| 1969 Unions want wage and price controls. Sensing a slide in the nation's economy, long-standing AFL-CIO leader George Meany calls on the government in 1969 to implement wage and price controls. It wasn't until two years later that President Nixon heeded his advice and installed a wage and price freeze. However, the move did little to revive the slumping economy. |
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1963 Alabama troopers prevent desegregation. . . for
8 days Governor George Corley Wallace [25 Aug 1919 – 13 Sep 1998] prevents the racial integration of Tuskegee High School in Tuskegee, Alabama, by encircling the building with state troopers. Eight days later, President John F. Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard and called them to the area, forcing Wallace to abandon his attempt to block the desegregation of Alabama public schools. George Wallace, one of the most controversial politicians in US history, was elected governor of Alabama in 1962 under an ultra-segregationist platform. In his 1963 inaugural address, Wallace promised his white followers: "Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!" However, the promise lasted only six months. In June of the same year, under federal pressure, he was forced to end his blockade of the University of Alabama and allow the enrollment of Black students. Despite his failures in slowing the accelerating civil-rights movement in the South, Wallace became a national spokesman for resistance to racial change, and in 1964 entered the race for the US presidency. Although defeated in most Democratic presidential primaries he entered, his modest successes demonstrated the extent of popular backlash against segregation. In 1968, he made another strong run as the candidate of the American Independent party, and managed to get on the ballot in all fifty states. On election day, he drew ten million votes from all across the country. In 1972, Governor Wallace returned to the Democratic party for his third presidential campaign, and under a slightly more moderate platform was showing promising returns when he was shot by Arthur Bremer on 15 May 1972. Three others were wounded, and Wallace was permanently paralyzed from the waist down. The next day, while fighting for his life in a hospital, he won major primary victories in Michigan and Maryland. However, Wallace remained in the hospital for several months, bringing his third presidential campaign to an irrevocable end. After his recovery, he faded from national prominence and made a poor showing in his fourth and final presidential campaign in 1979. During the 1980s, Wallace's politics shifted dramatically, especially in regard to race. In 1983, he was elected Alabama governor for the last time with the overwhelming support of Black voters. Over the next four years, the man who had promised segregation forever made more political appointments of Blacks than any other figure in Alabama history. |
1956 Tennessee National Guardsmen halt rioters protesting the admission of 12 Blacks to schools in Clinton.
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1946 O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh opens on
Broadway. Hailed by many critics as Eugene O’Neill’s finest work, The Iceman Cometh opens at the Martin Beck Theater. The play, about desperate tavern bums clinging to illusion as a remedy for despair, would be the last O’Neill play to be produced on Broadway before the author’s death. Like many of his other works, the play drew on O’Neill’s firsthand experiences with all-night dive bars and desperate characters. Although his actor father sent him to top prep schools and to Princeton, Eugene Gladstone O’Neill [16 Oct 1888 – 27 Nov 1953] dropped out of college after a year. He went to sea, searched for gold in South America, haunted the waterfront bars in Buenos Aires, Liverpool, and New York, and married briefly. He drank heavily. In 1912 O’Neill came down with tuberculosis and was sent to a sanitarium in Connecticut. While recovering, he wrote his first play and decided to devote himself to drama. He began churning out gritty, realistic plays about lives on the margins of society. He wrote nine plays from 1913 to 1914, six from 1916 to 1917, and four in 1918. In 1917, a Greenwich Village theater group, the Provincetown Players, performed his one-act play Thirst. The group became closely associated with O’Neill’s future work. In 1920, his first full-length play, Beyond the Horizon, was produced on Broadway. Between 1920 and 1943, O’Neill wrote 20 long plays and several short ones. His work was groundbreaking in its use of slangy, everyday dialogue, its dingy, run-down settings, and his experimental use of light, sound, and casting to set an emotional tone. O’Neill’s family life had been very unhappy. His father became rich playing just one theater role, the Count of Monte Cristo, for many years and never succeeded in becoming a more serious actor. His mother used morphine, and his beloved older brother became an alcoholic. All three died between 1920 and 1923. O’Neill wrote several autobiographical plays about his family after they died, including A Moon for the Misbegotten (produced in 1957) and Long Day’s Journey Into Night (produced in 1956). Other major works include The Hairy Ape (1923) and Mourning Becomes Electra (1931). Although O’Neill was an outgoing host with an active social life during his second marriage, he became reclusive during his third. In the 1940s, he developed a degenerative nervous disease, and he died in Boston. Many critics call O’Neill the US’s first major playwright. |
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1945 Ho Chi Minh declares Vietnamese Independence. Hours after the unconditional Japanese surrender in World War II, Ho Chi Minh, 65, the veteran Vietnamese Communist, proclaims the independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Near the end of World War I, Ho Chi Minh emigrated to France where, in 1920, he became a founding member of the French Communist Party. He later traveled to the Soviet Union, where he became a Comitern member and studied revolutionary tactics. Returning to East Asia in the mid-1920s, he set about organizing revolutionaries in China, and with the outbreak of World War II, returned to his Vietnamese homeland. He organized a Vietnamese independence movement — the Viet Minh — and raised a guerilla army to oppose the Japanese occupation of Vietnam. On 02 September 1945, Ho proclaims the independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam, hoping to prevent the French from reclaiming their former colonial possession. In 1946, he would be elected president of Vietnam, but in the same year, grudgingly accept the French demand that Vietnam exist as an autonomous state within the French Union. Nevertheless, fighting between Vietnamese nationalists and the French broke out soon afterwards, and in 1949, the French named Bao Dai their puppet emperor of all Vietnam. In the same year, with military and economic assistance of newly Communist China, Ho Chi Minh began a war of resistance against French and Southern Vietnamese forces, who were armed largely by the US In 1954, the French suffered, from the forces of general Giap, a major defeat at Dien Bien Phu in northwest Vietnam, prompting the division of Vietnam along the seventeenth parallel at the conference of Geneva. Ho Chi Minh became president of North Vietnam and set about organizing a Communist guerrilla movement in the South, the "National Liberation Front," also known as the Viet Cong. Ho and the Viet Cong successfully opposed a series of ineffectual US-backed South Vietnam regimes and beginning in 1963, withstood a decade-long military intervention by the United States. Ho Chi Minh died in 1969, the day after the 14th anniversary of his declaration of independence, and six years later Vietnam was reunited as an independent Communist nation. Vietnam declares its independence and Nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh proclaims himself first president. The proclamation paraphrased the US Declaration of Independence in declaring, "All men are born equal: the Creator has given us inviolable rights, life, liberty, and happiness!" and was cheered by an enormous crowd gathered in Hanoi's Ba Dinh Square. It would be 30 years, however, before Ho's dream of a united, communist Vietnam became reality. Born in 1890, Ho Chi Minh left Vietnam as a cook on a French steamer in 1911. After several years as a seaman, he lived in London and then moved to France, where he became a founding member of the French Communist Party in 1920. He later traveled to the Soviet Union, where he studied revolutionary tactics and took an active role in the Communist International. In 1924, he went to China, where he set about organizing exiled Vietnamese communists. Expelled by China in 1927, he traveled extensively before returning to Vietnam in 1941. There, he organized a Vietnamese guerrilla organization — the Viet Minh — to fight for Vietnamese independence. Japan occupied French Indochina in 1940 and collaborated with French officials loyal to France's Vichy regime. Ho, meanwhile, made contact with the Allies and aided operations against the Japanese in South China. In early 1945, Japan ousted the French administration in Vietnam and executed numerous French officials. When Japan formally surrendered to the Allies on 02 September 1945, Ho Chi Minh felt emboldened enough to proclaim the independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam. French forces seized southern Vietnam and opened talks with the Vietnamese communists. These talks collapsed in 1946, and French warships bombarded the northern Vietnamese city of Haiphong, killing thousands. In response, the Viet Minh launched an attack against the French in Hanoi on 19 December 1945 — the beginning of the First Indochina War. During the eight-year war, Mao Zedong's Chinese Communists supported the Viet Minh, while the United States aided the French and anti-communist Vietnamese forces. In 1954, the French suffered a major defeat at Dien Bien Phu, in northwest Vietnam, prompting peace negotiations and the division of Vietnam along the 17th parallel at a conference in Geneva. Vietnam was divided into northern and southern regions, with Ho in command of North Vietnam and Emperor Bao Dai in control of South Vietnam. In the late 1950s, Ho Chi Minh organized a Communist guerrilla movement in the South, called the Viet Cong. North Vietnam and the Viet Cong successfully opposed a series of ineffectual US-backed South Vietnam regimes and beginning in 1964 withstood a decade-long military intervention by the United States. Ho Chi Minh died on 02 September 1969, 25 years after declaring Vietnam's independence from France and nearly six years before his forces succeeded in reuniting North and South Vietnam under communist rule. Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, was renamed Ho Chi Minh City after it fell to the communists in 1975. |
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1945 Japan signs unconditional surrender ending WW
II. It is still 01 September in the US when USS Missouri hosts formal surrender of Japanese government to Allies. Representing the Allied victors are Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commander of the US Army forces in the Pacific, and Adm. Chester Nimitz, commander of the US Pacific Fleet, now promoted to the newest and highest Navy rank, fleet admiral. Among Allied officers from all of the participating countries, present was Lt. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, who had taken command of the forces in the Philippines upon MacArthur's departure and had been recently freed from a Japanese POW camp in Manchuria. Shigemitsu would be found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to seven years in prison subsequent to the surrender. The grand irony is that he had fought for concessions on the Japanese side in order to secure an early peace. He was paroled in 1950 and went on to become chairman of Japan's Progressive Party. By the summer of 1945, the defeat of Japan was a foregone conclusion. The Japanese navy and air force were destroyed. The Allied naval blockade of Japan and intensive bombing of Japanese cities had left the country and its economy devastated. At the end of June, the Americans captured Okinawa, a Japanese island from which the Allies could launch an invasion of the main Japanese home islands. US General Douglas MacArthur was put in charge of the invasion, which was code-named "Operation Olympic" and set for November 1945. The invasion of Japan promised to be the bloodiest seaborne attack of all time, conceivably 10 times as costly as the Normandy invasion in terms of Allied casualties. On 16 July, a new option became available when the United States secretly detonated the world's first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert. Ten days later, the Allies issued the Potsdam Declaration, demanding the "unconditional surrender of all the Japanese armed forces." Failure to comply would mean "the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitable the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland." On 28 July, Japanese Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki responded by telling the press that his government was "paying no attention" to the Allied ultimatum. US President Harry Truman ordered the devastation to proceed, and on 06 August, the US B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing an estimated 80'000 and fatally wounding thousands more. After the Hiroshima attack, a faction of Japan's supreme war council favored acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, but the majority resisted unconditional surrender. On 08 August, Japan's desperate situation took another turn for the worse when the USSR declared war against Japan. The next day, Soviet forces attacked in Manchuria, rapidly overwhelming Japanese positions there, and a second US atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese coastal city of Nagasaki. Just before midnight on 09 August, Japanese Emperor Hirohito convened the supreme war council. After a long, emotional debate, he backed a proposal by Prime Minister Suzuki in which Japan would accept the Potsdam Declaration "with the understanding that said Declaration does not compromise any demand that prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as the sovereign ruler." The council obeyed Hirohito's acceptance of peace, and on 10 August the message was relayed to the United States. Early on 12 August, the United States answered that "the authority of the emperor and the Japanese government to rule the state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers." After two days of debate about what this statement implied, Emperor Hirohito brushed the nuances in the text aside and declared that peace was preferable to destruction. He ordered the Japanese government to prepare a text accepting surrender. In the early hours of 15 August, a military coup was attempted by a faction led by Major Kenji Hatanaka. The rebels seized control of the imperial palace and burned Prime Minister Suzuki's residence, but shortly after dawn the coup was crushed. At noon that day, Emperor Hirohito went on national radio for the first time to announce the Japanese surrender. In his unfamiliar court language, he told his subjects, "we have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable." The United States immediately accepted Japan's surrender. President Truman appointed MacArthur to head the Allied occupation of Japan as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers. For the site of Japan's formal surrender, Truman chose the USS Missouri, a battleship that had seen considerable action in the Pacific and was named after Truman's native state. MacArthur, instructed to preside over the surrender, held off the ceremony until 02 September in order to allow time for representatives of all the major Allied powers to arrive. On Sunday, 02 September more than 250 Allied warships lay at anchor in Tokyo Bay. The flags of the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and China fluttered above the deck of the Missouri. Just after 09:00 Tokyo time, Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signed on behalf of the Japanese government. General Yoshijiro Umezu then signed for the Japanese armed forces, and his aides wept as he made his signature. Supreme Commander MacArthur next signed on behalf of the United Nations, declaring, "It is my earnest hope and indeed the hope of all mankind that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out the blood and carnage of the past." Ten more signatures were made, by the United States, China, Britain, the USSR, Australia, Canada, France, the Netherlands, and New Zealand, respectively. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz signed for the United States. As the 20-minute ceremony ended, the sun burst through low-hanging clouds. The most devastating war in human history was over. |
1944 During WW II, George Bush (Sr.) ejects from a burning plane
1944
Anne Frank is sent to Auschwitz ^top^In Nazi-occupied Holland, thirteen-year-old Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family were forced to take refuge in a secret sealed-off area of an Amsterdam warehouse on 6 July 1942. The day before, Anne's older sister, Margot, had received a call-up notice to be deported to a Nazi "work camp.” Born in Germany on 12 June, 1929, Anne Frank fled to Amsterdam with her family in 1933 to escape Nazi persecution. In the summer of 1942, with the German occupation of Holland underway, twelve-year-old Anne began a diary relating her everyday experiences, her relationship with her family and friends, and observations about the increasingly dangerous world around her. Just a few months later, under threat of deportation to Nazi concentration camps, the Frank family was forced into hiding in a secret sealed-off area of an Amsterdam warehouse. Over the next two years, under the threat of murder by the Nazi officers patrolling just outside the warehouse, Anne kept a diary that is marked by poignancy, humor, and insight. On 04 August 1944, just two months after the successful Allied landing at Normandy, the Nazi Gestapo discovers the Frank’s "Secret Annex.” Along with another Jewish family with whom they had shared the hiding place, and two of the Christians who had helped shelter them, the Franks were sent to the Nazi death camps. Anne, on 02 September 1944, and most of the others ended up at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, although her diary was left behind, undiscovered by the Nazis. On 30 October 1944, Anne was moved to Belsen. In early 1945, with the Soviet liberation of Poland underway, Anne was moved with her sister, Margot, to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. Suffering under the deplorable conditions of the camp, the two sisters caught typhus and died in early March, probably on 12 March in the case of Anne. After the war, Anne’s diary was discovered undisturbed in the Amsterdam hiding place, and in 1947, was translated into English and published. An instant bestseller which was eventually translated into over thirty languages, The Diary of Anne Frank has served as a literary testament to the six million Jews, including Anne herself, who were silenced in the Holocaust. |
1930 The first non-stop airplane flight from Europe to the US is completed in 37 hours as Capt. Dieudonné Coste and Maurice Bellonte of France arrived in Valley Stream, N.Y., aboard the Point d'Interrogation.
1915 Austro-German armies take Grodno, Poland.
1914 Le gouvernement français se réfugie à Bordeaux. Les troupes allemandes ont appliqué le plan Schlieffen en contournant les défenses françaises après avoir envahi la Belgique neutre. Elles sont à Senlis. Le gouvernement et le président de la République Poincaré quittent par un train spécial Paris menacé pour Bordeaux.
1901 US Vice President Theodore Roosevelt advises, "Speak softly and carry a big stick," in a speech at the Minnesota State Fair. — It was neither the first nor the last time he would say that. During TR's term as Governor of NY State he fought with the party bosses, particularly Boss Tom Platt regarding a political appointment. Roosevelt held out, although the boss threatened, to "ruin" him. In the end the boss gave in. Looking back upon his handling of the incident, Roosevelt thought he 'never saw a bluff carried more resolutely through to the final limit.' And writing to a friend a few days later, he observed: 'I have always been fond of the West African proverb: "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far." The proverb and the policy followed him into numerous instances in his career, including his policies abroad during his presidency.
1898 Battle of Omdurman: Sir Herbert Kitchner leads the British to victory over the Mahdists, and takes Khartoum.
1890 The Property Tax Party At a meeting on 02 September 1890, delegates of the Single Tax National League stuck to their ideological guns and passed the main — and only — plank of their party platform: a single tax that would be assessed on all property.
1870 At Sedan, having surrendered the previous evening, Napoléon and 83'000 French soldiers are taken prisoner by the Prussians.
1864 The forces of Union General William T. Sherman march into Atlanta, Georgia—one day after the Confederates evacuate the city.
1863 Siege of Fort Wagner, Charleston Harbor, South Carolina continues
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1862 McClellan is restored to full command. President Lincoln [12 Feb 1809 – 15 Apr 1865] reluctantly restores Union General George Brinton McClellan [03 Dec 1826 – 29 Oct 1885] to full command after the disaster of General John Pope [16 Mar 1822 – 23 Sep 1892] at Second Bull Run on 29 August and 30 August. McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac, saw much of his army transferred to Pope's Army of Virginia after his failure to capture Richmond during the Seven Days' Battles in June 1862. Pope, who had one chance to prove his leadership at Second Bull Run against Confederate General Robert E. Lee [19 Jan 1807 – 12 Oct 1870], failed miserably and retreated to Washington. He had not received any help from McClellan, who sat nearby in Alexandria and refused to go to Pope's aid. After a summer of defeats, the Union forces in the east were now in desperate need of a boost in morale. Even though McClellan was, in part, the architect of those losses, Lincoln felt he was the best available general to raise the sagging spirits of the men in blue. The president recognized McClellan's talent for preparing an army to fight, even if he had proven to be a poor field commander. Lincoln wrote to his private secretary John Hay [08 Oct 1838 – 01 Jul 1905]: "We must use the tools we have. There is no man in the Army who can man these fortifications and lick these troops into shape half as well as he. If he can't fight himself, he excels in making others ready to fight.” There was little time for the Union to dawdle after Second Bull Run. Lee's army lurked just 40 km from Washington, and had tried to cut off the Union retreat at Chantilly on 01 September. Even as Lincoln restored McClellan's command, the Confederates were starting to move northward. McClellan was soon on the road in pursuit of Lee's army. |
1792 Verdun, France, surrenders to the Prussian Army.
1784 English clergyman Thomas Coke, 37, is consecrated, the first "bishop" of the Methodist Episcopal Church, by founder John Wesley. Coke afterward journeyed to America, where he and Francis Asbury oversaw Methodism in the Colonies.
1752 Last day of Julian calendar in Britain, British colonies
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1715 Début de la régence de Philippe d'Orléans. Le roi Louis XIV [05 Sep 1638 – 01 Sep 1715] est mort, il y a seulement un jour. Un testament fait de Philippe d'Orléans le régent du royaume. Louis XIV a écrit : "Mon neveu, je vous fait régent du royaume. Vous allez voir un roi dans le tombeau et un autre dans le berceau. Souvenez-vous toujours de la mémoire de l'un et des intérêts de l'autre.” Mais il a subordonné son pouvoir à celui du duc du Maine. Philippe s'élève lors de la lecture du testament contre cette clause. Le Parlement consent à le casser, en échange de la restitution du droit de remontrance, supprimé soixante ans plus tôt. Pour qu'aucune contestation soit possible, le Régent demande au nouveau roi, qui n'a que cinq ans, de le désigner pour seul régent lors d'un lit de justice devant le Parlement le 12 septembre suivant. The heir of Louis XIV, Louis XV, was a five-year-old child who was not expected to live. Louis had distrusted his nephew, the Duc d'Orléans, and wanted to leave actual power in the hands of the Duc du Maine [31 Mar 1670 – 14 May 1736], his son by Mme de Montespan. In attempting to accomplish this, he had drawn up a will that was to help destroy the monarchy. The Parlement of Paris, convened to nullify the will after his death, rediscovered a political power that it used to prevent all reforms during the ensuing reigns, thus making the Revolution inevitable. Louis XV [15 Feb 1710 – 10 May 1774] was the great-grandson of Louis XIV and the last son of Louis, duc de Bourgogne, and Marie-Adélaïde of Savoy. Because his parents and his only surviving brother had all died in 1712, he became king on the death of Louis XIV. Until he attained his legal majority in February 1723, France was governed by a regent, Philippe II, duc d'Orléans [02 Aug 1674 – 02 Dec 1723]. |
1415 Bohemian and Moravian nobles send a document to the Council of Constance upholding Hus and saying they will fight
1192 Richard I ("The Lionhearted," who will become king of England) negotiates a treaty with Muslim general Saladin to allow access of Christians to the Holy City, ending the third crusade.
0909 A French Duke offers Berno of Blaume the land for a monastery at Cluny. Cluny becomes a center of reform for three centuries.
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— 31 BC Battle of Actium: Octavian's victory at
sea. At the naval battle of Actium in the Ionian Sea, Roman leader Octavian defeated the alliance of Roman Mark Antony and Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. Antony's fleet was burned and five thousand of his men were killed. The Roman world, previously divided between Mark Antony and Octavian, was now solely in the hands of Octavian, who as Augustus Caesar becomes the first Roman emperor. Mark Antony and Cleopatra would commit suicide in the following year. With the assassination of Roman dictator Julius Caesar [13 Jul 100 BC – 15 Mar 44 BC], Rome fell into civil war. To end the fighting, a coalition, the Second Triumvirate, was formed by three of the strongest belligerents. The triumvirate was made up of Octavian [23 Sep 63 BC – 19 Aug 14 AD], Caesar's great-nephew and chosen heir; Mark Antony [81 BC – Aug 30 BC], a powerful general; and Lepidus [<77 BC – 12 BC], a Roman statesman. The empire was divided among the three, and Antony took up the administration of the eastern provinces. Upon arriving in Asia Minor, he summoned Queen Cleopatra VII [69 BC – 30 Aug 30 BC], to answer charges that she had aided his enemies. Cleopatra, ruler of Egypt since 51 BC, had once been Julius Caesar's lover (March 47 BC) and had borne him a child, whom she claimed was his and whom she named Caesarion [Jun 47 BC – 30 BC]. Cleopatra sought to seduce Antony as she had Caesar before him, and in 41 BC arrived at Tarsus on a magnificent river barge, dressed as Venus, the Roman goddess of love. She was successful in her efforts and Antony returned with her to Alexandria, where they spent the winter in debauchery. In 40 B.C., Antony returned to Rome and married Octavian's sister Octavia [69 BC – 11 BC] in an effort to mend his increasingly strained relationship with Octavian. The triumvirate, however, continued to deteriorate. In 37 BC Antony separated from Octavia and traveled to the East, arranging for Cleopatra to join him in Syria. In their time apart, Cleopatra had borne him twins, a son and a daughter. According to Octavian's propagandists, the lovers were then married, which violated the Roman law restricting Romans from marrying foreigners. Antony's disastrous military campaign against Parthia in 36 BC further reduced his prestige, but in 34 BC he was more successful against Armenia. To celebrate the victory, he staged a triumphal procession through the streets of Alexandria, in which Antony and Cleopatra sat on golden thrones, and their children were given imposing royal titles. Many in Rome, spurred on by Octavian, interpreted the spectacle as a sign that Antony intended to deliver the Roman Empire into alien hands. After several more years of tension and propaganda attacks, Octavian declared war against Cleopatra, and therefore Antony, in 31 BC Enemies of Octavian rallied to Antony's side, but Octavian's brilliant military commanders gained early successes against his forces. On 02 September 31 BC, their fleets clashed at Actium in Greece. After heavy fighting, Cleopatra broke from the engagement and set course for Egypt with 60 of her ships. Antony then broke through the enemy line and followed her. The disheartened fleet that remained surrendered to Octavian. One week later, Antony's land forces surrendered. Although they had suffered a decisive defeat, it was nearly a year before Octavian reached Alexandria and again defeated Antony. In the aftermath of the battle, Cleopatra took refuge in the mausoleum she had had built for herself. Antony, informed that Cleopatra was dead, stabbed himself with his sword. Before he died, another messenger arrived, saying Cleopatra still lived. Antony was carried to Cleopatra's retreat, where he died after bidding her to make her peace with Octavian. When the triumphant Roman arrived, she attempted to seduce him, but he resisted her charms. Rather than fall under Octavian's domination, Cleopatra committed suicide on 30 August 31 BC, possibly by means of an asp, a poisonous Egyptian serpent and symbol of divine royalty. Because Ptolemy XV “Caesarion” was Julius Caesar's son and might pose a threat to Octavian's power, Octavian had the boy strangled by his tutor. Octavian then annexed Egypt into the Roman Empire, and used Cleopatra's treasure to pay off his veterans. In 27 BC, Octavian became Augustus, the first and arguably most successful of all Roman emperors. He ruled a peaceful, prosperous, and expanding Roman Empire until his death at the age of 75. |
1923
