OCTOBER 13 — 1710 Siege of Pt. Royal; 1860 James Wallace Black snaps the first aerial selfie; 2014 Giants beat Nats in longest playoff MLB game in history
OCTOBER 13
1775 – The Department of the Navy is established.
…The Continentals had no real need for sea protection until now that hostilities with the British were going on. Esek Hopkins, from Rhode Island, was appointed commander in chief of the first US Navy on October 13, 1775. His instructions from Congress were to head to Chesapeake Bay in Virginia and get intelligence. If it’s determined that their fleet is not superior, then attack. If you’re successful, then go south towards the Carolinas. “If bad winds, or stormy weather, or any other unforeseen accident of disaster disenable you so to do, you are then to follow such courses as your best Judgement shall suggest to you as most useful to the American cause and to distress the Enemy by all means in your power.”
Hopkins had a fleet of seven ships: two 24-gun frigates, the Alfred, and the Columbus; two 14-gun brigs, the Andrea Doria and the Cabot; and three schooners, the Hornet, the Wasp, and the Fly. The great John Paul Jones was Hopkins lieutenant. The Navy was successful in the Bahamas, defeating the British and gaining war supplies but the victory was short lived. He didn’t have a whole lot of Marines and Sailors at his disposal, and his fleet was blockaded in Narragansett. And Hopkins would lose respect from his officers.
There were private companies in the US who were authorized by Congress to fight the battles at sea, and these ships were much more successful in defeating the British. After the war the Navy was disbanded briefly, and then in April 1798 the Department of the Navy would be created.
1710 — Siege of Pt. Royal.
Great Britain and the Iroquois, V France and the Wabanaki Confederacy, Mi’kmaq, and Abenaki. Result: British victory, and the first of what would be many in this area for decades to come.
It’s been said that America was built out of war. Indeed, the French and Indian Wars certainly taught Europeans of a new style of fighting that they would either have to learn, or lose. Here in the New World, military operations such as coalition warfare with the French and Indians , each with their own operating agendas as well as their own native languages, was achieved as well as joint operations, involving naval and land missions.
The French had to learn to speak the Native American language, and customs. Besides, European wars were generally fought in open fields, instead of dense forests that were in the New World pushing westward and south. Native Americans use the element of surprise, ambush, and sniper attacks from rocks, trees, whatever they had. In the Old World, Britain was fighting the Dutch and the French, and those battles carried out into the colonies of the New World. Fighting went on in the Caribbean’s, Quebec and New England, and New Amerada became New York after the British seized Manhattan. The French and Indian War would be fought from 1754-63, but the battles had started back in the late 17th century.
In the early days, the French had control of the St. Lawrence Seway and Great Lakes, down the Mississippi to the Ohio and Missouri Rivers. But the British settlers outnumbered the French overall 20:1, had superior naval power, and would cut off the supply lines from the French in the St. Lawrence River. Port Royal, nowadays Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia, was part of the French colony of Acadia, which was founded in 1629 by Sir William Alexander’s Scottish settlers and named Charlesfort.
On October 5th, 1710, the Conquest of Acadia began when British regular and provincial forces, commanded by Francis Nicholson went to battle against the French Acadian garrison and the Wabanaki soldiers, commanded by Daniel d’Auger de Subercase, in the first of many battles that would begin the formation of how war was fought in the American colonies.
1953 – Daniel Keeter patents the first motion detector using ultrasonic radio waves.
1957 – The Amazing Colossal Man
…is released. It was about a man who gets exposed to atomic radiation and grows 60 feet tall. The old 90’s TV show Mystery S science Theater does a good job of mocking this one. On October 13, 1957, when the Amazing Colossal Man came out, it was a good example of how Hollywood was doing a great job of capitalizing on the nuclear age.
With other moves, like Them! In 1954 about giant ants, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms in 1953 about a dinosaur who becomes unfrozen and rages New York City, and The Incredible Shrinking Man in 1957 about…well…a man who shrinks, represented a certain imagery of about the unknowns of the nuclear age.
In 1962, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby would create the Incredible Hulk about a man exposed to gamma radiation. Then we found out what radiation really does, which basically makes us puke our guts out and we simply die. Stan Lee had to change The Hulk to a modern era by changing their cause of his mutation to be a result of taking the DNA from jellyfish.
1845 – Texas approves state constitution and would join the United States. In 1836 President Martin, The he Fox van Buren, would have annexed Texas but didn’t want to go to war with Mexico. But later with the support of President-elect James Polk the Purposeful, President His Accidency John Tyler managed to get the joint resolution passed on March 1, 1845, and Texas was admitted into the US on December 29. Don’t mess with Texas! This would in fact be one of the factors that led to war with Mexico soon after.
1860 James Wallace Black snaps the first aerial first selfie overlooking Boston.
He’s best known for taking an aerial photo of Boston after the fire of 1872. He teamed up with fellow photographer in the making John Whipple in 1845. By using daguerreotype plate polisher. A daguerreotype involved silver copper mirrors and a lot of photo stuff I know nothing about.
But Whipple was more interested in a different type of photography: the photo shots of outer space from the Harvard College Observatory. Silly man! Black took that shot and reversed it onto the famous picture of Boston at 2,000 feet from the Queen of the Air, which was the hot air balloon he borrowed from Samuel King. What might be more interesting than this selfie of post-burnt Boston just might be the face that Black is originally from Francetown, NH.
Just to be thorough about this story, someone from France allegedly took a picture from 2200 feet in a hot air balloon of a French village, but that picture either never survived, or got developed, or it got surrendered by whatever country was invading it at the time. Either way who cares about France. USA! USA! USA!
2014 — Giants beat the Nationals in the longest playoff baseball game ever.
A good game of baseball can sometimes take a while. In 2016 it took about 4 and half hours for the Dodgers and Washington Nationals to slug it out for nine innings in a National League Divisional Series Game 5 where the Dodgers would win at National Stadium in D.C., 4-3. Then again, extra innings certainly aren’t unusual, in fact during the postseason teams have battled it out through 15 innings more than once. The Mets and Astros played sixteen in a game 6 NCLS contest in 1986. Braves and Astros in a game 4 divisional match in 2005.
But on this day in 2016, in Game 3 of the NLDS, the Nats up 1-0 top of the 9th, Pablo Sandovol hit a double to tie the game, and no one was going home just yet. No one would score either for another intense 9 innings, This game, which started at 5:37 on the 13th of October, wouldn’t end until October 14th, Just in time for right handed pitcher Tanner Roark’s birthday, and instead of getting a present, Roark gave a huge one in the 18th inning to Brandon Belt who slugged it out for a home run and won the game.