Nakahama Manjirō (January 27, 1827 – November 12, 1898)

Called the U.S.’s first ambassador to Japan, a 14-year-old
fisherman by the name of Manjiro was considered America’s
first Japanese immigrant, arriving in the country on May 7,
1843, by way of a whaling ship.

According to the National Endowment of the Humanities,
the boy and his crew were caught in a violent storm, with
their ship eventually washing up on a desert island 300
miles away from their coastal Japanese village.

Rescued five months later by an American whaling ship,
Manjiro was adopted by American Capt. William Whitfield,
who renamed him John Mung and brought him back to the
states to his home in Massachusetts.

                  
SANDY KOZEL

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.