16 May History: This Date

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Events, deaths, births, of 16 MAY v.8.90

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• Protests mount in France... • Last Jews in Warsaw ghetto killed... • Germans attack Russian partisans... • President Johnson acquitted... • Battle of Champion's Hill... • Voltaire in Bastille... • Krushchev~Eisenhower talks collapse... • Du Guesclin sauve la France... • Fourier dies... • Condamnés à mort par la Révolution... • Phonograph record... • Japanese woman scales Everest... • US admiral's suicide... • GM tech center... • The nickel coin... • Louis marries Marie~Antoinette...

^ On a 16 May:
2004 Presidential election in the Dominican Republic, which is suffering an economic crisis. Leonel Fernández, 50, who was president from 1996 to 2000, of the centrist Dominican Liberation Party, wins with 54% of the vote. Incumbant Hipolito Mejía, 63, of the center-left Dominican Revolutionary Party gets 36%. Christian Democrat candidate Eduardo Estrella gets 9%.
2001 Manchester, England, police responds to a silent emergency 999 telephone call. Through the window of the house from which the call was made, they see a cocaktiel standing on the push button phone with the receiver off the hook. No one else is in the house. For legal reasons, police refuses to give the name of the parrot, who is not talking.
2000 The US Federal Reserve board raises the federal funds rate by one-half percent, the biggest increase in five years.
1993 Suleimán Demirel es elegido noveno presidente de Turquía.
1989 Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, meet in Beijing in the first Sino-Soviet summit in 30 years, formally ending the feud between the two countries.
1988 US Supreme Court rules trash may be searched without a warrant
1988 Marruecos y Argelia restablecen sus relaciones diplomáticas, pese a reconocer Argel a la República Arabe Saharaui Democrática.
1986 Marruecos y Argelia rompen sus relaciones diplomáticas.

1975 Japanese woman scales Everest ^top^
Via the South-East ridge route, Japanese mountaineer Junko Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit of Mt. Everest, the tallest mountain in the world. Located in the central Himalayas on the border of China and Nepal, Everest stands 29,028 feet above sea level. Called Chomo-Lungma, or "Mother Goddess of the Land" by the Tibetans, the English named the mountain after Sir George Everest, an early nineteenth-century British surveyor of the Himalayas. In May 1953, climber and explorer Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay of Nepal made the first successful climb of the peak. Hillary was later knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for the achievement. Ten years later, James Whittaker of Redmond, Washington, reached Everest’s summit with his Sherpa climbing partner Nawang Gombu, becoming the first American to top the peak. In 1975, Junko Tabei conquered the mountain, and in 1988, Stacy Allison became the first American woman to successfully climb Everest.

1974 La India anuncia que tiene la bomba atómica.
1974 Helmut Schmidt jura su cargo de canciller de la RFA.

1972 US bombs North Vietnam's main fuel line ^top^
A series of air strikes over five days destroys all of North Vietnam's pumping stations in the southern panhandle, thereby cutting North Vietnam's main fuel line to South Vietnam. These strikes were part of Operation Linebacker, an air offensive against North Vietnam that had been ordered by President Richard Nixon in early April in response to a massive communist offensive launched on March 30.

1971 US first class postage now costs 8 cents (was 6 cents)
1969 The Russian spacecraft Venus 5 landed on the planet Venus.

1968 Protests mount in France. ^top^
      In France, the May 1968 crisis escalates as a general strike spreads to factories and industries across the country, shutting down newspaper distribution, air transport, and two major railroads. By the end of the month, millions of workers were on strike, and France seemed to be on the brink of radical leftist revolution. After the Algerian crisis of the l950s, France entered a period of stability in the 1960s. The French empire was abolished, the economy improved, and President Charles de Gaulle was a popular ruler. Discontent lay just beneath the surface, however, especially among young students, who were critical of France's outdated university system and the scarcity of employment opportunity for university graduates.
      Sporadic student demonstrations for education reform began in 1968, and on 03 May a protest at the Sorbonne (the most celebrated college of the University of Paris) was broken up by police. Several hundred students were arrested and dozens were injured. In the aftermath of the incident, courses at the Sorbonne were suspended, and students took to the streets of the Latin Quarter (the university district of Paris) to continue their protests. On 06 May, battles between the police and students in the Latin Quarter led to hundreds of injuries.
      On the night of 10 May, students set up barricades and rioted in the Latin Quarter. Nearly 400 persons were hospitalized, more than half of them police. Leftist students began calling for radical economic and political change in France, and union leaders planned strikes in support of the students. In an effort to defuse the crisis by returning the students to school, Prime Minister Georges Pompidou announced that the Sorbonne would be reopened on 13 May. On that day, students occupied the Sorbonne buildings, converting it into a commune, and striking workers and students protested in the Paris streets. During the next few days, the unrest spread to other French universities, and labor strikes rolled across the country, eventually involving several million workers and paralyzing France.
      On the evening of 24 May, the worst fighting of the May crisis occurred in Paris. Revolutionary students temporarily seized the Bourse (Paris Stock Exchange), raised a communist red flag over the building, and then tried to set it on fire. One policeman was killed in the night's violence. During the next few days, Prime Minister Pompidou negotiated with union leaders, making a number of concessions, but failed to end the strike. Radical students openly called for revolution but lost the support of mainstream communist and trade union leaders, who feared that they, like the Gaullist establishment, would be swept away in a revolution led by anarchists and Trotskyites.
      On 30 May, President de Gaulle went on the radio and announced that he was dissolving the National Assembly and calling national elections. He appealed for law and order and implied that he would use military force to return order to France if necessary. Loyal Gaullists and middle-class citizens rallied around him, and the labor strikes were gradually abandoned. Student protests continued until 12 June, when they were banned. Two days later, the students were evicted from the Sorbonne. In the two rounds of voting on 23 June and 30 June, the Gaullists won a commanding majority in the National Assembly. In the aftermath of the May events, de Gaulle's government made a series of concessions to the protesting groups, including higher wages and improved working conditions for workers, and passed a major education reform bill intended to modernize higher education. After 11 years of rule, Charles de Gaulle resigned the presidency in 1969 and was succeeded by Pompidou. He died the next year just before his 80th birthday.

1966 Stokely Carmichael named chairman of Student Nonviolent Coordinating

Échec du sommet de Paris sur le statut de Berlin
1960 US-Soviet summit meeting collapses ^top^
      In the wake of the Soviet downing of a US U-2 spy plane on 01 May, Russian ruler Nikita Khrushchev [17 Apr 1894 – 11 Sep 1971] lashes out at the United States and President Dwight D. Eisenhower [14 Oct 1890 – 28 Mar 1969] at a Paris summit meeting between the two heads of state. Khrushchev's outburst angered Eisenhower and doomed any chances for successful talks or negotiations at the summit.
      On 01 May 1960, the Soviets shot down a CIA spy plane and captured the pilot, Gary Francis Powers [17 Aug 1929 – 01 Aug 1977]. The United States issued public denials that the aircraft was being used for espionage, claiming instead that it was merely a weather plane that had veered off course. The Soviets thereupon triumphantly produced Powers, large pieces of wreckage from the plane, and Powers' admission that he was working for the CIA. The incident was a public relations fiasco for Eisenhower, who was forced to admit that the plane had indeed been spying on Russia.
      Tensions from the incident were still high when Eisenhower and Khrushchev arrived in Paris to begin a summit meeting on 16 May. Khrushchev wasted no time in tearing into the United States, declaring that Eisenhower would not be welcome in Russia during his scheduled visit to the Soviet Union in June. He condemned the "inadmissible, provocative actions" of the United States in sending the spy plane over the Soviet Union, and demanded that Eisenhower ban future flights and punish those responsible for this "deliberate violation of the Soviet Union." When Eisenhower agreed only to a "suspension" of the spy plane flights, Khrushchev left the meeting in a huff. According to US officials, the president was "furious" at Khrushchev for his public dressing-down of the United States. The summit meeting officially adjourned the next day with no further meetings between Khrushchev and Eisenhower. Eisenhower's planned trip to Moscow in June was scrapped.
      The collapse of the May 1960 summit meeting was a crushing blow to those in the Soviet Union and the United States who believed that a period of "peaceful coexistence" between the two superpowers was on the horizon. During the previous few years, both Eisenhower and Khrushchev had publicly indicated their desire for an easing of Cold War tensions, but the spy plane incident put an end to such talk, at least for the time being.

1957 El belga Paul-Henri Spaak, nombrado secretario general de la OTAN.
1943 II Guerra Mundial: Tras cuatro semanas de lucha, las fuerzas alemanas terminan por vencer la resistencia del gueto de Varsovia.
1940 Les Allemands dans les Flandres
1925 Arthur Atwater Kent, aboard the blimp The Los Angeles called his wife, Mabel Lucas Kent, in a car in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1920 Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc) canonized in Rome
1920 Un referéndum decide la adhesión de Suiza a la Sociedad de Naciones.
1901 Start of Sherlock Holmes's The Adventure of the Priory School.
1897 Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith of the newly formed Vitagraph film company shoot their first fictional film, The Burglar on the Roof. The film was shot on the roof of a New York City building. The company flourished in the silent film era, introducing future stars like Rudolph Valentino and Norma Talmadge. Warner Bros. purchased the company in 1925.
1879 Treaty of Gandamak between Russia and the English, to set up Afghan state

1868 US President Johnson narrowly acquitted in first Senate vote ^top^
      Near the conclusion of an historic two-month trial, the US Senate failed by just one vote to convict President Andrew Johnson on an impeachment charged levied against him by the House of Representatives three months before. Senators voted thirty-five guilty and nineteen not guilty on the eleventh article of impeachment, a charge related to his violation of the Tenure of Office Act in the previous year. Ten days later, the Senate voted again on another article of impeachment, the second, and the vote was again thirty-five for conviction and nineteen for acquittal. Twice failing to achieve the two-third majority needed to convict the president, the radical Republicans in Congress dropped the matter, and Johnson remained in office.
      At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Andrew Johnson, a senator from Tennessee, was the only US senator from a seceding state who remained loyal to the Union. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln appointed him military governor of Tennessee, and in 1864, he was elected vice president of the United States.
      Inaugurated after Lincoln’s assassination in April of 1865, President Johnson enacted a lenient Reconstruction policy for the defeated South, including almost total amnesty to ex-Confederates, a program of rapid restoration of US state status for the seceded states, and the approval of new, local Southern governments, which were able to legislate "Black Codes" that preserved the system of slavery in all but its name.
      The Republican-dominated Congress greatly opposed Johnson’s Reconstruction program, and on 02 March 1867, passed the Tenure of Office Act over the president’s veto. The bill prohibited the president from removing officials confirmed by the Senate without senatorial approval, and was designed to shield members of Johnson’s cabinet like Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton who had been a leading radical Republican in the Lincoln administration. In the fall of 1867, President Johnson attempted to test the constitutionality of the act by replacing Stanton with General Ulysses S. Grant. However, the US Supreme Court refused to rule on the case and Grant turned the office back to Stanton after the Senate passed a measure refusing the dismissal.
      On 21 February 1868, Johnson decided to rid himself of Stanton once and for all and appointed General Lorenzo Thomas, an individual far less favorable to the Congress than Grant, as secretary of war. Stanton refused to yield, barricading himself in his office, and the House of Representatives, which had already discussed impeachment after Johnson’s first dismissal of Stanton, initiated formal impeachment proceedings against the president. On 24 February, the House voted eleven impeachment articles against Johnson, nine of which cited Johnson’s removal of Stanton in violation of the Tenure of Office Act. On 13 March, the impeachment trial of President Johnson began in the US Senate under the direction of US Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase. On 16 May and again on 26 May, the Senate narrowly fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict Johnson, and he remained in the White House. Nevertheless, he chose not to actively seek reelection, and in November of the same year, Ulysses S. Grant, who supported the Republicans’ radical Reconstruction policies, was elected president of the United States. (Witnesses testimony at the trial)

1864 Battle of Drewry's Bluff, Virginia
1864 Battle of Spotsylvania, Virginia continues

1863 Battle of Champion's Hill, Mississippi ^top^
The Union army seals the fate of Vicksburg by defeating the Confederates at the Battle of Champion's Hill (Baker's Creek), bloodiest action of Vicksburg Campaign . General Ulysses S. Grant had successfully run the Confederate gauntlet at Vicksburg and placed the Army of the Tennessee south of the stronghold, the Rebels' last significant holding on the Mississippi River. But he did not move directly on Vicksburg because he knew Joseph Johnston was assembling a Confederate force in Jackson, 60 km east of Vicksburg. Instead, Grant advanced toward Jackson and prevented Johnston from uniting with the Vicksburg garrison, headed by John C. Pemberton. After boldly attacking and defeating the Confederates at Jackson, Grant left William T. Sherman's corps to hold Johnston at bay. The Confederates were divided not only by Grant's army, but also by conflicting strategy. Johnston wanted Pemberton to head into northern Mississippi to join forces with his own army. But Pemberton insisted on sticking close to Vicksburg and defending the city. Grant sent his other two corps, commanded by James McPherson and John McClernand, to take on Pemberton. They found the Confederates on Champion's Hill, about halfway between Jackson and Vicksburg. There, some 30,000 Union troops attacked 20,000 Confederates. The battle swayed back and forth, but the Federals eventually gained the upper hand. Pemberton's men were forced to retreat, and one division was completely cut off from the rest of the army. Although McClernand's timidity kept the rout from being complete, the engagement was still the decisive action of the Vicksburg campaign. Pemberton fell back into Vicksburg, where Grant followed and soon bottled the Confederates. A six-week siege ensued, and Vicksburg fell on July 4.

1861 Tennessee admitted to the Confederacy
1825 Para zanjar las encontradas aspiraciones territoriales entre Argentina y Perú, Simón Bolívar crea una nueva república, que se llamó Bolivia.
1812 Las Cortes de Cádiz excluyen de la sucesión al trono a los infantes Francisco de Paula y María Luisa, hermanos de Fernando VII, supuestos hijos de Godoy y la reina.
1811 Tropas hispano-anglo-lusitanas, mandadas por Wellington, derrotan a los franceses en la batalla de La Albuera (Badajoz).
1811 El futuro libertador de Chile y Perú, José de San Martín, es ascendido a comandante tras la batalla de La Albuera.

1770 Louis marries Marie-Antoinette ^top^
      At Versailles, Louis, the French dauphin, 15, married Marie-Antoinette, 14, the daughter of Austrian Archduchess Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I. Born in Vienna, Marie Antoinette married Louis to strengthen France’s alliance with its longtime enemy, Austria. Four years later, with the death of King Louis XV, Louis and Marie were crowned king and queen of France.
      From the start, Louis was unsuited to deal with the severe financial problems that he had inherited from his grandfather, and his queen soon fell under criticism for her extravagance, her devotion to the interests of Austria, and her opposition to reform. Marie exerted a growing influence over her husband, and under their reign the monarchy became dangerously alienated from the French people.
      In a legendary episode [a testimonial to her reputation more than to historical fact], Marie allegedly responded to the news that the impoverished French workers had no bread to eat by declaring "Let them eat brioche." At the outbreak of the French Revolution, Marie and Louis resisted the advice of constitutional monarchists who sought to reform the monarchy in order to save it, and by 1791 opposition to the royal pair had become so fierce that the two were forced to flee. During their attempted escape to Austria, Marie and Louis were apprehended at Varennes, France, and taken back to Paris where they were imprisoned.
      In 1792, the French National Convention voted to abolish the monarchy, and in January of 1793, Louis was convicted by the tribunal for conspiracy with foreign powers and executed. Nine months later, in October, Marie, also convicted of treason, followed her husband to the guillotine.

1763 Samuel Johnson [1772 portrait by Joshua Reynolds >] meets his future biographer James Boswell in London. BOSWELL ONLINE: Boswell's Life of Johnson, Abridged and Edited.
JOHNSON ONLINE: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia — The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (PDF) — A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (page images) — A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland) — The Life of Milton — The Life of Pope — The Life of Savage — Selected works — The Vanity of Human Wishes — The Vanity of Human Wishes — The Vanity of Human Wishes — translator of: A Voyage to Abyssinia, by Jeronimo Lobo,

1717 Voltaire is imprisoned in the Bastille ^top^
Writer François-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire, is imprisoned in the Bastille. The outspoken writer was born on 21 November 1694 to middle-class parents, attended college in Paris, and began to study law. However, he quit law to become a playwright and made a name for himself with classical tragedies. Critics embraced his epic poem, La Henriade, but its satirical attack on politics and religion infuriated the government, and Voltaire was arrested in 1717. He spent nearly a year in the Bastille. Voltaire's time in prison failed to dry up his satirical pen.
In 1726, he was forced to flee to England. He returned several years later and continued to write plays. In 1734, his Lettres Philosophiques criticized established religions and political institutions, and he was forced to flee again. He retreated to the region of Champagne, where he lived with his mistress and patroness, Madame du Châtelet. In 1750, he moved to Berlin on the invitation of Frederick II of Prussia and later settled in Switzerland, where he wrote his best-known work, Candide. He died in Paris in 1778, having returned to supervise the production of one of his plays.
VOLTAIRE ONLINE:

Candide

L'homme aux quarante écus

Lettres philosophiques

Micromégas

Le monde comme il va

La Pucelle d'Orléans (1762)

In English translations:

Candide

Candide (in English and French)

Letters on England

Philosophical Dictionary (selected entries)

1703 Pedro I pone la primera piedra de la ciudad de San Petersburgo, a orillas del río Neva.
1571 Johannes Kepler, by his own calculations (done later), is conceived at 04:37.
1509 Zarpa del puerto de Cartagena la escuadra que, al mando del cardenal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, había de conquistar Orán (actual territorio de Argelia).

^ 1364 Du Guesclin sauve la France.
Bertrand Du Guesclin vainc le roi de Navarre Charles le Mauvais à Cocherel, au sud-est de Paris. La victoire du capitaine breton restaure le pouvoir du dauphin Charles de Valois. Elle sauve la France de l'effondrement après les débuts désastreux de la guerre de Cent Ans. Après que son père eût été capturé par les Anglais à Poitiers, l'héritier de la couronne avait du faire face à l'occupation du pays, à des révoltes paysannes, à la rébellion des marchands de Paris ainsi qu'à la trahison du roi de Navarre, son beau-frère! Humilié par le prévôt des marchands, Etienne Marcel, le dauphin s'était enfui de Paris. Mais il avait su retourner les Parisiens en sa faveur et rentrer dans sa capitale après l'assassinat du prévôt. L'habile dauphin (20 ans) avait obtenu aussi des Anglais un traité de paix à Brétigny. Restait le Navarrais, dont les redoutables troupes de Gascons étaient solidement établies dans les campagnes autour de Paris et faisaient bombance pendant que les Parisiens criaient famine. Le dauphin fait appel à Bertrand Du Guesclin (40 ans), un chef de bande qui s'est illustré dans les luttes dynastiques en son pays, la Bretagne. Le mercenaire breton attaque la ville de Melun, aux mains de Charles le Mauvais, avant d'écraser ce dernier dans la plaine de Cocherel. Du Guesclin va ensuite entraîner les grandes compagnies de mercenaires en Espagne où il retrouve son vieil ennemi, le roi de Navarre. De retour en France, il chasse les Anglais de presque tout le royaume. Il est tué en 1380, à 60 ans, au siège de Châteauneuf-de-Randon, en Auvergne. Grâce à lui, la France entre alors dans une longue embellie.

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^ Deaths which occurred on a 16 May:

2005 Mark McKenzie, 37; his mate, Brenda Kay Groene, 40; and her son Slade Groene, 13; hit on the head in the early hours, in their home near Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Brenda's children, Shasta Groene, 8, and Dillon Groene, 9, are abducted. The crime was not committed by Brenda's divorced husband Robert Roy Lutner, 33, but by Joseph Edward Duncan III, 41, who had been convicted of raping a 14-year-old boy in Washington state in 1980, and now was free on bond (since April 2005) after being charged with sexually molesting a 6-year-old boy at a school playground in July 2004. On 02 July 2005, Shasta Groene would be recognized by a waitress at a Denny's restaurant in Coeur d'Alene, and Duncan be arrested.
2005 Sheik Hassan al-Naimi and Sheik Talal Nayef, Sunni imams who were abducted on 15 May 2005 from different mosques in Baghdad's Shaab neighborhood by men wearing Iraqi army uniforms, murdered. Their bodies are found on 17 May 2005.
2004 Two women working for the US occupiers, by gunfire and terrorist bomb attack on the minibus which one of them was driving in Baghdad, Iraq. A third woman in the minibus is injured.
2004 A woman working as a translator for the the US occupiers in Mahmoudiyah, Iraq, shot in her home by intruders, in the early hours.
2004 Two al-Mahdi Army militiamen, among those fighting the Italian occupiers in Nasiriyah, Iraq, on two bridges across the Euphrates. 20 militiamen and, lightly, six Italian soldiers are wounded.
2003:: 41 persons in downtown Casablanca, Morocco, at about 22:00 (local = UT), by nearly simultaneous attacks starting with the killing of some of the policemen and security guards at a Jewish community center, the Belgian consulate, the restaurant of the Casa de España social club, and the hotel Farah Maghreb (formerly Safir); followed at each location by suicide explosions, three of them from car bombs. The dead include 10 attackers. Some 65 persons are injured.
2003 Sylvia Holtzclaw, James Barnes, 62, and his wife, Margaret Barnes, 58, in 13:15 (17:15 UT) robbery of a small branch of the Blue Ridge Savings Bank, in Greer, South Carolina, along Interstate 85. Bank employee Holtzclaw, and the Barnes, customers, were the only persons inside at the time.
2003 Taher Abdeh, 23, mentally ill Palestinian, shot near Nablus, in the evening, by Israeli troops who say that he ignored their warning shot and orders to stop approaoching their army post.
2001 Muhammad Salim, 14, Palestinian, shot in the chest and the abdomen by Israeli troops durnig a clash with stone-throwers at Netzarim Junction in central Gaza..
1996 Michael A. Lyons, 8, kidnapped as he walks home from school in Yuba CA, tortured with 60 jab wouds under the chin, raped, and then jabbed in the heart and his throat slit, by Robert Boyd Rhoades, 43, a barber, who, in 1985, was convicted of kidnapping, robbing and raping a 29-year-old Marysville woman and, in 1993, of molesting his 4-year-old step-granddaughter. On 17 June 1998, he would be convicted of the crimes against Michael Lyons, and, on 12 August 1999, sentenced to death. On 25 January 2000, it would be announced from the California DNA database it had been discovered that Rhoades was also guilty of the 20 April 1984 rape and murder of Julie Connell, 18, of San Leandro.

^ 1996 Admiral Jeremy "Mike" Boorda, 56, fraudulent medal wearer, suicide
      The only sailor to climb from the lowest enlisted ranks to that of four-star Navy admiral, Boorda was about to be questioned by a reporter about his right to wear two "Valor" medals when he drove back to his home, wrote a suicide note "to my sailors," and stepped into his garden, where he fatally shot himself in the chest.
      Appointed chief of naval operations by President Bill Clinton in 1994, Boorda had served on two US destroyers during the Vietnam War, and thought that this service authorized him to wear the two "V" decorations, which signified service in combat.
      In 1995, after being advised by the Navy’s office of awards and special projects that he was not entitled to wear the decorations, he immediately removed them. On May 16, 1996, with Newsweek magazine about to publish an article exposing his questionable claims to combat service, Boorda killed himself. The Navy later argued that Boorda had indeed earned the right to wear the two Valor medals.

1990 Sammy Davis Jr, 64, entertainer, from throat cancer
1990 Fernando Claudín, teórico marxista español.
1983 Mateo Alemán, ex presidente de México.
1979 Asa Philip Randolph, 90, labor leader and civil rights pioneer
1977 Five people are killed when a New York Airways helicopter, idling atop the Pan Am Building in midtown Manhattan, toppled over, sending a huge rotor blade flying.
1975 Michael X (Abdul Malik), hanged in Trinidad, for murder
1965 Ramón de la Cadena y Brualla, marqués de la Cadena, escritor y periodista español.

1965 27 US servicemen, 4 South Vietnamese, in bomb accident. ^top^
What is described by the United States government as "an accidental explosion of a bomb on one aircraft which spread to others" at the Bien Hoa air base leaves 27 US servicemen and 4 South Vietnamese dead and some 95 Americans injured. More than 40 US and South Vietnamese planes, including 10 B-57s, were destroyed.

1955 James Agee, in New York, US author and critic.

^ 1943 Last Jews killed in the Warsaw Ghetto itself,
the few survivors are sent to die at Treblinka as the Warsaw Ghetto uprising comes to an end.
In the evening Nazi soldiers gain control of Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto, blowing up the last remaining synagogue and initiating the mass deportation of the ghetto’s remaining dwellers to the Treblinka extermination camp. The revolt began on April 18 when Jews, walled into a stifling area after the massive German assault on the city, began a heroic armed revolt against their German persecutors. After all was said and done, 14'000 Jews were killed in the revolt or sent to the death camp at Treblinka and another 42'000 were sent to labor camps in Lublin.
      Shortly after the German occupation of Poland began, the Nazis forced the city’s Jewish citizens into a "ghetto" surrounded by barbed wire and armed S.S. guards. The Warsaw ghetto had an area of only 3.4 square kilometers but soon held almost 500'000 Jews in deplorable conditions. Disease and starvation killed thousands every month and, beginning in July of 1942, six thousand Jews per day were transferred to the Treblinka concentration camp. Although the Nazis assured the remaining Jews that their relatives and friends were being sent to work camps, word soon reached the ghetto that deportation to the camp meant extermination.
      An underground resistance group was established in the ghetto — the Jewish Combat Organization (ZOB) — and limited arms were acquired at great cost. On January 18, 1943, when the Nazis entered the ghetto to prepare a group for transfer, a ZOB unit ambushed them. Fighting lasted for several days, and a number of Germans soldiers were killed before they withdrew.
      On April 19, Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler announced that the ghetto was to be cleared out in honor of Hitler’s birthday the following day, and over a thousand S.S. soldiers entered the confines with tanks and heavy artillery. Although many of the ghetto’s remaining 60'000 Jewish dwellers attempted to hide themselves in secret bunkers, over a thousand ZOB members met the Germans with gunfire and homemade bombs. Suffering moderate casualties, the Germans initially withdrew but soon returned, and on April 24 launched an all-out attack against the Warsaw Jews. Thousands were slaughtered as the Germans systematically moved down the ghettos, blowing up the buildings one by one.
      The ZOB took to the sewers to continue the fight, but on May 8 their command bunker fell to the Germans and their resistant leaders committed suicide. By May 16, the ghetto was firmly under Nazi control and mass deportation of the last Warsaw Jews to Treblinka began. During the uprising some 300 hundred German soldiers were killed to the thousands of Warsaw Jews who were massacred. Virtually all of those who survived to reach Treblinka had been killed by the end of the war.

1943: 1584 Russian partisans, by German bombs. ^top^
The German army launches Operation Gypsy Baron against partisan resistance fighters who controlled large tracts of swampland, forest, and mountain ranges and were still battling the German invaders on the eastern front in Russia. Out of 6000 partisans in the region, German bombing killed 1584 and another 1568 were taken prisoner. The Germans dropped 840'000 leaflets calling for the surrender of the partisans.

1943: 1268 persons as dam bombing floods Ruhr. ^top^
The British Royal Air Force sets into motion a plan to bomb key dams in order to flood the Ruhr region of Germany. Operation Chastise, part of a larger strategy of "area bombing" begun a year earlier was led by Guy Gibson, one of the RAF's best bomber pilots. Leading 18 bombers at low altitude across the North Sea and Holland, Gibson lost six bombers and 56 of his crew (out of 133) who were shot down before reaching their destinations, the Mohne, Eder, and Sorpe dams.
The surviving aircraft succeeded in destroying two of their three targets, causing the Ruhr river, a tributary of the Rhine, to flood the surrounding area, killing 1268 people, including, unfortunately, 700 Russian slave laborers. Gibson would be awarded the Victoria Cross for his successful, though costly, raid.

1935 Hector Munro Macdonald, Scottish applied mathematician born on 19 January 1865.
1910 Henri-Edmond “Cross”, French Pointillist painter and printmaker born Henri-Edmond-Joseph Delacroix on 20 May 1856. — MORE ON “CROSS” AT ART “4” MAY 20 with links to images.
1894 Germán Hernández Amores, Spanish painter.
1892 John Banvard, US painter and writer, born on 15 November 1815. He claimed to have painted the world's largest painting (370 m long, but deceptively advertised as 3 miles in length): Panorama of the Mississippi (1846), which would be moved from one roller to another during two hours before an audience to give them the impression of a trip along the river. — MORE ON BANVARD AT ART “4” MAY but no image was found (sob! weep!)
1883 Ferdinand de Braekeleer, Belgian artist born on 12 February 1792.
1862 Jan-Baptist van der Hulst, Belgian artist born on 22 March 1790.
1849 Firmin Massot, Swiss painter, draftsman, and teacher, born on 05 May 1766.

^ 1830 Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier, mathematician, Egyptologist.
     French mathematician born on 21 March 1768, known also as an Egyptologist and administrator, who exerted strong influence on mathematical physics through his Théorie analytique de la chaleur (1822). He showed how the conduction of heat in solid bodies may be analyzed in terms of infinite mathematical series now called by his name, the Fourier series. Far transcending the particular subject of heat conduction, his work stimulated research in mathematical physics, which has since been often identified with the solution of boundary-value problems, encompassing many natural occurrences such as sunspots, tides, and the weather. His work also had a great influence on the theory of functions of a real variable, one of the main branches of modern mathematics.
         Joseph Fourier's father was a tailor in Auxerre. After the death of his first wife, with whom he had three children, he remarried and Joseph was the ninth of the twelve children of this second marriage. Joseph's mother died went he was nine years old and his father died the following year.
      His first schooling was at Pallais's school, run by the music master from the cathedral. There Joseph studied Latin and French and showed great promise. He proceeded in 1780 to the Ecole Royale Militaire of Auxerre where at first he showed talents for literature but very soon, by the age of thirteen, mathematics became his real interest. By the age of 14 he had completed a study of the six volumes of Bézout's Cours de mathématique. In 1783 he received the first prize for his study of Bossut's Mécanique en général.
      In 1787 Fourier decided to train for the priesthood and entered the Benedictine abbey of St Benoit-sur-Loire. His interest in mathematics continued, however, and he corresponded with C L Bonard, the professor of mathematics at Auxerre. Fourier was unsure if he was making the right decision in training for the priesthood. He submitted a paper on algebra to Montucla in Paris and his letters to Bonard suggest that he really wanted to make a major impact in mathematics. In one letter Fourier wrote
      Yesterday was my 21st birthday, at that age Newton and Pascal had already acquired many claims to immortality.
      Fourier did not take his religious vows. Having left St Benoit in 1789, he visited Paris and read a paper on algebraic equations at the Académie Royale des Sciences. In 1790 he became a teacher at the Benedictine college, Ecole Royale Militaire of Auxerre, where he had studied. Up until this time there had been a conflict inside Fourier about whether he should follow a religious life or one of mathematical research. However in 1793 a third element was added to this conflict when he became involved in politics and joined the local Revolutionary Committee. As he wrote:—
      As the natural ideas of equality developed it was possible to conceive the sublime hope of establishing among us a free government exempt from kings and priests, and to free from this double yoke the long-usurped soil of Europe. I readily became enamored of this cause, in my opinion the greatest and most beautiful which any nation has ever undertaken.
      Certainly Fourier was unhappy about the Terror which resulted from the French Revolution and he attempted to resign from the committee. However this proved impossible and Fourier was now firmly entangled with the Revolution and unable to withdraw. The revolution was a complicated affair with many factions, with broadly similar aims, violently opposed to each other. Fourier defended members of one faction while in Orléans. A letter describing events relates:—
      Citizen Fourier, a young man full of intelligence, eloquence and zeal, was sent to Loiret. ... It seems that Fourier ... got up on certain popular platforms. He can talk very well and if he put forward the views of the Society of Auxerre he has done nothing blameworthy...
      This incident was to have serious consequences but after it Fourier returned to Auxerre and continued to work on the revolutionary committee and continued to teach at the College. In July 1794 he was arrested, the charges relating to the Orléans incident, and he was imprisoned. Fourier feared the he would go to the guillotine but, after Robespierre himself went to the guillotine, political changes resulted in Fourier being freed.
      Later in 1794 Fourier was nominated to study at the Ecole Normale in Paris. This institution had been set up for training teachers and it was intended to serve as a model for other teacher-training schools. The school opened in January 1795 and Fourier was certainly the most able of the pupils whose abilities ranged widely. He was taught by Lagrange, whom Fourier described as the first among European men of science, and also by Laplace, whom Fourier rated less highly, and by Monge whom Fourier described as having a loud voice and is active, ingenious and very learned.
      Fourier began teaching at the Collège de France and, having excellent relations with Lagrange, Laplace and Monge, began further mathematical research. He was appointed to a position at the Ecole Centrale Des Travaux Publiques, the school being under the direction of Lazare Carnot and Gaspard Monge, which was soon to be renamed Ecole Polytechnique. However, repercussions of his earlier arrest remained and he was arrested again imprisoned. His release has been put down to a variety of different causes, pleas by his pupils, pleas by Lagrange, Laplace or Monge or a change in the political climate. In fact all three may have played a part.
      By 1 September 1795 Fourier was back teaching at the Ecole Polytechnique. In 1797 he succeeded Lagrange in being appointed to the chair of analysis and mechanics. He was renowned as an outstanding lecturer but he does not appear to have undertaken original research during this time.
      In 1798 Fourier joined Napoléon's army in its invasion of Egypt as scientific adviser. Monge and Malus were also part of the expeditionary force. The expedition was at first a great success. Malta was occupied on 10 June 1798, Alexandria taken by storm on 1 July, and the delta of the Nile quickly taken. However, on 1 August 1798 the French fleet was completely destroyed by Nelson's fleet in the Battle of the Nile, so that Napoléon found himself confined to the land that he was occupying. Fourier acted as an administrator as French type political institutions and administration was set up. In particular he helped establish educational facilities in Egypt and carried out archaeological explorations.
      While in Cairo Fourier helped found the Cairo Institute and was one of the twelve members of the mathematics division, the others included Monge, Malus and Napoléon Bonaparte. Fourier was elected secretary to the Institute, a position he continued to hold during the entire French occupation of Egypt. Fourier was also put in charge of collating the scientific and literary discoveries made during the time in Egypt.
      Napoléon abandoned his army and returned to Paris in 1799, he soon held absolute power in France. Fourier returned to France in 1801 with the remains of the expeditionary force and resumed his post as Professor of Analysis at the Ecole Polytechnique. However Napoléon had other ideas about how Fourier might serve him and wrote:—
      ... the Prefect of the Department of Isère having recently died, I would like to express my confidence in citizen Fourier by appointing him to this place.      Fourier was not happy at the prospect of leaving the academic world and Paris but could not refuse Napoléon's request. He went to Grenoble where his duties as Prefect were many and varied. His two greatest achievements in this administrative position was overseeing the operation to drain the swamps of Bourgoin and to oversee the construction of a new highway from Grenoble to Turin. He also spent much time working on the Description of Egypt which was not completed until 1810 when Napoléon made changes, rewriting history in places, to it before publication. By the time a second edition appeared every reference to Napoléon would have been removed.
      It was during his time in Grenoble that Fourier did his important mathematical work on the theory of heat. His work on the topic began around 1804 and by 1807 he had completed his important memoir On the Propagation of Heat in Solid Bodies. The memoir was read to the Paris Institute on 21 December 1807 and a committee consisting of Lagrange, Laplace, Monge and Lacroix was set up to report on the work. Now this memoir is very highly regarded but at the time it caused controversy.
      There were two reasons for the committee to feel unhappy with the work. The first objection, made by Lagrange and Laplace in 1808, was to Fourier's expansions of functions as trigonometric series, what we now call Fourier series. Further clarification by Fourier still failed to convince them. As is pointed out in :—
      All these are written with such exemplary clarity - from a logical as opposed to calligraphic point of view - that their inability to persuade Laplace and Lagrange ... provides a good index of the originality of Fourier's views.
      The second objection was made by Biot against Fourier's derivation of the equations of transfer of heat. Fourier had not made reference to Biot's 1804 paper on this topic but Biot's paper is certainly incorrect. Laplace, and later Poisson, had similar objections.
      The Institute set as a prize competition subject the propagation of heat in solid bodies for the 1811 mathematics prize. Fourier submitted his 1807 memoir together with additional work on the cooling of infinite solids and terrestrial and radiant heat. Only one other entry was received and the committee set up to decide on the award of the prize, Lagrange, Laplace, Malus, Haüy and Legendre, awarded Fourier the prize. The report was not however completely favorable and states:—
      ... the manner in which the author arrives at these equations is not exempt of difficulties and that his analysis to integrate them still leaves something to be desired on the score of generality and even rigor.      With this rather mixed report there was no move in Paris to publish Fourier's work.
      When Napoléon was defeated and on his way to exile in Elba, his route should have been through Grenoble. Fourier managed to avoid this difficult confrontation by sending word that it would be dangerous for Napoléon. When he learnt of Napoléon's escape from Elba and that he was marching towards Grenoble with an army, Fourier was extremely worried. He tried to persuade the people of Grenoble to oppose Napoléon and give their allegiance to the King. However as Napoléon marched into the town Fourier left in haste.
      Napoléon was angry with Fourier who he had hoped would welcome his return. Fourier was able to talk his way into favor with both sides and Napoléon made him Prefect of the Rhône. However Fourier soon resigned on receiving orders, possibly from Carnot, that the was to remove all administrators with royalist sympathies. He could not have completely fallen out with Napoléon and Carnot, however, for on 10 June 1815, Napoléon awarded him a pension of 6000 francs, payable from 1 July. However Napoléon was defeated on 1 July and Fourier did not receive any money. He returned to Paris.
      Fourier was elected to the Académie Des Sciences in 1817. In 1822 Delambre, who was the Secretary to the mathematical section of the Académie Des Sciences, died and Fourier together with Biot and Arago applied for the post. After Arago withdrew the election gave Fourier an easy win. Shortly after Fourier became Secretary, the Academy published his prize winning essay Théorie analytique de la chaleur in 1822. This was not a piece of political maneuvering by Fourier however since Delambre had arranged for the printing before he died on 16 May 1830.
      During Fourier's eight last years in Paris he resumed his mathematical researches and published a number of papers, some in pure mathematics while some were on applied mathematical topics. His life was not without problems however since his theory of heat still provoked controversy. Biot claimed priority over Fourier, a claim which Fourier had little difficulty showing to be false. Poisson, however, attacked both Fourier's mathematical techniques and also claimed to have an alternative theory. Fourier wrote Historical Précis as a reply to these claims but, although the work was shown to various mathematicians, it was never published.
      Fourier's views on the claims of Biot and Poisson are given in the following:—
      Having contested the various results [Biot and Poisson] now recognize that they are exact but they protest that they have invented another method of expounding them and that this method is excellent and the true one. If they had illuminated this branch of physics by important and general views and had greatly perfected the analysis of partial differential equations, if they had established a principal element of the theory of heat by fine experiments ... they would have the right to judge my work and to correct it. I would submit with much pleasure .. But one does not extend the bounds of science by presenting, in a form said to be different, results which one has not found oneself and, above all, by forestalling the true author in publication. Fourier's work provided the impetus for later work on trigonometric series and the theory of functions of a real variable.

The Fourier series of the function f(x)

a(0) / 2 + $(sum)$ (k=1.. $inf$ ) (a(k) cos kx + b(k) sin kx)

a(k) = 1/ $(integral)$ $(-PI to PI)$ f(x) cos kx dx b(k) = 1/ $(integral)$ $(-PI to PI)$ f(x) sin kx dx

THE FOURIER TRANSFORM
The Fourier transform, in essence, decomposes or separates a waveform or function into sinusoids of different frequency which sum to the original waveform. It identifies or distinguishes the different frequency sinusoids and their respective amplitudes.
Linear transforms, especially Fourier and Laplace transforms, are widely used in solving problems in science and engineering. The Fourier transform is used in linear systems analysis, antenna studies, optics, random process modeling, probability theory, quantum physics, and boundary-value problems and has been very successfully applied to restoration of astronomical data. The Fourier transform, a pervasive and versatile tool, is used in many fields of science as a mathematical or physical tool to alter a problem into one that can be more easily solved. Some scientists understand Fourier theory as a physical phenomenon, not simply as a mathematical tool. In some branches of science, the Fourier transform of one function may yield another physical function.
The Fourier Theorem: A simple statement of it is:. Any physical function that varies periodically with time with a frequency f can be expressed as a superposition of sinusoidal components of frequencies: f, 2f, 3f, 4f, ... etc

Condamnés à mort par la Révolution:
1794 (27 floréal an II):
BERGON François, prêtre, domicilié à Balayé, canton de Chanac (Aveyron), comme réfractaire à la loi, par le tribunal criminel du département du Lot.
PORCHER Pierre Nicolas, ex curé de Faronville, domicilié à Faronville (Loiret), comme réfractaire à la loi, , par le tribunal criminel dudit département.
LELEU Alexis, 27 ans, né à Lambers les Aires, célibataire, cultivateur à Rebreuve, à Arras
VICOGNE Jean Baptiste François, âgé de 33 ans, né à Béthune, imprimeur à Arras, époux de Lallart Amélie Joseph, à Arras
BOULANGER Georges, né à Auchy les Moines, célibataire, guillotiné à Arras
LOGEZ François Marie, âgé de 48 ans, né à Ranchicourt, marchand à Rebreuve sous les Monts, époux de Morel Barbe Angélique, guillotiné à Arras
Par le tribunal révolutionnaire de Paris:
BEZAR Charles, négociant, 42 ans, né à Montpellier, domicilié à Paris, comme convaincu d'âtre complice de la conspiration qui a existé contre la liberté et la souveraineté du peuple, en tenant des propos tendants à dissoudre la représentation nationale.
BURET Jean Baptiste, cultivateur, huissier, 33 ans, né et domicilié à Vicq-sur-Hautbois (Indre et Loire), canton de Châtre, comme conspirateur.
GRAVIER Jean Pierre, ancien secrétaire du tyran roi, 56 ans, né à Colmar (Basses-Alpes), domicilié à Mone (Vienne), comme conspirateur.
MOREAU Théodore, professeur de mathématiques, adjudants généraux de l'armée du Nord, 28 ans, né à Paris, domicilié à Versailles (Seine et Oise), comme conspirateur.
ROUSSELET Pierre Louis, 52 ans, natif de Baugency (Loiret), ex bénédictin, et curé constitutionnel, domicilié à Dame-Marie-des-Fontaines (Seine et Marne), comme conspirateur.
TOULON François, garde de bois nationaux, 33 ans, né et domicilié à St-Martinien (Allier), comme conspirateur, ayant dit aux jeunes gens pour les empêcher de partir aux frontières, que s'ils faisaient bien, ils ne partiraient pas, que c'était aux riches à marcher: et lors du recrutement pour la Vendée, d'avoir dit qu'ils ne devraient par partir, qu'on les emballait pour les conduire à la boucherie.
TOULON Jean Baptiste, garde de bois nationaux, 36 ans, natif de St-Martienien (Allier), domicilié à Mont-Luçon, même département, comme conspirateur, ayant dit lors du recrutement pour la Vendée, que si on le faisait marcher, il saurait bien se tourner du côté des rebelle; et en parlant des officiers municipaux de Nocy qui avaient fait des démarches pour empêcher les dégradations commise dans les bois de Chamberat, que c'étaient des voleurs qui en chassaient d'autres, et enfin qu'il soutiendrait les émigrés jusqu'au péril de sa vie.
1793:
BRELUCQUE Jean Baptiste, ex curé domicilié à Chargey, canton de Chamlitte (Haute Saône), comme réfractaire, par le tribunal criminel dudit département.
1792:
DARTHUIS Louis, domicilié à Paris, comme fabricateur de faux assignats,par le tribunal criminel de Paris.
HARY Julien, domicilié à Paris, département de la Seine, par le tribunal criminel dudit département, comme fabricateur de faux assignats.

1749 Peter Casteels, Flemish artist born on 03 October 1684.
1727 Catalina I de Rusia, esposa de Pedro I el Grande.
1696 Mariana de Austria, reina de España.
1691 Jacob Leisler, 51, and Jacob Milner (his son-in-law) becomes first American colonists hanged for treason, for having headed a revolutionary New York government. They were rehabilitated posthumously by the British Parliament in 1695.
1674 Francesc Puig i Terrats, un dels insurrectes cerdas “Angelets de la Terra“, malgrat una malaltia crònica que patia, va ser torturat amb foc. Posteriorment, patí garrot i el seu cap fou penjat en una gàbia al mur de la Llotja de Perpinyà. El seu cos fou esquarterat en quatre parts diferents i exposades en diversos punts de la vila.
1671 Dirck van Delen, Dutch painter born in 1605. — MORE ON VAN DELEN AT ART “4” MAY with links to images.
1669 Pietro Berrettini I da Cortona, Italian Baroque era painter, draftsman, and architect, probably born on 01 November 1596 (baptized on 27 November 1597). — MORE ON BERRETTINI AT ART “4” MAY with links to images.
1160 San Ubaldo.

< 15 May

17 May >

^ Births which occurred on a 16 May:

1995 Dell's first dual processor computer introduced: a desktop computer, designed to run two Intel Pentium processors. The dual processors provided extra power and speed for complex programs in financial analysis and computer-aided design.

^ 1956 GM Technical Center, a House of Style.
      General Motors dedicates its brand-new, $125 million GM Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. The Center, or at least its breathtaking style and dimension, is the product of Alfred Sloan and GM stylist Harley Earl.
      Born to Hollywood affluence, Earl never lost his movie-star flair. He was famous for being the automotive industry's first "stylist." In reality, he was a car architect. He achieved fame for his design of GM's 1927 LaSalle. The LaSalle was the first production car to offer a sleek, long and rounded look to its buyers. By later standards the LaSalle still looks, in its designer's words, "top-heavy and stiff-shouldered," but at the time of its unveiling, it was enough to make Earls' career.
      He had been brought to GM by Alfred Sloan, the company's almighty president. Sloan created a new department for Earl, at the head of which Earl would oversee the styling for all GM cars. Earl began his incremental quest for longer, lower cars. Why? Said Earl, "Because my sense of proportion tells me that oblongs are more attractive than squares, just as a ranch house is more attractive than a three-story, flat-roofed house or a greyhound is more graceful than an English bulldog."
      Earl's sense of proportion never exactly fit with the other vice presidents at GM. First of all, he stood six feet, four inches tall. The well-tanned Earl kept identical suits in his office so that he would never wrinkle over the course of a workday. This stylish approach to life rubbed many of Detroit's staunch executives the wrong way. Earl's major conflicts came with the GM body division, headed by the Fisher Brothers. The Body Division was in charge of turning Earl's artwork into roadworthy realities. Earl was often dissatisfied with their product, and he showed open contempt for the Fisher Brothers, whom he dubbed "the Seven Dwarves." The Fishers, in turn, weren't sure Earl was as practical as he could have been.
      Earl remains a larger than life figure in the pantheon of automotive history. Often credited with breakthroughs that he managed to promote better than the ideas' originators, Earl can be viewed in hindsight as a showman. But his artistic sense cannot be denied, nor can his impact on the artistic leanings of the automotive industry. Earl, as much as anyone, was responsible for the glorious aesthetic renaissance of 1950s Detroit.
      When Alfred Sloan suggested that GM should build a compound to house the company's research activities, it was Earl who urged him to create a structure that was architecturally and aesthetically distinctive. Ignoring his peers' pleas for practicality, Sloan allowed Earl to enlist the architectural skills of Eliel and Eero Saarinen. Today, the GM Technical Center is one of the landmarks of twentieth-century architecture. The aluminum-sheathed dome that houses its stylish auditorium stands a fitting monument to Harley Earl's legacy.

1952 Aleksandr Konstantinovich Nikitin, Ukrainian who would become a 1st rank captain in the Soviet Navy. Before retirement in November 1992, Nikitin served as a chief-inspector of the Inspection of Nuclear safety department of nuclear installations of the Defence Ministry of the Russian Federation. In 1995 he gave to the Norwegian environmental Bellona Foundation information on the environmental risks of improperly maintained and operated Russian nuclear submarines. He was arrested by the Russian authorities and repeatedly tried for treason, until finally acquitted by the Supreme Court of Russia on 13 September 2000. Nikitin them becomes the chairman of the Russian section of Bellona — [Nikitin case dossier: 238 items]
1923 Merton Miller, estadounidense, Nobel de Economía 1990.
1919 Wladziu Valentino Liberace West Allis Wisconsin, (flamboyant concert pianist and showman: The Liberace Show; Las Vegas entertainer)
1918 (1917?) Juan Nepomuceno Carlos Pérez-Rulfo Vizcaíno [–07 Jan 1986]. Mexican novelist, short story writer, and photographer. —(081101)
1912 Studs Terkel [–30 Oct 2008], US author, historian, actor, and broadcaster. — Author of: Giants of Jazz (1957) _ Division Street: America (1967) _ Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (1970) _ Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (1974). _ Talking to Myself: A Memoir of My Times (1977) _ American Dreams: Lost and Found (1983) _ The Good War (1984) _ Chicago (1986) _ The Great Divide: Second Thoughts on the American Dream (1988) _ Race: What Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession (1992) _ Coming of Age: The Story of Our Century by Those Who’ve Lived It (1995) _ My American Century (1997) _ The Spectator: Talk About Movies and Plays With Those Who Make Them (1999) _ Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Reflections on Death, Rebirth and Hunger for a Faith (2001) _ Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times (2003) _ And They All Sang: Adventures of an Eclectic Disc Jockey (2005) _ Touch and Go (2007) _ P.S. Further Thoughts From a Lifetime of Listening (2008) —(081101)
1906 Arturo Uslar Pietri, Venezuelan thinker, writer, educator, journalist, diplomat, politician, and government official.. —(081101)
1905 H. E. Bates, English novelist and short-story writer, who died on 29 January 1974.

^ 1898 Messali Hadj, activiste algérien.
Le monde venait de sortir de la Seconde Guerre mondiale où venaient de périr des milliers d’Algériens enrôlés dans les troupes alliées et la question algérienne n’était nulle part à l’ordre du jour. Mais un homme en décida autrement : Messali Hadj, un jeune Algérien de 20 ans, qui venait d’être démobilisé à la fin de la guerre et qui travaillait d’usine en usine pour survivre en ces dures années d’après-guerre. Né à Tlemcen d’un père artisan adepte de la confrérie religieuse des Derkaouas, Messali Hadj est sensible au devenir de son pays colonisé par la France. Il adhère à l’Etoile Nord-Africaine, une organisation qui regroupait des Algériens, mais qui n’avait qu’une vocation humanitaire. Il la transforme rapidement en organisation nationaliste, structurée et opérationnelle. Il en est élu secrétaire général en 1926, à l’âge de 28 ans. Une année plus tard, il évoque pour la première fois l’indépendance de l’Algérie au Congrès anti-impérialiste de Bruxelles devant des personnalités marquantes comme Ho Chi Minh, le futur libérateur du Vietnam, et Nehru, la figure emblématique indienne.
Les autorités françaises ne tardent pas à réagir et interdisent l’ENA en 1929. Messali se sépare des communistes et poursuit la lutte politique avec l’ENA clandestine qu’il dote d’une ligne directrice axée sur le socialisme, l’unité maghrébine (déjà), la réforme agraire et la lutte prolétarienne pour l’indépendance. Il est victime de successives périodes d’emprisonnement et d’assignement à résidence et se voit privé durant 22 ans de contact direct avec la vie politique du mouvement national. En 1946, il est confronté à une nouvelle génération de militants qui sont pour une action directe pour l’indépendance et regroupés dans l’Organisation spéciale (OS). Lui, qui est considéré comme le père du nationalisme algérien, ne déclenchera pourtant pas la lutte de Libération nationale le 01 novembre 1954, qui sera l’œuvre du FLN, auquel il refuse d’adhérer. Il fonde une autre organisation, le Mouvement national algérien, qui se trouvera vite en opposition avec le FLN. Il est accusé de culte de la personnalité, de mégalomanie et de sectarisme. Les luttes FLN-MNA sont souvent sanglantes. Le parcours de Messali devient alors préoccupant : il dérive exceptionnellement, avec l’épisode Bellounis, dans la collaboration avec la France. Il se retire au milieu des années 50 et refuse de participer aux accords d’Evian. Il meurt le 03 Jun 1974 en France dans l’anonymat. Bouteflika l’évoque pour la première fois en 1999 et le réhabilite aux yeux de l’opinion nationale.

1898 Jean Fautrier, French artist who died on 21 July 1964.
1894 Walter Yust, US editor in chief of the Encyclopedia Britannica from 1938 until his 29 February 1960 death.
1893 Niles Spencer, US painter who died in 1952. — MORE ON SPENCER AT ART “4” MAY with links to images.

1888 Phonograph record
Inventor Emile Berliner demonstrated the first modern phonograph record on this day in 1888. The record was a flat disk with spiraled grooves, which was easier to duplicate for the mass market than the recording cylinder developed by Thomas Edison. For this reason, the flat record quickly replaced Thomas Edison's cylinders. Berliner, a German immigrant who worked for Alexander Graham Bell's telephone company, also developed several other important improvements on existing inventions. In 1877, the year after Graham invented the telephone, Berliner developed an improved telephone receiver. He also developed a method for mass-producing records.

^ 1886 The Nickel
Congress dealt a crushing blow to fans of the half-disme by voting to discontinue the smallish silver coin. However, the disme's defeat marked the birth of one of the enduring coins of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Indeed, the House voted to replace the half-disme with a five-cent piece, which was affectionately dubbed the "nickel." The initial version of the nickel, which featured a shield on the front and a "5" on its back, was rather plain faced. However, successive runs of the coin were more ornate: in 1913, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing issued the now coveted "buffalo" nickel, with a buffalo and a bust of a Native American on its respective sides. The current, and even more ornate, incarnation of the coin is an homage to Thomas Jefferson, replete with the the third US president's likeness on its face and a rendering of his home in Monticello on the other side.

1879 Pietro Marussig, Italian artist who died in 1937.
1831 Edward Hughes inventor (microphone)
1824 Levi Parsons Morton (R) 22nd US VP (1889-93)
1821 Pafnuty Lvovich Chebyshev, Russian mathematician who died on 08 December 1894. He is mostly remembered for his work in number theory. Chebyshev was also interested in mechanics and is famous for the orthogonal polynomials he invented. [Chebyshev polynomials of the first kind] [Chebyshev polynomials of the second kind]
1814 Julián Sanz Río, filósofo español.

^ 1804 Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, educator and participant in the Transcendentalist movement, who opened the first English-language kindergarten in the United States. She died on 03 January 1894.
      Peabody was educated by her mother, who for a time operated an innovative girls' school in the home, and from an early age she exhibited an interest in philosophical and theological questions. In 1820 she opened a school of her own in Lancaster, Massachusetts, and two years later another in Boston. She also studied Greek from the young Ralph Waldo Emerson [25 May 1803 – 27 Apr 1882]. She opened a school in 1825 in Brookline, Massachusetts, where she made the acquaintance of William Ellery Channing, with whom she shared a remarkable intellectual intimacy. As her Socratic tutor, Channing introduced Peabody to the Romantic poets and philosophers of the day, and together they examined the emerging liberal theology of Unitarianism. She also served informally as his secretary (1825–1834), recording his sermons and seeing them into print. After her school closed in 1832 Peabody supported herself until 1834 mainly through writing, principally her First Steps to the Study of History (1832), and through private tutoring, when she helped Bronson Alcott establish his radical Temple School in Boston. Her Record of a School, based on her journal of Alcott's methods and daily interactions with the children, was published anonymously in 1835 and did much to establish Alcott as a leading and controversial thinker.
      In 1837 Peabody became a charter member of the Transcendentalist Club, members of which included Margaret Fuller, Emerson, Channing, and Alcott. On visits to Emerson and the others she introduced her Transcendentalist friends to the work of the Salem poet-mystic Jones Very and the writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, who had married her sister Sophia (another sister, Mary, married Horace Mann).
      In 1839 Peabody opened her West Street bookstore, which became a sort of club for the intellectual community of Boston. On her own printing press she published translations from German by Fuller and three of Hawthorne's earliest books. For two years she published and wrote articles for The Dial, the critical literary monthly and organ of the Transcendentalist movement; she also wrote for other periodicals.
      She was probably the first woman book publisher in the US. In 1849 she published a single number of a Transcendentalist journal, Aesthetic Papers, which contained, among other essays, “Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau. Peabody closed her shop in 1850 and for the next 10 years taught school, wrote, and worked to promote public education. Her particular brand of Transcendentalism, anchored firmly in an idea of a just society informed by liberal Christianity, led her to place great emphasis on the education of the young.In 1859 Peabody learned of Friedrich Froebel's kindergarten work in Germany, and the next year she opened in Boston the nation's first formal kindergarten. She continued it until 1867, when she undertook a tour of European kindergartens to learn more of Froebel's thought. Much of her later writing concerned kindergarten education. Those titles include Moral Culture of Infancy, and Kindergarten Guide (1863), Kindergarten Culture (1870), The Kindergarten in Italy (1872), and Letters to Kindergartners (1886). In 1873 she founded the Kindergarten Messenger, of which she was editor during its two years of publication, and in 1877 she organized the American Froebel Union, of which she was the first president. From 1879 to 1884 she was a lecturer at the Concord School of Philosophy of her old friend Alcott. She also published Reminiscences of Rev. Wm. Ellery Channing, D.D. (1880) and Last Evening with Allston (1886).

1801 William Henry Seward, US Secretary of State (1861-1869, "Seward's Folly: buys Alaska at 5 cents per hectare). He died on 10 October 1872.
1798 Claude Anthelme Honoré Trimolet, French artist who died on 16 December 1866.
1782 John Sell Cotman, English Romantic painter and etcher who died on 24 July 1842, specialized in Landscapes. — MORE ON COTMAN AT ART “4” MAY with links to images.
$versiera curve$ 1763 Louis-Nicolas Vauquelin chemist (discovered chromium, beryllium)

1718 Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Milan Catholic lay apostle and mathematician who died on 09 January 1799. She is noted for her work in differential calculus. She discussed the cubic curve which she named Witch (versiera in Italian), Cartesian equation y(x² + a²) = a³ or parametrically x = at, y = a/(1 + t²) . Author of Propositiones Philosophicae (1738) and of Instituzioni analitiche ad uso della gioventù italiana (2 volumes, 1748, 1749)

1540 Pascual Bailón, lego franciscano español que llegó a santo.

Holidays Cayman Islands : Commonwealth Day.

Religious Observances Unification Church : Day of Love of God / RC : St Ubaldus, bishop/confessor / Santos Juan Nepomuceno, Victoriano, Peregrín y Aquilino. / Saint Honoré était évêque d'Amiens au VIe siècle, à l'époque mérovingienne. Une chapelle lui fut consacrée à Paris en 1204. Elle donna son nom au quartier. Elle accueillit aussi la confrérie des boulangers, qui, pour cette raison, firent du saint leur patron... et lui dédièrent une délicieuse pâtisserie:-)

Thought for the day:
“America did not invent human rights, Human Rights invented America.” {tell that to the Amerindians !}

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updated Saturday 01-Nov-2008 16:30 UT
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