AUGUST 6 – 1779 General Washington’s spy realizes need for cover story; 1996 Game of Thrones is published; 1936 Headlines: Owens Completes Triple!; 1861 Happy Birthday Edith Roosevelt
AUGUST 6
1779 — General Washington’s spy realizes the need for a cover.
Without the aid of the Culper Spy ring, it’s unlikely that George Washington and his Continental Army would not have been able to defeat the British Redcoats. Then again, the same could be said if it weren’t for the funding of financier Robert Morris, or the military aid of the French.
George Washington would need all the lucky breaks he could get, and with mild mannered Robert Townsend of Oyster Bay, New York, he found a lucky break in fact. And never even knew Townsend’s name. Townsend lived near present day City Hall Park. He sold dry goods at a shop at the bottom of Wall Street near Hanover Square. He replaced Abraham Woodhull after Woodhull’s cover grew under suspicion and his family was beaten while he was away.
So in order to get information about British troop movement, questions would need to be asked, by how? It was on this day he admitted in a letter to Washington, “I saw and conversed with two officers of different corps from Kings-bridge from neither of whom I could obtain an account of the situation of the army there. I was afraid of being too particular.”
The answer was ingenious.
James Rivington, who was born in England in 1724, came to the American colonies in 1760 and opened a bustling print shop right there in Hanover Square. His paper, the Royal Gazette, was full of Loyalist propaganda and other yellow journalism. The Sons of Liberty actually hanged a Rivington effigy, and a mob burned down his house and his shop. He returned to England, but King George sent him back in 1777 to reopen his shop and become the King’s appointed printer.
Townsend had a skill for writing it just so turned out, so what a better way to add a few bucks to his salary by getting a job there. Rivington hired Townsend to add to his beloved newspaper, giving Townsend unlimited freedom to ask all the questions he wanted without arousing suspicion.
If you think Washington caught a lucky break with this scenario, it gets better. Major John Andre of the British army was station by General Henry Clinton in New York City as a counterspy. That’s right; he was hunting anyone who would spy for Washington. Turns out he was a poet, although his poetry nothing more than a collection of silly rhymes,, but Andre was a popular man in New York City, had a big ego and wanted to publish his poetry, so he also worked in Rivington’s print shop, right next to the spy he was looking for, and never suspected Townsend to be that spy.
Townsend also opened a coffeehouse right next to the print shop, and enjoyed the conversations going on between British redcoats who would visit his establishment and talk about things such as soirees, the latest gossip, oh! And troop movement! TBC
1945 – Enola Gay flies over Hiroshima and drops Little Boy, and Hiroshima goes up in a cloud of destruction. WWII was over in Europe, but not in the Pacific. Japan had refused for an unconditional surrender, which really disappointed President Harry Truman, who warned the Japanese of prompt and utter destruction. Give Em Hell Harry felt he had no choice but to end the war now instead of dragging it on, losing countless more lives.
Little Boy was one of two atomic bombs that was loaded onto Lt. Col. Paul W. Tibet’s plane and dropped over the city of Hiroshima, unleashing the equivalent of 12,500 tons of TNT. All contact was lost in Tokyo. Japanese Broadcasting Corporation, no contact. Military headquarters tried calling the Army Control Station in Hiroshima- nothing but static on the line. A staff officer went out to fly to the area to check out why the city had seemingly shut down. Meanwhile the United States publicly announced what had happened, which is how Tokyo got the news.
When the Japanese military pilot got to about 100 miles from Hiroshima, he and his copilot saw the city of Hiroshima wrapped up in a cloud of smoke and not much else. The city was burning furiously. Only 28,000 of the city’s 90,000 buildings were left. In all, about 129,000 people died as a result of the blinding flash, the fallout, and the ensuing radiation poisoning. On August 15th, another was dropped on Nagasaki. The Soviet Union declared war on Japan, and Japan finally surrendered unconditionally on September 2, 1945, thus ending WWII. The ethical justification for the bombings is debated to this day.
1936 – Here are the headlines: Des Moines Sunday Register: Owens Ties Drake Dash Mark! News-Telegraph: Hitler Hosts Olympics! New York Times: Owens Completes Triple As 5 Olympic Marks Fall.
Two days ago I talked in detail about how furious Hitler was that his Aryan race wasn’t as so superior as he thought they might be after the Buckeye Bullet won the long jump, relay and 100 and 200 meter races. After all Hitler went all out for this event. By eliminating almost all Jews from his teams, including pro tennis player Daniel Prenn, boxing champ Erich Sawlig, and track and field superstar Lily Hanoch. Hitler was ready to prove to the world that Nazi Germany was here to stay, providing a state-of-0the-art Olympic facility the world had never seen. And there were the Olympic Flags, displaying proudly next to the Swastika flag.
While Germany would win the Olympics with 33 and the Americans in 2nd place with 24, Hitler’s dream would’ve came true if it weren’t for Jesse Owens. A black man competing with Aryans, and physically outmatching them all and the headlines did not lie.
1996 – George R.R. Martin publishes Game of Thrones. It was the first in a series called A Song of Ice and Fire. The novel won the 1997 Locus Award[1] and was nominated for both the 1997 Nebula Award[1] and the 1997 World Fantasy Award.[2] The novella Blood of the Dragon, comprising the Deaneries Tarragon chapters from the novel, won the 1997 Hugo Award for Best Novella. In January 2011 the novel became a New York Times bestseller[3] and reached #1 on the list in July 2011. In 2005 Time magazine called Martin the American Tolkien, referring to British author JRR Tolkien who of course gave us The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. In 2011, a TV adaptation began airing on HBO, and last I checked was nominated for 23 emmies.
1911 – Happy Birthday America’s favoritE ditzy and witty redhead, Lucille Ball. When Lucille was a little girl here father died of typhoid fever. She was very shy as a performer early on, but that obviously changed. Her show, I Love Lucy, was the first comedy to be filmed in front of a live audience. She and her husband, Desi Arnez, wanted to film the show on an expensive studio set in Hollywood, but CBS wouldn’t go for it, so she and Dezi agreed to take a pay cut in order to retain full ownership rights to the show under their newly formed Desilu Productions. After she and Desi got divorced in 1960, Lucille took control of Desilu, becoming the first woman to run a major studio. She bought out Desi as well and and sold Desilu to Gulf+Western for $17M.
1861 – Happy Birthday Edith Roosevelt, from Norwich Connecticut, First lady of the US and wife of Teddy Roosevelt.