Today in History ^03/10/18

March 10, 2018 by GµårÐïåñ

General Ulysses S. Grant poses at Cold Harbor, Virginia, in June 1864 during the Civil War (© AP)

(1864) Lincoln promotes Grant as head of Union armies

Hoping to improve upon a string of mediocre commanders in the Union’s fight against the Confederacy in the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln promotes Ulysses S. Grant to lieutenant general of the US Army. Grant’s aggressive fighting strategy will prove decisive in helping to secure the Union’s victory.

Ulysses S. Grant was the most acclaimed Union general during the American Civil War and was twice elected President. Grant began his military career as a cadet at the West Point military academy in 1839. After graduation he went on to serve with distinction as a lieutenant in the Mexican–American War. Grant was a keen observer of the war and learned battle strategies serving under Generals Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott. After the war Grant served at various posts especially in the Pacific Northwest; he was forced to retire from the service in 1854 due to accusations of drunkenness. He was unable to make a success of farming and on the onset of the Civil War in April 1861, Grant was working as a clerk in his father’s leather goods store in Galena, Illinois. When the war began his military experience was needed, and Congressman Elihu B. Washburne became his patron in political affairs and promotions in Illinois and nationwide.

Born: Apr 27, 1822 · Point Pleasant, OH
Died: Jul 23, 1885 · Wilton, NY
Education: United States Military Academy
Highlights
1861: Going on the offensive, Grant took 3,000 Union troops by boat and attacked the Confederate Army commanded by General Gideon J. Pillow positioned at Camp Johnson in Belmont, Missouri on November 7, 1861.

1862: Resolved to take control of the Mississippi River from the Confederacy, President Lincoln and the Union Army and Navy were determined to take the Confederate stronghold Vicksburg in 1862.

1862: In early March 1862, Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck ordered Grant’s Army of the Tennessee to move southward up the Tennessee River to attack Confederate railroads.

1863: In January 1863, McClernand and Sherman’s combined XIII and XV corps, the Army of the Mississippi, defeated the Confederates at Arkansas Post.

1863: Adm. David D. Porter’s navy ships had previously made a run past Vicksburg’s batteries on April 16, 1863, enabling Union troops to be transported to the east side of the river.

1863: When Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans was defeated at the Chickamauga in September 1863, the Confederates, led by Braxton Bragg, besieged the Union Army of the Cumberland in Chattanooga.

Gen. U.S. Grant – Category:Images of people of the American Civil War
wiki/Ulysses_S._Grant_and_the_American_Civil_War

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Today in History ^12/22/17

December 22, 2017 by GµårÐïåñ

General William T. Sherman circa 1854-65 (Public domain)

(1864) Sherman gives Lincoln the city of Savannah as a Christmas present

Union Gen. William T. Sherman wires President Abraham Lincoln a message: “I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah.” The telegraph relieves Lincoln who had not heard from Sherman for weeks on his infamous March to the Sea across the South, but the capture of Savannah demonstrates the campaign’s success.

Sherman’s March to the Sea, more formally known as the Savannah Campaign, was a military campaign of the American Civil War conducted through Georgia from November 15 to December 21, 1864 by Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army. The campaign began with Sherman’s troops leaving the captured city of Atlanta on November 15 and ended with the capture of the port of Savannah on December 21. His forces destroyed military targets as well as industry, infrastructure, and civilian property and disrupted the Confederacy’s economy and its transportation networks. The operation broke the back of the Confederacy and helped lead to its eventual surrender. Sherman’s bold move of operating deep within enemy territory and without supply lines is considered to be one of the major achievements of the war.

Start date: Nov 15, 1864
End date: Dec 21, 1864

Savannah Campaign (Sherman’s March to the Sea).

wiki/Sherman’s_March_to_the_Sea

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Today in History ^06/03/17

June 3, 2017 by GµårÐïåñ

U.S. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant poses at Cold Harbor, Virginia, in June 1864 during the American Civil War (© AP)

(1864) General Grant makes a tragic decision at Cold Harbor

Confederate forces are entrenched just 10 miles southeast of Richmond, capital of the Confederacy. Union General U. S. Grant orders a full frontal assault, despite his reinforcements not having arrived, and 7,000 Union troops are dead within an hour’s time in one of the Civil War’s bloodiest battles.

The Battle of Cold Harbor was fought from May 31 to June 12, 1864, with the most significant fighting occurring on June 3. It was one of the final battles of Union Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign during the American Civil War, and is remembered as one of American history’s bloodiest, most lopsided battles. Thousands of Union soldiers were killed or wounded in a hopeless frontal assault against the fortified positions of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s army.

Start date: May 31, 1864
End date: Jun 12, 1864

wiki/Battle_of_Cold_Harbor

Gangs of American sailors and marines armed with sticks during the Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles in June 1943 (© Anthony Potter Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

(1943) Military men target Latinos in L.A. rioting

Fueled by racism, and what’s perceived as the flaunting of wartime rationing rules, the Zoot Suit Riots flare in Los Angeles as white Marines and Navy sailors attack young Latino men. Other cities will see similar clashes between soldiers and minorities wearing the distinctive suit.

The Zoot Suit Riots were a series of attacks in June 1943 in Los Angeles, California, United States, by white American servicemen stationed in Southern California against Mexican American youths and other minorities who were residents of the city.

Date: 1943

wiki/Zoot_Suit_Riots

Aretha Franklin in concert (© Ron Howard/Redferns/Getty Images)

(1967) Aretha Franklin gets some R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Aretha Franklin hits No. 1 on the ‘Billboard’ Hot 100 singles chart with her version of Otis Redding’s ‘Respect,’ turning the song into a women’s anthem. Decades later, Rolling Stone will rank her recording as one of the five greatest songs of all time.

“Respect” is a song written and originally released by American recording artist Otis Redding in 1965. The song became a 1967 hit and signature song for R&B singer Aretha Franklin. The music in the two versions is significantly different, and through a few minor changes in the lyrics, the stories told by the songs have a different flavor. Redding’s version is a plea from a desperate man, who will give his woman anything she wants. He won’t care if she does him wrong, as long as he gets his due respect, when he brings money home . However, Franklin’s version is a declaration from a strong, confident woman, who knows that she has everything her man wants. She never does him wrong, and demands his “respect”. Franklin’s version adds the “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” chorus and the backup singers’ refrain of “Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me…” Franklin’s cover was a landmark for the feminist movement, and is often considered as one of the best songs of the R&B era, earning her two Grammy Awards in 1968 for “Best Rhythm & Blues Recording” and “Best Rhythm & Blues Solo Vocal Performance, Female”, and was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1987. In 2002, the Library of Congress honored Franklin’s version by adding it to the National Recording Registry. It was placed number five on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It was also included in the list of Songs of the Century, by the Recording Industry of America and the National Endowment for the Arts. Franklin included a live recording on the album Aretha in Paris (1968).

Album: I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You
Artists: Aretha Franklin · Otis Redding
Duration: 2:21
Genre: R&B / Soul, Soul

wiki/Respect_(song)

Valerie Solanas, 28, enters police headquarters after she was arrested for shooting Andy Warhol in New York on June 3, 1968 (© Jerry Haynes/NY Daily News Archive/Getty Images)

(1968) Pop art provocateur is nearly assassinated

Already well into his 15 minutes of fame, Andy Warhol, the king of Manhattan’s underground art-world elite, is shot at his famed workspace, The Factory. He will survive after a 5-hour operation, and his would-be assassin, Valerie Solanas, will be diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic.

Andy Warhol was an American artist, director and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture, and advertising that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, silkscreening, photography, film, and sculpture. Some of his best known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell’s Soup Cans and Marilyn Diptych, the experimental film Chelsea Girls, and the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable.

Lived: Aug 06, 1928 – Feb 22, 1987 (age 58)
Height: 5′ 11″ (1.80 m)
Periods: Pop art · Modern art
Education: Carnegie Mellon University (1945 – 1949) · Schenley High School (1942 – 1945)
Buried: St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery
Parents: Julia Warhola (Mother) · Andrej Warhola (Father)

wiki/Andy_Warhol

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Today in History ^03/10/17

March 10, 2017 by GµårÐïåñ

Illustration of the Roman naval victory over the Carthaginians at Mylae during the First Punic War (© North Wind Picture Archives/Alamy)

(241 BCE) Romans defeat Carthage to end the First Punic War

Two decades of conflict between Mediterranean goliaths end as the fleet of the Roman Republic captures or destroys half of the Carthage fleet. Nevertheless, two more wars between the powers are on the horizon.

The First Punic War was the first of three wars fought between Ancient Carthage and the Roman Republic. For more than 20 years, the two powers struggled for supremacy, primarily on the Mediterranean island of Sicily and its surrounding waters, and also in North Africa. The war signaled the beginning of a strategic transformation in the western Mediterranean. Carthage began the war as the great sea-power of the western Mediterranean, while Rome had but a small fleet of fighting ships. Over the course of the war, Rome built up a powerful navy, developed new naval tactics, and strategically used their navy, army, and local political alliances on Sicily in order to achieve a victory that expelled the Carthaginians from Sicily. The First Punic War ended with a treaty between Rome and Carthage, but years of bloodshed were to follow in the Second and Third Punic Wars before the strategic issue of power in the western Mediterranean was resolved in favor of Rome, and in the total destruction of Carthage.

Start date: 264 BC
End date: 241 BC

wiki/First_Punic_War

Postcard depicting the French Foreign Legion, Morocco, circa 1900 (© Art Media/Print Collector/Getty Images)

(1831) French Foreign Legion is founded

France’s King Louis Philippe establishes a new military unit that he hopes will corral mercenaries and misbehavers, attract foreign fighters, and bolster his North African colonial expansion.

The French Foreign Legion is a military service branch of the French Army established in 1831, unique because it was created for foreign nationals willing to serve in the French Armed Forces.

Flag :
Insignia :

wiki/French_Foreign_Legion

(1864) Lincoln promotes Grant as head of Union armies

Ulysses S. Grant was the most acclaimed Union general during the American Civil War and was twice elected President. Grant began his military career as a cadet at the West Point military academy in 1839. After graduation he went on to serve with distinction as a lieutenant in the Mexican–American War. Grant was a keen observer of the war and learned battle strategies serving under Generals Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott. After the war Grant served at various posts especially in the Pacific Northwest; he retired from the service in 1854. On the onset of the Civil War in 1861, Grant was working as a clerk in his father’s leather goods store in Galena, Illinois.

Born: Apr 27, 1822 · Point Pleasant, OH
Died: Jul 23, 1885 · Wilton, NY
Education: United States Military Academy
Highlights
1861: Going on the offensive, Grant took 3,000 Union troops by boat and attacked the Confederate Army commanded by General Gideon J. Pillow positioned at Camp Johnson in Belmont, Missouri on November 7, 1861.

1862: Resolved to take control of the Mississippi River from the Confederacy, President Lincoln and the Union Army and Navy were determined to take the Confederate stronghold Vicksburg in 1862.

1862: In early March 1862, Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck ordered Grant’s Army of the Tennessee to move southward up the Tennessee River to attack Confederate railroads.

1863: In January 1863, McClernand and Sherman’s combined XIII and XV corps, the Army of the Mississippi, successfully defeated the Confederates at Arkansas Post.

1863: Adm. David D. Porter’s navy ships had previously run the guns at Vicksburg on April 16, 1863, enabling Union troops to be transported to the east side of the Mississippi.

1863: When Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans was defeated at the Chickamauga in September 1863, the Confederates, led by Braxton Bragg, besieged the Union Army of the Cumberland in Chattanooga.

wiki/Ulysses_S._Grant_and_the_American_Civil_War

Tibetans gather during an uprising against Chinese rule March 10, 1959 in front of the Potala Palace (former home of the Dalai Lama) in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet (Xizang) (© AFP/Getty Images)

(1959) Massive uprising in Chinese-occupied Tibet

Tensions come to a head after 10 years of Chinese occupation, as some 300,000 Tibetans, fearful that the Dalai Lama is about to be kidnapped, surround his palace in Lhasa to protect him.

The 1959 Tibetan Uprising or 1959 Tibetan Rebellion began on 10 March 1959, when a revolt erupted in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet Area, which had been under the effective control of the People’s Republic of China since the Seventeen Point Agreement in 1951. Armed conflict between Tibetan rebels and the People’s Liberation Army had started in 1956 in the Kham and Amdo regions, which had been subjected to socialist reform. The guerrilla warfare later spread to other areas of Tibet and lasted through 1962.

Start date: Mar 10, 1959
End date: Mar 21, 1959

wiki/1959_Tibetan_uprising

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Today in History ^12/22/16

December 22, 2016 by GµårÐïåñ

(1849) Dostoevsky spared at last minute from firing squad

Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky stands before a firing line but as the guns are about to fire gets a reprieve and is sent into exile. A member of an underground intellectual group, he’d been condemned to die for antigovernment activities. He’ll go on to write ‘Crime and Punishment’ and ‘The Brothers Karamazov.’
On this day in 1849, a Russian court sentences Fyodor Dostoevsky to death for his allegedly antigovernment activities linked to a radical intellectual group. His execution is stayed at the last minute. Dostoevsky’s father was a doctor at Moscow’s Hospital for the Poor, where he grew rich enough to buy land and serfs. After his father’s death, Dostoevsky, who suffered from epilepsy, studied military engineering and became a civil servant while secretly writing novels. His first, Poor People, and his second, The Double, were both published in 1846-the first was a hit, the second a failure. Dostoevsky began participating in a radical intellectual discussion group called the Petrashevsky Circle. The group was suspected of subversive activites, which led to Dostoevsky’s arrest in 1849, and his sentencing to death. On December 22, 1849, Dostoevsky was led before the firing squad but received a last-minute reprieve and was sent to a Siberian labor camp, where he worked for four years. He was released in 1854 and worked as a soldier on the Mongolian frontier. He married a widow and finally returned to Russia in 1859. The following year, he founded a magazine and two years after that journeyed to Europe for the first time. In 1864 and 1865, his wife and his brother died, the magazine folded, and Dostoevsky found himself deeply in debt, which he exacerbated by gambling. In 1866, he published Crime and Punishment, one of his most popular works. In 1867, he married a stenographer, and the couple fled to Europe to escape his creditors. His novel The Possessed (1872) was successful, and the couple returned to St. Petersburg. He published The Brothers Karamazov in 1880 to immediate success, but he died a year later. FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY IS SENTENCED TO DEATH — Source: www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fyodor-dostoevsky-is-sentenced-to-death
(1864) Sherman gives Lincoln the city of Savannah as a Christmas present

Union Gen. William T. Sherman wires President Abraham Lincoln a message: “I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah.” The telegraph relieves Lincoln who had not heard from Sherman for weeks on his infamous March to the Sea across the South, but the capture of Savannah demonstrates the campaign’s success.
Sherman’s March to the Sea, more formally known as the Savannah Campaign, was a military campaign of the American Civil War conducted through Georgia from November 15 to December 21, 1864 by Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army. The campaign began with Sherman’s troops leaving the captured city of Atlanta, on November 15 and ended with the capture of the port of Savannah on December 21. His forces destroyed military targets as well as industry, infrastructure, and civilian property and disrupted the Confederacy’s economy and its transportation networks. Sherman’s bold move of operating deep within enemy territory and without supply lines is considered to be revolutionary in the annals of war. Start date: Nov 15, 1864 End date: Dec 21, 1864 — Source: wiki/Sherman’s_March_to_the_Sea
(1956) Ohio zoo welcomes the first gorilla born in captivity

Colo is born at the Columbus Zoo on this day in 1956. Her parents had been surreptitiously put together at night by a zookeeper going against his boss’s orders to keep them separated. The success of Colo’s birth will spur a captive-breeding program for western lowland gorillas in zoos.
Colo is a western gorilla widely known as the first gorilla to be born in captivity anywhere in the world and as the oldest gorilla in captivity in the world. Colo was born at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium to Millie Christina and Baron Macombo. She was briefly called Cuddles before a contest was held to officially name her. Colo’s name is derived from the place of her birth, Columbus, Ohio. Tomatoes are her favorite food. — Source: wiki/Colo_(gorilla)
(1984) Bernhard Goetz shoots four black youths on NY subway

Bernhard Goetz shoots four teens after one says to Goetz, “Give me $5.” All four survive but are seriously wounded. After nine days on the run, Goetz will turn himself in to police. A jury will rule he acted in self-defense, but one victim will win a $43 million judgment against the self-styled subway vigilante.
The 1984 New York City Subway shooting was a shooting in the New York City Subway, in which Bernhard Goetz shot four alleged muggers on a New York City Subway train in Manhattan on December 22, 1984. He fired five shots, seriously wounding all four men. Goetz surrendered to police nine days after the shooting and was eventually charged with attempted murder, assault, reckless endangerment, and several firearms offenses. A jury found him not guilty of all charges except for one count of carrying Location: New York City, United States Date: December 22, 1984 Attack type: Mass shooting Weapons: Smith & Wesson Model 38 Non-fatal injuries: 4 Perpetrator: Bernhard Goetz — Source: wiki/1984_New_York_City_Subway_shooting
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