Joe's Daily U.S. History Lesson -- April 6

APRIL 6 1917-America enters WWI. That was just one too many ships that the Germans sunk. Good timing too! Western Europe didn’t have a lot of fight left in them. Even though the U.S. wanted neutrality from WWI, it appeared that war was just inevitable. In 1914 Americans didn’t believe that war would actually happen, so imagine the tourists that were caught by surprise. America was still paying out large scale loans to France and Britain so they could keep up the fight, and eventually Germany threw the international rules out the window and started targeting all ships headed towards Britain, whether it was a merchant ship or not. Germans sunk the British –owned RMS Lusitania in 1915, then offered military alliance with Mexico in the famous Zimmerman telegram that was intercepted and decoded by the British, and American ships like the Housatonic were getting sunk in the north Atlantic.

President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress for “a war to end all wars” that would “make the world safe for democracy”, and on this day in 1917 Congress voted yes and approved funding and troops. On June 26, 14,000 US troops landed in France to begin training for combat. Up until that point years of fighting led to a stalemate on the western front, and America’s fresh troops sparked a turning point in the war in favor of the allies. When the war finally ended on November 11, 1918, more than two million American soldiers had served on the battlefields of Western Europe, approximately 50,000 lost their lives.

1939– Happy birthday  Sheila Nevins, one of the most influential documentary writers in history. I should get a lesson from her! Sheila was born apr 6 1939 and grew up in a Jewish Family in Manhattan. She had a wealthy uncle who helped her with schooling, and she was able to obtain a BA in English in 1960. Her career would soon flourish as she became an actress, writer, and producer through the 60s and 70s, and hired by HBO as the Director of Documentary Programming in 1979. In the 80s she had a production company and later returned to HBO to become Vice President of Documentary Programming, in 2000 was inducted to the Broadcasting & Cable Company Hall of Fame, 2011 was honored by the Directors Guild of America for her unwavering commitment to documentary filmmakers and the advancement of the documentary genre, in 2013, won the Women’s Achievement Award, and by 2016 was awarded with a record number 32 prime time Emmy awards.  Sheila took home the Exceptional Merit in Documentary filmmaking award for Jim: The James Foley Story, a biography of the US war correspondent. For the record, Nevins also shared the record for the most Emmy Award nominations received by an individual, which is 74. A record she shares with Hector Rameriez

1841-His Accidency becomes president of the United States. Now before I explain why John Tyler was named His Accidency, I should tell you who he is. Because unless you’re a real US history buff, you wouldn’t really have any reason to know who he was. He was our tenth President who ran as vice president in the whig party with William henry Harrison, and after Harrison died in April, Tyler took over as President. This really tested the laws of the constitution in terms of winning the White House without actually being elected president.

By the 1820s, the Democratic-Republican Party had split into different sanctions. Tyler, originally a democrat, opposed Andy Jackson and Martin Van Buren and sided with the Whig Party. He served as a Virginia state legislator, governor, US representative, and US senator before his eletion as VP in the election of 1840. Although a Whig, he found many of the Whig policies unconstitutional, and started vetoing all of them. He alienated himself from the Whig party as a result, and that’s why they call him His Accidency. He got death threats from both parties and was expelled by the Whigs. Other than that, his contributions include working with Great Britain to restore Canadian border territorial disputes, and spearheading the annexation of Texas. During the American civil war, he served in the Confederate House of Representatives.

1970-Sam Sheppard dies. What a story this guy had! Sam Sheppard, osteopath, father, loving husband, pro wrestler. Except maybe he wasn’t such a loving husband. He did after all, spend 10 years behind bars for brutally killing his wife one night. I wish I had time to get into this whole story because it’s amazing. Because the story got so much public attention in the 1950s when he was pronounced guilty, Sheppard hired a new defense attorney to convince the Supreme Court to grant his client a new trial since he didn’t have his due process.

This time around, he was pronounced not guilty, got out of prison, and became a professional wrestler who came up with the move known as the Mandible Claw. Supposedly the movie and TV show The Fugitive was written based on Sam’s story. Check out more on this story in the novel Crooked River Bruning by Mark Winegardn