Milestones: April 24, 2024

April 24, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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EASTER REBELLION — THE IRISH REPUBLICAN BROTHERHOOD, a secret organization of Irish nationalists launched the Easter Rebellion on April 24, 1916, which was actually Easter Monday, a public holiday observed in some European nations. Patrick Pearse led the Irish Republican Brotherhood in this armed riot with assistance from militant Irish socialists under James Connolly, against British rule, by attacking the British provincial government headquarters and seizing the General Post Office in Dublin. They were also rebelling against what they had experienced as harsh rule from Britain: anti-Catholic laws and disregard for the Irish people’s needs during the Potato Famine of the mid-19th century. Taking control of much of Dublin, the groups then declared Ireland’s independence. However, British authorities initiated a counteroffensive and within five days had crushed the rebellion. Although Pearse and his compadres were executed, the Irish people elevated them to martyrdom.

The British were not altogether successful in permanently halting the rebellion, as armed protests continued after the Easter Rebellion and in 1921, 26 of Ireland’s 32 counties won independence with the declaration of the Irish Free State, which in 1949, became an independent republic.

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS — THE 19TH CENTURY IN AMERICA WAS OFF TO A LITERARY START when, on April 24, 1800, the Library of Congress was established. President John Adams approved legislation to appropriate $5,000 to purchase “such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress.” The library’s home was in the U.S. Capitol, of which the central portion had just been built. (Congress would begin convening in the Capitol building in November 1800.) By April 1802, the first library catalog had been compiled and listed 964 volumes and nine maps. However, the library had to be replaced and replenished multiple times, first for Britain’s invasion of Washington during the War of 1812. Congress’ generous response got most of the books replaced. The Library of Congress’ holdings expanded even more after the Civil War.

The Library of Congress Classification (LCC) is a classification system developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to organize and arrange the book collections of the Library of Congress. The LCC was later adopted by other libraries, particularly large academic libraries in the United States.

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MILITARY CODE OF CONDUCT — THE UNION ARMY ON APRIL 24, 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, issued General Order No. 100, establishing a code of conduct for Federal soldiers and officers to use when dealing with Confederate prisoners and civilians. This later became known as the Lieber code, after Franz Lieber, who conceived them. Lieber was a Prussian immigrant whose three sons fought during the Civil War, one of them on the Confederate side. An international law scholar, Lieber was particularly concerned about the treatment of combatants and civilians alike. The Library of Congress (see today’s Milestone) has on record the Lieber Code, which covered a wide range of legal issues to be considered in armed conflict, both in overview of principle and in the details of the rules. Lieber wrote almost all of the 157 codes, which established and codified policies for treatment of prisoners, the distinction between combatants and civilians, POW status, retaliation, permissible methods and means of warfare and even the treatment of fugitive and escaped slaves.

Unique for its time, the Lieber Code became the standard for international military law; and the original Geneva Conventions, originally established in 1864.

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AIRING GRIEVANCES AGAINST SUPERPOWERS — THE AFRO-ASIAN CONFERENCE, popularly known as the Bandung Conference, concluded on April 24, 1955. Held in Bandung, Indonesia (about 152 kilometers to the southeast of Jakarta), the conference brought together representatives from 29 “non-aligned” nations in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. They collectively denounced racism, condemned colonialism and shared their worries about the worsening Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. The 29 “non-aligned nations,” were so named because they believed that they would not benefit either from Western capitalism or communism, with many of the countries struggling to develop along their own value systems.

Not surprisingly, the United States government was angered and appalled at the rebukes expressed at Bandung. Although invited to do so, it refused to send an unofficial observer to the meetings. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was already on record as equating neutralism in the fight against communism as being a mortal sin.

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THE MANHATTAN PROJECT — THE FULL DETAILS OF THE MANHATTAN PROJECT WERE FINALLY SHARED with President Harry S. Truman on April 24, 1945. This secret program had the goal of enabling the United States to develop the first atomic bomb before its enemies could. Truman’s predecessor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had given the Manhattan Project his support in 1939 but didn’t even inform the vice president of his fourth term (Truman) of its existence. Truman, however, during his time in the U.S. Senate, was monitoring war production expenditures for wastefulness and in 1943 became suspicious of a plant in Minneapolis that was covertly part of the Manhattan Project. When then-Senator Truman began asking questions, FDR’s Secretary of War, Harry Stimson, admonished him to drop his investigation. After Roosevelt’s sudden death on April 12, 1945, War Secretary Stimson finally informed Truman as the new Commander-in-Chief of the “new and terrible” weapon being developed.

Truman was then compelled to decide whether to sit on the knowledge or use the bomb, which he did on August 6 and 9, 1945, against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to force a surrender from Japan. Truman remains the only world leader to have ever used an atomic bomb against an enemy.

See previous milestones, here.