Christmas Every Day

Firsts and Lasts

1485 Last of the Plantagenet kings

At the Battle of Bosworth usurper Henry Tudor defeats Richard III who is killed, ending the Plantagenet dynasty whose branches of York and Lancaster had been fighting the Wars of the Roses. Tudor becomes Henry VII.

1642 First day of the English Civil War

Charles I, involved in years of quarrelling with Parliament, raises his royal standard at Nottingham signifying that he was at war with his opponents. Seven years later he will be beheaded by his Parliamentary captors.

1831 Nat Turner’s first victim

Slave Nat Turner began his rebellion with an order to “kill the white people”. His rebels in Virgina murdered 60 whites before they were quelled after two days, leading to murderous reprisals against southern blacks. Turner was executed in November.

1953 Devil’s Island closes

The French government had operated a penal colony in their Guiana colony since 1852. Devil’s Island was known for its harsh conditions and tropical diseases; its most famous prisoner was the falsely-accused Captain Alfred Dreyfus. Few convicts ever returned to France; fewer escaped. The last prison was closed after severe public criticism. The island now houses part of the French space program.

1989 First pitcher to 5,000 K

Nolan Ryan, who played for the New York Mets, California Angels, Houston Astros and Texas Rangers, holds a number of baseball records: the only pitcher with 7 no-hitters, the only player to last 27 seasons, the fewest hits allowed per inning, and the leader in strikeouts. On this date in 1989 he struck out Ricky Henderson of the Oakland A’s to become the first pitcher to strike out 5,000 batters. He would go on to strike out another 714 before retiring in 1993.

1561 Mary, Queen of Scots returns to Scotland

“It cam wi’ a lass and it will gang wi’ a lass!” Such was the prophecy supposedly made by King James V of Scotland at the birth of his only child, Mary, in 1542. The Stuart dynasty had originated in the marriage of a Bruce daughter to a Stuart male and the king seemed to fear that his line would end with his daughter. It was not an accurate prophecy but his daughter did live a tumultuous and, in the end, tragic life.

Mary was half-French; her mother was Marie de Guise, a member of an ultra-Catholic royal clique. To keep Mary safe from the clutches of Henry VIII who wished to force a marriage with his son Edward, the child was whisked away to France where she was raised as a Renaissance princess. She was married to Prince Francis, heir to the throne, and in 1559 when he became French king she became Queen of both France and Scotland. Perhaps, just as important was her claim to be the true Queen of England — she was the grand-daughter of Henry VIII’s sister and after 1558 the ruler, Elizabeth, was a Protestant.

Her reign in France was short-lived because Francis, always sickly, died in late 1560 of a brain infection. The French packed her off the next year to Scotland where she could be useful to them as an anti-English ally. Mary was, however, politically maladroit and totally unprepared for the backwardness and political violence she discovered in her home country. Much of the ruling class had become Protestant and would not submit to a woman who was more French than Scottish and a Catholic to boot. Intrigue, murder, religious strife and sexual hijinks would mark her years in power.

 

A good date for things blowing up

1863 Union forces bombard Fort Sumter

The Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in 1861 marked the beginning of the American Civil War. In 1863 Union forces returned to Charleston harbour but failed in numerous attempts to destroy or capture the fort which remained in Southern hands until 1865.

1943 The Schweinfurt Raid

In an attempt to disable the German aircraft industry, the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force launched massive attacks on Schweinfurt and Magdeburg. The simultaneous raid was designed to disperse Luftwaffe fighter attacks but bad timing and lack of fighter protection made the  raid a disaster. 60 bombers and their crews were lost plus several of their escorts. The folly of long-range penetration without fighter coverage persisted until another raid on Schweinfurt later in the year proved even more catastrophic.

1958 Failure of Pioneer 0

The Space Race between the USA and the USSR was just getting started and rocket technology was still unreliable when an ambitious unmanned lunar expedition was launched. The Pioneer craft was to go into orbit around the moon with a camera and various instruments but less than four minutes into the flight the Thor rocket carrying the payload exploded.

2005 Terror bombing in Bangladesh

Inspired by the success of the Islamic jihad in Afghanistan, the Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (the Awakened Muslim Masses of Bangladesh) and the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen (the Assembly of Holy Warriors) combined forces in 2005 to set off 500 bombs all across Bangladesh. The groups wish to replace the secular state with a sharia-ruled government and force stricter observance of Islam. Though leaders of the groups were tried and executed, fundamentalist violence continues to plague the country.

1975 Assassination of Bangladesh’s founder

In the early hours of August 15, 1975 detachments of the Bangladesh Army roared through Dhaka as part of a military coup. Some were stationed to prevent possible opposition, others were bent on assassinating government figures. One unit backed by tanks attacked the presidential palace and murdered the country’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and members of his family. A junta of army officers was installed to rule the country.

Mujib, as he was called, had been the leading figure in obtaining his country’s independence. In 1947 the territories of British India were partitioned into a Hindu-majority India and two Muslim-dominated areas dubbed East and West Pakistan. The latter were separated by a thousand miles, and different cultures and languages. The West dominated the government and declared Urdu to be the official language despite the fact that the easterners largely spoke Bengali. Resentment against this enforced inferiority resulted in a 1971 rebellion in the east. Mujib, who had called for civil disobedience and resistance, was taken prisoner and the West Pakistani army tried to suppress the rising with enormous brutality including a campaign of rape; millions were displaced, 300,000 were said to have been killed and 200,000 women raped. The actions against women were allegedly supported by Muslim religious leaders, who declared that Bengali women were gonimoter maal (public property). This prompted Indian intervention and the result was a nasty war, ending in the independence of the east in a new state known as Pakistan. Mujib was released and returned home in 1972 to become the country’s first president.

Though Bangladesh was now independent, unrest continued. The country was devastated by the civil war, left-wing rebels wanted to impose communism, and Muslim fundamentalists objected to Mujib’s secular approach. Corruption was endemic, and was blamed for the famine conditions in many parts of the country. Mujib attempted to centralize power in himself with a new constitution that banned all political parties but his own; his paramilitary forces committed numerous atrocities. The situation was ripe for a coup.

After Mujib’s murder, the military junta ruled for a time before it too was overthrown. Bangladesh has suffered from political instability ever since, though at the present time the government is democratic and headed by Mujib’s daughter, Sheikh Hasina.

1961

Construction of the Berlin Wall

At the end of World War II, the the map of the defeated Germany was considerably altered. Parts of the nation were lopped off and given to neighbouring countries while the remaining territory was divided into four, each ruled by one of the occupying powers. There were sectors for the French, British, Americans, and USSR; the old capital Berlin, now deep in the Soviet sector, was similarly divided. In 1948 Stalin tried to drive the Western powers out of Berlin by blockading the city but the Berlin Airlift thwarted that.

Western Germany, or the German Federal Republic, emerged out of the French, British, and American sectors, democratic with a market economy; in the East, the German Democratic Republic, was a Soviet puppet state with a communist command economy. The prosperity gap that increasingly separated the two to the benefit of the westerners and political freedoms led to a desire on the part of GDR residents to migrate west. Before 1961, 3.5 million Germans had done so, perhaps as much of 20% of the population. Particularly irksome to the eastern government was the loss of young, educated Germans to a brain drain, with the relaxed border in Berlin as the faucet. Consequently at the urging of their Soviet masters, the populace of the city awoke on the morning of August 13, 1961 to the construction of the Antifaschistischer Schutzwall, the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart,  a barrier separating East and West Berlin, supposedly designed to keep the nasty capitalists out of the East German paradise. Hundreds of refugees fled over the makeshift border while it was being erected but it soon enclosed West Berlin in a ring of concrete, barbed wire, mines, dog patrols, and a no-man’s land death strip.

The Wall, which was eventually pierced in 1989, may have been of economic benefit to the GDR (ending the black market and enabling tighter control) but it was an enormous spiritual black eye to the communist project. If you had to make a prison of your own country, how could you proclaim the benefits of a Marxist society? Both Presidents Kennedy and Reagan scored propaganda coups by coming to the Wall and demanding its removal.

1965

The Watts Riots

A post-war migration of southern African Americans to the Los Angeles area created urban tensions as restrictive housing laws created largely black sections of the eastern and southern parts of the city. These shady real estate practices and perceived racial bias by the Los Angeles Police Department created resentment in areas such as Watts and Compton. On August 11, 1965 a routine evening traffic stop resulted in six days of rioting that caused deaths, enormous damage, and the summoning of the armed forces to subdue the unrest.

Marquette Frye was arrested for drunkenly driving his mother’s 1955 Buick, but a scuffle broke out when bystanders and Frye’s family protested his treatment. In addition to taking Marquette into custody, his mother and brother were also arrested. Guns were drawn, back-up was summoned, crowds gathered, and bottles were thrown. Despite attempts by community leaders to calm the situation, rumours spread about police brutality, and rioters took to the streets, vandalizing buildings and menacing white passersby. After two days of disturbances, the California National Guard put 2,300 reservists on to the streets to join 1,600 police, all to little avail. Arson was widespread, mobs enforced-no-go areas, and police were attacked; it was estimated that 30,000 inhabitants participated in the riots. The LAPD responded with mass arrests and ordered a curfew; bit by bit they took back the neigbourhoods and by August 16 peace had been restored.

The toll was high: 34 deaths, 1,038 injured, 3,438 arrested; hundreds of buildings and businesses over a 50-square-mile area were burnt or looted. A commission determined that a number of racial inequities in employment, housing and education were to blame. This was not to be the last major race riot in the 1960s.

1680

The Pueblo Revolt

Beginning in the mid-16th century, Spanish troops and settlers penetrated into the territory of the Pueblo in what is now New Mexico. Though royal Spanish law was remarkably tolerant for the time, its enforcement in distant parts of the empire was weak, leading to the enslavement and forced conversion of natives. Franciscan missionaries evangelized the Pueblo and won many to at least a superficial attachment to Christianity but most natives continued various aspects of their traditional spirituality including psychoactive drugs and kachina dances. Drought conditions and raids by the Apache added to the resentment against the Spanish occupiers and prompted a number of local unsuccessful revolts.

In 1680 a Pueblo leader named Popé (or Po’pay) engineered a conspiracy against the Spanish settlers and their missionaries. The notoriously fragmented natives had no tradition of political unity, but such was their hatred of their suppression that they listened to Popé’s blandishments, which promised an end to the drought and a return to prosperity if the foreigners were expelled and the Pueblo returned to the worship of their old gods. On August 10 they rose up en masse and began murdering hundreds of priests and colonists. Columns of frightened Spanish retreated from the territory into the safety of Texas, leaving the Pueblo once again in charge of their destiny. Popé travelled through the land, urging the destruction of all Spanish churches, and buildings, and discouraging the agriculture that the newcomers had brought: the cultivation of fruit trees, wheat and barley, and raising livestock such as cattle and sheep.

For twelve years the Pueblo maintained their independence but the droughts did not end with the return of the old gods, nor did Apache raids cease. When a new Spanish governor invaded again, he promised clemency for the rebels and distributed food; a peace was agreed upon. There would be further outbreaks of violence but, in general conditions, were better and Spanish oppression diminished after the revolt.

1944

The Night of 100 Suicides

Japanese prisoners of war were, relatively speaking, a rare phenomenon in World War II. Schooled in the ethos of the bushido warrior code, Japanese soldiers much preferred death to dishonour and would almost always fight to the last man or commit suicide rather than surrender.

In Cowra POW Camp in New South Wales, Australia, 4,000 enemy soldiers and interned civilians were held: Japanese, principally from captured merchant ships, Koreans, political prisoners from the Dutch East Indies, and Italians, captured in the North African campaign. The latter were the happiest of the captives, often allowed out into the community on their own or in work details, many of them making friends (and lovers) among the local population. The Japanese, however, were troublesome and resentful. Unlike the Italians, they were not trusted outside the camp, but otherwise were well treated according to Geneva Convention rules, quite unlike the barbarous conditions faced by Australians captured by the Japanese.

About 2 in the morning of 5 August 1944, a bugle sounded, and over a thousand Japanese erupted from their barracks, armed with makeshift weapons, and attempted a mass escape, the largest ever tried during the war.  Shouting “Banzai” they threw themselves at the barbed wire fences. With blankets, baseball gloves and bare bodies, they neutralized the wire and assaulted the few guards in human wave attacks. Inside the barracks, a dozen prisoners had hanged themselves while others set fire to the compound. At the cost of hundreds of lives they overwhelmed their captors and escaped into the night. They scrupulously observed their commanders’ instructions to harm no civilians but they resisted any attempt at recapture. It took four days to round up the escapees, though more were killed in the process and more committed suicide. In the end, the casualty list read four Australian dead, 231 Japanese killed, and 108 wounded.

A military court of inquiry determined

• that conditions at the camp were fully in accordance with the International Convention;
• that no complaints regarding treatment had been made by or on behalf of the Japanese prior to the incident, which appeared to have been a premeditated and concerted plan of the prisoners;
• that the actions of the Australian garrison in resisting the attack averted greater loss of life, and that firing ceased as soon as control was assured; and
• that many of the dead had died by suicide or by the hand of other prisoners, and that many of the wounded had suffered self-inflicted wounds.

A survivor explained the motivation for the events: “the soldiers has been brainwashed to believe that only a shameful coward with no right to exist would ever surrender in wartime. Even their families often couldn’t accept defeated troops returning home, and they were often treated like fearful ghosts and driven away.” Today Cowra has become a place of pilgrimage and friendship for the Japanese people, and is the location of the only Japanese War Cemetery in Australia, containing the graves of those Japanese killed in the breakout.

1914

Germany invades France

After a month of posturing and threats following the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne, the powers of Europe finally take up arms; with the German invasion of France the Great War, the First World War begins.

The German General Staff had long planned their strategy for the conquest of France. Knowing that they faced enemies on two fronts — the French Republic to the west, the Russian Empire to the east — they counted on a quick strike to knock one of their enemies out of the war before turning to confront the other. Since France was more highly industrialized and mechanized, they could mobilize their armies more quickly than the Russians, so the Germans made the French their first target. According to the Schlieffen Plan, proposed in 1905 by Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen, the Chief of the Imperial Army German General Staff, the German army would concentrate its forces on the Western Front and avoid French fortifications by invading through neutral Belgium and Luxembourg, a gross violation of international law and a treaty to which Germany was a signatory.

On August 3, seven German field armies, comprising 80% of the empire’s armed forces, began to move, sweeping through Belgium and Luxembourg, hoping to smash the French armies on the border and encircle Paris. At first they were successful, taking the great fortress of Liege and capturing Brussels. The French, meanwhile, were concentrating on a thrust east into Alsace, held by the Germans since the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 but considered by the French to be theirs. By late August German forces had entered France, coming to within 43 miles of Paris, where they were stalled by stiffening French resistance and the arrival of the British Expeditionary Force. The Schlieffen Plan had failed; the result was a stalemate and four years of hideous, near-static trench warfare.

1944

The Warsaw Uprising Begins

When Nazi armies collaborated with the Soviet Red Army in overrunning Poland in the autumn of 1939, the occupying forces set out to eradicate Polish identity. Both the Germans and Russians took special care to imprison and murder the country’s intellectual, artistic, political and military leaders. The Nazis aimed to rid the country of its Slavic population and replace it with German colonists; the USSR aimed to Sovietize the Poles; both wished to erase Poland from the map.

Patriotic Poles, however, continued to resist; some inside the country in partisan units devoted to sabotage; some outside the country in the armies of the Allies. Polish fliers participated in the Battle of Britain; Polish soldiers battled the Germans in Italy and on D-Day in France. Unfortunately there was no political union, no single government-in-exile that could speak for Poland — a pro-western group was based in London and a pro-Soviet group operated from Moscow. When Poles exposed the Soviet perpetrators of the 1940 Katyn massacre of Polish officers, the USSR curtailed cooperation with the western group. This was to prove fatal in 1944.

For years the Polish Home Army and other partisan groups had been harassing German forces and arming for a general uprising. Some of these units had assisted Polish Jews in their doomed battle for the Warsaw Ghetto and all looked forward to the advance of Allied armies. By the summer of 1944 it was apparent that the Red Army would be the first to liberate Poland and it was decided that a mass rebellion would begin on August 1. The plan was to take control of Warsaw and then link up with advancing Russian forces to drive the Germans out of the rest of the country.

On August 1 tens of thousands of Poles attacked German bunkers and fortifications in Warsaw. For four days they scored successes, occupying much of the centre of the capital, liberating a concentration camp and causing Germans to withdraw. However, the Red Army halted its advance and refused to come to the aid of the Poles; Stalin refused British and American airforces permission to drop supplies. When the western Allies flew over Poland anyway, Stalin refused permission for them to land in territory under Red control, thus limiting the capacity and effectiveness of the airdrops. The Germans, on the other hand, were able to rush reinforcements into the city. After a while stalemate, turned to siege, civilians and partisans began to starve and German troops carried out massacres of inhabitants in order to break the will of the resistance. Fighting continued until early October by which time much of the city was in flames, Home Army troops had surrendered and the civilians were forced out of Warsaw, 85% of which had been destroyed in the fighting or in the aftermath by vengeful German troops.