This was a date with a whole host of international events happening. For Great Britain this was when the famous Mutiny on the Bounty -HMS Bounty – occurred in 1789. Three years later. in 1792, France invaded Austrian Netherlands (present day Belgium and Luxemburg) to begin the French Revolutionary Wars. In 1869 Chinese and Irish laborers for the Central Pacific Railroad working on the first (US) transcontinental railroad laid down ten miles of track in one day, a feat that has never been matched.
Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl and 5 crew set sail in the balsa wood Kon Tiki raft from Peru in 1947 to try to prove that native Peruvians may have settled Polynesia. Russian composer Igor Stravinsky conducted the premiere of his American ballet -Orpheus- at the New York City Center in 1948. And in 1965 US forces again intervened in a Latin American country- this time in the Dominican Republic’s civil war – ostensibly to prevent another “Cuba”.
This was the birthdate of our 5th US President James Madison,(1758) during whose presidency we had our second war with Britain -the War of 1812, nicknamed by his critics here “Mister Madison’s War” He was followed by James Monroe, who ,authored the Monroe Doctrine, which told Europe “hands off the Americas” but failed to address our own interference south of the border. Dutch lawyer and Nobel Prize winner Tobias Asser also born this date (1838) thought a little broader and helped establish the Hague convention on international law. It was also the birthdate of Czech-German businessmen Oscar Schindler (1908) famous for using his position to smuggle Jews out from under the Nazi’s during WWII.
Italian businessman and carmaker Ferruccio Lamborghini (1916) creator of the same-named car was born this date as was American author Harper Lee (1926, To Kill a Mockingbird), US Secretary of State James Baker (1930), comedian and late night show host Jay Leno (1950) and current Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court Elena Kagan (1960).
We said farewell to long time Portland Blazer coach (Rip City!) Jack Ramsay(2014), Illinois Senator Richard Lugar (2019) who worked with Barack Obama when they were both in the Senate on nuclear weapon’s control,, and astronaut Michael Collins (2021) who only got to look on from the Apollo 11 command module as Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon in 1969.
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