04 Aug History: This Date

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Events, deaths, births, of AUG 04
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On an August 04:
1998 US Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist cleared the way for prosecutors to question White House lawyers about their advice to President Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky case.

^ 1997 UPS strike.
After months of preparation by the Teamsters, their contract now expired, 185'000 union UPS drivers go on strike. In addition to their strike preparations, the Teamsters had tried to reach a new agreement with UPS. However, the failure to come to terms on a new pension plan and put a cap on the use of part-time employees killed the deal. The latter issue especially niggled at the union: three-fifths of UPS employees were part-timers, and four-fifths of the staff picked up during the previous four years worked part-time. Of course, the rub was economic: full-timers made $19.95 per hour, compared with part-time workers, who earned $9 per hour. By striking, the union aimed to halt company business and thus fire back a cash-based salvo at management.
Though it took a bite out of the striker’s earnings, the gambit worked: a few days after the walkout, UPS’ sales volume has gone down 8%. With the strike stretching into its second week, and the potential losses mounting higher every day, management ceded to the union’s demands. In addition to securing a favorable pension plan, replete with a raise in retirement benefits, the new agreement called for UPS to boost thousands of part-time workers up to full time status and even dole out a pay raise to the remaining part-timers. Lest the Teamsters claim absolute victory, management warned that any drop in business immediately following the strike would result in lay-offs. Still, the outcome seemingly marked a turning point for labor, which had lost much of its support and leverage during the 1980s. Not only did they score a victory over a major corporation, but also, with some wooing, they won the battle for the public’s support.

1996 Microsoft and Netscape agreed to support VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) for viewing 3-D images on the Web. The cooperation was rare, as the two companies were promoting competing standards in several other arenas.
1996 Oracle says it will buy Treasury Services, a software company that produces financial services software. The estimated price is $120 million
1994, Serb-dominated Yugoslavia withdrew its support for Bosnian Serbs, sealing the 480-km border between Yugoslavia and Serb-held Bosnia.
1994 Truck carrying millions of bees overturns on NY parkway. Bees escape.
1993 Angolese air force bombs Huambo
1993 Rwandian Hutu's and Tutsi's sign peace treaty in Arusha
1991 The Greek luxury liner Oceanos sinks in heavy seas off South Africa's southeast coast; all 402 passengers and 179 crew members survive.
1990 European community proposes a boycott of Iraq
1988 US Congress votes $20'000 to each Japanese-American interned in WW II
1987 The US Federal Communications Commission votes to rescind the Fairness Doctrine, which required radio and television stations to present balanced coverage of controversial issues.
1986 OPEC lowers oil production 20%
1984 Republic of Upper Volta becomes Burkina Faso (National Day)
1983 Bettino Craxi sworn in as premier of Italy
1983 Revolution in Burkina Faso.
1981 Oliver North is assigned to White House duty
1979 Italian govt of Cossiga begins
1977 US President Carter establishes Department of Energy
1974 Crawford-Butler Act allows Puerto Ricans to elect own governor.

^ 1972 Would-be Wallace assassin convicted
      Arthur Bremer was convicted on nine counts in the 15 May shooting of Governor George Wallace of Alabama and three others. Bremer is sentenced to sixty-three years in prison. George Wallace, one of the most controversial politicians in US history, was elected governor of Alabama in 1962 under an ultra-segregationist platform. In his 1963 inaugural address, Wallace promised his white followers: "Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!" However, the promise lasted only six months. In June of the same year, under federal pressure, he was forced to end his blockade of the University of Alabama and allow the enrollment of African-American students.
      Despite his failures in slowing the accelerating civil-rights movement in the South, Wallace became a national spokesman for resistance to racial change, and in 1964 entered the race for the US presidency. He was defeated in most of the Democratic presidential primaries which he entered. In 1968, he made another strong run as the candidate of the American Independent party, and managed to get on the ballot in all fifty states. On election day, he drew ten million votes from all across the country.
      In 1972, Governor Wallace returned to the Democratic party for his third presidential campaign, and under a slightly more moderate platform was showing promising returns when he was shot by twenty-one-year-old Arthur Bremer on 15 May 1972. Three others were wounded, and Wallace was permanently paralyzed from the waist down. The next day, while fighting for his life in a hospital, he won major primary victories in Michigan and Maryland. However, Wallace remained in the hospital for several months, bringing his third presidential campaign to an end.
      After his recovery, he faded from national prominence and made a poor showing in his fourth and final presidential campaign in 1979. During the 1980s, Wallace's politics shifted dramatically, especially in regard to race. In 1983, he was elected Alabama governor for the last time with the overwhelming support of African-American voters. Over the next four years, the man who had promised segregation forever made more African-American political appointments than any other figure in Alabama history. He died in 1998.

^ 1969 Vietnam: Secret peace talks start
The first secret negotiating session takes place between Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Xuan Thuy, at the apartment of French intermediary Jean Sainteny in Paris. Kissinger reiterates a proposal put forth on May 14 for a mutual withdrawal of North Vietnamese and US troops and also warns that if no progress is made by November 1 toward ending the war, the United States would consider measures of "grave consequences."
Xuan Thuy responds with the standard North Vietnamese line that the United States would have to withdraw all its troops and abandon the Thieu government before there would be any "logical and realistic basis for settling the war." The negotiations end with only an agreement to keep open the new secret channel of communications. These secret talks would continue, but would not bear fruit until late 1972, after the North Vietnamese Nguyen Hue Offensive had failed and President Nixon had launched Operation Linebacker II, the "Christmas bombing" of North Vietnam.

1967 The US Court of Military Appeals in Washington upholds the 1965 court-martial of Second Lieutenant Henry H. Howe, who had been sentenced to dismissal from the service and a year at hard labor for participating in an antiwar demonstration.
1965 Cook Islands enters into free association with New Zealand.

^ 1964 Vietnam: Dubious Viet PT boat attack leads to war quagmire
      At 20:00, the destroyers USS Maddox and USS C. Turner Joy, operating in the Gulf of Tonkin, intercept radio messages from the North Vietnamese that give Captain John Herrick of the Maddox the "impression" that Communist patrol boats are planning an attack against the US ships, prompting him to call for air support from the carrier USS Ticonderoga. Eight Crusader jets soon appeared overhead, but in the darkness, neither the pilots nor the ship crews saw any enemy craft. However, at about 22:00 sonar operators reported torpedoes approaching. The US destroyers maneuvered to avoid the torpedoes and began to fire at the North Vietnamese patrol boats. When the action ended about two hours later, US officers reported sinking two, or possibly three of the North Vietnamese boats, but no US sailor was sure of ever having seen any enemy boats nor any enemy gunfire.
      Captain Herrick immediately communicated his doubts to his superiors and urged a "thorough reconnaissance in daylight." Shortly thereafter, he informed Admiral U. S. Grant Sharp, commander of the Pacific Fleet, that the blips on the radar scope were apparently "freak weather effects" while the report of torpedoes in the water were probably due to "overeager" radar operators.
      Because of the time difference, it was only 09:20 in Washington when the Pentagon received the initial report of a potential attack on the US destroyers. When a more detailed report was received at 11:00 there was still a lot of uncertainty as to just what had transpired. President Johnson, convinced that the second attack had taken place, ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff to select targets for possible retaliatory air strikes.
      At a National Security Council meeting, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and McGeorge Bundy, Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, recommended to the president that the reprisal strikes be ordered. Johnson was cautious at first, but in a follow-up meeting in the afternoon, he gave the order to execute the reprisal, code-named Pierce Arrow. The President then met with 16 Congressional leaders to inform them of the second unprovoked attack and that he had ordered reprisal attacks. He also told them he planned to ask for a Congressional resolution to support his actions.
      At 23:20, McNamara was informed by Admiral Sharp that the aircraft were on their way to the targets and at 23:26, President Johnson appeared on national television and announced that the reprisal raids were underway in response to unprovoked attacks on US warships. He assured the viewing audience that, “We still seek no wider war.” However, these incidents proved to be only the opening moves in an escalation that would eventually see more than 500'000 US troops in Vietnam.
— With fresh evidence now available, claims that the Tonkin Gulf incident was deliberately provoked gain new plausibility.

^ 1964 Slain civil-rights workers found
      The remains of three civil-rights workers whose disappearance on June 21 garnered national attention are found buried in an earthen dam in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, both white New Yorkers, had traveled to Mississippi in the summer of 1964 to aid in the registration of African-American voters. There, they were joined by James Chaney, an African-American civil-rights worker from Meridan, Mississippi.
      On 21 June, the three young men were jailed in Philadelphia on charges of speeding. After five hours they were released, and that evening they drove to investigate a fire at an African-American church in Sandstone, a nearby community. They were never seen alive again. The next day, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, a zealous advocate of civil rights, urged President Lyndon B. Johnson to get personally involved, and the latter coordinated his efforts with J. Edgar Hoover, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI).
      On 23 June, FBI agents found the workers' burned station wagon, but no trace of the three men. However, all signs pointed to foul play, and the incident provided the final impetus needed for the 1964 Civil Rights Act to pass Congress in early July. In the five weeks before their remains were found, the FBI was forced to overcome considerable opposition from local authorities, whom the investigators increasingly suspected of having played a leading role in the disappearance.
      On 04 August the bodies are found, buried in a dam a few kilometers from the burned-out church.
     The culprits were identified, but the state of Mississippi made no arrests. Finally, on 04 December, nineteen men, including Neshoba County Sheriff Lawrence Rainey and Chief Deputy Cecil Price , were indicted by the US Justice Department for conspiracy to violate the civil rights of Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney (charging the suspects with civil rights violations was the only way to give the federal government jurisdiction in the case).
      After nearly three years of legal wrangling, in which the US Supreme Court ultimately defended the indictments, the men went on trial in Jackson, Mississippi. The trial was presided over by an ardent segregationist, US District Judge William Cox, but under pressure from federal authorities and fearing impeachment, he took the case seriously. On 27 October 1967, an all-white jury found seven of the men guilty, including Price and KKK Imperial Wizard Bowers. Nine were acquitted, and the jury deadlocked on three others. The mixed verdict was hailed as a major civil rights victory, as no one in Mississippi had ever before been convicted for actions taken against a civil rights worker. In December, Judge Cox sentenced the men to prison terms ranging from three to 10 years. After sentencing, he said, “They killed one nigger, one Jew, and a White man. I gave them what I thought they deserved.” None of the convicted men served more than six years behind bars.

1962 Nelson Mandela captured by South African police.
1956 Indonesia says it will not pay debts to the Netherlands.
1956 first motorcycle rode over 200 mph (Wilhelm Herz-210 mph/338 kph)

^ 1953 Eisenhower warns of "ominous" situation in Asia
      Speaking before the Governor's Conference in Seattle, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warns that the situation in Asia is becoming "very ominous for the United States." In the speech, Eisenhower made specific reference to the need to defend French Indochina from the communists. By 1953, US officials were becoming increasingly concerned with events in Asia and elsewhere in the so-called "Third World." During the early years of the Cold War (1945 to 1950), the focus of America's anticommunist foreign policy was on Europe. With the outbreak of war in Korea in 1950, however, the American government began to shift its focus to other areas of the globe, particularly Asia. During the presidential campaign of 1952, Eisenhower was harshly critical of President Harry S. Truman's foreign policy, declaring that too little attention had been paid to Asia and that the Korean War was the result of ignoring communist intentions in that corner of the world. Shortly after taking office in early 1953, the victorious Eisenhower adopted a "get tough" policy toward the situation in Korea, even hinting that nuclear weapons might be employed to break the military stalemate between US and Communist forces. On 27 July 1953, an armistice was signed, bringing the Korean War to an end.
      Just over a week later, Eisenhower addressed the Governor's Conference and suggested that the Communist danger in Asia was far from over. He specifically noted the communist threat in French Indochina, where the French military was battling Vietnamese revolutionaries for control of Vietnam. Eisenhower defended his decision to approve a $400 million aid package to help the French in their effort as "the cheapest way that we can prevent the occurrence that would be of most terrible significance to the United States."
      According to Eisenhower, Communist victory in Indochina would have far-reaching consequences. "Now let us assume that we lose Indochina. If Indochina goes, several things happen right away. The Malay Peninsula, that last little bit of land hanging on down there, would be scarcely defensible. The tin and tungsten that we so greatly value from that area would cease coming." One by one, other Asian nations would be toppled. "So you see, somewhere along that line, this must be blocked and it must be blocked now." Eisenhower's speech marked the first appearance of what would come to be known as the "domino theory" — the idea that the loss of Indochina to communism would lead to other Asian nations following suit, like a row of dominos. The speech also indicated that the United States was fully committed to the defense of Indochina to prevent this possibility. After the defeat of the French in 1954, the US took France's place in fighting the Vietnamese communist revolutionaries, thus beginning its slow but steady immersion into the Vietnam War.

1952 Helicopters from the US Air Force Air Rescue Service land in Germany, completing the first transatlantic flight by helicopter in 51 hours and 55 minutes of flight time.
1948: 5 day southern filibuster in US Senate succeeds in maintaining poll tax.

1944 Frank family captured by Nazis      ^top^
      In Nazi-occupied Holland, thirteen-year-old Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family were forced to take refuge in a secret sealed-off area of an Amsterdam warehouse on 06 July 1942. The day before, Anne's older sister, Margot, had received a call-up notice to be deported to a Nazi "work camp."
      Born in Germany on 12 June 1929, Anne Frank fled to Amsterdam with her family in 1933 to escape Nazi persecution. In the summer of 1942, with the German occupation of Holland underway, twelve-year-old Anne began a diary relating her everyday experiences, her relationship with her family and friends, and observations about the increasingly dangerous world around her.
      Just a few months later, under threat of deportation to Nazi concentration camps, the Frank family was forced into hiding in a secret sealed-off area of an Amsterdam warehouse. Over the next two years, under the threat of murder by the Nazi officers patrolling just outside the warehouse, Anne kept a diary that is marked by poignancy, humor, and insight.
      On 04 August 1944, just two months after the successful Allied landing at Normandy, the Nazi Gestapo discovers the Frank’s "Secret Annex." Along with another Jewish family with whom they had shared the hiding place, and two of the Christians who had helped shelter them, the Franks were sent to the Nazi death camps. Anne and most of the others had ended up at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, although her diary was left behind, undiscovered by the Nazis.
      In early 1945, with the Soviet liberation of Poland underway, Anne was moved with her sister, Margot, to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. Suffering under the deplorable conditions of the camp, the two sisters caught typhus and died in early March, probably on 12 March in the case of Anne..
      After the war, Anne’s diary was discovered undisturbed in the Amsterdam hiding place, and in 1947, was translated into English and published. An instant bestseller which was eventually translated into over thirty languages, The Diary of Anne Frank has served as a literary testament to the six million Jews, including Anne herself, who were silenced in the Holocaust.
      Acting on tip from a Dutch informer, the Nazi Gestapo captures 15-year-old Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family in a sealed-off area of an Amsterdam warehouse. The Franks had taken shelter there in 1942 out of fear of deportation to a Nazi concentration camp. They occupied the small space with another Jewish family and a single Jewish man, and were aided by Christian friends, who brought them food and supplies. Anne spent much of her time in the "secret annex" working on her diary. The diary survived the war, overlooked by the Gestapo that discovered the hiding place, but Anne and nearly all of the others perished in the Nazi death camps.
      Annelies Marie Frank was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on 12 June 1929. She was the second daughter of Otto Frank and Edith Frank-Holländer, both of Jewish families that had lived in Germany for centuries. With the rise of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in 1933, Otto moved his family to Amsterdam to escape the escalating Nazi persecution of Jews. In Holland, he ran a successful spice and jam business. Anne attended a Montessori school with other middle-class Dutch children, but with the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940 she was forced to transfer to a Jewish school. In 1942, Otto began arranging a hiding place in an annex of his warehouse on the Prinsengracht Canal in Amsterdam.
      On her 13th birthday in 1942, Anne began a diary relating her everyday experiences, her relationship with her family and friends, and observations about the increasingly dangerous world around her. Less than a month later, Anne's older sister, Margot, received a call-up notice to report to a Nazi "work camp." Fearing deportation to a Nazi concentration camp, the Frank family took shelter in the secret annex the next day. One week later, they were joined by Otto Frank's business partner and his family. In November, a Jewish dentist — the eighth occupant of the hiding place — joined the group.
      For two years, Anne kept a diary about her life in hiding that is marked with poignancy, humor, and insight. The entrance to the secret annex was hidden by a hinged bookcase, and former employees of Otto and other Dutch friends delivered them food and supplies procured at high risk. Anne and the others lived in rooms with blacked-out windows, and never flushed the toilet during the day out of fear that their presence would be detected. In June 1944, Anne's spirits were raised by the Allied landing at Normandy, and she was hopeful that the long-awaited liberation of Holland would soon begin.
      On 01 August 1944, Anne made her last entry in her diary. Three days later, 25 months of seclusion ended with the arrival of the Nazi Gestapo. Anne and the others had been given away by an unknown informer, and they were arrested along with two of the Christians who had helped shelter them. They were sent to a concentration camp in Holland, and in September Anne and most of the others were shipped to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. In the fall of 1944, with the Soviet liberation of Poland underway, Anne was moved with her sister Margot to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. Suffering under the deplorable conditions of the camp, the two sisters caught typhus and died in early March 1945. The camp was liberated by the British less than two months later.
      Otto Frank was the only one of the 10 to survive the Nazi death camps. After the war, he returned to Amsterdam via Russia, and was reunited with Miep Gies, one of his former employees who had helped shelter him. She handed him Anne's diary, which she had found undisturbed after the Nazi raid. In 1947, Anne's diary was published by Otto in its original Dutch as Diary of a Young Girl. An instant best-seller and eventually translated into more than 50 languages, The Diary of Anne Frank has served as a literary testament to the nearly six million Jews, including Anne herself, who were murdered in the Holocaust. The Frank family's hideaway at Prinsengracht 263 in Amsterdam opened as a museum in 1960. A new English translation of Anne's diary in 1995 restored material that had been edited out of the original version, making the work nearly a third longer.

1944 British 8th army reaches suburbs of Florence Italy
1944 RAF pilot T. D. Dean becomes the first pilot to destroy a V-1 buzz bomb when he tips the pilotless craft's wing, sending it off course.
1943 British premier Churchill travels on the Queen Mary to Canada
1943 Russian units reach suburbs of Orel
1943 USAF bombs Germans in Troina
1942 first train with Jews departs Mechelen Belgium to Auschwitz
1942 British premier Winston Churchill arrives in Cairo
1942 Col-Gen Jeremenko arrives in Stalingrad/welcomed by Nikita Khrushchev
1942 German occupier orders all Dutch homing pigeons killed
1942 The British government charges that Mohandas Gandhi and his All-Indian Congress Party favor "appeasement" of Japan.
1941 Winston Churchill departs on Prince of Wales to US
1936 Ioannis Metaxas names himself dictator of Greece
1933 The New York Stock Exchange closes at 12:30 after gas bombs explode near the Exchange building.
1930 Child labor laws estralished in Belgium
1929 60'000 SA'ers / SS'ers march by Munich
1925 first Dutch Colijn govt forms
1925 US marines leave Nicaragua after 13-year occupation
1917 The New York Stock Exchange closes for the day because of the heat.
1917 Pravda calls for killing all capitalists, priests and officers
1916 Denmark cedes Danish West Indies, including the Virgin Islands, to the US for $25 million
1914 German fleet under admiral Souchon fire on Algerian coast
1914 Germany declares war on Belgium; Britain declares war on Germany
1914 King Albert I becomes supreme commander of Belgian army
1914 Lord Kitchener becomes British minister of War

^ 1914 US proclaims neutrality as World War I starts in Europe.
      As World War I erupts in Europe, President Woodrow Wilson proclaims the neutrality of the United States; a position a vast majority of Americans favored. However, Wilson's hope that America could be "impartial in thought as well as in action" was soon compromised by Germany's attempted quarantine of the British Isles. Britain was one of America's closest trading partners, and tension arose between the United States and Germany when several US ships traveling to Britain were damaged or sunk by German mines.
      In February 1915, Germany announced unrestricted warfare against all ships, neutral or otherwise, that entered the war zone around Britain. One month later, Germany announced that a German cruiser had sunk the William P. Frye, a private American vessel that was transporting grain to England when it disappeared. President Wilson was outraged, but the German government apologized and called the attack an unfortunate mistake.
      In early May 1915, several New York newspapers published a warning by the German embassy in Washington that Americans traveling on British or Allied ships in war zones did so at their own risk. The announcement was placed on the same page as an advertisement of the imminent sailing of the British-owned Lusitania ocean liner from New York to Liverpool. On 07 May, the Lusitania was torpedoed without warning by a German submarine just off the coast of Ireland. Of the 1959 passengers, 1198 were killed, including 128 Americans.
      It was revealed that the Lusitania was carrying about 173 tons of war munitions for Britain, which the Germans cited as further justification for the attack. The United States eventually sent three notes to Berlin protesting the action, and Germany apologized and pledged to end unrestricted submarine warfare. In November, however, a U-boat sunk an Italian liner without warning, killing 272 people, including 27 Americans. Public opinion in the United States began to turn irrevocably against Germany.
      In 1917, Germany, determined to win its war of attrition against the Allies, announced the resumption of unrestricted warfare. The United States broke off relations with Germany, and on 22 February Congress passed a $250 million arms appropriations bill intended to make the United States ready for war. Two days later, British authorities gave the US ambassador to Britain a copy of the "Zimmermann Note," a coded message from German foreign secretary Arthur Zimmermann to Count Johann von Bernstorff, the German ambassador to Mexico. In the telegram, intercepted and deciphered by British intelligence, Zimmermann stated that in the event of war with the United States, Mexico should be asked to enter the conflict as a German ally. In return, Germany promised to restore to Mexico the lost territories of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. On 01 March, the US State Department published the note, and American public opinion was galvanized against Germany.
      In late March, Germany sunk four more US merchant ships, and on 02 April President Wilson appeared before Congress and called for a declaration of war against Germany. On 04 April, the Senate voted 82 to 6 to declare war against Germany. Two days later, the House of Representatives endorsed the declaration by a vote of 373 to 50, and America formally entered World War I.
      On 26 June, the first 14'000 US infantry troops landed in France to begin training for combat. After four years of bloody stalemate along the western front, the entrance of America's well-supplied forces into the conflict was a major turning point in the war. When the war finally ended on 11 November 1918, more than two million American soldiers had served on the battlefields of Western Europe, and some 50'000 of these men had lost their lives.

1903 Cardinal Giuseppe Sarto of Venice is elected Pope: Pius X.

1898 Packard test-drives a Winton ^top^
On a visit to the Winton plant with his brother James, William D. Packard is taken for a test-drive in one of the company’s vehicles, accompanied by George L. Weiss, a Winton executive. Packard ended up purchasing the Winton, to his later regret. The Packards’ disappointing experience with the Winton prompted them to build their own car and establish in 1900 the Ohio Automobile Company, which would later become the Packard Motor Company.

1892 Sunday school teacher Lizzie Borden arrested in Fall River, Mass
1886 Colombia adopts constitution
1881 50ºC, Seville, Spain (European record)
1879 Pope Leo XIII issued the encyclical "Aeterni patris," which urged the study of "true" philosophy, especially that of Thomas Aquinas. He said that there was no conflict between science and truth. This led to a great revival of both Thomist studies and scholastic philosophy.
1879 A law is passed in Germany making Alsace Lorraine a territory of the empire.
1870 British Red Cross Society forms
1864 Land and naval action new Brazos Santiago, Texas
1864 Federal troops fail to capture Fort Gaines on Dauphin Island, one of the Confederate forts defending Mobile Bay.

^ 1864 Union generals squabble outside of Atlanta
A Union operation against Confederate defenses around Atlanta, Georgia, stalls when infighting erupts between Yankee generals. The problem arose when Union General William T. Sherman began stretching his force—consisting of the Army of the Ohio, the Army of the Tennessee, and the Army of the Cumberland—west of Ezra Church, the site of a major battle on 28 July, to Utoy Creek, west of Atlanta. The Confederate army inside of Atlanta, commanded by General John Bell Hood, had attacked Sherman's army three times in late July and could no longer mount an offensive operation. Sherman now moved General John Schofield, who commanded the Army of the Ohio, from the east side of Atlanta to the west in an attempt to cut the rail lines that supplied the city from the south and west. Schofield's force arrived at Utoy Creek on 03 August. The Army of the Cumberland's Fourteenth Corps, commanded by General John Palmer, had also been sent by Sherman to assist Schofield.
But on 04 August, the operation came to a standstill because Palmer refused to accept orders from anyone but General George Thomas, commander of the Army of the Cumberland. Although Schofield was the director of the operation, Palmer felt that Schofield was his junior. The two men had been promoted to major general on the same day in 1862, but Schofield's appointment had expired four months later. Schofield had been reappointed with his original date of promotion, 29 November 1862, but Palmer insisted that the reappointment placed Schofield behind him in seniority. Agreeing only to relay Schofield's order to his division commanders, Palmer refused even to accept Sherman's orders. On 05 August, Sherman declared that Schofield was senior to Palmer, upon which Palmer resigned and returned to his Illinois home. The delay provided the Confederates ample time to extend their defenses and protect their western rail links. An example of how generals' egos could be both large and fragile, the incident would be laughable if it were not for the event's consequences. When the Yankees attacked on 06 August, they were repulsed with the loss of 300 casualties, which might have been prevented if the squabble had not occurred.

1863 Siege of Fort Wagner, Charleston Harbor, South Carolina continues.
1862 US government collects its first income tax.
1855 John Bartlett publishes Familiar Quotations. ONLINE: Familiar Quotations (9th edition, 1901), Familiar Quotations (10th edition, 1919), Familiar Quotations (10th edition, 1919) [another site]
1830 Plans for the city of Chicago are laid out.
1821 First edition of Saturday Evening Post (publishes until 1969)

^ 1792 French Revolution closes all religious houses
     On the whole, the French Revolution was hostile to Christianity and to that which it had built over the centuries. The revolutionists pursued an erratic policy toward church and faith. At times they attempted to sway the priests to their side. Very early in the revolution, while the king was still alive, the Catholic church was declared the only church of the nation. But more usually the revolutionaries acted directly contrary to the interests of the church. As early as August of 1789 various church fees were abolished.
      When the Declaration of Rights of Man was issued, it merely tolerated religion, with the words "No one is to be molested for his opinions, even his religious opinions..." A decree in November 1789 declared all church property was at the disposal of the nation. A month later a vast amount of church property was ordered sold. Early the next year religious vows were forbidden. Yet the National Assembly agreed to pay the priests' stipends.
      When the Pope condemned the Declaration of Rights, half the priests swore to uphold the new constitution whereas the rest refused. They were considered anti-revolutionaries (called "non-jurors"). Non-jurors were forbidden to preach in their churches. They could only hold mass. Many non-jurors therefore renounced state pay and embraced poverty. Increasingly they came under restriction and attack.
      The churchmen were not without blame. Their bishops were largely drawn from the old ruling classes. As their persecution of the Huguenots showed, they were without tolerance. The cruelties of the inquisition in France are also notorious. Christ's love too often had not been shown. Philosophers, rejecting the church and embracing Deism, Agnosticism or Atheism, had a good deal of historical rationale for their attacks on the church. And many who occupied high positions within the Revolution thought as they did. It must have pleased them greatly to close all religious houses on this date, 04 August 1792. Cluny, an abbey hoary with tradition, was destroyed. Others became prisons.
      Later that month an oath of liberty and equality was devised to which all clergy must accede. On the 26th, passions high, a decree ordered all non-juring clergy out of the nation within two weeks. The sick and aged alone were excused. The penalty was exportation to Guiana. Before all was over, French priests were hunted, harassed and executed. A Deist god was proclaimed by Robespierre, and at last the Goddess Reason was made the official deity of a France whose daily, blood-crazed zigzags in policy were anything but reasonable. Some venerable Catholic buildings became the scenes of mocking rites.

1791 Austria and Turkey sign Peace of Sistova
1790 The Revenue Cutter service, the parent service of the US Navy and Coast Guard, is organized.
1789 Abolition des privilèges des nobles en France. — The Constituent Assembly in France abolishes the privileges of nobility.
1760 Battle at Leignitz: Prussia beats Austria and Russia

^ 1753 George Washington becomes a Master Freemason
      George Washington, 21, a Virginia planter, becomes a Master Mason, the highest basic rank in Freemasonry. Washington would soon hold his first military commission as a major in the Virginia colonial militia.
      Derived from the practices and rituals of the medieval stonemasons' guilds, Freemasonry first gained popularity in England in the early eighteenth century. The first US Mason "lodge" was established in Philadelphia in 1730, and future Patriot Benjamin Franklin was a founding member. There is no central Masonic authority, and Freemasons are governed locally by the order's many customs and rites. Members trace the origins of Masonry back to the erecting of King Solomon's Temple in biblical times, and are expected to believe in a Supreme Being, follow specific religious rites, and maintain a vow of secrecy concerning the order's ceremonies.
      The Masons of the eighteenth century adhered to liberal democratic principles that included religious toleration, loyalty to local government, and the importance of charity and political compromise. For George Washington, joining the Masons was a rite of passage and an expression of his civic responsibility. After becoming a master Mason, Washington had the option of passing through a series of additional rites that would take him to "higher degrees." However, because of the secrecy of the organization, the exact degree that he eventually reached is not known.
      Many other leaders of the US Revolution were also Freemasons, and Masonic rites were witnessed at such events as Washington's presidential inauguration and the laying of the cornerstone of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. — a city designed with Masonic symbols in mind. Masonic symbols, approved by Washington in the design of the Great Seal of the United States, can still be seen on the one-dollar bill. The all-seeing eye in a triangle above a thirteen-stepped, four-sided pyramid is unmistakably Masonic, and the scroll beneath, which proclaims the advent of a "New Secular Order" in Latin, is one of Freemasonry's long-standing goals. Freemasonry has continued to be important in US politics, and at least thirteen presidents and numerous members of Congress have been Masons.
     US Presidents known to be Masons include Washington, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, James Polk, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, James Garfield, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Warren Harding, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and Gerald Ford. Today there are an estimated two million Masons in the United States, but the exact membership figure is one of the society's many secrets.

1735 A jury acquits John Peter Zenger of the New York Weekly Journal charged with seditious libel by the royal governor of New York. The jury says, "The truth is not libelous."
1730 Crown prince Frederik of Prussia escapes to England
1717 A friendship treaty is signed between France and Russia.
1704 War of Spanish Succession, English and Dutch troops occupy Gibraltar
1695 French garrison of ? surrenders to Willem III
1693 Dom Perignon invents champagne
1666 Sea battle between Netherlands and England
1351 Sea battle at Zwartewaal: Willem V beats Hoeksen and English
1347 English troops conquer Ft Calais
1181 Supernova seen in Cassiopia.

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Deaths which occurred on an August 04:
2003 Dr. Frederick C. Robbins, US pediatrician who shared a Nobel Prize in 1954 for discovering a way to grow the polio virus in a test tube and paving the way for the vaccines that have eliminated the crippling disease from much of the world. He was born on 25 August 1916.
2003 Sgt. Rudolph B. Flaim, 25, by a single round from a machine gun (supposed not to be loaded) which he was helping fellow members of the 876th Engineer Battalion of the Pennsylvania National Guard put into a sport utility vehicle, in Fort Indiantown Gap, during a training exercise from which he was exempt.
2003 Chung Mong-hun, 55, suicide by jumping from his 12th floor office in Seoul, early in the day. Chung was the head of Hyundai Asan and had been at the forefront of building South Korean business ties with the Communist North. His company's projects mainly covered tour programs in Mt. Kumgang and the establishment of an industrial complex. Chung had been on trial on charges that his company helped former President Kim Dae Jung's government secretly pay $100 million to North Korea to get Pyongyang to agree to an inter-Korean summit between Kim and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il. Chung was a son of Chung Ju Yung, the late founder of the Hyundai Group, which was once South Korea's largest business conglomerate.
Amitai

2002 Cecelia Ochoa, 32; her daughters, Crystal Ochoa, 7, and Ana Ochoa, 9 months; her father, Bartolo Alivizo, 56; her sister Jacqueline Saleh, 20, shot in their Dallas home by Abel Revilla Ochoa, 29, Cecelia's husband and the father of Crystal and Ana, who also wounds Alma Alivizo, 27, another of his wife's sisters. Ochoa, a US citizen from Mexico, had been out of work for several months. He is arrested the next day. His wife was a Head Start teacher.
2002 An Israeli security guard (Yekutiel Amitai, 34, from Jerusalem) [< photo], an Arab coffee drinker (Nizal Awassat, 51, from the village of Jabel Mukaber) [photo >], and a Palestinian gunman, 19 (of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades), who, at about 11:00 just outside the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem's walled Old City, opens the door of a truck of Israel's main phone company, Bezeq, pulls out Amitai and shoots him with a pistol, shoots at the driver wounding him, whereupon border police fire at the attacker, killing him and Awassat, and wounding 12 other Palestinians sipping thick strong coffee at the outside tables of the Omal Café across the street. One policeman is wounded. Then the police arrest and handcuff a number of Palestinians, including some of the wounded.
2002 An armed Palestinian in a wet suit, who had swum to the vicinity of the Jewish enclave settlements Dugit and Alei Sinai in the Gaza Strip, shot by Israeli soldiers.

^ 2002 Six civilians (Mason Amin Hassan, 23, from Sajour; Marlene Menachem, 22, from Moshav Safsufa; Mordechai Friedman, 27, from Ramat Beit Shemesha; Sari Goldstein, 22, from Karmiel; and two Filipinas domestic workers in Moshav Safsufa: Adlina Kononen, 37, and Rebecca Roga, 40), three Israeli soldiers (Sergeant Major Roni Kamal Ghanem, 28, from the Druze village Marer; and two sergeants from Mitzpe Aviv: Omri Goldin, 20, and sergeant Yifat Gavrieli, 19); and a Hamas suicide bomber who, at about 08:55, explodes into a fireball Egged bus #361 with many soldiers among its passengers, at the Meron Junction near Tsfat, Israel. 52 persons are unjured, mostly by the fire (one of them, in a coma, is Aviv Ronen, girl friend of Goldin). The bus had left Haifa at 07:15 and was close to its destination, Safed.

[photo below: 8 victims and the destroyed bus]

Amin
Hassan

Marlene
Menachem

Sari Goldstein

Sgt. Maj. Roni Ghanem

^ 2001 Maria Herrera, 24, her unborn baby due in one month, her son, Andy, 4, and her sister, Dilcia Peña, 16.
      Police officer Joseph Gray, 41. would be ordered held on $250'000 bail on 10 August 2001 after pleading innocent to charges that he killed three family members while driving to work drunk. An earlier decision to free him with no bail had sparked criticism. Bail was imposed after prosecutors described his alleged day-long drinking binge before the accident last weekend and argued that Officer Joseph Gray posed a risk to the community.
      Gray, who was off duty at the time of the accident, was originally released in his own custody, angering Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and residents of the Brooklyn neighborhood where the accident happened. Prosecutors initially had sought $500'000 bail.
      Gray, 40, struck and killed Maria Herrera, 24, who was eight months pregnant, along with her 4-year-old son, Andy, and her 16-year-old sister, Dilcia Pena. Herrera's baby son was delivered by Caesarean section after the accident but was stillborn.
      The 15-year veteran would be indicted by a grand jury on 09 August 2001 on multiple counts of manslaughter, as well as vehicular manslaughter, drunken driving, speeding and running a red light. He is suspended from the force.
      Gray had been drinking with colleagues at a strip club and in a police station parking lot before hitting the three pedestrians with his van on the night of 04 August. Seventeen officers, including the 72nd Precinct's commander, have been disciplined. Twelve of them had been either drinking in the parking lot or visited the strip club, which was off-limits to officers. The officers were celebrating a sergeant's upcoming wedding.
     Gray would resign from the police department on 28 August 2001, before he was to be interviewed by police investigators, the first step in the department's disciplinary process.
      Gray had been drinking for up to 12 hours before the accident. He and other officers drank beer in an police parking lot, then moved on to a strip club that had been declared off-limits to officers. In the wake of the accident, three officers on probation were fired and 14 others were transferred, suspended or had their job descriptions changed.

1997 Jeanne Calment, 122, in France, world's oldest person (born on 21 February 1875) [< photo taken on her 118th birthday]
1992 Frantisek Tomasek, 93, archbishop of Prague/cardinal
1991 Nikiforos Vrettakos, 80, Greek poet (Hodyne)
1980, 272 people, killed by Hurricane Aline, in Texas and Caribbean
1977 Emil Bloch, 92, German philosopher (Principle Hope, Traces)
1945 Gerhard Gentzen, mathematician
1930 Siegfried Wagner, 61, German opera composer.
1925 Josef Kinzel, Austrian artist born on 04 May 1852.
1920 Rohn, mathematician
1914 German army shoots Belgian priests and burns down village of Battice
1907 Doyle, John E. P., author. JOHN DOYLE ONLINE: Plymouth Church and Its Pastor
1906 Tilly, mathematician

1892 Andrew and Abby Borden, axed to death.      ^top^
Andrew and Abby Borden, elderly residents of Fall River, Massachusetts, are found bludgeoned to death in their home. Lying in a pool of blood on the living room couch, Andrew's face had been nearly split in two. Abby was found upstairs with her head smashed to pieces. The Bordens, who were considerably wealthy, lived with their two unmarried daughters, Emma and Lizzie. Since Lizzie Borden, 32, Andrew Borden's daughter from a previous marriage, was the only other person besides the housekeeper who was present when the bodies were found, suspicion soon fell upon her.
      Because of the sensational nature of the murders, the trial attracted attention from around the nation. Despite the fact that fingerprint testing was already becoming commonplace in Europe at the time, the police were wary of its reliability, and refused to test for prints on the murder weapon-a hatchet-found in the Borden's basement. The prosecution tried to prove that Lizzie had burned a dress similar to the one she was wearing on the day of the murders and had purchased a small axe the day before.
      But Lizzie was a sweet-looking Christian woman, Sunday school teacher, and the jury took only 90 minutes to decide that she could never commit such a heinous crime. Although she was now an orphaned heiress rather than a convicted murderess, the media continued to portray Lizzie as the perpetrator. Her story is still remembered today mostly because of the infamous rhyme:
      Lizzie Borden took an axe, / And gave her mother forty whacks; / When she saw what she had done, / She gave her father forty-one.
     Ignoring the taunts, Lizzie lived, in Fall River, until 01 June 1927. She was buried in the family plot next to her parents.

1891 George Washington Williams, 41, historian (History of Negro)
1890 Emile Lévy, French academic painter born on 29 August 1826. — MORE ON LÉVY AT ART “4” AUGUST with links to images.
1875 Hans Christian Andersen, 70, author. ANDERSEN ONLINE: Fairy Tales, Fairy Tales and Stories
1874 Otto Hesse, mathematician

^ 1873 One US and one Amerindian soldiers, as Custer is attacked.
     Custer and 7th Cavalry attacked by Indians While protecting a railroad survey party in Montana, Custer and his 7th Cavalry clash for the first time with the Sioux Indians, who will defeat them three years later at Little Big Horn. During the previous two years, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry had not fought a single battle against the hostile Indians of the western Plains. Hungry for action, Custer was pleased when the 7th Cavalry was ordered to help protect a party of surveyors laying out the route for the proposed Northern Pacific Railroad. The new transcontinental railroad (the third in the United States) was to pass through territory controlled by hostile Sioux Indians. Custer was optimistic that the assignment would give him a chance to improve his reputation as an Indian fighter. Initially, the military escort saw little action. The hostile Indians seemed to be avoiding or ignoring the survey party. For Custer, the mission turned into something of a lark. He spent much of his time shooting buffalo, antelope, elk, and other animals. To find good hunting, he often led the 7th Cavalry far away from the survey party and the main body of the military escort.
      On this day, Custer is far ahead of the rest of the force, camping along the Tongue River in southeastern Montana. Suddenly, a large band of Sioux warriors appear on the horizon and attack. The Indians are led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, but the young braves seem to have attacked impetuously and with little planning. Custer, who had been taking an afternoon nap, reacts quickly and mounts an effective defense. After a brief skirmish, the Indians withdraw.
      Since only one soldier and one Indian were killed in the skirmish, Custer's short battle along the Tongue River seemed relatively insignificant at the time. However, Custer's easy escape in his first encounter with Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse may have given him a dangerously scornful view of their fighting abilities. It helped to confirm his belief that the Plains warriors tended to flee rather than fight. As a result, when Custer again encountered Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse at the Little Big Horn River three years later, his greatest fear was that they would withdraw before he could attack, and he rushed in without proper reconnaissance. That time, though, the Indians stood and fought, leaving Custer and more than 200 of his men dead.

1821 Richard Cosway, English miniaturist, draftsman, dealer, and collector, born on 05 November 1742. — MORE ON COSWAY AT ART “4” AUGUST with links to images.
1812 Georg Simon Klügel, German mathematician born on 19 August 1739.
1795 Francisco Bayeu y Subías, Spanish painter born on 09 May 1734, brother-in-law of Goya. — MORE ON BAYEU AT ART “4” AUGUST with links to images.
1666 Thousand of people as hurricane hits Guadeloupe, Martinique and St Christopher

^ 1639 Juan Ruiz de Alarcón y Mendoza, 58, Mexican-born Spanish dramatist of the colonial era.
     He was the principal dramatist of early 17th-century Spain after Lope de Vega and Tirso de Molina.
     Born into a prosperous family in Mexico, Ruiz de Alarcón went to Spain in 1600 to study at the University of Salamanca, from which he graduated in about 1602. After studying further at the University of Mexico, he settled permanently in Spain in about 1611 and held several government posts, being appointed to the Council for the Indies in 1626. He wrote plays for his own enjoyment rather than for financial reward.
      Less prolific than his contemporaries, Ruiz de Alarcón wrote about 25 plays, most of which were published in two separate volumes in 1628 and 1634, respectively. His plays are notable for their superb plot construction, psychological subtlety, and ethical teachings. Most of his comedies of life in Madrid center on a defect in a person's character: La verdad sospechosa is a study of inveterate lying; Las paredes oyen concerns slander; La prueba de las promesas is an attack on ingratitude; Mudarse por mejorarse inveighs against the fickleness of lovers. A skinny hunchback, Ruiz de Alarcón and his deformities were mercilessly ridiculed by rival dramatists, especially Lope de Vega.
     Not to be confused with Pedro Antonio de Alarcón y Ariza, (10 March 1833 — 10 July 1891), Valdemoro writer remembered for his novel El sombrero de tres picos

1633 George Abbott, 60, English theologian/archbishop of Canterbury
1598 William Cecil first baron Burghley, 77, English premier
1578 King Sebastian of Portugal (1557-78), 24, and 8000 of his soldiers, as well as some of the Moors of Morocco who defeat his crusade at the battle of Alcazar-el-Kebir
1477 Jacques d'Armagnac-Pardiac, duc de Nemours, born in 1433, after months in a torture cage, beheaded for repeated conspiracies against king Louis XI [03 Jul 1423 – 30 Aug 1483]
1306 Wenceslas III, 16, last king of Bohemia (1305-06) of the Premysliden dynasty (which had ruled for nearly 400 years), murdered by an unknown assassin
1265 Simon de Montfort, English earl of Leicester, born in 1208, and most of his followers, in the battle of Evesham, as prince Edward [17 Jun 1239 – 07 Jul 1307] puts down the baronial revolt against his father King Henry III [01 Oct 1207 – 16 Nov 1272].
1204 Boniface of Montferrat, margrave of Montferrat, murdered
1060 Henry I, born in 1008, King of France from 1026.

Births which occurred on a 04 August: ^top^
2002 Baby girl, born at 19:30 at home (2625 56th Lane N., St. Petersburg, Florida) to Stephanie Smith, 23, who immediately abandons the newborn at 19:00 in a garbage can across the street at 2624 56th Lane N., where she is discovered in a plastic bag, tied shut, covered with trash, healthy, with her umbilical cord still attached, shortly after noon the next day after neighbors heard her crying. The mother, after undergoing surgery on 05 August, is arrested late on 06 August on an attempted first-degree murder charge. [photo: leaving the hospital on the way to jail, 06 August >]
1934 Jonas Savimbi, Angolan leader of UNITA.
1930 Enrico Castellani, Italian worthless so-called “artist”. — more with links to two images.
1929 Yasser Arafat, leader (Palestine Liberation Organization)
1920 Helen Thomas, UPI journalist (starts White House press conferences)
1912 Aleksandr Aleksandrov, mathematician
1912 Raoul Wallenberg (humanitarian: saved 20'000 Hungarian Jews from Nazis [WWII]; 2nd person to receive honorary US citizenship [1981]). He and his driver were arrested by the invading Soviet troops on 17 January 1945. In 2000 Russia acknowledged for the first time that Wallenberg and his driver were imprisoned for political reasons until they died allegedly in 1947 (Wallenberg “on 17 July 1947, of a heart attack”)
1909 MacLane, mathematician
1904 Witold Gombrowicz, Polish author (Ferdydurke, Pornography)
1900 Arturo Umberto Illia pres of Argentina (1963-66)
1900 Elizabeth Britain's Queen Mother, King George VI's wife. At the time of her 101st birthday (the 4th anniversary of the death of Jeanne Calment, 122), she said she was aiming at beating the UK longevity record, then held by Amy Hulmes, 113.
1884 Sigmund O.P. Mowinckel, Norwegian Old Testament scholar. Associated from 1917-54 with Oslo University, his most influential work was done in the Psalms. In 1951 he published The Psalms in Israel's Worship (1963)
1881 Guy de Pourtalès, Swiss/French writer (Nietzsche in Italy)
1877 Dame Laura Johnson Knight, English painter and designer who died on 07 July 1970. — MORE ON KNIGHT AT ART “4” AUGUST with links to images.
1859 Knut Hamsun Norway, writer / Nazi (Hunger—Nobel 1920)
1853 John Henry Twachtman, US painter and printmaker who died on 18 (08?) August 1902. — MORE ON TWACHTMAN AT ART “4” AUGUST with links to images.
1839 Walter Horatio Pater, author. PATER ONLINE: Imaginary Portraits , Plato and Platonism , The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry
1834 Venn, mathematician
1832 Gaspar Núñez de Arce Spain, poet "Spanish Tennyson"
1825 Adolphe Jourdan, French Neoclassical painter who died in 1889. — links to images.
1805 William Rowan Hamilton, Irish mathematician and scientist, who died on 02 September 1865. In 1843 he discovered the quaternions, the first noncommutative algebra to be studied. He felt this would revolutionize mathematical physics and he spent the rest of his life working on quaternions. — HAMILTON ONLINE: Lectures on Quaternions

^ 1792 Percy Bysshe Shelley, English Romantic poet. His passionate search for personal love and social justice was gradually channeled from overt actions into poems that rank with the greatest in the English language. Shelley, the heir to his wealthy grandfather's estate, was expelled from Oxford in March 1811 when he refused to acknowledge authorship of The Necessity of Atheism. He eloped with his first wife, Harriet Westbrook [01 Aug 1795 – apr. 30 Nov 1816], the daughter of a tavern owner, in late August 1811. However, in the spring of 1814, Shelley fell in love with the Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin [30 Aug 1797 – 01 Feb 1851], daughter of a prominent reformer and early feminist writer. Shelley and Godwin fled to Europe, arriving in France on 28 July 1814, and would marry on 30 December 1816, after Shelley's wife drowned herself. Shelley's inheritance did not pay all the bills, and the couple spent much of their married life abroad, fleeing Shelley's creditors. While living in Geneva, the Shelleys and their dear friend Lord Byron challenged each other to write a compelling ghost story. Only Mary Shelley finished hers, later publishing the story as Frankenstein (1818). The Shelleys had five children but only one lived to adulthood. After Shelley drowned in a sailing accident on 08 July 1822, when Mary Shelley was only 24, she edited his Posthumous Poems (1824), Poetical Works (1839), and his prose works. She lived on a small stipend from her father-in-law, Lord Shelley, until her surviving son inherited his fortune and title in 1844. She died on 01 February 1851 at the age of 53. Although she was a respected writer for many years, only Frankenstein and her journals are still widely read.
PERCY SHELLEY ONLINE: Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats : while we "decay Like corpses in a charnel," the creative spirit of Adonais, despite his physical death, "has outsoared the shadow of our night." Alastor: or, The Spirit of Solitude (1816), blank-verse poem, warns idealists not to abandon "sweet human love" and social improvement for the vain pursuit of dreams. The Cenci (1819), tragedy of incestuous rape and patricide in 16th-century Rome The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1901) A Defence of Poetry (1840) essay: the poet creates humane values and imagines the forms that shape the social order. The Necessity of Atheism (1811) Prometheus Unbound + short poems such as Ode to Liberty, Ode to the West Wind, The Cloud, To a Sky-Lark.	MARY SHELLEY ONLINE: Frankenstein (1818): scientist creates artificial human monster. Frankenstein (another site) The Last Man (1826), her best novel: future destruction of the human race by a plague. The Mortal Immortal Valperga (1823)
*Prometheus Unbound: a lyrical drama* (1819) was the keystone of Shelley's poetic achievement, a masterpiece that combines supple blank verse with a variety of complex lyric measures. In Act I, Prometheus, tortured on Jupiter's orders for having given mankind the gift of moral freedom, recalls his earlier curse of Jupiter and forgives him ("I wish no living thing to suffer pain"). By eschewing revenge, Prometheus, who embodies the moral will, can be reunited with his beloved Asia, a spiritual ideal transcending humanity; her love prevents him from becoming another tyrant when Jupiter is overthrown by the mysterious power known as Demogorgon. Act II traces Asia's awakening and journey toward Prometheus, beginning with her descent into the depths of nature to confront and question Demogorgon. Act III depicts the overthrow of Jupiter and the union of Asia and Prometheus, who — leaving Jupiter's throne vacant — retreat to a cave from which they influence the world through ideals embodied in the creative arts. The end of the act describes the renovation of both human society and the natural world. Act IV opens with joyful lyrics by spirits who describe the benevolent transformation of the human consciousness that has occurred. Next, other spirits hymn the beatitude of humanity and nature in this new millennial age; and finally, Demogorgon returns to tell all creatures that, should the fragile state of grace be lost, they can restore their moral freedom through these "spells": To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than Death or Night; To defy Power which seems Omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope, till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates. . .

1790 US Coast Guard has its beginning as the Revenue Cutter Service.
1776 Pierre-Simon Ballanche, French philosopher/poet (Prolégomènes)
1755 Nicolas-Jacque Conte inventor (modern pencil)
1664 Louis Lully, composer.
1611 (baptized) Jan van den Hoecke, Antwerp painter and draftsman who died in 1651. — MORE ON VAN DEN HOECKE AT ART “4” AUGUST with links to images.

Holidays Norway : Peer Gynt Festival Days / Trinidad and Tobago : Discovery Day (1498) / US : Coast Guard Day (1790) / Virgin Islands : Nicole Robin Day

Religious Observances Old RC : St Dominic, confessor / RC : St Jean-Marie Vianney, Curé d'Ars, patron of priests

WHAT HOPES FOR KURDISTAN?
The Kurds in Syria are between Iraq and a hard place. [If you don't know which is that other place that is hard on Kurds, look in this space in tomorrow's H42DAY]

Thoughts for the day:“The best way to keep your friends is to give them a way not to give them away.”
“New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.” — John Locke, English philosopher [29 Aug 1632 – 28 Oct 1704].
“Common sense never makes any discovery, uncommon sense does, sometimes even uncommon nonsense.”
“People need your love the most when they appear to deserve it the least.” -- John Harrigan

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