(WHTM) Last year I did a little piece titled "What else happened on the 4th of July." I had a lot of fun doing it, and I hope folks enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Of course, there's still a lot of 4th of July history to cover. So, here are a few more events from around the world and across the centuries.
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362 B.C.E. At the Battle of Mantinea, Thebans led by General Epaminonda defeat the Spartans, who had been occupying Thebes since the Peloponnesian War (431–404 B.C.). The Spartans were weakened, Epaminonda died in the battle, and long term the battle was a lose-lose, because it weakened the Greeks enough for Phillip II of Macedonia to invade and conquer Greece (with a little help from his son Alexander, who went on to make a name for himself. )
1584 Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe, two British captains sent to find land in the New World for England to claim, arrive at Roanoke Island. The land they found is named Virginia after Queen Elizabeth; Sir Walter Raleigh would establish a colony on the island in 1585. Because of hostilities with Spain, British supply ships didn't return to the island until 1590, to find the colony and colonists had vanished. The mystery of the "Lost Colony" endures to this day.
1634 City of Trois-Rivières is founded in New France, or as we call it today, Quebec, Canada. It's located about midway between Montreal and Quebec City, where the Saint-Maurice River flows into the Saint Lawrence. It's called Trois-Rivières (Three Rivers) because a pair of islands divides the Saint-Maurice into three channels as it enters the Saint Lawrence.
1744 In Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the Iroquois sign a treaty ceding lands between the Allegheny Mountains and the Ohio River to the British. With great originality, this was called the Treaty of Lancaster.
1832 Writer and activist John Neal makes the first public speech advocating for the rights of women in the United States. (He didn't just make a speech, but pushed for women's rights for over 50 years.)
1838 the Iowa Territory is organized. The territory existed until December 28, 1846, when the southeastern portion of the territory joined the Union as the State of Iowa. The rest of the land would be a territory with an organized territorial government until March 3, 1849, when the Minnesota Territory was established.
1886 The Canadian Pacific Railway's first transcontinental train arrives in Port Moody on the Pacific coast, having made a six-day trip from Montreal.
1898 Off the coast of Sable Island, located about 190 miles southeast of Halifax, Nova Scotia, SS La Bourgogne, en route from New York to Le Havre, collides with the British sailing ship Cromartyshire and sinks with the loss of 549 lives. The scandalous aspect of this disaster is that 48 percent of the crew survived - but only 13% of the passengers.
1910 In a boxing match billed "The Fight of the Century" African American boxing Champion Jack Johnson knocks out white boxer Jim Jeffries in the 15th round. This triggers the "Johnson-Jeffries race riots" in cities across the nation, as angry whites attack negroes, leaving somewhere between 11 and 26 people dead, and hundreds injured.
1913 President Woodrow Wilson addresses Civil War veterans at Gettysburg during the Great Reunion of 1913.
1939 At the age of 36, Lou Gehrig announces his retirement from baseball to the crowd at Yankee Stadium. He has been diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, for which there is no cure. It will kill him in less than two years. But he would tell the crowd "Fans, for the past two weeks, you've been reading about a bad break. Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been in ballparks for 17 years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans."