Today in History: August 22

1654: Jacob Barsimon, an employee of the Dutch East India Co., becomes the first Jewish immigrant to what will become the United States when he lands at New Amsterdam.

1791: Slaves in the northern part of Haiti revolt, triggering a twelve-year civil war that will culminate in independence in 1803.

1851: The U.S. schooner America beats 15 other yachts in a race around the Isle of Wight to win a silver cup made by Garrard’s of London.  The award will be named the America’s Cup in her honor.

1902: The unsuccessful Henry Ford Co., which had begun life as the unsuccessful Detroit Automobile Co., is reorganized after Ford’s departure and given a new name: Cadillac Automobile Co.

1902: German director Leni Riefenstahl is born at Berlin, Germany.  She will become the first major film maker to be blacklisted for her political views.

1903: Former Prime Minister Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, dies at age 73.  He was the son-in-law of Sir Edward Alderson, Baron of the Exchequer and author of Hadley v. Baxendale.

1911: Louvre employee Vincent Peruggia walks out of the museum with da Vinci’s Mona Lisa under his coat.  It remains missing for two years before Peruggia is arrested trying to sell it to a Florence art dealer.

1926: Charles W. Eliot, the man who hired Christopher C. Langdell to revolutionize legal education at Harvard, dies at age 92.