by the Pilgrims as military advisor for the Plymouth Colony. One of the
Mayflower passengers, Standish played a leading role in the
administration and defense of the colony from its inception. On February
17, 1621, the colony militia elected him as its first commander and
continued to re-elect him to that position for the remainder of his
life. He served as an agent of Plymouth Colony in England, and as
assistant governor and treasurer of the colony. He was also one of the
first settlers and founders of the town of Duxbury, Massachusetts. As a
military leader, Standish favored preemptive action, sometimes angering
Native Americans and disturbing more moderate members of the colony. By
the 1640s, he relinquished his role as an active soldier and settled
into a quieter life on his Duxbury farm. Several towns and military
installations have been named for Standish, and monuments have been
built in his memory. The popularity of the fictionalized book The
Courtship of Miles Standish by H.W. Longfellow helped to cement the
Pilgrim story in US culture.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myles_Standish>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1801:
The U.S. House of Representatives elected Thomas Jefferson as
President and Aaron Burr as Vice President, resolving an electoral tie
in the 1800 presidential election.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1800>
1859:
The French Navy captured the Citadel of Saigon, a fortress that
was manned by 1,000 Nguyễn Dynasty soldiers, en route to conquering
Saigon and other regions of southern Vietnam.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citadel_of_Saigon>
1904:
Italian composer Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly (Geraldine
Farrar in the title role pictured) premiered at La Scala in Milan,
generating negative reviews that forced him to rewrite the opera.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madama_Butterfly>
1959:
Vanguard 2, the first weather satellite, was launched to
measure cloud cover distribution.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard_2>
2006:
A massive landslide in the Philippine province of Southern
Leyte killed over 1,000 people.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Southern_Leyte_mudslide>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
suzerainty:
1. A relation between states in which a subservient nation has its own
government, but is unable to take international action independent of
the superior state; a similar relationship between other entities.
2. The status or power of a suzerain.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/suzerainty>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
While the broad principles of democracy are universal, the fact
remains that their application varies considerably … We are at the
beginning of the road, at the very beginning. We still have a long way
to go.
--Boutros Boutros-Ghali
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Boutros_Boutros-Ghali>
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