This Bad Day

So you think you're having a bad day? STFU, crybaby.

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On this bad day in 1839 (09/09/1839), Maria Swanenburg was born. Swanenburg  was a Dutch serial killer who murdered at least 27, and was suspected of killing more than 90 people. Her nickname was Goeie Mie (which translates as Good Mee) which she got for taking care of children and ill people in the poor neighborhood of Leiden in which she lived.

It was established with certainty she poisoned at least 102 people with arsenic of which 27 died (16 of those were her relatives) between 1880 and 1883. The investigation included more than ninety suspicious deaths. Her first victim was her own mother in 1880; shortly after this, she killed her father too. She was caught when trying to poison the Frankhuizen family in 1883. Her trial began in 1885. She was found guilty of murder of her last three victims and sentenced to life in a correctional facility. She died there in 1915. 

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On this bad day (08/10/1932), Rin Tin Tin passed of old age at home. Rin Tin Tin was a male German Shepherd rescued from a World War I battlefield by an American soldier, Lee Duncan. Duncan trained Rin Tin Tin and obtained silent film work for the dog. Rin Tin Tin was an immediate box office success and went on to appear in 27 Hollywood films, gaining worldwide fame. In 1929, Rin Tin Tin may have received the most votes for the first Academy Award for Best Actor, but the Academy determined that a human should win.

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On this bad day (08/09/378 AD), 30,000 Roman troops led by the Roman Emperor Valens arrived at Adrianople after marching for seven hours over difficult terrain. The reconnaissance of the preceding days had informed him of the location of 80,000 Gothic rebels led by Fritigern.

Complacent Roman commanders began the battle without orders to do so, believing they would have an easy victory. The Battle of Adrianople ended with an overwhelming victory for the Goths as the Romans lost over 2/3 of their army. In the rout, the Emperor himself was abandoned by his guards. Valens' final fate is unknown; he probably died anonymously on the field. His body was never found. 

Part of the Gothic War (376–382), the battle is often considered the start of the process which led to the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century.

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On this bad day (08/08/1925), the Ku Klux Klan paraded in the streets of Washington, DC. The march’s aims were somewhat ambiguous. The teaching of evolution in public schools was a burning issue at the time. The procession was seen in some quarters as an opportunity for the northern chapters to wrest power from the South. Some say it was organized to counter reports of faltering enrollment. 

At the time, the KKK had over 4 million members nationally. Estimates of the size of the parade range from 25,000 to 40,000 to 60,000 up to 200,000. 

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On this bad day (08/07/1933), the Iraqi army moved north in order to crush the Assyrians, who had been demanding autonomy within Iraq. The Simele massacre is a term used to describe not only the massacre in Simele, but also the killing spree that took place among 63 Assyrian villages that led to the deaths of between 600 and 3,000 Assyrians.

The massacres also had a deep impact on the newly established Kingdom of Iraq. Kanan Makiya argues that the killing of Assyrians transcended tribal, religious, ideological and ethnic barriers as Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs, Sunni Kurds, Sunni Turkmen, Shia Turkmen, and Yazidis ; Monarchists, Islamists, nationalists, royalists, conservatives, Leftists, federalists, and tribalists, were all united in their anti-Assyrian and anti-Christian sentiments. According to him, the pogrom was "the first genuine expression of national independence in a former Arab province of the Ottoman Empire" and that the killing of Assyrian Christians was seen as a national duty.

7 August officially became known as Martyrs Day or National Day of Mourning by the Assyrian community in memory for the Simele massacre.

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On this bad day (08/06/1824), William Palmer - known as the Rugeley Poisoner or the Prince of Poisoners - was born. Palmer was an English doctor found guilty of murder in one of the most notorious cases of the 19th century. Charles Dickens called Palmer "the greatest villain that ever stood in the Old Bailey".

Palmer was convicted for the 1855 murder of his friend John Cook. He had poisoned Cook with strychnine, and was suspected of poisoning several other people including his brother and his mother-in-law, as well as four of his children who died of "convulsions" before their first birthdays. Palmer made large sums of money from the deaths of his wife and brother after collecting on life insurance, and by defrauding his wealthy mother out of thousands of pounds, all of which he lost through gambling on horses.

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The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization or PATCO was a United States trade union that operated from 1968 until its decertification in 1981 following a strike that was broken by the Reagan Administration. The 1981 strike and defeat of PATCO was called "one of the most important events in late twentieth century U.S. labor history" by labor historian Joseph A. McCartin.

The union had declared a strike, seeking better working conditions, better pay and a 32-hour workweek. Ronald Reagan declared the PATCO strike a "peril to national safety" and ordered them back to work under the terms of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. Subsequently, Reagan demanded those remaining on strike return to work within 48 hours, otherwise their jobs would be forfeited.

On this bad day (08/05/1981), following the PATCO workers' refusal to work, Reagan fired the 11,345 striking air traffic controllers, and banned them from federal service for life. Many of the strikers were forced into poverty as a result of being blacklisted for U.S. government employment. 

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On this bad day (08/04/1578), The Battle of Alcácer Quibir (also known as Battle of Three Kings, or Battle of Oued El Makhazeen in Morocco, and Battle of Alcazar in English) was fought in northern Morocco, near the town of Ksar-el-Kebir. The combatants were the army of the deposed Moroccan Sultan Abu Abdallah Mohammed II, with his ally, the King of Portugal Sebastian I, and a large Moroccan army nominally under the new Sultan of Morocco Abd Al-Malik I.

The battle ended after nearly four hours of heavy fighting and resulted in the total defeat of the Portuguese and Abu Abdallah's army with 8,000 dead, including the slaughter of almost the whole of the country’s nobility, and 15,000 taken prisoner; perhaps 100 survivors escaped to the coast. The body of King Sebastian, who led a charge into the midst of the enemy and was then cut off, was never found. Portugal and its Empire were not de jure incorporated into the Spanish Empire, and remained as a separate realm of the Spanish Habsburgs until 1640 when it broke away through the Portuguese Restoration War.

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On this bad day (08/03/1913), the Wheatland Hop Riot took place at the Durst Ranch in Wheatland, California, which was embroiled in a strike of agricultural workers. The riot resulted in four deaths and numerous injuries and was subsequently blamed by authorities upon the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). 

The owner of Durst Ranch rounded up local authorities to put down the strike. The sheriff and his men approached the speakers' platform at an assembly of the striking farm workers and the workers began to intervene on the leaders’ behalf. Greatly outnumbered, one of the law enforcement officials fired a shotgun into the air in an effort to disperse the crowd. The shot provoked the opposite effect and many members of the crowd jumped on the District Attorney and Deputy Sheriff and began beating them.

A coroner's inquest was conducted which concluded that the IWW strike leadership had caused the riot which lead to the death of the District Attorney. On January 13, 1914 the recognized leaders of the strike were found guilty of second-degree murder after one day of jury deliberations. They received life sentences in the state penitentiary. 

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On this bad day (08/02/216 BC), the army of Carthage decisively defeated a larger army of the Roman Republic at the Battle of Cannae. It is regarded both as one of the greatest tactical feats in military history and as one of the worst defeats in Roman history.

Under Hannibal, 50,000 Carthaginian troops faced roughly 86,000 Roman and allied troops. Hannibal lost approximately 6,000 while Polybius writes that of the Roman and allied infantry, 70,000 were killed, 10,000 captured, and "perhaps" 3,000 survived.  The Roman army was effectively destroyed as a fighting force. Following the defeat, Capua and several other Italian city-states defected from the Roman Republic to Carthage.

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On this bad day (08/01/1589), King Henry III of France was assassinated. Henry was a monarch of the House of Valois who was elected the monarch of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from 1573 to 1575 and ruled as King of France from 1574 until his death. Reports that Henry engaged in same sex relations with his court favorites date back to his own time. The scholar Louis Crompton provides substantial contemporary evidence of Henry III's homosexuality, and the resulting problems at court and politics

During the War of the Three Henrys, Henry was preparing to attack Paris when a young Dominican friar, Jacques Clément, was granted access to deliver important documents to the king. The king signaled for his attendants to step back for privacy, and Clément whispered in his ear while plunging a knife into his abdomen. Clément was then killed on the spot by the guards.

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On this bad day (07/31/1917), the British forces in Flanders engaged the forces of the German Empire to begin the Battle of Passchendaele - also referred to as the Third Battle of Ypres - one of the major campaigns of the First World War. The costly offensive, ending with the capture of Passchendaele village, merely widened the Ypres Salient by a few kilometers.

In the Official History, British casualties were tallied at 244,897 and German figures were estimated at 400,000. In 2007, an independent historian estimated 399,590 German losses. The British claim to have taken 24,065 prisoners has not been disputed.

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On this bad day (07/30/1419), Jan Želivský, a Hussite priest, led his congregation on a procession through the streets of Prague to the New Town Hall, protesting the town council’s arrest of Hussite activists. While they were marching, a stone was thrown at Želivský from the window of the town hall. This enraged the mob and they stormed the building. Once inside the hall, the group threw the judge, the burgomaster, and some thirteen members of the town council out of the window and into the street, where they were killed by the fall or dispatched by the mob. 

The First Defenestration of Prague was thus the turning point between talk and action leading to the prolonged Hussite Wars. The wars broke out shortly afterward and lasted until 1436. 

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Samuel de Champlain, “The Father of New France", was a French navigator, cartographer, draughtsman, soldier, explorer, geographer, ethnologist, diplomat, and chronicler. He founded New France and Quebec City. 

On this bad day (07/29/1606), Champlain and his party encountered a group of Iroquois somewhere in the area near Ticonderoga and Crown Point, New York. Two hundred Iroquois advanced on Champlain's position, and one of his guides pointed out the three Iroquois chiefs. In his account of the battle, Champlain recounts firing his arquebus and killing two of them with a single shot, after which one of his men killed the third. The Iroquois turned and fled. 

This action started a series of uprisings and conflicts between various Native American tribes and the French, Dutch, and English colonial settlements of Canada, New York, and New England, including the Beaver Wars, the Powhatan wars of 1610–14, 1622–32 and 1644–46 in Virginia, the Pequot War of 1637 in Connecticut, the Dutch-Indian War of 1643 and King Philip's War.

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The Bonus Army was the popular name of some 43,000 marchers of World War I veterans, their families, and affiliated groups who gathered in Washington, D.C., in the spring and summer of 1932 to demand cash-payment redemption of their service certificates. The World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924 had awarded them bonuses in the form of certificates they could not redeem until 1945. Many of the war veterans had been out of work since the beginning of the Great Depression.

On this bad day (07/28/1932), President Herbert Hoover ordered the army to clear the veterans' campsite. Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur commanded the infantry and cavalry supported by six tanks. After the cavalry charged, the infantry, with fixed bayonets and tear gas entered the camps, evicting veterans, families, and camp followers. Two veterans died, 55 were injured and 135 arrested. A veteran's wife miscarried. When the 12-week-old died in the hospital after being caught in the tear gas attack, a government investigation reported he died of enteritis, while a hospital spokesman said the tear gas "didn't do it any good." 

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On this bad day (07/27/1976), the Tangshan earthquake, the largest earthquake of the 20th century by death toll, occurred. The epicenter of the earthquake was near Tangshan in Hebei, People's Republic of China, an industrial city with approximately one million inhabitants. The number of deaths initially reported by the Chinese government was 655,000, but this number has since been stated to be around 240,000 to 255,000. Another report indicates that the actual death toll was much higher, at approximately 650,000, and explains that the lower estimates are limited to Tangshan and exclude fatalities in the densely populated surrounding areas. 

A further 164,000 people were recorded as being severely injured. The earthquake occurred between a series of political events involving the Communist Party of China, ultimately leading to the expulsion of the ruling Gang of Four by Mao's chosen successor, Hua Guofeng. In traditional Chinese thought, natural disasters are seen as a precursor of dynastic change.

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On this bad day (07/26/1991), Paul Reubens was arrested in Sarasota, Florida for masturbating during a film at an adult theater. Reubens is an American actor, writer, film producer, game show host, and comedian, best known for his character Pee-wee Herman. 

Reubens' attorneys agreed to a plea in which Reubens pled no contest, while maintaining his innocence, so as to avoid what would have been a highly publicized trial. The plea kept the charge off Reubens' record and obligated him to spend 75 hours performing community service. Despite the negative publicity, many artists who knew Reubens spoke out in his support. Bill Cosby defended Reubens, saying, "Whatever [Reubens has] done, this is being blown all out of proportion."