An interesting day in history.
1836 Fall of the Alamo
After a 13-day siege Mexican troops under General Santa Ana pour into the Alamo fort and massacre the defenders. The painting above shows the death of Davy Crockett.
1857 The Dred Scott decision
Dred Scott, a black slave, had been taken by his master to a non-slave state and sued for his freedom. The Supreme Court ruled against him, saying that “a negro, whose ancestors were imported into [the U.S.], and sold as slaves”, whether enslaved or free, could not be an American citizen and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court. Moreover, the court said the federal government could not regulate slavery in territories acquired after the creation of the U.S. This ruling inflamed anti-slavery passions and contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861.
1912 First use of airships in war
Italian forces in two dirigibles drop bombs on Turkish troops in what is now Libya.
1970 A Weather Underground bomb explodes
Left-wing terrorist groups emerged out of the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s. One of these was the Weathermen, (later the Weather Underground) whose name derived from the Bob Dylan song “Subterranean Homesick Blues” containing the line “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” The group incited riots, declared war on the USA, and bombed the Pentagon, Capitol Building and State Department. On this date three terrorists, all white graduate students, died when one of their own bombs exploded in their Greenwich Village safe house.
1984 British miners’ strike begins
Until this strike the British miners had been among the best-paid and most militant of the UK’s labour unions. For years, the the National Union of Miners had successfully resisted government plans to make the coal industry more efficient and reduce subsidies; their strike in 1974 had brought down Edward Heath’s Conservative government. In 1984, without calling a national ballot, NUM president Arthur Scargill led the miners out again, but this time Margaret Thatcher’s government was prepared. Coal stockpiles at power plants were enormous, and police strategies were devised to counter the union tactic of flying pickets. After a year of bitter conflict, the union conceded defeat.