CatSalgado32
“History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul,” said Lord Acton. People who do not know and understand true history are stumbling about in darkness, incapable of making truly informed decisions in the present, which is why the study of history is so important. Below are some of the important deaths, births, and events that occurred this past week in history.
March 31
1146 – St. Bernard of Clairvaux preachesthe Second Crusade at Vezelay, Burgundy, in a famous speech that convinces the French king and his nobles present there to go on crusade to reclaim the Holy Land from the Muslims.
1685 – German composer Johann Sebastian Bach is born.
1980 – American track and field star Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin (much to the chagrin of racist Hitler and his Nazis, who despised black people), dies.
April 1
1204 – Eleanor of Aquitaine, a powerful medieval royal, dies.
1748 – A Spanish engineer and team rediscover the ruins of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii.
1815 – Otto von Bismarck is born, the German military leader and chancellor famous for unifying German states into one nation.
April 2
742 – Estimated date of the birth of Charlemagne (“Charles the Great”), the Frankish king who became the first Holy Roman Emperor.
2005 – Pope John Paul II dies. While he unfortunately took some theologically questionable actions as pope, and did not properly address the clerical sex scandal, he was a major force in helping bring down the evil Soviet Union.
April 3
1783 – Brilliant and satirical writer Washington Irving, “known for his biographical works and such stories as ‘Rip Van Winkle’ and ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,’” is born in New York City.
1860 – The famous Pony Express debuts, with horse and rider relay teams taking mail from Missouri to California (about 1800 miles) in ten days, a new standard of speed for mail delivery.
1922 – Joseph Stalin takes control of Russia’s Soviet Communist Party; he went on to be one of history’s worst mass murderers.
April 4
188 – Roman emperor Caracalla is born. He is considered one of the most vicious and bloodthirsty tyrants in the history of Rome.
527 – Justinian, later one of the most influential Byzantine emperors, is made co-emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire with his uncle Justin.
1884 – Yamamoto Isoroku is born. Famous as the imperial Japanese admiral who came up with the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that brought America into WWII.
1968 – Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated.
April 5
1242 – The “Battle on the Ice” occurred with Russia triumphing.
1794 – French Revolutionary Georges Danton is executed. Before his death, after falling in love with a Catholic woman, Danton converted and became Catholic too. His conversion drove the change in his violent views that ended up leading to his death.
1856 – Booker T. Washington was born a slave on April 5, 1856, but grew up to be one of the foremost educators and thinkers of his time.
1964 – Douglas MacArthur dies.
2008 – Actor Charlton Heston dies.
April 6
46 BC – Estimated date of the Battle of Thapsus during a period of Roman civil war between Pompey and Julius Caesar.
1453 – Muslim Mehmed II and his forces begin what would ultimately be a successful siege on Byzantine capital Constantinople.
1483 – Artist Raphael is born in Urbino.
1917 – The United States officially entersWWI by declaring war on Germany with Congressional approval.
Read about more key events on Substack.
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