On This Date In History
On March 1, 1872, President Grant signs the bill creating the nation’s first national park at Yellowstone.
Native
Americans had lived and hunted in the region that would become
Yellowstone for hundreds of years before the first Anglo explorers
arrived. Abundant game and mountain streams teaming with fish attracted
the Indians to the region, though the awe inspiring geysers, canyons,
and gurgling mud pots also fascinated them.
John Colter, the famous
mountain man, was the first Anglo to travel through the area. After
journeying with Lewis and Clark to the Pacific, Colter joined a party of
fur trappers to explore the wilderness. In 1807, he explored part of
the Yellowstone plateau and returned with fantastic stories of steaming
geysers and bubbling cauldrons. Some doubters accused the mountain man
of telling tall tales and jokingly dubbed the area “Colter’s Hell.”
Before
the Civil War, only a handful of trappers and hunters ventured into the
area, and it remained largely a mystery. In 1869, the Folsom-Cook
expedition made the first formal exploration, followed a year later by a
much more thorough reconnaissance by the Washburn-Langford-Doane
expedition. The key to Yellowstone’s future as a national park, though,
was the 1871 exploration under the direction of the government geologist
Ferdinand Hayden. Hayden brought along William Jackson, a pioneering
photographer, and Thomas Moran, a brilliant landscape artist, to make a
visual record of the expedition. Their images provided the first visual
proof of Yellowstone’s wonders and caught the attention of the U.S.
Congress.
Early in 1872, Congress moved to set aside 1,221,773 acres
of public land straddling the future states of Wyoming, Montana, and
Idaho as America’s first national park. President Grant signed the bill
into law on this day in 1872. The Yellowstone Act of 1872 designated the
region as a public “pleasuring-ground,” which would be preserved “from
injury or spoilation, of all timber, mineral deposits, natural
curiosities, or wonders within.”
For a nation bent on settling and
exploiting the West, the creation of Yellowstone was surprising. Many
congressmen gave it their support simply because they believed the
rugged and isolated region was of little economic value. Yet the
Yellowstone Act of 1872 set a precedent and popularized the idea of
preserving sections of the public domain for use as public parks.
Congress went on to designate dozens of other national parks, and the
idea spread to other nations around the world.
Ferdinand Hayden
Hayden Survey At Mirror Lake En Route To East Fork Of The Yellowstone River - August 24, 1871
Hayden Geological Survey - Yellowstone National Park - Began 6.8.1871
On March 1, 1966, Venera 3, a Soviet probe launched from Kazakhstan on November 15, 1965, collides with Venus, the second planet from the sun. Although Venera 3 failed in its mission to measure the Venusian atmosphere, it was the first unmanned spacecraft to reach the surface of another planet. Four years earlier, the U.S. probe Mariner 2 was the first spacecraft to pass close enough to Venus to take scientific measurements of the planet, discovering surface temperatures in excess of 800 degrees Fahrenheit on its surface.
In 1967, Venera 4 succeeded where Venera 3 failed, successfully ejecting several scientific instruments, including a thermometer, a barometer, an atmospheric density gauge, and gas analyzers, into Venus’ atmosphere. Then, in 1970, Venera 7 became the first spacecraft created by humans to soft-land on Venus, successfully sending back images and data for 23 minutes before succumbing to the extremely high temperature and atmospheric pressure found on the planet’s surface.
On March 1, 1971, a bomb explodes in the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., causing an estimated $300,000 in damage but hurting no one. A group calling itself the Weather Underground claimed credit for the bombing, which was done in protest of the ongoing U.S. supported Laos invasion.
The so-called Weathermen were a radical faction of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); the Weathermen advocated violent means to transform American society. The philosophical foundations of the Weathermen were Marxist in nature; they believed that militant struggle was the key to striking out against the state to build a revolutionary consciousness among the young, particularly the white working class. Their primary tools to achieving these ends were arson and bombing.
Among the other targets of Weathermen bombings were the Long Island Court House, the New York Police Department headquarters, the Pentagon, and the State Department. No one was killed in these bombings, because the bombers always called in an advanced warning. However, three members of the Weather Underground died on March 6, 1970, when the house in which they were constructing the bombs exploded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbQCpUhONtk&t=29s
On March 1, 1692, in Salem Village in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Sarah Goode, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba, an Indian slave from Barbados, are charged with the illegal practice of witchcraft. Later that day, Tituba, possibly under coercion, confessed to the crime, encouraging the authorities to seek out more Salem witches.
Trouble in the small Puritan community began the month before, when nine year-old Elizabeth Parris and 11 year-old Abigail Williams, the daughter and niece, respectively, of the Reverend Samuel Parris, began experiencing fits and other mysterious maladies. A doctor concluded that the children were suffering from the effects of witchcraft, and the young girls corroborated the doctor’s diagnosis. With encouragement from a number of adults in the community, the girls, who were soon joined by other “afflicted” Salem residents, accused a widening circle of local residents of witchcraft, mostly middle aged women but also several men and even one four year-old child. During the next few months, the afflicted area residents incriminated more than 150 women and men from Salem Village and the surrounding areas of Satanic practices.
In June 1692, the special Court of Oyer, “to hear,” and Terminer, “to decide,” convened in Salem under Chief Justice William Stoughton to judge the accused. The first to be tried was Bridget Bishop of Salem, who was found guilty and executed by hanging on June 10. Thirteen more women and four men from all stations of life followed her to the gallows, and one man, Giles Corey, was executed by crushing. Most of those tried were condemned on the basis of the witnesses’ behavior during the actual proceedings, characterized by fits and hallucinations that were argued to be caused by the defendants on trial.
In October 1692, Governor William Phipps of Massachusetts ordered the Court of Oyer and Terminer dissolved and replaced with the Superior Court of Judicature, which forbade the type of sensational testimony allowed in the earlier trials. Executions ceased, and the Superior Court eventually released all those awaiting trial and pardoned those sentenced to death. The Salem Witch Trials, which resulted in the executions of 19 innocent women and men, had effectively ended.
On March 1, 1781, the Articles of Confederation are finally ratified. The Articles were signed by Congress and sent to the individual states for ratification on November 15, 1777, after 16 months of debate. Bickering over land claims between Virginia and Maryland delayed final ratification for almost four more years. Maryland finally approved the Articles on March 1, 1781, affirming the Articles as the outline of the official government of the United States. The nation was guided by the Articles of Confederation until the implementation of the current U.S. Constitution in 1789.
The critical distinction between the Articles of Confederation and the U.S. Constitution, the primacy of the states under the Articles, is best understood by comparing the following lines.
The Articles of Confederation begin:
“To all to whom these Present shall come, we the undersigned Delegates of the States”
By contrast, the Constitution begins:
“We the People of the United States do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
The predominance of the states under the Articles of Confederation is made even more explicit by the claims of Article II:
“Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.”
Less than five years after the ratification of the Articles of Confederation, enough leading Americans decided that the system was inadequate to the task of governance that they peacefully overthrew their second government in just over 20 years. The difference between a collection of sovereign states forming a confederation and a federal government created by a sovereign people lay at the heart of debate as the new American people decided what form their government would take.
Between 1776 and 1787, Americans went from living under a sovereign king, to living in sovereign states, to becoming a sovereign people. That transformation defined the American Revolution.
On March 1, 1917, the text of the so-called Zimmermann Telegram, a message from the German foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, to the German ambassador to Mexico proposing a Mexican-German alliance in the case of war between the United States and Germany, is published on the front pages of newspapers across America.
In the telegram, intercepted and deciphered by British intelligence in January 1917, Zimmermann instructed the ambassador, Count Johann von Bernstorff, to offer significant financial aid to Mexico if it agreed to enter any future U.S-German conflict as a German ally. If victorious in the conflict, Germany also promised to restore to Mexico the lost territories of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.
U.S. President Woodrow Wilson learned of the telegram’s contents on February 26; the next day he proposed to Congress that the U.S. should start arming its ships against possible German attacks. He also authorized the State Department to make public the Zimmermann Telegram. On March 1, the news broke. Germany had already aroused Wilson’s ire, and that of the American public, with its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare and its continued attacks against American ships. Some of those in the United States who still held out for neutrality at first claimed the telegram was a fake. This notion was dispelled two days later, when Zimmermann himself confirmed its authenticity.
Public opinion in the United States now swung firmly toward American entrance into World War I. On April 2, Wilson went before Congress to deliver a message of war. The United States formally entered the conflict four days later.
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