On September 27, 1779, the Continental Congress appoints John Adams as its representative to negotiate treaties of peace and commerce with Great Britain. Adams had successfully negotiated an alliance with France a year earlier. Adams would spend much of the next 3 years reporting to the Congress by messenger on the political climate of western Europe. It wasn't until the war began to turn in the colonists' favor in the fall of 1782 that Adams would have a chance to actually negotiate with the British. On September 27, 1962, Rachel Carson's cautionary book "Silent Spring" is published. Originally released as several articles in The New Yorker magazine, the book shed light on the damage that man-made pesticides inflict on the environment, especially DDT (though, contrary to common belief, the book did not call for an outright ban on DDT). A career employee of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with a master's in zoology from Johns Hopkins University, Carson was a leading environmental advocate of the mid-20th century with a number of publications already to her credit. The release of "Silent Spring" is often viewed as the beginning of the modern environmentalist movement in America. On September 27, 1854, a maritime tragedy spawns a noble tradition. The Arctic, a luxurious wooden-hulled Atlantic liner, collides in heavy fog with the iron-hulled steamer Vesta, off the coast of Newfoundland. It would be hard to find a worse performance of duty than that of James Luce, captain of the Arctic. Luce takes none of the precautions common to ships that find themselves fog-bound; he does not reduce speed, he does not post additional lookouts, he does not begin sounding the ship's horn. When his ship consequently rams the Vesta, he assumes the other ship took most of the damage and begins rendering aid, failing to consider that wood will lose in any collision with steel. When his own damage becomes apparent, Luce begins putting his passenger off in lifeboats, but then decides he can make a run for the shallows off Newfoundland and ground the ship rather than lose it completely. In doing so, he manages to actually run over several of his lifeboats and increase the rate at which water is pouring into his damaged vessel. An "every man for himself" state quickly evolves, with crew members seizing the remaining lifeboats from passengers, and killing the one ranking ship's officer who tries to restore order. In the end, the Arctic is lost, along with 322 of the 400 passengers and crew aboard. Luce would attempt to go down with the ship, but survived in a fluke of fate; the crate to which he lashed himself for the trip to Davy Jones' locker was empty and popped to the surface. He is hailed as a hero by the public, but the maritime community is appalled by the crew's performance under duress, and a new policy for disasters at sea is adopted; when a ship must be abandoned, take care of "women and children first."
On September 28, 1066, William, Duke of Normandy, invades England with about 7,000 French troops. Fifteen years earlier, William had supposedly met with his cousin Edward ("the Confessor), the childless King of England. Edward, the story goes, promised to name William heir to the throne of England during that meeting, but on his deathbed, Edward instead gave the throne to the powerful Harold Godwinson, who became Harold II. William disputed Harold's claim to the throne. Harold began massing an army to meet William's threat, but first had to deal with an attack from his brother Tostig, aided by Harald III of Norway. Harold marched his army to Scotland and turned back that threat, just 3 days before William launched his invasion..... On September 28, 1918, a war bonds promotional parade in Philadelphia sparks a resurgence of Spanish Flu. The deadly flu pandemic was believed to have started in the American midwest earlier in the year, and carried to Europe by soldiers fighting World War I. It ran rampant through Europe and Africa, but appeared to have just about burned about in America when the Liberty Loans Parade brought soldiers apparently still carrying the disease into Philly. Thousands were infected, the city morgue was overwhelmed within days and the city was quarantined. The death toll would reach 12,000. Worldwide, anywhere from 20 million to 50 million are killed; the estimate range is so wide because its difficult to tell how many in Europe were victims of the flu or casualties of the war. On September 28, 1542, Spanish explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo discovers an expansive bay north of Mexico. Cabrillo was one of many explorers searching for a mythical water route through the American continent, a search that began when it became clear that Columbus had discovered a new continent, and not a western route to India as first thought. Cabrillo names the bay he found San Diego.
To call William French is generous. He was really a Norseman. His grandfather Rufus was given Normandy by King Louis to stop other Viking raids up the Seine to Paris. One of my ancestors Willian deTankerville rode with Duke William as his chamberlain (chief of staff).
@Winston1 Actually I said French troops, not that William himself was French. And I really try not to go into too much detail because I want these posts to be readable, so I'm figuring identifying as French because its really Norman and Normandy is part of modern-day France is close enough.
I had a cousin in Boston who did research years ago. I guess some is fairly easy from church records if there are notables in the line such as my ancestor. I also have another ancestor who was hung, drawn and quartered as a regicide of Charles I. He was one of Cromwell’s colonels in the Roundheads whose son escaped to the colonies. Both are mentioned in books and the link is clear. Other lines are less detailed as there are fewer records. If your ancestors came from England in the 1600s or 1700s there’s pretty good documentation. One of my great grandfathers was born in Palermo in 1859 coming here at 3. I know what he did here but nothing about his forebears.
On September 29, 1918, after a 56-hour-long bombardment, Allied forces breach the so-called Hindenburg Line, the last line of German defenses on the Western Front during World War I. Called the Seigfried Line by the Germans, it is a heavily fortified position 6,000 feet deep and several miles long running from the northern coast of France to near the city of Verdun. In the final 24 hours of the bombardment, British artillery fires more than 940,000 shells on the position. The end of the war is less than a month away. On September 29, 1913, Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the engine that bears his name, disappears from the steamship Dresden while traveling from Antwerp, Belgium to Harwich, England. On October 10, a Belgian sailor will spot a body floating in the water in the North Sea; it turns out that the body was Diesel. His death is classified a suicide....or was it? Diesel was set to license a British company to build his innovative engine for installation in their submarines. Certainly the pre-WWI German government would not have wanted that. Nor were the big oil companies enamored with him. His engine was much more efficient than internal combustion engines, and didn't need standard gasoline at all; his prototype ran on peanut or vegetable oil. Did Big Oil kill Diesel? Did his own government? We'll likely never know. On September 29, 1976, Rush releases All The World's A Stage. A double album recorded in their home town of Toronto, it is the first of 11 live recordings the band will release in its 40+ career. The greatest thing to me about this album (my first extensive exposure to Rush) is to hear the songs from their first studio album - on which the talented but unspectacular John Rutsey plays drums - now played live by Neil Peart. For example:
