Official "This Day In History" thread

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

Of course, as we all know, and was known in his day, Columbus was laboring under a misconception about the size of the earth, so never found a westward passage to Asia.

But he still found something interesting ... and a mere 4 centuries and a massive 50-mile canal project later, there was indeed a westward passage to Asia in the region where Columbus landed. (Although technically, it's westward passage with a SE-ward dogleg through the canal.)

In related news, on this day in 1524 Florentine navigator Giovanni Verrazano 'discovered' New York Bay.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

Columbus was laboring under a misconception about the size of the earth, so never found a westward passage to Asia.

What I take away from that age is that accurate timekeeping was considered strategically important. Prizes were given for timekeeping.

If you know what time it is, you can tell where you are on a sphere with reasonable certainty given other signals.

If you don't know what time it is, your error bounds are a little bit larger.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by chalsall

What I take away from that age is that accurate timekeeping was considered strategically important. Prizes were given for timekeeping.

If you know what time it is, you can tell where you are on a sphere with reasonable certainty given other signals.

If you don't know what time it is, your error bounds are a little bit larger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine...e_chronometers (see below**)
Longitude is the problem. Latitude you can get from sightings at local noon.

Of course, Polynesians could navigate by stars, and find islands by reflected waves. It helps to be intimately connected with the water for the latter feat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyne...nal_techniques

**Marine Chronometers
This is just the link with a date. The whole piece is pretty interesting, as is the story of the development of an accurate clock which could run reliably at sea.

In 1714, the British government offered a longitude prize for a method of determining longitude at sea, with the awards ranging from £10,000 to £20,000 (£2 million to £4 million in 2019 terms) depending on accuracy. John Harrison, a Yorkshire carpenter, submitted a project in 1730, and in 1735 completed a clock based on a pair of counter-oscillating weighted beams connected by springs whose motion was not influenced by gravity or the motion of a ship. His first two sea timepieces H1 and H2 (completed in 1741) used this system, but he realised that they had a fundamental sensitivity to centrifugal force, which meant that they could never be accurate enough at sea. Construction of his third machine, designated H3, in 1759 included novel circular balances and the invention of the bi-metallic strip and caged roller bearings, inventions which are still widely used. However, H3's circular balances still proved too inaccurate and he eventually abandoned the large machines.[8]

Harrison solved the precision problems with his much smaller H4 chronometer design in 1761. H4 looked much like a large five-inch (12 cm) diameter pocket watch. In 1761, Harrison submitted H4 for the £20,000 longitude prize. His design used a fast-beating balance wheel controlled by a temperature-compensated spiral spring. These features remained in use until stable electronic oscillators allowed very accurate portable timepieces to be made at affordable cost. In 1767, the Board of Longitude published a description of his work in The Principles of Mr. Harrison's time-keeper.[9]

Take note of John Harrison. Also note that he never received the Longitude Prize. Parliament eventually gave him a belated award.

[Nick]

If you're ever in London, go to the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, where several of these early clocks for ships are still on display.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by kladner

Take note of John Harrison. Also note that he never received the Longitude Prize. Parliament eventually gave him a belated award.

Here is his clock on display at Greenwich:

[Dr Sardonicus]

April 18

On this day...

In 1906, a devastating earthquake struck San Francisco, followed by raging fires; estimates of the final death toll range between 3,000 and 6,000.

According to the sf-info.org page,

At the time, 375 deaths were reported; the figure was fabricated by government officials who felt that reporting the true death toll would hurt real estate prices and efforts to rebuild the city; additionally, hundreds of casualties in Chinatown went ignored and unrecorded. Today, this figure has been revised to an estimate of at least 3,000. Between 227,000 and 300,000 people were left homeless out of a population of about 410,000; half of the people who evacuated fled across the bay to Oakland and Berkeley. Newspapers at the time described Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, the Panhandle and the beaches between Ingleside and North Beach as being covered with makeshift tents. More than two years later in 1908, many of these refugee camps were still in full operation.

See also the Wikipedia page on Gladys Hansen.

[ewmayer]

A few more SF-themed events on this date, plus some various others:

o Astonishingly, just 1 year later to the day the famous Fairmont Hotel opened, thanks to architect Julia Morgan's innovative (for the US at the time ... Morgan had learned about the new technology during her studies in Europe) use of reinforced concrete to rebuild the heavily damaged interior of the hotel, which had been nearly completed at time of the quake.

o In 1936 the Pan-Am Clipper began regular passenger flights from San Francisco to Honolulu.

o 18 Apr 1942 Jimmy Doolittle's raiders firebombed Tokyo and several other Japanese cities.

o 1964 Sandy Koufax became the first MLB pitcher to strike out the opposing side in an inning with the minimum 9 pitches.

o 1996 In Lebanon, at least 106 civilians were killed when the Israel Defense Forces "accidentally" shelled the UN compound at Quana.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

o 18 Apr 1942 Jimmy Doolittle's raiders firebombed Tokyo and several other Japanese cities.

Interesting. The fact that the ordnance included incendiaries as well as high explosives isn't usually emphasized. Of course, the direct military impact of the raid was small.

Coincidentally, as described here, the last of Doolittle's Raiders recently died.

The Japanese Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign against Chinese civilians who sheltered the raiders was noteworthy:

Background

On April 18, 1942, the United States launched the Doolittle Raid, an attack by B-25 Mitchell bombers from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet on Tokyo, Nagoya, and Yokohama. The original plan was for the aircraft to bomb Japan and land at airfields in the unoccupied portion of China. Because the raid had to be launched earlier than planned, two of the aircraft ran out of fuel and crash-landed in the Chinese provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangxi.

Sixty-four American airmen parachuted into the area around Zhejiang. Most were given shelter by Chinese civilians but eight of the Americans were picked up by Japanese patrols; three were shot after a show trial for "crimes against humanity".

The campaign

Imperial General Headquarters was aware of possible air attacks from Chinese territory on Japan. Two days before the Doolittle Raid, Headquarters set up an operational plan with the goal of defeating Chinese forces and destroying air bases. The operation started on May 15, 1942, with 40 infantry battalions and 15-16 artillery battalions of the Imperial Japanese Army.

The Japanese army conducted a massive search for American airmen and in the process whole towns and villages that were suspected of harboring the Americans were burned to the ground and many civilians executed. The Japanese also wanted to occupy the area to prevent American air forces from establishing bases in China from which they could reach the Japanese mainland.

Aftermath

When Japanese troops moved out of the Zhejiang and Jiangxi areas in mid-August, they left behind a trail of devastation. Chinese estimates put the civilian death toll at 250,000. The Imperial Japanese Army had also spread cholera, typhoid, plague and dysentery pathogens. Around 1,700 Japanese troops died out of a total 10,000 Japanese soldiers who fell ill with disease when their biological weapons attack rebounded on their own forces.

Shunroku Hata, the commander of Japanese forces involved in the massacre of the 250,000 Chinese civilians, was sentenced in 1948 in part due to his "failure to prevent atrocities". He was given a life sentence but was paroled in 1954.

[Nick]

On this day in about A.D. 30 ... oh wait ...

[Dr Sardonicus]

April 19

The Shot Heard Round the World

The American Revolutionary War began on April 19, 1775, with a battle between British soldiers and American revolutionaries at Concord and Lexington in Massachusetts. The first shot of the war - the so-called "shot heard 'round the world" is not actually known to history. The term comes from a poem, "Concord Hymn", by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

"By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world."

The bridge in question is North Bridge, in Concord, where it is established that the first shots by American soldiers acting under orders were taken, as well as the first British fatalities and retreat.

The war would end eight years later with the independence of a new country born of the Thirteen Colonies - the United States of America.

In other April 19 Revolutionary War news:

1775 Paul Revere, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott are captured by British troops riding from Lexington to Concord, Prescott escapes to warn Concord

1782 John Adams secures Dutch Republic's recognition of the United States as an independent government and house he purchased in The Hague, Netherlands became first American embassy.

Legend has it that, after Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown, the band played The World Turned Upside Down.

If buttercups buzz'd after the bee
If boats were on land, churches on sea
If ponies rode men and if grass ate the cows
And cats should be chased into holes by the mouse
If the mamas sold their babies
To the Gypsies for half a crown
If summer were spring
And the other way 'round
Then all the world would be upside down!

However, according to a page associated with the PBS program Liberty!,

There is some dispute as to whether the British actually played "The World Turned Upside Down" as they surrendered at Yorktown. Tradition says yes, but at least one scholar has claimed that the earliest mention of the song being played as arms were laid down didn't occur until 1828, almost fifty years after the event.

Contemporary accounts are certain, however, of the importance "Yankee Doodle" had in the ceremony. Henry Knox, Washington's chief of artillery, says that the British band was specifically not allowed to play the song. The Marquis de Lafayette writes that the French army played the song to "discomfort" the British as they marched from the fort between the French and Americans.

"Yankee Doodle" was born as a jest at American soldiers. The song first appeared during the French and Indian War, sung by British troops to poke fun at the bumpkin nature of their American cousins. Americans were called Jonathan's by the British. The word yankee was probably derived from the Dutch word jankee, or little John.

Early in the day, at the battles of Lexington and Concord, British troops played "Yankee Doodle" to poke fun at the Americans as they marched through the countryside. This was before they faced the withering fire of the New England militia on their way back to Boston at the end of the day.

The British again played the song to deride the colonists at Bunker Hill, but by this time, the "Jonathan's" had claimed the tune as their own.

[ewmayer]

Other notable 19 Apr events:

607 - Comet 1P/607 H1 (Halley) approaches within 0.0898 AUs of Earth (that is ~40x the earth-moon distance).

1770 - Captain james Cook first sights the landmass now known as Australia, thinks to self "this would make a fine place for an open-air prison".

1897 - 1st Boston Marathon (B.A.A. Road Race), won by John J. McDermott in 2:55:10; the world's oldest annual marathon inspired by success of the first (modern) marathon at the 1896 Summer Olympics.

1904 - Much of Toronto destroyed by fire, Mrs. O'Leary's cow denies culpability, saying "I was in Chicago at the time". A fictionalized account of the Fire was central to the Murdoch Mysteries episode, "Great Balls of Fire".

1906 - San Francisco quake officially ends; geologists have been busy fault-finding ever since.

1943 - Jews refuse to surrender the Warsaw Ghetto to SS officer Jürgen Stroop, who then orders its destruction, beginning the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.