marble over his grave simply reads: Benjamin and Deborah Franklin.

Information from Walter Isaacson’s superb biography of Franklin.

was born on this date in in 1894. Khrushchev was Soviet Premier from 1954-1964. The New York Times has posted its lengthy obituary from 1971.

One of the more infamous moments at the United Nations took place when Khrushchev visited there in 1960 and reportedly banged his shoe on the desk in a protest. Or maybe he didn’t. Read what NewMexiKen reported a year ago about this incident.

Even when the historical record is unambiguous, the museum sometimes improvises. John Wilkes Booth famously declared “sic semper tyrannis” (Latin for “thus always to tyrants”) after assassinating Lincoln. That sounded too arcane for modern ears. So in one of the multimedia presentations, the script writers have Booth growling instead: “Vengeance shall be mine.”

The goal is to make Lincoln’s story accessible so both adults and children “feel the fascination of history down in their gut,” Rogers explained.

Los Angeles Times

Maybe they could even go Deadwood style and have Lincoln call Douglas a “c***sucker.”

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum opens today with a silicone Lincoln posing in the rotunda and pundit Tim Russert introducing mock TV attack ads from the campaign of 1860.

In the Union Theater, an abolitionist roars “Lincoln was no friend of the black man” as hologram cannons boom to signal the start of the Civil War. Strobe lights flash; the plush seats jerk and rumble like a ride at Universal Studios. When Atlanta burns, the air feels hot.

This is history, Hollywood style: A $90-million look at Honest Abe’s life and times — with special effects created by Stan Winston Studios, the wizards behind Jurassic Park and Terminator 3.

Some call it the model of a 21st century museum. Others call it schlock.

From an article in the Los Angeles Times.

This Day in History at the History Channel has the story on the unsinkable Mrs. Brown.

Tammy Grimes played Molly Brown in the 1960 Broadway musical. Debbie Reynolds in the 1964 film. And Kathy Bates, of course, in the 1997 film Titanic.

Titanic Sinks Four Hours After Hitting Iceberg;
866 Rescued By Carpathia, Probably 1,250 Perish;
Ismay Safe, Mrs. Astor Maybe, Noted Names Missing

Biggest Liner Plunges to the Bottom at 2:20 A.M.
RESCUERS THERE TOO LATE
Expect to Pick Up the Few Hundreds Who Took to the Lifeboats.
WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST
Cunarder Carpathia Rushing to New York with the Survivors.
SEA SEARCH FOR OTHERS
The California Stands By on Chance of Picking Up Other Boats or Rafts.
OLYMPIC SENDS THE NEWS
Only Ship to Flash Wireless Messages to Shore After the Disaster.

From The New York Times story of the sinking.

An historic timepiece which stopped ticking when the Titanic sank 93 years ago today is to be auctioned.

The 18-carat Gold Pocket Watch is among the rare artefacts connected to the ill-fated ocean liner to be sold by Bonhams and Butterfields in Massachusetts in the US on May 1.

The watch, which was damaged when disaster struck mid-Atlantic, belonged to Nora Keane, an Irish immigrant, living in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania with her brothers and sisters.

Following a four-month visit to her mother in Castle Connell, County Limerick, Miss Keane decided to return on the maiden voyage of RMS Titanic, boarding at Queenstown as a 2nd Class passenger.

She was rescued by lifeboat with the watch which got water damage when the lifeboat passed under the ship’s pump discharge.

Its gilt face has some rust staining, but it is still expected to fetch £2,600-3,600, Bonhams said.

Scotsman.com News

RMS Titanic hit an iceberg at 11:40 PM (Titanic time) on this date in 1912. She was at 41° 46′ north latitude , 50° 14′ west longitude in the Atlantic.

She sunk at 2:20 AM on the 15th. So, more here tomorrow.

In the meanwhile, here for you history and film buffs is Titanic in 30 seconds with bunnies.

opened his first retail store, called the Golden Rule Store, in the mining town of Kemmerer, Wyoming, on this date in 1902. In 1913, the chain incorporated as J.C. Penney Company, Inc.

The first store, as seen in 1904.

It was on this date 70 years ago that the largest of the dust storms of the 1930s swept the western plains.

Cyclic winds rolled up two miles high, stretched out a hundred miles and moved faster than 50 miles an hour. These storms destroyed vast areas of the Great Plains farmland. The methods of fighting the dust were as many and varied as were the means of finding a way to get something to eat and wear. Every possible crack was plugged, sheets were placed over windows and blankets were hung behind doors. Often the places were so tightly plugged against the dust (which still managed to get in) that the houses became extremely hot and stuffy.

Quotation and photo from the Cimmaron Heritage Center, Boise City, Oklahoma. Boise City is in the Oklahoma panhandle near Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas and Texas.

As Atzerodt and Paine fanned out to seek their targets, Booth, a celebrated actor, familiar to everybody who worked at Ford’s Theatre, had no trouble in slipping upstairs during the performance of Our American Cousin. Moving quietly down the aisle behind the dress circle, he stood for a few moments near the President’s box. A member of the audience, seeing him there, thought him “the handsomest man I had ever seen.” John Parker, the Metropolitan policeman assigned to protect the President, had left his post in the passageway, and the box was guarded only by Charles Forbes, a White House footman. When Booth showed Forbes his calling card, he was admitted to the presidential box. Barring the door behind him, so as not to be disturbed, he noiselessly moved behind Lincoln, who was leaning forward, with his chin in his right hand and his arm on the balustrade. At a distance of about two feet, the actor pointed his derringer at the back of the President’s head on the left side and pulled the trigger. It was about 10:13 P.M.

When Major Rathbone tried to seize the intruder, Booth lunged at him with his razor-sharp hunting knife, which had a 7¼-inch blade. “The Knife,” Clara Harris reported, “went from the elbow nearly to the shoulder, inside, — cutting an artery, nerves and veins — he bled so profusely as to make him very weak.” Shoving his victim aside, Booth placed his hands on the balustrade and vaulted toward the stage. It was an easy leap for the gymnastic actor, but the spur on his heel caught in the flags decorating the box and he fell heavily on one foot, breaking the bone just above the ankle. Waving his dagger, he shouted in a loud, melodramatic voice: “Sic semper tyrannis” (“Thus always to tyrants” — the motto of the state of Virginia). Some in the audience thought he added, “The South is avenged.” Quickly he limped across the stage, with what one witness called “a motion…like the hopping of a bull frog,” and made his escape through the rear of the theater.

Up to this point the audience was not sure what had happened. Perhaps most thought the whole disturbance was part of the play. But as the blue-white smoke from the pistol drifted out of the presidential box, Mary Lincoln gave a heart-rending shriek and screamed, “They have shot the President! They have shot the President!”

From David Herbert Donald’s outstanding biography of Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth on this date in 1865. Lincoln died the next morning.

On April 26, Booth and co-conspirator David Herold were surrounded while hiding in a tobacco shed in Port Royal, Virginia. Herold surrendered to Union troops, but Booth held out and was shot while the shed burned down around him.

Click on the image to see a larger version of the poster.

Read The New York Times story from the day after the assassination, headlined Awful Event.

Here, from AP, is the actual recording 25 years ago today of Astronaut Jack Swigert telling Houston we have a problem.

In the film, Tom Hanks as Commander Jim Lovell has the line.

More on Apollo 13 posted earlier today.

This was what I posted on TJ a year ago:

It seems to NewMexiKen that the country could use a federal holiday during that long spell from Washington’s Birthday to Memorial Day. I propose that today, April 13, Jefferson’s birthday, would be ideal.

At a White House dinner honoring 49 Nobel laureates in 1962, President Kennedy remarked, “I think this is the most extraordinary talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”

Despite serious flaws, Jefferson remains one of the most remarkable Americans — statesman, scientist, architect, philosopher agronomist, author.

Click on the image to view Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence.

… was born on this date in 1743.

Eight-three years later, at the end of his remarkable life, he wished to be remembered foremost for those actions that appear as his epitaph:

Author of the
Declaration
of
American Independence
of the
Statute of Virginia
for
Religious Freedom
and Father of the
University of Virginia.

Fort Sumter — a man-made island some four miles from Charleston, South Carolina — was a symbol well beyond its strategic value in the tensions leading up to the Civil War. Since December 1860, South Carolina officials had been demanding the surrender of the fort as state property. To Northerners, surrendering the fort meant surrendering the very idea of the Union.

When Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861, he was informed that the small garrison at Fort Sumter was running out of supplies. By April, he ordered a relief expedition and informed the Governor of South Carolina that it would be “with provisions only,” not men, arms or ammunition. This put the next move into the hands of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Davis ordered that the fort be reduced before the supplies arrived.

The Confederacy opened fire at 4:30 AM on April 12, 1861. The Union garrison surrendered after 33 hours, and the American flag was lowered at Fort Sumter on April 14, 1865.

America’s most tragic conflict ignited at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, when a chain reaction of social, economic and political events exploded into civil war. At the heart of these events was the issue of states rights versus federal authority flowing over the underlying issue of slavery.

Photo and caption from the National Park Service.

Harry Truman takes the oath of office at 7:09 PM (Eastern War Time) on this date sixty years ago. Franklin Roosevelt had died just over two hours earlier at his retreat in Warm Springs, Georgia, the “Little White House.” When called at the Capitol and told he should rush to the White House, Truman is reported to have exclaimed, “Jesus Christ and General Jackson.” Once at the White House, Truman was told of FDR’s death by Mrs. Roosevelt.

The following day, Friday the 13th, is when Truman told several reporters: “Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don’t know whether you fellows ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when you told me yesterday what had happened, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.”

Information and quotations from David McCullough’s outstanding biography of Truman. Photo from the National Archives via the White House web site.