^
Births
which occurred on a 22 January:
1996 The New York Times's web
site
The
New York Times, which previously offered its content through
America Online, starts its own Web site. As consumers moved from proprietary
services to the Web throughout late 1995 and 1996, proprietary services
began to lose members. At the same time, content providers found they
had more control of their presentation on the Web than on proprietary
services, and many publishers began migrating their content to the
Web. |
1953 The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, opens on
Broadway.
1946 CIA, Central Intelligence Agency.
1938 Our Town, by Thornton Wilder, is performed
publicly for the first time, in Princeton, N.J.
1937 Eden
Pastora Gomez Nicaraguan contra leader
^
1932 Reconstruction Finance
Corporation is founded.
President Herbert Hoover [10 Aug 1874 – 20 Oct 1964] leads the
government into action against the Depression and signs the legislation
that establishes the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). Conceived
by Hoover in 1931, and passed by the House earlier that January, the
RFC was an independent agency charged with funding banks, railroads,
insurance companies, and other institutions that could help kick start
the moribund economy. When Franklin Roosevelt [30 Jan 1882 –
12 Apr 1945] became president, he made the agency a key engine of
the New Deal recovery program. The RFC was also a key player during
World War II, making disbursements that financed the US’s burgeoning
defense industry, as well as cash-strapped foreign governments.
However, by 1951 rumors that the agency
was awash in impropriety swirled around RFC, prompting congressional
officials to initiate a wide-reaching investigation. The probe not
only revealed an agency riddled with corruption, but pointed figures
at some of the RFC’s highest-ranking officials. Coupled with the push
by President Eisenhower [14 Oct 1890 – 28 Mar 1969] to curtail
the government's role in the economy, the findings resulted in the
end of the RFC. Eisenhower signed the RFC Liquidation Act into law
in 1953, which effectively stripped the organization of its duties
as a lender. By 1957, the RFC’s remaining powers had been shuttled
to other government agencies and it was shut down. |
1912 Florida
East Coast Railway is completed,
connecting to the mainland to the then nearly 20'000 residents of Key West,
on a small island about 206 kilometers south of the Florida peninsula. The
rail link served the island until 1935, when it was destroyed by a hurricane.
It was replaced in 1938 by the Overseas Highway and its 42 bridges, bringing
automotive traffic to the Florida Keys for the first time.
1911 Bruno Kreisky, chancellor of Austria (1970–1983) who died
on 29 July 1990. Kreisky joined the Social Democratic Party in 1926; he
was active in the party until it was outlawed in 1934. In 1935 he was arrested
for political reasons and imprisoned for 18 months. He was imprisoned again
in 1938, shortly after graduating as doctor of law from the University of
Vienna. Persecuted by the Gestapo because of his political beliefs and Jewish
birth, he fled to Sweden, where he engaged in journalism and business during
World War II. From1946 to 1950 he served at the Austrian legation in Stockholm
and then returned to Vienna to serve at the foreign ministry. From 1956
he was a member of the Austrian Parliament, and in 1959 he was elected deputy
chairman of the Social Democrats and became foreign minister. After the
party's decisive defeat in the 1966 general election, he took the lead in
an intraparty reform movement. He was narrowly elected chairman of the Social
Democrats in 1967, and he became chancellor of Austria when the Social Democrats
emerged from the 1970 elections as the strongest party; in 1971 they acquired
an absolute majority. Kreisky was credited with successfully pursuing a
policy of “active neutrality,” smoothing relations with neighboring Communist
Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia and seeking cooperation with other nonaligned
nations. Under his leadership, the Social Democrats preserved their parliamentary
majority in elections in 1975 and 1979. He resigned in 1983.
1909 [Sithu] U Thant, Burma, 3rd UN Secretary-General (1962-1972).
He died on 25 November 1974.
1904 George Balanchine
composer/choreographer
1892 Marcel Dassault [Bloch],
French airplane builder who died on 18 April 1986. [Il a inventé
des avions Dassault mais pas les chars d'assaut].
1891 Moïse
Kisling, French artist who died on 29 April 1953.
1891
Jack Lockett, Australian who would die on 25 May 2002.
1890
Fred M. Vinson, 13th Chief Justice of the United States, who died
on 08 September 1953.
1889 Willi Baumeister, German
painter who died on 31 August 1955. — MORE
ON BAUMEISTER AT ART “4” AUGUST
with links to images.
1889 Antonio Todde. He would
grow up to become a shepherd, and to celebrate his 112th birthday as the
oldest man in the world, together with his 97-year-old sister, four children,
a dozen or so grandchildren and a flock of great-grandchildren, in Tiana,
Sardinia, a village of about 600, which has a high percentage of people
over the age of 80, many of whom enjoy a glass of red wine every day and
for whom cheese and red meat are a regular part of the diet. He would die
on 03 January 2002.
^
1882 Louis Pergaud, French writer
who died fighting in World War I, on 08 April 1915.
Il
est né à Belmont, petit village du Doubs. Son père,
déjà instituteur public, descend d’une longue
lignée de paysans francs-comtois. Il connaît une enfance
campagnarde, tout à fait semblable à celle de ses futurs
héros (" Le p’tit Gibus ").
En 1898, il entre à l’école normale de Besançon,
où il s’intéresse aux sciences naturelles, au
point d’envisager de se présenter à l’École
normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud. Par malheur, il perd son
père et sa mère, coup sur coup, pendant l’hiver
1901. À sa sortie de l’école normale, quelques
mois plus tard, il accepte donc un poste d’instituteur stagiaire,
à Durnes. C’est là qu’il compose et fait
publier, à compte d’auteur, son premier ouvrage, un recueil
de vers intitulé L’Aube . Quatre ans plus tard,
il est nommé titulaire à Landresse, où il se
marie.
En août 1907, il renonce
provisoirement à l’enseignement pour tenter sa chance
à Paris. Il obtient un modeste emploi à la Compagnie
des eaux, qu’il conserve jusqu’en décembre 1909,
date à laquelle il réintègre l’enseignement.
A la suite d’un concours, il est nommé expéditionnaire
au service des beaux-arts de la préfecture de la Seine.
Il compose son premier volume de prose,
De Goupil à Margot . Il s’agit d’un recueil
de nouvelles que le Mercure de France publie et qui obtient le prix
Goncourt en 1910.
À partir
de 1911, Louis Pergaud écrit avec une sorte de fièvre
: La Revanche du corbeau , autre série de nouvelles,
paraît en 1911 ; La Guerre des boutons , (qui a contribué
à sa gloire puisque tous les potaches de plusieurs générations
l’ont lu … de force " (?)) en 1912 ; Le Roman
de Miraut , en 1914. À la veille de sa mobilisation,
il remet le manuscrit des Rustiques au Mercure de France.
Le 03 Aug 1914, il est mobilisé
à Verdun. Il disparaît pendant la nuit du 07 Apr au 08
Apr 1915, à Marchéville. Son corps n’a jamais
été retrouvé. Il laisse des articles, des notes,
des brouillons et un roman inachevé, Lebrac bûcheron,
où l’on retrouve un des héros de La Guerre
des boutons .
Rien n’est
poignant comme une œuvre brutalement interrompue, au moment même
où elle prenait forme. Avec les cinq ouvrages et demi qui la
constituent (en mettant de côté les deux recueils de
vers), celle de Louis Pergaud nous laisse sur une faim cruelle. Pourtant,
elle offre curieusement un panorama assez complet de la vie des paysans
francs-comtois au début de ce siècle. Pour la décrire,
Pergaud n’a eu qu’à regarder autour de lui, à
rassembler des souvenirs d’enfance, à écouter
les récits de ses parents et de ses voisins.
Dans les deux premiers recueils, De Goupil à Margot
et La Revanche du corbeau , l’ancien étudiant
amateur de sciences naturelles exprime son amour des habitants de
la forêt. Deux romans, Le Roman de Miraut, chien de chasse
, et Lebrac bûcheron , mettent l’accent
sur la rudesse de la condition paysanne, dans une région où
la terre est dure et les hivers bien longs. Enfin, Les Rustiques
, nouvelles malicieuses, et La Guerre des boutons
, cette Iliade burlesque et attendrissante, renouent avec la lointaine
tradition de la gaieté terrienne, où le rire (pas toujours
complice) est le seul moyen de triompher de la misère et du
désespoir.
Auteur:
De Goupil à Margot — La Revanche du corbeau
— La Guerre des boutons (1912) — Le Roman de
Miraut — Les Rustiques — Lebrac bûcheron.
La Guerre des boutons ce sont
des enfants de deux communes voisines tout le temps en train de se
battre. Cela commence à l'épée et ça finit avec la cavalerie (un cheval
et un âne). Il y a un petit qui s'appelle p'tit Gibus qui dit tout
le temps "si j'aurais su, j'aurais pas v'nu". Ils font plein de bétises,
et se reçoivent des raclées par les parents. A la fin, les deux chefs
de guerre se reconcilient en pension. Leur trésor, c'étaient des boutons
volés aux prisonniers ennemis. |
1879 Francis Martínez de Picabia,
French Dadaist-Surrealist
painter who died on on 30 November 1953. — MORE
ON PICABIA AT ART “4” JANUARY
with links to images.
1875 D[avid] W Griffith 1874
D.W. [David Wark] Griffith, US movie producer and director, the most influential
figure in early film history, made The Birth of A Nation and Intolerance.
1874 Leonard E. Dickson, mathematician. He died in 1954.
1863 Joseph Bail, French artist who died
on 26 November 1921.
1856 Walter Gay, US artist who
died in 1937.
1850 Robert Brookings, US businessman
and philanthropist who died on 15 November 1932.
1849 Johan
August Strindberg, Stockholm Swedish painter, sculptor,
and playwright, who died on 14 May 1912. — more
1822 Karoly Marko II, Hungarian artist who died in 1891.
— more
^
1788 George Gordon Noel Byron,
in Aberdeen, Scotland, romantic and satirical poet.
Byron was raised in near poverty. Afflicted with a clubfoot, he endured
a painful childhood. At age 10, he inherited his great uncle's title.
He attended Harrow, then Trinity College, Cambridge, where he ran
up enormous debts and wrote poetry. His first published volume of
poetry, Hours of Idleness (1807), was savaged by critics,
especially in Scotland, and his second published work, English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809), attacked the English literary
establishment.
Byron went on a
2-year tour of Europe and the Near East and returned to England on
14 July 1811. His travels inspired his first highly successful work,
Childe
Harold's Pilgrimage (1812). The poem brought him almost instant
acclaim in England, and Byron's taste, manners, and fashion all become
widely imitated. "I awoke one morning and found myself famous," he
says.
In 1815, he married Anne
Isabella Milbanke, and the couple had a daughter, August Ada, who
proved to be a mathematical prodigy and contributed to the first digital-computer
design, conceived by Charles Babbage. Byron and his wife separated
as scandal broke out over Byron's suspected incestuous relationship
with his half-sister, Augusta Leigh. He was ostracized by polite society
and forced to flee England in 1816. He settled in Geneva, near Percy
Bysshe Shelley and his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and became
intimately involved with Mary's half-sister, Claire Clairmont. She
bore Byron's daughter Allegra in January 1817.
Byron moved to Venice that year and entered a period of wild debauchery.
In 1819, he began an affair with the Countess Teresa Guiccioli, the
young wife of an elderly count, and the two remained attached for
many years. Byron, always an avid supporter of liberal causes and
national independence, supported the Greek war for independence. He
joined the cause in Greece, training troops in the town of Missolonghi,
where he died of malaria on 19 April 1824.
OTHER
WORKS BY BYRON ONLINE:
Don
Juan, Hebrew
Melodies, Manfred, Selected
Poetry |
1782 Franz Xaver Lampi, Austrian Polish painter who died
on 22 July 1852. — more
1775 André-Marie Ampère, à Lyon, savant.
1762
Jean-Baptiste Joseph Wicar (or Vicart), French Neoclassical painter
who died on 27 February 1834. — more
with links to images and information on queen Julie Bonaparte, who sat for
a portrait, and on some of her relatives.
1690 Nicolas Lancret,
French genre painter who died on 14 September 1743. — MORE
ON LANCRET AT ART “4” JANUARY
with links to images.
1592 Pierre Gassendi, mathematician.
1561 Francis Bacon, English philosopher, statesman, essayist.
BACON ONLINE: Novum
Organum — Historia
Regni Henrici Septimi Regis Angliæ — Sermones
Fideles — The
Advancement of Learning — The
Advancement of Learning — The
Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall — The
Essays — New
Atlantis — New
Atlantis.
1440 Ivan III Vasilyevich “the
Great”, grand prince of Moscow, from the death of his father Vasily
II [1415 – 27 Mar 1462] until his own death on 27 October 1505. He
subdued most of the Great Russian lands by conquest or by the voluntary
allegiance of princes, rewon parts of Ukraine from Poland–Lithuania,
and repudiated the old subservience to the Mongol-derived Tatars. He also
laid the administrative foundations of a centralized Russian state.
|
^
On
a 22 January:
^
2001 Twin boy guerrilla leaders hold press conference.
2001 Antonio Todde celebrates his 112th birthday in Tiana,
Sardinia, saying: “I eat a bit of meat every day and drink a nice glass
of wine. I want to make it to 120 and then 130.”
1973
US, North and South Vietnam and Vietcong sign boundary accord
1881
Ancient Egyptian obelisk "Cleopatra's Needle" erected in Central Park
2004
Policeman Ibrahim Khalid Ibrahim, another policemen, and a civilian,
Iraqis, near Fallujah, Iraq, in an attack on a checkpoint on the highway
to the town of Ramadi, by kaffiyeh-masked attackers in a passing car, who
throw a grenade and fire Kalashnikov assault rifles. Five policemen are
wounded.
1922
Benedict XV [Giacomo della Chiesa], 67, pope (1914-22). He was
created archbishop of Bologna in 1907 and cardinal in 1914, shortly before
his election to the papacy. During World War I, Benedict won the good will
of belligerents by his impartiality, his peace proposals, his charitable
donations, and his prisoner-of-war services. [photo >] He would
be succeeded by Pius XI.
