Jethro Sumner (c. 1733 – 1785) was an officer in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. After serving in Virginia's Provincial forces in the French and Indian War and later as Sheriff of Bute County, North Carolina, he became a strident Patriot, and was elected to North Carolina's Provincial Congress. He was named the commanding officer of the 3rd North Carolina Regiment in the Continental Army in 1776, seeing action in the Southern theater and Philadelphia campaign. One of five brigadier generals from North Carolina, he served with distinction in the battles of Stono Ferry and Eutaw Springs, but recurring bouts of poor health often forced him to play an administrative role, or to convalesce back home. Following a drastic reduction in the number of North Carolinians serving with the Continental Army, Sumner became a general in the state's militia, but resigned in protest after the state Board of War awarded overall command of the militia to William Smallwood, a Continental Army general from Maryland. In 1783 Sumner helped establish the state chapter of the Society of the Cincinnati, and became its first president. He died in 1785 with extensive landholdings.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jethro_Sumner
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
410:
Rome was sacked for the first time in 800 years, by the Visigoths under Alaric I. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Rome_(410)
1456:
The oldest known version of the Gutenberg Bible, the first major book produced on a printing press, was completed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutenberg_Bible
1821:
The Treaty of Córdoba was signed in Córdoba, Veracruz, ratifying the Plan of Iguala and concluding Mexico's War of Independence from Spain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_C%C3%B3rdoba
1941:
Adolf Hitler ordered the official termination of the T4 euthanasia program of the mentally ill and disabled, although killings continued in secret for the remainder of the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_T4
2012:
American cyclist Lance Armstrong was banned from all competitions and stripped of his seven Tour de France titles by the United States Anti-Doping Agency for using illicit performance-enhancing drugs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance_Armstrong
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
resplendence: The property of being, or that which causes something to be, resplendent. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/resplendence
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
I would encourage people to look around them in their community and find an organization that is doing something that they believe in, even if that organization has only five people, or ten people, or twenty people, or a hundred people. And to look at history and understand that when change takes place it takes place as a result of large, large numbers of people doing little things unbeknownst to one another. And that history is very important for people to not get discouraged. … History is instructive. And what it suggests to people is that even if they do little things, if they walk on the picket line, if they join a vigil, if they write a letter to their local newspaper. Anything they do, however small, becomes part of a much, much larger sort of flow of energy. And when enough people do enough things, however small they are, then change takes place. --Howard Zinn https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn
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