July 3 Birthday
On July 3, 1863, the third day of Gettysburg, General Robert E. Lee ordered 12,500 Confederate soldiers to march across three-quarters of a mile of open field toward the Union center on Cemetery Ridge. Pickett's Charge, as it became known, was a disaster. The Confederates reached the Union line at one point — "the high-water mark of the Confederacy" — but were overwhelmed. Half the attackers became casualties. Lee accepted full blame: "It's all my fault." He rode among the survivors saying, "All this has been my fault." Gettysburg was Lee's last offensive into Northern territory. Franz Kafka, born this day in 1883 in Prague, wrote in German, worked as an insurance clerk, and died of tuberculosis at forty-one. His novels — The Trial, The Castle, Amerika — were unpublished at his death. He had asked his friend Max Brod to burn the manuscripts. Brod did not. The word "Kafkaesque" describes a world of opaque bureaucracy and helpless individuals — precisely what Kafka described in his fiction. He once said: "A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.". People born on July 3 fall under the zodiac sign of Cancer. The birthstone is Ruby and the birth flower is Larkspur. Historical events on July 3 include 1863: Third day of Battle of Gettysburg — Pickett's Charge repulsed, 1775: George Washington assumes command of Continental Army, 1890: Idaho becomes 43rd US state. Famous people born on July 3 include Franz Kafka (1883), George M. Cohan (1878), Tom Cruise (1962).