May 31, 1020, is the supposed date for the supposed ride of the supposed Lady Godiva. Actually, I didn’t need to put “supposedly” in front of her name. There really was a Lady Godiva. She appears in the Domesday Book. She was the wife of the Earl of Mercia. Read more…
On May 1, 1865, the newly freed slaves of Charleston, South Carolina decided to honor the 257 Union dead from the siege of Charleston. A procession was held that included 3,000 schoolchildren carrying roses. The song “John Brown’s Body” was sung as they paraded. Women with flowers decorated the Read more…
On May 25, 1935, the Big Ten Championships was held to determine the best track and field stars in the conference. J.C. Owens was born the son of a sharecropper and the grandson of a slave in Alabama. At age 9, his family moved to Ohio. His first teacher Read more…
The first assassins in history were a legendary group of murderers associated with Middle East at the time of the Crusades. Since most of the evidence we have about the Assassins comes from sources that opposed them, it is hard to tell where the facts end and the legend Read more…
In 1943, the Anglo-Americans invaded Italy because Churchill convinced Roosevelt that a cross-Channel invasion should be postponed until 1944. To appease Stalin, it was agreed that an Italian campaign would tie down German units that might otherwise face the Red Army. Churchill felt a strike at the “soft underbelly Read more…
Part of Gen. Grant’s strategy to capture Richmond involved conquering the Shenandoah Valley. He assigned the task to Maj. Gen. Sigel. In May, 1864, Sigel moved south up the valley. His targets were the towns of Staunton and Lynchburg. Facing him was the army of Maj. Gen. John Breckinridge. Read more…
On May 14, 1864, Gen. Grant and his Army of the Potomac were about a week into the Wilderness Campaign (sometimes called the Overland Campaign). It had fought two vicious battles in the Wilderness forest and at Spotsylvania Court House. Although stymied at both places by Gen. Lee’s Army of Read more…
Lee surrendered to Grant on April 9, 1865, but fighting continued after that. The last battle of the Civil War was the Battle of Palmito Ranch in Texas. The Union and the Confederacy had small forces on the southern tip of Texas along the Rio Grande River. A gentleman’s Read more…
Tycho Brahe was a famous astronomer who accurately measured the stars and planets before the telescope was invented. He improved the sextant and quadrant to make his measurements. He was the first to propose that comets were objects in space. He also was a believer in alchemy. His achievements Read more…
John Sedgwick graduated from West Point in 1837. He served in the Seminole War, the Mexican War, and posts in the west. By the time the Civil War broke out, he was a brigadier general. He commanded a division in the Army of the Potomac in the Battle of Read more…