There was quite a variety of conflict in the record of this date. The most famous of all was imaginary, as Martian soldiers descended on the poorly armed New Jersey town of Grover's Mill. There may well be aliens contemplating an invasion of earth, and James T. Kirk is clearly in no condition to defend us these days, but we know enough about Mars to be certain that the red planet named for the god of war is not going to be the source. In 1938 this wasn't so widely known, and the Mercury Theater On The Air did a very good job. I couldn't find any good quotes on hysteria, but there were a few on panic and fear to choose from.
Despite skirmishes with native Maoris, James Cook claimed New Zealand for Great Britain on this day, the Mormon War in Missouri came to a bloody conclusion, and a group of Wobbly activists was badly beaten while being thrown out of Everett Washington. (They were taken to a remote railroad stop called Beverly Park - it isn't remote anymore, I actually lived very near there fifteen years ago.) Hungarian nationalists were celebrating a bit, the Soviet tanks that had rumbled into Budapest were gone and a new cabinet was being formed, a conflict between local Communists and foreign Communist occupiers. And in the Soviet Union the conflict was between past and present, truth and propaganda, as Khruschev attempted to purge Stalin from the public consciousness - he had already ordered the removal of Stalin's name from the history books.
1769 - Three weeks after his first landfall in New Zealand, First Lieutenant James Cook of the bark Endeavor claims New Zealand for Great Britain. He and his crew continued mapping and surveying until the following March, circumnavigating both islands and mapping 2400 miles of coastline.
1838 - The Mormon War of Missouri ended when over 200 state militiamen attacked the LDS settlement of Huan's Mill. Eighteen Mormons were killed, and a dozen wounded, in reprisal for Mormon militia attacks on several communities since August of that year. Joseph Smith then led his followers to Illinois.
1916 - 41 members of the International Workers of the World (IWW, the Wobblies) from Seattle, Washington took a ferry north to Everett to speak to workers there, but were beaten by sheriff's deputies, taken to Beverly Park south of town, and forced to run a gauntlet into a spiked cattle guard. The badly beaten Wobblies were left to wobble down the railroad track back to Seattle.
1938 - Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater On The Air presented a national broadcast dramatization of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds. National panic breaks out as the simulated newscast convinces thousands that Martian forces had landed at Grover's Mill, New Jersey. The introduction had made it clear that it was fictional, but many tuned it with the broadcast "already in progress."
1956 - Hungarian Prime Minister Imre Nagy assembled a multi-party coalition cabinet as students and workers continue their protest against Soviet occupation. Soviet tanks had been driven out of Budapest by students climbing aboard with gasoline bombs.
1961 - The Twenty-second Party Congress of the Soviet Union ordered the removal of J. V. Stalin's body, displayed in a glass-topped coffin next to V. I. Lenin since Stalin's death in 1953, after Dora Abramovna Lazurkina said Lenin appeared to her in a vision and said, "It is unpleasant to be next to Stalin, who did so much harm to the party." The decree was part of Khrushchev's "de-Stalinization" drive.
Commemoration of Dorothy of Montau, Widow, Patron saint of Prussia - Dorothy was born at Marienburg, Prussia in 1347, married a wealthy but quarrelsome swordsmith and gave birth to nine children, of which only the last reached adulthood. After several pilgrimages in the region made a pilgrimage to Rome in 1390, barefoot and carrying no money or provisions, returning to find her husband had died. Retired from the world, had herself walled into a cell where she could see only a cemetery and the altar in the church. Noted for mystic visions, miraculous healing. Died in 1394.
The tongue is more to be feared than the sword.
- Japanese proverb
Illusion is always based on reality, for its strength depends upon its
fit with the desires, fears and experiences of countless humans.
- John P. Grier
Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous.
(He is also a fool).
- Robert A. Heinlein
Fear cannot be banished, but it can be calm and without panic; and it
can be mitigated by reason and evaluation.
- Vannevar Bush
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