Thursday, July 22, 1943. Palermo falls to the Seventh Army. Greeks riot over Macedonia, US landings at Munda Point.

Patton's Seventh Army entered Palermo to an enormous celebration by the residents of the ancient city.  Two captured Italian generals, in turn, claimed to be happy about the event because "the Sicilians were not human beings but animals" ("i Siciliani non erano esseri umani ma animali").

Seventh Army staff aboard SS Monrovia, en route to Sicily, June/July 1943.

The Italian fascist government had held anti-Sicilian views due to Sicily's long peculiar history.  

The island has been inhabited since ancient times and was a destination for Italic and Phoenician colonists as far back as 1200 BC, who displaced the already existing Sicilian population.  Greek colonization commenced around 750 BC.  In antiquity, it was contested by the Greeks and Carthaginians, both of whom conquered it at different times.  The Romans conquered it and displaced the Carthaginians and declared that the island should be latinized, although its culture remained, at the time, Greek.  With the fall of the Roman Empire, it fell to invading Germanic tribes, with the Vandals taking Palermo in 440.  The Byzantine Empire then retook it, as the Eastern Roman Empire, and ruled it from the 550s to the 960s, during which time the Arabs began to attempt to take it.  From the 820s through the 960s, it slowly fell to Muslim invaders.

The Normans arrived starting in 1038, around thirty years prior to their invasion of England, and began to take it from the Arabs.  They formed a Norman kingdom that lasted until 1198, becoming part of the typical drama of European kingdoms at the time.  The Normans imported European settlers to the island, which went from being 1/3d Greek speaking and 2/3s Arabic speaking to being latinized once again.  It went back and forth to varying European households until 1860, when the Italians conquered it.  It became part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861.

During the fascist period the island was subject to unwelcome attention in part because Italians have never really regarded Sicilians as Italians, given their multi-ethnic heritage, and part because the strong local character of the island was unwelcome. Also, unwelcome was the fairly strong local Communist Party and the Sicilian Mafia. The fascist nearly crushed the Mafia during their period in power.

A general strike was called in Athens over Bulgarian intentions to annex Macedonia, which resulted in a massive protest in the city over the same thing.

The protests were successful in that they postponed the Bulgarian plans to the point that they were never carried out.

The SS executed all of the remaining 2,500 inmates of the Tarnopol concentration camp.

US infantry during the battle.

The Battle of Munda Point began on New Georgia.  The object was the points' airfield, in what would become a hard fought campaign.

The U.S. Navy raided Kiska.

Monday. June 11, 1921. The truce between Ireland and the United Kingdom ends the Anglo Irish War.

The flag of Ireland.

Hannah Carey, a 48 year old waitress in Killarney, was killed by a shot fired from a Royal Irish Constabulary truck.  She was likely not a victim of murder, but of an accident, as the RIC was reacting to an IRA attack upon a British Army unit just minutes prior.

She was the last causality of the Anglo Irish War.

On this day in 1921 the Anglo Irish War came to an end under an agreement between the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the President of the putative Irish Republic. The agreement had not only included an agreement to end the fighting, but also to engage in talks that would obviously outline the formalities, and there were indeed many to work out, of the existence between the two countries.   The Irish delegation would leave for London on July 12, the following day.

The history of the English presence in Ireland is a complicated and not really subject to easy summation.  England was a more powerful nation, comparatively, to Ireland dating back to the early days of the English kingdoms and as England's rule began to consolidate in a single king, that king often made claims of authority over Ireland even though they really were incapable of being enforced.

In 1169 the Normans, who were then into a century of their rule over England, having conquered the English thrown in 1066, invaded Ireland.  The invasion started in the form of an Anglo Norman mercenary intervention on behalf of one of the Irish kings but grew in scale until the English crown intervened against both the Irish kings and the Anglo Norman mercenaries.  The Crown then preceded over a period of years to consolidate its power in Ireland.

It is therefore commonly claimed that the Anglo Norman Invasion brought about "800 years of English rule" but it is not really true.  Even after the invasion, direct English rule was somewhat weak and grew weaker. The Anglo Normans assimilated surprisingly rapidly and by the 15th Century English rule was mostly titular with Ireland ruled by its own parliament and the Crown largely ignored.

The Reformation, however, rapidly changes this and in 1542 King Henry VIII, not content with all of the other destructive things he was doing, proclaimed himself the King of Ireland.  This was backed up by English military might and the contest took on a religious aspect given the English separation from Rome.  Indeed, the British effectively chose to fight out some of their contests for power on Irish ground.  Real British rule in Ireland, therefore, really dates to 1542.

In 1801 Parliament consolidate the rule with an Act of Union, making Ireland part of the United Kingdom. This was a political development that had been ongoing in Great Britain and had already brought about the union between Scotland and Wales that still exists.  This union was more problematic in Ireland, however, given that Ireland's population was overwhelmingly Catholic and Catholics were repressed in the United Kingdom.  The union was never really accepted by the Irish and a series of moves towards regaining independence occurred in following years.

Prior to World War One a strong move towards "home rule", which would have essentially granted Ireland regained independence in association with the Crown, leaving the British Parliament with authority on foreign policy, gained grown. These moves were strongly supported and strongly opposed.  They were gaining enough strength prior to the Great War that, had the war not broken out, Ireland would have obtained home rule prior to 1920, and the following Irish history would likely have developed differently.

As it was, moves towards an open civil war were already afoot prior to World War One and indeed they caused an infamous mutiny within the ranks of the British Army in Ireland which looked as if it would oppose any sort of Irish political freedom.  The British were still dealing with the aftermath of this mutiny when the Great War broke out, and the war quickly set all of these issues aside.

As we've been dealing here, the one group that didn't put them aside were Irish republicans, which struck during the late stages of the war itself in open rebellion.  This move was very unpopular inside of Ireland whose sons were fighting in France, but it did gain international attention. At the same time, the republicans took the wise course of action of forming their own putative representative government, setting up rival institutions to the official British ones where they could, and declaring themselves to be the legitimate government of the nation.

Following the Great War the British government was wise enough to see the handwriting on the wall, even though surrendering one of the major portions of the United Kingdom was a gigantic concession.  To some degree, much of recent UK history has stemmed from this, as the UK has slowly devolved rule to the other nations that remain in the United Kingdom.

This was of interest, to say the least, to the Irish American community in the United States.  An article on how this was reported on can be read here:

American reporting of truce in Ireland, July 1921

Former President and current Supreme Court Justice William Howards Taft was sworn in as the Chief Justice.

On the same day, President Harding signed a new Naval Appropriations bill that reduced spending for the Navy by $80,000,000 for the upcoming year.

In fairness, the US was still winding down from World War One and now had a gigantic surplus of ships.  The American people, for their part, were growing into disillusionment about their recent role in the Great War and the thesis that it was all a big plot by industrialist was starting to gain steam.

Perhaps related, or not, the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor concluded a meeting with a call for global disarmament by 1923.

The Bogd Khan was restored to titular head of Mongolia by Mongolian revolutionaries.

He was a Buddhist monk whose claim to power, or perhaps burden of it, was similar to that of the Dali Lama's and in fact he'd been born in Tibet and proclaimed the Bogd Khan in the presence of the Dali Lama and the Panchen Lama.  He had ruled the country as its theocratic head since the onset of the Chinese revolution in 1911, but his powers were limited due to his religious position.  During his first reign he'd been the subject of a propaganda campaign lead by the Chinese who wished to remove him and install a communist government.

In 1919 he was removed by the Chinese government as the crisis on the border with the infant Soviet Union developed.  Showing his position in the country's people, he was reinstalled, ironically, by the communist revolutionaries on this day in 1921 and would retain his position, being the last to occupy it, until his death in 1924.

Today In Wyoming's History: October 14. Columbus and Duke William make the scene.

Today In Wyoming's History: October 14:

October 14

Today is Columbus Day for 2013.



1066. Duke William of Normandy defeats King Harold Godwinson as the Battle of Hastings.  The result of this battle would bring feudalism into England and result in the birth of English Common Law.

The Bayeux Tapestry depicting the vents of October, 1066.

And its Columbus Day for this year, 2019, as well.

At least in my part of the country Columbus Day doesn't mean much, other than Federal offices are closed.  In some parts of the country there are protests regarding what ultimately occurred with the arrival of European Americans in the New World, again, and this time to stay.  Indeed, in some localities it is Indigenous Peoples Day.

Columbus was working for the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, of course.  They were having a big year, to say the least.  On January 2, Granada, the last Moorish kingdom in Spain, had surrendered to them, having failed to receive aid from any other Muslim power.  In an odd sort of way, Granada's experience was therefore similar to that of Constantinople, the seat of the shrunken Byzantine Empire, in 1453, some forty years earlier, which had failed to secure the support of other Christian powers against the Ottomans.

Columbus' expedition is typically claimed to have sighted land on October 12, 1492, but that date was on the "Old Calendar".  Using the "New Calendar", that date is actually October 21, 1492.

It's also the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, one of the single most important dates in English history and the history of the English speaking peoples.  Perhaps the single most important date.  Saxon England entered the feudal world and English met French.

The Start of The Troubles. October 5, 1968

Or at least it is by some accounts.  A precise start to the violence of the 1960s and 1970s that characterized Northern Ireland in the minds of many, indeed even characterized, unfairly, Ireland itself in this period, is hard to define.

Ireland had never accommodated itself to English rule at any point, but dating back to the Middle Ages various English kingdoms and then the Kingdom of England itself had claimed sovereignty over parts or all of Ireland.  For many decades, even centuries, the claim was fairly tenuous as a rule, but starting with the Norman conquest of England in 1066 it became inevitable that the conquering spirit of the barely Francoized Norsemen would lead them on to Ireland.  That path had already been partially laid by the Saxons already and the Normans were on a global path of expansion that would lead them on to install themselves over Sicily.  In that context, Ireland couldn't be avoided.

The Normans landed in Ireland as early as 1169, or perhaps we should say as late as that, given that this was a century after their conquest of England.  This was followed by landings in 1170 and 1171, which ultimately lead to the English King Henry landing that year in an effort to establish his own Anglo Norman sovereignty but also to put a lid on Norman freebooters.  He came and went but came back and in 1175 was self declared the overlord of Ireland, a position that was intended to put himself in loose control of the various Irish kingdoms but to leave them Irish.  This soon failed and in 1177 he declared his son John Lackland the Lord of Ireland and simply co-opted the ongoing Norman invasion.  This would bring to an end the era of independent Irish kingdoms.  The fact that there were, of course, multiple Irish kingdoms doomed the Irish in and of itself, but frankly Norman military capabilities were so advanced at the time that there was really no hope for Irish resistance.

This isn't intended to be a history of Ireland, so we'll simply leap forward and note that the United Kingdom ruled Ireland, over Irish objection, until 1922.  The Irish rebelled from time to time, particularly after the English crown separated the Church from Rome and then took it into Protestantism.  This became particularly pronounced after Cromwell became the English Lord Protector and English law became increasingly hostile to Catholicism.  The Irish became impoverished serfs in their own land and constantly sought to free themselves from England.  By the 19th Century, as the English began to reform their views, slowly at first, and then rapidly later on, things were perhaps so fixed in attitude that efforts towards Home Rule were insufficient to keep a significant minority of Irish from seeking an armed separation from the United Kingdom which came in the form of the Anglo Irish War.

The dates for the Anglo Irish War itself are debated, but a person can realistically date it to the Easter Rebellion of 1916.  The rebellion was a failure and indeed rejected by the Irish, but the English overreaction to it was sufficiently harsh that a follow up, more thought out, guerrilla, and indeed terroristic, war that started in 1919 had somewhat broader support.

Still, the mixed views on England were strong enough that the compromise reached with the United Kingdom not only left Ireland as a dominion of the United Kingdom, a status that at the time meant that the United Kingdom retained foreign policy decisions to some degree over a separated Ireland, but it also allowed Northern Ireland to opt out of the Irish Free State, a position bitterly opposed by Irish Republicans and which lead to the Irish Civil War.  Northern Ireland had been a problem in the context of Irish independence for many years as its population was majority Scots and Presbyterian.  Predictably, Northern Ireland voted to opt out of the Irish Free State.

This lead to the Irish Civil War, as noted, and following that lead to a bizarre situation in which the Irish Republic basically did not recognize Ulster as legitimately separate from it but, at the same time, really did nothing about it.  Ethnic Irish in Ulster stewed about the situation but by and large accommodated themselves to it.

In 1960s a non violent civil rights movement seeking to improve the position of minority Catholics in Ulster commenced.  It was not well received in all quarters.  Irish nationalist reacted with protests nad parades in 1966 and actually dynamited an English monument in that year in spite of being quite weak. This was responded to by the formation of Ulster unionist movements that saw the republican challenge as being stronger than it really was.  An organization formed calling itself the Ulster Volunteer Force, recalling similar paramilitary forces from the pre World War One Ulster and soon Ulster unionist terrorist attacked the homes of Catholic residents.

This lead to civil rights protests that occurred into 1968.  These were met with Unionist violence.  

On this day in 1968, once such event occurred.  The Northern Irish government banned an anticipated civil rights protest but it occurred anyhow.  The government sent the Royal Irish Constabulary to confront the marchers and the RUC policemen met them with violence.  The entire thing was filmed and shown on television, sparking Catholic disgust and outrage.  Two days of rioting ensued pitting Irish nationalist against the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Thirty years of violence and the rise of the Provisional Irish Republican Army would follow.