4 Feb History.

<< Feb 03| HISTORY “4” “2”DAY |Feb 05 >>
Events, deaths, births, of FEB 04 v.8.01

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[For Feb 04 Julian go to Gregorian date: 1583~1699: Feb 14 — 1700s: Feb 15 — 1800s: Feb 16 — 1900~2099: Feb 17]

ALTERNATE SITES ANY DAY OF THE YEAR IN HISTORY ART “4” FEB 04 wikipedia

^ On a 04 February:
2002 (Monday) Enterasys Networks (ETS) stock is downgraded from Buy to Hold by CSFB brokerage. So do stockholders hold? Many of them rush to sell, and they find ready buyers... at distress prices. From the previous close at $10.80, ETS drops as low as $4.13 intraday and closes at $4.20. [one~year price chart >]. The next day ETS would have an intraday low of $3.29 and close at $4.00..
The computer networking company said that the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating it and unidentified "affiliated companies". Company officials also said that internal auditors found discrepancies between two copies of a sales contract in the Asia-Pacific region, prompting the company to suspend three employees. Also, the Portsmouth, N.H.-based compnay said that it is delaying the release of its fourth-quarter and full-year financial results. The ongoing SEC investigation will delay the 05-Feb-planned distribution of shares in a subsidiary, Aprisma Management Technologies Inc. Two versions of the $4 million contract surfaced the previous week - one internally, and one in the hands of the company's outside auditors. One version supported recognizing current revenue from the contract, but the other did not. Asia-Pacific operations generate $25 million to $30 million a quarter, about 13%. Enterasys' Asian offices include ones in Hong Kong and Singapore. The company was told about the SEC investigation after business hours on 31 Jan 2002. The company said that Latin American sales, typically $12 million to $14 million a quarter, were off about $7 million in the fourth quarter, which ended on 29 Dec 2001. Quarterly results in Europe and North America, typically 80% of sales, met expectations, Enterasys said. Cabletron Systems Inc., once New Hampshire's largest private employer, split in August 2001 into Enterasys and Riverstone Networks Inc. of Santa Clara, California. Founded in 1983 by entrepreneurs Craig Benson and Bob Levine, Cabletron moved to Rochester, N.H., and flourished. By early 1997, the company had 4000 employees in New Hampshire and 6600 worldwide. Later that year, a long decline began. Cabletron had been surpassed by rivals focused on Internet-based products and technology. Cabletron eventually reorganized. Aprisma, based in Durham, helps businesses manage technology.
2000 Austrian President Thomas Klestil swears in a coalition government that includes Joerg Haider's far-right Freedom Party. This results in European Union sanctions.

^ 1999 Clinton impeachment trial: Senate approves video depositions

(1) The US Senate rejects a motion to call Monica Lewinsky to testify in person before the Senate impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton.

But the senators and the viewing audience will get the opportunity to hear from the former White House intern, as the Senate agreed to allow portions of her videotaped deposition to be played during the summation and closing statement phase of the trial.
Both the House managers and White House counsel will get the chance to play excerpts from this week's depositions of Lewinsky, presidential confidant Vernon Jordan and White House aide Sidney Blumenthal Feb. 6 during the summation of the facts portion of the proceedings.
- Once it becomes clear the video would be permitted, White House Counsel Charles Ruff enters a motion requesting the president's counsel be given early notice of which parts of the videotaped depositions the prosecutors plan to use on Feb. 6.
- House manager James Rogan (R-California) complains, quoting a former California judge who once said, "'It's none of your damn business' what the other side is going to put on."
- Ruff's motion is rejected on a party-line 54-46 vote.
Twenty-five Republicans join all 45 Democrats in opposing the request made by the House prosecution to call Lewinsky in person. But members of both parties cross party lines in approving, 62-38, the use of the videotaped depositions. An alternative motion, allowing only the transcripts of the depositions to be used, is defeated on a bipartisan basis.
(ROLL CALL) (TRANSCRIPT)

(2) White House counsel Charles Ruff formally responds to the invitation of 28 Senators for Clinton to voluntarily testify, telling Lott in a letter: "It is neither necessary nor appropriate for the president to testify."
(RUFF'S LETTER TO LOTT)

1998 Desparecen los símbolos nacionales o religiosos en la nueva bandera de Bosnia-Herzegovina.
1998 La organización Amnistía Internacional (AI) anuncia el cierre de su oficina en la capital colombiana, ante las crecientes amenazas recibidas por los enemigos de los derechos humanos.
1998 Un combinado de tres fármacos, usado en adultos con resultados satisfactorios en el control del virus del SIDA, se prueba con éxito en niños.
1997 A civil jury in Santa Monica, Calif., found O.J. Simpson liable for the deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. Simpson had been acquitted in criminal court.
1996 Beijing censors Internet communications, banning pornography and political content and requiring computer networks to register with the Chinese government.
1996 Prodigy announces than it will offer Internet service for $1 per hour, starting in New York in March and then rolling out nationwide. The first online service to offer Internet access, Prodigy hoped the move would stem the flow of members away from online services to Internet provider services. Eventually, Prodigy itself would become little more than another Internet service provider, abandoning its content creation efforts and scaling back its online service.
1996 Microsoft kills "Blackbird" Microsoft canceled work on its long-delayed Blackbird tool, meant to speed content development for the Microsoft Network's proprietary online service. The company announced it would develop a new version of Blackbird for the Web, heralding a major shift in strategy for Microsoft. Over the next month, the company would redirect its efforts to focus on the Internet. Microsoft did eventually introduce a Web development tool, Front Page, which it acquired in its purchase of software company Vermeer.
1992 Fracasa el intento de golpe de Estado en Venezuela por parte del teniente coronel Hugo Rafael Chávez Frias.
1991 Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani offered to hold talks with Iraq and the United States in an attempt to mediate an end to the Gulf War.
1991 US President George Bush sent Congress a $4.45 trillion budget for fiscal 1992 containing a deficit of $280.9 billion.
1991 US first-class postage raised from 25¢ to 29¢
1989 Se publica un informe según el cual en el mundo hay ya entre 5 y 10 millones de personas infectadas por el SIDA.
1988 El Congreso de EE.UU., por 219 votos contra 211, rechaza la propuesta de Ronald Reagan de conceder 26 millones de dólares a la contra nicaragüense.
1988 The New York Stock Exchange announces that it will limit the use of its electronic trading system when the Dow Jones industrial average gains or loses more than fifty points in one day. Two investigations had reported that computer trading accelerated the October 1987 stock market crash.
1988 Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega indicted on drug charges
1987 US President Reagan's veto of Clean Water Act is overridden by Congress
1986 US President Ronald Reagan's State of the Union address.
1985 España firma la convención de la ONU contra la tortura.
1986 Israeli fighters intercept Libyan liner (passenger plane)
1982 Suriname premier Chin A Sen flees
1980 Abolhassan Bani-Sadr was sworn in as president of Iran by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
1978 Se celebran elecciones municipales en Nicaragua en un clima de violencia. Los sandinistas anuncian la guerra civil.

^1974 Patty Hearst kidnapped
      Patty Hearst, 19, daughter of newspaper publisher Randolph Hearst, is kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley, California, by two Black men and a White woman, all three armed. Her fiancé, Stephen Weed, is beaten and tied up along with a neighbor who tries to help. Witnesses report seeing a struggling Hearst being carried away blindfolded, and she is put in the trunk of a car. Neighbors who came out into the street are forced to take cover as the kidnappers fire their guns to cover their escape.
      Three days later, the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a small US leftist group, announced in a letter to a Berkeley radio station that it was holding Hearst as a "prisoner of war." Four days later, the SLA demanded that the Hearst family give $70 in foodstuffs to every needy person from Santa Rosa to Los Angeles. This done, said the SLA, negotiation would begin for the return of Patricia Hearst. Randolph Hearst hesitantly gave away some $2 million worth of food. The SLA then called this inadequate and asked for $4 million more. The Hearst Corporation said it would donate the additional sum if the girl was released unharmed. In April, however, the situation changed dramatically when Patty Hearst declared, in a tape sent to the authorities, that she was joining the SLA of her own free will. Later that month, a surveillance camera took a photo of her participating in an armed robbery of a San Francisco bank, and she was also spotted during a robbery of a Los Angeles store. On 17 May, Los Angeles police raided the SLA's secret headquarters, killing six of the group's nine known members. Among the dead was the SLA's leader, Donald DeFreeze, a Black ex-convict who called himself General Field Marshal Cinque. Patty Hearst and two other SLA members wanted for the April bank robbery were not on the premises. Finally, on 18 September 1975, after crisscrossing the country with her captors — or conspirators — for more than a year, Hearst, or "Tania" as she called herself, was captured in a San Francisco apartment and arrested for armed robbery. Despite her claim that she had been brainwashed by the SLA, she was convicted on 20 March 1974, and sentenced to seven years in prison. In May 1977, she was released on probation and returned to a more routine existence. She later married her bodyguard.
     Patricia Hearst, the 19-year-old daughter of publishing billionaire William Randolph Hearst, is kidnapped from her Berkeley, California, apartment. Stephen Weed, Hearst's fiancé, was beaten unconscious by the two abductors. Soon, a ransom demand came from the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a radical activist group led by Donald DeFreeze. DeFreeze had formed the SLA in 1973 after he escaped from prison. On 06 November 1973, the SLA shot and killed Marcus Foster, Oakland's superintendent of schools, with bullets laced with cyanide. Less than a month before Hearst's kidnapping, an SLA bomb-making factory was discovered by the police. The SLA instructed William Hearst to distribute $70 million in food to the poor in Oakland to have Patty released. The Black Muslims, Malcolm X's former organization, were chosen to manage the food distribution, which turned into a riot when more than 10'000 persons showed up and fought for the food. However, Patty was not released by DeFreeze and the SLA. The Hearst story took a strange and unexpected turn two months after the abduction, when the SLA robbed the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco. The surveillance cameras clearly showed that Patty Hearst was one of the machine gun-toting robbers. Soon after followed a taped message from the SLA in which Hearst claimed that she had voluntarily joined the SLA and was now to be known as "Tania." On 17 May 1974, police were tipped that the SLA leaders were at a Los Angeles home. With 400 police and FBI agents outside the house, a tremendous gun battle broke out. The overwhelming firepower of the police eventually caused a fire to break out. DeFreeze and five other SLA members died in the fire. However, Hearst was not inside the house. She was not found until September 1975. Patty Hearst was put on trial for armed robbery and convicted, despite her claim that she had been coerced, through repeated rape, isolation, and brainwashing, into joining the SLA. Prosecutors believed that she actually orchestrated her own kidnapping because of her prior involvement with one of the SLA members. Despite any real proof of this theory, she was convicted and sent to prison. President Carter commuted Hearst's sentence after she had served two years. Hearst is currently seeking a pardon.

1974 Chimpanzee Nim Chimsky signs his first word, at 2½ months.
1971 British car maker Rolls Royce declared itself bankrupt.
1969 Yassar Arafat takes over as chairman of PLO.

1965 False rumors about US and Soviet pressure on respective allies in Vietnam
McGeorge Bundy, American Special Assistant for National Security, arrives in Saigon for talks with US Ambassador General Maxwell Taylor. Two days later Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin arrived in Hanoi. There was worldwide speculation that their visits were linked — that the United States and the Soviet Union had agreed to pressure their "clients" into negotiations — but this was denied by all the principals. Bundy, in fact, was there to confer with Ambassador Taylor on the best way to deal with the political situation. And although Kosygin publicly proclaimed continued Soviet support for North Vietnam and the communist war, a Soviet participant in the talks later described the North Vietnamese as "a bunch of stubborn bastards."

1962 El gobierno argentino ha prohibido la designación del ex presidente Juan Domingo Perón Sosa para la candidatura de gobernador de la provincia de Buenos Aires.

^1962 First US helicopter shot down in Vietnam.
The first US helicopter is shot down in Vietnam. It was one of 15 helicopters ferrying South Vietnamese Army troops into battle near the village of Hong My in the Mekong Delta. The first US helicopter unit had arrived in South Vietnam aboard the ferry carrier USNS Core on 11 December 1961. This contingent included 33 Vertol H-21C Shawnee helicopters and 400 air and ground crewmen to operate and maintain them. Their assignment was to airlift South Vietnamese Army troops into combat.

1962 USSR newspaper Izvestia reports that baseball is an old Russian game.
1962 The Sun, the Moon eclipsing it, and the five planets visible by the naked eye are aligned within 17º of each other. This does not cause the end of the world, as many feared.
1960 Es aprobada en Francia una ley que permite al general Charles André de Gaulle legislar por decreto.
1955 El armador griego Stavros Niarchos adquiere por $400'000 el cuadro La Piedad, de Domenikos Theotokopulos “el Greco”.
1948 Ceylon (later renamed Sri Lanka) gains independence from Britain (National Day)

^1945 The Yalta Conference begins.
      US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin meet at Yalta, in the Crimea, to discuss and plan the postwar world — namely, to address the redistribution of power and influence. It is at Yalta that many place the birth of the Cold War. It had already been determined that a defeated Germany would be sliced up into zones occupied by the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, the principal Allied powers. Once in Germany, the Allies would see to the deconstruction of the German military and the prosecution of war criminals. A special commission would also determine war reparations. But the most significant issue, the one that marked the conference in history, was Joseph Stalin's designs on Eastern Europe. (Stalin's demands had started early with his desire that the location of the conference be at a Black Sea resort close to the USSR. He claimed he was too ill to travel far.)
      Roosevelt and Churchill attempted to create a united front against the Soviet dictator; their advisers had already mapped out clear positions on Europe and the creation and mission of the United Nations. They propounded the principles of the Atlantic Charter, formulated back in August 1941, that would ensure "life, liberty, independence, and religious freedom" for a free Europe and guarantee that only those nations that had declared war on the Axis powers would gain entry into the new United Nations.
      Stalin agreed to these broad principles (although he withdrew his promise that all 16 Soviet republics would have separate representation within the United Nations), as well as an agreement that the Big Three would help any nation formerly in the grip of an Axis power in the establishment of "interim governmental authorities broadly representative of all democratic elements in the population...and the earliest possible establishment through free elections of governments responsive to the will of the people." Toward that end, Roosevelt and Churchill gave support to the Polish government-in-exile in London; Stalin demurred, insisting that the communist-dominated and Soviet-loyal Polish Committee of National Liberation, based in Poland, would govern. The only compromise reached was the inclusion of "other" political groups in the committee. As for Poland's new borders, they were discussed, but no conclusions were reached. The conference provided the illusion of more unanimity than actually existed, especially in light of Stalin's reneging on his promise of free elections in those Eastern European nations the Soviets occupied at war's end. Roosevelt and Churchill had believed Stalin's promises, primarily because they needed to — they were convinced the USSR's support in defeating the Japanese was crucial. In fact, the USSR played much less of a role in ending the war in the East than assumed. But there was no going back. A divisive "iron curtain," in Churchill's famous phrase, was beginning to descend in Europe.
      Yalta Conference foreshadows the Cold War President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin meet to discuss the Allied war effort against Germany and Japan and to try and settle some nagging diplomatic issues. While a number of important agreements were reached at the conference, tensions over European issues-particularly the fate of Poland-foreshadowed the crumbling of the Grand Alliance that had developed between the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union during World War II and hinted at the Cold War to come. Meeting in the city of Yalta in the Russian Crimean from 04 February to 11 February, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin each arrived with their own agendas for the conference. For Stalin, postwar economic assistance for Russia, and US and British recognition of a Soviet sphere of influence in eastern Europe were the main objectives. Churchill had the protection of the British Empire foremost in his mind, but also wanted to clarify the postwar status of Germany. Roosevelt's goals included consensus on establishment of the United Nations and gaining Soviet agreement to enter the war against Japan once Hitler had been defeated.
      None of them left Yalta completely satisfied. There was no definite determination of financial aid for Russia. Many issues pertaining to Germany were deferred for further discussion. As for the United Nations, Stalin wanted all 16 Soviet republics represented in the General Assembly, but settled for three (the Soviet Union as a whole, Belorussia, and the Ukraine). However, the Soviets did agree to join in the war against Japan 90 days after Hitler's Germany was defeated. It was over the issue of the postwar status of Poland, however, that the animosity and mistrust between the United States and the Soviet Union that would characterize the Cold War were most readily apparent. Soviet troops were already in control of Poland, a procommunist provisional government had already been established, and Stalin was adamant that Russia's interests in that nation be recognized. The United States and Great Britain believed that the London-based noncommunist Polish government-in-exile was most representative of the Polish people. The final agreement merely declared that a "more broadly based" government should be established in Poland. Free elections to determine Poland's future were called for sometime in the future.
      Many US officials were disgusted with the agreement, which they believed condemned Poland to a Communist future. Roosevelt, however, felt that he could do no more at the moment, since the Soviet army was occupying Poland. As the Cold War became a reality in the years that followed the Yalta Conference, many critics of Roosevelt's foreign policy accused him of "selling out" at the meeting and naively letting Stalin have his way. It seems doubtful, however, that Roosevelt had much choice. He was able to secure Russian participation in the war against Japan (Russia declared war on agonizing Japan on 08 August 1945), established the basic principles of the United Nations, and did as much as possible to settle the Poland issue. With World War II still raging, his primary interest was in maintaining the Grand Alliance. He believed that troublesome political issues could be postponed and solved after the war. Unfortunately, Roosevelt never got that chance — almost exactly two months after the end of the conference, Roosevelt suffered a stroke and died.

1944 US 7th Infantry Division captures Kwajalein.
1943 En el transcurso de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, submarinos alemanes hunden trece barcos aliados de un convoy cargado de armas.
1941 British tanks occupy Maus Libya
1938 Hitler seizes control of German army and puts Nazi in key posts.
1933 German President Von Hindenburg limits freedom of the press
1932 Japanese troop occupy Harbin, Manchuria
1926 Austrian chancellor Seipel wants to join Germany.
1924 Es liberado Mohandas Karamchand “Mahatma” Gandhi, líder nacionalista indio.

^ 1922 Ford Motor buys Lincoln Motor
The Ford Motor accompany acquires the Lincoln Motor Company for eight million dollars. Henry Ford’s son, Edsel, was subsequently named president of Lincoln. The move signaled Henry Ford’s first acknowledgement of diversification as a desirable marketing strategy. Throughout the 1920s, Ford Motors suffered from its unwillingness to match the diverse range of automobiles offered by General Motors. Ford regained some of its market share in 1927 when it released the new Model A, a car whose styling leaned heavily on the traditional sleek look of the Lincoln automobile.

1919 City of Bremen's Soviet Republic overthrown
1914 US Congress approves Burnett-anti-immigration law
1899 Revolt against US occupation of Philippines
1887 Interstate Commerce Act authorizes federal regulation of railroads

^ 1875 “Butlerizing”
In the US House of Representatives, during a debate on a civil rights bill, the very uncivil Southern Democrat Congressman John Young Brown of Kentucky says: “If I was to desire to express all that was pusillanimous in war, inhuman in peace, forbidding in morals, and infamous in politics, I should call it ‘Butlerizing’.” He is insulting Republican Congressman Benjamin Butler [05 Nov 1818 – 11 Jan 1893] of Massachusetts, a vigorous supporter of civil rights and a former Union general during the Civil War, hated by the rebels for the harsh way he acted while commanding the troops occupying New Orleans from May to December 1862. Brown is censured by the House. On 27 February 1875, Harper's Weekly publishes a Thomas Nast cartoon of the event, which can be seen, together with a detailed account of the event, at http://www.harpweek.com/09Cartoon/BrowseByDateCartoon.asp?Month=February&Date=27
—(060203)

1866 Mary Baker Eddy allegedly cures her injuries by opening a bible
1865 Robert E Lee is named commander-in-chief of Confederate Army
1864 Skirmish at Big Black River Bridge, Mississippi

^1861 Six southern states meet to form Confederacy
      In Montgomery, Alabama, delegates from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana convene to establish the Confederate States of America. As early as 1858, the ongoing conflict between the North and the South over the issue of slavery led Southern leadership to discuss a unified separation from the United States. By 1860, the majority of the slave states were publicly threatening secession if the Republicans, the anti-slavery party, won the presidency. Following Republican Abraham Lincoln's victory over the divided Democratic Party in November 1860, South Carolina immediately initiated secession proceedings. On 20 December, its legislature passed the "Ordinance of Secession," which declared that "the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved." After the declaration, South Carolina set about seizing forts, arsenals, and other strategic locations within the state. Within six weeks, five more Southern states had followed South Carolina's lead. In February 1861, representatives from the six seceded states met in Montgomery, Alabama, to formally establish a unified government, which they named the Confederate States of America.
     On 04 February 1861 the Provisional Congress convenes in Montgomery, Alabama. The official record read: "Be it remembered that on the fourth day of February, in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, and in the Capitol of the State of Alabama, in the city of Montgomery, at the hour of noon, there assembled certain deputies and delegates from the several independent South State of North America..."
      The first order of business was drafting a constitution. They used the US Constitution as a model, and most of it was taken verbatim. It took just four days to hammer out a tentative document to govern the new nation. The president was limited to one six-year term. Unlike in the US Constitution, the word "slave" was used and the institution protected in all states and any territories to be added later. Importation of slaves was prohibited, as this would alienate European nations and would detract from the profitable "internal slave trade" in the South. Other components of the constitution were designed to enhance the power of the states — governmental money for internal improvements was banned and the president was given a line-item veto on appropriations bills.
     On 09 February, Jefferson Davis, a West Point graduate who was the US Secretary of War in the 1850s and a senator from Mississippi. was elected the Confederacy's first president. By the time Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated in March 1861, Texas had joined the Confederacy, and federal troops held only Fort Sumter in South Carolina, Fort Pickens off the Florida coast, and a handful of minor outposts in the South. On 12 April 1861, the American Civil War began when Confederate shore batteries under General P.G.T. Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter in South Carolina's Charleston Bay. Within two months, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee had all joined the embattled Confederacy.

1846 Mormons leave Nauvoo MO for settlement in the west
1824 J W Goodrich introduces rubber galoshes to the public
1822 Free American Blacks settle Liberia, West Africa
1801 John Marshall is sworn in as chief justice of the United States.
1794 French National Convention proclaims abolishment of slavery

^ 1794 (16 pluviôse an II) Abolition de l'esclavage dans les colonies françaises.
      Sa Convention vote l'abolition de l’esclavage dans les colonies françaises. A la veille de la Révolution, l'abbé Grégoire avait fondé la «Société des Amis des Noirs» en vue de mettre fin à cette odieuse institution. En 1791, l'Assemblée nationale accordait le droit de vote à certains hommes de couleur libres. Mais cette demi-mesure ne satisfaisait guère les esclaves de Saint-Domingue, la principale colonie française, aussi appelée Haïti. Ils allaient très vite se soulever sous le commandement d'un chef nommé Toussaint Louverture.
      Devant cette révolte et les menaces d’invasion anglaise et espagnole, les commissaires de la République à Saint-Domingue se résignèrent à proclamer la liberté générale des esclaves. La Convention généralise ces décisions en votant enfin l'abolition de l'esclavage dans toutes les colonies sur une proposition des députés Lacroix, Danton et Levasseur. Le décret est voté dans l'enthousiasme et les députés de Saint-Domingue sont l'objet de toutes les attentions.
      Mais l'esclavage sera rétabli par le Premier Consul Napoléon Bonaparte en 1802... ce qui entraînera pour la France la perte définitive de la colonie de Saint-Domingue. La France n'abolira définitivement l'esclavage qu'en 1848, longtemps après le Royaume-Uni.
— La Convención francesa vota la abolición de la esclavitud en sus colonias.

1789 First electoral college unanimously chooses George Washington and Adams as US President and Vice President
1787 Shays' Rebellion (of debt-ridden Massachusetts farmers) is decisively defeated at Petersham. Daniel Shays [1747 – 29 Sep 1825], who had been an officer in the US War of Independence, escapes to Vermont. He would be condemned to death by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, but he would be pardoned.
1783 Great Britain declares a formal cessation of hostilities with its former colonies, the United States of America.
1600 Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler meet for first time outside of Prague
1508 Maximilian I assumes imperial title without being crowned
1441 Pope Eugene IV published the encyclical Cantante Domino. It asserted that the biblical canon of the Roman Catholic Church contains both the 66 protocanonical books (i.e., the complete Protestant Bible) and 12 deuterocanonical (aka "apocryphal") books 78 writings in all.
1229 Se firma el Acuerdo de Jaffa entre el sultán de Egipto y Federico II, emperador de Alemania, por el que éste se compromete a no atacar Egipto a cambio de las ciudades de Jerusalén, Belén y Nazaret.
1194 Richard I Lion Hearted pays Leopold O Fenrik VI's ransom of 100'000.

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< 03 Feb

05 Feb >

^Deaths which occurred on a 04 February:

2006 Kyle Fredericks, 19, shot at 20:16 (01:16 UT) on the sidewalk in front of 146-62 106th Avenue in South Jamaica, New York City, where he was walking eastbound with his girlfriend. —(060207)
2006 Betty Friedan, US feminist, activist, and writer, dies on her 85th birthday (see below). —(060524)
2004 Amit Kumar, businessman, murdered in Yarpur locality, Gardanibagh, near Patna, India.
2003 Yugoslavia, replaced by “Serbia and Montenegro” a looser union of its two remaining states, good for at least (and probably at most) three years, by a vote of the federal parliament. On 03 October 1929, King Alexander Karadjordjevic [16 Dec 1888 – 09 Oct 1934] had changed to Yugoslavia the name of his Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (established on 01 December 1918 under his father King Peter). The Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia was proclaimed on 29 November 1945. Slovenia and Croatia on 25 June 1991, Macedonia on 08 September 1991, and Bosnia-Herzegovina on 03 March 1992, seceded after the 04 May 1980 death of Communist dictator Josip Broz “Tito”.
2003 Some 20 persons by explosion of fireworks being loaded into shipping containers in Sialkot, Pakistan. Two of the dead are children at a nearby school which is set afire. Dozens of persons are injured.
2002 Absalom Giddings, 30, his girlfriend Una Bethune, 30, Donald Mays Jr., 42, and his girlfriend Corlis Williams, 33, shot by a teenager who goes to Giddings's home in the West Atco section of Winslow Township NJ to settle a minor grudge against him. The other three just happened to be there. The teenager kills two more persons the next day and is arrested on 22 February 2002..
2002 Mir Ahmad, 35, Daraz, and Jahan Giz, Afghan peasants gathering scrap metal, near Zhawar in Khost province, by Hellfire missiles fired from a CIA-operated Predator drone, in the belief the targets were al-Qaida leaders “in part because of their Arab-style dress.” and that “the tall one” to whom the others seemed to defer, might be Bin Laden. Ahmad was about 1m78 tall, which is taller than most men in the area. Bin Laden is about 1m96 tall. The three victims were from nearby Gorboz, from which and from the site of the killing US troops bar Washington Post reporter Doug Struck by threatening to shoot him. {http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55268-2002Feb10.html)
2001 Benito Prieto Coussent, pintor español.
2001 Iannis Xenakis, compositor, arquitecto y matemático francés de origen griego.
2000 Carl Albert, 91, in McAlester, Oklahoma, former US House of Reprensentatives Speaker.

^1999 Amadou Diallo, killed by police for taking out his wallet

41 BULLETS FIRED AT CLOSE RANGE.
19 HIT THE UNARMED “SUSPECT”.
Near midnight, four members of a special New York Police Street Crime Unit drive an unmarked police car down Wheeler Avenue in the Bronx. The officers are in street clothes and are wearing bullet-proof vests. They spot a man standing in the doorway of an apartment building, looking up and down the street. He resembles a rape suspect whom they are seeking. In fact, he has never commited any crime, he is a 22-year-old immigrant from Guinea who works as a street peddler. His name is Amadou Diallo [< picture]
     The officers jumped out of their car, and yelled to the suspect to "freeze" as he was standing in the vestibule of an apartment. The man didn't respond, but instead reached for his pants' pocket and took out a ... "Gun!" yelled one of the officers, and they started firing. One of the officers fired the first round through the doorway. Then the other officers fired into the vestibule as they walked closer to Diallo. Two of the police officers emptied their weapons. One of the bullets perforated Diallo's aorta. He was also shot in the spinal cord, lungs, liver, spleen, kidney, intestines, and was struck 11 times in the legs, once by a bullet that entered through the sole of Diallo's shoe.
     In the dead man's hand they found his weapon: a wallet. Scared, confused, possibly not understanding what "Freeze!" meant, not realizing his assailants were policemen, or wanting to show them his ID, he had reached for his wallet.
     In their defense, the officers said they were in fear for their life.
      Is it safe to send into the street police officers, wearing bullet-proof vests, and armed with automatic weapons, who are so scared that they kill and overkill an unarmed man on the flimsiest suspicion? Have they been adequately trained?
    On 000225 a jury of four blacks and eight whites, after deliberating for more than 20 hours over three days, returned the verdict on the four officers: not guilty on all 24 counts — from murder to reckless endangerment. It does not mean the jury found the officers innocent, just that they have a reasonable doubt as to their being guilty.
     Early in 2001, the US Justice Department would announce that it will not investigate whether the killer cops violated any civil rights law.
SO WHO IS GUILTY?
the victim? for taking out his wallet?
the police department? for not adequately training its officers?
the New York City mayor? for not properly supervising the police?
the lawmakers? for laws that give the police a license to kill?
P.S. A question for the National Rifle Association: if the police's mere belief that you carry a gun is a death warrant, what do you think actually carrying a gun would do to your life expectancy?

1998 Some 5000 in earthquake (Richer 6.1) in northeast Afghanistan.
1997 Benjamin D. de Jesus O.M.I. [25 Jul 1940–], is shot (probably by murderers hired by a Tausog politician) near Mt. Carmel church in Jolo, Sulu, the Philippines. On 29 December 1967 he was ordained a priest of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. On 06 January 1992 he was consecrated a bishop (by Pope John Paul II) to be Vicar Apostolic of Jolo. He was popular for his scholarship programs for poor, but deserving Muslim youths and for his inter-faith dialogues among Sulu and Tawi-Tawi’s culturally-diverse Islamic and Christian sectors. —(080117)
1996 Rigel Jones, 23, bleeds to death besides his truck after being stabbed, under the Alaskan Way Viaduct, Seattle, robbed of his jacket, wallet, and pager. No eyewitnesses are ever found. Transients Darrell Everybodytalksabout, 45 (an Amerindian), Phillip Lara Lopez, would be convicted of the murder in separate trials in 1997. On 07 February 2002, the Washington state supreme court would grant a new trial to Everybodytalksabout (who says that he was never there), as it declares inadmissible the testimony of a detective that he had frequently seen the two transients together.
1995 Patricia Plangman, más conocida como “Mary Patricia Highsmith”, escritora estadounidense.
1992: 17 soldiers and 80 civilians in Venezuela coup, as, starting at 00:00, paratrooper Hugo Chavez leads 15'000 soldiers in a coup against the unpopular government of president Carlos Andres Pérez, who defeats it by noon the next day. Chavez is jailed, but, in 1994, pardoned by president Rafael Caldera, and, in 1998, overwhelmingly elected president, then concentrates power in his hands. He celebrates the anniversaries of this date as the start of his “revolution”.

^
1987 Wladziu Valentino Liberace, 67, flamboyant pianist showman (Liberace Show, Evil Chandell-Batman).

Liberace was born in Wisconsin on 16 May 1919 of a Polish mother and Italian father.

For decades, Liberace was known for his music, candelabra, charisma, diamonds and dazzle.

He was the world's highest paid musician and pianist. He wrote Liberace Cooks, Liberace (1972), The Things I love (1976), and The Wonderful Private World of Liberace (1986).

1976 Edward Benjamin Britten, 62, composer
1976: 22'778 in 7.5 magnitude earthquake in Guatemala and Honduras, with epicenter at 15º20'N 89º10'W, at a depth of 5 km. At first the media report a few dozen deaths, in Guatemala City, where the reporters are. It takes days for help, and a body count, to reach rural communities, with poor or no roads. The international reconstruction aid that follows would help Guatemala's economy to more than recover.
1975 Some 10'000 persons in 7.0 magnitude earthquake in China, with epicenter at 40º36'N 122º30'E.
1974 Bose, mathematician.
1957 Miguel Covarrubias, Mexico City painter, writer, and anthropologist, born in 1904. — more with links to images.

^ 1940 Day 68 of Winter War: USSR aggression against Finland.
More deaths due to Stalin's desire to grab Finnish territory.
Finns take western 'motti' at Lemetti
      Ladoga Karelia: Finnish troops wipe up the western 'motti' at Lemetti in the early hours of the morning, capturing a considerable amount of enemy materiel, including 32 assault tanks, 40 trucks, six field kitchens and the instruments of a military band. Only some one hundred enemy troops manage to break out of the 'motti' before its final destruction.
      Northern Finland: the Russian Dolin ski brigade launches a counterattack in Kuhmo.
      Central Isthmus: enemy artillery, aircraft and assault tanks shell the Finnish positions in Summa and Lähde.
      Only in Summa village does the Soviet infantry attempt an advance, using its overwhelming superiority in numbers in an attempt to exhaust the Finnish troops, who are forced to fight and sleep in the open in temperatures of almost 30 degrees below zero.
      At 1 o'clock in the afternoon, Moscow's propaganda radio announces that Finland is continuing to hound its workers, with "officer devils" spurring their troops on to burn and loot working-class homes.
      The Finnish Army is unable to find any more reserves or transfer those it has in time to cover areas where the Russians are threatening to break through.
      Eastern Isthmus: Taipale enjoys its quietest night of the year. Less than 50 mortars are fired in 7th Division's sector.
      Helsinki: children, the elderly, and the disabled are to be compulsorily evacuated from the city. Those who do not leave voluntarily will be forcibly removed.
      Abroad: Paavo Nurmi and Taisto Mäki, the famous Finnish runners currently on a tour of the USA, attend a flag-raising ceremony in the Finnish pavilion at the New York World's Fair.

^ Suomalaiset kukistavat Lemetin läntisen motin Talvisodan 67. päivä, 04.helmikuuta.1940
      Suomalaiset kukistavat Lemetin läntisen motin aamuyön kuluessa. Motista saadaan huomattava sotasaalis, mm. 32 hyökkäysvaunua, 40 autoa, kuusi kenttäkeittiötä sekä sotilassoittokunnan instrumentit. Vain noin sata vihollissotilasta onnistuu murtautumaan motista ennen sen lopullista kukistumista.
      Venäläinen Dolinin hiihtoprikaati aloittaa vastahyökkäyksen Kuhmossa.
      Karjalan kannaksella vihollisen tykistö, ilmavoimat ja hyökkäysvaunut tulittavatsuomalaisten asemia Summassa ja Lähteellä.
      Vihollisen jalkaväki yrittää edetä vain Summan kylässä. Ylivoimainen vihollinen yrittää uuvuttaa suomalaistaistelijat, jotka joutuvat taistelemaan ja nukkumaan avoimissa asemissa lähes 30 asteen pakkasessa.
      Moskovan propagandaradio kertoo klo 13, että Suomessa työläisten ajojahti jatkuu ja että koteja poltetaan ja ryöstetään upseeripaholaisten kiihottaessa sotilaitaan.
      Reservejä suomalaisilla ei ole tai niitä ei ehditä siirtää tarpeeksi ajoissa murtokohtiin.
      Taipaleessa on vuoden rauhallisin yö: 7. Divisioonan lohkolle lasketaan ammutun vain vajaat 50 kranaattia.
      Vanhusten, lasten ja työkyvyttömien on poistuttava Helsingistä. Pakkotoimenpiteisiin uhataan ryhtyä ellei kehotusta noudateta.
      Ulkomailta: Amerikan-kiertueella olevat juoksijakuuluisuutemme Paavo Nurmi ja Taisto Mäki osallistuvat juhlalliseen lipunnostotilaisuuteen New Yorkin maailmannäyttelyn Suomen paviljongissa.

^ Finnarna besegrar den västra mottin i Lemetti Vinterkrigets 67 dag, den 04 februari 1940
     Finnarna besegrar den västra mottin i Lemetti på morgonkvisten. Man får ett betydande krigsbyte, bl.a. 32 anfallsvagnar, 40 bilar, 6 fältkök och militärorkesterns instrument. Endast ungefär 100 ryska soldater lyckas fly från mottin innan den slutligen förintas.
      Den ryska Dolinska skidlöparbrigaden går till motattack i Kuhmo.
      På Karelska näset beskjuts de finska ställningarna i Summa och Lähde av artilleri, flygplan och stridsvagnar.
      Det ryska infanteriet försöker avancera bara i byn Summa. Den överlägsna fienden försöker trötta ut finnarna som tvingas strida och sova i öppna ställningar i nästan 30 graders köld.
      Moskovas propagandaradio uppger kl. 13 att klappjakten på arbetarklassen i Finland fortsätter och att hem bränns och rövas när officersgalningarna hetsar upp sina soldater.
      Finnarna har inga reserver längre eller också har man inte hunnit flytta dem i tid till inbrytningsställena.
      Det är årets lugnaste natt i Taipale: man räknar endast 50 skjutna granater i den 7. Divisionens avsnitt.
      Åldringar, barn och arbetsoförmögna uppmanas avlägsna sig från Helsingfors. Myndigheterna hotar med tvångsåtgärder om uppmaningen inte följs.
      Utrikes: Våra löparstjärnor Paavo Nurmi och Taisto Mäki deltar under sin Amerikaturné i ett högtidligt flagghissningstillfälle vid den finska paviljongen på världsutställningen i New York.

1939 Edward Sapir US linguist/cultural anthropologist (Indian)
1932 Luis Menéndez Pidal, pintor español.
1928 Hendrik A Lorentz, 74, mathematician, physicist (L transformation-Nobel 1902)
1916 Mary Lizzie Macomber, Massachusetts artist born on 21 August 1861. — more with links to images.
1915 Mary Elizabeth Braddon Maxwell, English novelist born on 04 October 1837. In 1861 she published Garibaldi and Other Poems and her first novel, The Trail of the Serpent. In 1862 her reputation as a novelist was made by the success of Lady Audley's Secret. A three-volume novel, written at the request of John Maxwell (a publisher whom she subsequently married), it told a lurid story of crime in high society. Braddon published more than 70 novels, including John Marchmont's Legacy (1863), Dead Men's Shoes (1876), Vixen (1879), Asphodel (1881), London Pride (1896), The Green Curtain (1911), Aurora Floyd. Her sons W.B. Maxwell and Gerald Maxwell also became novelists.
1895 Thomas Kirkman, mathematician.
1893Concepción Arenal, penalista y escritora española.
1894 Antoine J "Adolphe" Sax, 79, instrument maker (saxophone)
1893 Bruno, mathematician.
1885 Sarah Miriam Peale, Philadelphia painter born on 19 May 1800. — more with links to images.
1855 Jewish families shot by soldiers in Coro, Venezuela

^ 1841 Bank of the US shuts down
Plagued by poor investment decisions and an uncertain economic climate, the Bank of the United States was forced to call it quits on February 4, 1841. It was a painful end for an institution that had suffered through one of the more contentious episodes in the nation’s early financial history. Indeed, the Bank was the direct product of President Alexander Hamilton’s controversial push for a national banking system. Despite the staunch objections of Thomas Jefferson, the federal government chartered the first Bank of the United States in 1791. However, Jefferson kept up his attack, and in 1811, led his supporters in Congress in a successful attempt to block the renewal of the bank’s charter. Buoyed by a confluence of conditions, including state banks’ recent run of woes and political shifts in the House, pro-bank forces forged a new charter in 1816. Under the charge of Nicholas Biddle, the revived Bank of the US enjoyed some healthy years. However, before long, the Bank faced another round of opposition, this time led by President Andrew Jackson, who fiercely opposed the notion of a central bank system. A nasty and protracted political battle ensued, as the president attempted to use his executive power to do away with the bank. Jackson eventually won out, and when the bank’s charter expired in 1836, Biddle shifted course and reestablished the Bank of the United States as a state institution based in Pennsylvania. Biddle’s bank limped on for a few more years before being finally shut down on 04 February 1841.

1830 Charles Daubigny, French artist born in 1740.
1819 George Henry Harlow, British painter born on 10 June 1787. — MORE ON HARLOW AT ART “4” FEBRUARY with links to images.
1815 Jacob van Stry, Dutch artist born on 02 October 1756.
1787 Pompeo-Girolamo Batoni, Italian painter born on 25 January 1708. — MORE ON BATONI AT ART “4” FEBRUARY with links to images.
1785 Donatien Nonnotte, French artist born on 10 January 1708.
1783 Some 50'000 by a massive earthquake that devastates most of the Tyrrenian coast of Calabria, Italy.
1779 John Hamilton Mortimer, British painter born on 17 September 1740. — MORE ON MORTIMER AT ART “4” FEBRUARY with links to images.
1774 La Condamine, mathematician.
1631 Bartolomé Juan Leonardo de Argensola, literato, fallece en Zaragoza.
1615 Giambattista della Porta, mathematician
1505 Joan of Valois Queen of France/saint, 40.
1498 Antonio del Pollaiolo, escultor y pintor italiano.
0708 Sisinnius Greek-Syrian pope (708, 20 days)
0211 Lucius Septimus Severus, 64, emperor of Rome (193-211)

< 03 Feb

05 Feb >

Births which occurred on a 04 February:

1989 Nkosi Johnson (last name received when adopted at age 2), born HIV-positive in South Africa. He would become the youngest AIDS activist and the longest survivor among those born with the disease in the country: over 12 years.
1955 Mikulas Dzurinda, primer ministro eslovaco.
1947 Dan Quayle (Senator-R-IN) / (44th Vice-President-R 1989-93) / unwitting author of many quaylisms such as “ I stand by all the mistatements that I've made”, though some quaylisms would be fabricated by others.

^ 1941 An engine design is patented by Olds
Ransom Eli Olds, 76, receives his last automobile patent for an internal combustion engine design. An innovator throughout his career, Olds built the first American steam-powered vehicle in 1887 when he was only eighteen. In 1897, Olds received a patent for his “motor carriage,” a gasoline-powered vehicle that he built the year before. He is also credited with having developed the first automobile production line. In an effort to meet the production demands for the Olds Runabout, Olds contracted with the likes of the Dodge brothers for the parts to his cars, which he then assembled in his own factory space. Olds’s assembly line was able to produce a higher volume of automobiles in a shorter period of time than was possible using the traditional method of building each vehicle individually. Olds Motor Works sold 425 Runabouts in its first year of business, 2500 the next year, 5000 in 1904, and the rest is automobile history.

1938 Our Town, Thornton Wilder play, opens on Broadway.
1937 Félix Grande, escritor español.
1931 María Estrela Martínez Cartas, in La Rioja, Argentina, confirmation name Isabel, which she adopted as a dancer. In 1961 she became Isabel Martínez de Perón, the third wife of ousted president Juan Domingo Perón [08 Oct 1895 – 01 July 1974] and she was elected vice-president when he was again elected president in 1973. She automatically became president after he died and was overthrown by a military coup on 24 March 1976. Juan Perón's first wife died of cancer; in 1945 he married actress María Eva Duarte [07 May 1919 – 26 July 1952] who also died of cancer, and in 1951 had been nominated for vice-president but was forced to withdraw by the army.
1925 Chris Zeeman, mathematician.
1921 Bettye Naomi Goldstein, Betty Friedan (after her 1947 marriage to Carl Friedan [–Dec 2005] whom she divorced in 1969), US feminist, social activist and writer, who died on her 85th birthday.
1917 Aga Yahya Khan Pakistan military/politician
1913 Rosa Lee Parks, civil rights activist (bus protester)
1913 First demountable tire-carrying rim patented by Louis Henry Perlman of New York. Until then changing a tire meant changing the wheel.
1907 James McIntosh Patrick, British painter. — more with links to images.
1906 Clyde W. Tombaugh, US astronomer who discovered Pluto. He died on 17 January 1997.
1906 Dietrich Bonhoeffer German theologian (Confessing Church) He was important for his support of ecumenism and his view of Christianity's role in a secular world. Opposed to Hitler, he was arrested on 05 April 1943, imprisoned, and, in consequence of the 20 July 1944 attempt on Hitler's life, executed on 09 April 1945.
1904 MacKinlay Kantor (Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist: Andersonville, [1956]; Long Remember, Gettysburg, Signal Thirty-Two)
1902 Charles A Lindbergh, Detroit MI, (Lucky Lindy), aviator: First to fly solo and nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean: flew The Spirit of St. Louis from NY to Paris [May 1927]; a major name in politics and business, pacifist, Nazi sympathizer, father of kidnapped and murdered child). He died on 26 August 1974.
1897 Ludwig Erhard chancellor of Germany (CDU)
1881 Kliment J Woroshilov Marshal/President USSR (1953-60)
1881 Fernand Léger, French Cubist painter who died on 17 August 1955. — MORE ON LÉGER AT ART “4” FEBRUARY with links to images.
1875 Ludwig Prandtl, German physicist, "father of aerodynamics" who died on 15 August 1953.
1862 Édouard Estaunié, French writer, known for his novels of character, who died on 01 April 1942. He was by profession an engineer and ended his career as inspector general of telegraphs. He was elected (1923) to the Académie Française. A theme recurrent in the 12 novels of Estaunié is expressed by the title of one of them, La Vie Secrète (1908): each man's outward life masks another, ill-understood, different, and usually much more important life which may break through the mask unexpectedly to take temporary control of him. The novels gain distinction from their profound and detailed psychological analysis. The more important of them are L'Empreinte (1896), Les Choses voient (1913), L'Ascension de Monsieur Baslèvre (1919), and L'Appel de la route (1922). He also wrote: Bonne dame (1891), Un simple 1891), Impressions de Hollande (1893), Petits maîtres (1893), Les sources de l’énergie électrique (1895), Le Ferment (1899), L’Épave (1902), Traité pratique de télécommunication électrique (1904), Solitudes (1916), L’appel de la route (1921) , L’infirme aux mains de lumières (1923), Le Labyrinthe (1924), Tel qu’ils furent (1927), Madame Clapain (1932), Une sainte parmi nous (1937)

^ 1847 The Magnetic Telegraph Company, first telegraph company, is incorporated under the laws of Maryland. The company opened offices in New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. At first, the company used carrier pigeons to send messages across the Hudson River from Jersey City to New York City. Later, a lead pipe enclosing a covered wire was laid under the river, allowing telegraph service to replace the pigeon system. Sending a message from Baltimore to Washington cost ten cents for the first ten words and a penny for each additional word. From New York to Washington, the first ten words cost fifty cents and additional words were five cents each.

1841 Clément Ader, French inventor (first to fly a heavier-than-air craft, a short hop). He died on 05 March 1926.
1841 Charles Édouard Edmond Delort, French painter who died on 05 March 1895. — link to an image.
1837
1835 Albert Venn Dicey, British jurist who died on 07 April 1922. His Lectures Introductory to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (1885) is considered part of the British constitution, which is an amalgam of several written and unwritten authorities. For this treatise, which is noted for its application of legal positivism to the study of British constitutional law, he drew on his knowledge of constitutionalism in the United States as well as in Great Britain.

^1826 The Last of the Mohicans is published The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper is published. One of the earliest distinctive American novels, the book is the second of the five-novel series called the "Leather-stocking Tales." Cooper was born on 15 September 1789 in New Jersey and moved the following year to the frontier in upstate New York, where his father founded frontier-town Coopersville. Cooper attended Yale but joined the Navy after he was expelled for a prank. When Cooper was about 20, his father died, and he became financially independent. Having drifted for a decade, Cooper began writing a novel after his wife challenged him to write something better than he was reading at the moment. His first novel, Precaution, modeled on Jane Austen, was not successful, but his second, The Spy, influenced by the popular writings of Sir Walter Scott, became a bestseller, making Cooper the first major American novelist. The story was set during the American Revolution and featured George Washington as a character. He continued to write about the American frontier in his third book, The Pioneer, which featured backcountry scout Natty Bumppo, known in this book as "Leather-stocking." The character, representing goodness, purity, and simplicity, became tremendously popular, and reappeared, by popular demand, in five more novels, known collectively as the "Leather-stocking Tales." The second book in the series, The Last of the Mohicans, is still widely read today. The five books span Bumppo's life, from coming of age through approaching death. Cooper died on 14 September 1851. Ce fils d'un riche membre du Congrès américain, est renvoyé de l'Université de Yale pour avoir provoqué une explosion dans un cours de chimie. Après avoir servit dans la marine, il devient fermier. C'est ce moment qu'il choisit pour écrire. Il accède rapidement à la célébrité en publiant des nouvelles et son chef d'œuvre Le Dernier des Mohicans. James Fenimore Cooper was the first major US novelist, author of the novels of frontier adventure known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring the wilderness scout called Natty Bumppo, or Hawkeye. They include The Pioneers (1823), The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder (1840), and The Deerslayer (1841). Cooper's first fiction, Precaution (1820), was a plodding imitation of Jane Austen's novels of English gentry manners, investigating the ironic discrepancy between illusion and reality. His second novel, The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground (1821), was based on another British model, Sir Walter Scott's "Waverley" novels, stories of adventure and romance, which Cooper transfered to an American Revolutionary War setting, introducing several distinctively American character types. Like Scott's novels, The Spy is a drama of conflicting loyalties and interests in which the action mirrors and expresses more subtle internal psychological tensions. The Spy soon brought him international fame. The first of the renowned "Leatherstocking" tales, The Pioneers; or, The Sources of the Susquehanna (1823), followed and adhered to the successful formula of The Spy, reproducing its basic thematic conflicts and utilizing family traditions once again. In The Pioneers, however, the traditions were those of William Cooper of Cooperstown, who appears as Judge Temple of Templeton, along with many other lightly disguised inhabitants of James's boyhood village. No known prototype exists, however, for the novel's principal character — the former wilderness scout Natty Bumppo, alias Leatherstocking. The Leatherstocking of The Pioneers is an aged man, of rough but sterling character, who ineffectually opposes "the march of progress," namely, the agricultural frontier and its chief spokesman, Judge Temple. Fundamentally, the conflict is between rival versions of the American Eden: the "God's Wilderness" of Leatherstocking and the cultivated garden of Judge Temple. Since Cooper himself was deeply attracted to both ideals, he was able to create a powerful and moving story of frontier life. Indeed, The Pioneers is both the first and finest detailed portrait of frontier life in American literature; it is also the first truly original American novel. Cooper wrote a series of sequels (not written in their narrative order) in which the entire life of the frontier scout was gradually unfolded. The Last of the Mohicans (1826) takes the reader back to the French and Indian wars of Natty's middle age, when he is at the height of his powers. That work was succeeded by The Prairie (1827) in which, now very old and philosophical, Leatherstocking dies, facing the westering sun he has so long followed. Identified from the start with the vanishing wilderness and its natives, Leatherstocking was an unalterably elegiac figure, wifeless and childless, hauntingly loyal to a lost cause. This conception of the character was not fully realized in The Pioneers, however, because Cooper's main concern with depicting frontier life led him to endow Leatherstocking with some comic traits and make his laments, at times, little more than whines or grumbles. But in these sequels Cooper retreated stylistically from a realistic picture of the frontier in order to portray a more idyllic and romantic wilderness; by doing so he could exploit the parallels between the American Indians and the forlorn Celtic heroes of James Macpherson's pseudo-epic The Works of Ossian, leaving Leatherstocking intact but slightly idealized and making extensive use of Macpherson's imagery and rhetoric. [Poesie di Ossian, tradotto da Melchiorre Cesarotti, zip] Cooper intended to bury Leatherstocking in The Prairie, but many years later he resuscitated the character and portrayed his early maturity in The Pathfinder; or, The Inland Sea (1840) and his youth in The Deerslayer; or, The First Warpath (1841). These novels, in which Natty becomes the centre of romantic interest for the first time, carry the idealization process further. In The Pathfinder he is explicitly described as an American Adam, while in The Deerslayer he demonstrates his fitness as a warrior-saint by passing a series of moral trials and revealing a keen, though untutored, aesthetic sensibility. Cooper continued to write many other volumes of fiction and nonfiction. His fourth novel, The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea (1823), inaugurated a series of sea novels, which were at once as popular and influential as the "Leatherstocking" tales. And they were more authentic. Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad rightly admired and learned from them, in particular The Red Rover (1827) and The Sea Lions (1849). Never before in prose fiction had the sea become not merely a theatre for, but the principal actor in, moral drama that celebrated man's courage and skill at the same time that it revealed him humbled by the forces of God's nature. As developed by Cooper, and later by Melville, the sea novel became a powerful vehicle for spiritual as well as moral exploration. Not satisfied with mere fictional treatment of life at sea, Cooper also wrote a meticulously researched, highly readable History of the Navy of the United States of America (1839). Through his novels, most notably The Bravo (1831), and other more openly polemical writings, Cooper attacked the corruption and tyranny of oligarchical regimes in Europe. The public was not interested in Cooper's acute political treatise, The American Democrat (1838), or in such political satires as The Monikins (1835) or Home As Found (1838). And though he wrote some of his best romances — particularly the later "Leatherstocking" tales and Satanstoe; or, The Littlepage Manuscripts (1845) — during the last decade of his life, profits from publishing so diminished that he gained little benefit from improved popularity. Though his circumstances were never straitened, he had to go on writing; and some of the later novels, such as Mercedes of Castile (1840) or Jack Tier; or, The Florida Reef (1846-48), were mere hack work. COOPER ONLINE:
The Last of the Mohicans The Last of the Mohicans The Last of the Mohicans The Deerslayer The Lake Gun The Lake Gun	The Prairie New York New York The Pathfinder The Pathfinder The Pioneers The Pioneers	Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief Tales for Fifteen, or, Imagination and Heart Tales for Fifteen editor of Susan Fenimore Cooper's Elinor Wyllys volume 1 Elinor Wyllys volume 2

Other novels of James Fenimore Cooper.
Lionel Lincoln (1824); The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish (1829); The Water Witch; or, The Skimmer of the Seas (1830); Homeward Bound (1838); Home As Found (1838); The Two Admirals (1842); The Wing-and-Wing; or, Le Feu-follet (1842); Wyandotté; or, The Hutted Knoll (1843); Ned Myers (1843); Afloat and Ashore (1844); The Chain-Bearer (1845); The Redskins: or, Indian and Injin (1846); The Crater: or, Vulcan's Peak (1847); The Sea Lions (1849); The Ways of the Hour (1850), The Heidenmauer, Precaution.
Other works:
Notions of the Americans: Picked Up by a Travelling Bachelor (1828); A Letter to His Countrymen (1834); Sketches of Switzerland (1836); Gleanings in Europe (1837)

1825 Myles Birket Foster, British painter who died on 27 March 1899. — more with links to images.
1802 Mark Hopkins, US educator and theologian who died on 17 June 1887.
1799 João Baptista da Silva Leitão de Almeida, escritor y político portugués.
1792 James Gillespie Birney, US lawyer, anti-slavery advocate who died on 25 November 1857. He was the presidential candidate of the Liberty Party in 1840 and 1844. Author of The American Churches, the Bulwarks of American Slavery (1840).
1746 Tadeusz Andrzej Bonawentura Kosciusko, in Mereczowszczyzna, Poland [now in Belarus], Polish army officer and statesman who died on 15 October 1817. He gained fame both for his role in the US War of Independence and for his leadership of a national insurrection in Poland.
1688 Pierre de Marivaux, Paris.
1524 Luís Vaz de Camões, primer poeta épico portugués.

Holidays Angola : Outbreak of Fighting Against Portuguese / Sri Lanka: Independence Day (1948) / US : Kosciuszko Day

Religious Observances : St Gilbert of Sempringham / St Andrew Corsini, bishop of Fiesole, confessor / St John of Britto, Portuguese Jesuit / Santos Andrés Corsini, Aquilino, Gelasio y Donato. / Sainte Véronique - Sur le chemin de croix, selon la tradition, Véronique aurait essuyé le visage du Christ et son voile aurait conservé les traits du supplicié. Le voile est vénéré à Saint-Pierre de Rome. Véronique elle-même aurait été enterrée à Soulac (Quercy) après avoir évangélisé l'Aquitaine.
Ash Wednesday (earliest possible date): 1598, 1693, 1761, 1818, 2285, 2353, 2437, 2505

Movable Feasts which occur on a 04 February:
(earliest possible date for Ash Wednesday)
2505 Ash Wednesday
2437 Ash Wednesday
2353 Ash Wednesday
2285 Ash Wednesday
1818 Ash Wednesday
1761 Ash Wednesday
1693 Ash Wednesday
1598 Ash Wednesday

DICTIONNAIRE TICRANIEN: lâcheté: ce qu'est obligé de faire celui qui brise un vase précieux dans un magasin d'antiquités.

Thoughts for the day:
“It is important to know the difference between an international mission, an internal mission, and an intermission.”
“DON'T BEAT AROUND THE BUSH, BEAT ON THE BUSH”
“BY BEATING AROUND THE BUSH YOU MIGHT FLUSH A QUAIL”
“The future will be a better tomorrow.” — Vice President Dan Quayle
“Ever heard of this theory of ‘trickle down’? That's ridiculous. We're talking about trickling up.” — Dan Quayle
“Let me say it one more time. It is ill-rel-e-vant.” — Why? — “Because. Because I say it isn't.” — Dan Quayle
“I hope there's some respect and dignity for things I did not do.” — Vice President Dan Quayle
“What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.” — Dan Quayle
“It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.” — Dan Quayle
“If we do not succeed, then we run the risk of failure.” — Vice President Dan Quayle
“La vida es duda, y la fe sin la duda es solo muerte.” — Miguel de Unamuno, filósofo españól [1864-1936]
“La duda sin la esperanza es pura desesperación.”

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http://www.intergate.com/~canu/history/h4feb/h4feb04.html
http://www.ifrance.com/7aujourdhui/history/h4feb/h4feb04.html
updated Wednesday 27-Feb-2008 13:09 UT
Principal updates:
v.7.10 Monday 05-Feb-2007 3:32 UT
v. 6.11 Monday 07-Feb-2006 16:45 UT
Sunday 06-Feb-2005 2:12 UT
Friday 06-Feb-2004 17:47 UT

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