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2003 Israeli corporal Oleg Shaichat,
20, of Upper Nazareth, abducted and murdered. He was hitchhiking home from the army base in Safed when he was abducted near the Beit Rimon junction, the turnoff from the main Tiberias-Haifa road that leads through several Arab villages, including Kafr Kana, to Nazareth and Upper Nazareth. His abductors drive to a nearby grove, where they murdered him. An intensive search is started, in which hundreds of volunteers would participate until his body is found on 28 July 2003, buried in an olive grove near Kafr Kana. Oleg immigrated to Israel from the Ukraine in 1995, with his parents, Anisim and Olga, and his brother Adam, 5 years his elder. Three men from Kafr Kana, Tarek Nujeidat, Yusuf Sabih, and Sharif Eid, would be arrested for this crime. But on 10 May 2004, the Israeli police would admit that it was a mistake, as they have recently arrested a new suspect who has confessed to the killing and has reenacted the murder. On 10 May 2004 the news come out that Israeli police have arrested two new suspects in the case. One of the two, Ataf Moussa, 21, from Kafr Manda, was arrested after carrying out the shooting attack at the Beit Rimon junction on 18 April 2004, using Shaichat's M-16 rifle. His accomplice, Mahmud Khatib, 20, from Kafr Kana, was mortally wounded by return fire from Israeli Border Police troops. He died of his injuries a short time later. Police interrogation of Moussa led to the arrest of a third suspect, Kahleb Anbatawi, 20, also of Kafr Kana. The two told police that they had set up a cell called Liberators of the Galilee with the intention of kidnapping a soldier and stealing his gun. They admitted that they had tried several times to abduct a soldier, but had been unsuccessful. The cell was comprised of seven members from Kafr Kana and Kafr Manda and included two minors. Anbatawi also admitted that on 21 July 2003, he and Khatib went out looking for another soldier to abduct and kill. Moussa was not with them at the time. Anbatawi and Khatib picked Shaichat up at the Beit Rimon junction after chatting with the soldier for a few minutes. After traveling along the main road for a short time, Anbatawi, who was driving, took a sharp turn onto a dirt road. Khatib then strangled Shaichat. A few hundred meters later, Anbatawi stopped the car, they dragged Shaichat out of the vehicle and shot him with his own weapon to ensure that he was dead. The two then removed all identifying items from Shaichat's body, and buried him. They burned the personal items and hid the gun. Anbatawi reenacted the murder for police. Moussa has reenacted the 18 April 2004 shooting attack at the Beit Rimon junction. Some investigators doubt the credibility of the version given by one in the defendants, Tarek Nujeidat, that led to the indictments against his two alleged accomplices, Sabih and Eid. The Shin Bet continued to investigate Shaichat's kidnapping and murder even when the investigation and the indictment were completed. One of the Shin Bet's problems with the probe was that the defendants were unable to give a credible explanation as to what happened to Shaichat's rifle after they allegedly murdered him. The Shin Bet's opinion, which later differed from that of the police and the State Prosecution's, turned out to be correct. One week after the murder of Shaichat, Nujeidat and Sabih were arrested and a few days later Eid was also arrested. Nujeidat confessed (under torture?) to the kidnapping and murder and implicated the other two. He even reenacted the crime for the police and drew sketches of the crime scene. Eventually Nujeidat recanted and the Shin Bet disagreed with the police that there was enough evidence to indict the three. An indictment, however, was finally filed in September. Sabih and Eid appealed to the Nazareth District Court and the Israeli Supreme Court against holding them until the end of court proceedings. They claimed Nuejeidat's confession "screamed clear signs of having received information from investigators, the media and village residents." Supreme Court Justice, Esther Hayut said that Nujeidat's confession "contained details that could not have been known if he had not been on the scene." (unless they had been fed to him by his torturers?) |
2003 Ali Mohammad Sheikh, hanged in village Chiwdara, Bagdam district, Indian-occupied Kashmir, presumably by anti-Indian militants who suspected that he had abandoned their cause and that was why the Indians had released him from prison.
2003 Five pilgrims (including a child) among the thousands about to start on a yatra to the Mata Vaishnovdevi cave shrine in Indian-occupied Kashmir, in two grenade attacks within ten minutes of each other on the crowd of pilgrims gathered to receive food at the late Gulshan Kumar's langar (community kitchen) in Banganga, the starting point for the pilgrimage to the Vaishno Devi shrine at Katra. 42 pilgrims are injured, one of which, a woman, dies the next day.
2002 Esphyr Slobodkina-Urquhart, Siberian-born on 22 September 1908, US Abstract painter and sculptor, author-illustrator of children's books. — more with links to images.
2002 Bernard Haldane, 91, London-born US founder in 1947 of career counseling firm Bernard Haldane Associates, which he sold in the early 1970s. Author of Career Satisfaction and Success: How to Know and Manage Your Strengths (1995) and 13 other books about changing jobs and looking for work.
2002 Ira J. Salone, 62; Belinda Jackson, 48; Marisha Jackson, 14; Shanae Jackson, 10; Tevin Jackson, 3; and Tyler Jackson, 3, in a minivan, and Kyong Leingang, 55, woman (from Addison) alone driving a sport-utility vehicle which crosses into the path of the minivan and crashes head-on at about 17:45 on Interstate 20 in Gregg County in east Texas. The people in the minivan wore from Shreveport; their lone survivor, Tatyana Jackson, 3, the third triplet, is critically injured in the head.
2002 Six coal miners by a methane explosion in the Dnipropetrovsk region of the Ukraine. About 300 Ukrainian miners in 2001 and almost 150 in the first half of 2002 have been killed in accidents in the mines, plagued by poor working conditions, a lax regard for safety rules and lack of funds for modernization. In 2000, at least 80 miners were killed and seven injured when a methane gas explosion tore through the Barakova coal mine in the eastern town of Luhansk in the country's worst mining disaster since independence in 1991. Ukraine's mines are expensive and dangerous to operate, but politicians fear even greater social costs of closing pits which employ 450'000 persons at 193 mines in areas with few other jobs.
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1984 Factory worker killed by robot Ignoring the "first law of robotics", a factory robot in Jackson, Michigan, catches a 34-year-old worker and crushes him against a safety bar. The National Institute of Safety and Health said this was the first robot-related fatality in the United States. The Three Laws of Robotics (found in Isaac Asimov's science fiction) are: 1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. From Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D., as quoted in I, Robot. In Robots and Empire (ch. 63), the "Zeroth Law" is extrapolated, and the other Three Laws modified accordingly: 0. A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. Unlike the Three Laws, however, the Zeroth Law is not a fundamental part of positronic robotic engineering, is not part of all positronic robots, and, in fact, requires a very sophisticated robot to even accept it. Asimov claimed that the Three Laws were originated by John W. Campbell in a conversation they had on December 23, 1940. Campbell in turn maintained that he picked them out of Asimov's stories and discussions, and that his role was merely to state them explicitly. The Three Laws did not appear in Asimov's first two robot stories, Robbie and Reason, but the First Law was stated in Asimov's third robot story Liar!, which also featured the first appearance of robopsychologist Susan Calvin. (When Robbie and Reason were included in I, Robot, they were updated to mention the existence of the first law and first two laws, respectively.) Yet there was a hint of the three laws in Robbie, in which Robbie's owner states that "He can't help being faithful, loving, and kind. He's a machine -- made so." The first story to explicitly state the Three Laws was Runaround, which appeared in the March 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. See the Isaac Asimov FAQ. |
1976 1st outbreak of "Legionnaire's Disease" kills 29 in Phila
1972 In New York, 57 murders occur in 24 hours
1972 Jigme Dori Wangchuck king of Bhutan
 1969
Lillie Belle Allen, 27, and Henry Schaad, in York race riots.
^top^ The riots, which lasted 10 days, began after a white gang member shot and wounded a young black man in, in York, Pennsylvania. Henry Schaad, was a White rookie police officer. More than 60 people were injured, 100 were arrested and several city blocks were burned. Lillie Belle Allen, a native of Aiken, S.C., is riding in a car with family members, on the fourth night of rioting. They stray into the neighborhood of a white gang. The car is fired upon. Lillie gets out of the car, waves her arms and yells “don't shoot” but is hit by a bullet. The bullet is part of the ammunition which Charlie Robertson, 35, a White policeman, has given to Rick Lynn Knouse for his 30.06 hunting rifle, instructing him to “kill as many niggers as you can,” wanting revenge for the 18 July 1969 shooting of a White patrolman in a Black neighborhood. Robertson also had urged “commando raids” on Black neighborhoods. The previous evening, he had attended a racist rally in a city park and had yelled: “White power!” (which he would admit in 2001). No charges are filed until April 2001, when Knouse and four others are indicted. Robertson has gone on to be elected York mayor, and serves two terms. In the Democratic primary for a third term, on 15 May 2001, he defeats by 100 votes City Councilman Ray Crenshaw, the first Black to run for mayor in city history. On 17 May 2001, Robertson is arrested as accessory before the fact in the murder of Lillie Allen. Murder is the only crime not subject to a statute of limitations. Robertson denounces his arrest as politically motivated, but admits that the police department had a culture of racism, and that he himself had racist feelings after his father was mugged by three black men in the 1950s Robertson would be tried starting on 01 October 2002 [leaving courthouse that day >], together with Robert Messersmith, accused of firing the fatal shot, and Gregory Neff, accused of firing three times at Allen's vehicle. On 19 October 2002 Robertson is acquitted, Messersmith and Neff are convicted of second-degree murder. Six other White men had already pleaded guilty to this murder, and one more would be tried later. |
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1967 Albert John Mvumbi Lutuli (or Luthuli),
struck by a train as he crosses on a railway bridge near his small
farm in Stanger, South Africa. He was a Zulu chief, teacher and religious
leader, and president of the African National Congress (1952–1960)
in South Africa. He was the first African to be awarded a Nobel Prize
for Peace (1960), in recognition of his nonviolent struggle against
racial discrimination. Albert John Mvumbi (“Continuous Rain”) Lutuli (the spelling he used) was born in 1898 in Rhodesia, where his father, John Bunyan Luthuli, a missionary interpreter, had gone from Zululand. After his father's death, the 10-year-old Albert returned to South Africa and learned Zulu traditions and duties in the household of his uncle, the chief of Groutville, a community associated with a US Congregational mission in Natal's sugar lands. Educated through his mother's earnings as a washerwoman and by a scholarship, he graduated from the American Board Mission's teacher-training college at Adams, near Durban, and became one of its first three African instructors. In 1927 Luthuli married Nokukhanya Bhengu, a teacher and granddaughter of a clan chief. In 1936 Luthuli left teaching to become the elected chief of the community of 5000 at Groutville. Though confronted by land hunger, poverty, and political voicelessness, he did not yet recognize the need for political action. In those early years he was, variously, secretary of the Natal African Teachers' Association and of the South African Football Association, founder of the Zulu Language and Cultural Society, and member of the Christian Council Executive, of the Joint Council of Europeans and Africans, and of the Institute of Race Relations in Durban. Luthuli's first political step in joining the African National Congress (ANC) in 1945 was motivated by friendship with its Natal leader. Far more significant was his election to the Natives Representative Council (an advisory body of chiefs and intellectuals set up by the government), at the very time in 1946 when troops and police were crushing a strike of African miners at the cost of eight lives and nearly a thousand injured. Luthuli immediately joined his people's protest against the council's futility. When he toured the US in 1948 as a guest of the Congregational Board of Missions, he warned that Christianity faced its severest test in Africa because of racial discrimination. On his return home he found that the Afrikaner Nationalists had newly come to power with their policy of apartheid. At this crucial time, Luthuli was elected president of the Natal African National Congress. Since its founding in 1912 the ANC's efforts to achieve human rights by deputation, petition, or mass protests had met with increasing repression. In 1952, stimulated by young black intellectuals, the ANC joined the South African Indian Congress in a countrywide campaign to defy what were deemed unjust laws; 8,500 men and women went voluntarily to prison. As a result of Luthuli's leadership in Natal, the government demanded that he resign from the ANC or from chieftainship. He refused to do either, stating, “the road to freedom is via the cross.” The government deposed him. Not only did he continue to be affectionately regarded as “chief ” but his reputation spread. In that same year, 1952, the ANC elected him president general. Henceforth, between repeated bans (under the Suppression of Communism Act), he attended gatherings, visited towns, and toured the country to address mass meetings (despite a serious illness in 1954). On 05 December 1956 Luthuli and 155 others were dramatically rounded up and charged with high treason. His long trial failed to prove treason, a Communist conspiracy, or violence, and in 1957 he was released. During this time Luthuli's quiet authority and his inspiration to others profoundly impressed distinguished foreign observers, leading to his nomination for the Nobel Prize. Nonwhite people responded in large numbers to his call for a stay-at-home strike in 1957; later, whites also began attending his mass meetings. In 1959 the government confined him to his rural neighborhood and banned him from gatherings, this time for five years, for “promoting feelings of hostility” between the races. After police, on 21 March 1960, shot dead 69 of the Africans demonstrating against the pass laws at Sharpeville (and wounded 186), Luthuli called for national mourning, and he burned his pass on 28 March 1960. (Too ill to serve the resulting prison sentence, he paid a fine.) The government outlawed the ANC and its rival offshoot, the Pan-Africanist Congress. In December 1961 Luthuli was allowed to leave Groutville briefly when, with his wife, he flew to Oslo to receive the Nobel Prize. His acceptance address paid tribute to his people's nonviolence and rejection of racism despite adverse treatment, and he noted how far from freedom they remained despite their long struggle. A week later, throughout South Africa, a sabotage group called the Spear of the Nation attacked installations; the policy of nonviolence had at last been abandoned, and Luthuli, back in enforced isolation, was an honored elder statesman, dictating his autobiography and receiving only those visitors permitted by the police. |
1966 Frank, mathematician.
1964 Jean Fautrier, French artist born on 16 May 1898. — more
1957 Bernard Spooner US inventor of bulletproof jacket.
1948 “Arshile Gorky” commits suicide, cancerous, his neck broken in a June 1948 automobile accident, and lastly his wife has just left him. He was a US painter important as the direct link between the European Surrealists and the US Abstract Expressionists. He was born Vosdanig Manoog Adoian in 1904 in Turkish Armenia, and had emigrated to the US in 1920. — MORE ON GORKY AT ART “4” JULY with links to images.
1944 Hitler assassination plotters and suspects, as revenge bloodbath starts ^top^
Adolf Hitler announces on radio that the attempt on his life has failed and that "accounts will be settled." Hitler had survived the bomb blast that was meant to take his life. He had suffered punctured eardrums, some burns and minor wounds, but nothing that would keep him from regaining control of the government and finding the rebels.
In fact, the coup d'etat that was to accompany the assassination of Hitler was put down in a mere 11 ˝ hours. In Berlin, Army Major Otto Remer, believed to be apolitical by the conspirators and willing to carry out any orders given him, was told that the Fuhrer was dead and that he, Remer, was to arrest Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda. But Goebbels had other news for Remer-Hitler was alive. And he proved it, by getting the leader on the phone (the rebels had forgotten to cut the phone lines). Hitler then gave Remer direct orders to put down any army rebellion and to follow only his orders or those of Goebbels or Himmler. Remer let Goebbels go.
The SS then snapped into action, arriving in Berlin, now in chaos, just in time to convince many high German officers to remain loyal to Hitler. Arrests, torture sessions, executions, and suicides followed. Count Claus von Stauffenberg, the man who actually planted the explosive in the room with Hitler and who had insisted to his co-conspirators that "the explosion was as if a 15-millimeter shell had hit. No one in that room can still be alive." But it was Stauffenberg who would not be alive for much longer; he was shot dead by a pro-Hitler officer the very day of the attempt. The plot was completely undone.
Now Hitler had to restore calm and confidence to the German civilian population. At 01:00, Hitler's voice broke through the radio airwaves: "I am unhurt and well…. A very small clique of ambitious, irresponsible…and stupid officers had concocted a plot to eliminate me…. It is a gang of criminal elements which will be destroyed without mercy. I therefore give orders now that no military authority…is to obey orders from this crew of usurpers…. This time we shall settle account with them in the manner to which we National Socialists are accustomed." -
1937 Elliott, mathematician
1925 Giovanni Frattini, mathematician
1888 Henri de Braekeleer, Belgian painter born in 1840. — more with link to an image.
1886 Carl Theodor von Piloty, German artist born on 01 October 1826. — more with link to an image.
1878 Sam Bass, on his 27th birthday, from being shot by Texas Rangers two days earlier. Bass left his Indiana home at age 18 and drifted to Texas, where in 1874 he befriended Joel Collins. In 1876 Bass and Collins went north on a cattle drive but turned to robbing stagecoaches; in September 1877 in Big Springs, Nebraska, they and four others robbed a Union Pacific train of $65'000 in gold coin and other valuables. Returning to Texas, Bass collected a gang and began a less successful career of train robbery, with the Texas Rangers in pursuit. Finally a former crony, Jim Murphy, tipped off the Rangers, who, on 19 July 1878, ambushed and wounded Bass, who was attempting a bank robbery in Round Rock. His career became the stuff of legend in a popular cowboy song, “The Ballad of Sam Bass.”
1873 Louis-Charles-Auguste Couder, French painter born on 01 April 1790. — more with link to an image.
1873 Codazzi, mathematician
1867 Thomas Baker, and eight native followers, clubbed to death on a cliff near the tiny settlement Nabutautau (or Tui Navatusila), Cannibal Isles (now Fiji). Baker, from the London Missionary Society, took a comb out of a chief's hair, probably not realizing that touching the head of a chief was strictly forbidden. Baker's body, boots and all, is then boiled with the local vegetable, bele, and eaten, though the soles of the boots proved too tough, and would be returned, together with the Methodist missionary's Bible and comb, on 13 November 2003, to 11 of his descendants attending a reconciliation ritual known as "ai sorotabu," in which they also received 100 rare sperm whale teeth, or tabua. Fiji's Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase and members of the influential Great Council of Chiefs were among about 2000 persons who attended the ceremony. Nubutautau, population about 120, is in the mountainous interior of Fiji's main island Viti Levu north of Suva. It is accessible only by a logging track hacked into the side of a mountain. Villagers, now Christian, believe Nubutautau has been cursed since Baker's slaying and that the ceremony would lift the curse. While Viti Levu's rain-soaked interior is lushly tropical, vegetation around Nubutautau is scant and villagers still hunt for food. The village has no electricity and few other services. Local children walk 25 kilometers to and from the nearest school each week. Fiji, a mix of Christians and Hindus, is now a deeply religious nation of about 840'000. Traditional village chiefs, or ratus, still hold great influence over the predominantly Melanesian population. Cannibalism was widespread in the former British colony, with human flesh described as "long pig," until the practice was outlawed in the late 19th century. Baker's death was among the last recorded incidences of cannibalism, of which he was the only White victim.
