FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS

The Alamo Mission (Spanish: Misión de Álamo), commonly called the Alamo and originally known as the Misión San Antonio de Valero, is an historic Spanish mission and fortress compound founded in the 18th century by Roman Catholic missionaries in what is now San Antonio, Texas, United States. It was the site of the Battle of the Alamo in 1836, where American folk heroes James Bowie and Davy Crockett died. Today it is a museum in the Alamo Plaza Historic District and a part of the San Antonio Missions World Heritage Site.

The historic district was one of the early Spanish missions in Texas, built for the education of local American Indians after their conversion to Christianity. The mission was secularized in 1793 and then abandoned. Ten years later, it became a fortress housing the Second Flying Company of San Carlos de Parras military unit, who likely gave the mission the name Alamo. During the Texas Revolution, Mexican General Martín Perfecto de Cos surrendered the fort to the Texian Army in December 1835, following the Siege of Béxar. A relatively small number of Texian soldiers then occupied the compound for several months. The defenders were wiped out at the Battle of the Alamo on March 6, 1836. As the Mexican Army retreated from Texas several months later, they tore down many of the Alamo walls and burned some of the buildings.

For the next five years, the Alamo was periodically used to garrison soldiers, both Texian and Mexican, but was ultimately abandoned. In 1849, several years after Texas was annexed to the United States, the U.S. Army began renting the facility for use as a quartermaster’s depot, before again abandoning the mission in 1876 after nearby Fort Sam Houston was established. The Alamo chapel was sold to the state of Texas, which conducted occasional tours but made no effort to restore it. The remaining buildings were sold to a mercantile company that operated them as a wholesale grocery store.

The Daughters of the Republic of Texas (DRT) formed in 1891 and began trying to preserve the Alamo. Adina Emilia De Zavala and Clara Driscoll successfully convinced the state legislature in 1905 to purchase the remaining buildings and to name the DRT as the permanent custodian of the site. Over the next century, periodic attempts were made to transfer control of the Alamo from the DRT. In early 2015, Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush officially moved control of the Alamo to the Texas General Land Office. The Alamo and the four missions in the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site on July 5, 2015.

TODAY’S ALMANAC

Question of the Day

How do you kill ants that come into the house? Our house is on a concrete base. They seem to come through the heating ducts in the concrete. The pipes are clay, and the ants live there summer and winter.Sprinkle hot pepper flakes near the ducts where the ants come in. If that doesn’t work, try ground cloves. Also wipe the area where you see the ants with a solution of equal parts white vinegar and water.

Advice of the Day

Don’t turn a chair with one foot as the pivot. It will lead to family quarrels.

Home Hint of the Day

Can’t get around that radiator to paint behind it? Check with your local paint store; you’ll probably find it stocks paint rollers about 1-inch thick and 7-inches long, with 24-inch handles, for just such predicaments.

Word of the Day

Hogshead1 hogshead=63 gallons

Puzzle of the Day

What men may be said to be made from trees?Aldermen

Born

• George Frederic Watts (artist) – 1817
• W.E.B. Dubois (founder of the Niagara Movement, which eventually merged with the NAACP) – 1868
• Majel Barrett-Roddenberry (actress and producer) – 1932
• Patricia Richardson (actress) – 1951
• Dakota Fanning (actress) – 1994
• Estelle Silvia Ewa Mary (daughter of Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria; first royal birth in 30 years) – 2012

Died

• John Quincy Adams (6th U.S. president) – 1848
• Melvin Franklin (Motown singer) – 1995
• Gordon Matthews (inventor of voicemail) – 2002
• Charlie Fox (1971 manager of the year with the San Francisco Giants and spent a half-century in baseball as an executive, manager, coach, and scout) – 2004
• Don Cornell (big band singer) – 2004

Events

• Cato Street Conspiracy foiled– 1820
• The siege of the Alamo began in San Antonio, Texas– 1836
• Liberty Bell developed its final irreparable crack after tolling for Washington’s birthday celebration– 1846
• Tootsie Roll introduced by Leo Hirshfield– 1896
• First powered flight in Canada (by John Alexander Douglas McCurdy in Silver Dart) took place in Baddeck, Nova Scotia– 1909
• Federal Radio Commission established– 1927
• U.S. rocket mail flight across Greenwood Lake, New York, to New Jersey– 1936
• Song As Time Goes By, from movie Casablanca, copyrighted– 1943
• The most memorable WW II photo was taken by Joe Rosenthal of members of the 5th Division of the U.S. Marines planting an American flag atop Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima, Japan– 1945
• The existence of Dolly the sheep, the first successful cloned mammal, was announced– 1997
• Chloe Hegland kept soccer ball aloft with 163 touches in 30 seconds– 2008

Weather

• Blizzard stranded 750 motorists in the Sierra Nevada region of California– 1936
• 97 degrees F, San Antonio, Texas– 1996

COURTESY www.almanac.com