What Happened Today

The English Civil War, or really the First English Civil War, began when King Charles I raised his Royal Standard at Nottingham. This was not actually the beginning of the conflicts between the English Parliament and King Charles, nor was it even the first moment either side had raised armies. Yet by raising his Royal Standard, Charles had taken deep seated conflicts around the role of Parliament in taxation, religion, and foreign affairs and asked for the country to rally around him. It was an astonishing step, as it was an official acknowledgement by the King that he was powerless against his own Parliament. The Parliament had previously driven Charles and his court out of London and prevented him from amassing arms. Yet Parliament always held open the possibility that open military conflict could be prevented if Charles acquiesced to certain demands. Charles could never countenance such a thing, and he thought it would be better if he would try and raise an army. Such thinking is what led to Charles losing his head some seven years later and would lead to the interregnum and rule of Oliver Cromwell.

The French painter Louis Beroud went into the Louvre to study the Mona Lisa for one of his own works when he discovered that the Mona Lisa was not in its spot. After consultation with the museum's staff, it became clear the painting had been stolen. Initially the suspicion was on radical poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire and a young Pablo Picasso, but then all leads went cold. Then in 1913 in Florence, a man named Vincenzo Peruggia offered the Mona Lisa to art gallery directors, including the head of the Uffizi Gallery. These men took the painting and informed the authorities of Peruggia's whereabouts. It became clear Peruggia had walked off with the painting while working as a guard at the Louvre. He said he did it out of patriotism, believing wrongly that the Mona Lisa was taken by Napoleon and he wanted to return it to its rightful home. Peruggia would serve time in jail, join the Italian Army, and then die in obscurity in 1925. In 1932, a journalist named Karl Decker wrote a story of an international criminal conspiracy with no actual proof. Nonetheless, the theft of the Mona Lisa turned it from a well regarded painting to the most famous painting in the world.

Throughout the early months of 1968, under the leadership of Alexander Dubcek, Czechoslovakia underwent a series of reforms from its previous hard-line Communist government. Increasing freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and economic reformation, the real striking element of what would be known as the "Prague spring" was a contemplation of multiparty democracy. This was severely bothersome to the Soviet Union. As the head of the Warsaw Pact nations, the Soviet Union viewed its allies as a bulwark against anti-Communist forces, and then-Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev was highly concerned about changes inside Communist nations. Signed in 1955, the Warsaw Pact was a mutual defense treaty against foreign invasion. Yet in August of 1968, the Warsaw Pact was used to invade one of its members. On the night of August 20, troops from the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, and Belarus invaded Czechoslovakia, easily taking the Prague airport and conducting an airborne invasion. Dubcek was arrested and taken to Moscow and Soviet troops were in control of the country by August 21. After that, the Prague spring was over.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe, did not want to directly take back Paris. He had many good reasons, most notably that he needed to destroy the Nazi military and that Adolf Hitler had given orders to destroy the city if it was attacked. General Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French Forces and by extension the French Resistance, knew it had a symbolic significance. The French Resistance was a hodge-podge of groups with different ideologies but a unifying goal of fighting the Nazis. As such, de Gaulle helped organize an uprising against Nazi rule in Paris. Strikes of various sorts occurred from August 15th to August 18th in 1944, grinding down the entire city. On August 19th, skirmishes took place between the French Forces of the Interior and Nazi troops. Then, the citizens of Paris helped rise up, including the Gendarmerie and the police. In less than a week, the liberation of Paris was successful. General de Gaulle would walk through the streets of Paris and take control of France on August 25th.

John White was the Governor of the Roanoke Colony, England's first colony in the Americas, and he had been away from it for three years when he returned to it in 1590. Delayed by the Spanish Armada and logistical problems, White's rescue and supply mission was delayed. What he found when he came back to the colony was the wooden fence around the town and the remnants of houses. Otherwise, there was nothing left. No people, no houses, no signs of people even dying at the colony. All that remained was the word "CROATOAN" carved into a fence-post. White's own daughter and granddaughter, who was the first person of English descent born in America, were among those missing. The small clue led possibly to the notion that the colony moved to the nearby Croatoan Island. Yet a storm made any search impossible, and the voyage returned to England. Although there was some indication the colonists had joined a Native American group and were subsequently slaughtered by the Powhatan, no one could ever prove anything, which made the Roanoake Colony forever lost and shrouded in mystery.

The Dakota tribe, under the leadership of a chief named Little Crow, had signed treaties with the United States Government that allowed them to receive payments for land and buy good and supplies from government agents. By 1862, during the Civil Warthe U.S. was not keeping up with the payments and the Dakota could not buy food during a famine. So when four Dakota men attacked and killed 5 white settlers, Little Crow agreed to go to war. Initially, the Dakota were strikingly successful. They managed to attack certain military outposts and drive settlers off of Dakota land. Then President Abraham Lincoln sent General John Pope, fresh off a disastrous defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run, to command troops in Minnesota to end the violence. Almost instantly, the Dakota were defeated at the Battle of Wood Lake. Most Dakota surrendered, although Little Crow fled to Canada. In November of 1862, 300 Dakota men were charged and convicted of muder, rape, or both, and were sentenced to death. In the end, Abraham Lincoln would pardon all but 38 of the men, who would be executed on the day after Christmas in the largest mass execution in American history.

Only one player in Major League Baseball history has ever died from an injury sustained during a game. In the fifth inning of a game between the American League leading Cleveland Indians and the third place New York Yankees on August 16, 1920, Yankees pitcher Carl Mays threw a pitch that hit Indians shortstop Ray Chapman. Chapman fell to the ground and was bleeding from his ear. The ball came off his head so hard that Mays believed he had connected with the bat, and Mays threw the ball to first baseman Wally Pipp. Chapman would be assisted off the field, but was barely conscious and died within twelve hours of being beaned. Chapman's death was one of three hugely impactful events in 1920. Before the season began, the Red Sox sold pitcher/outfielder Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees, and Ruth would hit 54 homeruns, showing a new way to play the game. Chapman's death in August made baseball create a rule that umpires had to keep fresh, white balls in play, eliminating the spitball and defacing the baseball. Finally, in September, it was revealed that eight members of the 1919 White Sox had thrown the World Series in conjunction with gamblers. The Indians would beat the White Sox for the AL Pennant and eventually won the World Series. Yet it was Ray Chapman's death that seemed to effect the game most profoundly.

In the summer of 1965, the Beatles were the biggest musical band in the history of the planet. The obsession of teenage girls, the icons of British culture, and the exemplar of musical ability, the Beatles were probably the only band that could have dreamed of playing a large stadium. At the start of their US Tour in 1965, the Beatles did just that with a concert at New York's Shea Stadium. The Shea Stadium concert was the first in a series of concerts at stadium, but it also was revelatory because it was in New York and it was first. Really, no band at the time could have realistically played a venue that large, as they couldn't hear themselves play. Still, the crowd went crazy at the sight of the band, and they had to arrive at their own concert by armored van. After the US tour, the band went to record Rubber Soul, their first album made with a dedicated selection of studio time. One year after their Shea Stadium concert, the Beatles would have their last concerts with another tour of US stadiums. The Shea Stadium concert would kick off any notion that rock bands could play such a large venue, yet it also signaled the beginning of the end for the Beatles' touring career.

Although he was a convicted of a horrible violent crime, Rainey Bethea was not too atypical for many criminals. He had a criminal record, having been convicted of grand larceny, and he committed the rape and murder of a 70 year old woman in Owensboro, Kentucky after breaking into her home to rob her. Having left a prison ring multiple people had seen him wear at the crime scene, Bethea was instantly identified at the suspect and was quickly charged with the crime. If he was found guilty of murder, he would be executed in the electric chair at the state prison. If he was found guilty of rape, he would be executed in the county where he committed the crime by hanging. So the prosecutors chose the rape charge. Since he had confessed multiple times, his guilt was never in question. Therefore, he would be hanged in Daviess County by the county sheriff, who was the widow of the recently deceased sheriff. That made Florence Thompson the rare female sheriff at the time. Facing an execution, Thompson got two volunteers, a Louisville policeman and an Illinois amateur expert on hanging. In front of a crowd of 20,000 people in Owensboro, Rainey Bethea was hanged. All of these factors made the laws about public executions change and caused Rainey Bethea to be the last person publicly executed in America.

The 25th Infantry Regiment was an all-African-American regiment of the United States Army who had just recently been transferred to Fort Brown, near Brownsville, Texas, after serving with distinction in Cuba and the Philippines during the Spanish-American War. When a bartender was shot and killed in Brownsville during a shootout on August 13, 1906, the townspeople of Brownsville blamed members of the 25th Infantry Regiment. The evidence for the soldiers' participation was pretty thin. They had reported back to barracks before a curfew on the night in question. Shell casings from guns said to have been only available to the soldiers of the 25th were proven to be planted. Furthermore, the Fort's officers backed the soldiers. Still, local officials sought to blame the 25th Infantry Regiment's soldiers, and despite these charges amounting to nothing, the entire chain of command got involved. Eventually, 167 members of the 25th Infantry Regiment were dishonorably discharged by President Theodore Roosevelt for participating in a "conspiracy of silence."