What Happened Today

Throughout May of 1864, The Army of the Potomac under Union General Ulysses S. Grant had been repeatedly engaging in fighting with the Confederates of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, then moving around their left flank. This meant that the situation in early June was only different because the two armies faced each other just east of the Confederate capital at Richmond. Becoming annoyed with the lack of a breakthrough, Grant decided to launch an all out assault against fortified and entrenched troops. It was a disaster. Worse, it was a disaster that might have been predictable to many observers. Such charges, most famously the South's ill-fated Pickett's Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg, did not work much in the Civil War. Indeed, the Union forces saw astonishing losses. Usually, this made an army retreat back to safe areasm ready to regroup. Yet after Cold Harbor, Grant stayed in front of Lee, leading to the long Siege of Petersburg, which would then lead to the fall of Richmond and the eventual surrender by Lee.

On June 2, 1919, eight bombs went off in eight separate cities at the homes of various government officials who had been supportive of anti-sedition laws and crackdowns on radical immigrant groups. In front of the house of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, where the front was blown apart, the body of a man Carlo Valdinoci was found blown apart by his own bomb. This tied the bombings to the followers of Luigi Galleani, a radical anarchist who widely advocated bombing government officials. This also tied the bombings to a string of crude bombings sent through the mail in April of 1919. In response to these bombings, the Galleanisti were swept up along with many other radicals, communists, and anarchists, in an event known as the Palmer Raids. The Palmer Raids are the most significant element of the Red Scare of 1919 and 1920, which was trying to prevent a Russian Revolution style uprising in America. Although the idea seems silly, Palmer was really responding to a series of bombings, one of which actually destroyed part of his home.

Adolf Eichmann was executed by hanging for war crimes in Israel, although his crimes did not happen in Israel. He was, however, a former Nazi who, as a high ranking party official, was responsible for the transportation of people to concentration and death camps. Eichmann's capture by Mossad agents in Buenos Aires in 1960 was a sensation, and his five month trial in 1961 was followed around the world. Eichmann's claim was that he was simply "following orders" and bore no responsibility for the events of the Holocaust. Actually, he had deep responsibility, as he was the person in charge of "Jewish Affairs" from 1933. This initially meant arranging mass emigration, but after the Wannsee Conference in 1942, this basically made Eichmann in charge of logistics for the Holocaust. He claimed he was not fully aware of what was going on. The writer Hannah Arendt, who attended some of the trial, said he exemplified the "banality of evil," because he was a pencil pusher more than the typical idea of a war criminal. The judges who heard Eichmann's case saw it differently, and that's why he was sentenced to die by hanging.

The Johnstown flood was the largest flood in American history when judged by death and damage. It all started when the South Fork Dam on the Little Conemaugh River failed. The South Fork Dam belonged to the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, an exclusive retreat for the wealthiest and most important citizens of Pittsburgh. When a large amount of rain fell, the men charged with taking care of the dam realized the dam was not able to hold, due to years of neglect and mismanagement. At that point, the river swelled to a flow comparable to the Mississippi, picking up debris as it went. By the time the water hit Johnstown, 14 miles downriver, it was a swirling mass of water and debris. Some neighborhoods were carried away, while other houses would be flipped over on their side. Over 2,200 people died, including 99 whole families. The recovery began immediately, but still took quite awhile and largely put the American Red Cross on the map. While people wanted the members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club to pay, but the law called the flood an "Act of God." People would later change the law.

Everything about Joan of Arc is strange, contradictory, and bizarre. A peasant girl who came to prominence for having religious visions that predicted the outcome of battles, Joan of Arc became thoroughly enmeshed with King Charles VII of France and his court as they fought against the English. She might have never swung a sword, and she certainly never actually commanded any French troops. She was actually just a sort of talisman, seen with a banner on the field and giving advice to the generals. After helping to lift the Siege of Orleans and retaking the city of Reims, the location of the coronation for French Kings, Joan of Arc became a hero for the French and an embodiment of evil for the English. So the English captured Joan of Arc near Compiegne, then tried for heresy. The trial was more complicated than it probably should have been, but eventually the English were able to burn Joan of Arc at the stake for heresy.

From 1649 to 1660, technically speaking, there was no King in England, Scotland, or Ireland. King Charles I was beheaded on the orders of his Parliament in 1649, leaving England a Republic, but Charles' son Charles II as the nominal King for anyone boosting the Royalist cause. The real authority in England was Oliver Cromwell, a Parliamentarian General and leader who would become the "Lord Protector." On his death in 1659, he passed down the title to his son Richard, who most people were unhappy with and who was dispatched by elements of the Army. Eventually, by the end of the year, George Monck, an Army General in Scotland, had taken control of England and reached out to Charles II. It was a strange choice, as Charles was living in the Spanish Netherlands with little money. Yet England seemed ready to have a King, as long as Charles would be the right kind of king. He agreed almost instantly, with the Declaration of Breda announcing his desire to return as King and the guarantee of specific rights. After that, a new Parliament called for Charles to return. With an easy procession, Charles reentered London on May 29, 1660, his thirtieth birthday.

Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act with the intention of doing just what the act's name described. Specifically, Jackson and his allies sought to move the "Five Civilized Tribes"--the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Creek, the Chickasaw, and the Seminole--off of their lands in the Southeast where white settlers wanted to move. The actual text of the law said the President would be able to negotiate with tribes to forge treaties that exchanged land currently held by each tribe for land in newly formed Indian Territory. In reality, the treaties would largely be signed by trickery, coercion, or just on unequal terms the U.S. Government had no intention of keeping. The process of Indian removal began quickly. Even two Supreme Court cases brought by the Cherokee Nation could not stop Andrew Jackson from removing Indian tribes just like the act said he could, as Jackson ignored the Supreme Court's pronouncements. The actual removal of all the tribes would become known as "The Trail of Tears," as the forced nature of the removal led to widespread disease and death before the groups made it to Indian Territory.

The Battle of Tsushima was one of those battles that truly changed the course of world history. It all began when the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked a Russian controlled port in China. In response, Russia sent a large fleet from the Baltic Sea all the way around Europe, Africa, and Asia to the Sea of Japan. After an incident with British fishing boats, the Russians had to go without stopping over a course of months. This meant they faced the Japanese fleet ragged and beat up. They might not have won had they been at full strength. Led by Admiral Togo Heihachiro, the Imperial Japanese Navy was a minor miracle, as Japan had only begun modernizing and building a Navy in the 1860s. Togo also led his ships in a Naval masterclass at Tsushima, managing to take advantageous positions and press his position. The Russian fleet was essentially destroyed, while the Japanese Navy would suffer only small casualties. The Japanese victory upset the balance of power in the world, as Russia was humiliated and Japan gave notice it was now a major power. The Battle of Tsushima also made the Naval powers rethink their general strategy to warfare on the seas.

Presidential impeachment is a difficult process under the United States Constitution, as two-thirds of the U.S. Senate has to vote to convict the President on impeachment charges in order to remove him from office. This means that the Congress has to be fed up with the President to even consider it. In 1868, the Congress was that fed up with Andrew Johnson. The Radical Republicans that dominated Congress wanted to see Confederate punished and the South totally reconstructed, while Johnson, a former War Democrat from Tennessee who inherited the Presidency after Abraham Lincoln's assassination, wanted to more easily bring the South back into the Union. The real issue was the Tenure of Office Act, a law saying the Senate had to approve of the removal of a cabinet officer. When Johnson removed Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, impeachment proceedings were inevitable. The House easily passed the Articles of Impeachment, but the Senate fell just one vote short of the two-thirds majority needed to actually remove Johnson from office.

Oscar Wilde was a brilliant and prominent poet, playwright, and essayist who was considered one of the cleverest men of his time. Yet he went to prison because he decided to do something fairly stupid and be extremely stubborn. The trouble for Wilde began when the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of Wilde's lover Alfred Douglas, left a card at Wilde's private club that said, "For Oscar Wilde, posing as a somdomite." Despite the misspelling, this was a charge Wilde wanted to fight under libel laws, even though none of his friends wanted him to do it. Queensberry could win the case by proving that what he had written, despite its misspelling, was absolutely true. His attorneys hired private detectives who found multiple male prostitutes who were willing to testify they had had sex with Wilde. Wilde immediately dropped the charges, but then he himself was charged with sodomy and gross indecency. Wilde cleverly defended himself in open court, but largely acknowledged he had homosexual relationships from the witness stand. Wilde would go to prison, where his bad health would only get worse. After his release in 1897, Wilde lived in France for just three years, drunk and destitute until his death in 1900.