Month: July 2015
Isabella (Belle) Boyd – The Story of a Confederate Spy (American Civil War)
On 29th July 1862, Belle Boyd, the confederate spy was arrested by the Union troops for providing valuable information to the confederates during the American Civil War.
Isabella Marie Boyd, popularly known as Belle Boyd was born in Martinsburg, Virginia on 9th May 1844. She attended Mount Washington Female College in Baltimore, Maryland and actively participated in fund raising activities for the Confederacy. In July 1861, the Union forces occupied the city of Martinsburg. However, the Boyd house still openly displayed confederate flags. On noticing this, the Union soldiers tried to enter the house and raise the Union flag. In this process one of the soldiers cursed and Boyd’s mother and Boyd retaliated by shooting him to death. Though she was acquitted of all charges, Union soldiers were posted around her house. From here began her career as a “rebel spy” at the age of 17.
Source: Wikipedia
Boyd used this opportunity to engage in conversations with Union soldiers and obtain valuable information about the federal troops which she delivered to the confederate soldiers via her servant. During the Battle of Winchester she undertook hazardous journey to personally deliver crucial information to the confederates led by General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson which helped him to defeat General Nathaniel Banks’s forces in the war. Boyd’s continued exploits to provide Union secrets to the Confederacy helped her achieve significant fame.
However, she was arrested and imprisoned in the Old Capitol Prison in Washington on 29th July 1862 and was eventually released as part of exchange of prisoners. Again she was arrested in July 1863 and imprisoned for 3 months. After her release she volunteered to courier confidential confederate papers.
In 1864, she sailed for England with letters from the Confederate President Jefferson Davis. The ship was intercepted by a Union vessel. Boyd with the help of Samuel Wylde Hardinge, a naval officer of the Union forces made it possible for the Confederate captain of the vessel to escape. On returning to the United States Hardinge faced court martial for assisting the enemy. Boyd was banished to Canada but she managed to reach England and married Hardinge in August 1964, only to be widowed in early 1965.
In 1865, she published her two-volume memoir of her war time activities, Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison.
In 1866 she debuted on the stage in The Lady of Lyons in Manchester. She worked in several plays over the next few years and was proclaimed for her beauty. She retired in 1869 and married John Swainston Hammond. However the marriage was dissolved in 1884.
Boyd returned to the stage to support her family after her third marriage with Nathaniel Rue High of Toledo, Ohio, a stock-company actor. She toured the country staging narratives of her own exploits as a spy.
She died on 11 th June 1900 during her speaking tour in Wisconsin and was buried in the Wisconsin Spring grove Cemetery.
Source: Civil War Trust; American Civil War Story; Encyclopaedia Britannica; National Park Service; The Latin Library
Machu Picchu: Hiram Bingham Discovered the Lost City of the Incas
On July 24th 1911, Hiram Bingham, an academic, explorer and politician from the United States located an ancient Inca settlement in Peru named Machu Picchu.
In 1911, Bingham organized the 1911 Yale Peruvian Expedition to search for the lost city of Vitcos, the last capital of the Incas. The team travelled from Cuzco into the Urubamba Valley and camped at Mandor Pampa. There a local farmer and innkeeper, Melchor Arteaga informed Bingham some excellent ruins on the top of mountain Machu Picchu, which meant “Old Peak” in the native Quechua language.
Next day, on 24 th July 1911 amidst bad weather conditions Bingham climbed to the top of the mountain to reach intricate network of stone structures covered densely with vegetation. This site was nothing but the famed ancient Incan city of Machu Picchu, often called “The Lost City of the Incas,” which has become a legendary site today.
Source: Wikipedia
Following this discovery Bingham returned to Machu Picchu in 1912 for further excavations which were sponsored by both Yale University and the National Geographic Society. Later in 1948 he published a book based on his research findings named “Lost City of the Incas”. The book and Bingham is credited with bringing this lost location of South America back to global attention.
However, Peru has long sought the return of the estimated 40,000 artifacts, including mummies, ceramics and bones that Bingham had excavated and exported from the Machu Picchu site. On 14th September, 2007, an agreement was made between Yale University and the Peruvian government for the return of the objects.
The fact that Bingham was the first to discover Machu Picchu also remains debated. Others who have claimed to come across Machu Picchu earlier include British missionary Thomas Payne, German engineer named J. M. von Hassel and more recently a German named Augusto Berns.
Machu Picchu today stands as one of the greatest man-made wonders stretching across five miles, with over 3,000 stone steps linking its many different levels. The site has been declared a “historical sanctuary” by the Peruvian government and it was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1983.
Source: HistoryToday; Rediscover Machu Picchu; Wired.com; History.com
Indra Lal Roy – First Indian Fighter Air Ace of World War I
Indra Lal Roy was the officially accredited the first Indian fighter air ace of World War I who served in the First World War with the Royal Flying Corps and its successor, the Royal Air Force.
Indra Lal Roy was born on 2nd December 1898 in Calcutta (now Kolkata), West Bengal. He was the second son of Lolita Roy and Peary Lal Roy the Director of Public Prosecutions in Calcutta. His elder brother was Paresh Lal Roy, who was known as the “Father of Indian Boxing”. His nephew, who became India’s first Chief of Air Staff of Indian Air Force, was none other than the iconic Subroto Mukherjee. Indra Lal Roy hailed from an affluent family and was educated from St. Paul’s School in Kensington in England. He had secured a scholarship to Oxford and aspired to be a part of the Indian Civil Service.
Source: Wikipedia
With World War I gathering impetus the British started recruiting Indians in the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) as front line combat pilots. Roy enlisted with the RFC in 1917 and he was commissioned as the 2nd Lieutenant on 5th July 1917. He trained as a pilot at Vendome in France and also with RFC Gunnery School in Turnberry.
In late October 1917 he was posted with the 56 squadron and was a part of A-Flight which was commanded by, Richard Maybery, the flying ace captain. Unfortunately his plane was shot down by the Germans on 6th December 1917. The British rescued him from the “no man’s land”, where he fell and was taken to the British hospital where he was initially pronounced dead. However he regained consciousness and after treatment he was not declared fit for flying till 13th May 1918.
On 19th June 1918, he was assigned to George McElroy’s 40 Squadron of RFC in France. On July 6th he shot down the first a German fighter plane over Arras in northern France. Between 6th to 19th July he managed ten victories (of which two were shared). Of these he managed to shoot down four fighter planes within four hours on a single day (8th July).
On 22nd July 1918 his fighter plane was attacked by German fighters over Carvin in France. Roy succeeded in shooting down two German fighters but he was shot down by German Fokker D.VII aircraft belonging to Jasta 29. He was killed in action and fell in German-held territory. He was barely 20 years old at the time of his heroic death.
It is said that German air combatant Baron Manfred von Richtofen dropped a wreath on the place where Roy fell, as a tribute to his bravery. He was buried by the Germans in Levil near Arras.
Roy was awarded a posthumous Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC), Britain’s third highest gallantry award in September 1918. He was the first Indian officer to receive this award, albeit posthumously.
Indra Roy Road in Bhawanipore, Calcutta, West Bengal is named after him. On his 100th anniversary, in December 1998 the Indian Government issued a commemorative stamp in his name. Also a unique inscription was made on his grave in French and Bengali.
The Bengali version read: Maha birer samadhi; sambhram karo, sparsha koro na. (A valiant warrior’s grave; respect it, do not touch it).
Source: The National Archives UK; FirstWorldWar.com; India Today Group; The Telegraph; The Times of India
Great Fire of Rome – Was Emperor Nero Involved?
Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, popularly known as Nero was the Emperor of Rome for less than two decades yet it was during his rule that Rome witnessed massive changes. He was the great grandson of Emperor Augustus. Nero and his mother Agrippina were exiled from Rome by Agrippina’s brother, the Emperor Gaius Caligula. However, Agrippina married her uncle Claudius who became the next Emperor and convinced him to make Nero his heir.
After Claudius’s mysterious death, Nero, then 16, was proclaimed the Emperor of Rome. He was under the guidance of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the Stoic philosopher who had been his tutor, and Sextus Afranius Burrus, head of the Praetorian Guard. He was an ambitious man and one of his grand plans was to rebuild Rome and name the new city Neropolis.
On the night of 18th July 64 AD a massive fire broke out in the marketplace near the Circus Maximus. The summer winds helped spread the fire rapidly through the city. Rome burnt for six days and seven nights before the fire was brought under control. Out of 14 districts, 10 were ruined by this fire implying that nearly two-third of the city was destroyed.
Nero was said to be away from the city at Antium near the coast during this time. On hearing about the fire, he is said to have returned to Rome and organize extensive relief efforts to save the people. On the other hand soon it was popularly believed that the city was purposely set on fire on Nero’s orders itself. Some claim that Nero was believed to have been “playing the fiddle” when the fire was grazing the town to the ground. The motive behind this mass destruction was believed to be his ambition to build a new city Neropolis.
Source: Wikipedia
Nero, however blamed the Christians for the great fire of Rome and ordered them to be persecuted. Thus the Roman persecution against the Christians were launched and continued till the era of Constantine.
Nero has said to have taken the opportunity of this destruction to build a new palace named The Domus Aurea (Golden House) for himself.
Over the next few years discontentment against Nero’s reign grew considerably and he was declared a public enemy by the Senate. On 68 AD, four years after the Great fire of Rome, Nero committed suicide to avoid execution.
Till date historians remain divided about Nero’s hand in the Great Fire of Rome. Thus even after nearly twenty centuries the cause of the fire remains shrouded in mystery.
Source: History.com; HistoryToday; PBS.org; EyeWitnesstoHistory.com
Treaty of Cession of Manu’a (Deed of Cession of Manuʻa) to the United States – Now a Part of American Samoa
Present day American Samoa is an archipelago located in South Pacific Ocean. It is located south east of the sovereign state of Samoa and east of the International Date Line and south of the equator. American Samoa comprises of five islands and two atolls namely Tutuila, Aunuu, Rose, Swains and the Manua group of Tau, Olosega and Ofu.
Around 4000 years ago, the seafaring Polynesians from South East Asia was the initial inhabitants of this island group. Genealogy and evidence from legends suggests Samoa was governed by the faamatai chiefly system and was involved in war with the islands of Tonga and Fiji.
Source: Wikipedia
Copyright: Creative Commons
Western contact with the Samoan islands began in 1722 with the arrival of Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen. In 1768, French explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville named them the Navigator islands. Missionary influence dates back to the 19th century and the western missionaries led by John Williams of the (Congregationalist) London Missionary Society came to Savai’i in 1830.
Soon Britain, USA and Germany engaged in rivalry over the control of the islands. The rivalries were settled by the Treaty of Berlin signed in 1899 in which the Samoan archipelago was divided between Germany and US (Britain relinquished its claim over the islands).
America soon took ownership of the eastern Samoan islands and established a coaling station on Pago Pago Bay in Tutuila Island.
Tui Manuʻa Elisara was the last independent ruler of Manuʻa, and he was forced to cede the island of Manu’a in the deed of cession of Manu’a on 16th July, 1904.
At present American Samoa is an ‘unincorporated territory’ of the United States. This is because the region is not fully bound by the American Constitution. The Samoan Constitution was enacted in 1967 and it upholds the supremacy of Samoan traditional law. An elected governor is the head of the Samoan state. People born in American Samoa are considered as natives (they are not American citizens but US nationals) by the US government and the territory does not have a voting right in the US House of Representatives.
Source: The Commonwealth ; Embassy of the United States; Nations Online; American Samoa Bas Association; Wp Council; New World Encyclopedia
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