Wolf Howling: peasant's revolt

Sunday, June 14, 2009

This Day In History - June 14: Birthdays of the Army, Bourbon & Superman; Peasants & Californians Revolt

Art: Napoleon In Berlin, Charles Meynier

1381 – A major development in our traditions of democracy and freedom for all traces back to the Great Revolt, also called the Peasant Revolt. And on this day in 1381, leaders of Peasants' Revolt met with Richard II on the field at Blackheath, where they presented their demands, including the dismissal of corrupt and unpopular ministers, "an end to the much-hated poll tax; an end to serfdom; and the repeal of the law that unfairly [froze] their wages to pre-Black Death rates." While the meeting was ongoing, some of the other rebels took matter into their own hands and stormed the Tower of London. There they found two of most hated ministers, Simon of Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Lord Treasurer Robert de Hales, beheading them both. Not finding the king's uncle John of Gaunt, they burnt his home, the Savoy Palace, to the ground. Do read the entry at Brits at Their Best on the role of John Wycliffe in the Great Revolt and the revolt's aftermath.

1645 – In the pivotal battle of the English First Civil War, a Parliamentarian army under the command of Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell decisively beat the main Royalist army loyal to King Charles I at the Battle of Naseby. The King lost his veteran infantry, including 500 officers, and all of his artillery. The war would end in a year.

1648 – Margaret Jones was hung in Boston for witchcraft.

1775 – The United States Army was born when Continental Congress authorized the formation of the Continental Army.

1777 – The Stars and Stripes was adopted by Congress as the Flag of the United States.

1789 – Survivors of the famed Mutiny on the Bounty, including Captain William Bligh and 18 others, reach Timor after a nearly 7,400 km (4,000-mile) journey in an open boat.

1789 – Bourbon - a from of whisky distilled from corn, is born on this day when the first batch is distilled by the Rev. Elijah Craig in Bourbon County, Kentucky.

1800 – Having installed himself as the leader of France in a coup in 1799, Napoleon began his famous wars of conquest of the European continent. On this date in 1800, in one of his most famous battles, he defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Marengo in Northern Italy and re-conquered Italy.

1807 – Napoleon decisively defeated a Russian Army at the Battle of Friedland, ending the War of the Fourth Coalition.

1821 – The Ottoman Empire completed the conquest of the Sudan when Badi VII, king of Sennar, surrendered his throne to Ottoman General Ismail Pasha.

1846 – Anglo settlers in Sonoma, California, start a rebellion against Mexico and proclaim the California Republic, kicking off the Bear Flag Revolt.

1900 – Hawaii becomes a United States territory.

1907 – Norway adopts female suffrage.

1938 – Action Comics issue one was released, introducing Superman.

1940 – Paris surrenders to German occupation. In less than a month, the Vichy Regime would be established and the French would begin active collaboration with Hitler.

1940 – Auschwitz concentration camp began operations when the first group of 728 prisoners, Poles from Tarnów, arrived at the camp.

1941 – In June 1940, the Red Army occupied Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and installed new, pro-Soviet governments in all three countries. A year later, facing an ongoing guerrilla war against their occupation, the Soviets began the mass deportations and murder of Estonians, Lithuanians and Latvians with the "June deportation." Men were generally imprisoned and most of them died in Siberian gulags. Women and children were resettled in Kirov oblast and Novosibirsk oblast and about a half of them eventually survived..

1954 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a bill into law that places the words "under God" into the United States' Pledge of Allegiance.

1962 – Albert DeSalvo, better known as the Boston Strangler, murders Anna Slesers, his first victim.

1962 – The New Mexico Supreme Court in the case of Montoya v. Bolack, 70 N.M. 196, prohibits state and local governments from denying Indians the right to vote because they live on a reservation.

1966 – In an effort to prevent the spread of heresy, the Vatican had begun banning books in 1557 by listing them in the Church's "index librorum prohibitum." Making the list over the years were books by Jean Paul Sartre, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, Rene Descartes, Francis Bacon, John Milton, John Locke, Galileo Galilei, and Blaise Pascal. This practice came to an end on this day in 1966 by the order of then Pope Paul VI.

1967 – Mariner 5 is launched toward Venus.

1976 – The trial begins at Oxford Crown Court of Donald Neilson, the killer known as the Black Panther.

1982 – The Falklands War ends when Argentine forces in the capital Stanley unconditionally surrender to British forces.

1985 – TWA Flight 847 is hijacked by four members of Hezbollah, including Imad Mugniyah, shortly after take-off from Athens, Greece. Iran was directly involved in this hijacking. The kidnappers beat and murdered one of the passengers, U.S. Navy diver, Robert Stethem, and threw his body to the tarmac.

Births

1811 – Harriet Beecher Stowe, American author (d. 1896)

1928 – Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Marxist Revolutionary and mass murderer for whom justice would be delayed until 1967.

1932 – Joe Arpaio, sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona

1946 – Donald Trump, American businessman

1950 – Rowan Williams, 104th Archbishop of Canterbury and, arguably, one of the most ineffective and misguided individuals to ever hold the position.

Deaths

1381 – Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, who lost his head to rampaging peasants over the poll tax.

1497 – Giovanni Borgia, Duke of Borgia, he was the son of Pope Alexander VI and the Pope's mistress, Vannozza dei Cattanei. He was murdered on the night of 14 June in a crime that has never been solved. Speculation is that either his brother had a hand in his death or that he was murdered by the father of a young woman whom he sought to seduce.

1914 – Adlai Stevenson I, American politician, 23rd Vice President (b. 1835)

1928 – Emmeline Pankhurst, British feminist (b. 1857)

1936 – G. K. Chesterton, English author (b. 1874)

Holidays and observances

Today is Liberation Day in the Falkland Islands, Flag Day in the U.S., and the feast day of St. Eliseus, the Prophet whose story appears in the Old Testament. he became the attendant and disciple of Elijah (1 Kings 19:16-19), and after Elijah was taken up in a fiery chariot into the whirlwind, he was accepted as the leader of the sons of the prophets, and became noted in Israel. He possessed, according to his own request, "a double portion" of Elijah's spirit (2 Kings 2:9); and for sixty years (892-832 BC) held the office of "prophet in Israel" (2 Kings 5:8).

This Day In History - 12 June: Peasants' Revolt, Oda Sneaks, & Reagan Calls For A Wall To Be Torn Down

1381 – The Peasants' Revolt got into full swing in England by June 12. Rebels arrived at Blackheath where they were treated to a sermon by Priest John Ball who asked the famous question: "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?" (i.e. in the Garden of Eden, were there any class distinctions?"). The Peasant's Revolt was the most extreme and widespread insurrection in English history. It marked the beginning of the end of serfdom in medieval England. The causes of the revolt were excessive taxation and attempts by the aristocracy to limit the compensation peasants could be paid. Do those two sound familiar?

1560 – In one of the great battles of medieval Japan, Oda Nobunaga, outnumbered ten to one, defeated Imagawa Yoshimoto at the Battle of Okehazama with a surprise attack.

1665 – England installed a municipal government in the former Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam, today NYC.

1775 – British general Thomas Gage declared martial law in Massachusetts. He offered a pardon to all colonists who would lay down their arms, but for Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who, if captured, were to be hanged.

1830 – Beginning of the French colonization of Algeria: 34,000 French soldiers land 27 kilometers west of Algiers, at Sidi Ferruch.

1898 – General Emilio Aguinaldo declares the Philippines' independence from Spain.

1940 – 13,000 British and French troops surrender to Major General Erwin Rommel at Saint-Valery-en-Caux.

1942 – Anne Frank, the young girl whose writing has been a window into the horrors of the holocaust, received a diary for her thirteenth birthday.

1943 – Nazis liquidates the Jewish Ghetto in Berezhany, western Ukraine. 1,180 Jews are led to the city's old Jewish graveyard and shot.

1963 – Civil rights figure Medgar Evers is murdered in front of his home in Jackson, Mississippi by KKK member Byron De La Beckwith.

1964 – Anti-apartheid activist and ANC leader Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life in prison for sabotage in South Africa.

1967 – The United States Supreme Court, in Loving v. Virginia declares all U.S. state laws which prohibit interracial marriage to be unconstitutional.

1978 – David Berkowitz, the "Son of Sam" killer in New York City, is sentenced to 365 years in prison for six killings.

1987 – Ronald Reagan publicly challenges Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate.

1991 – Russians elect Boris Yeltsin as the president of the republic.

1994 – Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman are murdered outside her home in Los Angeles by ex-husband O.J. Simpson.

1997 – Shakespeare's Globe Theater is officially reopened in London by Queen Elizabeth II.

2004 – A 3 lbs. chondrite type meteorite strikes a house in Ellerslie, New Zealand causing serious damage but no injuries.

Births

1924 – George H. W. Bush, 41st President of the United States

1929 – Anne Frank, German-born Dutch Jewish diarist and Holocaust victim (d. 1945)

Deaths

816 – Pope Leo III, best remembered for his act on Christmas Day 800, when, to Charelemagne's surprise, Pope Leo crowned Charlemagne as Roman emperor. This symbolism suggested that leaders bore their authority at the pleasure of the Church, strengthening the Church and setting up an issue that would plague Church-monarch relations for close to the next millenium.

918 – Ethelfleda, the eldest daughter of England's King Alfred the Great, wife of Æthelred, ealdorman of Mercia, and after his death, ruler of Mercia. As befitting a daughter of Alfred, she proved a formidable military leader and tactician during her reign over Mercia.

1957 – Jimmy Dorsey, American musician (b. 1904)

2003 – Gregory Peck, American actor (b. 1916)

Today is the feast day for Saint Leo III who is discussed above, and for Saint Pharaildis, the patron Saint of Ghent. She was married against her will at a young age with a nobleman, even after having made a private vow of virginity. Her husband insisted she submit. She refuses and was beaten, but retained her virginity through her marriage and then until her death in 740 A.D. Her patronage includes childhood diseases, difficult marriages, physical abuse and widows.

Update: Crusader Rabbit has a great post up on a fascinating historical fact: ". . . a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass."

Don't miss Rougeclassicism, where they regularly post memorable dates from ancient history.

And for the best in current events, don't miss Larwyn's Linx at Doug Ross's Journal.