HISTORY

Here are some historical events that occurred in December that I didn't get a chance to post........PEACE........................Scott


December 18:
1632 : Mayflower passengers come ashore at Plymouth
Harbor

On December 18, 1620, passengers on the British ship
Mayflower come ashore at modern-day Plymouth,
Massachusetts, to begin their new settlement, Plymouth
Colony.

The famous Mayflower story began in 1606, when a group
of reform-minded Puritans in Nottinghamshire, England,
founded their own church, separate from the
state-sanctioned Church of England. Accused of
treason, they were forced to leave the country and
settle in the more tolerant Netherlands. After 12
years of struggling to adapt and make a decent living,
the group sought financial backing from some London
merchants to set up a colony in America. On September
6, 1620, 102 passengers--dubbed Pilgrims by William
Bradford, a passenger who would become the first
governor of Plymouth Colony--crowded on the Mayflower
to begin the long, hard journey to a new life in the
New World.

On November 11, 1620, the Mayflower anchored at what
is now Provincetown Harbor, Cape Cod. Before going
ashore, 41 male passengers--heads of families, single
men and three male servants--signed the famous
Mayflower Compact, agreeing to submit to a government
chosen by common consent and to obey all laws made for
the good of the colony. Over the next month, several
small scouting groups were sent ashore to collect
firewood and scout out a good place to build a
settlement. Around December 10, one of these groups
found a harbor they liked on the western side of Cape
Cod Bay. They returned to the Mayflower to tell the
other passengers, but bad weather prevented them
reaching the harbor until December 16. Two days later,
the first group of Pilgrims went ashore.
After exploring the region, the settlers chose a
cleared area previously occupied by members of a local
Native American tribe, the Wampanoag. The tribe had
abandoned the village several years earlier, after an
outbreak of European disease. That winter of 1620-21
was brutal, as the Pilgrims struggled to build their
settlement, find food and ward off sickness. By
spring, 50 of the original 102 Mayflower passengers
were dead. The remaining settlers made contact with
returning members of the Wampanoag tribe and in March
they signed a peace treaty with a tribal chief,
Massasoit. Aided by the Wampanoag, especially the
English-speaking Squanto, the Pilgrims were able to
plant crops--especially corn and beans--that were
vital to their survival. The Mayflower and its crew
left Plymouth to return to England on April 5, 1621.

Over the next several decades, more and more settlers
made the trek across the Atlantic to Plymouth, which
gradually grew into a prosperous shipbuilding and
fishing center. In 1691, Plymouth was incorporated
into the new Massachusetts Bay Association, ending its
history as an independent colony.

history.com/tdih.do

December 17:
1903 : First airplane flies

Near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur
Wright make the first successful flight in history of
a self-propelled, heavier-than-air aircraft. Orville
piloted the gasoline-powered, propeller-driven
biplane, which stayed aloft for 12 seconds and covered
120 feet on its inaugural flight.

Orville and Wilbur Wright grew up in Dayton, Ohio, and
developed an interest in aviation after learning of
the glider flights of the German engineer Otto
Lilienthal in the 1890s. Unlike their older brothers,
Orville and Wilbur did not attend college, but they
possessed extraordinary technical ability and a
sophisticated approach to solving problems in
mechanical design. They built printing presses and in
1892 opened a bicycle sales and repair shop. Soon,
they were building their own bicycles, and this
experience, combined with profits from their various
businesses, allowed them to pursue actively their
dream of building the world's first airplane.

After exhaustively researching other engineers'
efforts to build a heavier-than-air, controlled
aircraft, the Wright brothers wrote the U.S. Weather
Bureau inquiring about a suitable place to conduct
glider tests. They settled on Kitty Hawk, an isolated
village on North Carolina's Outer Banks, which offered
steady winds and sand dunes from which to glide and
land softly. Their first glider, tested in 1900,
performed poorly, but a new design, tested in 1901,
was more successful. Later that year, they built a
wind tunnel where they tested nearly 200 wings and
airframes of different shapes and designs. The
brothers' systematic experimentations paid off--they
flew hundreds of successful flights in their 1902
glider at Kill Devils Hills near Kitty Hawk. Their
biplane glider featured a steering system, based on a
movable rudder, that solved the problem of controlled
flight. They were now ready for powered flight.

In Dayton, they designed a 12-horsepower internal
combustion engine with the assistance of machinist
Charles Taylor and built a new aircraft to house it.
They transported their aircraft in pieces to Kitty
Hawk in the autumn of 1903, assembled it, made a few
further tests, and on December 14 Orville made the
first attempt at powered flight. The engine stalled
during take-off and the plane was damaged, and they
spent three days repairing it. Then at 10:35 a.m. on
December 17, in front of five witnesses, the aircraft
ran down a monorail track and into the air, staying
aloft for 12 seconds and flying 120 feet. The modern
aviation age was born. Three more tests were made that
day, with Wilbur and Orville alternately flying the
airplane. Wilbur flew the last flight, covering 852
feet in 59 seconds.

During the next few years, the Wright brothers further
developed their airplanes but kept a low profile about
their successes in order to secure patents and
contracts for their flying machines. By 1905, their
aircraft could perform complex maneuvers and remain
aloft for up to 39 minutes at a time. In 1908, they
traveled to France and made their first public
flights, arousing widespread public excitement. In
1909, the U.S. Army's Signal Corps purchased a
specially constructed plane, and the brothers founded
the Wright Company to build and market their aircraft.
Wilbur Wright died of typhoid fever in 1912; Orville
lived until 1948.

The historic Wright brothers' aircraft of 1903 is on
permanent display at the National Air and Space Museum
in Washington, D.C.


history.com/tdih.do

December 16:
1773 : The Boston Tea Party

In Boston Harbor, a group of Massachusetts colonists
disguised as Mohawk Indians board three British tea
ships and dump 342 chests of tea into the harbor.

The midnight raid, popularly known as the "Boston Tea
Party," was in protest of the British Parliament's Tea
Act of 1773, a bill designed to save the faltering
East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and
granting it a virtual monopoly on the American tea
trade. The low tax allowed the East India Company to
undercut even tea smuggled into America by Dutch
traders, and many colonists viewed the act as another
example of taxation tyranny.

When three tea ships, the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and
the Beaver, arrived in Boston Harbor, the colonists
demanded that the tea be returned to England. After
Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused,
Patriot leader Samuel Adams organized the "tea party"
with about 60 members of the Sons of Liberty, his
underground resistance group. The British tea dumped
in Boston Harbor on the night of December 16 was
valued at some $18,000.

Parliament, outraged by the blatant destruction of
British property, enacted the Coercive Acts, also
known as the Intolerable Acts, in 1774. The Coercive
Acts closed Boston to merchant shipping, established
formal British military rule in Massachusetts, made
British officials immune to criminal prosecution in
America, and required colonists to quarter British
troops. The colonists subsequently called the first
Continental Congress to consider a united American
resistance to the British.

history.com/tdih.do