On 20 April 1861, when Virginia authorities took over the Norfolk Navy Yard after its evacuation by Federal forces, they found, among other valuable items, the hulk of the steam frigate USS Merrimack. Though burned to the waterline and sunk, the big ship’s lower hull and machinery were salvageable.
During the remainder of 1861 and into 1862, the Confederate States Navy raised, dry-docked and converted her into a casemate ironclad ram, a new warship type that promised to overcome the Union’s maritime superiority.
The (newly-named) CSS Virginia made her first combat sortie on 8 March 1862, steaming down the Elizabeth River from Norfolk and into Hampton Roads.
She rammed and sank the U.S. Navy Cumberland and shelled the frigate Congress into submission.
In Washington, D.C., Federal Government officials panicked, convinced that Virginia posed a grave threat to Union seapower and coastal cities.
However, their worries were relieved the next day. When Virginia returned to Hampton Roads to attack the grounded steam frigate USS Minnesota, she found the Union’s own pioneer ironclad, USS Monitor, waiting. A second historic battle ensued, with the two opponents firing away, without mortal effect, until the action ended in a tactical draw in the early afternoon of 9 March 1862.
1497 – Nicolaus Copernicus’ first recorded astronomical observation
1522 – Martin Luther begins preaching his Invocavit Sermons in German city of Wittenberg
1562 – Kissing in public banned in Naples
1745 – Bells for first American carillon shipped from England to Boston
1839 – Prussian government limits work week for children to 51 hours
1841 – US Supreme Court rules the kidnapped slaves from the Spanish schooner Amistad are free
1862 – USS Monitor and CSS Merrimack battle in Hampton Roads
1907 – First involuntary sterilization law enacted, Indiana
1942 – Construction of the Alaska Highway began
1945 – 334 US B-29 Superfortresses attack Tokyo with 120,000 fire bombs
1950 – Willie Sutton robs Manufacturers Bank of $64,000 in NYC
1951 – Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam submit a classified paper at the Los Alamos lab, in which they proposed their revolutionary new design, staged implosion, for a practical megaton-range hydrogen bomb
George Burns was born Nathan Birnbaum on January 20, 1896 in New York City
1959 – Barbie, the popular girls’ doll, debuted, over 800 million sold
1961 – 1st animal returned from space, dog named Blackie aboard Sputnik 9
2006 – Liquid water is discovered on Enceladus, the sixth largest moon of Saturn.
2007 – The US Justice Department releases an internal audit that found that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had acted illegally in its use of the USA Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information about US citizens.
2012 – Senior members of hacking group Lulz Sec are arrested, including one member of the FBI, in the United States, United Kingdom and Ireland
Birthdays
1454 – Amerigo Vespucci, Italian explorer (America)
1934 – Yuri Gagarin, Russia, cosmonaut, 1st man into space (aboard Vostok 1)
Deaths
1706 – Johann Pachelbel, German organist/composer, dies at 52
1989 – Robert Mapplethorpe, US photographer, dies at 42
1992 – Menachem Begin, PM Israel (1977-80, 81-83, Nobel 1979), dies at 85
1996 – George Burns, American actor and singer (b. 1896)