24 Jun History: This Date

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Events, deaths, births, of JUN 24
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ALTERNATE SITES ANY DAY OF THE YEAR IN HISTORY ART “4” JUN 24 wikipedia

• War of King Philip... • Bataille de Fontenoy... • Napoléon invades Russia... • Picasso's 1st exhibit... • Lincoln consults Scott... • De Valera resigns... • Sadi Carnot dies...

On a June 24:
2003 On the New York Stock Exchange, 7.5 million of the 43 million shares of USG are traded, rising from their previous close of $13.03 to an intraday high of $18.08 and closing at $17.60. They had traded as low as $3.78 as recently as 24 February 2002 and as high as $64.31 on 19 April 1999. — [5~year price chart >] — USG Corporation is a manufacturer and distributor of building materials, producing a range of products for use in new residential, new nonresidential and repair and remodel construction, as well as products used in certain industrial processes.
2002 In Ring v. Arizona (01-488), the US Supreme Court, 7 to 2, overturns the death sentences of 168 convicted murderers, ruling that juries and not judges must make sentencing decisions, in line with its 26 June 2000 Apprendi v. New Jersey (99-478) ruling that juries, not judges, must decide whether to add 2 years to a prison sentence for a hate crime.
2002 After an 8-week trial in a Federal court, Providence, Rhode Island, still-popular Mayor Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci Jr. is convicted of racketeering conspiracy, together with his former chief of staff Frank E. Corrente and auto-body shop owner Richard Autiello, for the thousands of dollars in bribes Cianci received in exchange for city jobs, contracts and leases after he returned to office in 1990. A former Republican who is now an independent, Cianci has been Providence's mayor since 1974, except for 1984 to 1990 as a popular local radio host, after he pleaded no contest to beating his estranged wife's lover with a fireplace log and got a five-year suspended sentence.
2002 Date by which most of the 3000 White farmers in Zimbabwe who have not already been killed, harassed into fleeing, or expropriated are ordered by the Mugabwe government to stop farming. By 08 August 2002 they are to leave their properties.
2000 First US Presidential Webcast, in which Clinton announces the website http://www.firstgov.com/ which, within 90 days will centralize all US government information for the public.
2000 [Saturday] First of two days of Parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe.

^ 1998 AT&T goes local, again
Merger mania, indeed: on this day in 1998, ATandT made a move to return to the local phone service game by snapping up cable heavyweight Tele-Communications, Inc. for a reported $48 billion. The deal, inked a mere ten days after the two companies opened negotiations, handed ATandT cable connections in roughly 33 million homes across the United States.
This was a stunning reversal of fortune for the phone industry king, which, a decade back, had been forced to relinquish its choke hold over local phone lines and divest itself of its regional service providers (the "Baby Bells”). Along with reemerging as a local phone force, the acquisition of Tele-Communications also boosted ATandT's status in the booming Internet industry. Moreover, the company was primed to take a leading role in the long-awaited convergence of the various telecommunications channels. For cash-strapped Tele-Communications, the merger promised to help ease the debts company chief John Malone piled up in his quest to make his company the king of convergence.

1996 A jury orders the city of Philadelphia to pay $1.5 million in damages for the bombing of MOVE headquarters in 1985 that killed 11 persons.
1991 The US Supreme Court rules that the First Amendment did not shield news organizations from being sued when they publish the names of sources who had been promised confidentiality.
1986 US Senate approves "tax reform"
1982 US Equal Rights Amendment goes down to defeat

^ 1973 Eamon de Valera resigns
      Eamon de Valera, 90, the world’s oldest statesman, resigns as president of Ireland. Born in New York on 14 October 1882, de Valera emigrated to Ireland at age 2 and joined the Easter Rebellion of 1916 against British rule. Saved from execution because of his American citizenship, he was released under a general amnesty in 1917. The same year, he became leader of Sinn Féin, a political party dedicated to achieving a unified and independent Ireland. In 1919, Sinn Féin achieved an electoral majority in Ireland and de Valera was imprisoned, but he escaped back to the United States. During his exile, he was elected president of Ireland by the Dail Eireann, a revolutionary parliament that proclaimed Irish independence.
      When he returned to Ireland in 1920, Sinn Féin and the Irish volunteers were engaged in a widespread and effective guerrilla campaign against British forces. The same year, a cease-fire was declared and in 1922, Arthur Griffith and other former Sinn Féin leaders broke with de Valera in signing a treaty with Britain, calling for the partition of Ireland, with the south becoming autonomous and the six northern counties of the island remaining in Great Britain. De Valera deplored the period of civil war that followed, but maintained his opposition to the British government.
      In 1926, he left Sinn Féin, which had become the unofficial political wing of the underground movement for Northern independence, and entered Irish Free State politics. He formed the Fianna Fail political party, and in 1932, he was elected Irish president as the party gained control of the Irish Free State government. For the next sixteen years, President de Valera pursued a policy of complete political separation from Great Britain, including the introduction of a new constitution declaring Ireland a fully sovereign state and a policy of neutrality during World War II. In 1948, he narrowly lost a reelection vote and was forced to resign, but in 1951 he returned as Irish prime minister, and in 1959, as president. He retired from Irish politics in 1973. He died in Dublin on 29 August 1975.

1970 US Senate votes overwhelmingly to repeal the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
1968 Deadline for redeeming US silver certificate dollars for silver bullion
1967 Pope Paul VI issues his Encyclical Sacerdotalis Caelibatus -- On the Celibacy of the Priest
1966 Period of relative peace following WW II exceeds that following WW I
1964 The Federal Trade Commission announces that starting in 1965, cigarette manufactures will be required to include warnings on their packaging about the harmful effects of smoking.
1963 Zanzibar granted internal self-government by Britain
1963 first demonstration of home video recorder, at BBC Studios, London

^ 1961 Kennedy wants communications satellites
President John Kennedy's assigns to Vice President Lyndon Johnson the high priority task of unifying the United States satellite programs: "I would appreciate your having the Space Council undertake to make the necessary studies . . . for bringing into optimum use at the earliest practicable time operational communications satellites."
In 1983, on the same date, astronaut Sally Ride lands at Edwards Air Force Base aboard the 100-ton Space Shuttle Challenger completing her voyage as the first American woman in space. These two events evidence the nation's leap from an age of earth-bound methods of communication and travel into the space age.

1955 Soviet MIG's down a US Navy patrol plane over the Bering Strait. During the Korean War, a brief incident near Vladivostok pitted Grumman F9F-5s against MiG-15s.
1948 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia nominates NY governor Thomas Dewey as presidential candidate.

^ 1948 Soviet blockade of Berlin begins
In East Germany, in an attempt to discourage the Western powers from maintaining the sovereignty of West Berlin, Soviet authorities began a blockade of the Western zone of the former German capital. Berlin, divided between the Allied powers at the end of World War II, was located deep within Soviet-occupied East Germany, and citizens of the Western occupation zones subsisted almost entirely on supplies shipped from the West.
In June of 1948, in one of the first major crises of the Cold War, the Soviets halted the shipment of food and fuel to the two million some inhabits of West Berlin. Britain and the United States responded by initiating the largest airlift in history, flying 278'288 relief missions to the city over the next fourteen months, which resulted in the delivery of 2,326,406 tons of supplies. As the Soviets had cut off power to West Berlin, coal accounted for over two-thirds of the material delivered. Flights were made around the clock, and at the height of the Berlin Airlift, planes were landing in the city every three minutes. On 12 May 1949, the Soviets lifted the blockade, and on 30 September 1949, the Berlin Airlift came to an end.
The massive airlift into Berlin showed the Soviets that a post-WWII blockade would not work.

1945 "Bridge Over the River Kwai." bombed out ^top^
Thousands of British and Allied prisoners of war, forced into slave labor by their Japanese captors, had built a bridge, under the most grueling conditions, over the River Kwai, linking parts of the Burma-Siam (now Thailand) railway and enabling the Japanese to transport soldiers and supplies through this area. British aircraft bombed the bridge to prevent this link between Bangkok and Moulein, Burma. This episode of the war was dramatized in extraordinary fashion in the 1957 film Bridge on the River Kwai, directed by David Lean, and starring Alec Guinness and William Holden.

1945 Victory parade in Moscow
Soviet troops parade past Red Square in celebration of their victory over Germany. As drums roll, 200 soldiers throw 200 German military banners at the foot of the Lenin Mausoleum. A little over 130 years earlier, victorious Russian troops threw Napoleon's banners at the feet of Czar Alexander I.

1943   Royal Air Force Bombers hammer Muelheim, Germany in a drive to cripple the Ruhr industrial base.
1941   President Franklin Roosevelt pledges all possible support to the Soviet Union. The ships of the doomed Allied convoy PQ-17 followed orders and began to disperse in the Arctic waters.
1940 Les Italiens occupent Menton -- Armistice entre la France et l'Italie (France signs an armistice with Italy during WW II) Italy's Breda Ba.65 was not the best ground-attack plane to see action in World War II, it may well have been the worst.
1932 Coup ends absolute monarchy in Thailand
1931   The Soviet Union and Afghanistan sign a treaty of neutrality.
1930 first radar detection of planes, Anacostia DC
1923 Straits Treaty
1913   Greece and Serbia annul their alliance with Bulgaria following border disputes over Macedonia and Thrace. In 1878, Bulgaria had no army. By 1913, it had one of the most formidable land forces in Europe.
1910   The Japanese army invades Korea.
1901 First art exhibit of Pablo Picasso [25 Oct 1881 – 08 Apr 1973] — MORE AT ART “4” JUNE with links to many images.

^ 1900 Locomobiles lead to “motorized” parks
Oliver Lippincott became the first motorist in Yosemite National Park when he drove there in his Locomobile steamer. Lippincott would start a trend with his visit, as motorists increasingly chose to drive to National Parks, avoiding the more time consuming train and coach rides. By 1901 a number of other motorists had made the trip to Yosemite, mostly in Locomobiles.
A personal account survives from motorist William A. Clark, of San Francisco, California, who, with his wife, manned the fifth car ever driven into the park. Clark eloquently expressed the miraculous feeling of climbing to the elevation of 2300 m on the Big Oak Flat Road: “Individually our souls were inspired; mentally, we were enchanted; personally, we could say nothing, for words fail when the Creator lays before us the sublime in the highest sense.” And then his arrival in the Yosemite Valley, Clark described a less sublime, but equally sympathetic, brand of satisfaction, “We ran our machine into the midst of a circle of Eastern tourists, seated around a large campfire. To say that the apparition of an automobile suddenly appearing among them called forth general applause and hearty congratulations but feebly expresses it.” The automobile is in large part responsible for creating the uniquely American culture of the National Park.

1898 US troops drive Spanish forces from La Guasimas Cuba.
1884 John Lynch is first black elected chairman of Republican convention
1864 Maryland abolishes slavery
1863 Siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi (18 May 1863 – 04 July 1863) continues
1863 Siege of Port Hudson, Louisiana continues

^ 1862 Lincoln consults Winfield Scott
President Abraham Lincoln meets with retired General Winfield Scott, a hero of the Mexican War and the commander of all Union forces at the outbreak of the Civil War. Scott, aged and infirm, still possessed a sharp military mind. More important, he was one of the few impartial advisors surrounding Lincoln. On 23 June, Lincoln took a train from Washington to West Point, New York, and called on Scott the following day to discuss Union strategy in Virginia. Lincoln had doubts about George McClellan's ability to lead the Army of the Potomac, which was stuck in a stalemate with Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia outside of Richmond. He also sought Scott's opinion on the various Federal armies operating in northern Virginia. Scott recommended that Irwin McDowell's corps be sent to aid McClellan on the James Peninsula, since a defeat of Lee at Richmond would, in Scott's words, "be a virtual end of the rebellion." Although it may have been sound advice, Lincoln did not move McDowell's force. McClellan had provided no evidence to Lincoln that he would effectively apply the reinforcements against Lee. Instead, Lincoln consolidated McDowell's corps with the commands of John C. Frémont and Nathaniel Banks, who had recently been bested by Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley. John Pope, under whom Frémont refused to serve and so went on inactive duty, led the newly formed Army of Virginia. This new army would face its first test in August at the Second Battle of Bull Run, where it suffered a humiliating defeat. More than anything, this visit fueled Lincoln's disenchantment with military advice. Lincoln spent the war's first two and a half years learning about military affairs and searching for the right advisor. He would not find that voice until the fall of 1863—from Ulysses S. Grant.

1862 United States' intervention saves the British and French at the Dagu forts in China.
1861 Tennessee becomes 11th (and last) state to secede from US
1861 Federal gunboats attack Confederate batteries at Mathias Point, Virginia.
1858 Le ministère d'Algérie. Le prince Jérôme, cousin de Napoléon III, prend en charge le portefeuille du ministère de l'Algérie. Le 26 novembre 1860, le même ministère est dissous...
1821 Battle of Carabobo; Bolivar defeats royalists outside of Caracas
1813 Battle of Beaver Dam—British and Indian forces defeat US forces

^ 1812 Napoléon’s Grande Armée invades Russia
      Following the rejection of his Continental System by Czar Alexander I, French Emperor Napoléon orders his Grande Armée, the largest European military force ever assembled to date, into Russia. The enormous army, featuring some 500'000 soldiers and staff, includes troops from all of the European countries under the sway of the French Empire.
      During the opening months of the invasion, Napoléon would be forced to contend with a bitter Russian army in perpetual retreat. Refusing to engage Napoléon's superior army in a full-scale confrontation, the Russians under General Mikhail Kutuzov burned everything behind them as they retreated deeper and deeper into Russia. On September 7, the indecisive Battle of Borodino was fought, in which both sides suffered terrible losses.
      On September 14, Napoléon arrived in Moscow intending to find supplies, but instead found almost the entire population evacuated, and the Russian army retreated again. Early the next morning, fires broke across the city, set by Russian patriots, and the Grande Armée’s winter quarters were destroyed. After waiting a month for a surrender that never came, Napoléon, faced with the onset of the Russian winter, was forced to order his starving army out of Moscow.
      During the disastrous retreat, Napoléon’s army suffered continual harassment from a suddenly aggressive and merciless Russian army. Stalked by hunger and the deadly lances of the Cossacks, the decimated army reached the Berezina River late in November, and found their way blocked by the Russians. On 27 November, Napoléon forced a way across at Studenka, but when the bulk of his army passed the river two days later, he was forced to burn his makeshift bridges behind him, stranding some 10'000 stragglers on the other side. From there, the retreat became a rout, and on December 8, Napoléon left what remained of his army to return to Paris. Six days later, the Grande Armée finally escaped Russia, having suffered a loss of over 400'000 men during the disastrous invasion.
During the Napoleonic Wars a British naval officer proposed the use of saturation bombing and chemical warfare.

1793 First republican constitution in France adopted

1778 The Continental Congress returns to Philadelphia ^top^
from its temporary capital of York, Pennsylvania. Nine months before, on September 26, 1777, Philadelphia was captured by the British following Patriot General George Washington’s defeats at the Battle of Brandywine and the Battle of the Clouds. British General William Howe had made Philadelphia, the seat of the Continental Congress, the focus of his campaign, but the Patriot government had deprived him of the decisive victory he hoped for by moving its operations to the more secure site of York one week before.
General Benedict Arnold had led the American force that reclaims the capital city without bloodshed on June 19. He was appointed military governor. The previous day, the fifteen thousand British troops under Sir Henry Clinton had evacuated Philadelphia, where the British position in Philadelphia had become untenable after France’s entrance into the war on the side of the Americans. In order to avoid the French fleet, General Clinton was forced to lead his British-Hessian force to New York City by land. Other loyalists in the city sailed down the Delaware River to escape the Patriots

^ 1675 King Philip’s War begins
      In colonial New England, King Philip’s War began when a band of Wampanoag warriors raided the border settlement of Swansee, Massachusetts, and massacred the English colonists there. In the early 1670s, fifty years of peace between the Plymouth colony and the local Wampanoags began to deteriorate when the rapidly expanding settlement forced land sales on the local tribe members. Reacting to increasing Native American hostility, the English met with King Philip, chief of the Wampanoag, and demanded that his forces surrender their arms. The Wampanoag did so, but in 1675, a Christian Native American, who had been acting as an informer to the English, was murdered, and three Wampanoags were tried and executed for the crime.
      King Philip responded by ordering the attack on Swansee on June 24, which set off a series of Wampanoag raids in which several settlements were destroyed and scores of colonists massacred. The colonists retaliated by destroying a number of Indian villages. The destruction of a Narragansett village by the English brought the Narragansett into the conflict on the side of King Philip, and within a few months several other tribes and all the New England colonies were involved in the war.
      In early 1676, the Narragansett were defeated and their chief killed, while the Wampanoag and their other allies were gradually subdued. King Philip’s wife and son were captured, and on August 12, 1676, after his secret headquarters in Mount Hope, Rhode Island, were discovered, Philip was assassinated by a Native American in the service of the English. The English drew and quartered his body and publicly displayed his head on a stake in Plymouth. King Philip’s War, which was extremely costly to the colonists of southern New England, terminated the Native American presence in the region and inaugurated a period of unimpeded colonial expansion.

1664   New Jersey, named after the Isle of Jersey, is founded.
1662 Dutch invasion of Macau repulsed (Macau Day)
1540 Henry VIII divorces the 4th of his six wives, Anne of Cleves
1535 Anabaptists Protestants conquerered and disbanded
1527 King Gustavus of Sweden assembles the Diet of Wester's, for the purpose of carrying through the Protestant Reformation in Sweden.
1509   Henry VIII crowned King of England. Buckingham Palace is a symbol of strength and tradition.
1497   Italian explorer John Cabot, sailing in the service of England, lands in North America on what is now Newfoundland or the northern Cape Breton Island in Canada. He claims eastern Canada for England
1340 Défaite de l'Ecluse (Sluys). Parce que Jacques Van Artevelde a reconnu Edouard III d'Angleterre comme roi de France légitime, Philippe VI, qui a à sa disposition une puissante flotte, veut engager une bataille navale contre les Zélandais. Ses géniaux amiraux ont ancrés celle-ci dans le port de l'Ecluse près de Bruges. Les navires sont piègés et pris à l'abordage par les archers anglais. La flotte française est presque totalement détruite. The English fleet defeats the French fleet off the Flemish coast an Sluys.
1322 Jews are expelled from France
1314 Battle of Bannockburn; Scottish forces led by Robert I the Bruce win an overwhelming victory over Edward II of England. England's warrior-king Edward I won victories against such renowned foes as Baybars, Llewellyn and Wallace.
1190 Testatement de Philippe Auguste. Sur le point de partir avec Richard Coeur de Lion pour la troisième croisade, Philippe Auguste, ce jour, organise par un testament ce que doit être le gouvernement pendant son absence.

^ 0841 Bataille de Fontenoy
      Défaite de Lothaire, un des 3 fils de Louis le Débonnaire et petits-fils de Charlemagne. Héritier de l’Empire Carolingien. Au soir de la bataille de Fontenoy, Lothaire, qui hérite légitimement de son père Louis le Pieux le vaste empire de Charlemagne, est en déroute. Il a été vaincu par son frère Louis le Germanique et par son demi-frère Charles le Chauve, alliés militairement. Pour l’Église, pour les clercs qui entourent les deux jeunes princes, cette victoire est un "jugement de Dieu". Par la défaite de l’héritier légitime et unique, la volonté divine a voulu marquer qu’un seul homme ne doit plus régner sur un si grand territoire.
      L’idée d’empire, très personnelle du temps de Charlemagne (au point que celui-ci souhaitait que fussent partagées, à sa mort, les terres qu’il avait conquises), s’était maintenue de par la mort des fils de Charlemagne, sauf un, Louis le Pieux (ou le Débonnaire) ; elle s’était renforcée avec Lothaire, qui entendait bien régner seul sur l’Empire. La bataille de Fontenoy a montré qu’il convient de revenir à l’idée de partage. Mais pour cela il faut que Charles et Louis, que lient seulement les armes, passent un véritable accord politique, traité d’alliance entre deux rois dès lors égaux (ce sont les Serments prononcés à Strasbourg, le 14 février 842) ; il importe ensuite que, se partageant l’Empire (et en laissant une part à Lothaire), ils se reconnaissent des territoires (traité de Verdun, 843).
      Devant les difficultés à partager des terres dissemblables, on finit par choisir le critère linguistique : Charles obtient la partie francophone, Louis le domaine germanophone de l’Empire. C’est donc la langue qui signifie le partage : elle est le nouveau signe du politique. Les Serments sont prêtés en langues vulgaires, ancêtres respectifs du français et de l’allemand. Et comme il s’agit de se reconnaître des territoires, Louis jure dans la langue du royaume attribué à Charles (donc, en français), et Charles dans la langue du royaume attribué à Louis (donc, en allemand). Puis les troupes de chacun prêtent serment dans leur propre langue. Ces quatre Serments (deux en roman : Louis et les officiers de Charles ; deux en germanique : Charles et les officiers de Louis) adaptent en langue vulgaire les formules qu’utilise le latin juridique des chancelleries : "Pro Deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro commun salvament, d’ist di en avant, in quant Deus savir et podir me dunat, si salvarai eo cist meon fradre Karlo [...]."
      Ils n’ont toutefois pas été conservés par quelque document diplomatique, minute de ce qui fut prononcé, mais par une œuvre littéraire. En effet, au premier rang des intellectuels qui guidèrent cette opération politique figure Nithard. Petit-fils de Charlemagne, et donc cousin des princes, c’est à la fois un lettré et un guerrier; proche conseiller de Charles, il rédige en latin, à sa demande et dans le feu de l’action, une Histoire des fils de Louis le Pieux, qui explique et justifie les événements comme les décisions. Afin de signifier dans son texte, et par son texte même, cette nouvelle alliance, Nithard utilise l’échange linguistique et reproduit les Serments dans les deux langues vulgaires. L’écriture était jusque-là entièrement latine. Par le geste de Nithard (miraculeusement conservés, les Serments ; ne se lisent que dans un manuscrit de son Histoire), le français accède à l’écrit, et c’est la première langue romane à le faire.

0451 10th recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet.

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Deaths which occurred on a June 24:
2004 Some 80 persons, in multiple attack by Iraqi insurgents, mostly against police and officials who are puppets of the US-dominated occupiers, in Baqouba, Mosul, Baghdad, Falloujah, Ramadi, Mahaweel, and other places. Some 300 persons are wounded.
2003 Iraqis Ghazi Moussa Hassan, 50, an ambulance driver;, and Tayseer Abd-ul Wahid, Abbas Qassem, and Hazim Sabhan, all in their twenties; and six UK military policemen, who were training Iraqi police, in attack by a furious mob of some 1000 Iraqis on a police station in Majar al-Kabir, Iraq; after UK paratroopers had withdrawn following house to house searches in which they had allegedly brutalized, humiliated, and offended the religion of Iraqis.
2002 Some 200 persons as a passenger train speeding backward downhill out-of-control for 30 minutes hits an oncoming cargo train in Igandu near Mpwapwa, Tanzania, at about 08:30. Some 800 are injured. All the passenger train's 22 coaches, except one second-class coach, derailed and overturned. As the passenger train was climbing the Fufu escarpment at Igandu to reach Dodoma, its engine failed. After mechanics fixed it, the train rolled backwards to test the engine, which failed again as well as the brakes. The engineer jumped off and suffered only minor injuries.
2002 Pierre Werner, 88 [photo >], conservative Christian Social People's Party prime minister of Luxembourg (1959-1974, 1979-1984), early proponent (1970) of a common European currency.
2002 Amr Kouffa, Yasser Rizak and two his brothers, another man, and one of drivers of the two taxis in which the victims are, attacked by Israeli Apache helicopter gunships in the Rafah area of the southern Gaza Strip, early in the day. Rizak, the main target, was Yasser Rizak, the Rafah-area commander of the Hamas military arm., of which Kouffa was a key activist.
2001 Osama Jawabri, 29, when a public telephone exploded while he was making a call. Jawabri regularly used the public pay phone, which was near his house on a square in central Nablus, West Bank. Jawabri was a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which has killed Jewish settlers, and participated in attacks in the West Bank and Israel. He has long been sought by Israel.
2001 Budhwa Oraon, 50, and his wife, Baili Oraon, 55, beaten and their throats slit by a mob of villagers who accused them of practicing witchcraft, causing the death of some children, in the Lalganj area the state of Jharkhand, India.
1975: 113 persons as an Eastern Airlines Boeing 727 crashes while attempting to land during a thunderstorm at New York's John F. Kennedy airport.
1973:: 32 persons in fire at the Upstairs Bar in New Orleans.
1964 Stuart Davis, US Abstract painter born on 07 December 1894. — MORE ON DAVIS AT ART “4” JUNE with links to images.
1938 Pedro Figari, Uruguayan artist born on 20 June 1861.
1922 Dr Walter Rathenau German foreign minister killed by anti-semites
1915 Some 800 die as excursion steamer Eastland capsizes in Chicago
1909 Sarah Orne Jewett, JEWETT ONLINE: The Country of the Pointed Firs , The King of Folly Island, and Other People, Tales of New England , A White Heron , Selected works and commentary

^ 1894 Stephen Grover Cleveland, 22nd and 24th president of the United States (1885–1889 and 1893–1897), the only one ever to serve two discontinuous terms. — click image for full 1899 portrait (122x92cm; 1400x1000pix, 233kb) by Zorn [18 Feb 1860 – 22 Aug 1920] >
      Cleveland distinguished himself as one of the few truly honest and principled politicians of the Gilded Age. His view of the president's function as primarily that of blocking legislative excesses made him quite popular during his first term, but that view cost him public support during his second term when he steadfastly denied a positive role for government in dealing with the worst economic collapse the nation had yet faced.
      Cleveland was born on 18 March 1837, the son of Richard Falley Cleveland, an itinerant Presbyterian minister, and Ann Neal. The death of Grover Cleveland's father in 1853 forced him to abandon school in order to support his mother and sisters. After clerking in a law firm in Buffalo, New York, he was admitted to the bar in 1859 and soon entered politics as a member of the Democratic Party. During the US Civil War (12 Apr 1861 – 26 Apr 1865) he was drafted but hired a substitute so that he could care for his mother, an altogether legal procedure but one that would make him vulnerable to political attack in the future. In 1863 he became assistant district attorney of Erie county, New York, and in 1870–1873 he served as county sheriff. With this slight political background and only modest success as a lawyer, the apparently unambitious Buffalo attorney launched perhaps the most meteoric rise in US politics.
      In 1881, eight years after stepping down as sheriff, Cleveland was nominated for mayor by Buffalo Democrats who remembered his honest and efficient service in that office. He won the election easily. As Buffalo's chief executive he became known as the “veto mayor” for hisrejection of spending measures he considered to be wasteful and corrupt. In 1882, without the support of the Tammany Hall Democratic machine in New York City, Cleveland received his party's nomination for governor, and he went on to crush his Republican opponent by more than 200'000 votes. As governor of New York, Cleveland again used the veto frequently, even to turn down measures that enjoyed wide public support. His devotion to principle and his unstinting opposition to Tammany Hall soon earned him a national reputation, particularly among those disgusted with the frequent scandals of Gilded Age politics.
      In 1884 the Democrats sought a presidential candidate who would contrast sharply with Republican nominee James G. Blaine [31 Jan 1830 – 27 Jan 1893], a longtime Washington insider whose reputation for dishonesty and financial impropriety prompted the Republican reformist Mugwump faction to bolt their party. Cleveland's image was the opposite of Blaine's, and he seemed likely to draw Mugwump votes to the Democratic ticket. As a result, Cleveland won the Democratic nomination with ease.
      During the campaign, Cleveland's image as the clean alternative to the supposedly sullied Blaine suffered serious damage when Republicans charged that the Democratic candidate had fathered a child out of wedlock some 10 years earlier. As Republicans joyously chortled, “Ma, ma, where's my pa?,” Cleveland remained undaunted, and he instructed Democratic leaders to “Tell the truth.” The truth, as Cleveland admitted, was that he had had an affair with the child's mother, Maria Halpin, and had agreed to provide financial support when she named him as the father, though he was uncertain whether the child was really his. Meanwhile, Democrats, trying to contrast Cleveland's reputation with Blaine's, chanted “Blaine Blaine, James G. Blaine, the continental liar from the state of Maine!” Late in the campaign, Blaine experienced an embarrassment of his own, when a supporter at a rally in New York City described the Democrats as the party of “rum, Romanism, and rebellion”, a swipe at the city's Irish Catholics, many of whom Blaine hoped to lure into his camp. Although Blaine was present when the fateful words were spoken, he did nothing to dissociate himself from the remark. The general election was determined by electoral votes from New York state, which Blaine lost to Cleveland by fewer than 1200 votes.
      As president, Cleveland continued to act in the same negative capacity that had marked his tenures as mayor and governor. He nullified fraudulent grants to some 30'000'000 hectares of Western public lands and vetoed hundreds of pension bills that would have sent federal funds to undeserving Civil War veterans. Once again, Cleveland's rejection of wasteful and corrupt measures endeared the president to citizens who admired his honesty and courage. He also received credit for two of the more significant measures enacted by the federal government in the 1880s: the Interstate Commerce Act (1887), which established the Interstate Commerce Commission, the first regulatory agency in the United States, and the Dawes General Allotment Act (08 Feb 1887), which redistributed Amerindian reservation land to individual tribe members.
      On 02 June 1886 Cleveland, a lifelong bachelor, married Frances Folsom, the daughter of his former law partner. Frances Cleveland, 27 years younger than her husband, proved to be a very popular first lady. To all appearances the marriage was a happy one, though during the 1888 presidential campaign she was forced to publicly refute Republican-spread rumors that Cleveland had beaten her during drunken rages.
      The major issue of the 1888 presidential campaign was the protective tariff. Cleveland, running for reelection, opposed the high tariff, calling it unnecessary taxation imposed upon US consumers, while Republican candidate Benjamin Harrison [20 Aug 1833 – 13 Mar 1901] defended protectionism. On election day, Cleveland won about 100'000 more popular votes than Harrison, evidence of the esteem in which the president was held and to the widespread desire for a lower tariff. Yet Harrison won the election by capturing a majority of votes in the electoral college (233 to 168), largely as a result of lavish campaign contributions from pro-tariff business interests in the crucial states of New York and Indiana.
      Cleveland spent the four years of the Harrison presidency in New York City, working for a prominent law firm. When the Republican-dominated Congress and the Harrison administration enacted the very high McKinley Tariff in 1890 and made the surplus in the treasury vanish in a massive spending spree, the path to a Democratic victory in 1892 seemed clear. Cleveland won his party's nomination for the third consecutive time and then soundly defeated Harrison and Populist Party candidate James B. Weaver [12 Jun 1833 – 06 Feb 1912] by 257 electoral votes to Harrison's 145 and Weaver's 22, making Cleveland the only US president ever elected to discontinuous terms.
      Early in Cleveland's second term the United States sank into the most severe economic depression the country had yet experienced. Cleveland believed that the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, which required the secretary of the treasury to purchase 4.5 million ounces of silver each month, had eroded confidence in the stability of the currency and was thus at the root of the nation's economic troubles. He called Congress into special session and, over considerable opposition from Southern and Western members of his own party, forced the repeal of the act. Yet the depression only worsened, and Cleveland's negative view of government began to diminish his popularity. Apart from assuring a sound, i.e., gold-backed, currency, he insisted the government could do nothing to alleviate the suffering of the many thousands of people who had lost jobs, homes, and farms. His popularity sank even lower when, distraught over the diminishing quantity of gold in the treasury, he negotiated with a syndicate of bankers headed by John Pierpont Morgan [17 Apr 1837 – 31 Mar 1913] to sell government bonds abroad for gold. The deal succeeded in replenishing the government's gold supply, but the alliance between the president and one of the era's leading “robber barons” intensified the feeling that Cleveland had lost touch with ordinary folks.
      That the president cared more about the interests of big business than those of the ordinary people of the US seemed manifest in Cleveland's handling of the Pullman Strike (11 May 1894 – 20 Jul 1894). Cleveland sent federal troops to Chicago to quell violence at Pullman's railroad car facility, despite the objections of Illinois Governor John P. Altgeld [30 Dec 1847 – 12 Mar 1902]. The strike was broken within a week, and the president received the plaudits of the business community. However, he had severed whatever support he still had in the ranks of labor.
      In foreign policy Cleveland displayed the same courageous righteousness that characterized much of his domestic policy. He withdrew from the Senate a treaty for the annexation of Hawaii (it took place anyhow in July 1898) when he learned how the Hawaiian leader, Queen Liliuokalani [02 Sep 1838 – 11 Nov 1917], had been overthrown in a US-led coup (Jan 1893). He also refused to be swept along with popular sentiment for intervention on behalf of Cuban insurgents fighting for independence from Spain. Yet he was not totally immune to the new spirit of US assertiveness on the international stage. By invoking the Monroe Doctrine (proclaimed 02 Dec 1823), for example, he forced Britain to accept arbitration of a boundary dispute between its colony of British Guiana (now Guyana) and neighboring Venezuela.
      At the tumultuous Democratic convention in 1896, the party was divided between supporters of Cleveland and the gold standard and those who wanted a bimetallic standard of gold and silver designed to expand the nation's money supply. When William Jennings Bryan [19 Mar 1860 – 26 Jul 1925] delivered his impassioned Cross of Gold speech (09 Jul 1896), the delegates not only nominated the little-known Bryan for president but also repudiated Cleveland, the first and only US president ever to be so repudiated by his own party.
      Cleveland retired to Princeton, New Jersey, where he became active in the affairs of Princeton University as a lecturer in public affairs and as a trustee (1901–1908). As the rancor over the gold standard subsided with the return of prosperity, Cleveland regained much of the public admiration he had earlier enjoyed. Never again, however, would the Democratic Party adhere to the pro-business, limited-government views that so dominated his presidency, and Cleveland remains the most conservative Democrat to have occupied the White House since the Civil War.

1901 Joseph (Flavius Josephus) Cook, COOK ONLINE: Outlines of Music Hall Lectures, Embracing Five Addresses on Factory Reform in the Largest Trade of the United States

^ 1894 Marie-François-Sadi Carnot, 56 ans.
      Le président de la République arrive à Lyon après une série de visites officielles en province. Il y préside un banquet et inaugure une exposition. Sur le chemin du Grand Théâtre qu'il rejoint en calèche découverte, tout à coup, un jeune homme sort de la foule, saute sur le marche-pieds et enfonce un poignard dans la poitrine du président en criant : " Vive l'anarchie ! " Le meurtrier, ceinturé sur le champ, est un ouvrier boulanger italien, âgé de vingt ans. Il s'appelle Santo Geronimo Caserio. La foule continue d'acclamer le président... Elle ne remarque pas qu'il est blessé et qu'il agonise. Le président meurt trois heures plus tard.
      Fils d’un batelier, Caserio est né en Lombardie. Devenu apprenti boulanger, il se convertit à l’anarchisme à une période où le terrorisme anarchiste italien connaît son apogée. Ses activités politiques lui valent une condamnation puis l’exil. Il exerce son métier à Lyon, à Vienne et à Sète. C’est dans cette dernière ville qu’il a l’idée d’accomplir "un grand exploit". Le lendemain, la veuve de Sadi Carnot reçoit une photographie de Ravachol, expédiée par Caserio, avec ces simples mots : "Il est bien vengé " Caserio accueille sa condamnation à mort en criant : "Vive la révolution sociale!". Il est guillotiné le 16 Aug 1894.
     Born on 11 August 1837, in Limoges, son of leftist deputy Hippolyte Carnot, and grandson of Lazare Carnot, the famous "Organizer of Victory" of the French Revolution, Sadi Carnot was educated as an engineer at the École Polytechnique and then the École des Ponts et Chaussées). After service as a government engineer at Annecy, he was named commissioner of Normandy with responsibility for organizing resistance there in the Franco-German War (1870-71). After a brief term as prefect of Seine-Inférieure he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies from the Côte d'Or département. Sitting with the Left Republicans, Carnot concentrated on issues concerning public works and railroad development.
      In October 1878 he was appointed undersecretary of public works, and in 1880 he took charge as minister. Elected vice president of the Chamber in April 1885, he served as minister of commerce and finance. In 1887 he was elected president of the republic without actively aspiring to the office. The Carnot presidency was marked by the plots of the political adventurer General Georges Boulanger, labor agitation, anarchist movements, and the Panama Canal scandals (1892). Yet he managed to retain his popularity through 10 different governments formed in the course of seven years.

1880 Jules Antoine Lissajous, French mathematician born on 04 March 1822. ^top^
Lissajous was interested in waves and developed an optical method for studying vibrations. At first he studied waves produced by a tuning fork in contact with water. In 1855 he described a way of studying acoustic vibrations by reflecting a light beam from a mirror attached to a vibrating object onto a screen. Duhamel had tried to demonstrate these vibrations with a mechanical linkage but Lissajous wanted to avoid the problems caused by the linkage. He obtained Lissajous figures [Parametric Cartesian equation: x = a sin(nt + c), y = b sin(t) >] by successively reflecting light from mirrors on two tuning forks vibrating at right angles. The curves are only seen because of persistence of vision in the human eye. Lissajous studied beats seen when his tuning forks had slightly different frequencies, in this case a rotating ellipse is seen.

1877 Robert Dale Owen. OWEN ONLINE: A New View of Society

1870 Adam Lindsay Gordon. GORDON ONLINE: Ashtaroth: A Dramatic Lyric , Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes , Poems , Sea Spray and Smoke Drift

^ 1859 Quelques 30'000 morts de la Bataille de Solférino
      Le royaume de Piemont et de Sardaigne, allié à la France, mène une guerre pour l’Indépendance de l’Italie contre l’Autriche. Pour prix de sa participation, la France recevra la Savoie et Nice. Deux sanglantes victoires, Magenta (04 Jun 1859) et Solferino, le 24 juin. Ce jour, les armées françaises et sardes font face à l'armée autrichienne.
      En dépit de la violence des combats qui font quelques 30'000 morts de part et d'autre et des milliers de blessés auxquels les religieuses ne parviennent pas à porter secours, cette bataille, livrée presque par hasard, est remportée par les armées françaises et sardes, grâce au courage des zouaves qui prennent d'assaut les fortifications du village de Solférino.
      Le soir, Napoléon III [20 Apr 1808 – 09 Jan 1873] télégraphie à Paris : "Grande bataille et grande victoire." Celui-ci, par peur de l’opinion publique, qui ne comprend pas que ses enfants aillent mourir en Italie, ainsi que par crainte de voir la Prusse entrer dans la guerre, arrête brusquement son aide. Le royaume de Piémont reçoit la Lombardie. Mais les mouvements de libération n’arrêteront pas pour autant. Les carbonari sont actifs et demandent l’union des états pontificaux au Piémont. C’est alors l’épisode "Garibaldi" (voir anniversaire des 24 Mars et 11 Mai).
     Henri Dunant [08 May 1828 – 30 Oct 1910], horrifié, organise des soins pour les blessés. De cette initiative, naîtra, en 1864, la Croix Rouge internationale.
The Italian Campaign of 1859.
//— Image: — Austrian Feldmarschalleutnant Ludwig Ritter von Benedek at Solferino (engraving 1099x900pix, 193kb) Benedek [14 Jul 1804 – 27 Apr 1881] was a Hungarian in the service of the Austro-Hungarian Empire which ruled northern Italy.

^ Soigner les blessés de Solférino.
      Un suisse, Henri Dunant , 31 ans, horrifié s'émeut devant le sort des victimes de la bataille de Solférino, ce sanglant combat. Il fait appel à des volontaires pour soigner les blessés. De cette initiative, naîtra , en 1864, la Croix Rouge internationale. La bataille de Solférino, si importante dans le processus d’unification et d’indépendance de l’Italie, connaît également une autre conséquence importante et positive, la création de la "Croix Rouge Internationale" par le suisse Henri Dunant.
      Philanthrope suisse, ce Genevois élevé dans l’atmosphère de piété milite dans les Unions chrétiennes de jeunes gens et entre au service de la Compagnie genevoise de colonisation, à Sétif. En 1858, tout en gardant la citoyenneté suisse, Henri Dunant est naturalisé français. Pour régler les problèmes nés de ses activités algériennes, il cherche à intéresser Napoléon III à ses difficultés en lui offrant la dédicace d’un ouvrage écrit à sa louange. En 1859, il le suit en Italie, lors de la guerre contre l’Autriche. Cette circonstance va décider de sa destinée. Il se trouve présent, sur les arrières de l’armée française, à la journée de Solferino (24 Jun), qui fait 40'000 tués et blessés. Dunant voit affluer au quartier général de Castiglione les blessés et les mourants. Il constate l’incurie et l’indifférence avec laquelle on traite les victimes. Dunant improvise des secours, organise les soins, mobilise les volontés et, jusqu’au 12 Jul, continue son action à Brescia, publiant dans les journaux de Genève des appels à la charité.
      Il traduit le choc qui a bouleversé sa vie dans un récit, publié en novembre 1862, Un souvenir de Solferino. Toute l’Europe s’émeut à la lecture de ces pages qui auront huit éditions, jusqu’en 1873. L’auteur formule le vœu de "quelque principe international, conventionnel et sacré, lequel, une fois agréé et ratifié, servirait de base à des sociétés de secours pour les blessés dans les divers pays de l’Europe". Son souhait trouve un écho à la Société Genevoise d’Utilité Publique. Une commission est créée. Elle charge Dunant de présenter le mémoire qu’elle a élaboré, au Congrès de statistique de Berlin, en septembre 1863. La Commission des cinq se transforme en un Comité international de secours aux blessés. Dans la capitale prussienne, Dunant, aidé du médecin militaire hollandais Basting, lance un appel aux puissances pour réunir une conférence internationale à Genève, initiative qui fait de lui le promoteur indiscutable de la future Croix-Rouge.
      La Conférence de Genève, groupant les représentants de seize États, s’ouvre en octobre 1863. Elle préconise la création de sociétés nationales de secours aux blessés militaires officiellement reconnues. Appia et Dufour font adopter un signe distinctif : le brassard blanc à croix rouge, inverse du drapeau fédéral suisse. Le 24 Aug 1864 sont signées les conventions de Genève, qui jettent les bases du droit humanitaire qui seront développée dans des conventions ultérieures. Elles font obligation de soigner les blessés, sans distinction de nationalité, et prévoient la neutralisation du personnel et du matériel sanitaires. Dunant est alors au comble de sa renommée et couvert d’honneurs. Vice-président de la Société française de secours aux blessés militaires (1864), il parcourt l’Europe pour propager l’idéal de la Croix-Rouge.
      Son imagination ne cesse d’engendrer des projets politico-économiques passablement utopiques, comme la neutralisation de la Méditerranée ou, ce qui fait de lui un précurseur du sionisme, le retour des Juifs en Palestine. Ses affaires algériennes périclitent et Dunant use de son crédit pour tenter de les renflouer en multipliant les emprunts. Il fait investir plus de trois millions de francs dans des mines, des fabriques, des exploitations forestières, mal gérées et déficitaires. En 1867, le Crédit Genevois, principal créancier, le fait déclarer en faillite et condamner comme civilement responsable.
      À trente-neuf ans, totalement ruiné, Dunant quitte sa ville natale. Mis au ban de la société, il démissionne de ses fonctions de secrétaire du Comité international de la Croix-Rouge, qui passe désormais son nom sous silence. Il cherche à rétablir sa situation, mêlant philanthropie et commerce dans des entreprises qui s’avèrent malheureuses. En 1888, il échoue à Heiden, comme indigent, à l’hôpital du district. Pendant vingt ans, dans son étroite chambre, Dunant accumule une énorme documentation, écrit et récrit ses Mémoires, qu’il laissera inachevées. Il a retrouvé quelques fidèles, qui s’emploient à le tirer de l’isolement.
      En 1895, Georg Baumgartner, journaliste au Züricher Nachrichten, apprend, par hasard, l’existence du créateur de la Croix-Rouge. Dans des articles à sensation, il dénonce le "scandale Dunant" et lance un appel au Conseil fédéral suisse, pour que soit rendue au philanthrope la place qui lui revient. Dunant reprend la plume pour soutenir les idées sur le pacifisme et le désarmement qui connaissent un regain de faveur à la fin du XIXe siècle. L’opinion européenne le redécouvre. En 1901, tardive réhabilitation, il reçoit, avec le pacifiste français Frédéric Passy [20 May 1822 – 12 Jun 1912], le premier prix Nobel de la paix et lègue le capital qui lui est attribué à des œuvres de bienfaisance. Déjà entré dans la légende, il meurt à Heiden le 30 octobre 1910.

1794 Gerrit Zegelaar, Dutch artist born on 16 July 1719.
1832 Timofey Fedorovich Osipovsky, Russian mathematician born on 02 February 1765. His most famous work is A Course of Mathematics (3 volumes, 1801-1823).
1693 Isaac Willaerts, Utrecht Dutch painter born in 1620.

Births which occurred on a 24 June:

^ 1935 Pete Hamill, son of Irish immigrants, in an Irish neighborhood in Brooklyn.
The oldest of a large brood of children, Hamill grew up playing stickball in a blue-collar neighborhood but was fascinated with comic books and novels. With the neighborhood tavern the center of the neighborhood's social life, Hamill started drinking at an early age. Although his love for books had won him admittance to an elite high school in Manhattan, he felt out of place and dropped out. Drawn by his love of comic books and art, Hamill went to art school and became a graphic artist after a period of drifting and living in Mexico. He eventually landed a job at the New York Post, which turned into a writing job and a regular, widely read column. A heavy drinker, Hamill finally quit on New Year's Eve, 1972. His memoir, A Drinking Life, describes his lifelong relationship with alcohol and draws a colorful picture of Brooklyn neighborhood life in the 1940s and 1950s.

^ 1920 La Tchouvachie créée comme oblast autonome
     République libre de la Fédération de Russie depuis 1991, la Tchouvachie est devenue République socialiste soviétique autonome le 21 avril 1925. Elle occupe, au sein de la région économique Volga-Viatka, un territoire de 18'300 kilomètres carrés comprenant 1'353'000 habitants selon les estimations de 1992.
      Au recensement de 1970, les représentants de la nationalité éponyme, qui appartiennent au groupe turc de la famille ethno-linguistique altaïque, étaient au nombre de 856'000, formant ainsi 70 % de la population de la république à laquelle ils ont donné leur nom. À cette date, 299'000 Russes, 36'000 Tatares et 21.000 Mordves vivaient à leurs côtés, alors que 838'000 Tchouvaches étaient installés en dehors des frontières de la Tchouvachie.
      Bien que multipliée par 26 entre 1940 et 1971, la valeur de la production industrielle demeure faible en Tchouvachie, région avant tout agricole. L’énergie produite provient essentiellement des centrales hydrauliques de la région. On y trouve des industries du bois, de matériel de construction, des industries chimiques, textiles et alimentaires. L’urbanisation reste faible; la capitale de la République, Tcheboksary, a cependant vu sa population passer de 9000 habitants en 1926 à 104'000 en 1939 et à 442'000 en 1992, mais elle doit cette progression aux investissements consentis par les pouvoirs publics fédéraux en faveur de la Tchouvachie, qui lui sont réservés en priorité.

1915 Sir Fred Hoyle British mathematician and astronomer best known as the foremost proponent of the steady-state theory of the universe. This theory holds both that the universe is expanding and that matter is being continuously created to keep the mean density of matter in space constant.
1913 Mario Servando Carreño, Cuban painter. — MORE ON CARREÑO AT ART “4” JUNE with links to images.
1909 William George Penney, English mathematician and nuclear physicist who died on 03 March 1991.
1883 Jean Metzinger, French Cubist painter, critic, and poet, who died on 03 November 1956. — MORE ON METZINGER AT ART “4” JUNE — LINKS with links to images.
1880 Oswald Veblen, US mathematician who died on 10 August 1960. He made important contributions to topology, and to projective and differential geometry. Author of The invariants of quadratic differential forms (1927) and of Projective relativity theory (1933).
1866 Giovanni Bartolena, Italian artist who died in 1942.
1865 Robert Henry Cozad “Robert Henri”, US painter and teacher who died on 12 July 1929.
1850 Horatio Herbert Kitchener England, original Order of Merit member.
1847 Joseph Noël Sylvestre, French artist who died on 08 November 1926.
1842 Ambrose Gwinnet Bierce US, satirist who wrote The Friend's Delight and The Devil's Dictionary. BIERCE ONLINE: Can Such Things Be?, Fantastic Fables, : My Favorite Murder, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
1839 Gustavus Franklin Swift, US business leader, founded Swift & Co. He died on 29 March 1903.
1831 Rebecca Blaine Harding (married name: Davis). HARDING ONLINE: Bits of Gossip, Frances Waldeaux , Life in the Iron-Mills

^ 1813 Henry Ward Beecher , liberal US Congregational minister, who would die on 08 March 1887. His oratorical skill and social concern made him one of the most influential Protestant spokesmen of his time.
      He was the eighth of the 13 children of the prominent Congregationalist minister Lyman Beecher [12 Oct 1775 – 10 Jan 1863], of which the best know is Harriet Beecher Stowe [14 Jun 1811 – 01 Jul 1896] author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Henry Ward Beecher showed little promise at various schools until he went to Amherst in 1830. Though never distinguished as a scholar, he became a superior speaker and popular leader.
      After three postgraduate years in Cincinnati, Ohio, at Lane Theological Seminary, of which his father became president in 1832, Beecher in 1837 became minister to a small Presbyterian congregation at Lawrenceburg, Ind. He gradually cultivated his pulpit technique, there and in a pastorate at Indianapolis, Ind. (1839–1847), and came to believe that a sermon succeeds by focussing on the single objective of effecting a moral change in the hearer. A highly successful preacher and lecturer, Beecher furthered his reputation through Seven Lectures to Young Men (1844), vivid exhortations on the vices and dangers in a frontier community.
      In 1847 he accepted a call to Plymouth Church (Congregational), Brooklyn, N.Y., where he drew weekly crowds of 2500 by the early 1850s. Though his influence upon public affairs was sometimes exaggerated, both his pronouncements and his personal life were regularly matters of national and even international interest. He gradually became more emphatic in opposing slavery, and his lectures of 1863 in England won over audiences initially hostile to him and to the Northern point of view. Increasingly outspoken after the Civil War, he supported a moderate Reconstruction policy for the South, favored the candidacy of Grover Cleveland [18 Mar 1837 – 24 Jun 1908] in the 1884 presidential campaign, and advocated women's suffrage, evolutionary theory, and scientific biblical criticism. His outlets for these issues, in addition to Plymouth Church, were The Independent, a Congregational journal he edited in the early 1860s, and the nondenominational Christian Union (later Outlook), which he founded in 1870.
      Beecher, always considered an emotional and sensual man, became in the 1870s the subject of rumors alleging immoral affairs, and he was sued in 1874 by his former friend and literary protégé Theodore Tilton [02 Oct 1835 – 25 May 1907], who charged him with adultery with his wife. Two ecclesiastical tribunals exonerated Beecher, though the jury in the civil suit failed to reach agreement, as have later students of the evidence. Despite the scandal, however, he remained active and influential until his death.
      Beecher's many works include The Beecher Trial: A Review of the Evidence , Life Thoughts, Gathered from the Extemporaneous Discourses of Henry Ward Beecher , Morning and Evening Exercises , New Star Papers: or, Views and Experiences of Religious Subjects , Plain and Pleasant Talk about Fruits, Flowers and Farming, War and Emancipation , Evolution and Religion (1885); Life of Jesus the Christ (1871, 1891); Yale Lectures on Preaching (1872–1874); many sermons; and a novel, Norwood: A Tale of Village Life in New England (1867).

1797 John Hughes, in Ireland. He would become the Catholic Archbishop of New York, who would die on 03 January 1864.
1771 E I Du Pont France, chemist/scientist (Du Pont)
1616 Ferdinand Janszoon van Bol, Dutch Baroque era painter who died on 24 July 1680. — Ferdinand Bol Leaning on Window Sill (etching) by von Bartsch. — Young Man in Velvet Cap (Ferdinand Bol) (etching) by Rembrandt. — MORE ON VAN BOL AT ART “4” JUNE with links to images.
1542: Juan de Yepes y Álvarez, better known as Saint John of the Cross. SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS ONLINE: Ascent of Mount Carmel , Dark Night of the Soul, The Living Flame of Love, A Spiritual Canticle of the Soul and the Bridegroom Christ
1519 Theodore Beza, French-born Swiss theological reformer. Beza became the acknowledged leader of the Swiss Calvinists, following John Calvin's death in 1564.

Holidays / Azores : Feriado Municipal Augra / Canada, PR : St John the Baptist/St Jean Baptiste Day/San Juan Day / Europe : Midsummer Day / Peru : Countryman's Day/Day of the Indian/Dia del Indio / Scotland : Bannockburn Day (1314) / Venezuala : Army Day/Carabobo Day (1821) / Za‹re : Constitution Day

Religious Observances Ang, RC, Luth, Cong : Nativity of St John the Baptist

Thoughts for the day:
“The wise shepherd never trusts his flock to a smiling wolf.”
“The wise wolf never trusts a smiling shepherd.”

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