This Bad Day

On this bad day in 1839 (09/09/1839), Maria Swanenburg was born. Swanenburg  was a Dutch serial killer who murdered at least 27, and was suspected of killing more than 90 people. Her nickname was Goeie Mie (which translates as Good Mee) which she got for taking care of children and ill people in the poor neighborhood of Leiden in which she lived.

On this bad day (08/09/378 AD), 30,000 Roman troops led by the Roman Emperor Valens arrived at Adrianople after marching for seven hours over difficult terrain. The reconnaissance of the preceding days had informed him of the location of 80,000 Gothic rebels led by Fritigern.

Complacent Roman commanders began the battle without orders to do so, believing they would have an easy victory. The Battle of Adrianople ended with an overwhelming victory for the Goths as the Romans lost over 2/3 of their army. In the rout, the Emperor himself was abandoned by his guards. Valens' final fate is unknown; he probably died anonymously on the field. His body was never found. 

On this bad day (08/08/1925), the Ku Klux Klan paraded in the streets of Washington, DC. The march’s aims were somewhat ambiguous. The teaching of evolution in public schools was a burning issue at the time. The procession was seen in some quarters as an opportunity for the northern chapters to wrest power from the South. Some say it was organized to counter reports of faltering enrollment. 

On this bad day (08/07/1933), the Iraqi army moved north in order to crush the Assyrians, who had been demanding autonomy within Iraq. The Simele massacre is a term used to describe not only the massacre in Simele, but also the killing spree that took place among 63 Assyrian villages that led to the deaths of between 600 and 3,000 Assyrians.

The massacres also had a deep impact on the newly established Kingdom of Iraq. Kanan Makiya argues that the killing of Assyrians transcended tribal, religious, ideological and ethnic barriers as Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs, Sunni Kurds, Sunni Turkmen, Shia Turkmen, and Yazidis ; Monarchists, Islamists, nationalists, royalists, conservatives, Leftists, federalists, and tribalists, were all united in their anti-Assyrian and anti-Christian sentiments. According to him, the pogrom was "the first genuine expression of national independence in a former Arab province of the Ottoman Empire" and that the killing of Assyrian Christians was seen as a national duty.

On this bad day (08/06/1824), William Palmer - known as the Rugeley Poisoner or the Prince of Poisoners - was born. Palmer was an English doctor found guilty of murder in one of the most notorious cases of the 19th century. Charles Dickens called Palmer "the greatest villain that ever stood in the Old Bailey".

The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization or PATCO was a United States trade union that operated from 1968 until its decertification in 1981 following a strike that was broken by the Reagan Administration. The 1981 strike and defeat of PATCO was called "one of the most important events in late twentieth century U.S. labor history" by labor historian Joseph A. McCartin.

The union had declared a strike, seeking better working conditions, better pay and a 32-hour workweek. Ronald Reagan declared the PATCO strike a "peril to national safety" and ordered them back to work under the terms of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. Subsequently, Reagan demanded those remaining on strike return to work within 48 hours, otherwise their jobs would be forfeited.

On this bad day (08/04/1578), The Battle of Alcácer Quibir (also known as Battle of Three Kings, or Battle of Oued El Makhazeen in Morocco, and Battle of Alcazar in English) was fought in northern Morocco, near the town of Ksar-el-Kebir. The combatants were the army of the deposed Moroccan Sultan Abu Abdallah Mohammed II, with his ally, the King of Portugal Sebastian I, and a large Moroccan army nominally under the new Sultan of Morocco Abd Al-Malik I.

On this bad day (08/03/1913), the Wheatland Hop Riot took place at the Durst Ranch in Wheatland, California, which was embroiled in a strike of agricultural workers. The riot resulted in four deaths and numerous injuries and was subsequently blamed by authorities upon the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). 

The owner of Durst Ranch rounded up local authorities to put down the strike. The sheriff and his men approached the speakers' platform at an assembly of the striking farm workers and the workers began to intervene on the leaders’ behalf. Greatly outnumbered, one of the law enforcement officials fired a shotgun into the air in an effort to disperse the crowd. The shot provoked the opposite effect and many members of the crowd jumped on the District Attorney and Deputy Sheriff and began beating them.

On this bad day (08/02/216 BC), the army of Carthage decisively defeated a larger army of the Roman Republic at the Battle of Cannae. It is regarded both as one of the greatest tactical feats in military history and as one of the worst defeats in Roman history.

On this bad day (08/01/1589), King Henry III of France was assassinated. Henry was a monarch of the House of Valois who was elected the monarch of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from 1573 to 1575 and ruled as King of France from 1574 until his death. Reports that Henry engaged in same sex relations with his court favorites date back to his own time. The scholar Louis Crompton provides substantial contemporary evidence of Henry III's homosexuality, and the resulting problems at court and politics

On this bad day (07/31/1917), the British forces in Flanders engaged the forces of the German Empire to begin the Battle of Passchendaele - also referred to as the Third Battle of Ypres - one of the major campaigns of the First World War. The costly offensive, ending with the capture of Passchendaele village, merely widened the Ypres Salient by a few kilometers.

On this bad day (07/30/1419), Jan Želivský, a Hussite priest, led his congregation on a procession through the streets of Prague to the New Town Hall, protesting the town council’s arrest of Hussite activists. While they were marching, a stone was thrown at Želivský from the window of the town hall. This enraged the mob and they stormed the building. Once inside the hall, the group threw the judge, the burgomaster, and some thirteen members of the town council out of the window and into the street, where they were killed by the fall or dispatched by the mob. 

Samuel de Champlain, “The Father of New France", was a French navigator, cartographer, draughtsman, soldier, explorer, geographer, ethnologist, diplomat, and chronicler. He founded New France and Quebec City. 

On this bad day (07/29/1606), Champlain and his party encountered a group of Iroquois somewhere in the area near Ticonderoga and Crown Point, New York. Two hundred Iroquois advanced on Champlain's position, and one of his guides pointed out the three Iroquois chiefs. In his account of the battle, Champlain recounts firing his arquebus and killing two of them with a single shot, after which one of his men killed the third. The Iroquois turned and fled. 

The Bonus Army was the popular name of some 43,000 marchers of World War I veterans, their families, and affiliated groups who gathered in Washington, D.C., in the spring and summer of 1932 to demand cash-payment redemption of their service certificates. The World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924 had awarded them bonuses in the form of certificates they could not redeem until 1945. Many of the war veterans had been out of work since the beginning of the Great Depression.

On this bad day (07/27/1976), the Tangshan earthquake, the largest earthquake of the 20th century by death toll, occurred. The epicenter of the earthquake was near Tangshan in Hebei, People's Republic of China, an industrial city with approximately one million inhabitants. The number of deaths initially reported by the Chinese government was 655,000, but this number has since been stated to be around 240,000 to 255,000. Another report indicates that the actual death toll was much higher, at approximately 650,000, and explains that the lower estimates are limited to Tangshan and exclude fatalities in the densely populated surrounding areas. 

On this bad day (07/26/1991), Paul Reubens was arrested in Sarasota, Florida for masturbating during a film at an adult theater. Reubens is an American actor, writer, film producer, game show host, and comedian, best known for his character Pee-wee Herman.