This Day In Texas History - August 6

[joe817]

1726 - Antonio Margil de Jesús, early missionary to Texas, died in Mexico City. He was to have accompanied the Domingo Ramón expedition of 1716, charged with setting up Franciscan missions in East Texas. However, illness prevented his arrival in East Texas until after the founding of the first four missions. In 1717 Margil supervised the founding of Nuestra Señora de los Dolores de los Ais and San Miguel de Linares de los Adaes, which with the previously established Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe completed the missions under the control of the Zacatecan Franciscans. In February 1720 Margil founded at San Antonio the most successful of all Texas missions, San José y San Miguel de Aguayo.In 1722.

1842 - The new British charge d'affaires to Texas arrived at the port of Galveston. He was Charles Elliot, British knight and retired naval officer. In this post he advocated abolition of slavery, worked for the establishment of free trade, and emphasized the importance of peace with Mexico. He became a personal friend of Sam Houston and Anson Jones, and worked with the British ambassador to Mexico for an armistice between Texas and Mexico in 1843. He was instrumental in negotiating the release of some of the prisoners from the Mier expedition. He opposed Texas annexation by the United States, and when Texans voted for annexation he was recalled.

1855 - Democratic Governor Elisha Pease was reelected over the American party candidate David Dickson by 10,000 votes to serve another term as the Governor of Texas.

1874 - Jim Reed, was killed at Paris, Texas. He was wanted for robbing passengers of the Austin-San Antonio stage of $2,500 in April of that year. Reed was shot while trying to escape from custody. His wife, Belle, refused to identify his body, preventing the deputy sheriff from collecting a reward. Following her husbands death, Belle would place their kids with relatives, move to the Indian territory (Oklahoma), and take up with the Younger brothers and Jesse James. She eventually married Samuel Starr in 1880. Belle Starr served time in prison for Horse Thieving. After prison, she was known as the "Bandit Queen". Belle Starr continued assisting her crimal associates, selling horsed they had stolen from her Dallas livery. She escaped prosecution, however, until February 3, 1889, when she was shot to death in Oklahoma, just two days short of her 40th birthday.

1880 - On August 6, 1880, forty miles north of the site of present Van Horn, black soldiers of the Tenth United States Cavalry and a detachment of the Twenty-fourth United States Infantry fought Victorio in the climactic engagement of the Apache leader's incursion into West Texas. Although scarcely more than a skirmish, the Battle at Rattlesnake Springs was important in convincing Victorio to abandon the Trans-Pecos. On August 7 Capt. Thomas C. Lebo reported to Grierson that four days earlier his Company K had located and destroyed the Indians' supply camp in the Sierra Diablo. Twice defeated, hungry, and denied access to water holes, Victorio abandoned his effort to return to New Mexico and fled back across the Rio Grande. On October 15 Mexican forces killed him in the Tres Castillos Mountains. Victorio's death ended the Indian threat to West Texas.

1966 - Houston oilman Ralph A. Johnston signed the deed transferring Paisano Ranch to the University of Texas. The 254-acre ranch, fourteen miles southwest of Austin, was the country retreat of J. Frank Dobie. After Dobie's death in 1964, a group of his friends and admirers, including O'Neil Ford, Peter Hurd, J. Lon Tinkle, and John Henry Faulk, undertook to preserve Paisano as a writers' retreat. Johnston, to whom Dobie had dedicated his last book, bought Paisano to take it off the market. Since 1967, more than sixty native Texan writers have worked and lived at the ranch as recipients of Dobie Paisano Fellowships, awarded by the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Institute of Letters.

1987 - General Ira Clarence Eaker(born at Field Creek, Texas) passed away at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland. On March 22, 1945, Eaker was transferred to Washington to become deputy chief of the army air force under Gen. H. H.(Hap) Arnold. In that position, representing the air force, he transmitted the command from President Harry Truman to General Spaatz, who was then commanding the Pacific Air Forces, to drop the atomic bomb on Japan.

[Hoi Polloi]

1726 - Antonio Margil de Jesús, early missionary to Texas, died in Mexico City.

1987 - General Ira Clarence Eaker(born at Field Creek, Texas) passed away at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland.

A song for the day:
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=r_Mr9cPSDK8[/youtube]

[USA1]

[budroux2w]

[joe817]

Wow Polloi! I LIKE IT!

[Hoi Polloi]

Wow Polloi! I LIKE IT!

I am so glad you thought it a good idea! I love it when history nerds collide.

The Dies Irea is a traditional funeral selection dating back to the Middle Ages, inspired by Zephaniah 1:15–16. You can read the Latin and the literal English translation here. It's not so popular nowadays, though, because lyrics focusing on the joyful aspects of death are more common than those that focus on the judgment aspects. This shift was not simply organic, but intentional. Now it is most frequently seen in chorale selections in whole or in part. Well-known parts of the Dies Irea are the Lacrimosa and the Pie Jesu, which are the last two stanzas of the 19-stanza rhyming Latin poem.

Abp. Annibale Bugnini said of the 1970 reforms that removed this piece from funeral selections, "They got rid of texts that smacked of a negative spirituality inherited from the Middle Ages. Thus they removed such familiar and even beloved texts as the Libera me, Domine, the Dies Iræ, and others that overemphasized judgment, fear, and despair. These they replaced with texts urging Christian hope and arguably giving more effective expression to faith in the resurrection."

It can be heard today in traditional Latin Masses of the Roman Catholic Church in classical settings by Verdi or Mozart or in Gregorian chant most often, in some parts of the Anglican church, at Trans-Siberian Orchestra concerts, in the Warhammer 40k universe, in the musical "beds" of commercials (e.g. X2: X-Men United and the Discovery channel), in the 2007 Transformers movie, on WrestleMania XIV, in Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame and their Lion King and their Beyond Rangoon, in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Final Fantasy XIII Orphan game, Call of Duty: World at War game, and by several metal and black metal bands among many, many other places.