History of the Week: Ethan Allen, MacArthur, Queen Victoria, Lenin, Churchill, Roe, Orwell, New Guinea, Ivan the Great, & More

There is also such a thing as amnesia of history, and we must fight it by learning about and teaching the truth of history at every opportunity. Below are some of the important events that occurred this past week.

January 21

1738 – Ethan Allen is born in Connecticut. He was famously leader of the Green Mountain Boys militia and was key in declaring the independence of the Republic of Vermont, which did not become part of the United States until after Allen’s death (though he hoped Vermont would become a state). Allen is most well-known to history as having captured Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point, New York, from the British during the American Revolution, thus seizing cannon that would be key for future Patriot fights.

1793 – Louis XVI, erstwhile king of France, is guillotined by bloodthirsty French Revolutionaries. Louis and his wife Marie Antoinette were actually democratically-minded monarchs; Louis, unfortunately too weak to stop the inevitable crisis after years of aristocratic and royal corruption, was attempting reforms.

1924 – Vladimir Lenin, “founder of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), inspirer and leader of the Bolshevik Revolution (1917), and the architect, builder, and first head (1917–24) of the Soviet state,” dies.

1950 – George Orwell, author of famous novels 1984 and Animal Farm, dies.

1968 – The Battle of Khe Sanh begins during the Vietnam War.

January 22

1440 – Ivan the Great of Russia is born. He greatly expanded Russian territory.

1901 – Great Britain’s Queen Victoria dies, one of the longest reigning British monarchs.

1905 – Over 100 Russian protestors are killed by security police in St. Petersburg as they march to the Winter Palace to request reforms, marking the start of the violent phase in the 1905 Russian Revolution (which failed).

1973 – The Supreme Court hands down the infamous Roe v. Wade decision, federally and preposterously recognizing a “right” to abortion. 63.5 million babies were subsequently aborted.

January 23

971 – Estimated date of a defeat of the Southern Han war elephants by the Song Dynasty. Marked the first use of a regular war elephant corps in the Chinese army.

1565 – Battle of Talikota, India. It was a victory for allied Muslim sultans and broke up the Hindu Vijayanagar empire.

1907 – Charles Curtis becomes the first U.S. senator of Native American Indian ancestry. A Republican, he later served as Herbert Hoover’s Vice President.

1943 – The Allied campaign in New Guinea begins, as part of the U.S. campaign in the Pacific and, ultimately, with the goal of liberating the Philippines from the Japanese.

1950 – The Israeli Knesset declaresJerusalem is the capital of Israel, as it was in ancient times.

January 24

41 AD – Roman Emperor Caligula is assassinated. His reign was marked by murder, corruption, debauchery, and crimes to such a terrible degree that he is generally considered to have been insane.

1848 – Gold is discovered at Sutter’s Mill in California, sparking what would become the California Gold Rush.

1965 – Winston Churchill, former British Prime Minister, dies. Churchill served in various official capacities in Great Britain throughout his life, including as Prime Minister more than once, and fought heroically in the military in multiple conflicts, including WWI.

1893 – A group of American sugar planters stage a successful coup against Hawaii’s Queen Liliuokalani, marking the end of Hawaiian monarchy and independence.

January 25

1554 – Jesuits founded a college that would eventually become the city of São Paulo, Brazil.

1971 – Idi Amin carries out a successful coup to seize control in Uganda. His bloody regime caused the massacre of an estimated 300,000 civilians. Amin particularly targeted Christian tribes loyal to his predecessor.

January 26

1788 – “[History.com] Captain Arthur Phillip guides a fleet of 11 British ships carrying convicts to the colony of New South Wales, effectively founding Australia.”

1880 – Douglas MacArthur is born on an Army base in Arkansas. “MacArthur fought in World War I, and in World War II was the commander of Allied forces in the Pacific.”