Today in History: discovery of the Rosetta Stone

Boston Globe

3 days ago

In 1775, 250 years ago, General George Washington moved his headquarters in Cambridge from the Wadsworth House to the building no w known as the Longfellow House. Also, Daniel Morgan and his rifle corps of 96 marksmen began their 600 mile march from Virginia to Boston to provide General Washington with snipers capable of targeting British officers. The march would take 21 days. And also on this day, the Second Continental Congress agreed to a secret plot to support a raid on a massive storehouse of gunpowder in Bermuda by local residents loyal to the rebel cause. The success of the raid the following month would be crucial to Washington's forces, which were nearly out of gunpowder, forcing soldiers to scrounge for pikes and swords instead for hand-to-hand combat. The purloined powder equalled four times what Washington's army had at the time.
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In 1799, the Rosetta Stone, a key to deciphering ancient Egyptian scripts, was found at Fort Julien in the Nile Delta during the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt.
In 1834, the Spanish Inquisition was abolished more than 350 years after its creation.
In 1870, Georgia became the last Confederate state to be readmitted to the Union.
In 1913, Democrat Augustus Bacon of Georgia became the first person elected to the U.S. Senate under the terms of the recently ratified 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, providing for popular election of senators.
In 1916, The Boeing Company, originally known as Pacific Aero Products Co., was founded in Seattle.
In 1975, three American astronauts blasted off aboard an Apollo spaceship hours after two Soviet cosmonauts were launched aboard a Soyuz spacecraft for a mission that included a linkup of the two ships in orbit.
In 1976, a 36-hour kidnap ordeal began for 26 schoolchildren and their bus driver as they were abducted near Chowchilla, California, by three gunmen and imprisoned in an underground cell. (The captives escaped unharmed; the kidnappers were caught.)
In 1996, MSNBC, a 24-hour all-news network, made its debut on cable and the internet.
In 1997, fashion designer Gianni Versace, 50, was shot dead outside his Miami Beach home; suspected gunman Andrew Phillip Cunanan (koo-NAN'-an), 27, was found dead eight days later, a suicide. (Investigators believed Cunanan killed four other people before Versace in a cross-country rampage that began the previous March.)
In 2002, John Walker Lindh, an American who'd fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan, pleaded guilty in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, to two felonies in a deal sparing him life in prison.
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In 2006, Twitter (now known as X) was launched to the public.
In 2019, avowed white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. was
In 2020, George Floyd's family filed a lawsuit against the city of Minneapolis and the four police officers charged in his death, alleging the officers violated Floyd's rights when they restrained him and that the city allowed a culture of excessive force, racism and impunity to flourish in its police force. (The city would agree to pay $27 million to settle the lawsuit in March 2021.)