10 September 2018
Interesting tidbits:
1570 – Spanish Jesuit missionaries landed in present-day Virginia to establish the short-lived Ajacán Mission and bring Christianity to the Virginia Indians. Early in the 16th century, Spanish explorers were the first Europeans to see the Chesapeake Bay, which they named the land now known as Virginia, as Ajacán. In 1570, Father Juan Bautista de Segura, Jesuit vice provincial of Havana, wanted to establish a mission in Ajacán without a military garrison, which was unusual. In August, Father Segura, Father Luis de Quirós, former head of the Jesuit college among the Moors in Spain, and six Jesuit brothers set forth from their base in Havana on their Ajacán Mission. The young Spanish boy Alonso de Olmos also accompanied the priests. On September 10, the party of 10 landed in Ajacán. The Spaniards constructed a small wooden hut with an adjoining room where Mass could be celebrated. Don Luis attempted to locate his native village of Chiskiack, which he had not seen in ten years, but thought he met distant relatives so the missionaries disembarked. Soon after the Spanish ship had departed with their reserve supplies, Don Luis left the Jesuits, purportedly to seek food and recruits from the nearby native people. When he failed to return, they decided he had abandoned them, perhaps disagreeing with their monogamy policy, as well as personal celibacy. Moreover, the mid-Atlantic region was enduring a long period of drought, which led to famine. Around February 1571, three missionaries went to the village where they thought Don Luis was staying, but he killed them in the forest, then brought warriors to the main mission station, killed both the priests and all six brothers, and stole all their clothing and supplies. Only Alonso Olmos, the young servant boy, was spared. When the relief ship arrived, canoes of men dressed in clerical garb tried to get them to land, then attacked. The Spaniards killed several, and captives told them about the young boy who survived. Rescued more than a year after the massacre, Alonco told them about the murders and his escape. Following the deaths of Father Segura, the Spanish attempted no further colonization of the Chesapeake region before 1587, when English settlers arrived and attempted to found a colony at Roanoke, which likewise disappeared before the relief ship arrived. In recent years intriguing but insufficient bits of evidence have surfaced indicating the possibility that Spanish interests in the American coast north of Florida were not completely abandoned, and that the Spanish interfered with the English colonizing attempts in Roanoke and Jamestown in an attempt to cause them to fail.
1846 – Elias Howe was granted a patent for the sewing machine.
1858 – George Mary Searle discovered the asteroid 55 Pandora.
1897 – Lattimer massacre: A sheriff’s posse killed 20 unarmed immigrant miners in Pennsylvania.
1932 – The New York City Subway's third competing subway system, the municipally-owned IND, was opened.
1936 – First World Individual Motorcycle Speedway Championship, Held at London's (England) Wembley Stadium.
2008 – The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, described as the biggest scientific experiment in history, was powered up in Geneva, Switzerland.
Today's birthday crew:
1801 – Marie Laveau, Louisiana Creole practitioner of Voodoo. In 1874 as many as twelve thousand spectators, both black and white, swarmed to the shores of Lake Pontchartrain to catch a glimpse of Marie performing her legendary rites on St. John's Eve (June 23–24).
1941 – Stephen Jay Gould, American paleontologist.
1948 – Judy Geeson, English actress (To Sir With Love).
1958 – Chris Columbus, American director known for such movies as Gremlins (1984), The Goonies (1985), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), and Home Alone (1990). He is also known as the director who began the Harry Potter film series by directing the first two films and producing the third.
Happy birthday guys!
