1863: General Joseph Hooker, appointed to command the Army of the Potomac after General Burnside's disasters at Fredericksburg and the "mud march," leads 73,000 Union soldiers across the Rappahannock River and through a densely forested stretch of Virginia countryside known as The Wilderness. Meanwhile, General John Sedgwick, commanding the far left element of Hooker's forces, crosses the lower Rappahannock below Fredericksburg with another 40,000 hardened troops. Caught by surprise and trapped between these forces, rebel general Robert E. Lee has but 43,000 men. Although the initial clashes are indecisive, Hooker holds a commanding advantage in every tactical particular except one: nerve. Inexplicably, he orders his forces to withdraw to the Wilderness town of Chancellorsville, and leaves Sedgwick motionless, without definite orders. He thus surrenders the initiative to his opponent--never a wise thing to do when one's opponent is the legendary Lee. Please see entry for 2 May 1863.
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1863: General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson completes a night march around the bulk of Union General Hooker's forces, and approaches Chancellorsville from the west. His 26,000 rebel troops slam into the flank of the Union XI Corps, whose commander has ignored reports from his patrols about Jackson's maneuver. In savage fighting, Jackson's men all but defeat the XI Corps, which must call for help from other Union detachments to hold its position. Tragically, Jackson is shot by his own troops after dark while riding in search of a route that will place his forces between Hooker's increasingly beleaguered army and its fords over the Rappahannock. General A. P. Hill takes Jackson's place, while Lee voices that he would sooner have lost a division than his prized corps commander. Please see entry for 3 May 1863; please see entry for 10 May 1863.
1945: The last stubborn German defenders in Berlin either surrender or are annihilated by the Soviet forces that have hammered their way relentlessly into the Nazi capital during the past two weeks. Heavy fighting has all but destroyed the German city. Thousands of women suffer brutal rape as the Soviet troops, showing the discipline and respect for order and property that is the hallmark of the Communist state, indulge in an orgy of vengeance on the helpless civilian population. Thousands more escape into hiding, many of them crawling through the debris-littered streets under bathtubs, which the Soviets summarily throw into the streets, apparently not understanding what they are. The Soviets also "liberate" and ship huge quantities of toilets back to Russia, believing the devices to be automatic potato-washing machines. Please see entry for 7 May 1945.
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1863: General Hooker awakes to one last splendid opportunity to destroy Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and arguably win the Civil War. Lee's army is split and both halves are weakened. The loss of Stonewall Jackson has driven cracks in the rebel soldiers' morale. And John Sedgwick's powerful VI Corps, which has been sitting idle for nearly two days at Fredericksburg, faces a weakened and scattered rebel force less than a third its strength under Jubal Early. For his part Lee, sensing disaster brewing, launches an all-out assault against Hooker's forces. It fails, but a chance rebel artillery shell strikes the very pillar of the Chancellor house against which Hooker is leaning, knocking him unconscious. He awakens partially paralyzed and in great pain but will not relinquish command and his chief surgeon will not take the responsibility for declaring him disabled from command. Thus, Lee's bloody and unsuccessful attack does not result in a crashing Union counterattack. Instead, Hooker orders his army to begin withdrawing, first to prepared defensive positions north of Chancellorsville and ultimately back across the Rappahannock. Sedgwick makes four determined assaults against the rebels on the heights southwest of Fredericksburg and ultimately clears that obstacle, but it is too late. The steam has run out of the grand Union offensive and the Army of the Potomac, which Hooker proudly called "the finest army on the planet," is once again digging in, fearful of Lee's next move. Please see entry for 4 May 1863.
1864: General Ulysses S. Grant, newly appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Union armies, leads General George Meade's Army of the Potomac across the Rappahannock River and into Virginia. The Union host travels through the same Wilderness that was the scene of such intense fighting around Chancellorsville only a year before. Robert E. Lee detects the Union movement and begins moving his army to intercept Grant's forces and to strike them in the flank as Lee is so adept at doing. Lee has 64,000 troops, Grant, almost 120,000. There are two differences in this Union army, however, that Lee has not taken into account. One is that the battle of Gettysburg has toughened the Union veterans and made them understand that the rebel soldier is anything but invincible. The other is that they are now led by the westerner Grant, whose idea of warfare is radically different from the "worry what Lee will do" philosophy of so many of his predecessors. Please see entry for 5 May 1864.
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1863: With General Hooker now psychologically contained in his diminishing bridgehead on the upper Rappahannock, Robert E. Lee now reverses his operation. He leaves 25,000 rebel soldiers facing Hooker's 75,000 (correctly surmising that the injured and thoroughly outclassed Hooker will not risk a renewed assault) and masses 21,000 troops against the surprisingly larger threat, John Sedgwick's VI Corpr pressing west from Fredericksburg. For the first time, Lee has a slim advantage in numbers in the fight, and he uses them well to contain Sedgwick and force him to withdraw over the Rappahannock that night. Hooker's offensive is over. It was well planned and, in the initial stages, brilliantly executed. Quite possibly there was no better opportunity to end the Civil War before 1865 than during the first four days in May, outside Chancellorsville. Instead, 13,000 rebels and 17,000 Union soldiers have died . . . and the war goes on.
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1864: Lee's rebel soldiers strike Grant's Union troops in a series of vicious, hard-fought assaults up and down the narrow Germanna Plank Road between Wilderness Tavern and Todd's Tavern. Union forces repel the first onslaughts and charge after the rebels, only to become bogged down in the murderously dense undergrowth of The Wilderness. Rebel forces attack again, and the fighting spreads along the entire flank of the Union advance, with Grant and his officers unable to exert more than local control because of the choked terrain. Toward late afternoon, even though the tough Union veterans have repelled all of Lee's assaults and have stabilized the lines, Grant's officers are worrying vocally about what Lee will do next. Grant, who has spent the day chewing cigars and issuing terse, effective orders, loses his temper and allows as he is "almighty tired" of hearing about what Lee will do, and wants them to think about what they will do to Lee. It is this indomitable toughness that marks Grant as Lee's final nemesis. It is that same toughness that, in the coming months, will lead Grant to conduct the first truly modern, total war in history against his opponent.
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1864: The bloody Battle of the Wilderness continues as Ulysses S. Grant, having spent the night reorganizing his Union divisions, launches a series of powerful attacks against Lee's rebels up and down the Germanna Plank Road. Five Union divisions--the better part of General Hancock's II Corps--slam into A. P. Hill's rebel lines and shatter two of his best divisions. Only the arrival of Longstreet's corps behind Hill saves Lee from complete disaster this day, although Longstreet is wounded by his own men in a near-repetition of what killed Stonewall Jackson. A rebel counterattack in mid-morning takes the steam out of the Union onslaught, and both sides spend the rest of the day repairing their lines and licking their wounds. Although there have been and will be far bloodier battles, the Wilderness proves to be one of the most gruesome. The heavy fighting sets the thick underbrush on fire in many places, and wounded Americans on both sides often must hope for a merciful bullet from friendly lines before the flames reach them. They die among the skeletal remains of the men who perished in this hellish place one year before. Union losses are approximately 16,000; 11,000 rebels have died, but Lee can afford the losses far less than Grant. As the armies draw a breath, troops on both sides expect Grant to follow the "traditional" pattern that has dominated the fighting in the east for four years: Union defeats presage Union retreats. Please see entry for 7 May 1864.
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1864: Late in the evening, Grant issues movement orders to the Army of the Potomac. Officers and men alike pack up and prepare to move out, and there is much grumbling, as the troops expect the "traditional" retreat to begin. The army does move out--to the southeast, deeper into Virginia. Quickly, the troops realize that this is not a retreat, it is an advance! Morale soars. Conversely, it begins to sag inside the rebel camp. Lee starts to suspect he may have an opponent in Grant who understands that the rebel movement cannot support a total war. Lee is correct. From now until the fighting ends at Appomattox, the rebel armies will find themselves in a meat grinder as Grant remorselessly destroys their manpower, their means to fight, their transportation and agricultural support, and their very will to continue the rebellion. Please see entry for 8 May 1864.
1945: "The mission of this Allied Force was fulfilled at 0241, local time, May 7, 1945. Eisenhower." With these simple words General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Forces, announces to the western world that World War II in Europe has ended. Nazi representatives have just signed an unconditional surrender, bringing to a close the horror that began in Europe in September, 1939. At the height of his power, Adolf Hitler exhorted the German people that, "In ten years you will not recognize your homeland!" He spoke the truth. Germany, once the most advanced, most powerful nation in continental Europe, is now prostrate and impoverished, its industries destroyed, its cities laid waste, most of its population living in underground shelters. Thirty million people have perished to put an end to Hitler's madness.
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1864: The Union V Corps, commanded by General Warren, is the leading element of the Army of the Potomac in Ulysses S. Grant's continued offensive following the Battle of the Wilderness. It meets and opens a sharp fight with a corps of the rebel Army of Northern Virginia, this corps commanded by General Anderson following the wounding of Longstreet. The fighting spreads north and west of Spottsylvania Courthouse as Grant and Lee rush reinforcements to the location. Lee soon has his whole army, some 56,000 men, present, but Grant matches those numbers quickly (he has 110,000 men at hand and a steady stream of reinforcements available over the following days and weeks). The rolling Virginia farm country is now host to a dozen of the bloodiest days in the American Civil War. Please see entry for 9 May 1864.
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1864: The Battle of Spottsylvania continues to grow as the Union and rebel armies close up. Lee desperately digs fortifications while trying to keep a few reserves free to counter flank attacks. Grant opens a series of attacks along Lee's extended left flank, but none of the assaults show great promise and he finally determines to concentrate his army and smash Lee's army into two unsupported pieces. His target in this effort is an inverted U-shaped stretch of rebel fortifications in the center of the line, aptly nicknamed the Mule Shoe. Please see entry for 10 May 1864. The difference in material might and military philosophies between the Union and rebel forces shows in Ulysses S. Grant's orders to General Phillip Sheridan. Grant places Sheridan in command of the Union cavalry corps and orders him to take his horse soldiers and penetrate deeply behind the rebel lines, his objective to gain intelligence on rebel strength and supplies, to destroy anything of military value, and to raise havoc in the countryside. Sheridan's troops set out early in the morning at a confident walk. No longer are they the amateurs in the constant rivalry with the rebel cavalrymen under J. E. B. Stuart. Please see entry for 11 May 1864.
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1863: Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson succumbs to the wounds he sustained when accidentally shot by his own men at the Battle of Chancellorsville. Jackson, an enigma in his life (he was devoutly religious, yet gleefully hurled men into bloody battles; he was a robust warrior on the battlefield, yet perhaps a hypochondriac off the field, constantly complaining of strange stomach maladies) is as enigmatic in his final moments. He hallucinates, urging his soldiers forward to the attack, but his last words are a peaceful plea for them all to cross over the river and rest in the shade of trees.
1864: At 6:10 p.m., Colonel Emory Upton leads twelve Union regiments against the bristling fortifications of the Mule Shoe. Upton a born soldier, has done his homework. He and his senior officers have studied the ground carefully. He has organized his force into a compact assault group and has inculcated his soldiers with the need to strike swiftly and with great shock power, and not to get bogged down in a dueling match while still outside the rebel trenches. Upton's assault goes in--and succeeds, clearing a stretch of the rebel line with surprisingly few casualties. The failure of other Union forces to launch their own attacks vigorously, however, dooms the effort to stagnation and the Union troops must withdraw. General Ulysses S. Grant, however, notices the attack and realizes its implications. Please see entry for 12 May 1864.
1940: The "Phony War" ends abruptly as Nazi armored, airborne, motorized, and infantry forces surge across the borders of the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. On paper, they should be unable to win; France and England have armies vastly superior in numbers facing them, and the French have invested an incredible sum in the intensely fortified Maginot Line that dominates France's common border with Germany. The problem for the Allies is that German military experts, chief among them Erich von Manstein, have studied the Allied deployment (organized generally as the perfect way to prevent Germany's attack--assuming Germany attacks identically to its plans in World War I) and have drawn their own plans around that. The blitzkrieg ("lightning war") comes brutally to France as German combined arms teams penetrate, isolate, and obliterate the more static Allied formations. In but three days Winston Churchill, who begins this day loudly predicting Allied triumph, will be listening to the French premier bemoan the disaster to his forces and will wonder aloud how such a debacle could occur. France and the Low Countries will suffer under Nazi domination for four years, until American and British forces spearhead the Allies' return to the Continent on D-Day, 6 June 1944.
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1864: Barely two days into their historic campaign in the rebel heartland, Phil Sheridan's troopers score a strategic triumph. The place is Yellow Tavern, Virginia. There, the Union horse soldiers fall upon the rebel cavalry, which has been shadowing the Union effort and which has been in a furious mood since the day before, when Sheridan's men destroyed ten miles of the Central Railroad line so thoroughly it will not be repaired during the rest of the war, severing one of Lee's three irreplaceable supply arteries. In that same action, the Union cavalrymen also destroyed huge quantities of supplies and invaluable rolling stock, and liberated almost 400 Union prisoners of war. The fighting at Yellow Tavern is sharp and decisive, and the Union troops inflict a savage beating on their antagonists. Worst of all for the rebels, when the gunfire dies away their renowned cavalry commander, J. E. B. Stuart, is dead. Stuart epitomized the dash and elan of the rebel cavalry, much to the joy of the civilian population (who thrilled to read of his daring "rides around the enemy army") and often to the irritation of Robert E. Lee (who more than once could have used strategic intelligence from his cavalry assets instead of headlines about their leader). Stuart's death effectively ends the presence of rebel cavalry as a military element in the American Civil War. Probably the ultimate outcome is foreordained; throughout the war grim professionals in the Union horse-soldier ranks have turned their forces into hard-hitting, highly mobile assault infantry, now accustomed to fighting dismounted where their repeating rifles can have devastating effects. The rebels have persisted in using cavalry more as a mounted shock force with little strategic intelligence value, and their practice of relying on sabre charges (most rebel cavalryment carrying only pistols in the way of firepower) inevitably dooms them to obsolescence. Please see entry for 12 May 1864. Another event also takes place. Prior to this year, when Union generals have tackled Robert E. Lee and fought heavy battles, they typically have resorted thereafter to retreating, complaining, or worrying. On this day General Ulysses S. Grant sends a message to Secretary of War Stanton which tolls the doom of the rebel efforts. Grant's simple message: "I intend to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer."
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1864: An entire corps of the Army of the Potomac surges forward at 4:30 in the morning, determined to repeat the local success of Colonel Upton's assault on the Mule Shoe two days before. The Union attack caves in the tip of Lee's army, and only a desperate counterattack by rebel general James Gordon buys Lee enough time to construct a new fortified line that blunts the Union assault. As will happen many times in the coming months, the immense power and increasing proficiency of the Union soldiers will just fail to achieve the destruction of Lee's army because of incompetent middle-level officers, fortuitous rebel improvisation, or plain bad luck. Please see entry for 14 May 1864. Meanwhile, Sheridan's brutal thrashing of the rebel cavalry at Yellow Tavern leaves the rebel interior in a state of complete panic. The rebel government fears that Sheridan will seize the capital and can muster only 4,000 convalescents and old men to defend it. Panicked orders fly to Robert E. Lee to detach troops to rout Sheridan but Lee can send nothing, his forces still being tied down by Ulysses S. Grant at Spottsylvania Courthouse. Sheridan, however, ignores the rebel capital, knowing that to mire his troops in assaulting the city will throw away every advantage his highly mobile force of lightly armed troops have. He continues his depradations across the Virginia countryside, inflicting heavy damage on transportation, communications, and industrial and agricultural resources, before rejoining Grant's main force on 24 May 1864.
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1846: Congress responds to President Polk's reports that Mexican military forces have invaded the United States and have "shed American blood upon American soil" by declaring war against Mexico. Pundits immediately predict a short war and a staggering victory--for the Mexican army, which has been trained by the famous Duke of Wellington. They are two-thirds correct: It will be a short war with a resounding triumph--for American arms. Please see entry for 9 March 1847.
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1864: Grant refuses to abandon his Spottsylvania offensive, and during the previous evening he shifts a considerable bulk of his army to the left, attempting to reach between Lee's rebel army and the rebel capital of Richmond, Virginia. Lee detects the move and shifts his own forces increasingly toward the southeast. Grant opts for a holding strategy temporarily, hoping that other Union armies on the Virginia coast or in the deep South will gain successes and thus force Lee to weaken his army to protect those threats to the rebel capital. The other attacks come to naught, however, and Grant realizes that the Army of the Potomac will have to decide the issue without the help of other Union formations. Please see entry for 20 May 1864.
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1776: The Virginia Convention instructs its delegate to the Continental Congress, Richard Henry Lee, to propose independence from Great Britain. Lee introduces three resolutions calling on the colonies to make alliances with foreign countries (chiefly France) and to form a "confederation" under a constitution approved by the separate states. His resolutions also proclaim, "That these United States are and of right ought to be free and independent states." Please see entry for 7 June 1776.
1916: American flyers take to the skies over France as the all-volunteer Escadrille Americaine begins operations against the German air force. As the United States is still neutral, French military authorities insist the squadron be called simply Escadrille 124. Ther Americans rebel and promptly--and permanently--name their unit the Lafayette Escadrille.
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1770: Marie Antoinette, daughter of Austrian empress Maria Theresa, marries the French Dauphin. She is fourteen. Although initially beloved by the French people, this last queen of France is destined to die on the guillotine, the revolution that results in her and her husband's death sparked, ironically, by the American Revolution. She leaves history two lasting contributions. One is the quotation, "Let them eat cake," which may be apocryphal. The other is quite real. Upon her arrival at the French court, she introduces a light, fluffy, curled bread, invented by the Austrians in 1683 and called a kipfel. The French will rename it the croissant.
1868: In the final vote, thirty-five United States Senators vote to convict President Andrew Johnson of the "high crimes and misdemeanors" for which he has been impeached. Nineteen Senators vote to acquit. Thus, one vote short of the two-thirds required by the Constitution, the impeachment move fails, and President Johnson is acquitted. He is the first of only two Presidents to be impeached thus far in our nation's history, and the only President to go through trial in the Senate. To date, no President has been removed from his office.
1919: Lieutenant Commander Albert C. Read, U. S. Navy, and his five-man crew depart from Newfoundland in their Curtiss NC-4 flying boat on the first transatlantic flight by a heavier-than-air craft. They will land successfully in Lisbon on 27 May.
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1946: Railroad union leaders, smelling a chance for still more money, threaten a strike that will cripple American industry as it shifts from military to consumer production, and likewise will strangle the government's efforts to return decommissioned servicemen to their homes. President Truman reacts forcefully, ordering the United States Army to take over the nation's railroad operations until union leaders finally see reason. He proposes a wage increase, far less than the union leaders wanted but infinitely more than they deserve.
1954: The United States Supreme Court rules in Brown v. Board of Public Education that racial segregation in schools is illegal. In so doing, it expressly overrules the doctrine of "separate but equal" facilities that it espoused in an 1896 case. Sadly, while the decision is morally and ethically commendable, the next forty years will see the issue of school segregation become a battleground for liberal activists, often for the sake of their personal agendae at the expense of the children the decision should have helped.
1988: Soviet forces begin their ignominious withdrawal from Afghanistan, having gained nothing and lost much by their underhanded invasion and their nine-year occupation of that harmless land. At their height, the Soviets actually controlled perhaps five percent of the country, and that only in urban areas and only during daylight. Their brutal tactics have turned world opinion against them and have united Afghans of all religious persuasions in a common cause of liberation. Further, their invasion has provided the United States with a valuable opportunity to obtain and study Soviet weapons and equipment, and to test our own newer generations of weapons, particularly antiaircraft missiles, in combat conditions. Afghanistan mourns more than 100,000 civilians murdered by the Soviet conquerors. The Soviets still have given no comprehensive accounting of their own losses. Numbers from 15,000 to 75,000 have been published.
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1896: In Plessy v. Ferguson, the United States Supreme Court upholds a Louisiana "Jim Crow" law and promulgates the doctrine of "separate but equal" facilities in public education. This doctrine of de jure and de facto segregation will persist until the Supreme Court reverses its view almost sixty years later.
1933: Congress creates the Tennessee Valley Authority, one of a number of public assistance programs vital to Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" to revitalize America and bring her out of the Great Depression. For a wonder, this program is an immense and lasting success. Dams throughout the Tennessee River's course provide reliable electricity to millions of people who did not have it before. See? Even the federal government can get it right once in a while!
1980: Mount Saint Helens in Washington explodes. The volcano, long thought dead, proved itself quite alive recently, and this explosion obliterates nearly half of the mountain while spilling millions of tons of ash, sand, dirt, grit, rocks, and debris into the Columbia River and skyward. Oddly, the anti-nuclear liberals fail to take note of two significant facts about this explosion: It had roughly the force of 5,000 atomic weapons, and it did not cause "nuclear winter." Hmm. Perhaps dust from volcanoes is different from all that dust their "carefully researched" theoretical models forecast in The War That Never Happened. Or perhaps that war never happened because the United States had those weapons in the first place.
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1971: United States postal rates reach 8 cents per ounce. Partly in response to the public outcry about this "excessive" cost for mail service, the United States Postal Service will be formed to replace the Post Office Department. There will be much ballyhoo about the semi-independent entity. Even today, commercial airwaves bloom with advertisements extolling the Service's rates and reliability. Of course, the commercials blithely ignore the fact that by federal law it is illegal for a truly private corporation to operate a daily-delivery mail service . . . .
1972: In response to United States mining of North Vietnamese ports, Soviet, Chinese, and North Vietnamese Communist representatives meet hurriedly in Peking to arrange for the speedy increase of supplies to the Asian dictatorship.
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1815: Commodore Stephen Decatur sets sail from New York with a fleet of ten United States naval warships. Over the coming months, he and his sailors and Marines will help the various warlords of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli in the Mediterranean understand the unwisdom of demanding tribute from merchant ships. As the U. S. Marines go "to the shores of Tripoli," they end the threat of warlords' depradations on unarmed American merchant vessels and also the Arabs' practice of using pirate fleets to strangle American commerce.
1862: Congress passes the Homestead Act. This statute permits any adult over the age of twenty-one to claim 160 acres of land from the public domain. A claimant has to build a house or barn on the land, cultivate it, and live there for five years, at the end of which time he may record his title to the land for a $10.00 filing fee. Concerned with increasing the amount of land under cultivation, Northern and Midwest politicians had been stymied for many years by their Southern counterparts in Congress, who had blocked all similar land reform movements because of the growing controversy over whether such lands would permit or prohibit ownership of slaves. The Southern states' secession, and the upheaval of the Civil War, has given the remaining members of Congress both the impetus and the opportunity to accomplish many of the long-desired and long-delayed reforms. Although the ultimate settlement of the unoccupied lands in the American West will result more from generous mining laws and railroad grants, the Homestead Act is a significant step in the United States' progress. It is also a major law in a social context especially important today: It is one of the first federal laws expressly making no distinction between men and women. Either one, if of the proper age, can claim land under the Act.
1864: The bloody cycle of assault, maneuver, and counter-maneuver at Spottsylvania finally ends as Ulysses S. Grant sends the Union Army of the Potomac on another powerful march southeast, striving again to interpose his superior strength between Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and the rebel capital in Richmond. Grant realizes what his predecessors ignored: It is not capturing the rebel capital that will end the war, but destroying Lee's army, and the threat of capturing the capital will force Lee, again and again, to fight, and to accept the irreplaceable losses that will inevitably bleed his army to death. Union losses in the twelve days of Spottsylvania reach nearly 18,000. Confederate losses are unknown even today, but easily exceed 10,000. Grant will receive replacements for his losses promptly. There are no replacements for Lee. This latest maneuver will end when the armies confront one another at Cold Harbor.
1895: The first commercial showing of a motion picture takes place in New York City. The feature is less than five minutes long, has no sound, is in black-and-white, and shows a boxing match. This is but one of the many inventions that Thomas Edison gives the world in his brilliant life.
1895: The United States Supreme Court rules that a federal income tax, created in the 1894 Wilson-Gorham Tariff Act, is unconstitutional. Please see entry for 25 February 1913.
1927: Charles Lindbergh takes off in a pouring rain from Roosevelt Field on Long Island in his custom-built airplane, The Spirit of St. Louis. Lindbergh had the Ryan aircraft factory in California build the plane to his specifications for just under $11,000.00. He cannot see forward except through a small periscope because the gasoline tank blocks all views forward. In fact, there is very little to the Spirit except for engine, fuel, and the indomitable will of its quiet pilot; Lindbergh eschews a radio in order to save weight and add fuel. His airplane is so laden with gasoline is almost does not clear telephone wires at the end of the runway. Please see entry for 21 May 1927.
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1927: 10:24 p.m., Paris, France. Charles Lindbergh descends out of the darkness and lands at Le Bourget Airfield to international acclaim, the first person to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean. He has flown almost 4,000 miles from Long Island entirely by dead reckoning, in approximately thirty-three and one-half hours. Lindbergh claims the $25,000.00 prize offered in 1919 for the feat, but categorically declines the various commercial offers that total more than $5,000,000.00.
1956: The United States explodes the world's first hydrogen bomb. The birth of this new weapon is also the birth of a new governmental agency, the Atomic Energy Commission. Then and now, liberals will decry American possession of nuclear arms as threatening world peace, when the undeniable facts clearly point otherwise. The United States remains the only nation in history to use such weapons solely to end a war, and never to begin one.
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1807: Trial begins in the case of the United States against Aaron Burr, arrested and charged with attempting to foment rebellion and establish his own independent nation from parts of Mexico and the United States. U. S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall presides ove the trial in Richmond, Virginia. Lack of evidence leads to Burr's acquittal, but his political career is over. He will live in Europe for several years, trying unsuccessfully to get support for his nation-making plan, then return to the United States to practice law and finally die in obscurity.
1819: The S. S. Savannah, an American merchant ship, under command of Captain Moses Brown, sails from the port in Georgia of the same name, bound for Liverpool, which she will reach on 30 June. This is the first transatlantic passage of a steam-powered vessel. The imagined perils of her steam engine so frighten prospective passngers that none of her thirty-two staterooms are occupied.
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1785: In a letter from France, where he is United States Minister, Benjamin Franklin describes one of his newest inventions: Bifocal spectacles. The punch line: Franklin invented the eyeglasses the previous year!
1924: Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow die in a hail of bullets as lawmen ambush them near Shreveport, Louisiana. "Bonnie and Clyde" have a mystique of almost innocent "goodness" about them, then and now, yet in two years they have casually killed a dozen people while robbing individuals and businesses throughout the region. When they are ambushed, they are holding a shotgun and a submachinegun. Just a couple of fun-loving kids who didn't mean any harm.
1977: American scientists synthesize insulin from bacteria in laboratory conditions. This development dramatically increases the availability and lowers the cost of this vital medicine, which heretofore had to be obtained from living individuals. It means the difference between life and death for thousands of diabetics.
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1844: Samuel F. B. Morse transmits the world's first telegraph message, "What hath God wrought?" from the courtroom of the United States Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., to his assistant Alfred Vail in Baltimore.
1864: General Phillip Sheridan leads his proud Union cavalry troops back to the Union lines and reports the success of his deep raid to Ulysses S. Grant. Sheridan's raid has cost the Union minimal casualties, has destroyed irreplaceable supplies and materiel, has torn up miles of rebel railroad track, and has killed the famous rebel cavalry commander J. E. B. Stuart and reduced its once-vaunted horse soldiers to sheer impotence.
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1950: After many delays occasioned by the Second World War, the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel finally opens in New York City. Initial traffic is more than twice what was anticipated.
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1865: The last rebel army surrenders to Union forces in Shreveport Louisiana, ending all organized rebellion in the secessionist states.
1958: The first American nuclear power plant opens. To date, there have been no accidents at civilian nuclear power plants resulting in any dangerous radiation leakage, yet anti-nuclear activists continue to decry this useful source of electricity.
1994: President Clinton returns Most Favored Nation status to Communist China despite its abysmal record of human rights violations. He also states that henceforth, Most Favored Nation status will no longer be connected to a nation's human rights position. This is a complete reversal of his campaign position--so what else is new?--but Clinton doesn't see it that way--again, so what else is new? He claims that this will actually improve China's human rights efforts. Uh, huh. Sure. Remember the 1970's? When President Carter thought that the reason the Soviet Union wasn't nice to us was that we were scaring them with our military--so he reduced its size and effectiveness dangerously low? The result? Afghanistan. I wonder if anyone in the White House sees the similarity.
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1937: The Golden Gate Bridge opens, spanning San Francisco Bay and linking the city of San Francisco with Oakland. The bridge is 4,200 feet long, the longest suspension bridge in the world.
1938: With almost six million Americans still unemployed, the New Deal cannot be said to have been a total success. President Franklin Roosevelt asks Congress to reduce corporate income taxes and for other help to stimulate the American economy. That's right. A Democratic President who asked Congress to lower taxes. It used to happen.
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1956: Congress votes to pay farmers to withdraw agricultural land from production. So begins the era of "farm subsidies," now a hotly contested and politically charged expense in the federal budget.
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1765: Virginia patriot Patrick Henry rises in that colony's House of Burgesses to protest Britain's Stamp Act (compelling colonists to purchase British government tax stamps even on domestically produced and domestically sold merchandise). His criticisms of King George III prompt the Speaker to protest Henry's speech as treasonous. Henry replies, "Tarquin and Caesar each had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it!"
1927: The "Mystery Sunbeam," a one-thousand-horsepower American vehicle driven by Major Henry Segrave achieves an average speed of almost 204 miles per hour--the fastest land speed record to that date.
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1922: The Lincoln Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C. The statue of the great President inside it is nineteen feet high, but seems much larger. Given the character of the man, that should hardly be surprising.
1953: American scientist James Watson, with Englishman Francis Crick, publish their discovery of deoxyribose nucleic acid (DNA), the genetic coding material that determines the genetic makeup of organic life. Theirs and their successors' research increasingly offer the human race the hope of solutions to genetic disorders, diseases, and other threats and impairments to life.
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1779: British troops seize the American fortifications at Stony Point and Verplanck, New York. They improve upon the fortifications and nickname the position "Little Gibraltar." Little Gibraltar will fall to American soldiers under the command of Anthony "Mad Anthony" Wayne the following July, whereafter he will, on General George Washington's orders, raze the fortifications, thus destroying the position's defense value should the British reclaim it.
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