What Happened Today

The Carthaginian Hannibal Barca had been running Roman armies ragged through the Italian peninsula for a year. He did this after moving his armies, including war elephants from the Iberian Peninsula through Gaul and over the Alps. Once in Italy, Hannibal won significant victories at Trebbia and Lake Trasimene, which made the Roman Republic nervous. Initially, the strategy approached by the appointed dictator Fabius involved a war of attrition, known as the "Fabian strategy." This left Hannibal and his army in Italy, but worn down. After a year, new leaders, Publius and Verro, are elected and they assembled the largest army in Roman history to face him. Despite the numbers advantage, the Romans were easily defeated. Hannibal introduced a pincer movement, exploiting a Roman weakness and routing the armies of Rome. Although numbers are not easy to verify from antiquity, the one thing that is clear is that Hadrian killed the vast majority of Rome's troops. Cannae would be studied for the rest of history, beginning with Romans in the immediate aftermath, including Scipio Africanus who would eventually defeat Carthage by using Hannibal's tactics.

The Warsaw uprising was supposed to happen in coordination with the advance of the Soviet Union's Red Army. The idea was that Polish resistance fighters known as the Home Army, helped by the Polish Government in Exile, would create chaos in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, then with the German Army struggling, the Red Army could easily take the city. That was not how the Warsaw uprising actually went, however. With the Germans losing on both fronts and the Soviet Union making remarkable gains on German-held territory, the summer of 1944 looked to be perfect timing. And after the start of the uprising, it looked like the Home Army would force the Germans to retreat. The problem with the uprising began to be seen as the Soviet Union refused to attack. It is not clear why, although it was speculated at the time that Joseph Stalin wanted to be sure he could install a Soviet-friendly government. After two months of fighting, the resistance fighters negotiated a treaty. They asked to be treated as Prisoners of War according to international conventions. Instead, the Germans moved out almost a million people from Warsaw to concentration camps and then destroyed 90% of the buildings in the city.

Operation Motorman was the largest British Army operation in 16 years, since the Suez Crisis. Operation Motorman also happened on British soil. Operation Motorman was part of the Troubles, the long running conflict between Catholics and Protestants, with some interference from the Birtish Government, in Northern Ireland. Operation Motorman took place after the Provisional Irish Republican Army broke a promised ceasefire on July 21, 1972. Operation Motorman was astonishingly effective at destroying "no-go areas," neighborhoods in Northern Ireland cities that had barricaded themselves from British military interference. Operation Motorman only killed two people, which was an astonishingly low number for such an action in Northern Ireland. Operation Motorman did establish that British troops would be present throughout Northern Ireland, particularly in Catholic neighborhoods. Operation Motorman, therefore, established a consistent military presence by the British in Northern Ireland, which made the British Army a promising target and deepened the conflict.

By 1975, Jimmy Hoffa was a convicted criminal, parolee, and one of America's most notorious men. He had become all of those things by being the President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. In that position, he became the most effective labor leader and turned the Teamsters into the biggest force among organized labor. He also was in deep with organized crime, which led him to be investigated and convicted on charges of jury tampering in Tennessee in 1964. This put him in Federal Prison, until President Richard Nixon commuted his sentence and released him in 1971. The commutation was seen as dirty, but part of the condition was Hoffa could not continue in his national labor activities. So Hoffa went back to his Local organization in Detroit, and on July 30, 1975, went to a lunch meeting with two organized crime figures, Anthony Giacolone and Anthony Provenzano. Hoffa was never seen again. Although many theories have been put forward, all seem to say he was murdered that day.

When James VI became King of Scots in 1567, odds were that his rule would not be especially notable. He was 13 months old, and Scotland would be ruled by regents. Additionally, James succeeded his mother Mary not because she died, but because she abdicated the throne. She herself took the throne as a baby, at just a few days old, and she was raised almost entirely at the French court so she could be prepared to marry Francis, Dauphin of France, heir to the King of France. Therefore, the Queen of Scots was never in Scotland, and she was prouder of being the 18 year old Queen Consort of France. Then Mary's husband the King passed away suddenly, she returned to Scotland, and she married her Catholic cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. The volatile Darnley was unpopular, and Mary was not much more well loved. Yet they produced an heir, James. Within months of James'  birth, Darnley would be assassinated, and Mary was suspected because she quickly married the chief suspect, the Earl of Bothwell. Eventually, this would force Mary's capture and abdication. Despite these difficulties in his accession to the throne, James would go on to lead Scotland, inherit the throne of England, and unite all of Britain under one crown.

Maximilien Robespierre was in many ways the embodiment of the French Revolution, as he led the nation towards a Republic, oversaw the Reign of Terror, and, eventually, met his death at the guillotine. Robespierre was never the official head of the French government. Instead, he emerged as the most influential of the Jacobins, the Republican society and early political party. After the deposition and then execution of King Louis XVI, Robespierre came into his own. Eloquent and persuasive, Robespierre believed in the ideal of a "Republic of Virtue" that would produce a truly revolutionary government. This led him to lead the Montagnard faction, and then placed him on the Committee of Public Safety. From there, he was so obsessed with the enemies of the Republic that he helped put thousands to death in the Reign of Terror. Any political enemy, even if they had usually been allies like Georges Danton. Finally, a speech to the National Convention warning about secret conspiracies was too much. So the Convention turned on him, and almost instantly arrested him and put his own neck on the guillotine, as he had done to so many people.

Throughout the summer of 1919, a series of race riots took place across the United States of America. Returning soldiers adjusting to civilian life, African-Americans working in new wartime jobs in Northern cities, and authorities worrying about Communism and Anarchism led to increased tensions everywhere. The violence hit Chicago that summer after a young black man named Eugene Williams floated over to a white beach on the informally segregated shores of Lake Michigan. White men would start throwing stones at him, which eventually caused his death by drowning. After police refused to arrest the stone thrower, mass violence broke out. At the drop of a hat, roving gangs of Irish-Americans attacked African-Americans and destroyed buildings in African-American neighborhoods. Fires, almost all of which would be deemed arson after the fact, made hundreds of families homeless. Some black families even decided to take trains back to the South. After the National Guard was brought in and quelled the riot five days later, 53 people were killed and hundreds were injured.

Although African-Americans had served during World War II with distinction, throughout the conflict and in the years immediately after the Armed Forces were segregated. This led to many different problems inside of the military, but it was hard to overturn the way that the Army, Navy, and Air Force worked. When Harry Truman became President upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, he took a more forward looking approach than his predecessor, but along the same lines. He announced the Truman Doctrine against Communism, argued for a "Fair Deal," and advocated for African-American civil rights. This was most notable at the 1948 Democratic National Convention, which saw the adoption of a Civil Rights platform and the subsequent walk out of the "Dixiecrats," Southern segregationists. The Dixiecrats, who were seen as key members of the Democratic coalition, seemed to have doomed the Democrats in 1948 over Civil Rights. Yet just two weeks later, Truman signed Executive Order 9981, which integrated the Armed Forces. Truman would win the election, but he took an unpopular political stance because he believed it was a moral imperative to end segregation in the Armed Forces.

The SS Andrea Doria was the most luxurious ship of its time. Launched in 1951 and going on its maiden voyage in 1953, it was a symbol of post-war and post-Fascist Italy's reemergence on the world stage. The Andrea Doria was supposed to be the nicest way to travel across the Atlantic. It was also one of the safest, with a series of 11 watertight compartments. Yet it also had a strange tendency to list to one side or the other. Mostly, though, it was a smashing success. Then, on July 25, 1956, as it was approaching New York, the Andrea Doria was in heavy fog near Nantucket. Coming near to the Swedish passenger ship MS Stockholm, the two ships collided at a nearly 90 degree angle. The Stockholm's ice breaking prow ripped into the Andrea Doria. The Stockholm was damaged, but afloat. The Andrea Doria went on to its side. The vast majority of people were able to be rescued, either on the ship's lifeboats or through ships coming to its aid. Most of the deaths occurred from the initial impact. Long term, though, the sinking of the Andrea Doria helped finish off the era of ocean liner passenger travel.

Hiram Bingham III was the only historian of Latin America in the United States in the early twentieth century. As such, he went to a variety of places throughout South America, and in Peru he was told of significant lost Inca cities. So in the summer of 1911, Bingham led an expedition from Yale to the Andes to find these places. He had a great deal of success at finding significant sites, but this expedition would become famous for going to a plateau nearly 8,000 feet above sea level, near a peak called Machu Picchu. There, he discovered a massive, impressive city built entirely by the Incas and never touched by the Spanish. This was important, because most of the key examples of Inca architecture were damaged in the Spanish conquest. Bingham thought the site was a religious center, but he was wrong. Machu Picchu was built by the significant Inca ruler Pachacuti as a royal retreat. Still, the ability to research the use of Machu Picchu was only possible because Hiram Bingham announced to the world that Machu Picchu existed, even if he did not always act as appropriately as people would have liked.