On this day in 1862, the US Navy formally commissions its
first hospital ship, the Red Rover. A captured Confederate
side-wheel steamer, it treats 374 patients in its first seven
months of service on the Mississippi, 332 of whom were
discharged; 37 die and five desert.

On September 16, 1620, the Mayflower sailed from Plymouth,
England, bound for the Americas with 102 passengers. The
ship was headed for Virginia, where the colonists—half
religious dissenters and half entrepreneurs—had been
authorized to settle by the British crown.

However, stormy weather and navigational errors forced the
Mayflower off course, and on November 21 the “Pilgrims”
reached Massachusetts, where they founded the first
permanent European settlement in New England in late
December.

Thirty-five of the Pilgrims were members of the radical English
Separatist Church, who traveled to America to escape the
jurisdiction of the Church of England, which they found
corrupt.        
        

The inauguration of the Suez Canal at Port Said.

The Suez Canal, connecting the Mediterranean and the Red
seas, was inaugurated in an elaborate ceremony attended by
French Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III.

In 1854, Ferdinand de Lesseps, the former French consul to
Cairo, secured an agreement with the Ottoman governor of
Egypt to build a canal 100 miles across the Isthmus of Suez.

An international team of engineers drew up a construction
plan, and in 1856 the Suez Canal Company was formed and
granted the right to operate the canal for 99 years after
completion of the work.

Construction began in April 1859, and at first digging was
done by hand with picks and shovels wielded by forced
laborers. Later, European workers with dredgers and
steam shovels arrived.

Ferdinand de Lesseps, the architect of the
Suez Canal.

Early photographs of dredging in the Suez Canal from
1868-69. Norbert Schiller Collection.

On June 17, 1885, the dismantled Statue of Liberty, a gift of
friendship from the people of France to the people of America,
arrived in New York Harbor after being shipped across the
Atlantic Ocean in 350 individual pieces packed in more than
200 cases.

The copper and iron statue was reassembled and dedicated
the following year in a ceremony presided over by President
Grover Cleveland. It became known around the world as an
enduring symbol of freedom and democracy.

At 2:20 a.m. on April 15, 1912, the British ocean liner Titanic
sank into the North Atlantic Ocean about 400 miles south of
Newfoundland, Canada. The massive ship, which carried
2,200 passengers and crew, had struck an iceberg two and
half hours before.

The iceberg thought to have been hit by Titanic, it was          
reported to have a streak of red paint from a ships hull
along it s waterline on one side.