What Happened Today

The Mayflower Compact was one of the first governing documents in England's American colonies, establishing a basic framework and social contract among the people who sailed on the Mayflower and established the Plymouth Colony. On the other hand, the people on board the Mayflower were not in the situation they thought they would be in when they hit America. The Mayflower's voyage was organized by a group of Separatists, people who wanted to separate themselves from the Church of England because they believed it was too corrupt. Yet they could not make a full colony by themselves. Instead, they had other people, who they referred to as "Strangers" while calling themselves "Saints," join them on their journey. The voyage was problematic, with a planned second ship, the Speedwell, not being able to make it into open seas. This delay meant they faced serious gale winds in the North Atlantic, which made the trip rough. Then they arrived well north of their intended target of Jamestown. With their ship forced to stay on Cape Cod, the men of the Mayflower realized they needed to agree to some kind of compact as they would winter on board an anchored Mayflower.

"Kristallnacht" is German for "Crystal night" and it would also become known as the "Night of Broken Glass," all of which referred to the shards of broken glass from shop windows that lay throughout German cities. Kristallacht specifically targeted the Jewish population in Germany. The trigger for the actions of Kristallnacht was the assassination of German Embassy official Ernst vom Rath in Paris by Herschel Grynzspan, who wanted to shoot a Nazi for the mass deportation of Polish Jews, including Grynzspan's parents, less than two weeks earlier. When Adolf Hitler found out about vom Rath's death, Hitler left the dinner party he was throwing. Then Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels said the riots that would take place should not be stopped. More specifically, the head of the secret police, Reinhard Heydrich, sent a telegram throughout Germany spelling out the exact orders for all German policemen. The result was that the state allowed the destruction of 7,000 Jewish-owned businesses, hundreds of synagogues, and untold Jewish homes. Some 30,000 young Jewish men were arrested and sent to labor camps. Most importantly, Kristallnacht signaled that the Nazi regime was entirely capable of genocide.

The Catholic Worker Movement was vehemently against the Vietnam War from the beginning, but one of its members taking the radical step of setting himself on fire was shocking. That is precisely what Roger LaPorte did by the United Nations Building in New York City. LaPorte was 22 years old, and spoke in the day between his self-immolation and his death about doing it to protest the war and all wars. LaPorte's self-immolation came just a week after a devoted Quaker named Norman Morrison set himself on fire underneath the office window of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara at the Pentagon. These twinned self-immolations were heavily influenced by the similar action of Thic Quan Duc, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who protested the regime of Ngo Ding Diem in 1963. The self-immolation of Thic Quan Duc led to widescale unrest against the repressive Diem regime, which caused the overthrow of his government. Roger LaPorte merely showed that there was more opposition to the Vietnam War than previously thought, all of which would explode in 1966 and 1967.

The Battle of White Mountain was the decisive battle of the early part of the Thirty Years' War. The Thirty Years' War really began in Prague when the Protestant nobility of Bohemia threw the Catholic representatives of King Ferdinand out of a window. Because Ferdinand was also the Holy Roman Emperor, he was able to amass a large army against Bohemia. Meanwhile, Bohemia would elect a new King, the very Protestant Frederick V, Elector Palatine. This elevated Frederick from a minor prince to a King, and was seen to provide a variety of Protestant alliances for the Bohemians. They needed it, because Emperor Ferdinand had gathered his own army, which was much better trained and drilled under the command of Johann Tsercales, Count of Tilly. Tilly's army carved through Western Bohemia, and easily came upon Prague in the late fall of 1620. The Bohemian army came out to meet Tilly's force at White Mountain near Prague, where they were routed. Almost as soon as any engagement took place, the Bohemian army fled the field. Frederick and his family needed to flee Prague, and Ferdinand would reclaim the throne of Bohemia, re-Catholicizing the nation by force.

Elijah P. Lovejoy was a native of Maine who had moved to Saint Louis after graduating college and begun a school and a newspaper. He began his newspaper career as an ardent opponent of Andrew Jackson and his supporters. After attending Princeton Theological Seminary, Lovejoy would focus more on religion and morality, attacking Catholicism, alcohol, and, most notably, slavery. Lovejoy's St. Louis Observer was the slave state of Missouri's most prominent abolitionist newspaper. This made Lovejoy a repeated target of violence. His press was destroyed on three separate occasions, which caused Lovejoy to move across the Mississippi River to Alton, Illinois. There he began the Alton Observer and attempted to found a local chapter of the Anti-Slavery Society. Despite Illinois being a free state, Alton was a hotbed of pro-slavery sentiment. As Lovejoy continued his abolitionist activities, an angry mob decided to destroy his press which was supposed to be hidden in a warehouse. While defending his printing press, Lovejoy was shot five times, dying instantly. The Reverend Elijah P. Lovejoy became a martyr to abolitionism, and his death became a rallying cry for anti-slavery activism.

No election in American history was as consequential as the 1860 Presidential Election. Within two months of the election of Abraham Lincoln, South Carolina had seceded from the Union, and before Lincoln had been inaugurated, the Confederate States of America were formed. The Democratic Party unraveled first, as their convention in April in Charleston, South Carolina dissolved without a nominee. Arguing over the platform, a group of extreme pro-slavery agitators called "Fire Eaters" sought a platform that called for widespread expansion of slavery. This targeted the frontrunner for the nomination Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas and had the support of most Southern delegates. Meanwhile in Chicago, the still young Republican Party decided to choose a more moderate candidate, Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, who had lost a Senate race to Douglas two years earlier. A new party emerged called the Constitutional Union Party, which nominated John Bell of Tennessee and argued for the "Union as it is and Constiution as it is." When the Democrats met again in Baltimore in June, it came out as two parties, with Northern Democrats nominating Douglas and Southern Democrats nominating Vice President John Breckinridge. This division allowed Abraham Lincoln to easily take the election with less than 40 percent of the vote, and made most Southerners even more set on secession.

Although he had only taken the throne in 1685, by 1688 James II was already highly unpopular with his subjects. A practicing Catholic, James was adversarial in matters of religion. He also was antagonistic to Parliament. Yet James was older, having inherited the throne from his elder brother Charles, and he had two Protestant heirs, including Mary, Princess Royal, who was married to her first cousin William III, Prince of Orange, ruler of the Netherlands. Then James had a son with his second, and notably Catholic, wife Mary of Modena in June of 1688. Now the assumption of a Protestant ruler arriving shortly was gone. So seven nobles, known as the Immortal Seven, invited William III to invade England. William was still hesitant and took time to gather his force for an invasion, largely concerned about his enemy Louis XIV of France helping James. Then Louis became involved in battles in Germany and William invaded. He met little resistance, and once he landed at Torbay, in southwest England, he had effectively seized control. Within two months, William and Mary would be crowned co-monarchs in what became known as "The Glorious Revolution," a largely bloodless invasion.

For the most part, the Iranian Revolution had taken place with little violence. Once the Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, had left the country seeking cancer treatment in January of 1979 and the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile in February, the Islamic Republic was established with Khomeini as the Supreme Leader. Then a group of 200 university students stormed the United States Embassy on November 4. They were supporters of Khomeini, but had no direction from him when they took the Embassy. The students managed to hold 66 people hostage, and eventually did receive the support of the Ayatollah. This put the United States in a bind, which the administration of Jimmy Carter sought to resolve. After the hostage takers released 9 people, mostly African-Americans and women to show they were on the side of the oppressed, it appeared they would not let go. The Carter Administration attempted a military rescue, which failed horribly. Once the Iran-Iraq war broke out, Iran was more willing to negotiate. Yet Carter was facing a reelection campaign, seeking a second term in office. Eventually, Carter would lose exactly one year after the hostages were taken, and Iran did not release the hostages until Carter's successor, Ronald Reagan, was sworn in as President.

Throughout 1979, a group calling itself the "Workers Viewpoint Organization" had been organizing workers in textile mills around Greensboro. On November 3, after the group became the "Communist Workers Party," they held a "Death to the Klan" rally. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Ku Klux Klan and allied American Nazi party groups showed up to protest the protest, after which they opened fire with shotguns. In just 88 seconds, five protesters would be fatally shot, while eleven others would be injured, while just one Klansmen was injured. Television news cameras were rolling the whole time, capturing the entire affair. When a funeral took place eight days later, hundreds of National Guardsmen protected the funeral from further violence. Despite that, the Klansmen arrested in the aftermath of the shooting were all acquitted in a trial that concluded a year after the event. A Federal trial, charging even more Klansmen with violating the civil rights of the victims, also resulted in acquittals. The Klansmen argued they fired in self defense; the Communist Workers Party said they were politically targeted. Most strikingly, the police should never have allowed the Greensboro massacre.

The Balfour Declaration was, in all reality, a letter from the Foreign Secretary of Great Britain, Arthur Balfour to one of the leading British Zionists, Lord Walter Rothschild. Yet it was an official statement of His Majesty's Government on the issue of a Jewish nation in Palestine. Officially, it said that Britain would support "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." The actual language of the declaration was simultaneously simple and complicated. The declaration was one long sentence, yet its specific usage was the subject of much debate. Zionism had been a political force in Europe since the 1890s, yet Britain only fully supported the notion with the advent of World War I. As a Jewish nation in Palestine would disrupt the Ottoman Empire, Britain found Zionism more compelling. Britain's support of the Arab Revolt, however, complicated support for Zionism, especially as promises to leading Zionists would be in conflict with the promises to Arab allies. So by the end of 1917, the British government declared it would support a "national home" for Jews, rather than a state, and promised not to violate the rights of non-Jews in the area. The statement would create trouble for decades.