09 Sep History: This Date

<< Sep 08| HISTORY “4” “2”DAY |Sep 10 >>
Events, deaths, births, of 09 SEP
[For Sep 09 Julian go to Gregorian date: 1583~1699: Sep 19 — 1700s: Sep 20 — 1800s: Sep 21 — 1900~2099: Sep 22]

ALTERNATE SITES ANY DAY OF THE YEAR IN HISTORY ART “4” SEP 09 wikipedia

On a 09 September:
2002 The largest generator of electricity (nuclear in its case) in the UK, British Energy is near bankrupcy, having earlier in 2002 reported an annual loss of $780 million. On the New York Stock Exchange, its American Depositary Receipts (BGY) drop from their previous close of $4.87 to an intraday low of $1.67 and close at $2.15. They started trading at $24.25 on 13 December 1999, reached an all-time high of $25.88 on 10 January 2000, sank to $7.25 on 22 May 2000, managed to reach as high as $20.02 on 10 September 2001, and declined from there. [3~year price chart <] In the following days, BGY would fall further, all the way to an intraday low of $0.32 on 18 September 2002.
2002 Austria's Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel dissolves parliament and calls for new elections. They will take place on 24 November 2002. The governing coalition of Schüssel's People's Party with the right-wing extremist Freedom Party has collapsed after the latter's leader, Jörg Haider, led a revolt against his party's popular chairman and Austria's foreign minister that led to her resignation.
2001 Fraudulent elections in Belarus. Dictatorial President Alexander Lukashenko, 47, is re-elected over trade union leader Vladimir Goncharik whose supporters have predicted widespread vote fraud.
2000 The Antarctic ozone hole has grown to 30 million square kilometers and, this day and the next, extends over Punta Arenas, Chile, exposing its 120'000 inhabitants to harmful ultraviolet radiation.
1996 Keeping her word not to cooperate with Whitewater prosecutors, Susan McDougal is led away to jail for contempt of court, denying that she is trying to protect Clinton with her silence.
1993 PLO leaders and Israel agreed to recognize each other, clearing the way for a peace accord.
1990 Bush and Gorbachev meet in Helsinki and urge Iraq to leave Kuwait.

1987 US discount rate raised. ^top^
The Federal Reserve and its then-new Chairman, Alan Greenspan, raise the discount rates. The Dow-Jones Industrial Average promptly drops 62 points, though it does make a slight recovery by the end of the day. Bond prices too fall and then rally, ending the day with a loss of 1-3/4 points. While the half-point hike in the discount rate — the amount that the Fed charges on loans to banks and "savings institutions" — was officially deemed a reaction to "potential inflationary pressures," some analysts wondered if Greenspan wasn't more concerned with boosting the slumping bond markets. Others interpreted the raise as the Fed's attempt to show its resolve in maintaining the anti-inflation record of the previous Chairman, Paul Volcker. Still, the move did not succeed in quelling concerns about the dollar; analysts and brokers predicted that the Fed would make another move to bump up discount rates.

1987 Gary Hart admits to cheating on his wife on the "Nightline" TV program.
1986 NYC jury indicts Gennadly Zakharov (Soviet UN employee) of spying
1983 Radio Shack announces its color computer 2 (the Coco2)

1982 Henry Ford II retires      ^top^
     When Henry Ford II, grandson and namesake of Henry Ford, succeeded his father as president of the Ford Motor Company in 1945, the firm, still recovering from the unexpected death of its president Edsel Ford, was losing money at the rate of several million dollars a month. The automotive giant was crumbling. Fortunately for the company, Henry Ford II turned out to be a genius of industrial management. He quickly set about reorganizing and modernizing the company, firing the powerful personnel chief Harry Bennett, whose strong-arm tactics and anti-union stance had made Ford notorious for its bad labor relations. He also brought in new talent, including a group of former US Air Force intelligence officers, among them Robert McNamara, who quickly became known as the “Whiz Kids.”
      During his tenure as president, Henry Ford II nursed the Ford Motor Company back to health, greatly expanding its international operations and introducing two classic models, the Mustang and the Thunderbird. Still, even an industrial management genius could grow tired of a president’s demanding schedule.

1981 Vernon E. Jordan resigns as president of National Urban League
1977 1st TRS-80 computer sold.

1971 Attica prison riot begins.      ^top^
      At the beginning of a four-day ordeal, 1000 prisoners riot and seize control of the maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility near Buffalo, New York. Nine prison guards were held hostage, and perished along with thirty-one of their captors on 13 September, when 1500 state police and other law-enforcement officers stormed the complex in a hail of indiscriminate gunfire.
     Prisoners riot and seize control of the maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility near Buffalo, New York. Later that day, state police retook most of the prison, but 1281 convicts occupied an exercise field called D Yard, where they held 39 prison guards and employees hostage for four days. After negotiations stalled, state police and prison officers launched a disastrous raid on 13 September, in which 10 hostages and 29 inmates were killed in an indiscriminate hail of gunfire. Eighty-nine others were seriously injured.
     By the summer of 1971, the state prison in Attica, New York, was ready to explode. Inmates were frustrated with chronic overcrowding, censorship of letters, and living conditions that limited them to one shower per week and one roll of toilet paper each month. Some Attica prisoners, adopting the radical spirit of the times, began to perceive themselves as political prisoners rather than convicted criminals.
     On the morning of 09 September, the eruption came when inmates on the way to breakfast overpowered their guards and stormed down a prison gallery in a spontaneous riot. They broke through a faulty gate and into a central area known as Times Square, which gave them access to all the cellblocks. Many of the prison's 2200 inmates then joined in the rioting, and prisoners rampaged through the facility beating guards, acquiring makeshift weapons, and burning down the prison chapel. One guard, William Quinn, was severely beaten and thrown out a second-story window. Two days later, he died in a hospital from his injuries.
     Using tear gas and submachine guns, state police regained control of three of the four cellblocks held by the rioters without loss of life. By 10:30, the inmates were only in control of D Yard, a large, open exercise field surrounded by 10-meters-high walls and overlooked by gun towers. Thirty-nine hostages, mostly guards and a few other prison employees, were blindfolded and held in a tight circle. Inmates armed with clubs and knives guarded the hostages closely.
     Riot leaders put together a list of demands, including improved living conditions, more religious freedom, an end to mail censorship, and expanded phone privileges. They also called for specific individuals, such as US Representative Herman Badillo and New York Times columnist Tom Wicker, to serve as negotiators and civilian observers. Meanwhile, hundreds of state troopers arrived at Attica, and New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller called in the National Guard.
     In tense negotiations, New York Correction Commissioner Russell Oswald agreed to honor the inmates' demands for improved living conditions. However, talks bogged down when the prisoners called for amnesty for everyone in D Yard, along with safe passage to a "non-imperialist country" for anyone who desired it. Observers pleaded with Governor Rockefeller to come to Attica as a show of good faith, but he refused and instead ordered the prison to be retaken by force.
     On the rainy Monday morning of 13 September, an ultimatum was read to the inmates, calling on them to surrender. They responded by putting knives against the hostages' throats. At 09:46, helicopters flew over the yard, dropping tear gas as state police and correction officers stormed in with guns blazing. The police fired 3'000 rounds into the tear gas haze, killing 29 inmates and 10 of the hostages and wounding 89. Most were shot in the initial indiscriminate barrage of gunfire, but other prisoners were shot or killed after they surrendered. An emergency medical technician recalled seeing a wounded prisoner, lying on the ground, shot several times in the head by a state trooper. Another prisoner was shot seven times and then ordered to crawl along the ground. When he didn't move fast enough, an officer kicked him. Many others were savagely beaten.
     In the aftermath of the bloody raid, authorities said the inmates had killed the slain hostages by slitting their throats. One hostage was said to have been castrated. However, autopsies showed that these charges were false and that all 10 hostages had been shot to death by police. The attempted cover-up increased public condemnation of the raid and prompted a Congressional investigation.
     The Attica riot was the worst prison riot in US history. A total of 43 persons were killed, including the 39 killed in the raid, guard William Quinn, and three inmates killed by other prisoners early in the riot. In the week after its conclusion, police engaged in brutal reprisals against the prisoners, forcing them to run a gauntlet of nightsticks and crawl naked across broken glass, among other tortures. The many injured inmates received substandard medical treatment, if any.
     In 1974, lawyers representing the 1281 inmates filed a $2.8 billion class-action lawsuit against prison and state officials. It took 18 years before the suit came to trial, and five more years to reach the damages phase, delays that were the fault of a lower-court judge opposed to the case. In January 2000, New York State and the former and current inmates settled for $8 million, which was divided unevenly among about 500 inmates, depending on the severity of their suffering during the raid and the weeks following.
     Families of the slain correction officers lost their right to sue by accepting the modest death-benefit checks sent to them by the state. The hostages who survived likewise lost their right to sue by cashing their paychecks. Both groups attest that no state officials apprised them of their legal rights, and they were denied compensation that New York should have paid to them.

1970 US Marines launch Operation Dubois Square, a 10-day search for North Vietnamese troops near DaNang.

1966 US car safety law
In response to the national uproar over automobile safety prompted by Ralph Nader’s book Unsafe at Any Speed, the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act was signed into law on this day. Nader’s book targeted the American automobile industry’s neglect of safety issues, using GM’s dangerous Corvair model as a focus for his criticism. Congress responded to the nation’s concern by passing a new bill, which established federal safety standards with strict penalties for violations. At the signing of the bill, President Johnson assured Nader and a crowd of several hundred that safety was “no luxury item, no optional extra.”

1965 Tibet is made an autonomous region of China.

1965 France leaves NATO
      In protest of US domination in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, French President Charles de Gaulle announces that France is withdrawing from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In the next year, France wauld remove all of its troops from the integrated military command of NATO; although 60'000 French soldiers remain stationed in Germany.
      On April 4, 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty was signed by twelve Western democracies — the United States, Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Portugal, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Iceland, and Canada — as a safeguard against the threat of Soviet aggression. The US-dominated alliance greatly increased American influence in Western Europe, and also led to the establishment of the Warsaw Pact, a Soviet-led Eastern European military alliance, in 1955. In 1952, Greece and Turkey joined NATO, followed by West Germany in 1955.
      In 1965, France withdraws from the alliance, citing increasing US domination in violation of the 1949 treaty.
     Much later, with the end of the Cold War, NATO members would approved the use of its military forces for peacekeeping missions in countries outside the alliance, and in 1994, the organization agreed to enforce U.N. resolutions enacted to end the bloody conflict in the former Yugoslavia. In 1994 and 1995, in the first actions in its forty-five-year history, NATO planes enforced the no-fly zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina, and struck at Bosnian Serb military positions and airfields on a number of occasions. Then, on December 20, 1995, NATO began the mass deployment of 60'000 soldiers to enforce the Dayton peace accords, signed in Paris by the belligerent parties of the former Yugoslavia six days before.

1957 Nashville's new Hattie Cotton Elementary School dynamited
1957 US President Eisenhower signed into law the first civil rights bill to pass Congress since Reconstruction.
1955 Second day of arrest of Catholic Christians in Shanghai
1948 People's Democratic Republic of Korea proclaimed in North Korea.
1948 Government of Hungary announces arrest of top Lutherans on charges of illegal manipulation of funds
1945 Japanese in S Korea, Taiwan, China, Indochina surrender to Allies
1944 Allied forces liberate Luxembourg
1944 Bulgaria liberated from Nazi control (often referred to as the invasion of Bulgaria by Russia) (National Day)

1943 Allies land at Salerno and Taranto
Operation Avalanche, the Allied land invasion of Salerno, and Operation Slapstick, the British airborne invasion of Taranto, both in southern Italy, are launched. The US 5th Army under Lt. Gen. Mark Clark landed along the Salerno coastline while British Commando units and their American counterparts, the US Rangers, landed on the peninsula itself. Salerno had been chosen as the first site for invasion of the peninsula because it was the northern-most point to which the Allies could fly planes from its bases in Sicily, which they had already invaded and occupied. Rockets launched from landing craft provided cover, and the beach landings went relatively smoothly. It wasn't until two days later that the Germans, with some Italian troops coerced into service, mounted a heavy counterattack on the beachhead. But Clark called in the 82nd Airborne for support, and by the 15th, Salerno was in Allied hands. Meanwhile, the British 1st Airborne Division, having successfully landed at Taranto, captured the airfield at Foggia.

^ 1942 Japanese plane fails to set fire to Oregon forests
      A Japanese float plane, launched from a submarine, drops its two incendiary bombs on a US forest at Mount Emily, near Brookings, Oregon. Due to unseasonable fog and humidity, the forests fail to ignite, but worried Pacific Coast citizens step up their blackout drills in preparation for future Japanese raids. The same Japanese plane would make a second attempt, even less successful, after midnight on 29 September1942.
      The Oregon attack was one of only a handful of Japanese raids against the continental United States. Only one resulted in casualties: on May 5, 1945, a woman and five neighborhood children were killed in Lakeview, Oregon, when a Japanese balloon they were attempting to drag out of the woods exploded. The US government eventually gave several thousand dollars in compensation to the victims' families.
      In comparison, three years earlier, on April 18, 1942, the first squadron of US bombers dropped bombs on the Japanese cities of Tokyo, Kobe, and Nagoyo, surprising Japanese military command who believed their home islands to be out of reach of Allied air attacks. When the war ended on August 14, 1945, some 160'000 tons of conventional explosives and two atomic bombs had been dropped on Japan by the United States. Approximately half-a-million Japanese civilians were killed during these bombing attacks.

1939 Le Canada déclare la guerre à l'Allemagne — 9 divisions françaises pénètrent en Sarre.

^ 1919 The Boston police department goes on strike
      The infamous Boston Police Strike of 1919 begins, causing an uproar around the nation and confirming the growing influence of unions on American life. Using the situation to their advantage, criminals took the opportunity to loot the city.
      As society changed in the 20th century, police were expected to act more professionally. Some of their previous practices were no longer countenanced. Explanations such as that given by the Dallas chief of police in defense of their unorthodox tactics — "Illegality is necessary to preserve legality" — was no longer acceptable to the public. Police forces were brought within the civil service framework and even received training for the first time. Soon, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) began to create local police unions.
      When the Boston Police went on strike on 09 September the country's leading newspapers sounded the alarm bells. Some falsely reported that gangs were running wild and attacking women throughout the city. Others saw it as evidence of the spread of communism. In actuality, the strike prompted a lot of property damage but did not seriously endanger the safety of the community-partly due to the quick response of the government.
      Calvin Coolidge, governor of Massachusetts at the time, called out the militia to assist Harvard students and faculty who were acting as a volunteer force. (He later used the incident to boost himself to the presidency.) While the Boston Police Strike proved disastrous for unions in the short term, police were eventually allowed to form unions. However, it is illegal for police to go on strike, and even informal work actions such as the "Blue Flu," whereby large numbers of police officers call in sick at the same time, are seriously discouraged.

1915 A German zeppelin bombs London for the first time, causing little damage.
1912 J Verdrines becomes 1st to fly over 100 mph (107 mph/172 kph)
1911 1st airmail service (British Post Office)

^ 1909 Alice B. Toklas, 32, moves in with Gertrude Stein, 35, in Paris. They would be lifelong companions, until Stein's death on 27 July 1946. Toklas died in 1967.
     Stein, who shared a house with her brother Leo for many years, met Toklas in 1907. Toklas began staying with Stein and Leo in Paris in 1909, then moved in permanently in 1910. Stein’s brother Leo moved out in 1914. Toklas' love and support of Stein was so important that when Stein wrote her autobiography in 1933, she titled it The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, adopting Toklas' persona as the narrator of her own memoirs. The two women turned their Parisian home at 22 rue de Fleurus into an important artistic and literary salon, where they entertained Picasso, Matisse, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and many others. Stein’s own avant-garde writing attempted to create a Cubist literature that used words like the strokes of a paintbrush.
      Stein was born in Pennsylvania in 1879 and traveled around Europe with her parents and four siblings. The family settled in Oakland when she was seven, and she spent much of her childhood raised by a governess. Very attached to her older brother, Leo, she followed him to Harvard and studied psychology with William James. She then followed Leo to Johns Hopkins, where she studied medicine for a year, then gave up.
      The siblings moved to Paris in 1903. Her best-known works include the novels Three Lives (1909) and The Making of Americans (1925), her autobiography, and the experimental work Tender Buttons (1914). Stein and Toklas survived the German occupation of Paris and later befriended many US servicemen in the city. After the success of her opera, Four Saints in Three Acts (1934), Stein launched a successful US lecture tour. Stein is considered one of the most influential thinkers (in her own opinion THE most influential, with Einstein) and writers of the century. Her last words, according to Toklas, were, “What is the answer? ... In that case, what is the question?”
     In her work, Gertrude Stein attempted to parallel the theories of Cubism, specifically in her concentration on the illumination of the present moment (for which she often relied on the present perfect tense) and her use of slightly varied repetitions and extreme simplification and fragmentation. The best explanation of her theory of writing is found in the essay Composition and Explanation, which is based on lectures that she gave at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and was issued as a book in 1926. Among her work that was most thoroughly influenced by Cubism is Tender Buttons (1914), which carries fragmentation and abstraction to an extreme.
      Her first published book, Three Lives (1909), the stories of three working-class women, has been called a minor masterpiece. The Making of Americans, a long composition written from 1906 to 1911 but not published until 1925, was too convoluted and obscure for general readers, for whom she remained essentially the author of such lines as "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose." Her only book to reach a wide public was The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933), actually Stein's own autobiography. The performance in the United States of her Four Saints in Three Acts (1934), which the composer Virgil Thomson had made into an opera, led to a triumphal American lecture tour in 1934-35. Thomson also wrote the music for her second opera, The Mother of Us All (published 1947), based on the life of feminist Susan B. Anthony. One of Stein's early short stories, Q.E.D., was first published in Things as They Are (1950). She wrote in Brewsie and Willie (1946) about the many young American servicemen who visited her after the liberation of Paris.

1908 Orville Wright makes 1st 1-hr airplane flight, Fort Myer, Virginia.
1899 French Jew, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, is again falsely found guilty (“with extenuating circumstances” this time) of passing secrets to the Germans, by a court-martial which repeats the travesty of justice of the first court-martial (22 December 1894) which sent Dreyfus to notorious Devil's Island. On 19 September 1899, French President Émile Loubet [31 Dec 1838 – 20 December 1929] would pardon Dreyfus. In July 1906 the civilian Cour d'Appel would exonerate Dreyfus, on 22 July 1906 he would be reinstated in the army and awarded the Légion d'Honneur. Major Hubert Joseph Henry, forger of the military cover-up, had alread confessed and, at the end of August 1898, committed suicide, which provoked Major Marie-Charles-Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy [1847 – 21 May 1923], the real spy (who had forged evidence against Dreyfus) whom a court-martial had falsely exonerated, to flee the country. — MORE and a Harper's cartoon.
1892 Almalthea, 5th moon of Jupiter, discovered by EE Barnard at Lick
1886 The Berne International Copyright Convention takes place.
1867 Luxembourg gains independence
1863 The Union Army of the Cumberland passes through Chattanooga as they chase after the retreating Confederates.
1862 Skirmish at Barnesville, Maryland
1862 Lee splits his army & sends Jackson to capture Harpers Ferry

^ 1850 California becomes the 31st US state in record time
      Though it had only been a part of the United States for less than two years, California becomes the 31st state in the union (without ever even having been a territory) on this day in 1850. Mexico had reluctantly ceded California and much of its northern territory to the United States in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,. When the Mexican diplomats signed the treaty, they pictured California as a region of sleepy mission towns with a tiny population of about 7300 — not a devastating loss to the Mexican empire. Their regret might have been much sharper had they known that gold had been discovered at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California, nine days before they signed the peace treaty.
     On 24 January 1848, on the property of Johann A. Sutter near Coloma, gold was discovered by James W. Marshall, who was helping construct a sawmill for Sutter on the American River. After the find was assayed in Sacramento, modest prospecting in the area showed favorable results, and in the summer of 1848, eastern newspapers published the first reports of the newly discovered gold fields. As there had been false claims of gold in California before, the majority of the American public treated Sutter's claims with skepticism. However, in December of the same year, President James K. Polk corroborated "the accounts of the abundance of gold" found in the recently acquired territory, and the California Gold Rush began.
      By the spring of 1849, tens of thousands of prospectors had set out for "El Dorado," often abandoning their farms, their jobs, and their families in an attempt to reap the rewards of California's newly found riches. In 1850, California's rapidly increasing population encouraged Congress to grant statehood to the territory. Although many of California's original "Forty-Niners" returned to their home states empty-handed, tens of thousands made a living in California, and by 1852, the population at the time of Marshall's discovery — 14'000 non-Indians — had grown to 250'000 Californians. Sutter and Marshall themselves failed to retain their gold claims as hordes of gold-seekers overran Sutter's land, and both men died in poverty. James Marshall was buried near the spot of his historic find.
      Most newly acquired regions of the US went through long periods as territories before they had the 60'000 inhabitants needed to achieve statehood, and prior to the Gold Rush, emigration to California had been so slow that it would have been decades before the population reached that number. But with gold fever reaching epidemic proportions around the world, more than 60'000 people from around the globe came to California in 1849 alone. Faced with such rapid growth, as well as a thorny congressional debate over the question of slavery in the new territories, Congress allowed California to jump straight to full statehood without ever passing through the formal territorial stage. After a rancorous debate between the slave-state and free-soil advocates, Congress finally accepted California as a free-labor state under the Compromise of 1850, beginning the state's long reign as the most powerful economic and political force in the far West.

1850 Territories of New Mexico and Utah created
1839 John Herschel takes the 1st glass plate photograph
1834 Parliament passes the Municipal Corporations Act, reforming city and town governments in England.
1833 The first tracts of the Oxford Movement (which sought to purify the English Church) were released. The series was forced to close in 1841, however, when Tract 90 was published, because it interpreted Anglicanism's "Thirty-Nine Articles" in too strong of a Roman Catholic direction.
1830 Charles Durant, 1st US aeronaut, flies a balloon from Castle Garden, NYC to Perth Amboy, NJ
1817 Alexander Lucius Twilight, probably 1st black to graduate from US college, receives BA degree at Middlebury College
1793 La Convention crée une armée révolutionnaire, dont elle confie le commandement à Charles Ronsin. Il lui revient de combattre la contre-révolution, de faire respecter les lois et de protéger le transfert des vivres vers la capitale.
1791 French Royalists take control of Arles and barricade themselves inside the town.
1786 George Washington calls for the abolition of slavery (but does not free his own slaves).
1776 The 2nd Continental Congress renames the United Colonies, "United States".

^ 1686 Ligue d'Augsbourg contre la France.
Louis XIV a fait occuper violement le Palatinat et l'électorat de Cologne pour que soient respectés les droits de sa belle-soeur, la princesse Palatine, dresse contre le royaume de France toutes les colères. Les Etats du Saint Empire romain germanique, l'Espagne, la Savoie, les Provinces-Unies, la Suède, qui ont toutes les raisons politiques, religieuses, économiques ou commerciales de s'opposer à la France, forment la ligue d'Augsbourg.

1561 The Colloquy of Poissy convenes near Paris to try and resolve differences between Catholics and Protestants. . Comprised of both French Catholic prelates, led by Ippolito d’Este, papal legate, and reformed Protestant theologians led by Theodore Beza, the council led to a 1562 edict offering a greater measure of freedom to French Protestants. Catherine de Medicis attended.
1585 Pope Sixtus V deprives Henry of Navarre of his rights to the French crown.
1543 Mary, Queen of Scots is is crowned Queen of England.
1411 Pope Gregory XII issues a bull of indulgences which John Hus of Bohemia denounces.
0337 Constantine's three sons, already Caesars, each take the title of Augustus. Constantine II and Constans share the west while Constantius II takes control of the east.

TO THE TOP

Deaths which occurred on a 09 September:
2003 Palestinians Thaer Sayuri, boy, 12; Ahmed Bader; and Izz a-Din Misk; in the Abu Kteila neighborhood of Hebron, West Bank. An Israeli tank fired shells at eight-story apartment building [photo >] where Bader and Misk had been besieged by Israeli troops for 12 hours. Shrapnel from the shells killed Sayuri in the building next door. Two Palestinians are injured. Later, Israelis of the Dudevan commando entered the building and shot Hamas leader in Hebron Bader and senior Hamas member Misk. Then the Israelis demolish the building, which belongs to the Kawasmeh family.
2003 A Palestinian man “suspected of planting a road-side bomb” north of the Karni Terminal, which is used to transfer goods between Israel and the Gaza Strip. The man is shot from an Israeli tank.
2003 Dr. David Appelbaum, 50; his daughter Naava Appelbaum, 20; David Shimon Abistris, 51; Yehiel (Emil) Tuvol, 52; Mrs. Gila Moshe, 40; waiter Shafik Kerem, 27, a Christian; and security guard Alon Mizrahi, 22, who tried in vain to prevent the entry of suicide bomber Ramez Abu Islim, 24; at 23:20 (20:20 UT), in Café Hillel on Emek Refaim Street in the German Colony, in Jerusalem. Some 40 persons are wounded. The Palestinian bomber, from Rantisi, West Bank, belonged to the Iz a Din a-Qassam Brigades, the armed force of Hamas. The next day Israeli troops arrest some 10 of his relatives and destroy his family's home. — Dr. Appelbaum, who moved to Israel from Cleveland, Ohio, some 20 years earlier, was head of the emergency room at Shaare Zedek Medical Center. Naava's wedding was to take place the next evening; instead it will be her funeral.
2003 Chief Warrant Officer Haim Alfasi, 39, of Haifa; Captain Yael Kfir, 21, woman of Ashkelon; Sergeant Jonathan Peleg, born 29 Sep 1982, of Moshav Yanuv; Corporal Felix Nikolaichkov, a Christian Ukrainian immigrant born on 02 October 1983, of Bat Yam; Corporal Mazi Grego, 19, woman of Holon; Sergeant Major Yaakov Ben Shabbat, 39, of Pardes Hannah; and suicide bomber Ihad Abdel Kader, 20; at 17:50 (14:50 UT), at hitchhiking spot crowded with soldiers outside Israeli military base Tzrifin, near Rishon Letzion. 32 persons are wounded, most of them soldiers (of which two die of their injuries the next morning: Cpl. Prosper Twito, 20; and Peleg's girlfriend Sgt. Efrat Schwartzman, 19). The Palestinian bomber, from Rantisi, West Bank, belonged to the Iz a Din a-Qassam Brigades, the armed force of Hamas. The next day Israeli troops arrest some 10 of his relatives and destroy his family's home.
2003 Edward Teller, Jewish Hungarian US nuclear physicist born on 15 January 1908. He participated in the development of the nuclear fission bomb, and was a virulent proponent of the nuclear fusion bomb. In 1954 he testified in Red Scare proceedings against J. Robert Oppenheimer, with whom he had clashed.
2002 Geeta Chatterjee, Dular Pal Chaudhary, Sufal Mondal, Arun Das, T K Dutta, Salma, G C Majumdar, C T Sonthalia, Rakesh Sahu; Ashraf Khan, Roshika Begum, and Subah Ibne Khan (all 3 Bangladeshis); V Worli, Arvind Chowdhary, Md Sirajuddin, Md Naushad, Md Naeem, Md Shansher, D G Rao, Baliram, Tripati Pathak, H L Majumdar, D N Mansi, Gulal Chandra Das, V K Dutta, Dinesh Kumar, Nidhi Kanojia, Akhlash Prasad, Sweta Goel, Bhagwati Devi, Rekha Lodha, Ashok Lodha, K K Gupta, Mahavir Prasad, Kailashu Devi, Sajjan Kumar, Mali Das Malik, Naresh Das Chowdhary, Pradeep Brahma, Ashustosh Jha, Mansoor, Ravindra Nath Mukherjee, Jothish Kr Mandal, C D V Subramaniyam, Subhash Chandra Aggarwal, Ranjeet Kr Agarwal, Rishit Kr Kanojia, Ashok Kr Mukherjee, Vijay Kr Pradeep, Istabinder (Sinni), K D Malik, Vijay Kumar Mishra; the preceding 52 and some 50 others of the 540 passengers and 80+ employees aboard luxury air-conditioned Howrah-Delhi Rajdhani Express train from Calcutta, destination New Delhi, which, at 22:35 derails on a 100-meter-high bridge on the Dhawa River not far from Rafiganj station near Gaya, Bihar state, India. Nome 150 others are injured. Maoist rebels have been active in the area. The dead include the wife and the 2- and 3-year-olds of survivor Mohammed Irshad. Five coaches, two of them badly mangled, piled on top of each other after one side of the bridge, which dates back to 1936, collapsed into the river. Shivani Gupta, 12, from Delhi, is trapped with her right hand stuck under a berth, in the most damaged coach, AS-2, which is the last one that rescuers manage to open with gas cutters, twenty hours later; she is one of the few survivors of the 35 in that coach.
2002 Some 85 of the 200 Nepalese soldiers and policemen at district headquarters in Sandhikharak, uncounted civilians and attacking Maoist rebels.
2001 (Sunday, first day of the Israeli workweek) Five Israelis and three Palestinians, bringing the al-Aqsa intifada body count to 611 Palestinians and 170 Israelis.
— Muhammad Shaker Habeishi, 55, Israeli Arab, Hamas suicide bomber detonates his explosives as passengers are getting off a crowded train in a Nahariya, killing himself, wounding more than 80 persons, and killing three Israelis: Jerusalem architect Dr. Yigal Goldstein, 47; his relative by marriage Morel Drapler a Mevasseret Zion photographer; and Danny Yifrah, 19, a soldier from Pisgat Ze'ev near Jerusalem [photo >].
— On the Jordan Valley Highway, an Islamic Jihad gunman in a jeep sprayed automatic rifle fire on a van carrying Israeli teachers from Beit She'an, West Bank, to their schools in the region. One teacher, Sima Franko, 24, and the driver of the van, Yaakov Hatzav, 42, were killed in the attack.
— A car bomb exploded, prematurely it seems, while a car was waiting at a stoplight at a busy intersection in central Israel, near Netanya. The Palestinian driver of the car was killed and five vehicles, including a bus, were set on fire, — Israeli troops fired on three members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine who were attempting to plant a bomb near a border fence in the Gaza Strip. One Palestinian was killed, a second Palestinian was wounded, and the third escaped.
2001 Kathleen Seely, 56, Kenneth Allen Sheldon, 50, at about 14:20 in the North Idaho Behavioral Health facility for juveniles, in Coeur d'Alene. For months Sheldon had stalked Seely, a psychatric nurse. He shoots her and then himself.

2001 Ahmed Shah Masood, 48, young Asim, and two suicide bombers posing as journalists.
      Masood, a Tajik, was the military leader of the Northern Alliance (anti~Taliban) in Afghanistan. A personality cult would develop around him, fostered by the Tajik, who predominate in the Northern Alliance, but are a minority in the country and in the post-Taliban government, where the Pashtun majority of the country predominates.

[< photo: in Kabul, on 08 September 2002, in preparation for the next day's first anniversary commemoration of Masood's death, Afghan soldiers raise a giant portrait of him.]

     Masood Khalili, one of Masood's closest friends, was sitting next to the commander when two Arabs posing as journalists triggered a bomb inside a camera in the northern Afghan town of Khwaja Bahawuddin near the Tajik border. Miraculously Khalili survived, although he lost sight in one eye and hundreds of pieces of shrapnel that make walking difficult could not be removed from his legs. Masood, 48, died shortly afterwards from his wounds, as did Masood's young translator, Asim.
      Nearly one year later, Khalili, having become Afghanistan's ambassador to India, would blame the assassination on the al Qaeda network sheltered in Afghanistan during the rule of the Taliban. He says that al Qaeda leader bin Laden, also accused of masterminding the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, wanted to weaken resistance to the Taliban within Afghanistan before striking the United States: “Osama bin Laden rightly thought that if he does something in New York, the Americans will rush to Afghanistan... and will help someone against him on the ground."
      Masood, the "Lion of the Panjsher," had led a small, poorly equipped force against the Taliban and prevented the hard-line Islamic regime from taking the whole of Afghanistan. He was also a key mujahideen fighter who helped repel the Soviet Army after 10 years of occupation in 1989, using guerrilla tactics and the commanding height of mountains lining the Panjsher Valley. But despite the death of its leader, the Northern Alliance held together and provided Washington with ground troops to follow up the intense air bombardment of Taliban strongholds by US fighters and bombers.
      Khalili would recall: "That night [08 to 09 September 2001] we talked about politics, Osama, the Pakistani militants, about terrorists being in Afghanistan, about their attacks very soon on our frontlines. "At about 03:30 ... he told me: 'Let us now read."' Following an Afghan tradition, Khalili opened his poetry book at a random page and read a few verses from an ancient Persian poet: "You two should value tonight, you two should remember this night and value it because many days come, many nights go, many weeks disappear, many months and years pass, and you two will not be able to see each other on a night like this again." Masood's dark, almond-shaped eyes widened at the words, Khalili said, and he asked him to repeat them before the two finally left each other to sleep.
      At 10:00 on 09 September 2001, the friends met again for an interview which had been promised to two Arabs carrying Belgian passports, who had been waiting for nine days. Both the interviewer and television cameraman appeared calm during the preamble to the interview as they outlined the questions they wanted to ask. Masood's mood darkened as they listed as many as eight questions about bin Laden. The cameraman then moved the table, which was in front of Khalili and Masood, but did so with unusual clumsiness. "I said, 'Have you brought a wrestler or a photographer?' Masood laughed and we also laughed." But the interview proceeded with the question: "What is going on in Afghanistan?". Immediately after it, the bomb, which was in the camera, detonated. Khalili's last glance of Masood's face was a few minutes later in a helicopter. "I saw his face. His eyes were closed and some blood was on his face and in his hair." Shortly after, Khalili lost consciousness.

1990 Samuel K Doe Liberian president, killed by rebels after being captured.

^ 1976 Mao Zedong (Tse-Tung), 82, Chinese revolutionary and statesman.
      After leading a successful Communist revolution, Mao proclaimed the People's Republic of China in 1949, with himself as both chairman of the Communist Party and president of the Republic. His successes were tarnished by two disastrous reform campaigns, first the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960), and then, much worse, the bloody, contradictory, and self-destructive Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).
     Mao Zedong, who led the Chinese people through a long revolution and then ruled the nation's communist government from its establishment in 1949, dies. Along with V.I. Lenin and Joseph Stalin, Mao was one of the most significant communist figures of the Cold War. Mao was born in China in 1893. During the 1910s, he joined the nationalist movement against the decadent and ineffective royal government of China and the foreigners who used it to exploit China. By the 1920s, however, Mao began to lose faith in the leaders of the nationalist movement. He came to believe that only a revolutionary change of Chinese society could bring freedom from Western domination and subjugation.
      In 1921, he became one of the founding members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Mao's early years as a communist were not easy. He was constantly in danger of arrest and execution by Chinese government forces. More importantly, he often split with his communist colleagues, many of whom favored slavishly copying the Bolshevik Revolution that brought communism to power in Russia. Mao insisted that revolution in China would come from the country peasants, not the urban workers.
      In 1935, Mao took control of the CCP. On the verge of defeat by Chinese Nationalist forces, the CCP came under scathing attack by Mao for its lack of revolutionary zeal and poor military strategy. Desperate, a majority of the CCP members relinquished control to Mao. Throughout the 1930s and into World War II, Mao's forces continued their attacks on the Chinese government. They were ultimately victorious in 1949, and the communist People's Republic of China was declared in that year. Mao made clear his dedication to constant battle with the West when, in 1950, he sent hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops into North Korea to battle US troops during the Korean War. For nearly three years the war raged, ending with a cease-fire in 1953.
      In the late 1950s, Mao began to withdraw from an active role in the Chinese government, but he returned with a vengeance in the mid-1960s when he led the "Cultural Revolution," which was designed to reinvigorate what he saw as the nation's flagging revolutionary spirit. The "revolution" amounted to frenzied calls from Mao and his supporters for greater dedication to the true ideals of communism and increasingly vociferous verbal assaults against both the Soviet Union (because of its "revisionist" tendencies) and the "imperialism aggression" of the United States. Thousands of Chinese were killed or imprisoned by Mao's young supporters, called the Red Guards.
      Internationally, forces were pushing Mao to seek a closer relationship with the United States. Since the early 1960s, relations between China and the Soviet Union deteriorated steadily, and there were frequent border clashes between their respective armed forces. By the late 1960s, Mao came to see the Soviet Union as a more dangerous threat to China than the United States. He therefore sought closer relations with the Americans, hoping to use them as allies in his battle with the Soviets. Mao's efforts resulted in a dramatic change in relations between the US and China, climaxing in President Richard Nixon's historic visit to China in 1972.
      The meeting with Nixon was one of Mao's last great public successes. Nearing 80 years of age, Mao began to make less frequent appearances. He also began to suffer the debilitating effects of Parkinson's disease. Mao died in 1976, still holding the position of Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party.

1966 Léon de Smet, Belgian painter born on 20 July 1881. — MORE ON DE SMET AT ART “4” SEPTEMBER with links to images.
1963 Over 3000 persons, by landslide into Vaiont Dam, Italy.

^ 1945 a moth, the first computer bug
Computer pioneer Grace Murray Hopper found the first documented live bug in a computer on this day in 1945. Although the term "bug" had been used to describe technical glitches since the late 1800s, the bug that plagued Hopper this day was an actual moth that had managed to get into the circuitry of the Mark II computer at Harvard University. The bug, which Hopper and her assistants removed with tweezers, was preserved at the Naval Museum in Dahlgren, Virginia.

1924 Patrick Mahon, executed for the murder (followed by dismebrment) of his mistress Emily Kaye, in Sussex, England.

1909 Edward Harriman
After a life full of cash and controversy, financier and railroad kingpin Edward Harriman passed away in 1909. Harriman started his career as a broker's clerk in New York, eventually saving up enough money to purchase a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. Following this Alger-esque rise to wealth and power, Harriman turned his attention to the nation's rail lines and, along with a group of bankers, acquired the troubled Union Pacific Railroad Company. By the time of his death, Harriman's aggressive ways not only produced 60'000 miles of rail track, but also spawned a financial crisis and raised the ire of more than a few people in the US, including President Teddy Roosevelt.

1901 Henri de Toulouse~Lautrec, French painter born on 24 November 1864 — MORE ON TOULOUSE~LAUTREC AT ART “4” SEPTEMBER with links to images.
1897 David H. Lewis, author. DAVID LEWIS ONLINE: Roller Skating for Gold
1897 Richard Holt Hutton, author. HUTTON ONLINE: Sir Walter Scott
1885 Jean Claude Bouquet, French mathematician born on 07 September 1819. He worked on differential geometry, on series expansions of functions, and on elliptic functions.
1883 Victor Alexandre Puiseux, French mathematician born on 16 April 1820. He worked on elliptic functions and studied computational methods in astronomy.
1874 Alonzo Delano, author. DELANO ONLINE: Alonzo Delano's California Correspondence, Life on the Plains and Among the Diggings
1870 Nathan Lord, author. LORD ONLINE: A Northern Presbyter's Second Letter to Ministers of the Gospel of All Denominations on Slavery
1817 Paul Cuffe, 58, entrepreneur/ civil rights activist

^ 1796: 20 Jacobins dont le Directoire réprime la mutinerie.
Les directeurs Carnot et Letourneur n'attendaient que cela, depuis quinze jours, ils savent qu'un complot se trame. Les derniers Jacobins, autour de leur chef Gracchus Babeuf, veulent tenter de renverser le Directoire. Le chef du camp de Grenelle, le marquis de Foissac-Latour, a été prévenu. Les babouvistes ont décidé de s'introduire dans son camp pour rallier les soldats à leur cause. Dans la nuit du 8 au 9, les choses se sont passées comme prévu pour les Directeurs. Les Jacobins sont bel et bien venus. La mutinerie s'est levée en chantant La Marseillaise. Un régiment de dragons s'est alors abattu violemment sur les manifestants et les a dispersés. On compte vingt morts officiellement. En ce 9 septembre, le Directoire dispose enfin du prétexte dont il avait besoin pour en finir avec l'opposition des Jacobins. Les arrestations commencent.

1767 Thomas Bardwell of Bungay, English painter and writer born in 1704. — MORE ON BARDWELL AT ART “4” SEPTEMBER with links to images.

^ 1739 Some 20 whites and 40 blacks in The Stono Rebellion
      Early on the morning of Sunday, 09 September 1739, twenty Black South Carolinians met near the Stono River, approximately 30 km southwest of Charleston. At Stono's bridge, they took guns and powder from Hutcheson's store and killed the two storekeepers they found there. With cries of 'Liberty' and beating of drums, the rebels, led by Jemmy, raised a standard and headed south toward Spanish St. Augustine. Along the road they gathered black recruits, burned houses, and killed white opponents, sparing one innkeeper who was "kind to his slaves."
      Thus began the Stono Rebellion, the largest slave uprising in the British mainland colonies prior to the US War of Independence. Late that afternoon, planters riding on horseback caught up with the band of sixty to one hundred slaves. More than twenty white Carolinians and nearly twice as many black Carolinians were killed before the rebellion was suppressed. As a consequence of the uprising, white lawmakers imposed a moratorium on slave imports and enacted a harsher slave code.
      Slaves frequently resorted to insurrection, first in the British colonies and later in the southern United States. At least 250 insurrections have been documented; between 1780 and 1864, ninety-one African-Americans were convicted of insurrection in Virginia alone. The first revolt in what became the United States took place in 1526 at a Spanish settlement near the mouth of the Pee Dee River in South Carolina.
      Between 1800 and 1831, Blacks instigated several ambitious rebellions in the US South. Among these were Gabriel's Revolt, which began north of Richmond, Virginia, on 30 August 1800, and Vesey's Rebellion, an abortive 1822 conspiracy to incite as many 9000 plantation and urban slaves in the vicinity of Charleston, South Carolina (free Black Denmark Vesey, 55, was hanged on 02 July 1822).
      Nat Turner's Rebellion, the most effectual slave revolt, erupted in Southampton County, Virginia on the night of 21 August 1831. Turner and his followers, as they moved toward an armory at Jerusalem, Virginia, killed nearly sixty Whites. Halted a few kilometers from their goal, the approximately seventy-five insurgents were soon killed or captured by the militia. Turner's 11 November execution failed to assuage fears of continued insurrection. Across the South, renewed legislative efforts to forbid education and greatly restrict movement and assembly further constrained the lives of enslaved people.

1688 Claude Mellan, French draftsman, engraver, and painter, born on 23 May 1598. — MORE ON MELLAN AT ART “4” SEPTEMBER with links to images.
1626 Abraham Govaerts, Flemish artist born on 30 August 1589. — links to images.
1513 King James IV of Scotland, defeated and killed by English at Flodden Fields.
1087 William I The Conqueror, King of England, and Duke of Normandy, in Rouen while conducting a war which began when the French king made fun of him for being fat. — Débarqué en Angleterre avec ses normands, il avait vaincu le roi Harold à la bataille d'Hastings le 10 octobre 1066. Devenu roi, il impose sa loi à l'Angleterre. Mais c'est en France qu'il meurt, cinq semaines après une chute de cheval lors de sa prise de Mantes..
0701 St Sergius I, Pope

Births which occurred on a 09 September:
1998 World's smallest hard-disk drive. IBM announces that it has created the world's smallest hard-disk drive, the microdrive. About the size of a matchbook, the microdrive weighs less than 30 grams and can hold about 340 megabytes of data. The drive is designed as storage for digital cameras and hand-held computers.
1934 Sonia Sanchez, poet.
1926 National Broadcasting Company (NBC) created by the Radio Corporation of America
1919 Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder gambler/sportscaster (lay you 5 to 1)

^ 1900 James Hilton, English author of 14 novels.(not to be confused with Hilton Hotels' Conrad Hilton [25 December 1887 – 03 January 1978)
     His first novel was Catherine Herself (1920). Another one was Knight Without Armor (1933).
      In the late 1930s Hilton moved to Hollywood, where he wrote or co-wrote screen scenarios (among them, that for Jan Struther's Mrs. Miniver).
     Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1934) is a story of a gentle, aging schoolmaster and his long, close association with the school in which he has taught.
     Lost Horizon (1933) is the story of an Englishman who finds paradise in the Tibetan valley of Shangri-La. The word Shangri-La, for a remote, utopian land, derives from this novel.
     Random Harvest (1941) describes the love story of a man trying to recapture three years of his life spent in amnesia.
     The last of Hilton's 14 novels was Time and Time Again (1953). Hilton died on 20 December 1954.

1890 Colonel Harland Sanders, originator of Kentucky Fried Chicken fast-food restaurants.
1887 Alfred Landon (R-Ks) pres candidate (1932, 1936), Republican governor of Kansas who carried only two states in his overwhelming defeat for the presidency by Franklin Roosevelt in 1936.
1878 Adelaide Crapsey, poet. CRAPSEY ONLINE: Verse
1871 Ralph Hodgson, poet. HODGSON ONLINE: Poems
1868 Mary Hunter Austin, author. AUSTIN ONLINE: The Land of Little Rain, The Land of Little Rain
1867 Walter Elmer Schofield, US Impressionist painter who died on 01 March 1944. — MORE ON SCHOFIELD AT ART “4” SEPTEMBER with links to images.
1860 Frank Morley, English US mathematician who died on 17 October 1937. He wrote mainly on geometry but also on algebra. He liked to make up puzzlers such as: “Show that on a standard chess-board the number of squares visible is 204, and the number of rectangles (including squares) visible is 1296; and that, on a similar board with n squares in each side, the number of squares is the sum of the first n square numbers, and the number of rectangles (including squares) is the sum of the first n cube numbers”.
1857 Pompeo Mariani, Italian painter who died on 25 January 1927. — more with links to images.
1850 Jane Ellen Harrison, author. HARRISON ONLINE: Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion
1850 Harishchandra India, poet/dramatist/father of modern Hindi.
1844 James Maurice Thompson, poet. THOMPSON ONLINE: Poems

1828 (28 August Julian) Lev Nikolayevich graf Tolstoy, Russian author, a master of realistic fiction and one of the world's greatest novelists. He died on 20 November 1910. — Issu d'une riche et noble famille russe, il se préoccupe du sort des paysans pauvres. Après avoir participé à la Guerre de Crimée (1854 - 1856), il abandonne famille et richesse pour vivre avec les paysans. Son roman le plus célèbre est Guerre de Paix. [brief Tolstoy bio in Russian] CLICK FOR TOLSTOY PORTRAIT GALLERY AT ART “4” SEPTEMBER > War and Peace (1865-69) contains three kinds of material — a historical account of the Napoleonic wars, the biographies of fictional characters, and a set of essays about the philosophy of history. The work's historical portions narrate the campaign of 1805 leading to Napoleon's victory at the Battle of Austerlitz, a period of peace, and Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. Tolstoy portrays Napoleon as an ineffective, egomaniacal buffoon, Tsar Alexander I as a phrasemaker obsessed with how historians will describe him, and the Russian general Mikhail Kutuzov as a patient old man who understands the limitations of human will and planning. Particularly noteworthy are the novel's battle scenes, which show combat as sheer chaos. Among the book's fictional characters, the reader's attention is first focused on Prince Andrey Bolkonsky, a proud man who has come to despise everything fake, shallow, or merely conventional. He joins the army to achieve glory. Badly wounded at Austerlitz, he comes to see glory and Napoleon as no less petty than the salons of St. Petersburg. Prince Andrey repeatedly discovers the emptiness of the activities to which he has devoted himself. Tolstoy's description of his death in 1812 is usually regarded as one of the most effective scenes in Russian literature. The novel's other hero, the bumbling and sincere Pierre Bezukhov, oscillates between belief in some philosophical system promising to resolve all questions and a relativism so total as to leave him in apathetic despair. He at last discovers the Tolstoyan truth that wisdom is to be found not in systems but in the ordinary processes of daily life, especially in his marriage to the novel's most memorable heroine, Natasha. When the book stops Pierre seems to be forgetting this lesson in his enthusiasm for a new utopian plan. The book's truly wise characters are not its intellectuals but a simple, decent soldier, Natasha's brother Nikolay, and a generous pious woman, Andrey's sister Marya. Their marriage symbolizes the novel's central prosaic values. The essays in War and Peace, which begin in the second half of the book, satirize all attempts to formulate general laws of history and reject the ill-considered assumptions supporting all historical narratives. In Tolstoy's view, history, like battle, is essentially the product of contingency, has no direction, and fits no pattern. The causes of historical events are infinitely varied and forever unknowable, and so historical writing, which claims to explain the past, necessarily falsifies it. According to Tolstoy's essays, history is made by the sum total of an infinite number of small decisions taken by ordinary people, whose actions are too unremarkable to be documented. Therefore Tolstoy's novel gives its readers countless examples of small incidents that each exert a tiny influence — which is one reason that War and Peace is so long. In Anna Karenina (1875-77) Tolstoy applied these ideas to family life. The novel's first sentence, which indicates its concern with the domestic, is perhaps Tolstoy's most famous: "All happy families resemble each other; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Anna Karenina interweaves the stories of three families, the Oblonskys, the Karenins, and the Levins. The novel begins at the Oblonskys, where the long-suffering wife Dolly has discovered the infidelity of her genial and sybaritic husband Stiva. In her kindness, care for her family, and concern for everyday life, Dolly stands as the novel's moral compass. By contrast, Stiva, though never wishing ill, wastes resources, neglects his family, and regards pleasure as the purpose of life. The figure of Stiva is perhaps designed to suggest that evil, no less than good, ultimately derives from the small moral choices human beings make moment by moment. Stiva's sister Anna begins the novel as the faithful wife of the stiff, unromantic, but otherwise decent government minister Aleksey Karenin and the mother of a young boy, Seryozha. But Anna, who imagines herself the heroine of a romantic novel, allows herself to fall in love with an officer, Aleksey Vronsky. Schooling herself to see only the worst in her husband, she eventually leaves him and her son to live with Vronsky. Throughout the novel, Tolstoy indicates that the romantic idea of love, which most people identify with love itself, is entirely incompatible with the superior kind of love, the intimate love of good families. As the novel progresses, Anna, who suffers pangs of conscience for abandoning her husband and child, develops a habit of lying to herself until she reaches a state of near madness and total separation from reality. She at last commits suicide by throwing herself under a train. The realization that she may have been thinking about life incorrectly comes to her only when she is lying on the track, and it is too late to save herself. The third story concerns Dolly's sister Kitty, who first imagines she loves Vronsky but then recognizes that real love is the intimate feeling she has for her family's old friend, Konstantin Levin. Their story focuses on courtship, marriage, and the ordinary incidents of family life, which, in spite of many difficulties, shape real happiness and a meaningful existence. Throughout the novel, Levin is tormented by philosophical questions about the meaning of life in the face of death. Although these questions are never answered, they vanish when Levin begins to live correctly by devoting himself to his family and to daily work. Like his creator Tolstoy, Levin regards the systems of intellectuals as spurious and as incapable of embracing life's complexity. Upon completing Anna Karenina, Tolstoy fell into a profound state of existential despair, which he describes in his Ispoved (1884; A Confession). The Kreutzer Sonata (1891) is a dark novella about a man who murders his wife. Smert Ivana Ilicha (written 1886; The Death of Ivan Ilych) is a novella describing a man's gradual realization that he is dying and that his life has been wasted on trivialities. Otets Sergy (written 1898; Father Sergius), which may be taken as Tolstoy's self-critique, tells the story of a proud man who wants to become a saint but discovers that sainthood cannot be consciously sought. Regarded as a great holy man, Sergius comes to realize that his reputation is groundless; warned by a dream, he escapes incognito to seek out a simple and decent woman whom he had known as a child. At last he learns that not he but she is the saint, that sainthood cannot be achieved by imitating a model, and that true saints are ordinary people unaware of their own prosaic goodness. This story therefore seems to criticize the ideas Tolstoy espoused after his conversion from the perspective of his earlier great novels. In 1899 Tolstoy published his third long novel, Voskreseniye (Resurrection). The novel's hero, the idle aristocrat Dmitry Nekhlyudov, finds himself on a jury where he recognizes the defendant, the prostitute Katyusha Maslova, as a woman whom he once had seduced, thus precipitating her life of crime. After she is condemned to imprisonment in Siberia, he decides to follow her and, if she will agree, to marry her. In the novel's most remarkable exchange, she reproaches him for his hypocrisy: once you got your pleasure from me, and now you want to get your salvation from me, she tells him. She refuses to marry him, but, as the novel ends, Nekhlyudov achieves spiritual awakening when he at last understands Tolstoyan truths, especially the futility of judging others. The novel's most celebrated sections satirize the church and the justice system, but the work is generally regarded as markedly inferior to War and Peace and Anna Karenina. The novella Hadji Murad (1904) is a brilliant narrative about the Caucasus. TOLSTOY ONLINE: — Works — Works — Works — Voyna i Mir — Anna Karenina — Khadzhi-Murat — Detstvo — Otrochestvo — Voskresenie — Isloved' RASSKAZY Dva Gusara — Nabeg, Rasskaz volontera — Rubka lesa. Rasskaz iunkera. — Iz kavkazkikh vospominaniy, razzhalovannyj — Zapiski markera — Skazki — Metel' — Azbuka — Kreytserova Sonata — PUBLITSISTIKA Put' zhizni — Sueverie gosudarstva — Sbornik publitsistiki — O Shakspire i o drame — Ob anafeme Tolstogo — Zakon nasilija i zakon ljubii (in English translations):
Anna Karenina Anna Karenina Childhood , Boyhood , Youth A Confession The Death of Ivan Ilych The Devil Family Happiness	Father Sergius The Forged Coupon and Other Stories The Forged Coupon and Other Stories The Gospel in Brief Hadji Murad The Kreutzer Sonata The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories	Master and Man Resurrection The Slavery of Our Times Twenty-three Tales War and Peace War and Peace War and Peace

BOOKS ABOUT TOLSTOY ONLINE:
Leo Tolstoy by G. K. Chesterton, G. H. Perris, and Edward Garnett
Leo Tolstoy: His Life and Work by Pavel Biriukov
Reminiscences of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy by Maxim Gorky
Reminiscences of Tolstoy — Reminiscences of Tolstoy — by Ilya Tolstoy
Tolstoy and His Message by Ernest Howard Crosby

1822 Norman Allison Calkins, author. CALKINS ONLINE: Primary Object Lessons for a Graduated Course of Development
1813 Henry Reeve, translator of Tocqueville's. Democracy in America volume 1, volume 2
1758 Alexander Nasmyth, British artist who died on 10 April 1840.

^ 1754 William Bligh, English naval officer who died on 07 December 1817. He commanded HMS Bounty at the time of the celebrated mutiny on that ship.
      Bligh first went to sea as a cabin boy at the age of seven and joined the Royal Navy in 1770. He was sailing master of the Resolution on Captain James Cook's third and final voyage in 1776–1780. He was appointed to the command of the 215-ton Bounty in 1787, when the vessel was being used in a scheme for taking breadfruit trees from Tahiti for replanting in the West Indies. The ship duly sailed to Tahiti, picked up breadfruit trees, and had sailed as far as the Friendly Islands (Tonga) on the voyage to Jamaica when it was suddenly seized by Fletcher Christian [25 Sep 1764 – 1792], the master's mate, on 28 April 1789. Bligh and 18 members of the crew who were loyal to him were turned adrift in the Bounty's longboat. The causes of the mutiny have been much discussed. Bligh's opponents charged him with tyranny, and it is true that Bligh had insulted many of his officers. Bligh himself imputed the mutiny to purely opportunistic motives, claiming that the crew “had assured themselves of a more happy life among the Otaheitans than they could possibly have in England, which, joined to some female connections, has most likely been the leading cause of the whole business.”
      In a remarkable feat of seamanship, Bligh eventually reached Timor in the East Indies on 14 June 1789, after a voyage of about 5800 km in the open longboat. Christian and eight others took the Bounty to Pitcairn Island, where the small colony that they founded was undiscovered until 1808 and where their descendants still reside. Of the mutineers who later went to Tahiti, three were taken to England and hanged.
      The mutiny made little difference to Bligh's career. He visited Tahiti again and successfully transported more breadfruit trees to the West Indies (1792). As captain of the Director, he was put ashore when his crew joined the mutiny of The Nore (1797). He commanded this ship with distinction at the Battle of Camperdown that year, however, as he did the Glatton at Copenhagen (1801). He was sent to New South Wales as governor in 1805. Again, complaints of his “oppressive behavior” led in 1808 to a mutiny, this time under the acting head of the New South Wales Corps in Sydney, Major George Johnston, who put Bligh under arrest. The mutineers were subsequently found guilty of conspiracy. Bligh was later promoted to rear admiral (1811) and vice admiral (1814).
      Bligh's character has been variously interpreted. He does not seem to have been unduly tyrannical, but his abusive tongue and his overbearing manner made him unpopular as a commander. He possessed undoubted courage in battle and great skill as a navigator.

1735 Charles Lepeintre, aptly surnamed French artist who died in 1803.
1585 duc Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, he would become a cardinal and Louis XIII's chief minister who helped build France into a world power.

Holidays Bulgaria, Luxembourg : Liberation Day (1944) / California : Admission Day (1850) / Italy : Salerno Day-Allied landing (1943) / North Korea : National Day / Tajikistan National Holiday

Religious Observances Ang : Constance & her companions / Christian : St Gorgonius, martyr / RC-US : Peter Claver, priest

Thoughts for the day:
“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is the most fatal.”
“Of all forms of love, the love of caution is the most maternal.”
“Of all forms of recklessness, recklessness in love is the most fatal.”
“Recklessness is not compatible with wrecklessness.”
“Of all forms of caution, cushion caution is the most alliterative.”
“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.” — Tolstoy [09 Sep 1828 – 20 Nov 1910]
“Some mathematician has said pleasure lies not in discovering truth, but in seeking it.” — Tolstoy in Anna Karenina
“Pleasure lies.”
“The truth can be painful, but not mathematical truth.”
“Il ne faut jamais rien outrer.” — Tolstoy in Anna Karenina — {évidemment, car ce serait un outrage}
“He sends a cross, but He also sends the strength to bear it.” — Tolstoy in Anna Karenina
“Christianity, with its doctrine of humility, of forgiveness, of love is incompatible with the state, with its haughtiness, its violence, its punishment, its wars.” — Tolstoy — {also with Islam}
“Tolstoy's was not Syot's lot. Quite the reverse.” — {Is it true that Tolstoy avoided those bridges where you have to pay to cross, because Tolstoy did not want to be toll's toy?}

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