This Month in the American Revolution: Boston Massacre, 'Liberty or Death', Charleston Siege

From the American Battlefield Trust calendar and timeline.

MARCH 5, 1770

**  Boston Massacre

MARCH 7, 1776

**  British evacuate Boston.

MARCH 23, 1775

**  Patrick Henry's "Liberty or Death" speech in Richmond, Virginia.

MARCH 29, 1780

**  Siege of Charleston, South Carolina, begins. 

MARCH 31, 1774

Boston Port Act.  Parliament closes the city's December Tea Party.

--Brock-Perry

Ten World Engineering Marvels-- Part 4: Netherlands and Da Subways

9.  NETHERLANDS NORTH SEA PROTECTION WORKS

With parts of their country below sea level, a system of floodgates, storm surge barriers and dams to prevent flooding and claim land from the sea, Netherlands constructed this.

The project began in 1927 with the construction of a 19-mile long dike, decades of land reclamation followed.

10.  NEW YORK AND BOSTON SUBWAYS

Horse-drawn carriages clogged the streets (and left behind certain droppings) and then there were the elevated trains with their soot, so leaders in Boston and New York took another way to solve the problem.  And that was to go underground.

Boston opened its subway in 1897 and New York City  seven years later.

--CootSubs

A Timeline of 9/11-- Part 1: Flights 11 and 175

Every September 11 I stop my blogs to remember.

All times Eastern Daylight Savings Time.

On September 11, 2001, on a clear, sunny day, terrorists on board three hijacked  passenger planes carried out coordinated suicide missions against the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon outside of Washington, D.C..  Everyone aboard the planes were killed and  nearly 3,000 people on the ground.

A fourth plane crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania,  killing all aboard after the passengers tried to gain control of the plane themselves.

**  7:59 am:  American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767,  with 92 people aboard,   takes off from Boston's Logan International Airport, en route to Los Angeles.

**  8:14 am:  United Airlines Flight  175, a Boeing 767 with 65 people aboard, takes off from Boston; it also is headed for Los Angeles.

**   8:19:  Flight attendants  aboard Flight 11 alert ground personnel that the plane has been hijacked; American Airlines notifies the FBI.

During this time I was at home finishing up my coffee and getting ready to drive from Spring Grove to my teaching job in Round Lake, Illinois.  We are at an hour's difference in Central Time Zone.

Ten Days of Tragedy in April (11-20)-- Part 1: Civil War and Presidential Deaths

From the April 18, 2021 Fox 4 Kansas City, Mo.  "10 days of tragedy:  15 historic  disasters occurred over these days in April" by Brian Dulle.

The middle of April has proven to be a calamitous time in human history.

**  APRIL 11, 1965:  Palm Sunday tornado out break over six Midwestern states killed 271 people.

**  APRIL 12, 1861:  The Civil War begins with the firing on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, S.C.

**  APRIL  12, 1945--  President Roosevelt dies in his 4th term.  World War II was still underway.

**  APRIL  13, 2014:  Jewish Community Center shootings in Kansas City  (3 killed)

**  APRIL  14, 1912:  Sinking of the RMS Titanic

**  APRIL  14, 1865:  Assassination of President Abraham Lincoln

**  APRIL  15, 2013:  Boston Marathon bombing  (3 dead and more than 260 wounded)

--Cooter

Pilgrims Arrive 400 Years Ago-- Part 6: Afterwards

1621 to 1692

NOVEMBER 1621

A second English ship sent to America by Plymouth Colony's investors arrives off Cape Cod.  Other ships carry new colonists follow over the next few years.

JUNE 1630

A flotillas of ships begins delivering more than 700 English Puritans to the new Massachusetts Bay Colony, in present-day Boston.

Over the next 10 years, this new colony will grow to be much larger and influential than Plymouth Colony.

*********************************

MAY 9, 1657

Plymouth Colony's longtime governor, William Bradford, dies.  He had spent 20 years writing a now-famous history of the Mayflower Pilgrims called "Of Plymouth Plantation."  There are those today who want this thrown out because of the word plantation which brings to mind slaves.

JUNE 20, 1675

King Phillip's War begins.  The conflict between Indians and English colonists across southern New England is devastating.  By the time it ends in 1678, the Indian population of the region is reduced by 40 to 80 percent.

JUNE 8, 1692

The final meeting of the Plymouth Colony legislature is held, as the colony is absorbed into the larger Massachusetts Bay Colony.

--CootPilgrim

How American Struggled to Bury Bodies During the 1918 Flu Pandemic-- Part 3: Boston and Philadelphia

Gravediggers at Boston's New Calvary Cemetery were spotted dumping corpses out of coffins could be used again.  The War Industries Board  ordered casket makers to manufacture only plain caskets and immediately cease production on "all fancy trimmed and couch and split panel varieties.  It limited caskets sizes for adults  to five feet, nine inches and six feet, 3 inches.

The worst horrors were seen in Philadelphia, where the number of deaths approached 1,000 a day at the pandemic's peak.  Entire neighborhoods were  draped in crepe that was mounted on front doors to mark deaths inside.

Civic leaders  recruited the J.G. Brill Company, a streetcar manufacturer, to construct thousands of  rudimentary boxes in which to bury the dead, while desperately needed coffins arrived in the city under armed guard.

Five hundred bodies crowded the city morgue, which had a capacity for only  36 corpses.    The city scrambled to open  six supplementary morgues and placed bodies in cold storage plants.  Some Philadelphia  residents were  unceremoniously tossed into mass graves  that had been hollowed out by steam shovels.

Crispus Attucks (A Black Man) Killed By British Troops at the Boston Massacre in 1770 Has Similarities With Floyd's Death-- Part 1

From the June 7, 2020, Chicago Tribune "After Floyd's death, a slaying from 1770 evokes similarities" by William J. Kole, AP.

Like George Floyd, he was black, in his mid-40s and died at the hands of a white man.  And, like Floyd, he may have helped touch off a revolution.

Many in the Black Lives Matter movement are invoking the name of Crispus Attucks -- a black American gunned down by a British soldier in the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770 -- as a symbol of entrenched white-on-black violence and oppression.

Attucks is widely seen as the first casualty of the American Revolution and 250 years after his death, he's becoming a rallying figure for a nation battling old demons.

Sad to say, though, I don't think many of those you black and white people out there marching, protesting and, in all too many cases looting and destroying Confederate monuments have a clue who Crispus Attucks is.

--Cooter

Lighthouse Stamps Out-- Part 3: Sally Snowman and the Lights

Sally Snowman was hired as the Boston Light lighthouse keeper in 2003 after volunteering there and co-authoring Boston Light: A Historical Perspective. Her job includes cleaning and maintenance and "light housekeeping" as she likes to joke. She wears attire like the first keepers would have worn after the Revolutionary War.

She says lighthouses stand for hope, "For those immigrants who came into Boston, seeing Boston Light was the hope of a new beginning. And when people have survived shipwrecks in Boston Harbor are asked about what kept them going-- what helped them keep the faith-- many said it was this lighthouse.

Jeff Gales of the U.S. Lighthouse Society says the stamps will help raise interest in these storied pieces of American architecture. "Eash lighthouse had their own light pattern," a pattern of light movements which would distinguish one lighthouse from another." There was a book that identified these light patterns in these days before GPS. Lighthouses also often were painted with different patterns which made them distinguishable in daylight.

We'll Leave the Light On. --Cooter

Lighthouse Stamps Out-- Part 2: Boston Light-- Oldest U.S. Lighthouse

The series will also commemorate the Portland Head lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth, Maine; the Portsmouth Harbor lighthouse in New Castle, N.H.; the Point Judith lighthouse in Narragansett, R.I.; and the New London Harbor lighthouse in New London, Ct.

BOSTON LIGHT

Boston Light, on Little Brewster Island, is the only lighthouse in the United States that still has a keeper. That would be Sally Snowman, even though the lighhouse was fully automated. A 1989 congressional mandate (I hate congressional mandates) said there must be someone on site because of its historical importance. (built in 1716, it is the oldest lighthouse in the country).

In 1719, Boston Light became the first North American lighthouse to install a cannon to signal ships in the fog. It was occupied by royal forces in the Revolutionary War and burned several times.

More to Come. --Cooter

Advertising At Other Parks-- Part 1: It's a Color Thing

Continuing from the April 16, 2013, Chicago Tribune "Here's the Pitch" by Mark Jacob.

WHITE-OUT--  In 1912, when the old Comiskey Park (and I still call it by that name) was new, a tobacco company's large white sign in straight center made it hard for hitters to see pitches coming at them.

White Sox manager Jimmy "Nixey" Callahan asked owner Charles Comiskey to remove the sign.  Comiskey said he would, but, being the sort he always was, if Callahan bought out the advertiser's contract.  Callahan did.

Signage at Comiskey never approached the wall-to-wall level like at some stadiums.  But, the new Sox ballpark, named commercially for that cell phone company, is full of ads.


GOING GREEN--  And you know which ballpark Jacob is talking about here. 

Fenway Park is the only older stadium than Wrigley Field.  The Red Sox have removed some advertising to make the place more special.  In 1947, they took down some garish left field ads, including a Gem Razor sign "Avoid 5 O'Clock Shadow."

Instead of the ads, the wall was painted green, creating that famous "Green Monster."

That Is One Really Big Green Wall.  --DaCoot