<<
May 27|
HISTORY
4 2DAY May
29 >> Events, deaths, births, of 28 MAY [For May 28 Julian go to Gregorian date: 1583~1699: Jun 07 1700s: Jun 08 1800s: Jun 09 1900~2099: Jun 10] |
• Belgium surrenders... • Addis Ababa falls to rebels...
• Tortilla Flat is published...
• Plane lands on Red Square...
• Securities fraud... • Condamnés à mort par la Révolution...
• US abandons Hamburger Hill...
• Appeal for Amnesty... • Blacks go to Civil War...
• 2 bank mergers... • Shroud of Turin photographed...
• Golden Gate Bridge opens to cars...
• French and Indian War...
• Dionne quintuplets are born...
• The Virginian is published...
• Poet Moore is born... |
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2003 Human rights in 2002. Amnesty International publishes its 2003 Annual Report (covering the year 2002). US usurper-president “Dubya” Bush (aka Hegemony-Seeking Unilateralist) is responsible for a war of aggression on Iraq which has not verified his pretexts, but has resulted in chaos in Iraq and increased hardships for innocent Iraqis. This and the al-Aqsa intifada have dominated the news, diverting attention from other vital human rights issues. “Forgotten” conflicts have taken a heavy toll on human rights and human lives – in Côte d'Ivoire, Colombia, Burundi, Chechnya, Nepal, etc. In Ituri in the DReCongo (Democratic Republic of Congo, former Zaïre) there is an imminent threat of genocide. Governments have spent billions allegedly to strengthen national security and to wage "war on terror[ism]". Yet for millions of people, the real sources of insecurity are corruption, repression, discrimination, extreme poverty, and preventable diseases. There have been some human rights successes during 2002, such as the establishment of the International Criminal Court, which the Bush usurper-regime was almost alone in rejecting, as it has many other international agreements which have almost unanimous support. The report documents human rights abuses in 2002 in 151 countries and territories: North America Canada — USA — Mexico Caribbean Bahamas — Cuba — Dominican Republic — Haiti — Jamaica — Puerto Rico — St Lucia — Trinidad & Tobago Central America Belize — El Salvador — Guatemala — Honduras — Nicaragua South America Argentina — Bolivia — Brazil — Chile — Colombia — Ecuador — Guyana — Paraguay — Peru — Suriname — Uruguay — Venezuela Eastern Europe Czech Republic — Hungary — Romania — Slovak Republic — Estonia — Latvia Western Europe Austria — Belgium — Denmark — Finland — France — Germany — Ireland — Italy — Portugal — Spain — Sweden — Switzerland — UK Commonwealth Of Independent States Armenia — Azerbaijan — Belarus — Georgia — Kazakstan — Kyrgyzstan — Moldova — Russian Federation — Tajikistan — Turkmenistan — Ukraine — Uzbekistan South-East Europe Albania — Bosnia~Herzegovina — Bulgaria — Croatia — Greece — Macedonia — Serbia and Montenegro Pacific Australia — Fiji — New Zealand — Papua New Guinea — Solomon Islands East Asia China — Japan — North Korea — South Korea — Taiwan South-East Asia Cambodia — Indonesia — Laos — Malaysia — Myanmar — Philippines — Singapore — Thailand — Timor~Leste — Viet Nam South Asia Afghanistan — Bangladesh — Bhutan — India — Maldives — Nepal — Pakistan — Sri Lanka Middle East Bahrain — Iran — Iraq — Israel/Occupied Territories — Jordan — Kuwait — Lebanon — Palestinian Authority — Qatar — Saudi Arabia — Syria — Turkey — UAE — Yemen North Africa Algeria — Egypt — Libya — Morocco/Western Sahara — Tunisia Central Africa Burundi — Cameroon — Central African Republic — Chad — Congo — Democratic Republic Of Congo — Equatorial Guinea — Rwanda Southern Africa Angola — Comoros — Madagascar — Malawi — Mauritius — Mozambique — Namibia — South Africa — Swaziland — Zambia — Zimbabwe East Africa Eritrea — Ethiopia — Kenya — Somalia — Sudan — Tanzania — Uganda West Africa Burkina Faso — Côte d'Ivoire — Gambia — Guinea — Guinea-Bissau — Liberia — Mauritania — Niger — Nigeria — Senegal — Sierra Leone — Togo REGIONAL SUMMARIES: Africa — Americas — Asia and the Pacific — Europe and Central Asia — Middle East and North Africa. |
2002 NATO and Russia sign a cooperation agreement, in
a military base near Rome. Then US president Bush (Jr.), who, like Russian
president Putin and other leaders was in attendance, visits the Pope.
MORE 2001 In an interview with ABC's correspondent John Miller, Osama Bin Laden makes the following comment on the fatwa which he issued calling Muslims to kill Americans regardless of whether they are civilians or military: "Allah ordered us in this religion to purify Muslim land of all non-believers… After World War II, the Americans became more aggressive and oppressive, especially in the Muslim world. American history does not distinguish between civilians and military, and not even women and children. They are the ones who used the bombs against Nagasaki. Can these bombs distinguish between infants and military? America does not have a religion that will prevent it from destroying all people." (The interview would be broadcast on 10 June 2001). 2000 President Alberto Fujimori "wins" overwhelmingly an election in Peru which is considered invalid by international observers and by his challenger Alejandro Toledo who boycotted the election. Fujimori does not know it yet, but this is the beginning of his downfall.
1993 Claudio Rodríguez, Premio Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras.
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1991 US Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and other NATO
defense chiefs agree to create a rapid reaction corps as part of a broad
plan to reshape the Western alliance in the post-Cold War era Los
15 ministros de Defensa de los países de la OTAN acuerdan en Bruselas constituir
las "fuerzas de reacción rápida" con cuatro divisiones de carácter multinacional,
bajo mando británico, cambio histórico del esquema defensivo occidental.
1990 El poeta asturiano Carlos Bousoño obtiene el Premio Nacional de Poesía de España por su obra "Metáfora del desacuerdo".
1972 White House "plumbers" break into Democratic Nat'l HQ at Watergate 1971 USSR Mars 3 launched, first spacecraft to soft land on Mars. |
1969
US abandons Hamburger Hill ^top^
Eight days after the costly taking of Hamburger Hill during the Vietnam war, US forces abandon the position, now considered of no military value. On May 20, after ten days and ten bloody assaults, Hill 937, known as "Hamburger Hill" by the Americans who fought there, was finally captured by US and South Vietnamese troops. Located 1.5 km east of the Laotian border, Hill 937 was to be taken as part of Operation Apache Snow, a mission intended to limit enemy infiltration from Laos that threatened Hue to the northeast and Danang to the southeast. On May 10, following air and artillery strikes, a US-led infantry force launched its first assault on the North Vietnamese stronghold, but suffered a high proportion of casualties and fell back. Ten more infantry assaults came over the next ten days, and Hill 937’s North Vietnamese defenders did not give up their fortified position until 20 May. Almost one hundred Americans had been killed and more than 400 had been wounded, amounting to a shocking 70-percent casualty rate during the ten-day battle. The same day that Hamburger Hill was finally captured, Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts called the operation "senseless and irresponsible" and attacked the military tactics of President Richard Nixon’s administration. His speech before the Senate was seen as part of a growing public outcry over the US military policy in Vietnam. In the next week, US military command reversed their stance on the strategic importance of Hamburger Hill, and, on May 28 it was abandoned, just one week after it was taken. North Vietnamese forces eventually returned and re-fortified their original position. US troops abandon "Hamburger Hill" (Ap Bia Mountain). A spokesman for the 101st Airborne Division said that the US troops "have completed their search of the mountain and are now continuing their reconnaissance-in-force mission throughout the A Shau Valley." This announcement came amid the public outcry about what had become known as the "Battle of Hamburger Hill." The battle was part of Operation Apache Snow in the A Shau Valley. The operation began on 10 May when paratroopers from the 101st Airborne engaged a North Vietnamese regiment on the slopes of Hill 937, known to the Vietnamese as Ap Bia Mountain. Entrenched in prepared fighting positions, the North Vietnamese 29th Regiment repulsed the initial American assault and beat back another attempt by the 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry on 14 May. An intense battle raged for the next 10 days as the mountain came under heavy Allied air strikes, artillery barrages, and 10 infantry assaults. On 20 May, Maj. Gen. Melvin Zais, commanding general of the 101st, sent in two additional US airborne battalions and a South Vietnamese battalion as reinforcements. The communist stronghold was finally captured in the 11th attack, when the American and South Vietnamese soldiers fought their way to the summit of the mountain. In the face of the four-battalion attack, the North Vietnamese retreated to sanctuary areas in Laos. During the intense fighting, 597 North Vietnamese were reported killed and US casualties were 56 killed and 420 wounded. Due to the bitter fighting and the high loss of life, the battle for Ap Bia Mountain received widespread unfavorable publicity in the United States and was dubbed "Hamburger Hill" in the US media, a name evidently derived from the fact that the battle turned into a "meat grinder." The purpose of the operation was not to hold territory but rather to keep the North Vietnamese off balance so the decision was made to abandon the mountain shortly after it was captured. The North Vietnamese occupied it a month after it was abandoned. Outrage over what appeared to be a senseless loss of American lives was exacerbated by pictures published in Life magazine of 241 US soldiers killed during the week of the battle. Gen. Creighton Abrams, commander of US Military Assistance Command Vietnam, was ordered to avoid such battles. Because of Hamburger Hill, and other battles like it, US emphasis was placed on "Vietnamization" turning the war over to the South Vietnamese forces rather than engage in direct combat operations. |
1967 Francis Chichester llega en su nave a Plymouth
(Inglaterra) tras dar la vuelta al mundo en solitario. 1963 Jomo Kenyatta becomes first PM of Kenya 1962 Suit alleging de facto school segregation filed in Rochester NY 1962 US stock market drops $20.8 Billion in 1 day 1961 Last trip on the Orient Express (after 78 years)
1958 The Presbyterian Church in the US merged with the Presbyterian Church of North America to form the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (UPCUSA). 1954 US President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a bill which adds the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance. 1953 Première of first animated 3-D cartoon in Technicolor-"Melody" 1952 En Grecia, las mujeres obtienen el derecho al voto. 1940 Capitulation de la Belgique par son roi, Léopold III Début de l'évacuation de Dunkerque, terminée le 3 juin (The Brandenburg commandos, warrior spies of Nazi Germany).
1937 Neville Chamberlain became prime minister of Britain. Dimite el primer ministro inglés, Stanley Baldwin, y le sucede Neville Chamberlain. |
1926 Military coup in Portugal Golpe militar del general Francisco Gomes da Costa en Portugal. 1924 José Martínez Ruiz, "Azorín", es elegido por unanimidad miembro de la Real Academia Española de la Lengua. 1918 Tatars declares Azerbaijan, in Russian Caucasus, independent El partido nacionalista "Mussavet" se adueña del poder y proclama la independencia de Azerbaiyán. 1917 El Parlamento británico aprueba el proyecto de ley de sufragio femenino, que concede el voto a las mujeres en el Reino Unido, aunque limitado a las mayores de 30 años que sean cabeza de familia. 1900 Britain annexes Orange Free State (as Orange River Colony) 1900 Eclipse solar total, visible desde la mayor parte de la Península Ibérica.
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1870 El ministro de Ultramar español, Segismundo Moret
y Prendergast, presenta una ley de abolición gradual de la esclavitud. 1864 Llega a Veracruz el nuevo emperador de México, el archiduque de Habsburgo Maximiliano de Austria, impuesto por la monarquía constitucional que establecen los franceses, con el que empieza el II Imperio mexicano. 1863 The 54th Massachusetts, a regiment of African-American recruits, leaves Boston, headed for Hilton Head, South Carolina.
1851, the Ohio Woman's Rights Convention opens in Akron. 1830 In a crime against humanity, the US Congress authorizes Indian removal from all states to western prairie [ethnic cleansing?]. (The good, the bad and the ugly of conquering the US West). 1818 Former president Thomas Jefferson set forth in a letter to a Jewish journalist his opinion of religious intolerance: 'Your sect by its sufferings has furnished a remarkable proof of the universal point of religious insolence, inherent in every sect, disclaimed by all while feeble and practised by all when in power. Our laws have applied the only antidote to this vice, protecting our religions, as they do our civil rights, by putting all on equal footing. But more remains to be done.' 1813 Guerra de la Independencia española: las tropas francesas salen de Madrid llevándose cuantas riquezas y obras de arte pueden. 1812 Rusia y Turquía firman el primer tratado de Bucarest, por el que el zar ruso adquiría Besarabia a cambio de la devolución de los territorios conquistados en Asia al sultán turco. 1805 Napoléon is crowned in Milan, Italy. 1794 (9 prairial an II) GERBAUD Joseph, propriétaire, domicilié à Bedouin, canton de Carpentras, département de Vaucluse, est condamné à mort par contumace, par le tribunal criminel dudit département, comme contre-révolutionnaire. 1785 Real decreto de Carlos III por el que se declara la bandera roja y amarilla como enseña de la Armada española. 1774 first Continental Congress convenes in Virginia. 1742 first indoor swimming pool opens (Goodman's Fields, London) 1741 Pacto de Nymphenburg entre Felipe V de España y el príncipe electo de Baviera, Carlos, a fin de asegurar para la corona imperial de Alemania una parte de Austria y a España sus posesiones en Italia. 1664 first Baptist Church organized (Boston) 1539 Hernando de Soto lands in Florida 1533 England's archbishop declared the marriage of King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn valid. 1486 Conquista de Loja (Granada) a los árabes por Fernando el Católico, acción en la que se distinguió Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba y Aguilar, el "Gran Capitán". 0640 Severinus begins his reign as Pope 585 -BC- Thales of Miletus predicts solar eclipse; it interrupts a battle outside of Sardis in western Turkey between Medes and Lydians. The battle ends in a draw. |
Deaths
which occurred on a 28 May: 2003 Ilya Prigogine, born on 25 January 1917, who received the 1977 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his contributions to non-equilibrium thermodynamics, particularly the theory of dissipative structures. 2003 Yukichi Chuganji, on Kyushu Island, Japan, born on 23 March 1889, who was the world's oldest man alive , retired silkworm breeder, who had also been a bank employee and a community welfare officer. Kamato Hongo, of Tokunoshima Island, Kagoshima prefecture, Japan, born on 16 September 1887, remains the world's oldest living woman since the death of Maude Farris-Luse [21 Jan 1887 – 18 Mar 2002]. 2002 Napoleon Beazley, by lethal injection, in Texas, for having, on 19 April 1994, when he was 17, shot twice in the head John Luttig, 63, in order to steal his Mercedes car, with the complicity of brothers Cedric and Donald Coleman. steals Luttig's Mercedes car. The execution comes despite international appeals on Beazley's behalf, because he is Black and was below age 18 at the time of the crime, and the victim's son J. Michael Luttig, a federal appeals judge in Virginia, came to the Tyler, Texas, trial and unduly influenced it, and the jury had no Black on it. 2002 Three yeshiva students, and a gunman from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, who shoots them in the West Bank enclave settlement of Itamar, near Nablus, in the evening, and is in turn shot by the settlement's security officer. 2002 Albert Malul, 50, of Jerusalem, by shots fired at the car in which he was traveling, south of the West Bank settlement of Ofra, coming from Jerusalem on Road 60 (the Ramallah bypass road), prior to reaching the Burka junction. 2002 Mildred Wirt Benson, author, under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene, of 23 of the 30 original Nancy Drew mysteries, about a beautiful, rich, smart 16-year-old girl who solved crimes. All Benson got was $125 per book, no royalties from the books (200 million books in 17 languages, including those by those who followed her, under the same pseudonym), movies, and board games. Benson wrote more than 100 other books, including the Penny Parker mystery series. Benson was born on 10 July 1905. 2001 At least 12 persons in coup attempt by Central African Republic poorly paid soldiers against President Ange-Félix Patasse. The dead include 7 members of the presidential guard. Patasse first won election in 1993, ending more than a decade of army rule. He won re-election in 1999 amid opposition claims of vote fraud. 2001 Kelly Coblentz, 16, of neisseria meninigitidis, sophomore at West Branch High School, in Alliance, Ohio. Coming after the death from the same cause of another student from the same school on 23 May, this causes a scare and motivates a preventive mass vaccination. 1998 Phil(ip Edward) Hartman(n), 49, and Brynn Hartman, 40, his third wife, who, under the influence of alcohol and cocaine, shoots her husband in the early hours, goes and tells a friend, who does not believe her, returns home with the friend, locks herself in a room and shoots herself; in Encino, California. (Phil Hartman's father died on 30 April 1998). — MORE 1995: 1989 personas en un seísmo en Neftegorsk (isla rusa de Sajalín). Hubo 1208 supervivientes. 1981 Stefan Wyszynski, cardenal primado de Polonia. 1980 Rolf Herman Nevanlinna, Finnish mathematician. His most important work was on harmonic measure, which he invented in 1936. He also developed the theory of value distribution named after him. 1977: 164 persons in fire at the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Kentucky. 1972 Duke of Windsor, 77, in Paris. As Edward VIII, he had abdicated the British throne in 1938 to marry divorcée Wallis Warfield Simpson. 1968 Cornelis Theodorus Maria Kees van Dongen, Dutch-born French painter born on 26 January 1877. MORE ON VAN DONGEN AT ART 4 MAY with links to images. 1963 Estimated 22'000 in cyclone in Bay of Bengal (India) 1921 Konrad Kiesel, German artist born on 29 November 1846. 1912 Paul Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, químico francés. 1885 Francis John Williamson, British artist born in 1826.
1805 Luigi Boccherini, compositor italiano. 1794 Elisabeth-Georgine van Hogenhuyzen, Dutch artist born in 1776.
1749 Pierre Hubert Subleyras, French painter born in 1699, specialized in Historical Subjects. MORE ON SUBLEYRAS AT ART 4 MAY with links to images. 1748 Ignaz Stern Stella, German artist born in 1680. 1723 Willem Grasdorp, Dutch artist born on 15 October 1678. |
Births
which occurred on a 28 May: 2003 Prometea, Haflinger mare, born naturally and unassisted to the mare from whose skin cells she was cloned, at the Laboratory of Reproductive Technology in Cremona, Italy. She is the only success out of 841 mare eggs whose DNA had been replaced by that taken from skin cells of various horses and mares. 22 of the 841 developed to advanced embryos within about a week. 17 of those were introduced into nine mares, resulting in 4 pregnancies, but only Prometea developed to full term. [04 April 2003 photo >] 2002 Adam D. Pearl, to Mariane Pearl, free-lance journalist who lives in Paris, where she had met and married Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was abducted on 23 January 2003 (at age 38) in Karachi by Islamic militants who later videotaped their slitting of his throat. [< click on image for full photo of baby and mother] 1944 Rudolph Giuliani (politician: Mayor of New York City, 2000 Republican Senatorial candidate withdrawing, his replacement lost to Democrat Hillary Clinton) 1942 Stanley B. Prusiner, bioquímico y neurólogo estadounidense.
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1934
Émilie Marie Jeanne, Yvonne Edouilda Marie, Cécile Marie Emilda, Marie Reine
Alma, and Annette Lillianna Marie Dionne.
^top^ The quintuplets are born (two months premature) in Corbeil, Ontario, to Oliva and Elzire Dionne, a poor Ontario farming couple who already had had nine children, of which five (3 boys, 2 girls) are living. Oliva Dionne had married Elzire Legros on 15 Sep 1925. The quintuplets, each weighing less than 1 kg, are the first to survive more than a few days, and the only identical quintuplets in history. A sixth baby was spontaneously aborted during the third month of pregnancy. The quints became media sensations. Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe (died in 1941), the doctor who delivered the babies also became a celebrity. |
Left to right: Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, Émilie, Marie. The Canadian government takes custody of the quints after deeming their natural parents unfit to raise them. The babies are put under Dr. Dafoe's supervision in a popular attraction named "Quintland.", across from the parents' home. As many as 6000 tourists a day pay to see the quints, who are exhibited three times a day behind one-way glass. The rest of the Dionne family had to make appointments to visit the quints, who lived under a strict regime. The quintuplets became international celebrities during their early years making three feature films for Twentieth-Century Fox, providing profitable endorsements for products from cod-liver oil to typewriters and automobiles, and attracting hordes of tourists to northern Ontario. In 1935 Ontario made them wards of the government, but their father regained control in 1941. The "Quints" were remarkable in being the first medically and genetically documented set that survived; not one member of any other quintuplet set had previously lived more than a few days. Much credit for the survival of the five premature infants was owing to the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, which quickly made available to Dafoe quantities of mother's milk and modern incubators and other equipment. The University of Toronto conducted biological, psychological, and dental studies of the quintuplets. The biological study established that the set originated from one fertilized egg. The Dionne quintuplets arose through repeated twinning of the early single embryo; therefore, six embryos were produced, and the five infants surviving birth inherited the same genetic material. Three of the sisters married: Annette had three sons; Marie had two daughters; and Cécile had four sons and one daughter. Only Cécile had a multiple birth: twin sons, one of whom died at the age of 15 months. Émilie died of an epileptic seizure on 06 August 1954, at Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, Que.; Marie died in Montreal on 27 February 1970. * Three survivors of famed quints say father sexually abused them (25 Sep 1995 ) Now the three surviving sisters, world-famous as toddlers in the 1930s, say they were sexually abused by their father. The usually reclusive sisters Annette, Cécile and Yvonne, now 61 made the allegation publicly for the first time during a rare interview over the weekend on Radio-Canada's French-language television channel. "We've come to a point where we had to liberate ourselves from the past and turn the page," Annette Dionne said Saturday when asked why she waited so long to break the silence. The identical quintuplets were taken away from their parents and made wards of the Ontario government, which put them on display for as many as 6000 persons a day who came to watch them play behind a one-way screen. Their father, Oliva, fought a nine-year battle to regain custody of his daughters. They were returned to their parents in 1943, and the abuse began soon after, the sisters said. Annette said their father, who died in 1979, would take the girls out one at a time in the family car and sexually assault them. As a teen-ager, Annette said she tried to discuss the abuse with a Roman Catholic priest at their private school. The advice she received was "to continue to love our parents and to wear a thick coat when we went for car rides," she said. The sisters said the abuse continued for several years. They never told their mother about the assaults "so as not to aggravate the situation," said Cécile Dionne. Oliva Dionne and his wife, Elzire, already had five children three boys and two girls when the quints were born. One of those siblings, Therese Callahan, on Monday challenged her sisters' claims about sexual abuse. "We assert that we had good parents, and that to our knowledge our father was certainly not a sexual abuser," Mrs. Callahan told the North Bay Nugget, an Ontario daily. She said she was speaking on behalf of the other older children in the family. However, Pierre Berton, who wrote a book about the quintuplets, said he had been told years ago by the husband of one of the quints about the sexual abuse. Berton said the sisters wouldn't talk about it. Two of the quintuplets Emilie and Marie died as adults. The three survivors live in suburbs of Montreal, rarely attracting attention since they co-authored an often bitter book in 1965 about their childhood, called "We Were Five." The sisters spoke mostly about their ordeal as Canada's No. 1 tourist attraction during the late 1930s. Authorities placed them in a virtual theme park called Quintland, across from the parents' home in Corbeil. Annette Dionne blamed both Ontario officials and the Roman Catholic Church for allowing them to be treated like "a commercial product." The sisters have filed a $10 million suit against the Ontario government, saying they were wrongly deprived of a share of the earnings from tourists. A made-for-television movie about the quintuplets, shown by CBS last year, gave a negative depiction of Allan Roy Dafoe, the doctor who delivered the babies, limited their contact with their parents, and took control of their lives. However, Annette Dionne, in the interview, showed little rancor toward Dafoe, saying life in the nursery where they were kept was relatively pleasant. Under Dafoe's supervision, the sisters became a huge commercial enterprise, endorsing hundreds of products ranging from corn syrup to Quaker Oats. The Dionne quintuplets were abused both by the world and, they claim, by their father. As babies, the quints were taken from their parents by the Ontario government and made wards of the state. Although their health was fine, they lived at a hospital that became a tourist mecca called "Quintland." Between 1934 and 1943, about 3 million people visited Quintland, a low, modern building with a garden and a high fence near the village of Corbeil, in Northern Ontario. The government and nearby businesses made an estimated half-billion dollars off the tourists. The sisters were the nation's biggest tourist attraction bigger than Niagara Falls. Born to poor, French-speaking, Catholic parents, the Dionne quints were at least two months premature, and together they weighed less than 14 pounds. Each of the babies could be held in an adult palm. They were put by an open stove to keep warm, and mothers from surrounding villages brought breast milk for them. Against all expectations, they survived their first weeks. To protect the infants from germs, kidnappers, and a father known to have considered exhibiting them for money, they were taken from their family and placed under the government's guardianship, protected from germs and kidnappers, but shamelessly exploited by exhibiting them for money and selling rights to have them appear in ads. A hospital was built across the road from their family's farmhouse for their exclusive use. The hospital became "Quintland" and the sisters' home for years after. Their parents, made unwelcome, became irregular visitors. Film footage of the young quintuplets shows five pretty girls with dark hair and dark eyes and a crush of tourists waiting in line to see them. "It wasn't human," Cécile Dionne told The (London) Independent in a 1995 interview. "It was a circus." In the early days, nurses would take the quints to a nursery balcony and show them, one at a time, to the crowds below. Later, they were viewed three times a day from a gauze-covered corridor. "We saw moving. We heard sounds," said Cécile. The quints were studied by scientists, who X-rayed them, catalogued episodes of "anger and fear," and recorded things such as food intake and incidents of dissent. Cécile said she learned the word "doctor" before she learned "mother." After nine years and a bitter custody fight, the girls moved back with their parents and their other siblings. They lived at home until they were 18, after which they broke off almost all contact with their parents. In a later book the sisters claimed their father sexually abused them, though they later disputed the allegations of abuse. In 1997 in poor health and with limited financial resources the surviving sisters were negotiating with the Ontario government for their share of some of the profits made at Quintland more than half a century ago. Three quints survived past the end of the century Yvonne, Annette and Cécile. Émilie died of suffocation as the result of an epileptic seizure on 06 August 1954, and Marie died from a stroke on 27 February 1970. Cécile married and had 5 boys (one set of twins), Annette married and had 3 boys and Marie also married and had 2 daughters, Emilie and Monique. They all eventually divorced. Yvonne remained single. The three surviving sisters live outside of Montreal and recently received a sum of money from the Ontario government for the way they were treated as children. Multiple births |
1930 Edward Philip George Seaga, político jamaicano
nacido en EE.UU. 1915 Frank Herbert Dedrick Pickersgill, Canadian agent who was captured by the Gestapo when he was parachuted into Nazi-occupied France on 20 June 1943 to work with the French Résistance, tortured, send to the Buchenwald concentration camp on 27 August 1944, and shot on 14 September 1944. 1912 Hans Zassenhaus, German mathematician who died on 21 November 1991. He did important work on Group Theory and Lie algebras. Author of Lehrbuch der Gruppentheorie (1937). 1908 Ian Fleming gave "Bond ... James Bond" a job (Goldfinger, Dr No)
1884 Edvard Benes, estadista checoslovaco. 1881 Luis Orgaz Yoldi, militar español. 1853 Carl Olof Larsson, Swedish painter, illustrator, and printmaker, who died on 22 January 1919. MORE ON LARSSON AT ART 4 MAY with links to images. 1833 Felix-Auguste-Joseph Bracquemond, French Art Nouveau printmaker, designer, painter and writer, who died on 27 October 1914. — more with links to images. 1818 P.G.T. Beauregard, Louisiana, Confederate general in charge of capture of Sumter. 1811 Jean-Paul Flandrin French painter and lithographer, who died on 08 March 1902. — more 1810 Alexandre Calame, Swiss painter who died on 17 March 1864, specialized in Landscapes. MORE ON CALAME AT ART 4 MAY with links to images. 1807 Louis Agassiz Switzerland, naturalist/geologist/teacher 1802 Theodor Leopold Weller, German artist who died on 10 December 1880
1759 William Pitt the Younger (C), English PM (1783-1801, 1804-06) He was considered England's greatest prime minister. [yet he and his father were the Pitts!] 1738 Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin, French inventor of a humanitarian improvement on the executioner's axe. 1710 Johann(II) Bernoulli, Basel, Switzerland, lawyer and mathematician who died on 17 July 1790. He was the most successful of the three.sons of Johann Bernoulli [27 Jul 1667 – 01 Jan 1748] and a nephew of Jacob Bernoulli [27 Dec 1654 – 16 Aug 1705].. 1676 Jacopo Francesco Riccati, Venetian who died on 15 April 1754. He wrote on philosophy, physics and differential equations. He is chiefly known for the Riccati differential equation. 1660 George I, king of England (1714-1727) 1371 John the Fearless, Burgundy, warrior. |