4 DECEMBER

1594 - Spanish colonial Catholic prelate Msgr. Domingo de Salazar, O.P., responsible for erecting the Manila Cathedral in the colony the Philippines, is dead; Salazar had fearlessly defended the Filipinos against the abusive encomenderos and Spanish officials who had inflicted much injustices and suffering during the early decades of Spain's colonial rule over the Southeast Asian archipelago, and had led to a rapid depopulation trend among the natives.

1899- Exactly 10 months into the Philippine-American War (1899-1914), Filipino freedom fighters led by Gen. Manuel Tinio y Bundok attack the imperialist American garrison at Vigan, Ilocos Sur but were severely repulsed, leading to the death of around 100 native freedom fighters; eight days earlier, Vigan fell into the hands of the enemy invading American forces as United States warships U.S.S. Oregon, U.S.S. Samar, and U.S.S. Callao began to bombard the province on November 26, 1899; about two years earlier, the Americans deceptively began positioning  themselves as "ally" to the Filipino cause of  independence against the yoke of Spanish  colonization, which eventually led Philippine leader Emilio F. Aguinaldo to stupidly allow the infamous Mock Battle of Manila that falsely showed  to the world that it was the Bald Eagle forces and not the Filipinos that have defeated the colonial Spaniards  in the Southeast Asian islands.


Photo credit: http://philippineamericanwar.webs.com/ilocosandcagayan1899.htm