Today in History for Aug. 24, 2015

Wilfred Thesiger

Aug. 24, 79 AD – Mount Vesuvius erupted, destroying the Roman city of Pompeii.

Aug. 24, 1456 - The printing of the Gutenberg Bible was completed.

Aug. 24, 1591 – British poet Robert Herrick was baptized in London, England.

Aug. 24, 1680 - Colonel Thomas Blood died at his home in Bowling Alley, Westminster. He was the Irish adventurer who stole the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London in 1671.

Aug. 24, 1776 - American General Charles Lee informed Congress that Georgia should be kept out of enemy hands and recommended that the Continental Army assign additional reinforcements. Lee argued that the state’s salubrious climate, crops of rice, numerous harbors and rivers, livestock and proximity to the West Indies made it mandatory to keep out of enemy hands.

Aug. 24, 1781 – During the American Revolutionary War, a small force of Pennsylvania militia was ambushed and overwhelmed by an American Indian group, which forced George Rogers Clark to abandon his attempt to attack Detroit.

Aug. 24, 1787 – Belgian-English sailor, hunter and explorer James Weddell was born. In February 1823 he sailed to latitude of 74°15′S (a record 7.69 degrees or 532 statute miles south of the Antarctic Circle) and into a region of the Southern Ocean that later became known as the Weddell Sea.

Aug. 24, 1798 – Asa Johnston, who arrived in Conecuh County 1818 as one of its original pioneers, was born in Bibb County, Ga.

Aug. 24, 1813 – General Ferdinand Claiborne led about 80 men to reinforce Fort Easley at Wood’s Bluff on the Tombigbee River in present-day Clarke County, Ala., writing that if the Creeks attacked there he would “give a good account of them.”

Aug. 24, 1814 – During the War of 1812, British troops under General Robert Ross overwhelmed American militamen at the Battle of Bladensburg, Md. and marched unopposed into Washington, D.C. During the Burning of Washington the White House, the Capitol and many other buildings are set ablaze.

Aug. 24, 1825 – Jessee C. Farrar was commissioned as Monroe County, Alabama’s Sheriff.

Aug. 24, 1828 - Confederate General George Hume "Maryland" Steuart was born in Baltimore, Maryland. Steuart was with the Army of Northern Virginia at the surrender at Appomattox Court House, Va. in 1865.

Aug. 24, 1861 – During the Civil War, a skirmish with Apache Indians was fought near Ft Bliss, Texas by Lieutenant Colonel John R. Baylor, CSA. Baylor has the distinction of being dismissed from the Confederate army by none other than Jefferson Davis himself because of his harshness toward Native Americans. Later on, he was back in a gray uniform as a Colonel. He is a little known, but intriguing, character.

Aug. 24, 1862 – During the Civil War, the CSS Alabama was officially commissioned off the island of Terceira, Azores, to begin a two-year career of plundering U.S. merchant vessels.

Aug. 24, 1863 – During the Civil War, a skirmish occurred at Gunter’s Landing, near Port Deposit, Alabama.

Aug. 24, 1863 – Croatian explorer Dragutin Lerman was born in Požega, Slavonia. He was a member of the 1882 Henry Morton Stanley expedition to the Congo and was one of Stanley's most trusted men.

Aug. 24, 1870 – The Wolseley Expedition reached Manitoba to end the Red River Rebellion.

Aug. 24, 1873 - An esoteric mystery of the Old West was solved when the first photograph was taken of the Mount of the Holy Cross in Colorado. Stories of the natural snow cross had circulated amongst settlers of the West for years and were the subject of much debate. Ultimately, photographer William Henry Jackson embarked on an expedition with the sole purpose of finding the Mount of the Holy Cross and succeeded in capturing the unique formation on film for the first time ever, thus proving its existence.

Aug. 24, 1887 – National Baseball Hall of Fame right fielder Harry Hooper was born in Bell Station, Calif. During his career, he played for the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago White Sox. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1971.

Aug. 24, 1905 – The Monroe Journal reported that G.W. Broughton had resigned as Monroe County, Alabama’s surveyor and that the Rev. B.J. Skinner had been selected to fill the vacancy.

Aug. 24, 1905 - Prof. Douglas Allen of Jackson, Ala. lectured at Beatrice on the subject of “industrial education.”

Aug. 24, 1909 – Workers started pouring concrete for the Panama Canal.

Aug. 24, 1911 – Monroeville, Ala. was awarded the County High School by unanimous vote of the state high school commission.

Aug. 24, 1915 - A “slide” occurred in the “deep cut” on the Gulf, Florida and Alabama railroad a few miles northwest of Monroeville, Ala. on this Tuesday. Several laborers were caught beneath the falling earth from the high embankment, and one man suffered a broken leg while others met with slight injuries.

Aug. 24, 1932 - Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the U.S. non-stop. The trip from Los Angeles, Calif. to Newark, N.J., took about 19 hours.

Aug. 24, 1933 – H.P. Lovecraft completed “The Thing on the Doorstep,” which was originally published in the January 1937 edition of Weird Tales.

Aug. 24, 1938 - Virgil Trucks struck out his 418th batter, the highest season total in organized ball, for Andalusia in an Alabama-Florida League game.

Aug. 24, 1960 – National Baseball Hall of Fame shortstop and third baseman Cal Ripken Jr. was born in Havre de Grace, Maryland. He played his entire career (1981-2001) for the Baltimore Orioles. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2007.

Aug. 24, 1964 – Gloria Jean Blanton of Excel, Ala. was named the winner of the Monroe County Maid of Cotton contest at the Monroeville Community House. Runner-up was Nancy Merriwether of Perdue Hill.

Aug. 24, 1972 – The Evergreen Courant reported that the large “Gulf” gas station sign had been erected at the intersection of I-65 and State Highway 83 in Evergreen, Ala. The sign’s poles were 110-feet tall and the sign was 15-feet tall for a total height of 125 feet.

Aug. 24, 1975 - Davey Lopes of the Los Angeles Dodgers set a Major League Baseball record when he stole his 38th consecutive base.

Aug. 24, 1977 - Alabama author John Green was born in Indianapolis, Ind.

Aug. 24, 1976 – Two teenagers were startled by an unidentified creature walking along the side of Abair Road in rural Whitehall, N.Y. They later described the thing as standing seven to eight feet tall, walking upright like a man, and swinging its long arms at its side. The monster’s eyes gave off a reddish glow and it made a sound like a pig squealing.

Aug. 24, 1981 - Mark David Chapman was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison for the murder of John Lennon.

Aug. 24, 1989 - Pete Rose, the manager of the Cincinnati Reds, was banned from baseball for life by Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti after being accused of gambling on baseball.

Aug. 24, 1989 – Flomaton beat Frisco City, 27-8, in Flomaton, Ala.

Aug. 24, 1990 - Iraqi troops surrounded foreign missions in Kuwait.

Aug. 24, 1998 – Country comedian Jerry Clower passed away at the age of 71 following heart bypass surgery in Jackson, Miss.

Aug. 24, 2003 – Ethiopian-English explorer and author Wilfred Thesiger passed away at the age of 93 in Croydon, London, England. Thesiger is best known for his travel books “Arabian Sands” (1959), on his foot and camel crossing of the Empty Quarter of Arabia, and “The Marsh Arabs” (1964), on his time living in the marshes of Iraq with the Marsh Arabs. He donated his collection of 23,000 travel photographs to the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford.