This day in history

[Locutus]

History Today ‏@HistoryToday

Signed on December 30th, 1853, the Gadsden Purchase settled the main boundaries of the US.

It was the Gadsden Purchase that settled the main boundaries of the United States of America (though Alaska was added in 1867). The Louisiana Purchase of fifty years earlier, the biggest land sale in history, had transferred an area of 827,000 square miles between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains from theoretical French sovereignty to the United States. The federal government went on to expand the borders by diplomacy, purchase, annexation and war. Florida was mopped up in 1819. In 1836 the American settlers in Texas threw off the yoke of Mexico and declared their independence, and despite the Alamo they made it stick. In 1844 James K.Polk was elected president. A strong believer in America’s ‘manifest destiny’ – a phrase first used the following year in relation to Texas – he settled matters with Britain over the border with Canada and made the 49th Parallel the accepted boundary in the north. Meanwhile, in 1845 he had annexed Texas and offered to buy California, and was not noticeably displeased to go to war when the Mexican government demurred.

- See more at: The Gadsden Purchase | History Today

 

[Blackleaf]

30 December in:

1419 - A Castilian fleet defeats an English-Hanseatic fleet during the Hundred Years' War. The battle is notable for the fact that the Castilians used guns;

1813: British soldiers burn Buffalo, New York, during the War of 1812;

1897: The British colony of Natal annexes Zululand, bringing it into the mighty British Empire;

1916: King Charles IV's coronation is the last ever performed in Hungary. The country becomes a republic in 1918;

1922: The USSR is formed. It would last until its break up on Boxing Day 1991, giving Europe 15 new sovereign states;

1999: Former Beatles guitarist George Harrison is attacked by Michael Abram at Friar Park, his 120-room mansion in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. Harrison dies in November 2001;

2006: Saddam Hussein is hanged.

 

[darkbeaver]

History Today ‏@HistoryToday

Signed on December 30th, 1853, the Gadsden Purchase settled the main boundaries of the US.



It was the Gadsden Purchase that settled the main boundaries of the United States of America (though Alaska was added in 1867). The Louisiana Purchase of fifty years earlier, the biggest land sale in history, had transferred an area of 827,000 square miles between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains from theoretical French sovereignty to the United States. The federal government went on to expand the borders by diplomacy, purchase, annexation and war. Florida was mopped up in 1819. In 1836 the American settlers in Texas threw off the yoke of Mexico and declared their independence, and despite the Alamo they made it stick. In 1844 James K.Polk was elected president. A strong believer in America’s ‘manifest destiny’ – a phrase first used the following year in relation to Texas – he settled matters with Britain over the border with Canada and made the 49th Parallel the accepted boundary in the north. Meanwhile, in 1845 he had annexed Texas and offered to buy California, and was not noticeably displeased to go to war when the Mexican government demurred.

- See more at: The Gadsden Purchase | History Today

A decade from now many of those land tracts will be up for change of hands again.

 

[Blackleaf]

On 6th January in:

1066: England's last Anglo-Saxon monarch, Harold II, is crowned King of England, probably at Westminster Abbey, following the death of King Edward the Confessor the day before. He reigns until he is killed whilst battling the army of Edward's cousin, William the Conqueror, at the Battle of Hastings on 14th October that year;

1540: Henry VIII marries his fourth wife, the German Anne of Cleves, at the Palace of Placentia, Henry's birthplace in Greenwich. The marriage is declared never consummated and, as a result, she is not crowned queen consort. The marriage is annulled just six months later, on 9th July 1540, and Anne goes on to outlive the rest of Henry's wives;

1661: The Fifth Monarchists unsuccessfully attempt to seize control of London;

1781: In the Battle of Jersey, part of the American War of Independence, the British defeat the last attempt by France to invade the British Channel Island of Jersey;

1809: The British, Portuguese (England's oldest allies, a close alliance which remains to this day) and colonial Brazilian forces begin the Invasion of Cayenne, French Guiana, during the Napoleonic Wars;

1912: New Mexico, formerly a part of Mexico, is admitted to the Union as the 47th U.S. state.

 

[darkbeaver]

No history before the seventeenth century is remotely reliable.