This is your morning Open Thread. Pour a cup of your favorite morning beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
On this day in 1933, Wiley Post becomes the first person to fly solo around the world traveling 15,596 miles in 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes.
Like many pilots at the time, Post disliked the fact that the speed record for flying around the world was not held by a fixed-wing aircraft, but by the Graf Zeppelin, piloted by Hugo Eckener in 1929 with a time of 21 days. On June 23, 1931, Post and his navigator, Harold Gatty, left Roosevelt Field on Long Island, New York in the Winnie Mae with a flight plan that would take them around the world, stopping at Harbour Grace, Flintshire, Hanover twice, Berlin, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Blagoveshchensk, Khabarovsk, Nome where his airscrew had to be repaired, Fairbanks where the airscrew was replaced, Edmonton, and Cleveland before returning to Roosevelt Field. They arrived back on July 1, after traveling 15,474 miles in the record time of 8 days and 15 hours and 51 minutes. The reception they received rivaled Lindbergh’s everywhere they went. They had lunch at the White House on July 6, rode in a ticker-tape parade the next day in New York City, and were honored at a banquet given by the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce of America at the Hotel Astor. After the flight, Post acquired the Winnie Mae from F.C. Hall, and he and Gatty published an account of their journey titled, Around the World in Eight Days, with an introduction by Will Rogers.
His Lockheed Vega aircraft, the Winnie Mae is on display at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, and his pressure suit is being prepared for display at the same location. On August 15, 1935, Post and American humorist Will Rogers were killed when Post’s aircraft crashed on takeoff from a lagoon near Point Barrow, in Alaska.
838 – Battle of Anzen: the Byzantine emperor Theophilos suffers a heavy defeat by the Abbasids.
1099 – First Crusade: Godfrey of Bouillon is elected the first Defender of the Holy Sepulchre of The Kingdom of Jerusalem.
1298 – Wars of Scottish Independence: Battle of Falkirk – King Edward I of England and his longbowmen defeat William Wallace and his Scottish schiltrons outside the town.
1456 – Ottoman Wars in Europe: Siege of Belgrade – John Hunyadi, Regent of Kingdom of Hungary defeats Mehmet II of Ottoman Empire
1484 – Battle of Lochmaben Fair – a 500-man raiding party led by Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany and James Douglas, 9th Earl of Douglas are defeated by Scots forces loyal to Albany’s brother James III of Scotland; Douglas is captured.
1499 – Battle of Dornach – the Swiss decisively defeat the Imperial army of Emperor Maximilian I.
1587 – Colony of Roanoke: a second group of English settlers arrive on Roanoke Island off North Carolina to re-establish the deserted colony.
1686 – Albany, New York is formally chartered as a municipality by Governor Thomas Dongan.
1793 – Alexander Mackenzie reaches the Pacific Ocean becoming the first Euro-American to complete a transcontinental crossing of Canada.
1796 – Surveyors of the Connecticut Land Company name an area in Ohio “Cleveland” after Gen. Moses Cleaveland, the superintendent of the surveying party.
1805 – Napoleonic Wars: War of the Third Coalition – Battle of Cape Finisterre – an inconclusive naval action is fought between a combined French and Spanish fleets under Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve of Spain and a British fleet under Admiral Robert Calder.
1812 – Napoleonic Wars: Peninsular War – Battle of Salamanca – British forces led by Arthur Wellesley (later the Duke of Wellington) defeat French troops near Salamanca, Spain.
1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Atlanta – outside Atlanta, Georgia, Confederate General John Bell Hood leads an unsuccessful attack on Union troops under General William T. Sherman on Bald Hill.
1894 – First ever motorized racing event is held in France between the cities of Paris and Rouen. The race is won by comte Jules-Albert de Dion.
1916 – In San Francisco, California, a bomb explodes on Market Street during a Preparedness Day parade killing 10 and injuring 40.
1933 – Wiley Post becomes the first person to fly solo around the world traveling 15,596 miles in 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes.
1934 – Outside Chicago’s Biograph Theatre, “Public Enemy No. 1” John Dillinger is mortally wounded by FBI agents.
1937 – New Deal: the United States Senate votes down President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s proposal to add more justices to the Supreme Court of the United States.
1942 – The United States government begins compulsory civilian gasoline rationing due to the wartime demands.
1942 – Holocaust: the systematic deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto begins.
1943 – World War II: Allied forces capture the Italian city of Palermo.
1944 – The Polish Committee of National Liberation publishes its manifesto, starting the period of Communist rule in Poland
1946 – King David Hotel bombing: Irgun bombs King David Hotel in Jerusalem, headquarters of the British civil and military administration, killing 90.
1951 – Dezik and Tsygan (“Gypsy”) were the first dogs to make a sub-orbital flight.
1962 – Mariner program: Mariner 1 spacecraft flies erratically several minutes after launch and has to be destroyed.
1976 – Japan completes its last reparation to the Philippines for war crimes committed in Japan’s imperial conquest of the country in the Second World War
1977 – Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping is restored to power.
1983 – Martial law in Poland is officially revoked.
1992 – Near Medellín, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar escapes from his luxury prison fearing extradition to the United States.
1993 – Great Flood of 1993: Levees near Kaskaskia, Illinois rupture, forcing the entire town to evacuate by barges operated by the Army Corps of Engineers.
1997 – The second Blue Water Bridge opens between Port Huron, Michigan and Sarnia, Ontario.
2002 – Israel kills Salah Shahade, the Commander-in-Chief of Hamas’s military arm, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.
2003 – Members of 101st Airborne of the United States, aided by Special Forces, attack a compound in Iraq, killing Saddam Hussein’s sons Uday and Qusay, along with Mustapha Hussein, Qusay’s 14-year old son, and a bodyguard.
2005 – Jean Charles de Menezes is killed by police as the hunt begins for the London Bombers responsible for the 7 July 2005 London bombings and the 21 July 2005 London bombings.
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