What Happened Today

In the summer of 1745, Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Severino Maria Stuart, better known as the Young Pretender or Bonnie Prince Charlie landed in Scotland to reclaim the thrones of Great Britain and Ireland for his father, James Francis Edward Stuart. James was known as the Old Pretender for laying claim to the thrones his father King James II was deposed from after James' birth. The issue was that the Prince would be raised as a Catholic heir to the throne of a Protestant nation. For nearly half a century, and through the death of James II, the Stuarts sought to reclaim their thrones, with their followers known as Jacobites. In 1745, as the main British Army was fighting in the War of the Austrian Succession, the Jacobites got their best chance at invading Britian. Bonnie Prince Charlie managed to gather Jacobites and Highland clans as he marched through Scotland. He reached his highpoint at the Battle of Prestonpans, near Edinburgh, when he smashed a force led by Sir John Cope. Prestonpans was maybe an illusion, as Cope's men were the reserves left behind. Indeed, the Jacobite Rising of 1745 would be easily defeated the next year at the Battle of Culloden. That left the Battle of Prestonpans as the closest Bonnie Prince Charlie ever got to the British throne.

By 1973, Bobby Riggs was a former World Number One Tennis Player and an active senior player. He also was an inveterate braggart and self-publicist, which is why he decided to constantly challenge a leading female player to a match to show he was still better. Riggs initially faced World Number One player Margaret Court, a physically impressive Australian player, and beat her so badly in May of 1973 that it was dubbed "The Mother's Day Massacre." At that point, Billie Jean King, who Riggs had initially wanted to play, stepped up and agreed to face Bobby Riggs at the Houston Astrodome. Billie Jean King was helping to advance Women's Tennis through a new tour, the Virginia Slims Series, and advocating for better prize money for women's players. Billie Jean King was the second best women's player in the world, after Margaret Court, but she was the best opponent for Bobby Riggs. Knowing Riggs would use the drop-shot and lob approach he had used to beat Court, King adjusted her strategy from her usual serve-and-volley approach. Instead, she made Riggs move and wore him out. In the aftermath of the "Battle of the Sexes," women's tennis would get a huge boost in popularity, and Billie Jean King would become an even bigger force in the sports world.

Trying to identify and arrest the Unabomber proved to be extremely difficult for authorities, as the bombs sent through the mail were homemade, sent to a variety of targets (although particularly Universities and Airlines to get the UnAbomber name), and almost quaint in their construction. The Unabomber had also corresponded with some media outlets, including offering his manifesto for publication so he would "desist with terrorism." With that promise in mind, Federal authorities allowed the New York Times and the Washington Post to publish Industrial Society and its Future. The Unabomber manifesto was written on a typewriter, uses capital letters for emphasis, and invariably uses "we" instead of "I" while presenting an idiosyncratic take on industrialization and technology. Yet there is also a calm manner to the rants about "leftists," autonomy, and the dangerous nature of technology. This writing would lead David Kaczynski to realize his brother Ted was the Unabomber. After compiling evidence with private investigators and lawyers, David Kaczynski went to the FBI and turned in his brother. Ted Kazcynski would be arrested on April 6, 1996 and would eventually reach a plea bargain to serve terms of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Booker T. Washington was the most significant African-American leader in the 1890s, which is why he was invited to give a speech to the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta. There, he addressed the role of what he called "the negro race" in the South moving forward. Washington's theme was that black people would be best served by learning trades and becoming better at agricultural and industrial practices. He also addressed the white leaders of the South, telling them to encourage this approach in the black community. Washington would note that white and black southerners would be separated like the fingers, but "one as the hand." Most importantly, Booker T. Washington agreed that the key to this approach was to never work towards social equality between the races. This fact is why it would later be called the "Atlanta Compromise," by W.E.B. DuBois, who once supported Washington, but would develop his own approach to lifting up African-Americans through working for civil rights. After the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Washington's speech would be seen almost as a relic of a former time.

As its preamble notes, the United States Constitution was created "in order to form a more perfect Union." The thing it was trying to make more perfect was the loose agreement known as the Articles of Confederation, which had been governing the United States of America since the Revolutionary War. By 1786, thanks to a number of issues such as Shays' Rebellion, it became clear that the Articles of Confederation could not adequately form a strong enough Federal government. So in 1787 delegates gathered in Philadelphia to create a new government. The first outline was known as the Virginia Plan, as it was put forward by the Virginia Delegation and written by Virginian James Madison. The Virginia Plan had three separate branches of government, a legislature, an executive, and a judiciary, but the way the states were represented proved controversial. The balance between large and small states was agreed to, but issues around counting slaves in enumeration resulted in the notorious "Three-Fifths Compromise." Certain delegates also objected to a lack of a Bill of Rights, guaranteeing specific rights for citizens. Eventually, though, the Consitution was agreed to by a majority of the delegations, and it was signed and sent to the individual states for ratification.

Shortly after noon, on a normal workday on Wall Street, a bomb in a horse drawn cart went off in front of JP Morgan's headquarters on Wall Street. The immediate blast killed 30 people on the spot, and eight others would later die of their injuries. Property damage was significant, if not debilitating, and the New York Stock Exchange temporarily suspended trading. Yet the next day, Wall Street kept going, and investigators began struggling with figuring out who had done it. Bolsheviks, socialists, anarchists, and other opponents of capitalism were fingered to little avail. The best candidate was some member of the Galleanisti, a radical Italian anarchist group that was responsible for a series of bombings. Galleanisti had already set off numerous bombs in 1919, and were one of the most terrifying groups in America. Eventually, suspicion settled on Mario Buda, who was a key bomb maker for various Anarchist groups, especially the Galleanisti. Buda was also angered about the arrest and indictment for robbery and murder of his friends Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in Massachusetts. Yet to this day no hard evidence places Buda near the Wall Street bomb.

By the summer of 1940, Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany had taken over most of Europe, with the notable exceptions of Britain and Russia. Britain looked ripe for the taking, however. If not for a last ditch evacuation at Dunkirk, the British Army would have been destroyed in the Battle of France. Germany's Luftwaffe also had numerical superiority over the Royal Air Force, and a plan to send enough planes over Britain to give Nazi Germany air superiority was in place. The British held out. Partly, this was because Prime Minister Winston Churchill had pledged to fight all out against the Nazis. The other reason Britain held on throughout the Battle of Britain day was that RAF fighters could do enough damage to the Luftwaffe to avoid serious damage. After months of repetitive fighting, the Luftwaffe planned a massive bombing run on various targets in Britain for September 15. Fighting took place in the air throughout the day, with RAF squadrons scrambling multiple times. Dispersing the German fighters gave some chance at hitting bombers, and despite some damage from bombs, the raid was not a success. Britain would never be invaded, and no air battle involved as many planes as those of Battle of Britain Day.

When Great Britain and her Empire officially adopted the Gregorian Calendar, the nation was aligning its calendar with that used across Europe. This meant everyone in Britain experienced the strange sensation of moving straight from September 2 to September 14, and "losing" 11 days. The rejection of the old Julian Calendar was first introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, making most nations in Europe on a different calendar from Britain for a century and a half. Yet the problems in calculating Easter present in the Julian Calendar was only getting worse, and Britain was separated from the Continent. Also, Britain had a series of political troubles, including a Civil War, an Interregnum, and a revolution, among much else. By the middle of the 18th century, Britain was forced to adopt the Gregorian calendar thanks to the Calendar Act of 1750. Led by Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, the act was supported by the wealthy, the merchants, and the foreign ambassadors. Many common people resented what losing 11 working days would do for their wages and their taxes. Every person still just went along with adopting the Gregorian Calendar.

When a plane went down over Mongolia carrying Lin Biao, the Vice Chairman of the Communist Party of China, the Chinese government gave an official explanation that Lin was attempting to flee after a failed coup against Chairman Mao Zedong. It was a bit odd. Everyone on the plane died instantly, including Lin Biao, his wife Ye Qun, and his son Lin Liguo, were killed, which meant the people who could best explain their actions were gone. Lin Biao was Mao's designated successor, the head of the military, and a key figure in the still ongoing Cultural Revolution. Lin Biao's desire for a coup was not entirely obvious. His son was definitely planning an overthrow of the government in a plan called Project 571. This was remarkably poorly coordinated and failed in a rather pitiful manner. Yet there was little evidence that Lin Biao was involved, and the circumstances of the plane crash itself, that the plane lost fuel over Mongolia on its way to Soviet Union, did not make any sense. Then, the Chinese government refused to have Mongolian authorities conduct an investigation. In the years after the plane crash, Lin Biao became a scapegoat for the excesses and violence of the Cultural Revolution.

President John F. Kennedy was in Houston to announce the development of a Manned Spaceflight Center in the city. Speaking from Rice Stadium at Rice University, Kennedy's theme was that of progress, particularly the scientific advances that had recently been made. His main promise would be that America would place a man on the moon within a decade. This was a remarkable claim. Kennedy had been a space program skeptic before taking office, and it was really the twin Cold War embarrassments in of the first manned spaceflight of Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet Cosmonaut, and the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, which boosted the Soviet's ally in Cuba Fidel Castro. Kennedy then doubled down on space programs and specifically sought to put a man on the moon. At that point, only one man, John Glenn, had even been in orbit and no one was sure how to get to the moon. Yet Kennedy confidently promised that America would put a man on the moon. Remarkably, despite deadly failures in the space program and Kennedy's own assassination, by July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin fulfilled Kennedy's promise by going to the moon.