Milestones: Friday, July 28, 2023

July 28, 2023 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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TRIGGERED WORLD WAR — WORLD WAR I (later referred to as the Great War) began on July 28, 1914, a month after the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary and his wife at Sarajevo, Bosnia at the hands of a Serbian nationalist named Gavrilo Princip. The Archduke and his wife, Sophie, were in Sarajevo to inspect the imperial troops, having just annexed the region. Angry over being annexed, Serbians threw bombs at the royal carriage. Although they missed, Princip managed to shoot Franz Ferdinand and Sophie at point-blank range. Austria-Hungary, with Germany’s support. Days later, Germany declared war on Russia, which was allied with Serbia. This in turn led France, part of the Dual Alliance with Russia since 1891, was angry at Germany’s invasion and declared war on Germany.

Great Britain, allied with France, was then dragged into the European conflict. Italy, having an interest in the partitioning of Austria, entered the war on the Allied side, after being promised portions of both Austria and the Ottoman Empire.

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NORDIC FESTIVAL — The FAROE ISLANDS celebrates the OLAI FESTIVAL taking place July 28-29, with the Eve of St. Olav starting as early as 10 p.m. local time on Thursday, July 27. The Faroe Islands collectively are a self-governing archipelago territory in the Norwegian Sea but part of the Kingdom of Denmark. The festival actually honors the feast day (death/martyrdom anniversary) of St. Olav, who was an 11th century king who Christianized Norway. He was killed on July 30 during a battle to reclaim the land from King Canute the Great of Denmark. Olav was canonized in Norway a year after his death; and in 1164 the Roman Catholic Church officially recognized him as Norway’s patron saint (the Reformation bringing Lutheranism to what is now western Scandinavia was still three centuries into the future).

The festival takes place in the town of Torshavn, but both Norway and Denmark honor St. Olav with ceremonial processions to parliament, which officially opens each year on this holiday. The festival includes meetings, concerts, sporting events and community singing.

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HEADED WESTWARD TO FIGHT CANCER — TERRY FOX, born 65 years ago at Winnipeg (province of Manitoba), Canada on July 28, 1958, dedicated his short life to fighting cancer, after the disease required the amputation of his right leg at age 18. Gaining inspiration from Dick Traum, the first amputee to finish the New York Marathon, the fiercely tenacious and competitive Fox planned and launched a “Marathon of Hope,” a 5,200-mile westward journey across his native Canada, starting April 12, 1980 in Newfoundland and running on an artificial leg for 3,3,28 miles — as far as Thunder Bay, Ontario — when the spreading disease forced him to stop. Fox did meet success in raising $24 million for cancer research and inspired millions of people.

Fox died on June 28, 1981, a month short of his 23rd birthday, near Vancouver, British Columbia, where his family had resided since 1966.

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‘OPERATION GOMORRAH’ — July 28 marks the 80th anniversary of the HAMBURG FIRESTORM, which broke out on this day in 1943 when the Allies dropped 2,326 tons of bombs, predominantly incendiaries, onto Hamburg, Germany during World War II, killing more than 42,000 civilians. Dubbed as “Operation Gomorrah,” in reference to the Biblical city destroyed by fire and brimstone, the Hamburg campaign had the goal of destroying all of Germany’s cities, and was more on the scale of the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki than of any previous air raid up to that point.

Firestorms erupt when fires in a specific area intensify to the point of devouring all available oxygen, drawing in even more and creating tornado-force winds that flame and accelerate the fires.

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POISE UNDER GRIEF — JACQUELINE LEE BOUVIER KENNEDY ONASSIS: born on July 28, 1929, epitomized grace and poise. Born into a prominent family on Southampton, Long Island, she and sister Caroline Lee Bouvier, later known as Lee Radziwill, attended Miss Porter’s School. While a roving photographer, she met John F. Kennedy during his time in the Senate; they courted and married, and in 1960 he was elected the 35th President of the United States. The entire world remembers the poise and courage Mrs. Kennedy exhibited when her husband was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Her insistence on continuing to wear her blood-stained pink suit was in itself a statement of both grief over the murder of her husband and defiance against those responsible. The slain President’s brother and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy took Jackie under his wing; but when he, also, was assassinated less than five years later, Jackie decided to leave the U.S. with her children. Her surprise marriage to Greek shipping tycoon magnate Aristotle Socrates Onassis angered many.

Jackie Onassis’ now-famous outfit was sent to the National Archives. Her daughter, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg 20 years ago stipulated a 100-year embargo against exhibiting the outfit in public.

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RECORD-SETTING DIVE — Oceanographer and explorer JACQUES PICCARD, born July 28, 1922, in Brussels, Belgium, might have been the son of a famed hot air balloonist, but he chose instead the depths of the world. Jacques Piccard did collaborate with his father on technology, such as that using buoyancy dynamics, that later enabled him to explore the oceans’ depths. He created the bathyscaphe, a submersible that he christened Trieste (for a town on the Italian/Slovenian border) and, in partnership with the U.S. Navy, he explored the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, specifically the Challenger Deep section, and undertook an unprecedented and successful seven-mile dive. Piccard also built the first tourist submarine.

According to a 2008 obituary of Jacques Piccard in the publication NewScientist, Star Trek creator Gene Rodenberry said he named his character Jean-Luc Picard in honor of Auguste and Jacques.

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CREATED PETER RABBIT — (HELEN) BEATRIX POTTER born on July 28, 1866, was a beloved author, illustrator, naturalist and conservationist, who created bestselling and now classic children’s books, usually bearing a moral or lesson about behavior. The series launched with The Tale of Peter Rabbit in 1901. The books came in their own special size with ornate hardcovers, and included among them, “The Tale of Benjamin Bunny,” “The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies,” and “The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin.”

Beatrix Potter loved the classics, which for her included American author Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

See previous milestones, here.