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Highlights for November 19
1863 Lincoln Delivers Gettysburg Address
We tend to forget that President Lincoln's remarks -- lasting only a minute or so -- were NOT the featured oration that day. Edward Everett gave a three-hour speech describing the battle. At the close of a dedication ceremony for a cemetery for Union army dead at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, President Abraham Lincoln delivers his Gettysburg Address, commonly considered one of the finest speeches ever uttered by an American politician. Asked to make "a few appropriate remarks," the usually long-winded Lincoln articulates, in less than three hundred words, an eloquent memorial to the thousands of Union soldiers who fell on the battlefields of Gettysburg, explains the historical relevance of their sacrifice, and calls for the living to resolve that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." The hard-won Union victory at the bloody three-day battle of Gettysburg ended the northern invasion of Confederate forces under General Robert E. Lee, but resulted in over 20,000 Union casualties.
The Lincoln Memorial, which opened in Washington, D.C., in 1922, features the words of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address carved into its interior marble walls.
1924 The story of Thomas Ince's death takes on a life of its own
Silent film director Thomas Harper Ince, "The Father of the Western," dies in his bed in Los Angeles, California. Although Ince died of a heart attack, rumors that he had been shot to death by publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst circulated for years. The rumors were so persistent that they were often reported as fact by many publications and books, and some even still believe that the Hollywood community covered up Ince's murder.
A stage performer as a teenager, Ince began directing silent films in his 20s. His movies were so successful that he was able to build his own studio on a large tract of coastal land between Santa Monica and Malibu. At the Inceville Studio, he filmed many of Hollywood's earliest Westerns, including Custer's Last Fight in 1912.
Ince was at the peak of his film career when he agreed to take a cruise on William Randolph Hearst's yacht on November 16, 1924, to celebrate his 42nd birthday with Hearst, Charlie Chaplin, actress Marion Davies (Hearst's longtime paramour) and others. While aboard the yacht, Ince suffered a heart attack. He debarked in San Diego and boarded a train to Los Angeles, where he died at home three days later.
Partly fueled by Hearst and Chaplin's inexplicable denial that they were even on the yacht when Ince suffered his heart attack, rumors began to spread that Hearst had shot Ince. There were two main theories surrounding the death: some believed that Hearst caught Ince with Davies, while others speculated that Hearst actually intended to shoot Chaplin. Although investigators confirmed that Ince had died as a result of a heart attack, the rumors persisted.
Years after the incident, publications continued to print false reports that Hearst had secretly supplied Ince's widow with a trust fund because he had killed her husband. Hearst's granddaughter, Patty Hearst, wrote a novel based on the rumors entitled, Murder at San Simeon. Though rumors about the "murder" continue, the death of Thomas Ince is the greatest Hollywood scandal that never happened.
1942 Soviet Counterattack at Stalingrad
The Soviet Red Army under General Georgi Zhukov launches Operation Uranus, the great Soviet counter-offensive that turns the tide of the Battle of Stalingrad. On August 23, 1943, the German Sixth Army sighted the Russian city of Stalingrad on the banks of the Volga River, the pre-designated boundary of the Third Reich. As part of the summer campaign by German forces in Russia, the Sixth Army under Field Marshall Friedrich von Paulus was to take Stalingrad, an industrial center and obstacle to Nazi control of the precious Caucasian oil wells. As the Sixth Army approached Stalingrad, the German Fourth Air Fleet under General Wolfram von Richthofen reduced the city to a burning rubble, and killed over forty thousand civilians.
At the beginning of September, General Paulus ordered the first offensives against Stalingrad, estimating that it would take his army about ten days to capture the city. Thus began the most horrific battle of World War II, and arguably the most important because it marked the turning point in the war between Nazi Germany and the U.S.S.R. In Stalingrad, the German Sixth Army faced a bitter Red Army employing the ruined city to their advantage, transforming destroyed buildings and rubble into natural fortifications. In a method of fighting the Germans began to call the Rattenkrieg, or "Rat's War," the opposing forces broke into squads eight or ten strong, and fought each other for every house and yard of territory. The battle saw rapid advances in the technology of street fighting, such as a German machine gun that shot around corners and a light Russian plane that glided silently over German positions at night, dropping lethal bombs without warning. However, both sides lacked the necessary food, water, or medical supplies, and tens of thousands perished.
Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was determined to liberate the city named after him and in November he ordered massive reinforcements to the area. German command underestimated the scale of the imminent counterattack, and the Sixth Army was quickly overwhelmed in Operation Uranus, which involved eleven Soviet armies, 900 tanks, and 1,400 aircraft. Within three days, the entire German force of over 200,000 men was encircled. For the next two months, the Germans desperately hung on, waiting for reinforcements that never came. Starvation and the bitter Russian winter took as many lives as the merciless Soviet troops, and when Field Marshal Friedrich Von Paulus finally surrendered on February 2, 1943, only 90,000 German soldiers were still alive.
Other Highlights for November 19
1863 Lincoln Delivers Gettysburg Address
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