January 21.......
1789 - The Power of Sympathy or the Triumph of Nature Founded in Truth is printed in Boston, Massachusetts. The book was the first novel by an American writer to be published in America. The first editions of the book did not carry the author's name, but a later printing carried the name of Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton. However, some scholars attribute the book's authorship to William Hill Brown. The content was a thinly veiled account of the seduction and suicide of a young woman in Morton's family.
1793 - One day after being convicted of conspiracy with foreign powers and sentenced to death by the French National Convention, King Louis XVI is executed by guillotine in the Place de la Revolution in Paris.
Louis ascended to the French throne in 1774 and from the start was unsuited to deal with the severe financial problems that he had inherited from his grandfather, King Louis XV. In 1789, in a last-ditch attempt to resolve his country's financial crisis, Louis assembled the States-General, a national assembly that represented the three "estates" of the French people--the nobles, the clergy, and the commons. The States-General had not been assembled since 1614, and the third estate--the commons--used the opportunity to declare itself the National Assembly, igniting the French Revolution. On July 14, 1789, violence erupted when Parisians stormed the Bastille--a state prison where they believed ammunition was stored.
Although outwardly accepting the revolution, Louis resisted the advice of constitutional monarchists who sought to reform the monarchy in order to save it; he also permitted the reactionary plotting of his unpopular queen, Marie Antoinette. In October 1789, a mob marched on Versailles and forced the royal couple to move to Tuileries; in June 1791, opposition to the royal pair had become so fierce that the two were forced to flee to Austria. During their trip, Marie and Louis were apprehended at Varennes, France, and carried back to Paris. There, Louis was forced to accept the constitution of 1791, which reduced him to a mere figurehead.
In August 1792, the royal couple was arrested by the sans-cullottes and imprisoned, and in September the monarchy was abolished by the National Convention (which had replaced the National Assembly). In November, evidence of Louis XVI's counterrevolutionary intrigues with Austria and other foreign nations was discovered, and he was put on trial for treason by the National Convention.
The next January, Louis was convicted and condemned to death by a narrow majority. On January 21, he walked steadfastly to the guillotine and was executed. Nine months later, Marie Antoinette was convicted of treason by a tribunal, and on October 16 she followed her husband to the guillotine.
1895- Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Passed in 1890, the Sherman Act was designed to weed out oversized businesses that blocked the "natural" flow of competition. Though the act was invoked that same year to force the break-up of Standard Oil, it was generally regarded as a limp piece of legislation that did little to stem the rise of trusts. However, that didn't stop big business from mounting charges to severely limit the scope of the Sherman Act. And, in the E.C. Knight case, the Supreme Court sided with the argument that the anti-trust legislation should distinguish between commercial and manufacturing enterprises and thus only apply to companies engaged in interstate trade. In turn, a company such as the sugar trust at the heart of the case, which "restricted" its business to manufacturing within a single state, was deemed legal, despite squashing any semblance of competition in the sugar refining industry. Whatever the legal merits of this decision, it derailed any efforts to put a lid on monopolies, until the passage of the Clayton Act in 1916. Incidentally, on July 15,1994, the U.S. government filed a complaint charging the Microsoft Corporation, the world's largest software developer, with violating Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
1924 - Commrade Lennin Dies - Vladimir Lenin, the architect of the Bolshevik Revolution and the first leader of the Soviet Union, dies of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 54. Joseph Stalin would replace him as leader of the Soviet Union.
1950 - In the conclusion to one of the most spectacular trials in U.S. history, former State Department official Alger Hiss is convicted of perjury. He was convicted of having perjured himself in regards to testimony about his alleged involvement in a Soviet spy ring before and during World War II. Hiss served nearly four years in jail, but steadfastly protested his innocence during and after his incarceration.
1959 - Director, producer, and screenwriter Cecil B. De Mille, one of the most influential filmmakers of his day, dies on this day in 1959. Among his many accomplishments: He helped found Paramount studios and served as the creative force behind the company's films.
1968 - One of the most publicized and controversial battles of the war begins at Khe Sanh, 14 miles below the DMZ and six miles from the Laotian border.
Seized and activated by the U.S. Marines a year earlier, the base, which had been an old French outpost, was used as a staging area for forward patrols and was a potential launch point for contemplated future operations to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos. The battle began on this date with a brisk firefight involving the 3rd Battalion, 26th Marines and a North Vietnamese battalion entrenched between two hills northwest of the base. The next day North Vietnamese forces overran the village of Khe Sanh and North Vietnamese long-range artillery opened fire on the base itself, hitting its main ammunition dump and detonating 1,500 tons of explosives.
An incessant barrage kept Khe Sanh's Marine defenders, which included three battalions from the 26th Marines, elements of the 9th Marine Regiment, and the South Vietnamese 37th Ranger Battalion, pinned down in their trenches and bunkers. Because the base had to be resupplied by air, the American high command was reluctant to put in any more troops and drafted a battle plan calling for massive artillery and air strikes. During the 66-day siege, U.S. planes, dropping 5,000 bombs daily, exploded the equivalent of five Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs in the area. The relief of Khe Sanh, called Operation Pegasus, began in early April as the 1st Cavalry (Airmobile) and a South Vietnamese battalion approached the base from the east and south, while the Marines pushed westward to re-open Route 9.
The siege was finally lifted on April 6 when the cavalrymen linked up with the 9th Marines south of the Khe Sanh airstrip. In a final clash a week later, the 3rd Battalion, 26th Marines drove enemy forces from Hill 881 North. Gen. William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam, contended that Khe Sanh played a vital blocking role at the western end of the DMZ, and asserted that if the base had fallen, North Vietnamese forces could have outflanked Marine defenses along the buffer zone. Various statements in the North Vietnamese Communist Party newspaper suggested that Hanoi saw the battle as an opportunity to re-enact its famous victory at Dien Bien Phu, when the communists had defeated the French in a climactic decisive battle that effectively ended the war between France and the Viet Minh.
It was a costly war for both sides. The official casualty count for the Battle of Khe Sanh was 205 Marines killed in action and over 1,600 wounded (this figure did not include the American and South Vietnamese soldiers killed in other battles in the region). The U.S. military headquarters in Saigon estimated that the North Vietnamese lost between 10,000 and 15,000 men in the fighting at Khe Sanh
1976- Concorde takes off - From London's Heathrow Airport and Orly Airport outside Paris, the first Concordes with commercial passengers simultaneously take flight on January 21, 1976. The London flight was headed to Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, and the Paris to Rio de Janeiro via Senegal in West Africa. At their cruising speeds, the innovative Concordes flew well over the sound barrier at 1,350 miles an hour, cutting air travel time by more than half. (The most beautiful plane ever built, hopefully one day I will get the chance to fly in it)
1993 - The exorcism of Joan Vollmer in the Australian outback begins, and results in her murder a week later. Joan's husband, Ralph, a pig farmer near Antwerp, had been concerned about Joan's erratic behavior. Unfortunately, he looked to strange interpretations of the Bible for help.
At first, Ralph tried tying his wife to the bed. When she managed to escape, he locked her in the basement. However, her constant screaming made that plan untenable. Consulting his holy book, he decided to exorcise the demons that he believed were in control of his wife. He turned to Leah Clugston, the resident expert in town. In fact, she was already in hot water with the local priest for diagnosing demonic possession in a significant segment of Antwerp's population.
Clugston brought her assistants Lisa Reichenbach and David Klinger to drive out Joan Vollmer's evil spirits. But the evil spirits were resilient. They hung on despite a week of beating Vollmer's body and praying. The small town had another exorcist and the call went out to Matthew Nuske.
Nuske immediately ordered that Joan Vollmer be bound to the fireplace and insisted that the entire Vollmer house be wrapped with layers of Glad Wrap to protect the people inside from evil. Meanwhile, the intensity of the beating inflicted on Joan increased. With Klinger and Reichenbach helping kick the restrained woman and Ralph slamming a Bible into her face, Joan finally died.
Nuske, however, decided that this was only part of the exorcism process and kept up the beating, hoping that Joan would rise from the dead, her soul intact. Three days later, with no sign of life forthcoming from Joan, the local reverend was called and he, in turn, brought the police. Ralph Vollmer, Nuske, Reichenbach, and Klinger were all sent to prison for manslaughter.
