Milestones: February 13, 2024

February 13, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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HISTORIC DRESDEN DESTROYED — THE ALLIED FORCES ON FEB. 13, 1945, LAUNCHED ONE OF THE MOST CONTROVERSIAL BOMBING RAIDS IN WORLD WAR II. The firebombing against Dresden was initiated on the grounds that this historic German city was a center of war production and manufacturing, which proved to be a tragically incorrect assumption. The raid’s consequence is that the medieval city of Dresden, famous for its rich artistic and architectural treasures, was destroyed. Allied bombers dropped around 2,700 tons of explosives and incendiaries over Dresden, killing roughly 25,000 people. Although the goal of the Yalta Conference just a few days earlier had been to demilitarize Germany and purge it of Nazism, the bombing of Dresden was deemed futile from a strategic standpoint: Germany was already near surrendering and the collateral damage outweighed the benefits of this campaign.

One American prisoner of war named Kurt Vonnegut, a budding writer, later wrote his sci-fi novel “Slaughterhouse Five” based on his experience surviving the Dresden firebombing.

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STOOD TRIAL FOR ‘ACCURATE’ HERESY— ON THIS DATE, GALILEO GALILEI, THE ITALIAN POLYMATH AND ASTRONOMER ARRIVED IN ROME FEB. 13, 1633, TO FACE THE ROMAN INQUISITION on charges of heresy, because he supported and articulated Nicolaus Copernicus’ theory that the earth revolved around the sun, rather than the reverse. Having conducted extensive research, Galileo was drawn to Copernican theory and would influence later scientists, including Sir Isaac Newton, who was born the same year that Galileo died. Even though Galileo’s theory would be proven correct centuries later, it conflicted with the Roman Catholic Church’s teachings that the sun was at the center of the universe. It would be 350 years before the Vatican, in 1992, formally acknowledged its mistake in condemning Galileo.

Galileo was born on Feb. 15, 1564, in Pisa, the son of a musician. That means his trial took place two days before his birthday. He got a lighter sentence of house arrest in exchange. for pleading guilty.

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JOINT SOVEREIGNS KEPT ENGLAND PROTESTANT — MARY, DAUGHTER OF THE DEPOSED KING JAMES II, AND HER HUSBAND, WILLIAM OF ORANGE, WERE PROCLAIMED JOINT SOVEREIGNS of England on Feb. 13, 1689. They were the beneficiaries of a bloodless coup called the Glorious Revolution, which helped ensure that only Protestants would be monarchs of England and that Catholics would be banned from ascending the throne. James II, though born a Protestant, had converted to Catholicism in 1669, thus damaging his relationship with Parliament, which sent a delegation to William and Mary, inviting them to be joint sovereigns, on the condition that they accept England’s new Bill of Rights. Drafted a good century before the birth of the United States and its own Constitution, the British Bill of Rights curtailed royal powers, granted more financial and military authority to Parliament, and broadened constitutional law. It also declared that no Roman Catholic would ever reign as monarch.

As for the now-deposed King James I, the father of the new Queen Mary, he was permitted to leave England, and he escaped to France.

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SWISS NEUTRALITY — THE PERPETUAL NEUTRALITY OF SWITZERLAND WAS RECOGNIZED ON FEB. 13, 1920, when the League of Nations convened. The League, which had been established as part of the Versailles Conference, was an international peace-keeping organization, which made Geneva, Switzerland its headquarters. Switzerland had been, until 1798, a loose confederation of German, French and Italian communities. The Swiss vehemently opposed him when Napoleon tried to unify and take control of France. In 1803, Napoleon approved the constitution and then withdrew his troops.

The Swiss people held their ground on neutrality through World War II.

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DOMINANT BLACK TEAM — THE NEW YORK RENAISSANCE, THE FIRST ALL-BLACK PROFESSIONAL BASKETBALL TEAM, WAS ORGANIZED ON FEB. 13, 1923. Robert L. Douglas founded the Renaissance to give young Black athletes the chance to compete, succeed and improve their lives, at a time when the white teams did not yet admit Blacks. Douglas brokered an agreement with William Roach, a Harlem-based real estate developer who owned the New Renaissance Ballroom and Casino. The Renaissance, Rens for short, gained dominance in basketball during the 1920s and 1930s. The team debuted on court Nov. 3, 1923, winning 28-22 against the Collegiate Five — an all-white team. Douglas remained the coach throughout Ren’s existence. They played their last game in 1949 as part of the racially integrated National Basketball League.

The Ren, which was named to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1963, won the World Professional Basketball Tournament, seven years before the NBA’s founding in June 1946.

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EXPANDED RIGHTS FOR COMPOSERS — THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF COMPOSERS, AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS (ASCAP), was founded on Feb. 13, 1914, with its primary goal of ensuring that composers’ rights and financial compensation are protected. Its fundamental goal was to “assure that music creators are fairly compensated for the public performance of their works and that their rights are properly protected.” Charter ASCAP members were Irving Berlin, James Weldon Johnson, Jerome Kern, John Philip Sousa and other giants of the day. While US copyright law already protected composers from unauthorized printed reproduction of their works, the idea that they had further rights to a share of the revenue from continual performances was new.

The landmark 1917 Supreme Court case, Herbert v. Shanley Co. decided that “The performance of a copyrighted musical composition in a restaurant or hotel without charge for admission to hear it but as an incident of other entertainment for which the public pays, infringes the exclusive right of the owner of the copyright to perform the work publicly for profit, under the Act of March 4, 1909.”

See previous milestones, here.