On August 13, 1512, Hernan Cortes and his Spanish conquistadors overrun Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire, and capture emperor Cuauhtemoc. His successor, Montezuma, had welcomed the Spanish into the city 2 years earlier, but was killed in civil unrest when Cortes began to establish his own government. The people drove Cortes and his men out of the city, but it fell again to a 3-month long siege aided by a smallpox outbreak. August 13, 1948 is the busiest day for the Berlin Airlift, the effort by the American and British governments to keep Berlin supplied after the Russians blockaded all ground entry points to the city in April. Supply missions using mostly obsolete aircraft began immediately. On August 13, in weather conditions that would suspend most air travel by today's safety guidelines, about 700 aircraft arrive in western Berlin carrying 5,000 tons of supplies. The airlift will continue until the Soviets lift the blockade in May, 1949.
I know I said at the one year anniversary that I would try not to repeat things, but some should be said more than once:
On August 14, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act, which guaranteed an income for retirees and the unemployed, and to provide death benefits to taxpayer dependents. Five years later, 65-year old Ida May Fuller of Vermont received the first government issued Social Security check, for $22.40 On August 14, 1994, terrorist Illich Ramirez Sanchez, long known as Carlos the Jackal, is captured in Khartoum, Sudan, by French intelligence agents. Sanchez had been wanted for acts of terrorism since 1973. Since there was no extradition treaty with Sudan, the French agents sedated and kidnapped Carlos. He was convicted in 1997 and is currently serving multiple life sentences in a Paris prison. On August 14, 1985, Michael Jackson follows Paul McCartney's advice. Two years earlier, while collaborating on the single "Say, Say, Say", McCartney supposedly advised Jackson to invest some of his rapidly growing wealth in music publication. Fast forward to 8/14/85 and Jackson outbids McCartney on the publishing rights to 251 songs of The Beatles' catalog, most of which was written or co-written by McCartney himself. The winning bid is $47 million. Jackson would use the catalog as collateral on personal loans several times, and on his death in 2008, its rights were transferred to the Sony Corporation, one of his primary creditors.
Agreed. One thing I always admired about "Peanuts" creator Charles Schulz was that every year on June 6, his strip was always a single panel of Snoopy as a soldier coming ashore at Omaha Beach. It was his "never forget" cause.
On August 15, 1945, millions of Japanese citizens hear the voice of Emperor Hirohito for the first time. Hirohito addresses the nation by radio for the first time, announcing that Japan had surrendered to the Allies several days earlier. On August 15, 1899, Edison Illuminating Company of Detroit, the city's main supplier of electricity, loses its chief engineer. He had been on the job, and on 24-hour call, for a little over a year. When not actually on the job or sleeping, he had been working on his personal project of developing a gasoline-powered vehicle, with some success. Ten days earlier, he had gathered a group of investors and founded the Detroit Automobile Company. Unable to devote full energy to his job and his company, Henry Ford resigns from Edison on the 15th.
America lost 2 20th century icons on August 16. Babe Ruth, died August 16, 1948. Elvis Presley, died August 16, 1977. Ruth was 53 years old at death. On his retirement from baseball, he held 56 major league records and 10 American League records. An indicator of how far above the curve Ruth was: when he hit his 700th home run, no other player in MLB history had reached the 300 home run mark. Presley died at age 42. Although its not certain how many records he actually sold, Presley is credited as the best selling solo artist of all time, and some estimates put his record sales at more than 1 billion. Again, how far above the curve was he? He holds the solo artist record for most certified (half million sold) gold albums at 101. Second place is Barbara Streisand at 52. On August 16, 1945, Russian troops liberate a Japanese POW camp in Manchuria. The prisoners include Lt. General Jonathan Wainwright, the highest ranking American officer taken prisoner in the war. Wainwright had assumed command of Allied troops in the Philippines following the evacuation of Gen. Douglas McArthur, and surrendered the islands as ordered on May 6, 1942. Despite his state of extreme malnutrition after more than 3 years in captivity, Wainwright was transported to Yokohama, Japan, where he attended the formal surrender signing ceremony on Sept. 2. He was then transported to the Philippines and received the formal surrender of Japanese troops on the islands, before finally returning to the States. He was promoted to full (4-star) general and received the Medal of Honor.
On August 17, 1943, General Bernard Law Montgomery triumphantly leads the British 8th Army into Messina, Sicily - only to find General George S. Patton and the U.S. 7th Army already there waiting for him. 7th Army's assignment for Operation Husky - the invasion of Sicily - was to support the British left flank as it drove up the island's east coast to take the port city of Messina, an assignment that Patton detested. When the drive north bogged down, Patton ordered units of his army northwest to take the city of Palermo, which was the American landing point for his proposal of the invasion. He then turned east and outraced Montgomery to Messina. Patton's glory soon turned to humiliation when word came out that during the campaign, he accused a soldier suffering from "battle fatigue" of cowardice, slapping the soldier in front of doctors and patients in a field hospital. European theater commander Dwight Eisenhower relieved Patton of his command and ordered him to apologize to the soldier and to the entire 7th Army, unit by unit. On August 17, 1998, President Bill Clinton becomes the first sitting president to testify before the Office of Independent Counsel as the subject of a grand-jury investigation. The Clintons had been the targets of a four-year investigation into a number of scandals, including accusations of sexual harassment, potentially illegal real-estate deals and suspected “cronyism” involving the White House travel office. Publicity around the investigation came to a head (see what I did there) when independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr uncovered an affair between Clinton and White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Clinton denied the affair, leading Starr to charge the president with perjury and obstruction of justice, which in turn prompted his testimony on August 17. After testifying, Clinton addressed the nation on live television and admitted to an "inappropriate" relationship with Lewinsky. On August 17, 1987, Rudolph Hess, Adolph Hitler's deputy during the pre-WWII rise of the Nazi Party and last surviving member of Hitler's inner circle, is found dead in the exercise yard of Spandau Prison, Berlin. Official cause of death was self-strangulation, with an electric cord found near his body. Hess had fled Germany and sought peace with the British in 1940, but his proposal - peace with England in exchange for a hands-off policy as Hitler plundered the European continent - simply landed him in a British prison for the duration. Because he was not present for the Nazi atrocities of the war years, he was sentenced to life in prison at the Nuremburg trials. For the last 21 years of his life he was the sole inhabitant of Spandau Prison.
