What Happened Today

The Warsaw Pact, officially the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation, and Mutual Assistance, was created because the Soviet Union was extremely worried that Germany would re-militarize. Of course, since 1945, no country like "Germany" existed, but instead there was the Communist East Germany and Capitalist West Germany. Still, once West Germany joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization upon gaining full sovereignty in 1955, Soviet leaders decided to do something. That something was gathering its eights satellite states in Eastern Europe, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania, at a meeting in Warsaw to create a mutual defense pact. Although all of these states had individual treaties with the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact formalized everything even more. In a way, it all worked as it was designed to. There was never an open war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries, but instead they faced off along the lines of espionage and proxy wars. Indeed, the Warsaw Pact outlived Communist control in most of its member states, such was the strength of the treaty.

Throughout the 1980s, there were a series of violent clashes between supporters in European football, and Dinamo Zagreb and Red Star Belgrade had been longstanding rivals in the Yugoslav First League. Yet when their match in May 1990 saw a riot break out, this was something more than football hooliganism. Just a week prior, Croatia had multi-party elections for the first time in years, and with Franjo Tudman's Croatian Democratic Union winning it appeared that Croatia would break apart from the rest of Yugoslavia. So the ethnic and religious tensions that had always been present between Croatia and Serbia were about to erupt, and the best team in Croatia met the best team in Serbia on the football pitch. Except, actually, the two teams ultras groups, Dinamo's Bad Blue Boys and Red Star's Delije, met each other in a riot on the pitch. The Delije were led by Zjelko Raznatovic, better known as Arkan, a career criminal who would lead the notorious Serb Volunteer Force in the wars to come. On the pitch, Dinamo's captain Zvonomir Boban would kick a policeman, becoming a Croatian folk hero in the process. This riot would mark the beginning of violence in the dissolution of Yugoslavia.

The Battle of Palmito Ranch, in all reality, should have never happened, as it took place a month after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, in a location that never saw serious fighting. Yet it was notable because it was the very last battle of the American Civil War and saw the very last casualty of the conflict, Private John J. Williams of Indiana. It has been said that the Battle of Palmito Ranch began because it was one last chance at glory for Union troops stuck along the Mexican border in Texas. One peculiarity of the Battle of Palmito Ranch was that it featured black troops on the Union side fighting against Mexican troops on the Confederate side. Still, the battle was between  just a few hundred troops, and there was one death and minimal casualties. Essentially, the Confederate troops held off a small offensive maneuver by the Union troops near them. So it's only real notability came from being a Confederate victory in the last battle of a war that Union won. Of course, the outcome of the Battle of Palmito Ranch did nothing to change the outcome of the war, and it was maybe just a Pyrrhic victory.

Only one Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has ever been assassinated while in office, and Spencer Perceval did not really have the profile of a politician who gets assassinated. Then again, his assassin John Bellingham was not the kind of political ideologue or unbalanced individual who has the profile of a person who commits an assassination. Perceval was an extremely capable politician who managed to have a rapid rise in politics through sheer ability. A committed evangelical, equally opposed to reform, Catholic emancipation, the slave trade, and Napoleon, Perceval was the Prime Minister who had to deal with a reversal of fortune in the Napoleonic Wars and the madness of King George III. Yet by 1812, he seemed to be righting his administration. John Bellingham made the future of Perceval's government an open question. Bellingham shot Perceval because he thought he still deserved redress for being arrested and imprisoned in Russia while being an agent for a British firm there. More stunningly, Bellingham calmly allowed himself to be arrested after assassinating Perceval. This led to a conversation about his sanity. Nonetheless, within a week, Bellingham was tried, convicted, and executed by hanging for assassinating the Prime Minister.

Few people have had the effect on American history that J. Edgar Hoover did. As the Director of first the Bureau of Investigation and then the rechristened Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hoover managed to track, surveil, and arrest anyone he thought was a subversive who was trying to harm the United States Government. Under this rubric, Hoover would target bank robbers, communists, anarchists, mafiosos, and civil rights leaders. More importantly, he transformed a small division of the Justice Department into a separate, hugely important element of the government that was responsible for any intelligence gathering on domestic subjects. Hoover himself was a peculiar man who would rule the FBI with an iron fist. He spoke extremely fast at all times, was obsessed with data and record collection, and moved any Bureau agents he did not like out of his office. Hoover was widely loathed in the government, but no one could do anything to stop him, as he served as Director of the FBI until his death in 1972.

Gabriel Lawrence, William Griffin, and Thomas Wright were initially arrested after a raid by authorities at a "molly house" owned by a Margaret Clap. Molly houses were gathering places for homosexual men in eighteenth century England. Since the reign of Henry VIII, homosexual sex between men, better known as "buggery" or "sodomy," was illegal. On the other hand, its prosecution was varied, and in the early eighteenth century, after the Glorious Revolution and the Hanoverian Succession, the desire to prosecute men on sodomy charges was increased through the Society for the Reformation of Manners. The problem was the actual way to prosecute sodomy, which led to a reliance on informants, who were usually hustlers and male prostitutes who were arrested on other charges. That is how Margaret Clap's establishment was raided and how evidence was brought against Lawrence, Griffin, and Wright. All three men tried to present some evidence that they had no idea that Clap's house was a molly house, but the juries didn't buy it. Thus, they were publicly hanged at Tyburn for the crime of sodomy, a public spectacle which was relatively rare in the history of Britain.

When the German Instrument of Surrender was officially signed, it meant the war in Europe was officially over. Of course, World War II was not yet done, but it also seemed to be a rather late acknowledgement of the facts on the ground. Allied troops had been marching through Germany for most of April, successively defeating German armies and liberating concentration camps. On April 29, German troops in Italy surrendered and Soviet troops had surrounded Berlin. The next day, Adolf Hitler killed himself so he would not be captured. At that point, a wide variety of German armies surrendered to their Allied counterparts. The only option the Allies gave the Nazis was unconditional surrender, terms set out at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. It was only when Alfred Jodl and Wilhelm Keitel agreed on May 8 could people actually celebrate. And in Britain, France, America, and the Soviet Union, people did celebrate. In Germany, any remnant of the Nazi government had to be eliminated after May 8, 1945, because that was the way World War II was fought.

Beginning in early 1915 during World War I, the German Navy began unrestricted submarine warfare in the waters around the British Isles. Mostly, they were more threatening than damaging, making shipping lines more difficult and creating generally anxiety about German submarines, known as U-boats. Then, on May 7, 1915, the German U-boat U-20 was off the Irish Coast and saw the RMS Lusitania coming at it. The Lusitania was one of the greatest ships of the Cunard Line and was a large passenger ship loaded with many transatlantic passengers on its route from New York to Liverpool. U-20 shot one torpedo that hit the Luistania in the starboard side. The Lusitania went down in just about 18 minutes. Due to falling over on its starboard side, most of the ship's lifeboats could not be deployed. In total, 1200 people would die on the Lusitania after it was sunk. This fact caused extreme outrage from Britain, although not all of it was directed at the Germans as it was at the Cunard Line and the Lusitania's captain. The real shock was in America, as a handful of American citizens died, and the sinking of the RMS Lusitania caused American sentiment to fall firmly against the Germans.

The Hindenburg was not the first large airship to crash, nor was it the deadliest airship crash. Instead, it was the most spectacular and most well covered airship disaster, as the Hindenburg exploded into a huge fireball that was reported on in newspapers, newsreels, and, most famously, radio. In a way, that fit what the Hindenburg was as a flying vessel. As an airship, a large balloon that could be used for passenger travel, the Hindenburg was the most luxurious and spectacular ship of its kind, and it was used as a propaganda tool by the Nazi regime. In 1937, its second year in service, the Hindenburg was scheduled to fly from Germany to America, which made many reporters wait at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station to see it land. They got a front row view to the ship catch fire and crash to the ground, all of which happened in less than a minute. The horror was perfectly captured by radio broadcaster Herbert Morrison, who famously exclaimed "Oh, the humanity," as the Hindenburg fell to the ground. With the crash of the Hindenburg, the era of the airship came to an end.

John Scopes was actively encouraged to present himself for arrest by local authorities in Dayton, Tennessee, who wanted him to admit teaching evolution in the local high school, which violated Tennessee's Butler Act. The Butler Act was swiftly enacted into law in Tennessee through the backing of Christian fundamentalists, and many people thought it violated the Constitution. The ACLU said they would back any challenge and the civic leaders of Dayton decided a little publicity for their town would be good. They got more than they bargained for, as multiple news outlets descended on the town and two famous figures joined the legal teams, William Jennings Bryan for the Prosecution and Clarence Darrow for the defense. Largely, the trial was designed as a formality, with Scopes admitting he taught evolution against State law. Instead, a dramatic showdown took place when Darrow called Bryan to be an expert on the Bible, trying to shatter Bryan's literal approach to scripture. The jury couldn't hear it and they found Scopes guilty. Eventually, Scopes would have the conviction held up by an appeals court, although they did reduce his fine.