Daily History

1780 – British Major James Wemyss, commanding a force of 140 horsemen, attempted to surprise 300 South Carolina militiamen under General Thomas Sumter at Fishdam Ford, South Carolina. Instead of capturing Sumter as planned, Wemyss, “the second most hated man in the British army,” was wounded in the arm and knee, and captured by Sumter.
Sumter and Wemyss were major figures in the bloody civil war that raged along the Santee River of South Carolina during the American War of Independence. British Colonel Banastre Tarleton, the man Carolinians most hated, for his brutal destruction of life and property, had burned Sumter’s plantation on the Santee in the early summer of 1780. Enraged, Sumter recruited a militia, which dubbed him the “Gamecock” for his willingness to fight, and began returning Tarleton’s terror tactics in kind.

1862 – General Ambrose Burnside assumed command of the Union Army of the Potomac following the removal of George B. McClellan.
Burnside was a solid corps commander, but by his own admission was not fit to command an army. Indeed, he was not the obvious choice to replace McClellan. Many favored General Joseph Hooker, who, like Burnside, commanded a corps in the army. Hooker had a strong reputation as a battlefield commander but had several liabilities: a penchant for drinking and cavorting with prostitutes and an acrimonious history with Henry Halleck, the general in chief of the Union armies.
McClellan had been well liked by many soldiers, and had a loyal following among some in the command structure. However, others detested him, and Burnside had a difficult time reconciling the pro- and anti-McClellan factions.
Within one month, officers began to mutiny against Burnside’s authority, and Hooker assumed command in late January 1863.

1875 – Indian Inspector E.C. Watkins submitted a report to Washington, D.C., stating that hundreds of Sioux and Cheyenne Indians associated with Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were hostile to the United States. In so doing, Watkins set into motion a series of events that led to the Battle of the Little Big Horn in Montana the following year.
The government responded to the Watkins report by ordering that the Indians “be informed that they must remove to a reservation before the 31st of January, 1876,” and promised that if they refused, “they would be turned over to the War Department for punishment.” However, by the time couriers carried the message to the Sioux it was already winter, and traveling 200 miles to the reservation across frozen ground was an impossible request.
When, as expected, the Sioux missed the deadline, the matter was turned over to the War Department. In March 1876, former Civil War hero General Philip Sheridan ordered a large force of soldiers to trap the Sioux and force them back to the reservations. Among the officers leading the force was George Armstrong Custer, who later that year lead his famous “last stand” against Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse at the Battle of Little Big Horn.

1913 – The Great Lakes Storm of 1913, the most destructive natural disaster ever to hit the lakes, destroyed 19 ships and killed more than 250 people.

1923 – In Munich, armed policeman and troops loyal to Germany’s democratic government crushed the Beer Hall Putsch, the first attempt by the Nazi Party at seizing control of the German government.
Adolf Hitler planned a coup against the state government of Bavaria, which he hoped would spread to the German army, which in turn would bring down the central, democratic government. On the evening of November 8, Nazi forces under Hermann Goering surrounded the Munich beer hall where Bavarian government officials were meeting with local business leaders. A moment later, Hitler burst in with a group of Nazi storm troopers, discharged his pistol into the air, and declared that “the national revolution has begun.” Threatened at gunpoint, the Bavarian leaders reluctantly agreed to support Hitler’s new regime.
In the early morning of November 9, however, the Bavarian leaders repudiated their coerced support of Hitler and ordered a rapid suppression of the Nazis. At dawn, government troops surrounded the main Nazi force occupying the War Ministry building. A desperate Hitler responded by leading a march toward the center of Munich in a last-ditch effort to rally support. Near the War Ministry building, 3,000 Nazi marchers came face to face with 100 armed policemen. Shots were exchanged, and 16 Nazis and three policemen were killed. Hermann Goering was shot in the groin, and Hitler suffered a dislocated elbow but managed to escape.
Three days later, Hitler was arrested. Convicted of treason, he was given the minimum sentence of five years in prison. He was imprisoned in the Landsberg fortress and spent his time writing his autobiography, Mein Kampf. Political pressure from the Nazis forced the Bavarian government to commute Hitler’s sentence, and he was released after serving only nine months. In the late 1920s, Hitler reorganized the Nazi Party as a fanatical mass movement that was able to gain a majority in the Reichstag in 1932. By 1934, Hitler was the sole master of a nation intent on war and genocide.

1935 – United Mine Workers president John L. Lewis and other labor leaders formed the Committee for Industrial Organization.

1938 – In an event that would foreshadow the Holocaust, German Nazis launch a campaign of terror against Jewish people and their homes and businesses in Germany and Austria. The violence, which continued through November 10 and was later dubbed “Kristallnacht,” or “Night of Broken Glass,” (after the countless smashed windows of Jewish-owned establishments), left approximately 100 Jews dead, 7,500 Jewish businesses damaged and hundreds of synagogues, homes, schools and graveyards vandalized. An estimated 30,000 Jewish men were arrested, many of whom were then sent to concentration camps for several months, and released only when they promised to leave Germany. Kristallnacht represented a dramatic escalation of the campaign started by Adolf Hitler in 1933 when he became chancellor to purge Germany of its Jewish population.
The Nazis used the murder of a low-level German diplomat in Paris by a 17-year-old Polish Jew as an excuse to carry out the Kristallnacht attacks. On November 7, 1938, Ernst vom Rath was shot outside the German embassy by Herschel Grynszpan, who wanted revenge for his parents’ sudden deportation from Germany to Poland, along with tens of thousands of other Polish Jews. Following vom Rath’s death, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels ordered German storm troopers to carry out violent riots disguised as “spontaneous demonstrations” against Jewish citizens. Local police and fire departments were told not to interfere. In the face of all the devastation, some Jews, including entire families, committed suicide.
In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, the Nazis blamed the Jews and fined them 1 billion marks (or $400 million in 1938 dollars) for vom Rath’s death. As repayment, the government seized Jewish property and kept insurance money owed to Jewish people. In its quest to create a master Aryan race, the Nazi government enacted further discriminatory policies that essentially excluded Jews from all aspects of public life.
Over 100,000 Jews fled Germany for other countries after Kristallnacht. The international community was outraged by the violent events of November 9 and 10. Some countries broke off diplomatic relations in protest, but the Nazis suffered no serious consequences, leading them to believe they could get away with the mass murder that was the Holocaust, in which an estimated 6 million European Jews died.
Admittedly, this was a long summary, but try to tell me an explanation for an event of this magnitude should have been shorter.

1940 – Neville Chamberlain, former Prime Minster of The United Kingdom, died of bowel cancer at the age of 71.
He is best known for his appeasement foreign policy, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding the German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Germany, which he believed guaranteed “peace for our time” (often misquoted as “peace in our time”) for England.
He could not possibly have been more wrong.

1940 – Robert McNamara became the president of the Ford Motor Company. He would hold the job for less than a month, heading to Washington in December to join President John F. Kennedy’s cabinet. McNamara served as the secretary of defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson until he resigned in 1968.

1965 – The biggest power failure in U.S. history occurred as all of New York state, portions of seven neighboring states, and parts of eastern Canada are plunged into darkness. The Great Northeast Blackout began at the height of rush hour, delaying millions of commuters, trapping 800,000 people in New York’s subways, and stranding thousands more in office buildings, elevators, and trains.
The blackout was caused by the tripping of a 230-kilovolt transmission line near Ontario, Canada, at 5:16 p.m., which caused several other heavily loaded lines also to fail. This precipitated a surge of power that overwhelmed the transmission lines in western New York, causing a “cascading” tripping of additional lines, resulting in the eventual breakup of the entire Northeastern transmission network. All together, 30 million people in eight U.S. states and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec were affected by the blackout.

1970 – Former French president Charles De Gaulle died of a ruptured blood vessel at the age of 79. A hero to French people – although often a thorn in the side of the Americans and British during World War II – DeGaulle continued to speak his mind as president. In a speech before 100,000 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, he denounced U.S. policy in Vietnam and urged the U.S. government to pull its troops out of Southeast Asia.

1989 – East German officials opened the Berlin Wall, allowing travel from East to West Berlin. The following day, celebrating Germans began to tear the wall down. One of the ugliest and most infamous symbols of the Cold War was soon reduced to rubble that was quickly snatched up by souvenir hunters.
The East German action followed a decision by Hungarian officials a few weeks earlier to open the border between Hungary and Austria. This effectively ended the purpose of the Berlin Wall, since East German citizens could now circumvent it by going through Hungary, into Austria, and then into West Germany.
The decision to open the wall was also a reflection of the immense political changes taking place in East Germany, where the old communist leadership was rapidly losing power and the populace was demanding free elections and movement toward a free market system.

2003 – Actor Art Carney died of natural causes at the age of 85. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Harry and Tonto, played the role of Felix Unger in The Odd Couple on Broadway, and will be forever remembered for his portrayal of sewer worker Ed Norton in The Honeymooners.

2004 – Houston Astros pitcher Roger Clemens won his record seventh Cy Young award.

2005 – Three suicide bombers carried out nearly simultaneous attacks on three U.S.-based hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing 60 victims and wounding hundreds.

2006 – Ed Bradley, best known for 26 years of award-winning work on 60 Minutes, died at the age of 65 of complications from lymphocytic leukemia.

2011 – Penn State fired longtime head football coach Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier over their handling of child sex abuse allegations against former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.

Compiled by Ray Lemire ©2015 RayLemire.com. All Rights Reserved.