Today was one of those days where many things have happened, so I thought I’d bring them up.

On August 3, 1492, the exploratory expedition lead by Christopher Columbus left Spain. He would get to the Caribbean and discover several islands and their inhabitants on October 12.  While other Europeans had been to the Americas before, this was the expedition that started the land rush to conquer and exploit the new world.  While I’ve always known that Columbus found land in October, it never occurred to me that he sailed from Spain so late in the year.  Imagine sailing out into a relatively unknown expanse in three small, leaky boats, not knowing if you’d be back before winter storms made the sea even more dangerous. 

Also, during this week in 1914, World War I was moving past the point of no return.  Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28, France declared war on Germany and Germany declared war on Russia on August 1, and Great Britain declared war on Germany on August 4.  By the time the great powers exhausted themselves and signed an armistice in 1918, 16,543,185 people would have died in the war and a further 21,228,813 people had been wounded.  This war on an industrial scale set the world up for the horrors of World War II, Communism, and all of the other savagery that fills the history of the 20th century.  All of these things led to attrocities that made the slaughter in French trenches and Russian swamps look almost civilized.

I don’t normally do a “Today in History” bit, but today is quite a date in military history:

1314 – Edward II of England is handed his ass by the Scottish at the battle of Bannockburn.  The battle was a complete rout of the English.  Of approximately 16,000 infantrymen who started the battle on the English side, 11,000 would be dead or captured two days later.  This action sealed the reputation of Robert the Bruce as king of an independent Scotland and probably contributed to the eventual murder of Edward after he abdicated a few years later.

1812 – Napoleon’s Grande Armee crossed into Russian territory on their ill-fated invasion.  By the time Napoleon got to Moscow and back, his army of almost 500,000 had been whittled down to about 27,000 soldiers.  380,000 French soldiers were dead, and about 100,000 were prisoners.  Napoleon had lost his charm of invincibility, and he never recovered from the military, political, or diplomatic losses from this fateful decision.

1916 – Artillery preparation for what would become the Battle of the Somme began.  The infantry advance started on July 1.  By the time the battle was declared over in mid-November, Allied and German casualties numbered over 1,000,000,  of which over 300,000 were killed.  This butcher’s bill paid for an advance of at most 7 miles along the trenches for the Allies.  British and Commonwealth soldiers, who bore the majority of the casualties on the Allied side, advanced only 2 miles.

1948 – The Berlin Blockade begins when Soviet occupation forces cut off all water and land access to Berlin from Western Germany.  The American, French, and British governments responded by supporting Berlin from the air, using transport aircraft to bring in food, fuel, medicine, and everything else the city needed until the blockade was lifted in May 1949.  This was the opening shot of the Cold War.