Today In History – December 20

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Today In History – December 20

A highly startling statement came from Martin Luther after he discovered what launched the Reformation through him. To him, and to millions upon millions since, was what he believed is the secret of living the Christian life – Hebrews 10:38 “But my righteous one will live by faith. And I take no pleasure in the one who shrinks back.” A man totally afraid of almost everything, with a hideous nightmares of going to hell and nightly occurrence for him, Luther had lived his life until that point “shrinking back.” But he was instantly transformed when he discovered that biblical truth. That moment launched the beginning of the Reformation.

Of course, Luther found a myriad of Scriptures that totally agree with Hebrews 10:38. He now formed a relationship with Christ not based on his good works or his failures, but simply believing that “the blood of Christ cleanses from ALL sin” (1 John 1:7). Romans 3:10 verified what Luther had found – “There is none righteous, no, not one”; and Romans 3:23 “ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Martin Luther had been trying to earn his salvation by keeping a set of rules he had been told he had to keep perfectly in order to be saved from his sins. Now he realized no one alive could be perfect enough to earn salvation. That’s why Christ died for him and for every other person in all time and that salvation began when a person sincerely asked Christ to be their God and Savior.

So what was the startling statement Martin Luther made. He said “If a Christian is going to sin, they should sin BIG!” He said that when he is and his friends kidnapped a cart full of nuns! One of those nuns kidnapped that day was Katherina Von Bora who subsequently fell in love with Martin Luther and married him.

KATHERINA VON BORA’S LIFE was one of hard work and solid virtue. When she was a young girl, her father placed her in a convent following his remarriage. She heard Luther’s teachings in her early twenties and accepted his doctrine of justification by faith alone. With some other nuns she contacted the reformer, requesting help to escape the convent. Luther arranged for a delivery-man to smuggle the women out in empty fish barrels.

Luther asked the families of the young women to take them back. When they proved unwilling, he found husbands for all of them. However, he was not able to find a place for Katie. Eventually he proposed to her and married her the same day.

They seem to have been a happy couple. Her hard work and practical domestic skills (budgeting, raising livestock, and brewing beer) fed and clothed them, their children, several orphans, and the many students who boarded with them.

After Luther’s death, Katie reared their younger children alone for six years. Elector John Frederick, the ruler of Saxony, set up a small trust fund and helped her purchase a farm near Wittenberg. However, her land was taxed unmercifully by contending armies during the Schmalkaldic War, leaving her in crushing poverty. As a result, she had to flee. Her animals were confiscated and her house burned to the ground. After peace was restored, Katie borrowed a thousand gulden to rebuild. To repay her loan, she took student boarders.

When plague broke out in Wittenberg in 1522, the university staff and students moved to Torgau, a place less affected by the disease. With her boarders gone, Katherina was again in dire financial straits. She decided to follow the university, but her decision proved catastrophic. At the end of the sixty mile trip, not far from the gate of Torgau, her horses bolted and she had to leap from the wagon into a lake. She was lifted from the water severely bruised. Friends carried her into the city. Although she fought for life for three months, the pain and hardships of her latter years sealed her inevitable end. Her last recorded words were, “I will cling to my Lord Christ as a burr on a coat.”  On this day, 20 December 1552 she died. Next day, the entire university turned out for her funeral.

Without a shot fired, the French hand over New Orleans and Lower Louisiana to the United States on December 20, 1803.

In April 1803, the United States purchased from France the 828,000 square miles that had formerly been French Louisiana. The area was divided into two territories: the northern half was Louisiana Territory, the largely unsettled (though home to many Indians) frontier section that was later explored by Lewis and Clark; and the southern Orleans Territory, which was populated by Europeans.

Unlike the sprawling and largely unexplored northern territory (which eventually encompassed a dozen large states), Orleans Territory was a small, densely populated region that was like a little slice of France in the New World. With borders that roughly corresponded to the modern state of Louisiana, Orleans Territory was home to about 50,000 people, a primarily French population that had been living under the direction of a Spanish administration.

These former citizens of France knew almost nothing about American laws and institutions, and the challenging task of bringing them into the American fold fell to the newly appointed governor of the region, twenty-eight-year-old William Claiborne. Historians have found no real evidence that the French of Orleans Territory resented their transfer to American control, though one witness claimed that when the French tri-color was replaced by the Stars and Stripes in New Orleans, the citizens wept. The French did resent that their new governor was appointed rather than elected, and they bridled when the American government tried to make English the official language and discouraged the use of French.

It didn’t help matters that young Claiborne knew neither French nor Spanish. Claiborne soon found himself immersed in a complex sea of ethnic tensions and political unrest that he little understood, and in January he wrote to Thomas Jefferson that the population was “uninformed, indolent, luxurious-in a word, ill-fitted to be useful citizens for a Republic.” To his dismay, Claiborne found that most of his time was spent not governing, but dealing with an unrelenting procession of crises like riots, robberies, and runaway slaves.

Despite his concerns, Claiborne knew that somehow these people had to be made into American citizens, and over time he gradually made progress in bringing the citizenry into the Union. In December 1804 he was happy to report to Jefferson that “they begin to view their connexion with the United States as permanent and to experience the benefits thereof.” Proof of this came eight years later, when the people of Orleans Territory drafted a constitution and successfully petitioned to become the eighteenth state in the Union. Despite Claiborne’s doubts about whether the French would ever truly fit into their new nation, the approval of that petition meant that the people of Louisiana were officially Americans.

On this day in 1836, President Andrew Jackson presents Congress with a treaty he negotiated with the Ioway, Sacs, Sioux, Fox, Otoe and Omaha tribes of the Missouri territory. The treaty, which removed those tribes from their ancestral homelands to make way for white settlement, epitomized racist 19th century presidential policies toward Native Americans. The agreement was just one of nearly 400 treaties–nearly always unequal–that were concluded between various tribes and the U.S. government between 1788 and 1883.

American population growth and exploration of the west in the early to mid-1800s amplified conflicts over territory inhabited by Native American tribes who held different views of land and property ownership than white settlers. During this time, Andrew Jackson played a major part in shaping U.S. policy toward Native Americans. A hero of the War of 1812, he earned equal recognition as an Indian fighter and treaty negotiator. In fact, he brokered nine treaties before becoming president in 1829. In 1830, as part of his zealous quest to acquire new territory for the nation, President Jackson pushed for the passing of the Indian Removal Act. It was this act that allowed for the 1838 forced removal by the U.S. military of Cherokee from their Georgia homeland to barren land in the Oklahoma territory. The march at gunpoint–during which 4,000 Cherokee died from starvation, disease and the cold–became known as the Trail of Tears. Jackson’s policies toward Indians reflected the general view among whites of the time that Indians were an inferior race who stood in the way of American economic progress.

A few presidents have made small attempts to bridge the gap of mistrust and maltreatment between the U.S. government and Native Americans. In 1886, Grover Cleveland protected Indian land rights when a railroad company petitioned the government to run tracks through a reservation. In 1924, Calvin Coolidge passed the Indian Citizen Act of 1924, which granted automatic U.S. citizenship to all American tribes, along with all the rights pertaining to citizenship. On personal moral grounds, Coolidge sincerely regretted the state of poverty to which many Indian tribes had sunk after decades of legal persecution and forced assimilation. Throughout his two terms in office, Coolidge presented at least a public image as a strong proponent of tribal rights. In recognition of his advocacy for Native Americans, a North Dakota tribe of Sioux “adopted” Coolidge as an honorary tribal member in 1927. However, U.S. government policies of forced assimilation, which worked to separate families and tribes and destroy native cultures, remained in full swing during his administration.

Largely relegated to reservations by the late 1800s, Native American tribes across the country were obliterated by disease and plunged into poverty, a state many remain in today.

1860

South Carolina secedes from the Union to defend slavery; the first of many to follow.

December 20, 1941, in one of his first acts as the new commander in chief of the German army, Adolf Hitler informs General Franz Halder that there will be no retreating from the Russian front near Moscow. “The will to hold out must be brought home to every unit!”

Halder was also informed that he could stay on as chief of the general army staff if he so chose, but only with the understanding that Hitler alone was in charge of the army’s movements and strategies.

Halder accepted the terms, but it was another blow to their already tense relationship. Halder had been at odds with the Fuhrer from the earliest days of the Nazi regime, when he spoke disparagingly of Hitler’s leadership ability and feared that “this madman” would plunge Germany into war. Promoted to chief of staff in September 1938, Halder began concocting an assassination scheme shortly thereafter along with other military officers who feared another European war over the Sudetenland crisis, when Hitler demanded the German-speaking population of Czechoslovakia-and the territory in which they resided-be made part of a greater Germany. Only a “peaceful” resolution to the crisis—the forced diplomatic capitulation of Czechoslovakia—killed the conspiracy. With Hitler’s popularity among the German people growing, and the timidity of the then-commander in chief of the army, General Walter von Brauchitsch, Halder learned to live with the “madman” in power.

But Halder would continue to butt heads with Hitler, urging that military strategy be left to the general staff when Hitler wanted to impose his imperious will on the army. But as the offensive against Moscow collapsed, an offensive which Halder had supported, and for which he began to agonize over, given the number of German dead, Halder could only concede to Hitler’s seizing of power, if just to retain his position on the general staff. By staying on, Halder hoped to be able to protect the remaining German troops on the Eastern front from the consequences of Hitler’s obsession over defeating the Soviets. Unfortunately, Hitler dismissed Halder during another disastrous Russian offensive, this one against Stalingrad in 1942.

On December 20, 1957, while spending the Christmas holidays at Graceland, his newly purchased Tennessee mansion, rock-and-roll star Elvis Presley receives his draft notice for the United States Army.

With a suggestive style–one writer called him “Elvis the Pelvis”–a hit movie, Love Me Tender, and a string of gold records including “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Hound Dog” and “Don’t Be Cruel,” Presley had become a national icon, and the world’s first bona fide rock-and-roll star, by the end of 1956. As the Beatles’ John Lennon once famously remarked: “Before Elvis, there was nothing.” The following year, at the peak of his career, Presley received his draft notice for a two-year stint in the army. Fans sent tens of thousands of letters to the army asking for him to be spared, but Elvis would have none of it. He received one deferment–during which he finished working on his movie King Creole–before being sworn in as an army private in Memphis on March 24, 1958.

After six months of basic training–including an emergency leave to see his beloved mother, Gladys, before she died in August 1958–Presley sailed to Europe on the USS General Randall. For the next 18 months, he served in Company D, 32nd Tank Battalion, 3rd Armor Corps in Friedberg, Germany, where he attained the rank of sergeant. For the rest of his service, he shared an off-base residence with his father, grandmother and some Memphis friends. After working during the day, Presley returned home at night to host frequent parties and impromptu jam sessions. At one of these, an army buddy of Presley’s introduced him to 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu, whom Elvis would marry some years later. Meanwhile, Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, continued to release singles recorded before his departure, keeping the money rolling in and his most famous client fresh in the public’s mind. Widely praised for not seeking to avoid the draft or serve domestically, Presley was seen as a model for all young Americans. After he got his polio shot from an army doctor on national TV, vaccine rates among the American population shot from 2 percent to 85 percent by the time of his discharge on March 2, 1960.

December 20, 1963 – More than two years after the Berlin Wall was constructed by East Germany to prevent its citizens from fleeing its communist regime, nearly 4,000 West Berliners are allowed to cross into East Berlin to visit relatives. Under an agreement reached between East and West Berlin, over 170,000 passes were eventually issued to West Berlin citizens, each pass allowing a one-day visit to communist East Berlin.

The day was marked by moments of poignancy and propaganda. The construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 separated families and friends. Tears, laughter, and other outpourings of emotions characterized the reunions that took place as mothers and fathers, sons and daughters met again, if only for a short time. Cold War tensions were never far removed from the scene, however. Loudspeakers in East Berlin greeted visitors with the news that they were now in “the capital of the German Democratic Republic,” a political division that most West Germans refused to accept. Each visitor was also given a brochure that explained that the wall was built to “protect our borders against the hostile attacks of the imperialists.” Decadent western culture, including “Western movies” and “gangster stories,” were flooding into East Germany before the wall sealed off such dangerous trends. On the West Berlin side, many newspapers berated the visitors, charging that they were pawns of East German propaganda. Editorials argued that the communists would use this shameless ploy to gain West German acceptance of a permanent division of Germany.

The visits, and the high-powered rhetoric that surrounded them, were stark reminders that the Cold War involved very human, often quite heated, emotions.

On December 20, 1983, ice hockey stars Guy Lafleur and Steve Shutt of the Montreal Canadiens score their 500th and 400th career goal, respectively, in a 6-0 rout of the New Jersey Devils at Byrne Meadowlands Arena in New Jersey.

Revered for his offensive game and considered one of the best right wings of all time, Lafleur played a total of 17 years–from 1971 to 1985 with the Canadiens and from 1988 to 1991 with the New York Rangers and the Quebec Nordiques–in the National Hockey League (NHL). With the Canadiens, he became the first player in NHL history to score at least 50 goals and 100 points in six consecutive seasons. Also a prolific scorer, Shutt joined the team at left wing in 1972 and contributed to that year’s Stanley Cup win alongside Lafleur and center Pete Mahovlich. Led by Lafleur and Shutt, the Habs enjoyed a four-year Stanley Cup run from 1976 through 1979.

During the game against the Devils on December 20, 1983, Shutt took a pass from Ryan Walter in the second period and faked Devils’ goalkeeper Glenn Resch to the right to score his 400th career goal and put Montreal up 3-0. Lafleur scored his own milestone goal at 8:34 into the third period, taking a rising shot from about 30 feet away to beat Resch. With the shot, Lafleur became only the 10th player in the history of the NHL (founded in 1917) to score 500 goals.

Shutt left Montreal for the Los Angeles Kings early in the 1984-5 season, but retired at the end of that year with a career total of 424 goals. Lafleur also retired that year, in a ceremony held before 18,000 fans at the Montreal Forum. In 1988, he decided to return to the ice, becoming only the second player since Gordie Howe to continue playing after being inducted into the Hall of Fame. He retired for good in 1991 and took a front-office job in the Canadiens organization. Shutt was elected to the Hall himself in 1993, and has worked as a television commentator and an assistant coach for the Canadiens.

On the 20th of December 1986, three black men are attacked by a group of white teenagers yelling racial slurs in Howard Beach, a predominately white, middle-class, Italian-American neighborhood in Queens, New York. Earlier that night, the men were driving from Brooklyn to Queens, when their car broke down near Howard Beach. They walked several miles to a pizza parlor in Howard Beach, where they asked to use a phone to call for assistance. After being told there was no phone available, they ordered some pizza. When the men left the pizzeria, they were confronted by the gang of teens. One of the men, Michael Griffith, 23, was chased into traffic on the Belt Parkway and died after being hit by a car. A second man, Cedric Sandiford, was severely beaten, while the third man, Timothy Grimes, outran the assailants and escaped without serious injury.

The attack stoked racial tensions in New York City and garnered national headlines. The two surviving victims, distrustful of police in Queens who they believed were treating them like perpetrators, refused to cooperate further with investigators and the district attorney’s office. Civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton led a large group of demonstrators on a protest march through Howard Beach and was met by a smaller band of counter-demonstrators who shouted abuse. Sharpton and other black leaders believed the Queens District Attorney’s office was mishandling the case and called for the appointment of a special state prosecutor. New York Governor Mario Cuomo named Charles Hynes to the position. Sharpton was later accused of using the case to further his own political agenda and increase his national profile. In December 1987, after 12 days of jury deliberations, three teens were convicted of manslaughter in the death of Griffith.

In 1988, Timothy Grimes was arrested for shooting his brother and sentenced to a long prison term. Cedric Sandiford died of illness in 1991.

Almost a decade after the killing, in June 2005, history seemed to repeat itself when three black men in Howard Beach were attacked with baseball bats by a group of young white men who yelled racial epithets. One of the black men was beaten, while the other two escaped unharmed. Further controversy erupted in the case after one of the victims reportedly admitted to police that he had gone to Howard Beach to steal a car. However, in the years since the 1986 incident, New York enacted stronger hate-crime laws and in June 2006, Nicholas Minucci, 20, was found guilty of racially motivated assault and robbery. The following month, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

A passenger ferry collides with an oil tanker near Manila in the Philippines on December 20, 1987, leaving 4,000 people dead. The ferry, the Dona Paz, was severely overcrowded, carrying more than twice its stated capacity, and nearly everyone on board was killed.

Sulpicio Lines owned the 2,215-ton Dona Paz, which was supposed to carry 1,400 passengers among the many islands of the Philippines. On December 20, it was going from Tacloban on Leyte Island to Manila. There was much demand due to the Christmas holidays and the company allowed approximately 4,000 people to board. Passengers shared cots and mats were laid out in the corridors as night fell during the 375-mile journey.

By 10 p.m., many of the ship’s officers were drinking and watching television while an apprentice officer piloted the ship through the busy Tablas Strait, 110 miles south of Manila. Also coming through the strait was the 629-ton tanker Victor, carrying 8,000 barrels of oil to Masbate Island. The two ships collided, for reasons still unknown, and a huge explosion resulted. Both ships sank quickly and although the Don Eusebio arrived on the scene shortly to help, it could only circle the fiery area in vain looking for survivors.

Only 24 survivors were found, half of whom were crew members from theVictor. For the next week, burned or drowned bodies washed ashore up and down Manila Island. President Corazon Aquino called it a “tragedy of harrowing proportions.” The precise number of people on board the Dona Paz is not known, but the best estimate puts the death toll near 4,000. This makes it twice as deadly as the Titanic disaster and the worst maritime tragedy in history.

The United States invades Panama in an attempt to overthrow military dictator Manuel Noriega, who had been indicted in the United States on drug trafficking charges and was accused of suppressing democracy in Panama and endangering U.S. nationals. Noriega’s Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) were promptly crushed, forcing the dictator to seek asylum with the Vatican anuncio in Panama City, where he surrendered on January 3, 1990.

In 1970, Noriega, a rising figure in the Panamanian military, was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to assist in the U.S. struggle against the spread of communism in Central America. Noriega became involved in drug trafficking and in 1977 was removed from the CIA payroll. After the Marxist Sandinista government came to power in 1979, Noriega was brought back into the CIA fold. In 1983, he become military dictator of Panama.

Noriega supported U.S. initiatives in Central America and in turn was praised by the White House, even though a Senate committee concluded in 1983 that Panama was a major center for drug trafficking. In 1984, Noriega committed fraud in Panama’s presidential election in favor of Nicolás Ardito Barletta, who became a puppet president. Still, Noriega enjoyed the continued support of the Reagan administration, which valued his aid in its efforts to overthrow Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.

In 1986, just months before the outbreak of the Iran-Contra affair, allegations arose concerning Noriega’s history as a drug trafficker, money launderer, and CIA employee. Most shocking, however, were reports that Noriega had acted as a double agent for Cuba’s intelligence agency and the Sandinistas. The U.S. government disowned Noriega, and in 1988 he was indicted by federal grand juries in Tampa and Miami on drug-smuggling and money-laundering charges.

Tensions between Americans in the Panama Canal Zone and Noriega’s Panamanian Defense Forces grew, and in 1989 the dictator annulled a presidential election that would have made Guillermo Endara president. President George H. Bush ordered additional U.S. troops to the Panama Canal Zone, and on December 16 an off-duty U.S. Marine was shot to death at a PDF roadblock. The next day, President Bush authorized “Operation Just Cause”–the U.S. invasion of Panama to overthrow Noriega.

On December 20, 9,000 U.S. troops joined the 12,000 U.S. military personnel already in Panama and were met with scattered resistance from the PDF. By December 24, the PDF was crushed, and the United States held most of the country. Endara was made president by U.S. forces, and he ordered the PDF dissolved. On January 3, Noriega was arrested by U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency agents.

The U.S. invasion of Panama cost the lives of only 23 U.S. soldiers and three U.S. civilians. Some 150 PDF soldiers were killed along with an estimated 500 Panamanian civilians. The Organization of American States and the European Parliament both formally protested the invasion, which they condemned as a flagrant violation of international law.

In 1992, Noriega was found guilty on eight counts of drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering, marking the first time in history that a U.S. jury convicted a foreign leader of criminal charges. He was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison.

1924 Adolf Hitler is released from prison after serving less than one year of a five year sentence for treason.

Every day she lives that record grows. This much-loved queen has been the Queen of England, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and head of the Commonwealth since her accession in 1952.

Today In History – December 20

Today In History – December 20

2007 Queen Elizabeth II becomes the oldest monarch in the history of the UK; previously, that honor belonged to Queen Victoria.