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ILA price chartOn an August 15:
2002 On the New York Stock Exchange the stock of Aquila Inc. (ILA) drops from its previous close of $4.95 to an intraday low of $2.22 and closes at $2.40. It started trading on 29 September 1997 at $20.55, rose to a peak of $37.55 on 21 May 2001, and, as recently as 17 April 2002 traded at $25.23. [5~year price chart >]. Aquila runs two lines of business: Regulated: (operates electric utilities and provides appliance repair and servicing) and Aquila Energy (markets wholesale energy, transports and processes natural gas).
2001 Ley de Derechos y Cultura Indígena, a Mexican constitutional amendement for Amerindian rights takes effect. It falls short of what the Amerindians were promised.
2001 “Captain Strasser...has been facing embarrassment by some members of the public throwing stones at him as well as booing him” the government of Sierra Leone (independent since 27 April 1961), announces, urging people to stop harassing Valentine Strasser, 34, who became Africa's youngest head of state (dictator) when he seized power in April 1992 and was overthrown in a bloodless military coup on 16 January 1996. After being overthrown, Strasser went to study in Britain. But he lost the right to stay in the former colonial power after dropping his studies and was refused entry last November after a trip to Gambia. Strasser's coup failed to end the civil war that broke out in 1991. One more cease-fire was reached in November 2000. Captain Strasser's forces were accused of torture and murder during his four-year rule, and on 26 May 2000 Amnesty International demanded that he be brought to justice for crimes against humanity.
2000 British Airways joined Air France in grounding its Concorde supersonic jets in the wake of the 25 July crash near Paris that claimed 113 lives.
2000 A group of 100 separated family members from North Korea arrived in South Korea for temporary reunions with relatives they had not seen for half a century; a group of 100 South Koreans visited the North.
Birthdays in History for Wed, August 15 Cooking expert Julia Child is 89. Actress Dame Wendy Hiller is 89. Conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly is 77.
1999 Chechnya war: Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov declares state of emergency, denies involvement in the Dagestan crisis in a televised address. He accuses Russia of precipitating the crisis through supporting Islamic radicals in Chechnya — http://www.cdi.org/issues/Europe/aug.html
1998 iMac is shipped      ^top^
      Apple Computer ships its new personal computer, the iMac. The machine, which was announced in May, became an overnight success, selling some 800'000 units in its first four months. Consumers raved about the whimsical machine, made of translucent plastic and available in fruit-inspired shades, including grape, blueberry, strawberry, tangerine, and lime. The iMac's success quickly boosted Apple's dwindling market share, which reached a low of 3 percent in 1997. By December 1998, market share had rebounded to 5 percent.
1996 MS apologizes for download time      ^top^
      Microsoft, which launched its new Internet browser on 11 August, apologized publicly to consumers who were having difficulty downloading the product. The company's servers had been swamped with people trying to download the free product. In the first six hours that it was available, about 32'000 people downloaded the browser.
1995 Un golpe de Estado en Santo Tomé y Príncipe, perpretado por militares de baja graduación, depone al presidente Miguel Trovoada.
1994 “Carlos” the terrorist is captured      ^top^
      Terrorist Illich Ramirez Sanchez, known as "Carlos the Jackal,", is captured in Khartoum, Sudan, by French intelligence agents. Since there was no extradition treaty with Sudan, the French agents sedated and kidnapped Carlos. The Sudanese government, claiming that it had assisted in the arrest, requested that the United States remove their country from its list of nations that sponsor terrorism.
      Carlos, who was affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Organization for Armed Arab Struggle, and the Japanese Red Army, was widely believed to be responsible for numerous terrorist attacks between 1973 and 1992. In 1974, he took the French ambassador and 10 others hostage at the Hague, demanding that French authorities release Yutaka Furuya of the Japanese Red Army. On 27 June 1975, French police officers tried to arrest Carlos in a Paris apartment, but he killed two officers in an ensuing gun battle and escaped. In June 1992, Carlos was tried in absentia for these murders and convicted. On 21 December 1975, Carlos and a group of his men took 70 OPEC officials hostage at a Vienna conference. They made it to safety with $50 million in ransom money, but not before killing three hostages. Carlos claimed responsibility for these crimes in an interview with the Arab magazine, Al Watan al Arabi.
      At his trial, which resulted in his imprisonment, Carlos was represented by Jacques Verges, who had reportedly helped to organize a failed rocket attack on a French nuclear power plant in 1982. Verges was also tied to an attempt to bribe prison guards so that Carlos' girlfriend (possibly his wife), German terrorist Magdalena Kopp, could be released. Verges categorically denied the charges.
1991 The UN Security Council, by a vote of 13-1, authorized Iraq to export $1.6 billion worth of oil in a tightly controlled sale to pay for desperately needed food and medicine.
1991 El Comité de Descolonización de la ONU reafirma el derecho de Puerto Rico a la libre determinación de independencia.
1990 President Mikhail Gorbachev restores Soviet citizenship to 1970-Nobel Prizewinning author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 71, expelled to the West in 1974 for his harrowing novels attacking Stalinism. He wrote (translated titles): One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), The First Circle (1968), Cancer Ward (1968), August 1914 (1971), The Gulag Archipelago (1973 Part I, 1974-75 Parts II and III), Lenin in Zurich: Chapters (1975), The Oak and the Calf (1980), The Mortal Danger (1980), In 1983 an expanded version of August 1914 appeared as the first part of a projected series, The Red Wheel, which included also October 1916, March 1917, April 1917.
1990 El gobierno de Mozambique, tras abandonar el marxismo-leninismo, legaliza el multipartidismo.
1989 Restrictions are lifted on the export of certain personal computers, such as the IBM PS/2 Model 30 and the Apple Macintosh Plus, to Soviet bloc countries, because many similar products were already available in Soviet bloc countries. This had been decided in July by the international Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls.
1986 The US Treasury Department enters the computer age with the digital “Treasury Direct” system.
1979 Andrew Young (black) resigns under pressure as UN ambassador after unauthorized meeting with representatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The controversy would further divide the Black and Jewish communities.
1975 Joanne Little (Black) acquitted of murdering a White jailer with an ice pick on 27August 1974. She was defending herself against sexual assault..
1974 South Korean President Park Chung-Hee escapes assassination.
1971 Vietnam: North Vietnamese capture Vietnamese marine base In South Vietnam, North Vietnamese troops increase operations along the DMZ. This activity had begun on August 12 and continued until the 15th. The North Vietnamese captured the South Vietnamese marine base at Ba Ho, two miles south of the DMZ; most of the defenders were killed or wounded, but the Communists suffered 200 dead in taking the base. —
1971 Nixon's economic measures      ^top^
      Richard Nixon turns his attention away from the war in Vietnam and announces a sweeping series of economic initiatives, including a ninety-day freeze on wages and rents, as well as the end of America's twenty-five-year-old policy of converting foreign money into gold. While the President hails these measures as the keys to a "new prosperity," the reality isn't quite so rosy. The economy is suffering from a number of maladies, including the strain of providing both butter — namely the Great Society programs — and the guns used to wage the Cold War. As a result, inflation and unemployment were on the rise, while the government is busy racking up a hefty national debt, as well as a trade deficit. The President's initiatives do give a temporary lift to the sluggish stock markets.
      The day following Nixon's announcement, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) would go up 32.93 points. But, the revival would short-lived, as the DJI beat a retreat downward when it became clear that economy wasn't going to be easily revived. By the time Nixon tendered his resignation, it was painfully clear that his measures were not about to lead to any sort of prosperity: debt, inflation and unemployment kept mounting, as the country struggled through a slump that didn't lift until the 1980s.
1971 Bahrain gains independence from Britain
1970 Vietnam: Regional Forces victorious South Vietnamese officials report that regional forces killed 308 Communist troops in four days of heavy fighting along a coastal strip south of the DMZ. This was one of the biggest victories of the war for the regional forces in the war and was extremely significant since one of the prime objectives of Nixon's Vietnamization policy was the strengthening of the regional/popular forces so that they could help secure the countryside.
1969 Woodstock begins      ^top^
      The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, "An Aquarian Exposition," opens at Max Yasgur's dairy farm in upstate New York. Promoters expected the music festival, modeled after the famous Monterey Pop Festival, to attract up to 200'000 for the weekend, but nearly a half a million people converged on the concert site. Promoters soon realized that they could not control access to the site and opened it up to all comers free of charge. Because of the unexpected size of the audience, volunteers were needed to help alleviate many of the logistics problems, while helicopters were used to fly in food, doctors, and medical supplies, as well as many of the musical acts that performed during the three-day festival. Despite rain and mud, the audience enjoyed non-stop performances by singers like Richie Havens, Janis Joplin, Arlo Guthrie, Joe Cocker, and Joan Baez, as well as the bands Creedence Clearwater Revival; The Grateful Dead; The Jefferson Airplane; Sly and the Family Stone; and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
      Although many different types of people attended the festival, many were members of the counterculture, often referred to as "hippies," who rejected materialism and authority, experimented with illicit drugs, and actively protested against the Vietnam War. Much of the music had a decided anti-war flavor. Representative of this genre was the "Fixin' to Die Rag" by Country Joe and the Fish. This song and its chorus ("And it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for / Don't ask me, I don't give a damn, next stop is Vietnam. / And it's five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates / There ain't no time to wonder why / Whoopie, we're all gonna die!") became an anti-war classic. Jimi Hendrix closed the concert with a freeform solo guitar performance of "The Star Spangled Banner." Woodstock became a symbol of the 1960s US counterculture and a milestone in the history of rock music.
1968 Vietnam: Heavy fighting erupts in and around the DMZ Heavy fighting intensifies in and around the DMZ, as South Vietnamese and US troops engage a North Vietnamese battalion. In a seven and a half hour battle, 165 enemy troops were killed. At the same time, US Marines attacked three strategic positions just south of the DMZ, killing 56 North Vietnamese soldiers.
1964 Race riot in Dixmoor, a Chicago suburb.
1964 Khrushchev ready to begin disarmament talks      ^top^
      Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev declares that he is ready to begin disarmament talks with the West. Though the Russian leader declined to discuss specific plans for disarmament, his statement was interpreted as an indication that he sought to limit the possibility of nuclear conflict between the Soviet Union and the Western powers. Khrushchev's comments, made during an interview while he was visiting London, came less than two years after the Cuban missile crisis. In October 1962, the United States discovered that the Soviets were constructing missile bases in Cuba capable of firing rockets with nuclear warheads. In the ensuing weeks, President John F. Kennedy demanded that the missile bases be removed, while Premier Khrushchev was equally insistent in claiming that the bases were purely for defensive purposes. Eventually, Kennedy ordered a blockade of Cuba to prevent any more missiles from being delivered. Khrushchev backed down after securing a US promise to respect the sovereignty of Cuba. The world had never come closer to nuclear war.
      The following year, the United States and Russia signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, barring the testing of atomic weapons under water or in the atmosphere. Khrushchev's August 1964 comments reflected the Soviet leader's continued interest in avoiding nuclear conflict. The premier declared that, "A new initiative would be welcome," and indicated that he would be prepared to attend a multinational disarmament conference in early 1965. He also suggested that if an agreement could be reached, the Soviet Union would be willing to allow verification inspections. "If we make a disarmament agreement and a start is actually made on disarmament, then we will allow free inspections as part of the specific program — and close inspections, too, so no one cheats." Nothing came of Khrushchev's offer, however. In Washington, spokesmen for President Lyndon B. Johnson indicated that with the presidential election so near, Johnson did not want to make any specific promises about future international conferences. For Khrushchev, the comments made in London may have sealed his fate. Already under attack by hard-liners in the Russian government and military because of his apparent willingness to cooperate with the Americans and cut Soviet military spending, Khrushchev was forced to resign as premier in October 1964. The much more inflexible and far less colorful Leonid Brezhnev replaced him.
1962 Shady Grove Baptist Church is burned in Leesburg, Georgia.
1961 Berlin Wall's construction begins      ^top^
      The division of post-war Germany into four occupied occupation zones left Berlin within the Soviet zone, and internally divided into East and West Berlin. For East Germans unhappy with life under the Communist system, West Berlin became a gateway to the democratic West. By August of 1961, an average of 2'000 East German refugees were streaming into West Germany every day, leading Communist authorities to seal off all roads between the two Berlins and lay barbed wire all along the border. Beginning on August 15, East Germany began building the Berlin Wall, the most tangible symbol of Cold War division. Berlin remained a divided city until 1989, when East Germany opened its borders and the Berlin Wall was torn down.
1960 Congo (Brazzaville) gains independence from France (Natl Day)
1950 Two US divisions are badly mauled by the North Korean Army at the Battle of the Bowling Alley in South Korea, which rages on for five more days.
1948 Republic of Korea (South Korea) proclaimed (National Day)
1947 India and Pakistan win independence      ^top^
      The Indian Independence Bill, which constitutes the independent nations of India and Pakistan out of the former British colony, comes into force at midnight. The long-awaited agreement ended two hundred years of British rule, and was hailed by Indian independence leader Mohandas Gandhi as the "noblest act of the British nation."
      However, religious strife between Hindus and Muslims, which had delayed Britain's granting of Indian independence after World War II, soon marred Gandhi's exhilaration. In the northern province of Punjab, which was sharply divided between Hindu-dominated India and Muslim-dominated Pakistan, hundreds of people were killed in the first few days after independence. The religious turmoil in India and Pakistan that would result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, including Mohandas Gandhi.
      The Indian independence movement first gained momentum at the beginning of nineteenth century, and after World War I, Gandhi organized the first of his many effective passive-resistance campaigns in protest of Britain's oppressive rule in India. In the 1930s, the British government made some concessions to the Indian nationalists, but during World War II, discontent with British rule had grown to such a degree that Britain feared losing India to the Axis. Gandhi and other nationalist leaders rejected as empty British promises of Indian self-government after the war, and organized the nonviolent "Quit India" campaign to hasten the British departure. British colonial authorities responded by jailing Gandhi and hundreds of others. Anti-British demonstrations accelerated after the war, and in 1947 the Indian National Congress reluctantly accepted the creation of Pakistan to appease the Muslim League and conclude the independence negotiations.
1945 South Korea liberated from Japanese rule
1945 Hirohito to Japan: “we lost”.      ^top^
      Emperor Hirohito's pre-recorded broadcast gives the news of Japan's surrender to the Japanese people. Although Tokyo had already communicated to the Allies its acceptance of the surrender terms of the Potsdam Conference several days earlier, and a Japanese news service announcement had been made to that effect, the Japanese people were still waiting to hear an authoritative voice speak the unspeakable: that Japan had been defeated. That voice was the emperor's. In Japan's Shinto religious tradition, the emperor was also divine; his voice was the voice of a god. And on August 15, that voice-heard over the radio airwaves for the very first time — confessed that Japan's enemy "has begun to employ a most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is indeed incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives." This was the reason given for Japan's surrender.
     Hirohito's oral memoirs, published and translated after the war, evidence the emperor's fear at the time that "the Japanese race will be destroyed if the war continues." A sticking point in the Japanese surrender terms had been Hirohito's status as emperor. Tokyo wanted the emperor's status protected; the Allies wanted no preconditions. There was a compromise. The emperor retained his title; Gen. Douglas MacArthur believed his at least ceremonial presence would be a stabilizing influence in postwar Japan. But Hirohito was forced to disclaim his divine status. Japan lost more than a war — it lost a god.
     The day is proclaimed VJ Day by the Allies, a day after Japan agreed to surrender unconditionally .
1945 The New York Stock Exchange closes to celebrate the end of World War II. The Exchange would open again on August 17.
1945 US gasoline rationing ends.      ^top^
      Rationing was just one of the special measures taken in the US during WW II. Civilian auto production virtually ceased after the attack on Pearl Harbor, as the US automotive industry turned to war production. Automotive firms made almost $29 billion worth of military materials between 1940 and 1945, including jeeps, trucks, machine guns, carbines, tanks, helmets, and aerial bombs.
1944 US, British and French forces land on the southern coast of France, between Toulon and Cannes, in Operation Dragoon.
1942 The Japanese submarine I-25 departs Japan with a floatplane in its hold which will be assembled upon arriving off the West Coast of the United States, and used to bomb US forests on 09 September.
1931 Roy Wilkins joins NAACP as assistant secretary
1918 US and Russia sever diplomatic ties
1917 Deposed Tsar Nicholas II, family, and a few servants, are moved by Bolsteviks from their residence at Tsarskoe Selo to further imprisonment in Siberia.
1914 Panama Canal is inaugurated (under cost) with the passage of the vessel Ancon.      ^top^
      The rush of settlers to California and Oregon in the mid-nineteenth century was the initial impetus of the US desire to build a shipping route across Central America.
      In 1881, Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French entrepreneur who had completed the Suez Canal in 1869, began work on a sea-level canal across Colombia-controlled Panama. However, inadequate planning, disease among the workers, and financial problems drove the company into bankruptcy in 1889. By the turn of the century, sole possession of the isthmian canal became imperative to the United States, which had acquired significant Caribbean and Pacific territory at the end of the Spanish-American War. In 1901, the US Congress authorized purchase of the French-owned Panama Canal Company, and allocated funding for the canal's construction.
      In 1903, the Hay-Herran Treaty was signed with Columbia, granting the US use of the territory in exchange for financial compensation. The US Senate ratified the treaty, but the Colombian Senate, fearing a loss of sovereignty, refused. In response, US President Theodore Roosevelt gave tacit approval to a Panamanian independence movement, and on 02 November 1901, ordered the USS Nashville to Central America. The next day, a faction of Panamanians, backed by the Panama Canal Company, issued a declaration of independence from Colombia. The presence of the US warship discouraged Colombian forces from quelling the insurrection, and on 06 November, the US officially recognized the independent Republic of Panama.
      Less than two weeks later, the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty was signed with Panama, granting the US exclusive and permanent possession of the Panama Canal Zone. In 1906, American engineers decided on a lock canal, and the next three years were spent developing construction facilities and eradicating tropical diseases in the area. In 1909, construction proper began. In one of the largest construction projects of all time, US engineers moved over 240 million cubic yards of earth and spent nearly $400 million dollars in constructing the forty-mile-long canal. On 20 October 1913, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans were connected with the explosion of the Gamboa Dike.
1901 Arch Rock, danger to Bay shipping, blasted with 30 tons of nitro
1899 Ford resigns job to go into auto production      ^top^
      Henry Ford resigns as chief engineer at the main Detroit Edison Company plant in order to concentrate on automobile production. On call at all times, Ford had no regular hours and could experiment in his free time. His tinkering was fruitful, for he completed his first horseless carriage by 1896. After turning to automobiles full time, he would revolutionize the automotive industry with the Model T, also known as the “tin Lizzy.”
1893 US no longer allowed exclusive rights in Bering Sea
1872 The first ballot voting in England is conducted
1870 Transcontinental Railway actually completed
1867 2nd Reform Bill extends suffrage in England
1864 Off New England coast, Confederate raider Tallahassee captures 6 yankee schooners
1863 Siege of Fort Wagner, Charleston Harbor, South Carolina continues
1863 Submarine "HL Hunley" arrives in Charleston on railroad cars
1862 Skirmish at Clarendon, Arkansas
1861 Anderson named commander of Department of the Kentucky      ^top^
      Just months after he surrendered Fort Sumter, Union General Robert Anderson is named commander of the Department of the Kentucky. Born in Kentucky in 1805, Anderson attended West Point and earned distinction in the Black Hawk War of 1832. He also fought in Florida's Seminole War before serving in the US-Mexico War under Winfield Scott. He rose to the rank of major prior to the outbreak of the Civil War. Although he was pro-slavery and pro-South, Anderson remained loyal to the United States.
      When Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election in November 1860, tension rose dramatically around Federal installations in the South. Anderson was assigned to command Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor in hopes that a pro-South officer would help smooth tensions with local residents. From the time South Carolina seceded on 20 December 1861, until the Confederates fired on the fort on 15 April 1861, Anderson politely dealt with the Charlestonians in a deteriorating climate. When he surrendered the fort after a 36-hour bombardment, he was hailed a national hero.
      Released by Confederates nearly six weeks after the surrender of Fort Sumter, Anderson was promoted to brigadier general. He was given command of the Department of Kentucky and carefully maintained the balance of neutrality in the state. But poor health forced him to resign his command two months later, and William T. Sherman replaced him. Anderson returned to active duty briefly in 1865 to hoist the American flag over Fort Sumter after the Confederate surrender. He died in 1871.
1858 Regular mail to the Pacific coast begins
1832 Gregory XVI encyclical On liberalism & religious indifferentism
1824 Freed American slaves establish Liberia.
1790 Father John Carroll, 55, is consecrated by Pius VI as the first Roman Catholic bishop (later, in 1811, the first archbishop) of the United States, with his see in Baltimore, freeing US Catholics from English oversight.
1760 Frederick II defeats the Austrians at the Battle of Liegnitz.
1748 United Lutheran Church of US organized
1620 Mayflower sets sail from Southampton with 102 Pilgrims
1598 Battle of Yellow Ford: Hugh O'Neill, the Earl of Tyrone, leads an Irish force to victory over the British.
1549 The first Christian missionaries to reach Japan land at Kagoshima (on the coast of Kyushu, southernmost of the four main islands of Japan). They were Spanish Jesuits, led by pioneer Catholic missionary Francis Xavier, 43.
1534 The Society of Jesus (Jesuits) was founded by Ignatius of Loyola, 43. Created to foster reform within Catholicism, and to undertake education and missionary work, this religious order was formally approved by Pope Paul III in 1540.
1514 Las Casas renounces his encomienda (colonial lands) believing they are an offense to God.
1385 John of Portugal defeats John of Castile at the Battle of Aljubarrota.
1261 Constantinople falls to Michael VIII of Nicea and his army.
1096 The armies of the First Crusade set out from Europe to deliver Jerusalem from the occupying forces of Islamic Turks. Peter the Hermit, contrary to legend, was not its initiator. Pope Urban II had called for the crusade at the Council of Clermont on 27 November 1095.
1057 Macbeth, King of Scotland, slain by son of King Duncan
0347 The proconsul of Africa proclaims the Catholic unity of the African Church under Gratus after years of conflict with the Donatists. Donatus withdraws into exile.
TO THE TOP
Deaths which occurred on an August 15:
2002 Iman Farres, 5, by unprovoked Israeli army gunfire in a residential area in Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip, near the Jewish enclave settlement Ganei Tal, as he was with his family working on a plot of land. The boy's grandfather, Nidal Farres, 60, and three others ran to help him. The grandfather and another man, 40, were critically wounded.
2002 Michael Wayne Short, 50, and his wife Mary Hall Short, 36, found at 09:00 in their Bassett (at 10820 Virginia Avenue, along US 220 in the Oak Level area), Virginia, home, shot in the head earlier in the morning; Michael, a self-employed mobile home mover (M.S. Mobile Home Movers Inc.), on a couch in an enclosed carport; Mary in bed. The murder weapon is not found. Their daughter, Jennifer Renee Short, 9, is missing. [Photos below. Most recent photo of Jennifer is at right]
Jennifer Short
the Shorts
2001 Emad Abu Sneineh, 25, ambushed and shot by Israeli undercover troops in a parked truck, as he gets out of a car near his home. The Israelis blamed him of being a militia leader heavily involved in shooting attacks on Israelis in Hebron. There was no attempt to arrest him.
2001 Whale beached on Bar Beach, Lagos, Nigeria, torn apart for its meat by locals.
1998:: 29 persons by a car bomb in Omagh, Northern Ireland; a splinter group calling itself the Real IRA claimed responsibility.
1996 Three engineering professors, shot by Frederick Martin Davidson, a graduate student at San Diego State University (Davidson was later sentenced to three life terms in prison).
1975 Mujibur Rahman, 55, and most of his family, killed in a coup      ^top^
     Mujibur also called Sheikh Mujib was a Bengali leader and first prime minister and later president of Bangladesh. Mujib, the son of a middle-class landowner, studied law and political science at the universities of Calcutta and Dacca. Although jailed briefly as a teenager for agitating for Indian independence, he began his formal political career as a cofounder of the Awami League in 1949. The league advocated political autonomy for East Pakistan, the detached eastern part of the nation of Pakistan. Rahman's arrest in the late 1960s incited mob violence that eroded the Pakistani president's authority in East Pakistan.
      In the elections of December 1970, Mujib's Awami League secured a majority of the seats in the National Assembly, and Mujib demanded independence for East Pakistan. Troops from West Pakistan were sent to regain control of the eastern province but were defeated with the help of India. Bangladesh was proclaimed an independent republic with Mujib as the first prime minister in January 1972. With increasing problems, Mujib took tighter control and assumed the presidency in January 1975. He was killed, along with most of his family, in a coup d'état just seven months later.
1967 René François Ghislain Magritte, Belgian Surrealist painter born on 21 November 1898 — MORE ON MAGRITTE AT ART “4” AUGUST LINKSLes Bijoux IndiscretsUntitled Poster for Magritte ExhibitionLe Jockey PerduL’Assassin MenacéLa Condition Humaine ILa Durée PoignardéeL’Empire des LumièresL’Empire des LumièresClairvoiyance self~portrait (early version of The Big Family?) — The Blank CheckPerspective I: Madame Récamier de David (satire of the famous portrait by Jacques Louis DavidPerspective II: Le Balcon de Manet (satire of Manet's Le Balcon) — La Trahison des Images (Ceci n'est pas une pipe) 1929 — Plaisir 1927 — La clé des champs (1933) — The Therapist (1937) — Le Mal du Pays (1940) — La Découverte du Feu (1935) [a flaming tuba] — Threatening Weather [ above the shoreline, three adjoining clouds, in the shapes of a female torso, a tuba, and a chair]
1935 Paul Signac, Parisian pointilliste painter, printmaker, etcher, lithographer, born on 11 November 1863. — MORE ON SIGNAC AT ART “4” AUGUST LINKSSailboats in the BayLe Soir (La Jetée de Flessingue)Nude figure standingLe vieux port #7Application du Cercle chromatiqueLe dimanche parisienË FlessingueThe Dining RoomThe Dining Room M. Félix FénéonWomen at the WellRed BuoyThe Large Pine, Saint-TropezPort St. Tropez
1935 Will Rogers and Wiley Post, in plane crash      ^top^
      American humorist Will Rogers, 55, and famous aviator Wiley Post, 35, are killed in an airplane accident near Point Barrow, Alaska. The aircraft, piloted by Post, was in the midst of a promotional journey across the North Pole to the USS.R. when it crashed just a few minutes after take-off. Post, a great innovator of long-distance flight, flew around the northern part of the earth in 1931 with pilot Harold Gatty (described in the book Around the World in Eight Days). Two years later, he repeated the feat alone, winning a permanent place in the annals of aviation history.
     His passenger, the world-renowned humorist Will Rogers, was also an enthusiast of air travel, and had taken several other long-distance flights. An Oklahoma native, Rogers worked as a cowboy in his youth before joining the vaudeville stage as a wisecracking rope-twirler in 1902. In 1915, he became a national sensation when he joined the Ziegfeld Follies, a popular stage revue. In the tradition of Mark Twain, Rogers offered profound observations from behind his rustic facade, and practically invented topical humor. The so-called "cowboy philosopher" gained a wide audience through a syndicated newspaper column, books, the radio, and starring roles in hit movies such as A Connecticut Yankee (1931), State Fair (1933), and David Harum (1934).
      A philanthropist, a family man, and an old cowboy who never took himself too seriously, he was the model of how Americans liked to think of themselves. Three years after his tragic death in Alaska, President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated a memorial to Rogers, praising the humorist's success in keeping in Americans smiling during the hard times of the Great Depression , and for doing it all without saying a disparaging word about anyone (however Rogers had said:"I don't belong to any organized political party — I'm a Democrat"). The Will Rogers Memorial, which features a museum and a famous statue of Rogers in a cowboy pose, was built on his property in Claremore, Oklahoma.
     Rogers, born in 1879 in Oklahoma-before Oklahoma became a state-became an immensely popular entertainer in the early 1900s. An expert rider and rope-twirler since childhood, he traveled abroad with a Wild West show. Later, he appeared at fairs and vaudeville shows, sprinkling his act with his gentle, folksy humor. In 1912, Rogers began appearing in musical comedies, and by 1917 he was starring in the Ziegfeld Follies. His folk wisdom won the hearts of the nation. He appeared in a few early films, but silent movies failed to do justice to his verbal talents. With the dawn of talking pictures in the late 1920s, Rogers became a top box-office draw. His films included Happy Days (1929), A Connecticut Yankee (1929), and Ambassador Bill (1931). In 1930, William S. Paley persuaded Rogers to try radio. Although Rogers was skeptical of the medium and disliked the microphone, his 12-episode show-full of his trademark humor and thoughtful political observations-was a hit. Later, he returned to radio, hosting Gulf Headliners in the early 1930s. Rogers declined a nomination as governor of Oklahoma but later served as mayor of Beverly Hills.
     Will Rogers' published works include Rogerisms — the Cowboy Philosopher on Prohibition (1919), Illiterate Digest (1924), and There's Not a Bathing Suit in Russia (1927).
Will Rogers quotes:
  • “All I know is what I read in the papers.”
  • “They may call me a rube and a hick, but I'd a lot rather be the man who bought the Brooklyn Bridge than the man who sold it.”
  • “This country is not where it is today on account of any one man. It is here on account of the real common sense of the Big Normal Majority.”
  • “I don't care how little your country is, you got a right to run it like you want to. When the big nations quit meddling then the world will have peace.”
  • “People talk peace. But men give their life's work to war. It won't stop 'til there is as much brains and scientific study put to aid peace as there is to promote war.”
  • Will Rogers “Take diplomacy out of a war and the thing would fall flat in a week.”
  • “You can be killed just as dead in an unjustified war as you can in one protecting your own home.”
  • “People don't change under governments. Governments change. People remain the same.”
  • “As bad as we sometimes think our government is run, it is the best run I ever saw.”
  • “Nowadays it is about as big a crime to be dumb as it is to be dishonest.”
  • “There is no income tax in Russia. But there's no income.”
  • “We elect our Presidents, be they Republican or Democrat, then start daring 'em to make good.”
  • “Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are for finishing it.”
  • “Live your life so that whenever you lose, you are ahead.”
  • “My ancestors didn't come over on the Mayflower, but they met the boat.”
  • “Comedians haven't improved. Nothing has improved but taxes.”
  • “Personally, I have always felt the best doctor in the world is the Veterinarian. He can't ask his patients what's the matter. He's just go to know.”
  • “No man is great if he thinks he is.”
  • “It's great to be great, but its greater to be human.”
  • “America is a land of opportunity and don't ever forget it.”
  • “People are marvelous in their generosity if they just know the cause is there.”
  • “No nation ever had two better friends that we have. You know who they are? The Atlantic and Pacific oceans.”
  • “I am just an old country boy in a big town trying to get along. I have been eating pretty regular and the reason I have been is because I have stayed an old country boy.”
  • “Don't gamble. Take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it til it goes up then sell it. If it don't go up, don't buy it.”
  • “Whoever wrote the Ten Commandments made 'em short. They may not always be kept but they can be understood.”
  • “Statistics have proven there are twenty five bath tubs sold to every Bible.”
  • “We'll hold the distinction of being the only Nation in the history of the world that ever went to the poor house in an automobile.”
  • “We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.”
  • "No matter how much I may exaggerate it, it must have a certain amount of truth...Now rumor travels faster, but it don't stay put as long as truth"
  • "We are here just for a spell and then pass on...So get a few laughs and do the best you can. Live your life so that whenever you lose, you are ahead."
  • "I don't make jokes, I just watch the Government and report the facts..."
  • "A diplomat tells you what he don't believe himself, and the man he's tellin' it to don't believe him, so it balances. Diplomats meet and eat, then rush out and wire their Government they've completely fooled the other fella."
  • "You can always joke good naturedly a big man, but be sure he is a big man before you joke about him."
  • "We'll show the world we are prosperous, even if we have to go broke to do it."
  • "...I maintain that it should cost as much to get married as to get divorced. Make it look like marriage is worth as much as divorce, even if it ain't."
  • "We can get all lathering at the time over some political campaign promise, or some conference pledge, but if the thing just drags along long enough we forget what it was that was originally promised. The short memories of the American voter is what keeps our politicians in office."
  • "Never blame a legislative body for not doing something. When they do nothing, that don't hurt anybody. When they do something is when they become dangerous."
  • "Things in our country run in spite of government. Not by aid of it!"
  • "It's just got so that 90 percent of the people in this country don't give a damn. Politics ain't worrying this country one tenth as much as parking space."
  • "We shouldn't elect a President; we should elect a magician."
  • "If we got one-tenth of what was promised to us in these acceptance speeches there wouldn't be any inducement to go to heaven."
  • "Elect 'em for a six-year term; not allow 'em to suceed themselves. That would keep their mind off politics." [That's the Mexican "sufragio efectivo, no reelección"]
  • "That's one good thing about wars. It takes smarter men to figure out who loses 'em than it does to start 'em...The more ignorant you are the quicker you fight."
  • "Now if there is one thing that we do worse than any other nation, it is try and manage somebody else's affairs."
  • "Nobody wants to be called common people, especially common people."
  • "Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it's not one bit better than the government we got for one third the money twenty years ago."
  • "Liberty dont work as good in practice as it does in speeches."
  • "The Income Tax has made more Liars out of American people than Golf has."
  • "It's not what you pay a man but what he costs you that counts."
  • "There is nothing as stupid as an educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated in."
  • About the Scopes "monkey" trial..."I don't know why some of these states want to have their ancestry established by law. There must be a suspicion of doubt somewhere."
  • "Our Foreign dealings are an Open Book, generally a Check Book."
  • "There is something about riding down the street on a prancing horse that makes you feel like something, even when you ain't a thing."
  • 1922 Boutroux, mathematician
    1909 Laura Alma-Tadema, British painter born in April 1852, second wife of painter Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. — LINKSA Knock at the Door
    1874 Henry Bryan Ziegler, British painter born on 13 February 1793.
    1873 Fritz Bamberger, German painter born on 17 October 1814.
    1812 Wells and more than 50 US men, women, and children, ambushed by Powatomis.
          Potawatomi Indians kill William Wells, an Indian captive turned Indian fighter. Born in Pennsylvania in 1770, Wells migrated with his family to Kentucky when he was nine years old. Five years later he was captured by Miami Indians and adopted into the family of the Wea village chief Gaviahatte. The young boy quickly adapted to Indian ways. He became a distinguished warrior and married the daughter of a prominent Miami war chief. For several years, Wells fought with the Miami against US soldiers attempting to push them off their land.
          In 1792, however, the army captured his wife and adopted mother. In exchange for their freedom, Wells agreed to join the US army as an interpreter. A reunion with a long lost brother helped reinforce the allegiance of Wells to the US, though his loyalties remained conflicted for the rest of his life. For several years, Wells was an invaluable scout and interpreter for the US Army, helping the Americans defeat the hostile factions of the Miami and other tribes.
          In 1797, he was appointed Indian agent for the Miami, Delaware, Potawatomi, and other tribes of the Old Northwest (the modern-day Midwest). Yet, increasing pressure for the Indians to give up their lands to white settlers led to renewed conflicts, and Wells was often caught between the two groups.
          The outbreak of the War of 1812 with Great Britain heightened an already tense situation as some Indians saw the war as chance to join forces with the British to push out the US. Concerned about the safety of the US persons at Fort Dearborn (in Chicago), where his niece was married to the fort commander, Wells quickly raised a rescue party of 30 Miami Indians who were loyal to him and the United States and headed north.
          When he arrived on August 13, he found the fort surrounded by hostile Indians. Wells argued for staying at the fort and making a stand until a larger force of US soldiers could arrive. But the commander insisted on evacuation. On this day in 1812, Wells led a small company of men, women, and children out of the fort. They had not gone far before hundreds of Potawatomi Indians ambushed the party, killing more than 50 and taking the remainder captive. Wells, who was dressed and painted as a Miami warrior, fought heroically but was eventually shot through the lungs. When he fell from his horse, witnesses claimed the Potawatomi swarmed over his body, cut out his heart, and divided it among them.
    1798 Edward Waring, mathematician
    1789 Jacob(II) Bernoulli, mathematician
    1758 Bouguer, mathematician
    1643 Cornelis-Jacobszoon Delff, Dutch painter born in 1571.
    1557 Agnes Prest, burned at the stake in Launceton, Cornwall, for expressing her Protestant convictions. Her husband and children were Catholics.
    1057 King Macbeth of Scotland. at the Battle of Lumphanan.      ^top^
         He is killed by Malcolm Canmore, son of King Duncan I, who was murdered by Macbeth. Under King Duncan, Macbeth was governor of the Scottish province of Moray and a trusted military commander. However, he opposed Duncan's ties to the Saxons in the South, and in 1040 he murdered the king and was crowned in his place. Macbeth claimed a right to the throne through his wife, Gruoch, who was the granddaughter of Kenneth III — the Scottish king who had been overthrown by Duncan's ancestor Malcolm II.
          In 1054 King Macbeth suffered a major military defeat at the Battle of Dunsinane against Siward, the earl of Northumbria. Siward was acting on behalf of Malcolm Canmore. Malcolm then gained control of the southern part of Scotland, and spent the next three years pursuing Macbeth, who fled to the north. Canmore, as Malcolm III, succeeded Macbeth as king of Scotland.
    — The play Macbeth by William Shakespeare.
    Births which occurred on an August 15:
    2001 Super-humongous computer ASCI White is dedicated.     ^top^
         After keeping the world's most powerful supercomputer to themselves for a year, government researchers show off the $110 million wonder and say it might help save the world from nuclear war. With the ability to perform 12.3 trillion calculations a second, the supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory mainly will be used to simulate how the US's aging nuclear weapons arsenal would function if launched. Those simulations must be as precise as possible because the United States suspended underground nuclear tests in 1992. The supercomputer is the "key to the country's mission of maintaining the stockpile" and assuring nuclear deterrence.
          The supercomputer — known as Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative White, or ASCI White — has a mind-boggling amount of other uses. ASCI White is roughly as powerful as 50'000 contemporary desktop computers. It can store the equivalent of 300 million books, or six Libraries of Congress. It has 8192 microprocessors, housed in a series of black refrigerator-sized boxes linked together by 133 km of wiring in a room the size of two basketball courts.
          A giant air-conditioning system that cools ASCI White requires three megawatts of electricity, enough for a small city. ASCI White was designed for the government by IBM Corp., which, is 2000, delivered it to Livermore in 28 tractor-trailers. The mammoth computer is 1000 times more powerful than Deep Blue, which defeated chess grand master Garry Kasparov in 1997.
          The machine is networked to researchers at Livermore and the Sandia and Los Alamos national labs in New Mexico via an encrypted line. It went through months of testing and debugging before being dedicated, ASCI White has enabled researchers to create three-dimensional models that can track the behavior of 1 billion atoms at once. "It opens up a whole new way of studying how materials behave, how they perform under different conditions, how they age." It's just the beginning. The US government says that to certify the nuclear arsenal with full confidence, it needs a supercomputer that is 10 times as powerful as ASCI White by 2004.
    1938 Maxine Waters, would grow up to be elected to the US House of Representatives (D — CA)
    1935 Vernon Eulion Jordan Jr civil rights activist
    1913 Heinz Trökes, German painter who died in 1997.
    1901 Arnulfo Arias 3 time president of Panama (1940-41, 49-51, 68)
    1901 Novikov, mathematician
    1893 Harlow H Curtice president of General Motors (1953-8)
    1892 Louis-Victor due de Broglie France, physicist (Nobel 1929)
    1892 Louis de Broglie, mathematician
    1890 Jacques Ibert Paris France, composer (Escales)
    1889 Jan Mankes, Dutch painter who died in 1920.
    1888 Thomas Edward Lawrence “of Arabia”, in Tremadoc, Wales (aka “T.E. Shaw” from 1927).      ^top^
         He would be an archaeological scholar, military strategist, and author best known for his legendary war activities in the Middle East during World War I and for his account of those activities in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926) abridged as Revolt in the Desert (1927).
         Early in 1914 he and Sir C. Leonard Woolley, and Capt. S.F. Newcombe, explored northern Sinai, on the Turkish frontier east of Suez. Supposedly a scientific expedition, and in fact sponsored by the Palestine Exploration Fund, it was more a map-making reconnaissance from Gaza to Aqaba, destined to be of almost immediate strategic value. The cover study was nevertheless of authentic scholarly significance; written by Lawrence and Woolley together, it was published as The Wilderness of Zin in 1915.
         The thesis that won him first-class honors in history at Oxford in 1910 was posthumously published, as Crusader Castles, in 1936. Other works of T.E. Lawrence published posthumously are The Mint (1955), an account of dehumanizing RAF recruit training; Evolution of a Revolt (1968);. and a book of poems, Minorities (1971).
         He also made a translation into English prose of Homer's Odyssey (1932). T. E. Lawrence died on 19 May 1935.
    1887 Edna Ferber, in Kalamazoo, Michigan.      ^top^
          Ferber went to work as a reporter for The Milwaukee Journal while still in her teens. She began publishing stories in her early 20s, and the reading public fell in love with her lively, no-nonsense character Emma McChesney, a traveling petticoat saleswoman. Ferber wrote many stories and several novels about McChesney, which were a hit with national magazines. Ferber's deep love for the United States was expressed in detailed portraits of Oklahoma in Cimarron (1930), Texas in Giant (1952), and Alaska in Ice Palace. Ferber also wrote plays, including Show Boat, about three generations of performers on a Mississippi riverboat, which was made into a hit musical and a movie.
    FERBER ONLINE:
    Buttered Side Down, Dawn O'Hara, the Girl who Laughed, Dawn O'Hara, the Girl who Laughed (another site), Emma McChesney & Co., Fanny Herself, One Basket: Thirty-One Short Stories
    1863 Aleksei Krylov, mathematician
    1862 Adam Emory Albright, US painter who died in 1957.
    1854 Laurits Andensen Ring, Danish painter who died on 10 September 1933. — Sommerdag ved Roskilde Fjord
    1845 Walter Crane, English painter and illustrator who died on 15 March 1915 — Crane the SocialistMORE ON CRANE AT ART “4” AUGUST LINKS — full text of The Cuckoo Clock, with Crane's 9 illustrations — Danseuse aux CymbalesReverend Henry ParryThe Marquis of Carabas' Picture BookThe HydropultThe Quiver of LoveThe Yellow DwarfWalter Crane's Picture BookDon Quixote and the WindmillsDon Quixote of the ManchaThe History of Reynard the FoxThe Shepheard's CalendarA Book of Old Songs
    1838 Franz Richard Unterberger, German artist who died on 25 May 1902.
    1828 Frank Buchser, Swiss painter who died on 22 November 1890. — Village Street in Woodstock, VirginiaLandscape near Scarborough
    1803 Eugène-Napoléon Flandin, French painter who died in 1876.
    1795 Léger, mathematician.
    1785 Thomas De Quincey Eng, writer. DEQUINCEY ONLINE: Confessions of English Opium Eater, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (another site), Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow
    1771 Walter Scott.         ^top^
         He would be a Scottish novelist and poet, whose work as a translator, editor, biographer, and critic, together with his novels and poems, made him one of the most prominent figures in English romanticism. He was born in Edinburgh. Trained as a lawyer, he became a legal official, an occupation that allowed him to write.
    Early Works
          A love of ballads and legends helped direct Scott's literary activity. His translations of German Gothic romances in 1796 gained him some note, but he first achieved eminence with his edition of ballads, The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, in 1802-1803. His first narrative poem, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), brought him huge popularity. Following this success, he wrote a series of romantic narrative poems, which included Marmion (1808), The Lady of the Lake (1810), The Bridal of Triermain (1813), and The Lord of the Isles (1815).
          In 1813, he was offered the poet laureateship of England, and declined, recommending Robert Southey for the post. He also published editions of the writings of the English poet John Dryden in 1808 and of the English satirist Jonathan Swift in 1814.
    Novels
          Scott's declining popularity as a poet, in part caused by the competition of Lord Byron, led him to turn to the novel. Waverley (1814) began a new series of triumphs. More than 20 novels followed in rapid succession, including Guy Mannering (1815), Old Mortality (1816), The Heart of Midlothian (1818), Rob Roy (1818), The Bride of Lammermoor (1819), Ivanhoe (1819), Kenilworth (1821), Quentin Durward (1823), and The Fair Maid of Perth (1828). Although he published this fiction anonymously, his identity became an open secret. Scott used his enormous profits to construct a baronial mansion called Abbotsford. In 1820 he was made a baronet. Scott was entangled with the printing firm of James Ballantyne and the publishing house of Archibald Constable, which both failed in the economic crisis of 1826. Refusing the easy recourse of bankruptcy, Scott strove for the rest of his life to repay a debt of more than £120'000. He completed the Life of Napoleon Buonaparte (1827) and wrote several new novels. After a series of strokes, he died at Abbotsford on 21 September 1832. By the sale of copyrights, all of Scott's debts were settled by 1847.
    Evaluation
          Scott is the first major historical novelist. In his portraits of Scotland, England, and the Continent from medieval times to the 18th century, he showed a keen sense of political and traditional forces and of their influence on the individual. Although his plots are sometimes hastily constructed and his characters sometimes stilted, these works remain valuable for their compelling atmosphere, occasional epic dignity, and clear understanding of human nature. James Fenimore Cooper in America, Honoré de Balzac in France, and Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray in England were among the many who learned from Scott's panoramic studies of the interplay between social trends and individual character. In Great Britain, he created an enduring interest in Scottish traditions, and throughout the Western world he encouraged the cult of the Middle Ages, which strongly characterized romanticism.
    Biographies of Walter Scott online: The Life of Sir Walter Scott by J. G. Lockhart (Comments by Carlyle on this work) — The Life of Sir Walter Scott by Sydney Fowler Wright Part I _ Part IISir Walter Scott by Richard Holt Hutton
    SCOTT ONLINE:
  • The Antiquary
  • Guy Mannering
  • Ivanhoe
  • Ivanhoe
  • The Talisman
  • The Talisman
  • Waverley
  • Waverley
  • The Black Dwarf
  • The Black Dwarf
  • The Keepsake Stories
  • Kenilworth
  • A Legend of Montrose
  • A Legend of Montrose
  • Redgauntlet
  • Rob Roy
  • The Lay of the Last Minstrel
  • The Bride of Lammermoor
  • The Heart of Mid-Lothian
  • Chronicles of the Canongate
  • Selections

    Contributor to Wright's
  • The Siege of Malta Part I, Part II
  • 1769 Napoleone Buonaparte, in Ajaccio, Corsica, he would grow up to be the writer of Lettres sur la Corse (1786) and Souper de Beaucaire (1793), a general (from 22 December 1793), first consul (1799-1804), emperor of the French (1804-1814/15), resident of St-Helena Island (15 October 1815 to his death on 05 May 1821).
    1702 Francesco Zuccarelli, Florentine landscape painter who worked principally in Venice and England. He died on 30 December 1788. — MORE ON ZUCCARELLI AT ART “4” AUGUST LINKSBacchanalThe Rape of EuropadetailWomen with a CenserThe Return of the Holy Family From Egypt
    1688 Frederick-William I king of Prussia (1713-1740)
    1666 Jean-Pierre Abesch (Joan Petrus von Esch), Swiss painter who died in 1740, 1741, or 1742.
    1613 Jeremy Taylor, Anglican clergyman and devotional writer. Two of his works became classic expressions of Anglican spirituality: JEREMY TAYLOR ONLINE: The Rule and Exercise of Holy Living (1650) and The Rule and Exercise of Holy Dying. (1651).
    1557 Agostino Carracci, Italian printmaker and painter who died on 22 March 1602. — MORE ON CARRACCI AT ART “4” AUGUST LINKSTobias and the AngelApollo and the PythonThe Three GracesSatyr Whipping a NymphLute PlayerHoly Family with SaintsA Headpiece St. Jerome Omnia Vincit AmorHead of a Faun in a ConcaveThe Annunciation
    1534 Jesuit Order      ^top^
          In Paris, France, Ignatius de Loyola, a Spanish soldier turned priest, found the Society of Jesus, a Roman Catholic missionary organization. The founding members — Ignatius and six of his students — took vows of poverty and chastity, and made plans to work for the conversion of Muslims. However, they were unable to travel to the Holy Lands because of the Turkish wars, and went to Rome instead.
          In 1540, Pope Paul III would approve the constitution of the Society of Jesus, and under the charismatic leadership of Ignatius the Jesuit Order began to expand rapidly. For the rest of the century, the disciplined and highly educated Jesuit priests played a leading role in the Counter Reformation, and won back many of the European faithful that had been lost to Protestantism. Near the end of the seventeenth century, the Jesuits began in force the work for which their order was originally founded: the conversion of the infidels in foreign lands.
          The "Black-Robes," as they were known in native America, had successes all around the globe, and often preceded European countries in their infiltration of foreign lands and societies. The life of a Jesuit life was one of immense risk, and thousands of priests were persecuted or martyred by foreign authorities hostile to their mission of conversion. However, in some nations, such as India and China, the Jesuits were revered as men of wisdom and science. With the rise of nationalism in the eighteenth century, most European countries suppressed the Jesuits, and in 1773 Pope Clement XIV dissolved the order under pressure from the Bourbon monarchs. However, in 1814, Pope Pius VII reestablished the Jesuits as a world order, and they continue their missionary work to this day. The orders' founder, Ignatius de Loyola, was canonized as a Catholic saint in 1622.
    1432 Luigi Pulci Italy, poet (Morgante)      ^top^
         Appartenente ad una nobile famiglia decaduta, Luigi Pulci nacque a Firenze nel 1432. Nel 1451, a soli 19 anni, fu costretto ad assumere insieme ai fratelli la responsabilità dei debiti accumulati dal padre, morto quell’anno, e si impiegò come segretario presso un ricco mercante. Nel 1461 entrò a servizio della famiglia Medici e fu particolarmente caro alla madre di Lorenzo il Magnifico, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, oltre che amico personale di Lorenzo il Magnifico. Si impose alla cerchia di intellettuali e artisti che si raccoglieva intorno al giovane principe grazie al suo temperamento bizzarro e alle sue prove letterarie.
    click for Conferma della Regola
    [< Pulci, small detail of Ghirlandaio's Conferma della Regola]

          Per conto di Lorenzo svolse numerose missioni ufficiali guadagnando grande stima e influenza all’interno della corte medicea. Dopo il 1471 il suo prestigio cominciò gradualmente a calare; di cultura non vastissima anche se non superficiale, Pulci era infatti legato al recupero della tradizione popolare attraverso canoni espressionisti, indirizzo letterario che aveva attratto inizialmente il giovane Lorenzo ma che era stato superato ben presto dal più raffinato neoplatonismo ficiniano.
          L’opera di maggior spicco nel corpus di Pulci è il poema in ottave Morgante, commissionatogli da Lucrezia Tornabuoni. Completato già prima del 1470 venne pubblicato soltanto otto anni più tardi, in 23 canti; una seconda edizione del poema, in 28 canti, fu pubblicata nel 1478. Si tratta di una parodia dei poemi epico-cavallereschi in cui l’attenzione dell’autore è volta soprattutto a creare una lingua che fonda tecnicismi e voci dialettali fortemente espressive, a scapito dell’intreccio molto spesso meccanico e schematico. Altre opere di Pulci sono l’Epistolario, numerosi sonetti e favole villerecce, la Giostra di Lorenzo in 160 stanze e un Vocabolarietto di lingua furbesca. Morì a Padova nel 1484.
    PULCI ONLINE: Morgante (zipped)
    Last day for filing income tax return in the US for those who have requested an automatic extension.
    Holidays Chad, Congo-1960, India-1947 : Independence Day / Costa Rica : Mother's Day / Grenada, Liechtenstein, Corsica : National Day / Laos : Memorial Day / South Korea : Liberation Day (1945, 1948)
    Religious Observances Ang, Luth : St Mary, virgin, mother of Our Lord / RC : Assumption of the Virgin

    Thoughts for the day: "When all is said and done, too many people keep on saying and doing."
    "When all is said and done, there's usually too much said and not enough done."
    "When all is said and done, there's all too often little in common between the two."
    "When all is said and done, what was done can often be undone, but what was said cannot be unsaid."
    "When all is said and done, shut up and relax."
    "When all is said and done, all are sad and dumb."
    “When all is said and done, the woods are dark and deep, and there's no more miles to go before you sleep.”
    “When all is said and done, I am glad.”
    "When all is said and done, it gets boring."
    "When all is said and done, somebody finds out it was all wrong."
    "When all is said and done, why do they have to schedule yet another meeting?"
    “When all is said and done, please wake me up.”
    “When all is said and done, it's too late.”
    “When all is said and done, last one out please switch off the lights.”
    "Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."
    — Will Rogers
    "Calvin Coolidge didn't say much, and when he did he didn't say much." — Will Rogers
    "Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects." — Will Rogers
    “Some people manage to be ignorant even of the fact that they are ignorant on every subject.”
    “I concentrate my ignorance on those subjects which are best ignored.”
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