Today in History: January 7-10
Galileo discovers Jupiter's moons, Ibn Saud claims the Hejaz, Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon, and more!
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This is our last one of these before regular programming resumes on Tuesday. Thanks for reading!
January 7, 1610: Galileo Galilei mentions in a letter his discovery three of the four Galilean moons (Callisto, Europa, Ganymede, and Io) of Jupiter. He presumably had already observed them, but this is the first time he documented it. Initially assuming them to be fixed stars, over the days and weeks after writing this letter Galileo determined that they were moons and discovered that there was a fourth one.
January 7, 1942: The Imperial Japanese army lays siege to US and Philippine forces on Luzon Island’s Bataan Peninsula. The beleaguered US and Philippine soldiers held out for a bit over three months, but finally surrendered to Japan on April 9. Some 78,000 soldiers surrendered, 12,000 of them American—one of the largest single surrenders in US military history. Over 20,000 Philippine and hundreds of US prisoners subsequently died in the ensuing Bataan Death March to the city of San Fernando and due to the brutality with which the Japanese military treated the captives.
January 8, 1926: Abdulaziz ibn Saud is crowned king of the Hejaz, adding that kingdom to his original dominion in the Nejd. This personal union lasted for six years and became the nucleus of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In 1932, Ibn Saud unified the Hejaz and the Nejd (as well as al-Hasa, east of the Nejd) into a single state, to which he later added Asir, Najran, and Jizan after a 1934 war with Yemen.
January 9, 1822: Prince Pedro of Portugal, Brazilian regent for his father King João VI, rejects an order from Portugal to dissolve Brazil’s government and return home. The order had been arranged by Portuguese general Jorge de Avilez, who wanted to force Pedro out of Brazil and govern the country himself, but when Avilez subsequently mutinied he and his forces were defeated and forced to eave Brazil. This incident kicked off the series of events that led to Pedro’s coronation as Emperor Pedro I of Brazil in October and the subsequent Brazilian War of Independence.
January 9, 1916: The Gallipoli Campaign ends
January 9, 1917: The Battle of Rafa ends with the UK defeating the last Ottoman defenders in Egypt. Rafa marked the close of the Sinai portion of World War I’s Sinai/Palestine Campaign, which began with an Ottoman attack on the Suez canal in late January 1915 and would end with the Allied capture of Aleppo in October 1918. This battle relatively small engagement consisted mostly of the British army surrounding and wearing out a much smaller Ottoman garrison. Rafa drove the Ottomans out of Egypt and cleared the way for Britain to invade the Levant.
January 10, 49 BCE: Julius Caesar “crosses the Rubicon” by, well, literally crossing the Rubicon River and marching his army toward Rome. Caesar took the provocative action of bringing his army with him to the capital due to fears that he would be prosecuted by his political opponents without some kind of leverage on his side (specifically, the kind of leverage you get from bringing along thousands of armed men who are ready to start killing people on your orders). The act kicked off a civil war between Caesar and Pompey (plus his traditionalist allies in the Roman Senate), that did much to usher in the end of the Roman Republic.
January 10, 1475: The Battle of Vaslui