Hollow Leg History | What Happened on This Date, September 19?

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1356

English forces under Edward the Black Prince defeat the French at Battle of Poitiers and capture the French King John II. The Battle of Poitiers was a major English victory in the Hundred Years' War. Edward, the Black Prince, led an army of English, Welsh, Breton and Gascon troops, many of them veterans of the Battle of Crécy. They were attacked by a larger French force led by King John II of France, which included allied Scottish forces. The French were heavily defeated; an English counter-attack captured King John II along with his youngest son and much of the French nobility. Jean de Venette, a Carmelite friar, vividly describes the chaos that ensued following the battle. The demise of the French nobility at the battle, only ten years from the catastrophe at Crécy, threw the kingdom into chaos. The realm was left in the hands of the Dauphin Charles, who faced popular rebellion across the kingdom in the wake of the defeat. Jean writes that the French nobles brutally repressed the rebellions, robbing, despoiling, and pillaging the peasants' goods. Mercenary companies hired by both sides added to the destruction, plundering the peasants and the churches. Poitiers was the second major English victory of the Hundred Years' War. Poitiers was fought ten years after the Battle of Crécy (the first major victory), and about half a century before the third, the Battle of Agincourt (1415).

1692

A part of the Salem Witch Trials, Giles Corey is pressed to death for standing mute and refusing to answer charges of witchcraft brought against him. He is the only person in America to have suffered this punishment. Giles Corey seems to have been a man of steel; as he was steadfast in refusal to plead, nor did he cry out in pain as the rocks were added on the boards. After two days, Corey was asked three times to enter a plea, but each time he replied, "More weight."

1881

President James A. Garfield, who had been in office just under four months, succumbs to wounds inflicted by an assassin 80 days earlier, on July 2. Garfield’s assassin was an attorney and political office-seeker named Charles Guiteau. Guiteau was a relative stranger to the president and his administration in an era when federal positions were doled out on a “who you know” basis. When his requests for an appointment were ignored, a furious Guiteau stalked the president, vowing revenge. Guiteau was deemed sane by a jury, convicted of murder and hanged on June 30, 1882. Garfield’s spine, which shows the hole created by the bullet, is kept as a historical artifact by the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C.

1944

Hürtgen Forest swallows up an advancing US army. Allied forces advance eastward after the Normandy invasion, and as the US 60th Infantry Regiment enters Germany's Hürtgen Forest, a bloody fight begins that will be named the longest single battle in US Army history, and later almost forgotten in the shadow of the Battle of the Bulge. The battle of the Hurtgen ended in a German defensive victory and the whole offensive was a dismal failure for the Allies The Americans suffered between 33,000 - 55,000 casualties, included 9,000 non-combat losses and represented a 25 percent casualty rate. The Germans had also suffered heavy losses with 28,000 casualties - many of these were non combat and prisoners of war.

2010

Oil rig Deepwater Horizon is declared sealed after a 5-month long spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Thought to be one of the biggest accidents in the oil and gas industry, the Deepwater Horizon spill or the BP oil spill began on April 20, 2010, when an explosion destroyed the rig and killed 11 people.