HISTORIC AUGUST

There are historic dates in every month, from January 1 (George Washington displayed the Grand Union Flag, 1776) to December 31 (Thomas Edison demonstrated his incandescent lamp, 1879).  But August (named for Augustus Caesar) has a wide variety of notable anniversaries, and besides, I’ve waited til the last minute for this month’s blog.

For starters, the eighth month originally was named Sextilis as the sixth month in ancient Rome. But following chronological realignment, it became August in 8 B.C. to honor Emperor Augustus Caesar (63 BC to 14 AD).

Three Roman cities were destroyed on August 24, 79 A.D. (the date is often debated) when Mount Vesuvius erupted in southern Italy.  The death toll at Pompei, Herculaneum and other places remains unknown but certainly ran into thousands.

(Skipping forward, in August 1883 catastrophic eruptions on the Indonesian island of Krakatoa spurred tidal waves 120 feet high, killing as many as 36,000 people. Scientists later calculated the five cubic miles of earth were blasted perhaps 50 miles into the mesosphere.)

“In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”  Remember that from grade school?  Me too. Actually, on August 3 the future Admiral of the Ocean Sea set sail from Spain with his three-ship “fleet” bound for a short cut to the Far East.  Three months later he fetched up somewhere in the Bahamas, and the rest, as they say, is politically incorrect history.

Ninety-one years later—August 5, 1583--Sir Humphrey Gilbert established the first British colony in North America.  On the Newfoundland coast he claimed St. John’s Harbor in the name of Queen Elizabeth. The noted explorer was not so fortunate on the return leg, sunk in a storm near the Azores.

For a week in Philadelphia during 1787 The Great Debate occurred in the Constitutional Convention.  The upshot was confirming a four-year term for president, ceding Congress the right to regulate foreign and interstate trade, and naming a committee to finalize a draft of the Constitution.  Some 232 years later, members of Congress who have sworn to Preserve and Protect that blessed document are trying hard to destroy it.  And there’s no penalty for Violation of Oath.

On August 21, 1863, during the American Civil War, Confederate leader William Quantrill led 450 mounted guerrillas in a predawn raid in Lawrence, Kansas.  The riders left about 150 residents dead, dozens wounded, and much of the town in ruin.  “Bloody Bill” had been denied a regular commission by the Confederate war cabinet, describing his attitude as barbaric.  He removed any doubt of that assessment. 

On August 19, 1934 German voters overwhelmingly granted additional powers to Chancellor Adolf Hitler, including the office of president.  Thus, one-man rule was codified, paving the sanguinary road to the Second World War.

On August 2, 1939 German expatriate Albert Einstein wrote President Franklin Roosevelt about the prospect for nuclear weapons, noting “A single bomb of this type carried by boat (The B-29 was barely in the drafting stage) and exploded in a port might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory.”

The rest, as they, say is radioactive history.

Actually, it’s short-term history because six years later almost to the day a B-29 Superfortress flew from Tinian in the Marianas to Hiroshima in Japan and dropped a 9,700-pound “gadget” that destroyed the city.  Optimists hoped that the 1945 shock and awe would force Tokyo’s doom-laden war cabinet to surrender but it took another A-bomb three days later, August 9, to obliterate most of Nagasaki.  Emperor Hirohito over-rode his war ministers on the 15th, effectively ending the world’s most destructive war.

(Other WW II August events included the first U.S. offensive of the war at Guadalcanal in 1942 and the Anglo-American conquest of Sicily in 1943.)

The true nature of Communism became evident on August 13,1961, with the first phase of the Berlin Wall.  Eventually the East German regime built more than 100 miles of wall around West Berlin, occupied by the Allies and the Soviets since 1945.  In 1987 President Ronald Reagan famously called, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”  It lasted until 1990, yet today addled American liberals insist that a border fence to keep foreigners out is equivalent to a Communist barrier to keep people in.                                  

In 1964 the “Tonkin Gulf Incident” sent America spinning uncontrollably into a decade-long Crazy Asian War.  Thing is: the first incident on August 2 did occur with North Vietnamese PT boats engaging an American destroyer.  The next “incident” two nights later never occurred—a fact evident to then-Commander James B. Stockdale, an aviator and the only witness to both events.  Some military and political leaders in DC suspected that panic-stricken U.S. sailors misinterpreted radar data but it didn’t matter to the vile Lyndon B. Johnson.  Only 90 days from a tough presidential election, he used the incident as proving he was  Tough On Commanism (he was from Texas, after all), and ordered retaliatory air strikes. 

The rest, as they say, is grief-stricken history to the tune of 58,000 dead Americans, the loss of much of Indochina to Commanism, and political-cultural fault lines that remain today.

In 1969 the three-day Woodstock music and hedonistic revel began in a farm field near Bethel, New York.  Reportedly between 300,000 and 400,000 youngsters grooved to a couple of dozen rock and roll bands, representing the growing 1960s counter-culture movement.  Among the groups performing were Santana; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Jefferson Airplane; and my favorite, Creedence Clearwater Revival.  Despite the mixture of drugs and a boisterous good-times atmosphere, apparently only two deaths ensued.  The first (predictably) was an overdose but the second (surprisingly) involved a celebrant who fell asleep or passed out under a tractor, unknown to the driver.

The iconic American of the postwar era died in a Memphis hospital on August 16, 1977. Elvis Aaron Presley succumbed to heart failure at age forty-two.  The King was dead after a twenty-one-year reign.  And no other Music Monarch has come close to matching him.  

The half-century Cold War effectively ended (see 1961) on August 29, 1991 with a failed coup to preserve the tottering Soviet Communist Party.  Thus passed the Evil Empire. Yet some Russians—and others including Americans—still bemoan the passing of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.