On September 11th…
“History is often not for the faint of heart. There are hard lessons to be learned and while it may be easier to ignore them, I can’t. Many of the events which took place on this date throughout history stagger the imagination. To ignore these events or to avoid writing about them is impossible.”
~Ray Lemire
1297 – William Wallace led an army of 10,000 Scots to victory over an English Army of 25,000 at the Battle of Stirling Bridge. The battle was depicted – although not entirely accurately – in the film Braveheart.
1609 – Explorer Henry Hudson sailed into New York harbor and discovered Manhattan Island and the river which would bear his name – 392 years to the day before that island would be the site of the worst attack on American soil in history.
1649 – At the Massacre of Drogheda, Ireland, Oliver Cromwell – Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England – ordered the deaths of 3000 English Royalist and Irish Confederate soldiers.
1683 – 150,000 warriors from the Muslim Ottoman Empire, led by Grand Vizier Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha, began a 2-day battle at Kahlenberg mountain in Vienna against the Holy Roman Empire (in league with the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth) under the command of King John III Sobieski.
Perhaps marking the turning point in the 300-year struggle between the Holy Roman Empire and the Muslim Ottoman Empire, the Battle of Vienna was notable for the largest cavalry charge in history, and is considered one of the twenty most important battles in the history of the world, resulting in 50,000 casualties.
The overwhelming Muslim defeat cost Mustafa his position, and ultimately, his life. On December 25, 1683, he was executed by strangulation with a silk rope pulled by several men on each end, by order of the commander of the Elite Guard.
1777 – General Sir William Howe and General Charles Cornwallis launched a full-scale British attack on General George Washington and the Patriot outpost at Brandywine Creek near Chadds Ford, in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.
1814 – At the Battle of Plattsburgh (a/k/a Battle of Lake Champlain), British forces were defeated by the U.S., effectively bringing an end to the War of 1812.
1814 – Captain William Morgan, an ex-freemason was arrested in Batavia, New York for debt after declaring that he would publish Illusions of Free Masonry, a book critical of the Freemasons and describing their secret degree work in great detail. This set into motion the events that led to his mysterious disappearance following his release.
1857 – Approximately 120 men, women and children in a wagon train en route to California from Arkansas were murdered by Mormon militiamen at the Mountain Meadows Massacre in southern Utah.
1921 – Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, a silent-film era performer at the height of his fame, was arrested in San Francisco for the rape and murder of aspiring actress Virginia Rappe. Arbuckle was later acquitted by a jury, but the scandal essentially put an end to his career.
1941 – In a speech at an America First rally at the DesMoines Coliseum, aviator Charles Lindbergh sparked charges of anti-Semitism when he blamed “the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration” for trying to draw the United States into World War II.
1941 – Construction on the Pentagon began – 60 years to the day before the terrorist attacks of 2001. The five-sided shape was reminiscent of a 17th-century fortress or a Civil War battlement; indeed, the first shot of that war, a mortar shell that burst with a glare at 4:30 in the morning of April 12, 1861, illuminated the dark, five-sided shape of Fort Sumter.
1944 – A Royal Air Force bombing raid on Darmstadt, Germany and the firestorm the attack produced, killed 11,500 and left 66,000 homeless.
1962 – The Beatles recorded their first single, Love Me Do and P.S. I Love You, at EMI studios – long before the name was changed to Abbey Road Studios – in London. Producer George Martin brought in a session drummer, Andy White (pictured above), for the recording.
1967 – The Carol Burnett Show debuted on CBS. The show would run until 1978 and won 25 prime-time Emmy Awards.
1971 – Former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, one of the most significant figures of the Cold War, died at the age of 77. The 1962 Cuban missile crisis was viewed as a terrible embarrassment for the Soviet Union. In 1964, Khrushchev’s opponents organized a political coup against him and he was forced into retirement. The remainder of his life was rather solitary as he was forgotten by most and reviled by many in Russia.
1973 – Chile’s armed forces staged a coup d’état against the government of President Salvador Allende. He survived the attack but reportedly committed suicide – although many still believe he was murdered – as troops stormed the burning palace.
1974 – Little House On The Prairie premiered on NBC. The program would run for nine seasons.
1976 – A group of Croatian nationalists planted a bomb in a coin locker at Grand Central Terminal. After stating political demands, they revealed the location and provided instructions for disarming the bomb. The disarming operation was not executed properly and the bomb exploded, killing Brian Murray, a NYPD bomb squad specialist.
1978 – Gerald and Charlene Adelle Gallego began a two-year killing spree in Sacramento, CA. They killed a total of 10 victims, mostly teenagers, whom they kept as sex slaves before killing them.
In 1984, Gerald Gallego was tried for murder in both California and Nevada (where several of the murders took place). In exchange for her testimony againt Gerald, Charlene was not charged in California and she agreed to plead guilty to murder and received a sentence of sixteen years and eight months in Nevada.
Gerald was convicted in both states and sentenced to death in both of them, but he died in prison before his sentence could be carried out. Charlene Gallego was released from prison in Nevada in July 1997.
1985 – Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds recorded his 4,192nd base hit, breaking Ty Cobb’s career record.
1987 – Actor Lorne Greene of Bonanza fame died of complications from pneumonia, following ulcer surgery. He was 72.
1987 – Dan Rather, angered because CBS decided to shorten the CBS Evening News to broadcast the end of a U.S. Open tennis tournament, walked off the set and caused the network to “go black” for six minutes.
1988 – The Saint-Jean Bosco massacre took place in Haiti. At the conclusion of a three-hour rampage on the Saint-Jean Bosco church packed with 1000 parishioners, the church was burned down thereby making it impossible to verify the total number of deaths.
1998 – Independent counsel Kenneth Starr sent a report to the U.S. Congress accusing President Bill Clinton of 11 possible impeachable offenses.
2001 – In a series of coordinated suicide attacks by 19 members of the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda, the United States suffered the darkest day in its history.
Two hijacked aircraft crashed into the North and South towers, respectively, of the World Trade Center complex in New York City. Within an hour and 42 minutes, both 110-story towers collapsed, with debris and the resulting fires causing partial or complete collapse of all other buildings in the World Trade Center complex, including the 47-story 7 World Trade Center tower, as well as significant damage to ten other large surrounding structures.
A third plane smashed into The Pentagon, while a fourth plane crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
A total of 2,977 innocent people were killed. Although al-Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden, initially denied any involvement, in 2004 he claimed responsibility for the attacks, citing U.S. support of Israel, the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, and sanctions against Iraq as motives.
There are many Americans who continue to attribute the planning and execution of the attacks against the United States to parties other than, or in addition to, al-Qaeda, including their belief that there was advance knowledge of the attacks among high-level government officials.
You may have the right to express those concerns but on this day – this day of reflection – let the conspiracy theories remain quiet. This a day to remember the lives lost and to recall and honor the bravery of so many who did their best to assist those in need.
2002 – Football Hall of Fame quarterback Johnny Unitas died at the age of 69.
2012 – The U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was stormed, looted and burned down, resulting in the deaths of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and Information Officer Sean Smith. Several hours later, a second assault targeted a different compound about one mile away, killing CIA contractors Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.
Initially, top U.S. officials and the media reported that the Benghazi attack was a spontaneous protest triggered by an anti-Muslim video, Innocence of Muslims. Subsequent investigations determined that there was no such protest and that the incident started as a premeditated attack that was quickly joined by rioters and looters.
On September 28 – 17 days after the attack – a spokesman for the Director of National Intelligence stated “As we learned more about the attack, we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists.”
Compiled by Ray Lemire ©2016 RayLemire.com. All Rights Reserved.
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