Tag: History

On March 11, 1779, Congress establishes the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to help plan, design and prepare environmental and structural facilities for the U.S. Army. Made up of civilian workers, members of the Continental Army and French officers, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers played an essential role in the critical Revolutionary War battles at Bunker Hill, Saratoga and Yorktown.

The members of the Corps who had joined at the time of its founding in 1779 left the army with their fellow veterans at the end of the War for Independence. In 1794, Congress created a Corps of Artillerists and Engineers to serve the same purpose under the new federal government. The Corps of Engineers itself was reestablished as an enduring division of the federal government in 1802.

Upon its reestablishment, the Corps began its chief task of creating and maintaining military fortifications. These responsibilities increased in urgency as the new United States prepared for a second war with Britain in the years before 1812. The Corps’ greatest contribution during this era was to the defense of New York Harbor—the fortifications it built not only persuaded British naval commanders to stay away from the city during the War of 1812, but later served as the foundations for the Statue of Liberty.

In subsequent years, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers evolved from providing services for the military to helping map out the uncharted territories that would become the western United States. Beginning in 1824, the Corps also took responsibility for navigation and flood control of the nation’s river systems.

Today, the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers is made up of more than 35,000 civilian and enlisted men and women. In recent years, the Corps has worked on rebuilding projects in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the reconstruction of the city of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

On March 11, 1669, Mount Etna, on the island of Sicily in modern-day Italy, begins rumbling. Multiple eruptions over the next few weeks killed more than 20,000 people and left thousands more homeless. Most of the victims could have saved themselves by fleeing, but stayed, in a vain attempt to save their city.

Mount Etna dominates the island of Sicily. Rising 11,000 feet above sea level in the northeast section of Sicily, it can be seen from just about every part of the island. The geologic history of Mount Etna demonstrates that it has been periodically spewing ash and lava for thousands of years; the first recorded eruption of the volcano was in 475 BCE. It is the most active volcano in Europe. In 1169, an earthquake just prior to an eruption killed 15,000 people on Sicily. Despite the dangers of living near an active volcano, the eruptions made the surrounding soil very fertile, so many small villages developed on the slopes of the mountain.

When Etna began to rumble and belch gas on March 8, the residents nearby ignored the warning signs of a larger eruption. Three days later, the volcano began spewing out noxious fumes in large quantities. Approximately 3,000 people living on the slopes of the mountain died from asphyxiation. Even worse, Etna was soon emitting tremendous amounts of ash and molten lava. The ash was sent out with such force that significant amounts came down in the southern part of mainland Italy, in some cases nearly 100 miles away. Lava also began pouring down the south side of the mountain heading toward the city of Catania, 18 miles to the south along the sea.

At the time, the city of Catania had about 20,000 residents; most failed to flee the city immediately. Instead, Diego de Pappalardo, a resident of the city, led a team of 50 men to Mount Etna, where they attempted to divert the lava flow. Wearing cowhides soaked in water, the men bravely approached the lava with long iron rods, picks and shovels. They were able to hack open a hole in the hardened lava wall that had developed on the outside of the lava flow and much of the flow began to flow west out of the new hole. However, the residents of Paterno, a city lying southwest of Etna were monitoring these developments and quickly realized that this new flow direction could imperil their own city. They literally fought back the Catanians, while the lava breach hardened and filled again.

For several weeks, the lava pushed toward Catania and the sea. Still, the residents failed to evacuate the city. Apparently, they remained hopeful that the lava would stop or the city’s ancient defensive walls would protect them. Neither was the case—the walls were quickly swallowed by the extremely hot

lava and nearly 17,000 people in Catania died. Most of the city was destroyed. Catania was not the only city affected—the eruption wiped out 14 towns and villages and left about 27,000 people homeless.

Following this disaster, it was decreed that interference with the natural flow of lava was prohibited in Italy, a regulation that remained in effect hundreds of years later.

In Montgomery, Alabama, delegates from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas adopt the Permanent Constitution of the Confederate States of America.

The constitution resembled the Constitution of the United States, even repeating much of its language, but was actually more comparable to the Articles of Confederation—the initial post-Revolutionary War U.S. constitution—in its delegation of extensive powers to the states. The constitution also contained substantial differences from the U.S. Constitution in its protection of slavery, which was “recognized and protected” in slave states and territories. However, in congruence with U.S. policy since the beginning of the 19th century, the foreign slave trade was prohibited.

The constitution provided for six-year terms for the president and vice president, and the president was ineligible for successive terms. Although a presidential item veto was granted, the power of the central Confederate government was sharply limited by its dependence on state consent for the use of any funds and resources.

Although Britain and France both briefly considered entering the Civil War on the side of the South, the Confederate States of America, which survived until April 1865, never won foreign recognition as an independent government.

On March 11, 2004, 193 people are killed and nearly 2,000 are injured when 10 bombs explode on four trains in three Madrid-area train stations during a busy morning rush hour. The bombs were later found to have been detonated by mobile phones. The attacks, the deadliest against civilians on European soil since the 1988 Lockerbie airplane bombing, were initially suspected to be the work of the Basque separatist militant group ETA. This was soon proved incorrect as evidence mounted against an extreme Islamist militant group loosely tied to, but thought to be working in the name of, al-Qaida.

Investigators believe that all of the blasts were caused by improvised explosive devices that were packed in backpacks and brought aboard the trains. The terrorists seem to have targeted Madrid’s Atocha Station, at or near which seven of the bombs were detonated. The other bombs were detonated aboard trains near the El Poso del Tio Raimundo and Santa Eugenia stations, most likely because of delays in the trains’ journeys on their way to Atocha. Three other bombs did not detonate as planned and were later found intact.

Many in Spain and around the world saw the attacks as retaliation for Spain’s participation in the war in Iraq, where about 1,400 Spanish soldiers were stationed at the time. The attacks took place two days before a major Spanish election, in which anti-war Socialists swept to power. The new government, led by Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, removed Spanish troops from Iraq, with the last leaving the country in May 2004.

A second bombing, of a track of the high-speed AVE train, was attempted on April 2, but was unsuccessful. The next day, Spanish police linked the occupants of an apartment in Leganes, south of Madrid, to the attacks. In the ensuing raid, seven suspects killed themselves and one Spanish special forces agent by setting off bombs in the apartment to avoid capture by the authorities. One other bomber is believed to have been killed in the train bombings and 29 were arrested. After a five-month-long trial in 2007, 21 people were convicted, although five of them, including Rabei Osman, the alleged ringleader, were later acquitted.

In memory of the victims of the March 11 bombings, a memorial forest of olive and cypress trees was planted at the El Retiro park in Madrid, near the Atocha railway station.

Paul McCartney of the Beatles was knighted Sir Paul McCartney by Queen Elizabeth the II. Plus, a four day blizzard began called the White Hurricane, that paralyzed the Eastern part of the United States. In New York City, A Raisin in the Sun debuted with Stars Sidney Poitier and Claudia McNeil. The first woman, Janet Reno, was sworn in as the United States Attorney General as well.

On March 11, 1973, the first formal meeting of “Parents of Gays,” co-founded by the parents of a gay son, is held in a church in Greenwich Village in New York. In 1982, it became a national organization called “Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays,” or PFLAG—the largest family and ally organization in the United States for the LGBTQ community.

The year before the first meeting, co-founder Jeanne Manford’s son Morty and other gay advocates had been attacked while handing out fliers at a political event at a New York hotel. Manford, a teacher, and her husband, Jules, became incensed when police nearby did not intervene.

Later in 1972, Jeanne Manford marched in New York’s Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade, a precursor to gay pride events, carrying a sign reading: “Parents of Gays: Unite in Support for Our Children.” Many LGBTQ people at the event begged her to talk with their own parents.

“The young people were hugging me, kissing me, screaming, asking if I would talk to their parents,” Jeanne Manford said in a 1996 interview with Newsday. “Very few of them were out to their parents for fear of rejection.”

Even before the parade, Jeanne and Jules—who died in 1982—had been discussing forming a support group for parents of gay people. About 20 people attended the first meeting.

In a 2009 speech, President Barack Obama praised Jeanne Manford’s efforts as an LGBTQ advocate, saying her work was “the story of America, of ordinary citizens agitating and advocating for change, of hope stronger than hate, of love more powerful than any insult or injury.”

Manford, who served as grand marshal for the 1991 New York City Gay Pride March, died in 2013. She was 92. Morty Manford, who became an assistant New York attorney general, died from complications of AIDS in 1992.

Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, the first Broadway play written by a Black woman, opens at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York on March 11, 1959.

Taking its title from the Langston Hughes poem “Harlem,” Hansberry’s story follows a working-class Black family from the South Side of Chicago hoping to improve their lives. Raised herself on Chicago’s South Side, Hansberry’s parents were racial justice activists, and A Raisin in the Sun was inspired by her life.

It was also the first Broadway show to feature a Black director, Lloyd Richards, and its stars included Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Claudia McNeil and Louis Gossett.

The New York Drama Critics Circle Award named “Raisin” the best American play in 1959 and it received four Tony Award nominations for best play, best direction and best performances for Poitier and McNeil. It ran for 530 performances until it closed in 1960, and was adapted for the big screen in 1961, with Hansberry writing the script. Broadway revivals took place in 2004 and 2014 and the play is credited with bringing Black audiences to the stage.

“Never before, in the entire history of the American theater, had so much of the truth of black people’s lives been seen on the stage,” James Baldwin later wrote of the production. “Black people had ignored the theater because the theater had always ignored them.”

Captain James Cook discovered the Northwest coast of the Americas on this day. He discovered what is now the coast of Oregon, and was the first European to do so. German troops violated the Treaty of Versailles on this day in 1936. Broadway musicals were put on pause for four days during the musician walkout. Also, Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone, or what he called the electric speech machine.