From American Minute for March 8th: Old Ironsides is the nickname of the three-masted frigate USS Constitution, the oldest commissioned ship in the world still afloat. After Muslim Barbary Pirates of North Africa had captured American ships, including the Polly, Betsey, Maria, Dauphin and Philadelphia, the USS Constitution was sent to fight in the First Barbary War, 1803, the Battle of Tripoli Harbor, 1804, and the Battle of Derne, 1805. When the ship returned, Francis Scott Key wrote the poem When the Warrior Returns from the Battle Afar, published in Bostons Independent Chronicle, December 30, 1805. Key wrote it to the same tune which nine years later he used for the Star-Spangled Banner: In conflict resistless each toil they endurd Till their foes shrunk dismayd from the wars desolation: And pale beamed the Crescent, its splendor obscurd By the light of the Star-Bangled Flag of our nation. Where each flaming star gleamed a meteor of war, And the turband head bowed to the terrible glare. Then mixt with the olive the laurel shall wave And form a bright wreath for the brow of the brave. The USS Constitution sailed against the British in the War of 1812 and caught slave traders off the coast of Africa in the 1850s. The USS Constitution was saved from being broken into scrap by the poem Old Ironsides, written by poet, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Her deck, once red with heroes blood, Where knelt the vanquished foe, When winds were hurrying oer the flood, And waves were white below... As dean of the Harvard Medical School, Dr. Holmes proposed that diseases were spread person to person, a theory which predated the discovery of germs. Dr. Holmes tried to admit the first African-Americans and the first woman to Harvard Medical School. Dr. Holmes invented the American stereoscope, which was a 19th century hand held device to view 3-D pictures. In his poem about Pilgrim pastor John Robinson of Leyden, published in The Professor at the Breakfast Table, 1860, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: Before the Speedwells anchor swung, Ere yet the Mayflowers sail was spread, While round his feet the Pilgrims clung, The pastor spake, and thus he said:-- Ye go to bear the saving Word To tribes unnamed and shores untrod: Heed well the lessons ye have heard From those old teachers taught of God. Dr. Holmes son, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., was born MARCH 8, 1841. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., graduated from Harvard, enlisted in the Army against his fathers wishes, and was injured in the Civil War three times, including a gunshot wound to the chest at the Battle of Balls Bluff, October 1861. Holmes, Jr., edited the American Law Review, was a Harvard Law professor, and Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court. In 1902, Theodore Roosevelt appointed Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., to the U.S. Supreme Court. Known as The Great Dissenter for of his unconventional opinions advocating broad freedom of speech, he served over 30 years, to a more advanced age than any other Justice. Holmes replied to a reporter on his 90th birthday, MARCH 8, 1931: Young man, the secret of my success is that at an early age I discovered I was not God.
Posted on: Sat, 08 Mar 2014 06:07:14 +0000
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