Ray"s Today in History – August 5

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Ray’s Today in History – August 5

This is Ray Mossholder from the headquarters of Reach More Now in Fort Worth, Texas, and this is Today in History. These are the stories that have made news throughout history – stories that happened on

AUGUST 5

Ray’s Today in History – August 5

 August 5, 1100 – Henry I is crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey.

In 1305 on this date, William Wallace, who led the Scottish resistance against England, is captured by the English near Glasgow and transported to London where he is put on trial and executed. Mel Gibson immortalized William Wallace in the 1995 movie “Braveheart”.

On August 5, 1604, John Eliot was baptized in England. His non-conformist views eventually prompted him to come to America, where he founded fourteen congregations of Indian Christians, translated the Bible into Algonquin and helped prepare the Bay Psalm Book, the first book printed in America. Captured at one point by Indians, he learned their language while in captivity.

On this day in 1620, the Separatists left England for Massachusetts, which didn’t exist yet.

In 1608, a congregation of judgmental and disgruntled English Protestants from the village of Scrooby, Nottinghamshire, left England and moved to Leyden, a town in Holland. These “Separatists” didn’t want to pledge allegiance to the Church of England. (They were not the same as the Puritans, who had many of the same objections to the English church but wanted to reform it from within.) The Separatists hoped that in Holland, they would be free to worship as they liked

In fact, the Separatists (they called themselves “Saints”) did find religious freedom in Holland, but they also found a secular life that was more difficult to navigate than they’d anticipated. For one thing, Dutch craft guilds excluded the migrants, so they were relegated to menial, low-paying jobs.

Even worse was Holland’s easygoing, cosmopolitan atmosphere, which proved alarmingly seductive to some of the Saints’ children. (These young people were “drawn away,” Separatist leader William Bradford wrote, “by evill [sic] example into extravagance and dangerous courses.”) For the strict, devout Separatists, this was the last straw. They decided to move again, this time to a place without government interference or worldly distraction: the “New World” they called it, across the Atlantic Ocean.

First, the Separatists returned to London to get organized. A prominent merchant agreed to advance the money for their journey. The Virginia Company gave them permission to establish a settlement, or “plantation,” on the East Coast between 38 and 41 degrees north latitude (roughly between the Chesapeake Bay and the mouth of the Hudson River). And the King of England gave them permission to leave the Church of England, “provided they carried themselves peaceably.”

In August 1620, a group of about 40 joined a much larger group of (comparatively) secular colonists– “The Saints”called everyone else “Strangers,” but they set sail anyway from England on two merchant ships: the Mayflower and the Speedwell. The Speedwell began to leak almost immediately, however, and the ships headed back to port. The travelers squeezed themselves and their belongings uncomfortably onto the Mayflower and set sail once again.

Because of the delay caused by the leaky Speedwell, the Mayflower had to cross the Atlantic at the height of storm season. As a result, the journey was horribly unpleasant. Many of the passengers were so seasick they could scarcely get up, and the waves were so rough that one “Stranger” was swept overboard and drowned. (William Bradford wrote in his diary “It was the just hand of God upon him for the young sailor had been a proud and very profane yonge man.”)

After two miserable months at sea, the ship finally reached the New World. There, the Mayflower’s passengers found an abandoned Indian village and not much else. They also found that they were in the wrong place: Cape Cod was located at 42 degrees north latitude, well north of the Virginia Company’s territory. Technically, the Mayflower colonists had no right to be there at all.

In order to establish themselves as a legitimate colony under these dubious circumstances, they named the area “Plymouth,” after the English port from which they had departed. 41 of the Saints and Strangers drafted and signed a document they called the Mayflower Compact. This Compact promised to create a “civil Body Politick” governed by elected officials and “just and equal laws.” It also swore allegiance to the English king.

The colonists spent the first winter, which only 53 passengers and only half the crew survived, living onboard the Mayflower. But the Mayflower sailed back to England in April 1621.

Once they moved ashore, the colonists faced even more challenges. During their first winter in America, more than half of the Plymouth colonists died from malnutrition, disease and exposure to the harsh New England weather. In fact, without the help of Indians, it is likely that none of the colonists would have survived.

An English-speaking Pawtuxet Indian named Samoset helped the colonists form an alliance with the local Wampanoags, who taught them how to hunt local animals, gather shellfish and grow corn, beans and squash. At the end of the next summer, the Plymouth colonists celebrated their first successful harvest with a three-day festival of thanksgiving. We still commemorate this feast today and we call it “Thanksgiving”.

Eventually, the Plymouth colonists were absorbed into the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony. Still, the Mayflower Saints and their descendants remained convinced that they alone had been specially chosen by God to act as a beacon for Christians around the world. Even today, those who can trace their ancestry all the way back to the Mayflower consider themselves the elite.

Harriet Tubman was
an African American abolitionist, humanitarian, and, during the American Civil War, a Union spy. Born into slavery, Tubman escaped and subsequently made some thirteen missions to rescue approximately seventy enslaved family and friends,[1] using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. She later helped abolitionist John Brown recruit men for his raid onHarpers Ferry, and in the post-war era struggled for women’s suffrage.

Born a slave in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was beaten and whipped by her various masters as a child. Early in life, she suffered a traumatic head wound when an irate slave owner threw a heavy metal weight at her, intending to hit another slave. The injury caused dizziness, pain, and spells of hypersomnia, which occurred throughout her entire life. A devout Christian, she also experienced strange visions and vivid dreams, which she ascribed to premonitions from God.

In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia, then immediately returned to Maryland to rescue her family. Slowly, one group at a time, she brought relatives with her out of the state, and eventually guided dozens of other slaves to freedom. Traveling by night and in extreme secrecy, Tubman (or “Moses”, as she was called) “never lost a passenger”. Her actions made slave owners anxious and angry, and they posted rewards for her capture. When a far-reaching United StatesFugitive Slave Law was passed in 1850, she helped guide fugitives further north into Canada, and helped newly freed slaves find work.

When the US Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the raid at Combahee Ferry, which liberated more than seven hundred slaves. After the war, she retired to the family home in Auburn, New York, where she cared for her aging parents.

She was active in the women’s suffrage movement until illness overtook her and she had to be admitted to a home for elderly African-Americans that she had helped to establish years earlier.

On August 5, 1892, Harriet Tubman received a pension for the rest of her life from Congress for her work as a nurse, spy and scout during the Civil War. After she died in 1913 at the age of 91, she became an icon of American courage and freedom, most especially black American courage and freedom.

On this day in 1779, Lieutenant Colonel James DeLancey’s New York Loyalists and Patriot William Hull’s Connecticut Brigade engage in a civil war for the Bronx in New York. The Patriots destroyed numerous buildings and food stores while also capturing several Loyalists, along with some horses and cattle. First-hand accounts give conflicting figures as to the number of casualties sustained by each side.

On this day in 1858, after several unsuccessful attempts, the first telegraph line across the Atlantic Ocean is completed, a feat accomplished largely through the efforts of American merchant Cyrus West Field.

The telegraph was first developed by Samuel F. B. Morse, an artist-turned-inventor who conceived of the idea of the electric telegraph in 1832. Several European inventors had proposed such a device, but Morse worked independently and by the mid 1830s had built a working telegraph instrument. In the late 1830s, he perfected Morse Code, a set of signals that could represent language in telegraph messages. In May 1844, Morse inaugurated the world’s first commercial telegraph line with the message “What hath God wrought,” sent from the U.S. Capitol to a railroad station in Baltimore. Within a decade, more than 20,000 miles of telegraph cable crisscrossed the country. The rapid communication it made possible greatly aided American expansion, making railroad travel safer as it provided a boost to business conducted across the great distances of a growing United States.

In 1854, Cyrus West Field conceived the idea of the telegraph cable and secured a charter to lay a well-insulated line across the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. Obtaining the aid of British and American naval ships, he made four unsuccessful attempts, beginning in 1857. In July 1858, four British and American vessels–the Agamemnon, the Valorous, the Niagara, and the Gorgon–met in mid-ocean for the fifth attempt. On July 29, the Niagara and the Gorgon, with their load of cable, departed for Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, while the Agamemnon and the Valorous embarked for Valentia, Ireland. By August 5, the cable had been successfully laid, stretching nearly 2,000 miles across the Atlantic at a depth often of more than two miles. On August 16, President James Buchanan and Queen Victoria exchanged formal introductory and complimentary messages. Unfortunately, the cable proved weak and the current insufficient and by the beginning of September had ceased functioning.

Field later raised new funds and made new arrangements. In 1866, the British ship Great Eastern succeeded in laying the first permanent telegraph line across the Atlantic Ocean. Cyrus West Field was the object of much praise on both sides of the Atlantic for his persistence in accomplishing what many thought to be an impossible undertaking. He later promoted other oceanic cables, including telegraph lines that stretched from Hawaii to Asia and Australia.

On this day in 1861 the United States Army abolished flogging.

Also on this day in 1861, President Abraham Lincoln imposed the first federal income tax by signing the Revenue Act. Strapped for cash with which to pursue the Civil War, Lincoln and Congress agreed to impose a 3 percent tax on annual incomes over $800.

On this day in 1864, at the Battle of Mobile Bay, Union Admiral David Farragut led his flotilla through the Confederate defenses at Mobile, Alabama, to seal one of the last major Southern ports. The fall of Mobile Bay was a huge blow to the Confederacy, and the victory was the first in a series of Yankee successes that helped secure the re-election of Abraham Lincoln later that year.

The world’s first electric traffic signal is put into place on the corner of Euclid Avenue and East 105th Street in Cleveland, Ohio, on this day in 1914.

In the earliest days of the automobile, navigating America’s roads was a chaotic experience, with pedestrians, bicycles, horses and streetcars all competing with motor vehicles for right of way. The problem was alleviated somewhat with the gradual disappearance of horse-drawn carriages, but even before World War I it had become clear that a system of regulations was necessary to keep traffic moving and reduce the number of accidents on the roads. As Christopher Finch writes in his “Highways to Heaven: The AUTO Biography of America” (1992), the first traffic island was put into use in San Francisco, California in 1907; left-hand drive became standard in American cars in 1908; the first center painted dividing line appeared in 1911, in Michigan; and the first “No Left Turn” sign would debut in Buffalo, New York, in 1916.

Various competing claims exist as to who was responsible for the world’s first traffic signal. A device installed in London in 1868 featured two semaphore arms that extended horizontally to signal “stop” and at a 45-degree angle to signal “caution.” In 1912, a Salt Lake City, Utah, police officer named Lester Wire mounted a handmade wooden box with colored red and green lights on a pole, with the wires attached to overhead trolley and light wires. Most prominently, the inventor Garrett Morgan has been given credit for having invented the traffic signal based on his T-shaped design, patented in 1923 and later reportedly sold to General Electric.

Despite Morgan’s greater visibility, the system installed in Cleveland on August 5, 1914, is widely regarded as the first electric traffic signal. Based on a design by James Hoge, who received U.S. patent 1,251,666 for his “Municipal Traffic Control System” in 1918, it consisted of four pairs of red and green lights that served as stop-go indicators, each mounted on a corner post. Wired to a manually operated switch inside a control booth, the system was configured so that conflicting signals were impossible. According to an article in The Motorist, published by the Cleveland Automobile Club in August 1914: “This system is, perhaps, destined to revolutionize the handling of traffic in congested city streets and should be seriously considered by traffic committees for general adoption.”

On August 5, 1914, the German army launched an assault on the city of Liege in Belgium, violating the latter country’s neutrality and beginning the first battle of World War I.

1926 – For the very first time, magician Harry Houdini performed his greatest feat, spending 91 minutes underwater in a sealed tank before escaping. That was the same trick that would later kill him.

The 5th of August, 1940 – Prior to World War II: The Soviet Union formally annexed Latvia. In order to ensure that Latvia wouldn’t fight back, Joseph Stalin released everyone who had been in prison to keep the Latvian people subdued.

1941 – World War II: The Battle of Smolensk concluded with Germany capturing about 300,000 Soviet Red Army prisoners.

1944 – World War II: Possibly the biggest prison breakout in history occurs as 545 Japanese prisoners of war attempted to escape outside the town of Cowra, New South Wales, Australia.

1944 – World War II: The Nazis began a week-long massacre of anywhere between 40,000 and 100,000 civilians and prisoners of war in Wola, Poland.

Still on this day in 1944, Polish insurgents liberated a German forced-labor camp in Warsaw, freeing 348 Jewish prisoners, who joined in a general uprising against the German occupiers of the city.

As the Red Army advanced on Warsaw in July, Polish patriots, still loyal to their government-in-exile back in London, prepared to overthrow their German occupiers. On July 29, the Polish (underground) Home Army, the People’s Army (a communist guerilla movement), and armed civilians took back two-thirds of Warsaw from the Germans.

On August 4, the Germans counterattacked, mowing down Polish civilians with machine-gun fire. By August 5, more than 15,000 Poles were dead. The Polish command cried to the Allies for help. Churchill telegraphed Stalin, informing him that the British intended to drop ammunition and other supplies into the southwest quarter of Warsaw to aid the insurgents. The prime minister asked Stalin to aid in the insurgents’ cause. Stalin balked, claiming the insurgency was too insignificant to waste time with.

Britain succeeded to getting some aid to the Polish patriots, but the Germans also succeeded-in dropping incendiary bombs. The Poles fought on, and on August 5 they freed Jewish forced laborers who then joined in the battle, some of whom formed a special platoon dedicated solely to repairing captured German tanks for use by the Polish in the struggle.

The Poles would battle on for weeks against German reinforcements, and without Soviet help, because Joseph Stalin had his own plans for Poland.

An earthquake hit Ecuador killing 6,000 people and injuring another 20,000 on this day in 1948. The 6.7-magnitude tremor was particularly deadly for its size.

The quake hit high in the Andes Mountains, about 100 miles south of Quito. The tremor caused serious damage over an area of 1,500 square miles. Landslides set off by the quake proved to be the most deadly feature of the disaster. Houses fell down hills and others were buried. Approximately 100,000 people lost their homes. The landslides also caused some flooding by changing water-flow patterns. Some of the victims lost their lives to drowning.

In Ambato, Ecuador, the textile mills were hard hit, with hundreds of workers perishing. Only 300 of the 3,500 residents of Pelileo survived and virtually every home in the town was demolished. It was estimated that another 20,000 people suffered serious injuries from the earthquake. Further compounding the tragedy, a Shell Oil plane bringing rescue workers to the area crashed and killed all 34 people onboard.

In 1949 on this day, the terrible Mann Gulch fires in Montana killed 13 firefighters.

On August 5, 1955, Jesse Irvin Overholtzer, the founder and first director of Child Evangelism Fellowship, died.

On August 5, 1957 – American Bandstand, a show dedicated to the teenage “baby-boomers” by playing the songs and showing popular dances of the time, debuted on the ABC television network.

And on August 5, 1958 – Herbert Hoover eclipsed John Adams as having the longest retirement of any former U.S President until that time. Hoover’s record was 31 years, 7 months, and 16 days, but it has since been eclipsed by “Duracell” Jimmy Carter.

In 1962 on this day apartheid in South Africa: Nelson Mandela was jailed. He would not be released until 1990.

On August 5, 1962, movie actress Marilyn Monroe is found dead in her home in Los Angeles. An autopsy found a fatal amount of sedatives in her system, and her death was ruled a probable suicide. Ever since her death there have been a number of conspiracy theories about her. But the mystery surrounding her death if it wasn’t a suicide is buried with Marilyn.

On this day in 1963, representatives of the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain sign the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited the testing of nuclear weapons in outer space, underwater, or in the atmosphere. The treaty was hailed as an important first step toward the control of nuclear weapons.

Discussions between the United States and the Soviet Union concerning a ban on nuclear testing began in the mid-1950s. Officials from both nations came to believe that the nuclear arms race was reaching a dangerous level. In addition, public protest against the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons was gaining strength. Nevertheless, talks between the two nations (later joined by Great Britain) dragged on for years, usually collapsing when the issue of verification was raised. The Americans and British wanted on-site inspections, something the Soviets vehemently opposed. In 1960, the three sides seemed close to an agreement, but the downing of an American spy plan over the Soviet Union in May brought negotiations to an end.

The Cuban Missile Crisis provided a major impetus for reinvigorating the talks in October 1962. The Soviets attempted to install nuclear-capable missiles in Cuba, bringing the Soviet Union and the United States to the brink of a nuclear war. Cooler heads prevailed and the crisis passed, but the other possible scenarios were not lost on U.S. and Russian officials. In June 1963, the test ban negotiations resumed, with compromises from all sides. On August 5, British, American, and Russian representatives signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. France and China were asked to join the agreement but refused.

The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was a small but significant step toward the control of nuclear weapons. In the years to come, discussions between the United States and the Soviet Union grew to include limits on many nuclear weapons and the elimination of others. Whether each of the countries involved will keep their promise remains to be seen.

August 5, 1966 – The Beatles released their groundbreaking album Revolver

On the same day in 1969, NASA’S Mariner 7 made its closest fly-by of Mars

And in 1974 on this day Congress placed a $1 billion ceiling on military aid to South Vietnam for fiscal year 1974. This figure was trimmed further to $700 million by August 11. Military aid to South Vietnam in fiscal year 1973 was $2.8 billion; in 1975 it would be cut to $300 million. Once aid was cut, it took the North Vietnamese only 55 days to defeat the South Vietnamese forces when they launched their final offensive in 1975.

On this day in 1976, the National Basketball Association (NBA) merged with its rival, the American Basketball Association and took on the ABA’s four most successful franchises: the Denver Nuggets, the Indiana Pacers, the New York (later New Jersey) Nets and the San Antonio Spurs.

On August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan began firing 11,359 air-traffic controllers striking in violation of his order for them to return to work. The executive action, regarded as extreme by many, significantly slowed air travel for months.

Two days earlier, on August 3, almost 13,000 air-traffic controllers went on strike after negotiations with the federal government to raise their pay and shorten their workweek proved fruitless. The controllers complained of difficult working conditions and a lack of recognition of the pressures they face. Across the country, some 7,000 flights were canceled. The same day, President Reagan called the strike illegal and threatened to fire any controller who had not returned to work within 48 hours. Robert Poli, president of the Professional Air-Traffic Controllers Association (PATCO), was found in contempt by a federal judge and ordered to pay $1,000 a day in fines.

On August 5, an angry President Reagan carried out his threat, and the federal government began firing the 11,359 air-traffic controllers who had not returned to work. In addition, he declared a lifetime ban on the rehiring of the strikers by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). On August 17, the FAA began accepting applications for new air-traffic controllers, and on October 22 the Federal Labor Relations Authority decertified PATCO.

On this day in 2002, the rusty iron gun turret of the U.S.S. Monitor broke from the water and into the daylight for the first time in 140 years. The ironclad warship was raised from the floor of the Atlantic, where it had rested since it went down in a storm off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, during the Civil War. Divers had been working for six weeks to bring it to the surface.

Nine months before sinking into its watery grave, the Monitor had been part of a revolution in naval warfare. On March 9, 1862, it dueled to a standstill with the C.S.S. Virginia (originally the C.S.S. Merrimack) in one of the most famous moments in naval history–the first time two ironclads faced each other in a naval engagement. During the battle, the two ships circled one another, jockeying for position as they fired their guns. The cannon balls simply deflected off the iron ships. In the early afternoon, the Virginia pulled back to Norfolk. Neither ship was seriously damaged, but the Monitor effectively ended the short reign of terror that the Confederate ironclad had brought to the Union navy.

That evening, the Monitor’s commander, J.P. Bankhead, signaled the Rhode Island that he wished to abandon ship. The wooden side-wheeler pulled as close as safety allowed to the stricken ironclad, and two lifeboats were lowered to retrieve the crew. Many of the sailors were rescued, but some men were terrified to venture onto the deck in such rough seas. The ironclad’s pumps stopped working, and the ship sank before 16 of its crew members were rescued. The remains of two of these sailors were discovered by divers during the Monitor’s 2002 reemergence.

Many of the ironclad’s artifacts are now on display at the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia.

In 2010 on this day – The Copiapó mining accident occurred, trapping 33 Chilean miners approximately 2,300 feet below the ground.

And finally – today, Wednesday, August 5, 2015 – the top story:

While hideous fires continue to rage in many parts of California, and Republican presidential candidates rehearse for tomorrow night’s debates on Fox News, A man wielding a gun and a hatchet was shot dead by police after attacking theatergoers with pepper spray and exchanging fire with authorities inside a screening of Mad Max: Fury Road at a movie theater near Nashville, Tenn., officials said.

The shooting at the Hickory 8 Theater in Antioch, Teen. follows soon after a movie theater shooting in Lafayette, La. left three dead last month.

The Nashville Police Department’s bomb squad detonated a backpack containing a fake bomb left behind by the shooter late Wednesday afternoon. Authorities said contents of the backpack made the squad “uncomfortable” and were searching a second backpack for dangerous items, according to police spokesman Don Aaron.

Authorities believe the suspected shooter is a white 51-year-old man who lives in the area

The suspect opened fire when a police officer encountered him inside the theater. The officer returned fire, then retreated. A SWAT team then shot and killed the gunman as he tried to leave a through a rear exit.

Three people were injured in the attack, which are still under investigation. According to Haas, a 58-year-old man was treated for chemical spray exposure, along with a superficial wound caused by a hatchet or axe. Two women—53 and 17—were also treated for chemical spray exposure. All three have been treated and released. Haas said don’t the department doesn’t anticipate needing to transport any patients to the hospital.

“Police response was swift, and this could have been worse,” Brian Haas, a spokesperson with the Nashville Fire Department, said.

The shooter had a surgical mask-like covering on his face, likely to protect his face from the chemical irritant he sprayed in the theater.

Police are questioning “about 20 people” who were in the multiplex at the time, Aaron told press. A local mall and other area businesses near the theater have been placed on lockdown, local news outlet WSMV reported.

This is Ray Mossholder and that’s it for August 5. And unless the Lord comes within the next 24 hours, I’ll be back with August sixth tomorrow.

Ray’s Today in History – August 5

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Ray"s Today in History – August 5