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Events, deaths, births, of JUN 19 v.7.50
[For events of Jun 19  Julian go to Gregorian date: 1583~1699: Jun 29 — 1700s: Jun 30 — 1800s: Jul 01 — 1900~2099: Jul 02]
ALTERNATE SITES    ANY DAY  OF THE YEAR IN HISTORY     ART “4” JUN 19   wikipedia
• Satanic Verses author is born... • Ky premier of South Vietnam... • Plus de frontières entre les 12... • Condamnés à mort par la Révolution... • The Rosenbergs are executed... • Talking peace with Sitting Bull...
^  On a 19 June:
2003 In Lawrence Township PA, off-duty policeman Matthew R. Houser, 25, is arrested for driving drunk at 80mph (129 kb/h) in a 45mph (72km/h) zone. On 02 September 2003 the Lawrence Township Board of Supervisors would vote to fire Houser.
2000 The US Supreme Court reaffirms, 6-3, that praying in public schools had to be private, barring officials from letting students lead stadium crowds in prayer before football games.
1998. Moscou réclame un crédit supplémentaire au FMI.
1998 Disney buys stake in Infoseek
      Disney buys a 43 percent stake in Internet directory Infoseek. Media companies were busily buying portal sites at the time, hoping to become the primary entry into the Internet for Web surfers.
1996 Intel buys into CNET
      Intel says that it will buy a 4.5% stake in CNET, one of the Web's most popular technology news and information sites. The purchase is Intel's first major foray into Internet content.
^ 1990 Les frontières tombent entre les 12
     Signature des accords complémentaires au Traité dit de Schengen. Ils consacrent la libre circulation des personnes et des biens sur le territoire des 12 pays co-signataires* et bien sûr, plus tard, de tous les pays qui s’intégreront à l’Union Européenne. C’est une des grandes décisions dont l’aspect pratique marque immédiatement les ressortissants de l’Union, puisque dans les mois qui suivent tous les postes frontières "intérieurs" sont supprimés. De plus c’est un traité qui définit les cadres de travail et de collaboration entre les appareils judiciaires et les polices nationales, la lutte contre le grand banditisme et le terrorisme international.
* The European Union was founded by the Treaty of Maastricht, effective 01 November 1993 [full text in pdf, as amended by the Treaty of Amsterdam].. It consisted originally of Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Denmark, Ireland, and the United Kingdom joined in 1973, Greece in 1981, and Portugal and Spain in 1986; Austria, Finland, and Sweden would become members of the EU in 1995.
1989 La peseta se incorpora a la banda ancha del mecanismo restringido de cambios del Sistema Monetario Europeo, para estabilizar el cambio de la moneda española.
1987 The Supreme Court strikes down a Louisiana law requiring public schools to teach creationism if they taught evolutionism. The court rules that the state law violates the First Amendment.
1986 Graves altercados en Melilla entre grupos de cristianos y musulmanes.
1985 El Consejo de Ministros español acuerda restablecer los derechos de los militares del Ejército de la República.
1981 Heaviest known orange (2.5 kg) exhibited, Nelspruit, S Africa
1977 Paul VI canonizes John Nepomucene Neumann, the first US-born male saint. As fourth Bishop of the Philadelphia Diocese, Neumann is remembered for developing the parochial school system.
1968 50'000 participate in Solidarity Day March of Poor People's Campaign
^ 1968 General mobilization in South Vietnam
      In a public ceremony at Hue, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu signs a general mobilization bill. Under the new measure, men between the ages of 18 and 43 were subject to induction into the regular armed forces. Men between the ages of 44 and 50 and youths between 16 and 17 years old were eligible to serve in the part-time civilian People's Self Defense Organization. An estimated 90,000 17-year-olds in the People's Self Defense Organization would be transferred to the regular army. It was believed that, by the end of 1968, the law would provide for the induction of an additional 200,000 men. This would begin a steady growth in the size of the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces that would accelerate under President Richard Nixon's Vietnamization program. There would be 1.1 million men and women in the South Vietnamese forces by the end of 1972.
^ 1965 Ky becomes premier of South Vietnam
      Air Vice-Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky assumes the premiership of the ninth government to be installed within the last 20 months in the country. The Armed Forces Council had chosen Ky as premier on 11 June, and Gen. Nguyen Van Thieu was chosen for the relatively powerless position of chief of state. Having risen to the rank of lieutenant general in the fledgling South Vietnamese Air Force, Ky was one of a group of officers who had seized power earlier in 1965 to end the anarchy that had followed in the wake of the assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem in November 1963. The new premier immediately took steps to strengthen the armed forces. He also instituted needed land reforms, programs for the construction of schools and hospitals, and price controls. Additionally, his government began a much-touted campaign to remove corrupt officials. At the same time, however, Ky instituted a number of unpopular repressive actions, including a ban on newspapers. In 1966, Buddhists, among other political factions, demanded Ky's ouster, and protests took place in various cities. The disturbances ended partly as a result of a government crackdown and partly because of a loss of support for the Buddhists among dissident elements of the military. Ky continued in his post until the elections of 1967, when be became Vice President of South Vietnam and Thieu became president. Ky served in that position until 1971, when he chose not to run as an opposition candidate against President Nguyen Van Thieu. He reverted to the rank of Air Marshal in the air force.
1965 Coup d’état en Algérie, deux ans après l’Indépendance. Le colonel Houari Boumédienne, chef historique du Front de Libération Nationale, prend le pouvoir après avoir renversé les deux autres chefs historiques de l’indépendance, Ben Bella et Khedler. Il concentre tous les pouvoirs entre ses mains et domine les 3 structures efficaces, l’Armée, le Parti et l’Etat. Une forme bizarre de démocracie commence !
1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is approved after surviving an 83-day Senate filibuster. — El Senado de los EE.UU. adopta la ley sobre derechos civiles de los negros.
1963 Retour de la première femme cosmonaute, Valentina Terenchkova, à bord du Vostok-6. Elle a accompli 48 révolutions autour de la terre. — Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova returns to Earth after spending nearly three days as the first woman in space.
1961 The US Supreme Court struck down a provision in Maryland's constitution requiring state officeholders to profess a belief in God.
1961 Kuwait regains complete independence from Britain
1959 US Senate rejects Ike's appointment of Lewis Strauss for Secretary of Commerce.
1947 First plane (F-80) to exceed 600 mph (966 km/h): Albert Boyd, Muroc, California.
1945 Abbott and Costello's classic comedy routine "Who's on First?" makes its cinema debut, in The Naughty Nineties. The duo had already made the routine famous in live performances and on the radio.
1945 La Asamblea de las Naciones Unidas rechaza el ingreso de España.
^ 1944 US victory in Battle of the Philippine Sea
      US carrier-based fighters decimate the Japanese Fleet with only a minimum of losses in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. The security of the Marianas Islands, in the western Pacific, were vital to Japan, which had air bases on Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. US troops were already battling the Japanese on Saipan, having landed there on the 15th. Any further intrusion would leave the Philippine Islands, and Japan itself, vulnerable to US attack.
      The US Fifth Fleet, commanded by Admiral Raymond Spruance, was on its way west from the Marshall Islands as backup for the invasion of Saipan and the rest of the Marianas. But Japanese Admiral Ozawa Jisaburo decided to challenge the American fleet, ordering 430 of his planes, launched from aircraft carriers, to attack. In what became the greatest carrier battle of the war, the United States, having already picked up the Japanese craft on radar, proceeded to shoot down more than 300 aircraft and sink two Japanese aircraft carriers, losing only 29 of their own planes in the process. It was a described in the aftermath as a "turkey shoot."
      Admiral Ozawa, believing his missing planes had landed at their Guam air base, maintained his position in the Philippine Sea, allowing for a second attack of US carrier-based fighter planes, this time commanded by Admiral Mitscher, to shoot down an additional 65 Japanese planes and sink another carrier. In total, the Japanese lost 480 aircraft, three-quarters of its total, not to mention most of its crews. American domination of the Marianas was now a foregone conclusion.
      Not long after this battle at sea, US Marine divisions penetrated farther into the island of Saipan. Two Japanese commanders on the island, Admiral Nagumo and General Saito, both committed suicide in an attempt to rally the remaining Japanese forces. It succeeded: Those forces also committed a virtual suicide as they attacked the Americans' lines, losing 26'000 men compared with 3'500 lost by the United States. Within another month, the islands of Tinian and Guam were also captured by the United States. The Japanese government of Premier Hideki Tojo resigned in disgrace at this stunning defeat, in what many have described as the turning point of the war in the Pacific.
1940 L'héroïque résistance des 2000 cadets de Saumur, commencée la veille, continue et durera jusqu'au 21. -- Les Allemands franchissent la Loire, repli français vers le sud -- Chute de Cherbourg et de Brest
1937 Guerra civil española: las tropas "nacionales" entran en Bilbao.
1934 The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is created.
^ 1934 Silver Purchase Act
      President Franklin Roosevelt's first term in office was packed with busy days and June 19, 1934, was certainly no exception. Indeed, on this day Congress passed a veritable smorgasbord of legislation, including the Silver Purchase Act. Along with nationalizing silver stocks, the bill charged the President with increasing the Treasury's silver supply. Though silver was hardly about to supplant the gold standard, the legislation called for silver to equal one-third of the Treasury's gold holdings. And, while to some to the Silver Act was perhaps little more than another blip during Roosevelt's furious first term, the passage of the bill marked a rare victory for the long-suffering silver movement, which had pushed for the adoption of metal since the late nineteenth century.
1933 El canciller Engelbert Dollfuss prohibe en Austria el Partido Nacional Socialista.
1932 Navarra rechaza el Estatuto vasco y aspira a tener uno propio, según su régimen foral.
1931 first photoelectric cell installed commercially West Haven Ct
1917 After WW I King George V orders members of British royal family to dispense with German titles and surnames, they take the name Windsor
1917 La Cámara de los Comunes británica reconoce el derecho al voto de las mujeres mayores de 30 años.
1911 Proclamación oficial de la República en Portugal.
1910 In Spokane, Washington, under sponsorship of the Spokane Ministerial Association and the YMCA, Father's Day is observed for the first time.
1905 El papa Pío X autoriza a los católicos italianos a participar en la vida pública.
^ 1905 First nickelodeon opens
      Pittsburgh showman Harry Davis opens the world's first nickelodeon, showing a silent film called The Great Train Robbery. The storefront theater boasted 96 seats and charged only 5 cents. Nickelodeons soon spread across the country, typically featuring live vaudeville acts as well as short films. By 1907, some two million Americans had visited a nickelodeon, and the storefront theaters remained the main outlet for films until they were replaced around 1910 by large modern theaters. Inventors in Europe and the United States, including Thomas Edison, had been developing movie cameras since the late 1880s. Early films could only be viewed as peep shows, but by the late 1890s movies could be projected on a screen. Audiences were beginning to attend public demonstrations, and several movie "factories" (as the earliest production studios were called) were formed. In 1896, the Edison Company inaugurated the era of commercial movies, showing a collection of moving images as a minor act in a vaudeville show that also included live performers, among whom were a Russian clown, an "eccentric dancer," and a "gymnastic comedian." The film, shown at Koster and Bial's Music Hall in New York City, featured images of dancers, ocean waves, and gondolas. Short films, usually less than a minute long, became a regular part of vaudeville shows at the turn of the century as "chasers" to clear out the audience after a show. A vaudeville performers' strike in 1901, however, left theaters scrambling for acts, and movies became the main event. In the earliest years, vaudeville theater owners had to purchase films from factories via mail order, rather than renting them, which made it expensive to change shows frequently. Starting in 1902, Henry Miles of San Francisco began renting films to theaters, forming the basis of today's distribution system. The first theater devoted solely to films, "The Electric Theater" in Los Angeles, opened in 1902. Housed in a tent, the theater's first screening included a short called "New York in a Blizzard." Admission cost about 10 cents for a one-hour show. Nickelodeons developed soon after, offering both movies and live acts.
1901 Premier vol d'un ballon dirigeable Zeppelin, du nom de son inventeur le comte Zeppelin. Au cours de ce premier vol d'essai, l'appareil vole à 30 km/h. Utilisés pendant la Première Guerre mondiale, les zeppelins seront ensuite affectés à des liaisons transatlantiques jusqu'à la catastrophe du Hindenburg, survenue en 1937 aux États Unis, les fasse abandonner.
1889 Start of Sherlock Holmes adventure The Man with the Twisted Lip
+ ZOOM IN +^ 1885 The Statue of Liberty arrives
in New York City's harbor, a gift of friendship from the people of France to the people of the United States. Originally known as "Liberty Enlightening the World," the statue was proposed in 1865 by French historian Edouard Laboulaye [18 Jan 1811 – 25 May 1883], chairman of an anti-slavery society, to commemorate the Franco-American alliance during the US War of Independence. Designed by French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi [02 Apr 1834 – 04 Oct 1904], the 46-meter statue is in the form of a woman with an uplifted arm holding a torch. On the 1877 anniversary of the birthday of George Washington [22 Feb 1732 – 14 Dec 1799], the US Congress approved the use of a site on New York Bedloe's Island suggested by Bartholdi. In May of 1884, the statue was completed in France; three months later the cornerstone for its pedestal was laid in New York.
      On 19 June 1885, the dismantled Statue of Liberty arrives to the New World, enclosed in 214 packing cases. Its copper sheets were reassembled and the last rivet of the monument was driven in on 28 October 1886, during a dedication ceremony attended by US President Grover Cleveland [18 Mar 1837 – 24 Jun 1908]. In 1903 on the pedestal were inscribed lines from "The New Colossus," a famous sonnet by US poet Emma Lazarus [22 Jul 1849 – 19 Nov 1887] that welcomed immigrants to the United States with the declaration, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. / I lift my lamp beside the golden door." However, all too often, anti-immigrant sentiments and legislation have belied those hospitable words.
      On 01 January 1892, Ellis Island, adjacent to Bedloe's Island, opened as the chief entry station for immigrants to the United States, and for the next thirty-two years, more than twelve million immigrants were welcomed into New York harbor by "Lady Liberty." In 1924, the Statue of Liberty was made a national monument.
—(060619)
1868 Maj Gen E R S Canby removes mayor of Columbia SC
^ 1868 Father De Smet talks peace with Sitting Bull
      Attempting to convince hostile Indians to make peace with the United States, the Jesuit missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet [30 Jan 1801 – 23 May 1873] meets with the great Sioux Chief Sitting Bull [1831 – 15 Dec 1890] in present-day Montana. A native of Belgium, De Smet came to the United States in 1821 at the age of 20. He became a Jesuit novice in Maryland and was subsequently ordained in St. Louis. As a priest, De Smet's ambition was to be a missionary to the Amerindians of the Far West. In 1838, he was sent to proselytize among the Potawatomi villages near today's Council Bluffs, Iowa. There, he met a delegation of Flathead Indians who had come east seeking a "black robe" whom they hoped might be able to bring the power of the Christian god to aid their tribe. During the 1840s, De Smet made several trips to work with the Flathead in present-day western Montana. He established a thriving mission and eventually secured a peace treaty with the Flathead's previously irreconcilable enemy, the Blackfeet.
      A genuine friend to the Amerindians, De Smet earned a reputation as a white man who could be trusted to fairly negotiate disputes between Indians and the US government. During the 1860s, such disputes became increasingly common in the West, where Plains Indians like the Sioux and Cheyenne resisted the growing flood of white settlers invading their territories. The US government began to demand that all the Plains Indians relocate to reservations. Leaders in the American government and military hoped the relocation could be achieved through negotiations, but they were also perfectly willing to use violence to force the Indians to comply. One of the principal leaders of the so-called "hostile" Indians that resisted relocation was the great Chief of the Teton Sioux, Sitting Bull. In May 1868, the federal government asked De Smet to meet with Sitting Bull to negotiate a peace treaty. The 67-year-old De Smet agreed to try, and on this day in 1868, he met with Sitting Bull at his camp along the Powder River in present-day Montana. Although tensions were high, Sitting Bull had promised to meet De Smet with "arms stretched out, ready to embrace him." Lest any hotheaded young brave do something foolish, Sitting Bull first talked with De Smet in his own lodge in order to ensure the priest's safety. The next day, De Smet met with a council that included other chiefs. De Smet was not able to convince Sitting Bull personally to sign a peace treaty. However, the chief did agree to send one of his lesser chiefs to Fort Laramie, Wyoming, to sign a treaty in which the Sioux agreed to allow white travel and settlement in specified areas. Although Sitting Bull himself had not agreed to the treaty, the negotiations were a triumph for De Smet. No White has ever come close to equaling his universal appeal to the Amerindians.
      De Smet spent the remaining five years of his life continuing to work for peace with the Plains Indians. Through his books and speaking tours, he also attempted to bring a sympathetic portrait of the Indians to an American public that tended to think of Indians as bloodthirsty savages. Ultimately, however, De Smet was unable to stop the tragic Plains Indian War that eventually forced Sitting Bull and other Amerindians to leave their homes and move to government-controlled reservations. De Smet died in Saint-Louis, three years before Sitting Bull won his greatest victory in his war with the United States at the Battle of the Little Big Horn (25 Jun 1876).
1865 The people of Texas are informed by a proclamation of general Gordon Granger [06 Nov 1822 – 10 Jan 1876] that all slaves are free. This date would become the annual holiday “Juneteenth”. — (060619)
^ 1864 Confederate pirate ship is sunk
      Off the coast of Cherbourg, France, the Confederate raider CSS Alabama loses a ship-to-ship duel with the USS Kearsarge and sinks to the floor of the Atlantic, ending an notorious career that saw over sixty Union merchant vessels destroyed by the Confederate pirate.
      The construction of the Alabama in secrecy for the Confederacy in Liverpool shipyards, was uncovered by the Union, creating a significant diplomatic crisis between the US government and Great Britain. Nevertheless, the ship was commissioned on 24 August 1862, and set off into the open seas captained by Confederate Raphael Semmes [27 Sep 1809 – 30 Aug 1877] and manned by an international mercenary crew in which Southerners were the minority. Leaving destroyed US merchant ships in its wake, the Alabama cruised the Atlantic, rounded Africa, and visited Southeast Asia, before redoubling the Cape of Good Hope back to Europe.
      On 11 June 1864, the Alabama arrived at Cherbourg, and Captain Semmes requested permission to dock and repair his ship. The US sloop-of-war Kearsarge, which had been pursuing the Alabama, arrived three days later and waited outside of the harbor. On 19 June 1864, the Alabama sails out to meet its foe. However, unlike the sixty-odd merchant ships that the Confederate raider had sunk during its two-year rampage, the Kearsarge was prepared. After an initial exchange of gunfire, the battle quickly turns against the Alabama, which lacked the type of high quality powder and shells necessary to penetrate the Kearsarge's chain-cable armor. Within an hour, the Alabama is reduced to a sinking wreck, and Captain Semmes lowers his colors and jumps ship with the other survivors. While the victorious Union vessel rescued much of the Alabama's surviving crew, Semmes and a number of others were picked up by a British yacht that had been observing the sea battle, and escaped to England.
1864 CSS Alabama sinks The most successful and feared Confederate commerce raider of the war, the CSS Alabama, sinks after a spectacular battle with the USS Kearsage. Built in an English shipyard and sold to the Confederates in 1861, the Alabama was a state-of-the-art ship, 67 meters long, with a speed of up to 13 knots (24 km/h). The cruiser was equipped with a machine shop and could carry enough coal to steam for 18 days, but its sails could greatly extend that time. Under its captain, Raphael Semmes, the Alabama prowled the world for three years, capturing US commercial ships. It sailed around the globe, usually working out of the West Indies, but taking prizes and bungling Union shipping in the Caribbean, off Newfoundland, and around the coast of South America. In January 1863, Semmes sunk a Union warship, the Hatteras, after luring it out of Galveston, Texas. The Union navy spent an enormous amount of time and effort trying to track down the Alabama. The ship sailed around South America, across the Pacific, and docked in India in 1864. By the summer, Semmes realized that after three years and 140'000 km his vessel needed overhauling in a modern shipyard. He sailed around Africa to France, where the French denied him access to a dry dock. Semmes moved out of Cherbourg Harbor and found the USS Kearsage waiting. In a spectacular battle, the Kearsage bested the Alabama and sent the Confederate raider to the bottom. During its career, the Alabama captured 66 ships and was hunted by more than 20 Federal warships.
CSS ALABAMA SUNK OFF FRANCE: Off the coast of Cherbourg, France, the Confederate raider CSS Alabama loses a ship-to-ship duel with the USS Kearsarge and sinks to the floor of the Atlantic, ending an illustrious career that saw some 68 Union merchant vessels destroyed or captured by the Confederate raider. At the outset of the Civil War, the Union began an increasingly successful blockade of Southern ports and coasts, crippling the economies of the Confederate states. In retaliation, Confederate raiders, outfitted in the South and abroad, launched an effective guerrilla war at sea against Union merchant shipping. In 1862, the CSS Alabama, a 1000-ton screw-steam sloop of war, was built at Liverpool, England, for the Confederate Navy. Britain had proclaimed neutrality in the Civil War but was sympathetic to the Southern cause and gave tacit aid to the Confederacy in the opening years of the conflict. Before the Alabama was put to sea, the Union government learned of its construction, but the protestations of the US ambassador did not prevent it from sailing from Liverpool. After leaving British waters disguised as a merchant ship, the Alabama was outfitted as a combatant by supply ships and placed in commission on 24 August 1862. The CSS Alabama was captained by Raphael Semmes of Mobile, Alabama, who as commander of the Confederate raider Sumter had captured 17 Union merchant ships earlier in the war. The warship was manned by an international crew--about half Southerners, half Englishmen--and rounded out by a handful of other Europeans and even a few Northerners. Leaving sunk and burned US merchant ships in its wake, the Alabama cruised the North Atlantic and West Indies, rounded Africa, and visited the East Indies before redoubling the Cape of Good Hope back to Europe.
      By the time the Alabama docked at Cherbourg for a badly needed overhaul on 11 June 1864, it had inflicted immense damage on the seaborne trade of the United States, destroying 60-odd US merchant ships during its two-year rampage. The USS Kearsarge, a steam-sloop that had been pursuing the Alabama, learned of its presence at Cherbourg and promptly steamed to the French port. On 14 June 1864, the Kearsarge arrived and took up a patrol just outside the harbor. After being fitted and stocked over five more days, the Alabama steamed out to meet its foe on 19 June 1864. A French ironclad lurked nearby to ensure that the combat remained in international waters. After an initial exchange of gunfire, the battle quickly turned against the Alabama, whose deteriorated gunpowder and shells failed to penetrate the Kearsarge's chain-cable armor. Within an hour, the Alabama was reduced to a sinking wreck. Captain Semmes tried to retreat back to Cherbourg, but his way was blocked by the Kearsarge, and he was forced to strike his colors. The crew abandoned ship, and the Alabama went down into the Channel. The survivors were rescued by the Kearsarge and the British yacht Deerhound, which had been observing the battle. Those picked up by the latter, including Semmes and most of his officers, were taken to England and thus escaped arrest. After traveling to Switzerland for a much-needed rest, Semmes returned to the Confederacy via Mexico. Appointed a rear admiral, he helped command the Confederate Navy in Virginia's James River. After the defeat of the Confederacy in 1865, he returned to Mobile to practice law and write about his war experiences. After years of US protests, the British finally agreed in 1871 to take responsibility for the damages caused by British-built Confederate raiders. In 1872, an international arbitration panel ordered Britain to pay the United States $15.5 million in damages, of which more than $6'000'000 was inflicted by the Alabama.
1863 Siege of Port Hudson, Louisiana continues.
1863 Siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi continues.
1862 Lincoln signs a law prohibiting slavery in the Western territories.
^ 1856 First US Republican national convention ends
      In Music Fund Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the first formal national convention of the Republican party, founded two years before, comes to its conclusion. John Charles Fremont of California, the famous explorer of the West, has been nominated for the presidency, and William Dewis Dayton of New Jersey had been chosen as the candidate for the vice presidency.
      The Republican party had its origins in the successful introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, an act that would later dissolve the terms of the Missouri Compromise and allow slave or free status to be decided in the territories by popular sovereignty. When it seemed the bill would win congressional passage, the Whig party, which could not adequately cope with the issue of slavery, disintegrated. By February 1854, anti-slavery factions of the former Whig party had begun meeting in the upper mid-western states to discuss the formation of a new party. One such meeting, at Ripon, Wisconsin, on 20 March 1954, is generally remembered as the founding meeting of the Republican party. The Republicans rapidly gained supporters in the North, and, in 1856, their first presidential candidate, John C. Fremont, won eleven of the sixteen northern states.
      By 1860, the majority of Southern slave states were publicly threatening secession if the Republicans won the presidency. On November 6, 1860, Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected president over a divided Democratic Party, and six weeks later, South Carolina formally seceded from the Union. Within six more weeks, five other Southern states had followed South Carolina's lead and, on 12 April 1861, the Civil War began when Confederate shore batteries under General P. G. T. Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter in South Carolina's Charleston Bay.
      The Civil War firmly identified the Republican party as the official party of the victorious North, and after the war, the Republican-dominated Congress forced a radical Reconstruction policy on the South, which saw the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution and the granting of equal rights to all Southern citizens. By 1876, the Republican Party had lost control of the South, but it continued to dominate the presidency until the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933.
1849 Suspension du droit d'association. Le 13 juin, l'appel à l'insurrection de Ledru-Rollin provoqué par la décision du parti de l'ordre d'envoyer des troupes françaises contre la République romaine pour rétablir à Rome le pouvoir temporel du pape a échoué. Les chefs de la Montagne ont pris la fuite. Après une dernière émeute à Lyon, ce 19 juin, le droit d'association est suspendu.
1842 Los restos del Cid y de su esposa Jimena son trasladados desde el monasterio de San Pedro de Cardeña a la Casa Consistorial de Burgos.
1812 El Papa Pío VII, prisionero de Napoleón Bonaparte, es encerrado en el castillo de Fontainebleau.
1808 Se inicia la Batalla de Bailén, conflicto bélico en el que el ejército francés es derrotado por las fuerzas españolas durante la Guerra de Independencia de España.
1790 Revolución francesa. Se decreta la abolición de la nobleza, órdenes militares, libreas, escudos y toda clase de distinciones entre los franceses.
^ 1778 Benedict Arnold enters Philadelphia
      After almost nine months of British occupation, General Benedict Arnold leads the American force that reclaims the capital city without bloodshed. He is appointed military governor. The previous day, the fifteen thousand British troops under Sir Henry Clinton had evacuated Philadelphia, where the British position in Philadelphia had become untenable after France’s entrance into the war on the side of the Americans. In order to avoid the French fleet, General Clinton was forced to lead his British-Hessian force to New York City by land. Other loyalists in the city sailed down the Delaware River to escape the Patriots.
     On June 24, the Continental Congress returned from its temporary capital of York, Pennsylvania. Nine months before, on September 26, 1777, Philadelphia was captured by the British following Patriot General George Washington’s defeats at the Battle of Brandywine and the Battle of the Clouds. British General William Howe had made Philadelphia, the seat of the Continental Congress, the focus of his campaign, but the Patriot government had deprived him of the decisive victory he hoped for by moving its operations to the more secure site of York one week before. In June of the next year, the British were forced to end their occupation and the Continental Congress returned.
1778 Washington's troops finally leave Valley Forge
^ 1767 Tahiti découverte
      Samuel Wallis, capitaine anglais [1728-1795], aborde l’île de Tahiti. ce jour, au cours d’un voyage autour du monde entrepris à la recherche du continent austral, le navire Dolphin, venant du détroit de Magellan, commandé par l’Anglais Samuel Wallis, toucha l’île d’Otaheite (Tahiti) par le sud-est. Le Dolphin fut assailli par un grand nombre de pirogues dont la première arborait en signe d’amitié un plant de bananier. Tandis que les Tahitiens montaient à bord, recevaient couteaux et clous en échange de bananes, de noix de coco, de fruits de l’arbre à pain et de cochons, des embarcations étaient envoyées à terre pour chercher de l’eau douce et du bois de chauffe et pour reconnaître le pays environnant. Après avoir longé la côte est de Tahiti, Wallis s’arrêta au-delà de la pointe à laquelle Cook devait donner le nom de Vénus, dans la baie de Matavai qu’il appela Port-Royal, tandis qu’il donnait à Tahiti le nom d’île du Roi-George-III.
      La période de cinq semaines que Wallis passa à Tahiti fut très mouvementée. Les Tahitiens, inquiets de l’attitude des Européens, attaquèrent ceux-ci à coups de pierres ; ils ripostèrent au fusil. Lorsque le lieutenant Furneaux planta le pavillon britannique sur la plage de Matavai, les Tahitiens comprirent son geste et lui déclarèrent la guerre. Leur flotte de trois cents pirogues ayant été finalement détruite ou dispersée au canon, ils demandèrent la paix en faisant une offrande de conciliation qui fut acceptée. À cette occasion, Wallis fit connaissance avec celle qu’il appela la "reine" Purea et qui était, avec son mari, le personnage le plus puissant de l’île.
      L’avenir de Tahiti, réalités et mythes, était contenu virtuellement dans cette visite: la vie paradisiaque des îles et les mœurs idylliques des habitants, leur avidité de nouveautés techniques, le rôle déterminant des armes à feu, l’intervention des Européens et les incompréhensions réciproques qui devaient amener la ruine de l’ancienne structure sociale polynésienne. La même année, Samuel Wallis découvrit au nord-est des îles Fidji un archipel auquel fut donné son nom, l’archipel de Wallis-et-Futuna. Constamment malade au cours du voyage, Wallis regagna la Grande-Bretagne. En 1780, il fut nommé commissaire de la marine et mourut à Londres quinze ans plus tard.
     Samuel Wallis was born at Lanteglos-by-Camelford in Cornwall. He served under Admiral Boscawen as his flag lieutenant, and was given command of H.M.S. Dolphin in 1766 to explore the Pacific. It was believed that another continent existed to the south of South America, and Wallis spent twenty months sailing round the world looking for signs of it. He found the islands of Tahiti and Easter island, and his reports led to Captain Cook's later voyages.
1754 Albany Congress held by 7 British colonies and Iroquois Amerindians
1631 Traité de Cherasco entre la France, l'empereur et le duc de Savoie. Le duc de Nevers prend possession du Montferrat et de Mantoue.
1586 English colonists sail away from Roanoke Island, N.C., after failing to establish England's first permanent settlement in America.
1299 Traité de Montreuil par lequel Philippe IV le Bel rend au roi d'Angleterre Edouard Ier la Guyenne mais conserve la ville de Bordeaux. Pour sceller leur accord, il lui offre d'épouser sa soeur Marguerite et promet le mariage de sa fille Isabelle de France avec celui qui deviendra le futur roi Edouard II.
0325 The month-long Council of Nicaea closes. Known as the first ecumenical council in the history of the Church, it formulated the Nicene Creed and established the method for calculating Easter.
--240 -BC Eratosthenes estimates circumference of Earth.
TO THE TOP
< 18 Jun 20 Jun >
^  Deaths which occurred on a 19 June:

2006 Pfc. Kristian Menchaca [29 May 1983–]; and Pfc. Thomas Lowell Tucker [05 May 1981–]; of the US Army 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, murdered by insurgents who tortured them after taking them prisoners on 16 June 2006 when they were in one of the three Humvees making up a checkpoint near Youssifiyah, Iraq, in an attack during which the driver of that Humvee, Spc. David J. Babineau, 25, was killed. The three victims belonged to the same platoon as Pfc. Steven D. Green who murdered four Iraqis in Mahmoudiyah on 12 March 2006. — (060804).

2005 Four civilians, including a child, by a car bomb in Baghdad, Iraq. 22 persons are injured.

2005 Two policemen, in drive-by shootings in Baghdad, Iraq.

2005 An engineer, murdered on his way to work at an oil refinery southwest of Baghdad, Iraq.
Avner Mordechai
2005:: 24 persons including a suicide bomber at 14:45 (10:45 UT) in Baghdad kebab restaurant Ibn Zanbour (“Son of the Wasp”). 36 persons are injured. 7 of the dead are policemen, some others are security guards.

2004 Some 20 persons, some of them and possibly all innocent civilians, by missiles fired from US aircraft at a house in Falluja, Iraq, where the US “believed” that they were some militiamen of the al-Mahdi Army.

2003 Avner Mordechai, 63, and a suicide bomber of Islamic Jihad, whom Mordechai [photo >], in the grocery of which he is the owner, approaches at 06:05 (03:05 UT), in moshav Sdei Trumot, near Beit She'an, Israel. The terrorist was probably waiting to attack a nearby bus stop when enough people would be gathered there. Mordechai had immigrated to Israel from Kurdistan in the 1950s. He leaves a widow, Shifra Mordechai, six children, and several grandchildren.
grandma Alon
Gila Kessler
2003 A US Army medic, at noon in the southwest Baghdad neighborhood al-Dora, by a rocket propelled grenade hitting the ambulance transporting a wounded US soldier, who is not hurt further. But two other medics are wounded.

2002 Mazen Ismail, 3 other Palestinians, and Israeli Maj. Shlomi Cohen, 26, of Rehovot and St.-Sgt. Yosef Talbi, 20, of Yehud, in an evenirg gunbattle in Qalqilyah, West Bank, when Israeli troops search the home of Ismail, head of Palestinian Authority military intelligence in Qalqiyah.


2002 Gila Sara Kessler, 19, from Eli; Hadassa Yungreis, 20, from Migdal Ha'emek; Shmuel Yerushalmi, 17, from Shilo; Michal Franklin, 22, from Jerusalem; Noa Alon, 60, from Ofra, and her granddaughter Gal Eizenman, 5, from Ma'aleh Adumim; and a suicide bomber from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, at 19:10 next to a hitchhiking post at the French Hill intersection in Jerusalem. Some 40 persons, including babies, are injured; one of them dies the next day. The bomber arrived in a car, got out, sprinted toward the hitchhiking post pursued by two Israeli Border Police officers, and blew himself up.


2001 Ivgenia Dorfman, 15, of Bat Yam, Israel, becomes the 21st casualty of the 01 June 2001 suicide bombing at the Tel Aviv Dolphinarium, from head injuries, at Ichilov Hospital.


2001 Juan Raul Garza, 44, by lethal injection at the US federal penintentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, for killing one man and ordering the deaths of two others as part of a marijuana smuggling ring he operated from Brownsville, Texas, for which he had been sentenced to death in August 1993.		 grandaughter Gal
Shmuel Yerushalmi
^ 2000:: 58 illegal immigrants found dead in the UK
      A customs officer making a routine check found the bodies of 58 people in the back of a refrigerated truck in the port of Dover a major point of entry to Great Britain for illegal immigrants. Another two people were found alive in the rear of the Dutch~registered vehicle, which was carrying tomatoes. The survivors were hospitalized and were expected to recover. The customs officer searched the truck in a parking lot after it arrived just before midnight off a cross-Channel ferry from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge. The dead — 54 men and four women — were Chinese asylum seekers.
     British authorities expressed horror and vowed to increase efforts to crack down on people smugglers. They did not mention their responsibility for inhumane immigration laws.
2000 Noboru Takeshita, 76, former Japanese Prime Minister, in Tokyo.
1996 John Young, and two rottweiler dogs which kill him on a street in East Oakland, California, and are shot by police.
1994 Lauro Olmo, dramaturgo español.
1993 William Golding, escritor británico, Premio Nobel 1983.
1982 John Cheever, escritor estadounidense.
^ 1956 Thomas J. Watson, Sr., founder and head of IBM
      A veteran salesman from the National Cash Register Company, Watson joined the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) in 1914. The company, which produced punch cards and tabulating systems, was a disorganized conglomeration of smaller companies. About 235 employees worked at CTR when Watson joined. Watson quickly unified the company, and in 1924, he changed its name to International Business Machines (IBM). During his four decades with the company, Watson built IBM into one of the world's most successful corporations.
      When Watson died in 1956, the company employed more than sixty thousand people. The company's primary products included typewriters and primitive electromechanical computers. It was not until Watson's son, Thomas Watson, Jr., took over in 1952 that the company began to focus on the fledgling market for electronic computers. By the late 1960s, IBM produced 70% of the world's computers and 80% of the US's computers. In 1981, the company successfully entered the personal computer market. However, IBM never gained the same dominance in personal computing that it enjoyed in mainframe computing.
^ 1953 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, by electric chair
      In Sing Sing Prison, Ossining, New York, Julius Rosenberg [born 12 May 1918] and his wife Ether Greenglass Rosenberg [born 28 September 1915] become the first US civilians to be executed on charges of espionage. Known for their Communist leanings, they were convicted of assisting a Los Alamos spy pass atomic secrets to the Soviets. Occurring at the height of "red menace" hysteria in the 1950s, evidence suggests that the government was unsure of their guilt. In one of her last letters before being executed, Ethel Rosenberg wrote: "my husband and I must be vindicated by history; we are the first victims of American Fascism."
Innocents ? En pleine période de folie anti-communiste, le sénateur Mac Carthy avait accusé les époux, savants atomistes, d’avoir laissé parvenir des secrets militaires à l’URSS. Le procès bâclé ne permettra pas de prouver leur culpabilité. Mais malgré les preuves d’innocence, le jury tout-puissant les condamnera à la peine capitale. Le président Dwight Eisenhower refusera de leur accorder la grâce présidentielle. Encore aujourd’hui ils n’ont pas été réhabilité. Cette affaire reste une honte dans l’histoire d’un pays démocratique. Des lustres après leur exécution, en 1953, la culpabilité des époux Rosenberg reste à démontrer. A cette question, les réponses demeurent controversées, le plus souvent marquées au coin de l’idéologie : coupables si l’on se situe dans une optique anticommuniste... et innocents dans le cas inverse. Aussi insatisfaisant et irritant que cela puisse paraître, l’honnêteté oblige à reconnaître que des doutes demeurent et que, en dernière analyse, personne n’a de réponse totalement concluante, sauf Ethel et Julius Rosenberg qui ont toujours proclamé leur innocence.
      Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a married couple convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage in 1951, are put to death in the electric chair. The execution marked the dramatic finale of the most controversial espionage case of the Cold War. Julius was arrested in July 1950, and Ethel in August of that same year, on the charge of conspiracy to commit espionage. Specifically, they were accused of heading a spy ring that passed top-secret information concerning the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. They allegedly recruited Mrs. Rosenberg's brother, David Greenglass, who worked at the site of the first atom bomb test in New Mexico. Greenglass became a star witness against the Rosenbergs, testifying that he saw his sister transcribing his spy notes on a typewriter. In 2001 Greenglass would admit that he lied about this and other matters, to save himself and his wife.
      The Rosenbergs vigorously protested their innocence, but after a brief trial in March 1951 they were convicted. On 05 April 1951, a judge sentenced them to death. The pair was taken to Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York, to await execution. During the next two years, the couple became the subject of both national and international debate. Many people believed that the Rosenbergs were the victims of a surge of hysterical anticommunist feeling in the United States, and protested that the death sentence handed down was cruel and unusual punishment.
      Most people in the US, however, believed that the Rosenbergs had been dealt with justly. President Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke for many in the US when he issued a statement declining to invoke executive clemency for the pair. He stated, “I can only say that, by immeasurably increasing the chances of atomic war, the Rosenbergs may have condemned to death tens of millions of innocent people all over the world. The execution of two human beings is a grave matter. But even graver is the thought of the millions of dead whose deaths may be directly attributable to what these spies have done.” Julius Rosenberg was the first to be executed, at about 20:00. on 19 June 1953. Just a few minutes after his body was removed from the chamber containing the electric chair, Ethel Rosenberg was led in and strapped to the chair. She was pronounced dead at 20:16. Both refused to admit any wrongdoing and proclaimed their innocence right up to the time of their deaths. Their orphaned two sons, Michael [1943~] and Robert [1947~], were adopted by Abel and Anne Meeropol, whose surname became theirs. They are co-authors of We Are Your Sons (1975).
      In 1995 the CIA would release decoded (and doctored?) Soviet messages, which appear to show that Julius Rosenberg was indeed a spy, though nothing he contributed to the Soviets seems to have deserved the death penalty; and his wife was not involved, other than refusing to bear false witness against her husband.
1945 Stefan Mazurkiewicz, Polish mathematician born on 25 September 1888. His main work was in topology and the theory of probability.
1938 Luis González Obregón, historiador mexicano.
1932 Some 200 by hailstones in Hunan Province, China.
1928 Maria Katarina Wiik, Helsinki painter born on 02 (03?) August 1853. — MORE ON WIIK AT ART “4” JUNE with links to images.
1902 Federico Augusto, rey de Sajonia.
1884 Ludwig Adrian Richter, Dresden German painter, printmaker, and illustrator, born on 28 September 1803.
1871 Johann Fischbach, Austrian artist born on 05 April 1797.
click for full picture by Manet  ^top^

1867 Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Austria, Emperor of Mexico, and his two leading generals Miramón and Mejía, by firing squad
      In 1861, after establishing his liberal Mexican government, Benito Juarez had become president of a country in financial ruin, and was forced to default on his debts to European governments. In response, France, Britain, and Spain sent naval forces to Veracruz to demand reimbursement. Britain and Spain negotiated with Mexico and withdrew, but France under Napoléon III decided to use the opportunity to make a dependent empire out of Mexican territory.
      Late in 1861, a well-armed French fleet stormed Veracruz, landing a large force and driving President Juarez and his government into retreat. Certain that French victory would come swiftly in Mexico, 6000 French troops under General Charles Latrille de Lorencez set out to attack Puebla de Los Angeles, a small city in east central Mexico. From his new headquarters in the north, Juarez rounded up a rag-tag force of loyal men and sent them to Puebla. Led by Texas-born General Zaragoza, the 2000 Mexicans fortified the town and prepared for the French assault. On the fifth of May, 1862, Lorencez drew his army, well-provisioned and supported by heavy artillery, before the city of Puebla and began their assault from the north. The battle lasted from daybreak to early evening, and when the French finally retreated they had lost nearly 500 soldiers to the less than 100 Mexicans killed.
      Although not a major strategic victory in the overall war against the French, Zaragoza's victory at Puebla represented a great moral victory for the Mexican government, and symbolized the country's ability to defend its sovereignty against threat by a powerful foreign nation. The French went on to conquer Mexico City and installed Ferdinand Maximilian as Emperor.
      Six years later, under pressure from the newly reUnited States, France withdrew. Abandoned in Mexico, Emperor Maximilian was captured by Juarez's forces, and on 19 June, executed by order of Benito Juarez. This same year Manet made a painting of the event. [click on image above to see full painting].
1839 Joseph Paelinck, Flemish painter born on 20 March 1781. — MORE ON PAELINCK AT ART “4” JUNE with links to images.
1805 Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée, French painter born on 21 January 1725. — MORE ON LAGRENÉE AT ART “4” JUNE with links to images.
^ Condamnés à mort par la Révolution:
1794 (01 messidor an II):
GUADET Marguerite Elie, député de la convention nationale, homme de loi 35 ans, natif de St Emilion, domicilié à Bordeaux (Gironde), mis hors la loi, par décret de la Convention nationale, exécuté, à Bordeaux, comme conspirateur, par suite des malheureuses journées des 31 mai, 1 et 2 juin 1793.
MARCHAND Etienne Renobert, officier au 7ème régiment de cavalerie,par le tribunal révolutionnaire de Cambray, comme ayant abandonné son poste.
A Arras:
DELACROIX François, 36 ans, né à Cambrai, célibataire, chapelier
GRIFFON François, 40 ans, sergent à Vergés, époux de Roussel Catherine,
LESCARDE César Louis Joseph, 50 ans, né à Arras, chirurgien, époux de Lenfant Sabine,
NONJEAN Pierre Joseph, 49 ans, né à Arras, célibataire.
WAGNON Denis, 43 ans, né à Lille, libraire, époux de Crepin Marie Jeanne
BOISTEL Jean Baptiste, né à Arras en 1750, sergent à Vergés, époux de Blanchet Victoire, guillotiné
MARCHANDISE ou MARCHAND Romain, 35 ans, né à Frémicourt, ci-devant homme de loi, guillotiné
Domiciliés à Avignon, département de Vaucluse, par la commission populaire d'Orange:
BONNET Agricole, aîné, imprimeur, comme fédéraliste.
BORTY Louis Agricole, charpentier, comme contre-révolutionnaire.
CLOZEAU-PITOY Aimé Louis, fabricant d'étoffes en soie, comme fédéraliste.
RICAR Vincent, sous brigadier des ci-devant chevaux légers, comme fédéraliste.
TUTON Jérôme, charpentier, comme contre-révolutionnaire.
Par le tribunal révolutionnaire de Paris:
CLAVET G., 36 ans, né à Couront, département du Terrible, tailleur, domicilié à Paris, comme ennemi du peuple.
LARDILLON Etienne, employé à la poste-aux-lettres de Paris, .comme distributeur de faux assignats.
LAURENCOT Antoine Pierre, garde Forestier, 64 ans, né à Nevers-la-Charité (Haute-Saône), domicilié au Pont-de-Planches, même département, comme s'étant vanté d'avoir reçu des nouvelles d'un de ses fils émigré.
      ... comme conspirateurs:
DUFRANCASTEL Jean Philippe, agent du ci-devant évêque de Bayeux (Calvados), 63 ans, né à Lille-Adam, domicilié à Bayeux.
FABRE Pierre Joseph, ex procureur syndic du département des Pyrénées Orientales, 50 ans, né et domicilier à Perpignan, même département,.
LAMEULLE Jean François, chiffonnier, 64 ans, né et domicilié à Aubervilliers, département de la Seine, ... pour avoir dit dans un cabaret, en parlant des croix et de Pargenterie des églises, que s'il y avait une commune qui se fût rebellée, les autres auraient fait la même chose.
            ... domiciliés à Paris:
CLEVET Georges, tailleur.
LEVEQUE Pierre (dit Dumoulin), fermier de l'ex évêque de Bayeux.
LIRZIN Jacques, limonadier, 42 ans, né. à Paris, ... pour avoir crié " vive le roi, et dit qu'il chiait sur la Nation".
RIPERT Jules Charles Louis, 31 ans, natif de Marseille (Bouches du Rhône), ex noble.
1692 Sarah Good, Elizabeth Howe, Susannah Martin, Sarah Wildes, Rebecca (née Towne) Nurse [bap. 21 Feb 1621–], hanged for alleged witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts. Fifteen young girls in the Salem community had charged some 150 citizens in the area with witchcraft during the greater part of this year. This was the second execution resulting from the Salem witch trial. The first had been that of Bridget Bishop [–10 Jun 1692].
^ 1027 Saint Romuald (environ 950 - 1027)
      Il appartient à la puissante famille des ducs de Ravenne. Né en 950, Romuald sera, durant trois ans, moine au monastère de Sant’Apollinare in Classe. Ensuite il devient ermite dans la lagune de Venise. En 978, il accompagne le doge Orseolo, qui va prendre l’habit monastique à Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa dans le Roussillon. Il réside un peu en ce monastère, puis reprend la vie érémitique dans le voisinage. Revenu à Ravenne au bout de dix ans, Romuald est élu en 998 abbé de Sant’Apollinare in Classe. Il démissionne un an après, se rend au Mont-Cassin et à Rome, prêchant l’austérité dans les monastères et les ermitages et créant de nouvelles maisons. En 1012, Romuald fonde dans les Apennins le monastère de Camaldoli, berceau de l’ordre des Camaldules. Son originalité est de juxtaposer à un monastère cénobitique des ermitages situés plus haut dans la montagne, où vivent les moines mus par une spiritualité plus exigeante. Ermite à Val di Castro, Romuald meurt le 19 juin 1027. Sa fête, longtemps placée au 7 février, anniversaire d’une translation, a été reportée au 19 juin dans le nouveau calendrier romain.

 
< 18 Jun 20 Jun >
^  Births which occurred on a 19 June:

2001 Two Hundred Years Together, 1795-1995, about the relations of Russians and Jews, by Russia's Nobel laureate author and historian Alexander Solzhenitsyn, goes on sale in Moscow.
Salman Rushdie^ 1947 Salman Rushdie, in Bombay, novelist.
      In1961 he emigrated to Britain, studied history at Cambridge, then: worked as an independent journalist. In 1981 he published the novel Midnight's Children (surrealist fiction that deals with the history of India from 1910 to the declaration of the emergency in 1976 through the eyes of Saleem Sinai, born on the stroke of Midnight August 15, 1947. It is at once the history of a sub-continent, the story of a boy's coming to age, the saga of a family and the off-key liberation-song of a people).
      In 1988 he publishes the novel: The Satanic Verses which earn him a death penalty (fatwah) for blasphemy against Islam, decreed by Iran. Rushdie had to go into hiding for many years. His style is a mixture of realism, fantasy and grotesque tales, using historical facts and real political events, often allusions and language games. [Webcurrents review]
      A more recent novel of Rushdie is The Moor's Last Sigh (1995--Whitbread novel of the year), a playful family epic told by a descendant of the explorer Vasco da Gama who was born with a strange condition that makes him age twice as fast as everyone else. [links to reviews]
     Other books by Rushdie are The Ground beneath Her Feet (1999): a novel about "the triangle of art, love, and death" inspired by the Orpheus myth, which describes the life of an Indian rock singer Vina Aspara, and the ground beneath her feet shakes in an earthquake.
-- Haroun and the Sea Stories (1990) -- about Khattam-Shud, the cult-master, whose goal was to drain the sea of stories, silencing creative expression.
East, West: Stories (1994) -- three stories set in the East, three in the West, and the final three about expatriates from the East living in the West. [Indolink review]
Grimus (1975): A wandering Indian seeks the island of immortality, but once there must fight Grimus, a mysterious malevolent ghost.
Shame (1983--Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger): a novel about the shame of being humiliated, and the shame of the resulting destructive violence--
Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991(1991) -- See the list of some 70 essays
The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey (1987): a diary of Rushdie's visit to Nicaragua in 1986 and a testament of a revolution led by warrior-poets, with Rushdie's analysis of the political situation in central America.
Summary of The Satanic Verses:
Chapter I: The Angel Gibreel: The novel opens with the two main characters, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, falling to earth because the plane they have been flying in has just been blown up by the terrorists who have hijacked it. We are then told a good deal of detail about their backgrounds, their occupations, their love affairs, and how they happened to find themselves together on the plane. Then the story of the hijacking is told, leading up to the moment of explosion which began the novel.
Chapter II: Mahound: Gibreel falls asleep and "dreams" the beginning of the other main plot of the novel, the story of Mahound, more or less closely based on the traditions surrounding Muhammad and the founding of Islam in the seventh century. It is this plot that resulted in the attacks on Rushdie by Muslim critics. We see Mahound surveying the city of Jahilia and are introduced to various significant locales. The period corresponds historically to the early days of Muhammad's preaching in Mecca, where he was not widely accepted, and the Ka'ba was still filled with pagan idols, including those of the three goddesses who are the focus of the "satanic verses." Mahound's preaching has earned the hatred of the ruler of Jahilia, Abu Simbel, whose fortune is derived from worshippers at their temples. Abu Simbel, aware that Baal is his wife Hind's lover, blackmails the poet Baal to satirize the Mahound and his companions.
      But then he tries a more effective alternative to render the prophet harmless by offering him toleration if he in turn will acknowledge the three goddesses whose temples he and his wife receive their income from. Mahound horrifies his followers by seeming to be willing to deviate from his message of strict monotheism. He consults with the Angel Gibreel, who has up to this point been dictating holy scripture to him, and becomes convinced that the "satanic verses" acknowledging the three goddesses, should be proclaimed as inspired, though the narrator hints that they have been inspired not by God, but by the devil.
      Mahound's decision produces an orgy of celebration which results in death for some, and he himself wakes up in Hind's bedroom. Mahound realizes the "satanic verses" are indeed satanic, and goes to the Ka'ba to repudiate them. A fierce persecution of Mahound's followers is unleashed, and he has to flee to Yathrib. Gibreel dreams that he is being attacked by the goddesses, for in his dream-role as the archangel/devil he has been responsible both for suggesting the verses and repudiating them.
Chapter III: Ellowen Deeowen: Rosa Diamond, an old woman who spends much of her time dreaming about the past (the Norman Invasion and her own, in Argentina), witnesses Gibreel and Saladin's descent to earth and rescues them; but Saladin is arrested as an illegal immigrant, while Rosa dies. The police strip and humiliate Saladin, who discovers that he is turning into a hairy, goatlike creature. In a bizarre secret hospital where animal/human experiments reminiscent of H. G. Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau are being carried out he is befriended by a physiotherapist and escapes.
      The scene shifts to Saladin's home where his wife Pamela, rather than grieving for him, has started an affair with Jumpy Joshi, and does not welcome the news that he is still alive. The two lovers flee and engage in an orgy of lovemaking until Saladin finds them in his goatlike form. On the train to London Gibreel is bored by an American fundamentalist with the same name as a "false prophet" in Islamic tradition: Maslama. Various signs convey to Gibreel that he is evolving into an angel. This scene shifts to introduce Alleluia Cone, former lover of Gibreel, speaking to a class of schoolgirls about her career as a mountain-climber. Gibreel, entering London, haunted by the ghost of another lover--Rekha Merchant--runs into her on the street.
Chapter IV: Ayesha: Gibreel's dreams resume with a narrative imitation of a long zoom shot focussing in on the fanatical Imam, in exile in London. This figure is clearly based on the Iranian Muslim fundamentalist leader, the Ayatollah Khomeni. His companions are named after prominent companions of Muhammad, and his enemy in his homeland of Desh is named after Muhammad's favorite wife. Gibreel as angel carries the Imam to the capital city of Desh, as the Islamic Gibreel had carried Muhammad to Jerusalem. They witness a popular revolution in which the evil Ayesha dies. From her dead body springs the spirit of Al-lat, one of the three goddesses of the "satanic verses," but she is defeated by Gibreel. The Imam triumphs and tries to freeze time by destroying all the clocks in the land. Rushdie provides his own commentary on this image in discussing the Iranian revolution: ". . . the revolution sets out quite literally to turn back the clock. Time must be reversed".
      A separate plot now begins, involving Mirza Saeed Akhtar, his wife Mishal, and the mystical, mysterious and beautiful Ayesha (a quite different figure from the Ayesha of the Desh plot, but in the long run equally destructive). As Mirza watches the butterfly-clad Ayesha, he longs for her. A long flashback tells of Ayesha's girlhood and introduces us to several characters from the village of Titlipur. Mirza Saeed tries to transmute his lust for the girl into passion for his wife, but it is Mishal who becomes close to Ayesha. This intimacy is a disaster, for the seemingly insane girl claims to have been told by the Angel Gibreel that Mishal has breast cancer. The only cure, she pronounces, is to make a foot-pilgrimage to Mecca. Unfortunately, this involves walking across the Arabian Sea. The skeptical and furious Mirza Saeed cannot stop his wife from going, but decides to accompany them in hopes of somehow saving her.
Chapter V: A City Visible but Unseen: Back in contemporary London, the guilt-ridden Jumpy Joshi takes the goatlike Saladin Chamcha back to his apartment above the Shaandaar Café, dominated by Hind, the wife of Muhammad Sufyan. This Hind is not as lascivious as the one in the "satanic verses" plot, but she is almost as fierce. She has two teenaged daughters--Mishal and Anahita--who will become fascinated with the strange man/devil that Saladin has become. We pause in the plot to learn more about the family and its interrelationships. Hind muses on the disgusting weirdness that is London.
      A dream provides details of Saladin's escape from the "hospital." He phones his old work partner, Mimi Mamoulian, only to find that he has lost his job. He briefly encounters the name of Billy Battuta, who will figure prominently in the novel later. His old boss, Hal Valance, explains why his television series has been cancelled. He is enraged to learn that Gibreel is alive, and--far from helping him out in any way--is claiming he missed Flight 420 and seems to be engaged into making his "satanic verses" dreams into a movie. Meanwhile his wife has become pregnant by Jumpy. Everything seems to be conspiring against Saladin; and, battered into submission by fate, he loses his supernatural qualities after a visit to the bizarre Hot Wax nightclub. A subplot involves a series of gruesome murders of old women for which the black militant leader Uhuru Simba is arrested.
      The next section returns to the story of Allie Cone, detailing her childhood and young adulthood. Her reunion was Gibreel is passionate, but it will be spoiled by his insane jealousy. Again haunted by Rekha Merchant, a deranged Gibreel tries to confront London in his angelic persona, but he is instead knocked down by the car of film producer S. S. Sisodia, who returns him to Allie and signs him up to make a series of films as the archangel of his dreams. Again he tries to leave Allie, but a riot during a public appearance lands him back again, defeated, at Allie's doorstep. At the end of the chapter we learn that a most uncharacteristic heat wave has broken out in London.
Chapter VI: Return to Jahilia: This chapter, the most controversial in the novel, returns us to Jahilia, from which Mahound had fled (historically this corresponds to the Prophet Muhammad's flight from Mecca to Medina). Mahound is returning to his home city, having gained many followers while he was away. The monstrous Hind, miraculously unaged, continues her reign of terror over the city. The cynical Poet Baal encounters Salman, now disillusioned with Mahound. He says that in Yathrib the prophet has become obsessed with laying down various restrictive laws, some of which parallel parts of the Sharia, traditional Islamic law. This passage has been widely attacked by Muslim scholars as inaccurate and blasphemous, but clearly Rushdie was not attempting a scholarly discourse on Islamic law. It is, however, a satire on restrictive moral codes. He also describes what he takes to be the origins of the religion's restrictions on women.
      Salman, noting that the revelations Mahound received were very convenient for the Prophet himself, has begun to test him by altering the revelations given to Mahound when they are dictated. He has realized that Mahound is far from infallible; and, terrified that his changes to the sacred text will be discovered, he has fled to Jahilia. Muslims who see this as a satire on the dictation of the Qur'an find it highly offensive, for the sacred scripture of Muslims is held to be the exact and perfectly preserved word of God in the most literal sense.
      The aged Abu Simbel converts to the new faith and surrenders the city of Mahound. At first Hind resists, but after the House the Black Stone is cleansed of pagan idols (as the Ka'ba was similarly cleansed by Muhammad), she submits and embraces the new faith as well. Bilal manages to save Salman from execution; but Baal flees, hiding in a brothel named Hijab. The prostitutes there have blasphemously taken on the names of the Prophet's various wives. No scene in the novel has been more ferociously attacked, though as Rushdie points out it is quite inaccurate to say that the author has made the Prophet's wives into whores. Rather the scene is a commentary on the tendency of the profane to infiltrate the sacred. Nevertheless, the imagery and language of this section has offended readers mightily. Baal becomes a sort of pseudo-Mahound, by making love to each of the prostitutes in turn. Salman visits Baal and tells him a story that implies the real Ayesha may have been unfaithful to Mahound.
      The brothel is raided, Baal sings serenades to the imprisoned whores and is himself arrested and condemned to death. Hind, meanwhile, retreats to her study, evidently practicing witchcraft. It is revealed that her "conversion" was a ruse to divert Mahound's attention while she trained herself in the magical powers necessary to defeat him. Ultimately she sends the goddess Al-Lat to destroy the Prophet who, with his dying breath thanks her for killing him.
Chapter VII: The Angel Azraeel: This is by far the most eventful chapter in the novel, and the one in which readers are most likely to get lost. The Saladin/Gibreel plot resumes as the former meditates on his two unrequited loves: for London and for Pamela, both of whom have betrayed him. He calls on his wife, now pregnant by Jumpy Joshi, and says he wants to move back into his home, although he seems to have fallen out of love with her. Back in his room at the Shaandaar Cafe, he watches television and muses on various forms of transformation and hybridism which relate to his own transmutation and fantasizes about the sexy teenaged Mishal Sufyan. The first-person demonic narrator of the novel makes one of his brief appearances. The guilty Jumpy coerces Pamela into taking Saladin home. The pair is involved in protests against the arrest of Uhuru Simba for the Granny Ripper Murders. Saladin goes with them to a protest meeting where an encounter with Mishal makes him feel doomed. Jumpy mentions Gibreel to him. After hearing evangelist Eugene Dumsday denounce evolution on the radio, he realizes that his personal evolution is not finished.
      A heat wave has hit London. At a bizarre party hosted by film maker S. S. Sisodia, Saladin meets Gibreel again. He starts out to attack him, furious at the latter's having abandoned him back when the police came to Rosa Diamond's house; but enraged by the beautiful Alleluia Cone, he more effectively avenges himself accidentally by blurting out the news of his wife's unfaithfulness, unaware of the effect this will have on Gibreel, who is extremely prone to jealousy. Gibreel insanely assaults Jumpy Joshi, whom he fears is lusting after Allie.
      Allie, driven to distraction by Gibreel's jealousy, invites Saladin to stay with her and the sedated Gibreel in Scotland. The two lovers are bound in an intensely sexual but destructive relationship which makes Saladin more than ever determined to take his revenge on Gibreel, whom he takes to the Shaandaar Café, where they encounter drunken racists. On the way back to Allie's flat Saladin plants the seeds of his campaign against Gibreel's sanity by telling him of the jealous Strindberg. He begins to use his talent for imitating many voices to make obscene and threatening phone calls to both Allie and Gibreel, and he succeeds in breaking the couple up.
      Gibreel, now driven completely insane, is suffering under the delusion that he is the destroyer angel Azraeel, whose job is to blow the Last Trumpet and end the world. A riot involving both Blacks and Asians breaks out when--after Uhuru Simba dies in police custody--it is made clear that he was not the Granny Ripper. Gibreel is in his element in this apocalyptic uprising. It is not always clear in what follows how much is Gibreel's insanity and how much is fantastic reality: but he experiences himself as capable of blowing streams of fire out of his trumpet to incinerate various people, including a group of pimps whom he associates with the inhabitants of the Jahilian brothel in his dream. On a realistic level, the ensuing fires are probably just the result of the rioting that has broken out around him. Jumpy Joshi and Pamela die when the Brickhall Community Relations Council building is torched either by Saladin, or by the police. When Saladin returns to the Shaandaar Café he finds it ablaze as well, and plunges in to try to rescue the Sufyan family, but instead he is rescued by Gibreel. As an ambulance takes the two men away, Gibreel lapses back into madness and dreams the next chapter.
Chapter VIII: The Parting of the Arabian Sea: It is important to know that the events in this chapter are based on a real occurrence. In 1983 thirty-eight fanatical Shi'ites walked into Hawkes Bay in Karachi (the site of the Rushdie family home in Pakistan). Their leader had persuaded them that a path through the sea would miraculously open, enabling them to walk to the holy city of Kerbala in Iraq
      The story of the mystical Ayesha from the end of Chapter IV resumes. One disaster after another assails the pilgrims following Ayesha in her march to the sea; but she insists on continuing, as does Mishal, Mirza Saeed's wife, despite his repeated attempts to dissuade her. He tries to persuade Ayesha to accept airplane tickets to complete the pilgrimage to Mecca (which is in fact the most common way for pilgrims to make the hajj today); but she refuses. Her fanaticism makes her more and more ruthless, unmoved even by the deaths of fifteen thousand miners nearby. She behaves like the evil Ayesha of the Desh plot when an Imam announces that an abandoned baby is a "Devil's Child," and allows the congregation of the mosque to stone it to death. Finally, the horrified Mirza Saeed watches as his wife and others walk into the sea and are drowned; though all other witnesses claim that the sea did miraculously open as Ayesha had expected and the group crossed safely. Mirza Saeed returns home and starves himself to death, in his dying moments joining his wife and Ayesha in their pilgrimage to Mecca, though probably only in his mind.
Chapter IX: The Wonderful Lamp A year and a half later, Saladin flies home to be with his dying father. He has heard that Gibreel is now making films based on the "dreams" which have alternated with the present-day plot throughout the novel. On the plane he reads of various scandals and disasters taking place in India: clearly it is no utopia. Whereas Saladin resents the former maidservant who has married his father and taken on his mother's identity, his lover/friend Zeeny Vakil immediately sympathizes with her. After years of hostility to his father, Saladin finds no support in those surrounding him for his attitude. As he sits by his father's bedside the two are finally reconciled. Saladin has inherited his father's estate and is now rich. Meanwhile a dispute over a film on Indian sectarianism has become the center of a censorship controversy in a way that ominously forshadows the treatment which Rushdie's Satanic Verses was to receive upon publication.
      Gibreel has also returned to Bombay, depressed and suicidal. The movie he tries to make is a "satanic" inversion of the traditional tale from the Ramayana, reflecting his disillusionment with love after having been rejected by Allie. Ultimately he goes entirely mad, kills Sisodia and Allie (hurling the latter symbolically from the same skyscraper from which Rekha Merchant had flung herself). Visiting Saladin, he confesses, then draws a revolver from the "magic" lamp Saladin had inherited from his father, and shoots himself. Zeeny Vakil's final words to Saladin, "Let's get the hell out of here," may be ambiguous: they could mean only "Let's leave," but she may also be inviting him to leave the the realm of the Satanic in which he has been living for so long.
Note: The Satanic verses, according to one Islamic tradition, were inserted in Quran 53:21-22 by the devil, taking advantage of Muhamad's desire for reconciliation with his tribe, which believed in the three "daughters of God" mentioned in Quran 53:19-20: "Have you thought upon al-Lat and al-Uzza And Manat, the third, the other?" to which the Satanic verses are appended: "These are the exalted cranes (intermediaries) Whose intercession is to be hoped for." However the angel of revelation, Jibril, returned Muhamad to strict monotheism by substituting the correct verses: "Are yours the males and His the females? That indeed would be an unfair division!"
^ 1947 The Marshall Plan.
     Representatives of 22 European nations meet at the invitation of the British and French foreign ministers to participate in the design of a plan for rebuilding war-torn Europe. In a Harvard University commencement address two weeks earlier, US Secretary of State George C. Marshall had called for a massive European aid package designed to stabilize the world economy and discourage the spread of communism. Over 12.4 billion dollars would be transferred to Western Europe under the Economic Recovery Program known as the "Marshall Plan." Not completely altruistic, the legislation creating the plan specified aid dollars be spent in the US
     Nearly every Western European nation participated in the recovery effort. Although inflation proved a serious side effect of the program, within two years many countries had reached or exceeded pre-war levels of agricultural and industrial production. By encouraging European economic integration, the Marshall Plan fostered the creation of the European Economic Community of the 1950s--the precursor to today's European Union.
  • For European Recovery: The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Marshall Plan includes the text of three books about the Marshall Plan as well as William Averill Harriman's album of photographs, The Marshall Plan at the Mid-Mark.
  • A National Archives exhibition on the Marshall Plan features the legislation that created the aid package.
  • Visit the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's tribute to the Marshall Plan. This online exhibition contains an audio version of Marshall's speech delievered at Harvard.
    • + ZOOM IN +^ 1945 Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar (former Burma) opposition leader, human rights activist, 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, persecuted by the Myanmar government. [2002 photo >]
          Her mother is Khin Kyi, a prominent Burmese diplomat, and her father is Aung San [1914 – 19 Jul 1947] who was assassinated when he was de facto prime minister of what would shortly become independent Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi attended schools in Burma until 1960, when her mother was appointed ambassador to India. After further study in India, she attended the University of Oxford, where she met her future husband, Michael Aris [–27 Mar 1999]. She had two children and lived a rather quiet life until 1988, when she returned to Myanmar to nurse her dying mother. There the mass slaughter of protesters against the brutal and unresponsive rule of the military strongman Ne Win led her to speak out against him and to begin a nonviolent struggle for democracy and human rights. The newly formed group with which she became affiliated, the National League for Democracy, won 82% of the parliamentary seats that were contested in 1990, but the results of that election were ignored by the military government. Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest and held incommunicado from July 1989. The military offered to free her if she agreed to leave Myanmar, but she refused to do so until the country was returned to civilian government and political prisoners were freed. She was freed from house arrest on 10 July 1995, but placed under it again in September 2000, released on 06 May 2002, attaqued by a government mob (which killed or injured some 100 of her supporters) and arrested once more on 30 May 2003.
    1935 Rodrigo Borja Cevallos, político ecuatoriano.
    ^ 1934 Nathanael West's A Cool Million is published
          Nathanael West's novel A Cool Million, a satire of rags-to-riches morality tales, is published. West, the son of Jewish immigrants, was born in New York in 1903. He attended Brown University, then went to Paris to write for about a year and a half, during which time he wrote his first novel, The Dream Life of Balso Snell, about disgruntled characters inside the Trojan Horse. Only 500 copies of the book were printed when it was published in 1931.
          West returned to New York, where he took a job managing a hotel. He frequently gave free or cheap rooms to struggling fellow writers, including Dashiell Hammet and Erskine Caldwell. In 1933, he published his novella, Miss Lonelyhearts, about a male reporter who becomes increasingly troubled by the pitiful letters he answers in his advice column. In the 1930s, West moved to Hollywood to write screenplays, and in 1939 he published The Day of the Locust, considered one of the best novels written about early Hollywood.
          West and his wife, Eileen McKenney, were killed in an automobile accident in California in 1940. Although West was not widely read during his lifetime, his popularity grew after World War II and after the publication of The Complete Works of Nathanael West in 1957.
    1923 Andrés Rodríguez Pedotti, militar y político paraguayo, ex-presidente de Paraguay.
    1922 Aage Niels Bohr Denmark, son of Niels Bohr [07 Oct 1885 – 18 Nov 1962], Aage is a Danish physicist who shared the 1975 Nobel Prize for Physics with Ben R. Mottelson [09 Jul 1926~] and James Rainwater [09 Dec 1917 – 31 May 1986] for their work in determining the asymmetrical shapes of certain atomic nuclei.
    1910 Abe Fortas (US Supreme Court Justice). He died on 06 April 1982.
    1909 Tsushima Shuji “Osamu Dazai” Japan, novelist. Author of Bannen (1936; "The Twilight Years", short stories), Otogi zoshi (1945; "Fairy Tales", new versions of traditional tales), Tsugaru (1944), Shayo (1947; The Setting Sun), Biyon no Tsuma (1947; Villon's Wife), Ningen Shikkaku (1948; No Longer Human). He committed suicide on 13 June 1948, leaving uncompleted a novel entitled Goodbye. .
    1903 Henry Louis Gehrig first baseman (NY Yankees) "Iron Horse" (Baseball Hall of Famer: NY Yankees: 7 World Series; his uniform was the first to be retired). He suffered for two years from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, dying of it on 02 June 1941, giving it his name.
    1902 Wallace John Eckert, US astronomer who died on 24 August 1971.
    1897 Moe Howard comedian (3 Stooges)
    click for complete photo1896 Bessie Wallis Warfield Spencer Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, who died on 24 April 1986. Bessie Wallis Warfield was born in Pennsylvania. She married Earl W. Spencer, a navy pilot, in 1916 and divorced in 1927. In England for a visit, she met Ernest A. Simpson, a U.S.-born British subject; they married in 1928. Wallis Simpson met Edward [23 Jun 1894 – 28 May 1972], then the prince of Wales and they fell in love. Wallis sued for divorce from her second husband in July 1936, with the apparent intention of marrying Edward (who had become King Edward VIII). Edward renounced the British throne on 10 December 1936 (confirmed by the Declaration of Abdication Act the following day), in order to marry Simpson. He was named duke of Windsor by his brother, now George VI [14 Dec 1895 – 06 Feb 1952]. Wallis Simpson's divorce became final in May 1937, and she had her name changed legally to Mrs. Wallis Warfield, and married the duke of Windsor on 03 June 1937. They lived in France. In July 1940 King George VI named his brother governor of the Bahama Islands, where the duke and duchess remained through most of World War II. [click on image for full photo >] The duke resigned his post in early 1945, and the couple moved back to France. In 1956 the duchess of Windsor published her autobiography, The Heart Has Its Reasons.
    1895 Rosa Gai, in Isola d'Asti, Italy. She would die on 11 May 2006. She is the last of the five children of railroad employee Enrico Gai and elementary school teacher Luigia Gai. Her fiancé, Nino, died in combat in 1917 in WW1 and she never married. She settled in Milan in the 1920s and worked there as a seamstress until she was 85. From 1994 she lived at the istituto geriatrico Piero Redaelli. — (060618)
    1889 Enrico Celio, in Ambri, Ticino, president of Switzerland (1943, 1948), of the Schweizerische Konservative Volkspartei, who died on 23 February 1980.
    1881 James J. “Jimmy” Walker, New York City politician who died on 18 November 1946. The son of Irish Catholic immigrants who lived in New York's Greenwich Village, Walker attended Saint Francis Xavier College and graduated from New York Law School in 1904. After graduation, however, he began frequenting Broadway's theatres and vaudeville, writing popular songs and eventually marrying (in 1912) a musical comedy singer. In that same year he was admitted to the New York State bar. Already gravitating toward politics, he became a district captain and a member of the Assembly (1909) and, under the tutelage of Alfred E. Smith [30 Dec 1873 – 04 Oct 1944], was elected to the State Senate (1914). With the backing of the Tammany organization and Governor Smith, Walker was nominated in 1925 as the Democratic mayoralty candidate in the primary elections. He served as mayor of New York City for two terms. During his first term he created the Department of Sanitation, brought about unification of the city's public hospitals, and made considerable improvements in the playgrounds and park systems; and, under his guidance, the Board of Transportation approved contracts for the construction of an elaborate subway system. Reelected to office in 1929, he came under critical fire from several sources. In 1931 the New York legislature formed a committee to investigate the affairs of New York City. As a result of this investigation, extensive corruption was revealed and 15 charges were levelled against Walker. Accused, among other things, of being actuated by improper and illegal considerations and of being unable to explain satisfactorily the large sums of money deposited in his bank account, he resigned on 01 September 1932. He then went to Europe with his showgirl-mistress and did not return to the United States until1935. He was named chairman of the National Cloak and Suit Industry in 1940; he later became the president of the Majestic Records Company.
    1878 James M Kilroe, priest of St Mary Star of the Sea, in the Bronx
    1872 Charles D. Ward, British artist.
    1861 José Rizal, escritor y político, caudillo destacado de la independencia filipina.
    Rizal^ 1861 José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda, Filipino peaceful patriot, physician, and man of letters, shot by the Spanish colonialists on 30 December 1896.
          The son of a prosperous landowner, Rizal was educated in Manila and at the University of Madrid. A brilliant medical student, he soon committed himself to the reform of Spanish rule in his home country, though he never advocated Philippine independence. Most of his writing was done in Europe, where he resided between 1882 and 1892.
          In 1886 Rizal published his first novel, Noli me tangere, a passionate exposure of the evils of Spanish rule in the Philippines. A sequel, El filibusterismo (1891), established his reputation as the leading spokesman of the Philippine reform movement. He published an annotated edition (1890) of Antonio Morga's Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, hoping to show that the native people of the Philippines had a long history before the coming of the Spaniards. He became the leader of the Propaganda Movement, contributing numerous articles to its newspaper, La Solidaridad, published in Barcelona. Rizal's political program included integration of the Philippines as a province of Spain, representation in the Cortes, the replacement of Spanish friars by Filipino priests, freedom of assembly and expression, and equality of Filipinos and Spaniards before the law.
          Rizal returned to the Philippines in 1892. He founded a nonviolent-reform society, the Liga Filipina, in Manila, and was deported to Dapitán in northwest Mindanao. He remained in exile for the next four years. In 1896 the Katipunan, a Filipino nationalist secret society, revolted against Spain. Although he had no connections with that organization and he had had no part in the insurrection, Rizal was arrested and tried for sedition by the military. Found guilty, he was publicly executed by a firing squad in Manila. His martyrdom convinced Filipinos that there was no alternative to independence from Spain. On the eve of his execution, while confined in Fort Santiago, Rizal wrote “Mi Último Adiós”, a masterpiece of 19th-century Spanish verse.

    MI ÚLTIMO ADIÓS
    Adios, Patria adorada, región del sol querida,
    Perla del Mar de Oriente, nuestra perdido Eden!
    A darte voy alegre la triste mustía vida,
    Y fuera más brillante, más fresca, más florida,
    Tambien por ti la diera, la diera por tu bien.

    En campos de batalla, luchando con delirio
    Otros te dan sus vida sin dudas, sin pesar;
    El sitio nada importa, ciprés, laurel o lirio,
    Cadalso o campo abierto, combate o cruel martirio,
    Lo mismo es si lo piden La Patria y el hogar.

    Yo muero cuando veo que el cielo se colora
    Y al fin anuncia el día tras lobrego capuz;
    Si grana necesitas para tenir tu aurora,
    Vierte la sangre mía, derrámala en buen hora
    Y dórela un reflejo de su naciente luz

    Mis sueños cuando apenas muchacho adolescente,
    Mis sueños cuando joven ya lleno de vigor,
    Fueron el verte un día, joya del