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Events, deaths, births, of 20 MAY v.7.40
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ALTERNATE SITES    ANY DAY  OF THE YEAR IN HISTORY     ART “4” MAY 20     wikipedia
• Columbus dies in poverty... • Martial law in Beijing... • Thermonuclear bomb tested at Bikini... • Hamburger Hill battle ends... • Panzers break through in France... • Homestead Act... • Balzac is born... • Condamnés à mort par la Révolution... • Da Gama reaches India... • French optimism in Vietnam... • Auden becomes US citizen... • Equal rights for homosexuals... • Lindbergh flies off to cross Atlantic... • Parents killed today, school shooting tomorrow... • D'Antona freddato... • John Stuart Mill is born...• Levi Strauss jeans...
^  On a 20 May:

2002 After two-and-a-half years under UN trusteeship since having its independence vote drowned in blood by Indonesian militias, East Timor becomes an independent country. Xanana Gusmão, a former anti-Indonesia independence leader, becomes President, Mari Alkatiri Prime Minister, José Ramos Horta (1996 Nobel Peace Prize) Foreign Minister.

2001 Local elections in Croatia for officials in 21 county and 422 municipal councils, as well as 123 city halls. 3.9 million Croats are eligible to vote.
2001 Presidential elections in Mongolia. President Natsagiin Bagabandi is reelected. His Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party runs the country almost as a one-party state. It has 72 of parliament's 76 seats, won in elections in 2000. Formerly Communist, it now claims to be for democracy and radical economic reform.

2000 The five nuclear powers on the UN Security Council agree to eventually eliminate their nuclear arsenals, as part of a new disarmament agenda approved by 187 countries.
^ 1996 US Supreme Court defends equal rights of homosexuals
      In a historic victory for the "gay" and lesbian civil rights movement, the US Supreme Court voted six to three to strike down an amendment to Colorado’s state constitution that would have prevented any city, town, or county from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to protect the rights of homosexuals. In 1992, Colorado’s Amendment 2 was passed with a majority of the state’s citizens approving it in a special referendum. Four years later, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Romer v. Evans, a case that allowed the nation’s highest court to scrutinize the constitutionality of the amendment. On 20 May 1996, in a ruling authored by Associate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the Supreme Court strikes down Amendment 2, arguing that the law inherently violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by defining a specific group of person and then denying them the possibility of protection across the board. Although the ruling, authored by a Republican appointee, is cautious in its language, it is applauded as a historic civil rights victory that gives activists of the homosexual and lesbian civil rights movement their first major constitutional precedent for fighting future anti-homosexual legislation.
1992 “Illegitimacy is something we should talk about in terms of not having it.” says Vice President Dan Quayle (reported in Esquire Aug.92)
1991 Lawmakers in the Soviet Union voted to liberalize foreign travel and emigration.
^ 1989 Martial Law in Beijing
      China’s Communist government declares martial law over Beijing and calls in troops and tanks to suppress the dissidents protesting for democratic reforms in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
      On April 15, the death of Hu Yaobang, a former Communist Party head who supported democratic reforms, roused some 100'000 students to gather at Beijing's Tiananmen Square to commemorate Hu and voice their discontent with China's authoritative Communist government.
      On April 22, an official memorial service for Hu Yaobang was held in Tiananmen's Great Hall of the People, and student representatives carried a petition to the steps of the Great Hall, demanding to meet with Premier Li Peng. The Chinese government refused such a meeting, leading to a general boycott of Chinese universities across the country and widespread calls for democratic reforms.
      Ignoring government warnings of violent suppression of any mass demonstration, students from more than forty universities began a march to Tiananmen on April 27. The students were joined by workers, intellectuals, and civil servants, and by mid-May over a million people filled the square, the site of Communist leader's Mao Zedong's proclamation of the People's Republic of China in 1949.
      On May 20, the government formally declares martial law in Beijing, and troops and tanks are called in to disperse the dissidents. However, large numbers of students and citizens blocked the army's advance, and by May 23, government forces had pulled back to the outskirts of Beijing. On June 3, with negotiations to end the protests stalled and calls for democratic reforms escalating, the troops received orders from the Chinese government to reclaim Tiananmen at all cost. By the end of the next day, Chinese troops had forcibly cleared Tiananmen Square and Beijing's streets, killing hundreds of demonstrators and arresting thousands of protestors and other suspected dissidents.
      In the weeks after the government crackdown, an unknown number of dissidents were executed and hard-liners in the government took firm control of the country. The international community was outraged by the incident, and economic sanctions imposed by the United States and other countries sent China's economy into decline. However, by late 1990, international trade had resumed, thanks in part to China's release of several hundred imprisoned dissidents.
1989 Walter McConnel, 57, is oldest to reach 8300 m Mt Everest top.
1985 Dow Jones industrial avg closes above 1300 for first time.
1985 US began broadcasts to Cuba on Radio Marti
1980 In a referendum, 59.5% of Québec voters reject separatism.
1978 US launches Pioneer Venus 1; produces first global radar map of Venus
1972 Republic of Cameroon declared as constitution is ratified.
1970 Some 100'000 demonstrate in New York's Wall Street district in support of US policy in Vietnam and Cambodia.
^ 1969 Bloody battle for Hamburger Hill ends
      After ten days and ten bloody assaults, Apbia Mountain (Hill 937), known as "Hamburger Hill" by the Americans who fought there, is finally captured by US and South Vietnamese troops.
      Located 1.5 km east of the Laotian border, Hill 937 was to be taken as part of Operation Apache Snow, a mission intended to limit enemy infiltration from Laos that threatened Hue to the northeast and Danang to the southeast. On May 10, following air and artillery strikes, a US-led infantry force launched its first assault on the North Vietnamese stronghold, but suffered a high proportion of casualties and fell back.
      Ten more infantry assaults came over the next ten days, and Hill 937’s North Vietnamese defenders did not give up their fortified position until May 20. Almost one hundred Americans had been killed and more than 400 had been wounded, amounting to a shocking 70-percent casualty rate during the ten-day battle.
      The same day that Hamburger Hill was finally captured, Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts called the operation "senseless and irresponsible" and attacked the military tactics of President Richard Nixon’s administration. His speech before the Senate was seen as part of a growing public outcry over the US military policy in Vietnam.
      In the next week, US military command reversed their stance on the strategic importance of Hamburger Hill, and, on May 28 it was abandoned, just one week after it was taken. North Vietnamese forces eventually returned and re-fortified their original position.
Criticism in the US Senate.
     As part of a growing outcry over US military policy in Vietnam, Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), in a Senate speech, scorns the military tactics of the Nixon administration. He condemned the battle for Ap Bia Mountain, which had become known as "Hamburger Hill," as "senseless and irresponsible." The battle in question had occurred as part of Operation Apache Snow in the A Shau Valley. Starting on May 10, paratroopers from the 101st Airborne had engaged a North Vietnamese regiment on the slopes of Hill 937, known to the Vietnamese as Ap Bia Mountain. Entrenched in prepared fighting positions, the North Vietnamese 29th Regiment repulsed the initial American assault, and beat back another attempt by the 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry on May 14. An intense battle raged for the next 10 days as the mountain came under heavy Allied air strikes, artillery barrages, and 10 infantry assaults. On May 20, Maj. Gen. Melvin Zais, commanding general of the 101st, sent in two additional US airborne battalions and a South Vietnamese battalion as reinforcements. The Communist stronghold was finally captured in the 11th attack when the American and South Vietnamese soldiers fought their way to the summit of the mountain. In the face of the four-battalion attack, the North Vietnamese retreated to sanctuary areas in Laos.
      During the intense fighting, 597 North Vietnamese were reported killed and US casualties were 56 killed and 420 wounded. Due to the bitter fighting and the high loss of life, the battle for Ap Bia Mountain received widespread unfavorable publicity in the United States and was dubbed "Hamburger Hill" in the US media, a name evidently derived from the fact that the battle turned into a "meat grinder." Since the operation was not intended to hold territory but rather to keep the North Vietnamese off balance, the mountain was abandoned soon after the battle and was occupied by the North Vietnamese a month later. Senator Kennedy was not the only American who thought the battle had been futile and ill advised; there was widespread public outrage over what appeared to be a senseless loss of American lives. The situation was exacerbated by pictures published in Life magazine of 241 US soldiers killed during the week of the Hamburger Hill battle. Gen. Creighton Abrams, commander of US Military Assistance Command Vietnam, was ordered by the White House to avoid such battles. Because of Hamburger Hill, and other battles like it, US emphasis was placed on "Vietnamization" (turning the war over to the South Vietnamese forces), rather than direct combat operations.
1961 White mob attacks a busload of "Freedom Riders" in Montgomery, Alabama, prompting the federal government to send in US marshals to restore order.
^ 1956 US tests thermonuclear bomb over Bikini Atoll
      The United States conducts the first airborne test of an improved atomic fusion bomb, dropping it from a plane over the tiny island of Namu in the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The successful test indicated that hydrogen bombs were viable airborne weapons and that the arms race had taken another giant leap forward. The United States first detonated a hydrogen bomb in 1952 in the Marshall Islands, also in the Pacific. However, that bomb — and the others used in tests that followed — were large and unwieldy affairs that were exploded from the ground. The practical application of dropping the weapon over an enemy had been a mere theoretical possibility until the successful test in May 1956. The hydrogen bomb dropped over Bikini Atoll was carried by a B-52 bomber and released at an altitude of more than 50'000 feet. The device exploded at about 5000 meter altitude. This bomb was far more powerful than those previously tested and was estimated to be 15 megatons or larger (one megaton is roughly equivalent to 1 million tons of TNT). Observers said that the fireball caused by the explosion measured at least four miles in diameter and was brighter than the light from 500 suns. The successful US test meant that the ante in the nuclear arms race had been dramatically upped. The Soviets had tested their own hydrogen bomb in 1953, shortly after the first US test in 1952. In November 1955, the Soviets had dropped a hydrogen bomb from an airplane in remote Siberia. Though much smaller and far less powerful (estimated at about 1.6 megatons) than the US bomb dropped over Bikini, the Russian success spurred the Americans to rush ahead with the Bikini test. The massive open-air blast in 1956 caused concerns among scientists and environmentalists about the effects of such testing on human and animal life. During the coming years, a growing movement in the United States and elsewhere began to push for a ban on open-air atomic testing. The Limited Test Ban Treaty, signed in 1963 by the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain, prohibited open-air and underwater nuclear testing.
^ 1953 French see “light at the end of the tunnel” in Vietnam
      Using a phrase that will haunt Americans in later years — "Now we can see [success in Vietnam] clearly, like light at the end of a tunnel" — Gen. Henri Navarre assumes command of French Union Forces in Vietnam. The French had been fighting a bloody war against Communist insurgents in Vietnam since 1946. The insurgents, the Viet Minh, were fighting for independence and the French were trying to reassert their colonial rule in Indochina. Upon assumption of command, Navarre addressed himself to the grave deterioration of the French military position, particularly in the North, by advancing a plan for a build up of French forces preparatory to a massive attack against the Viet Minh. He received more support from US Secretary of State John F. Dulles in Washington than he did from Paris, but his operations during the summer only underscored the inadequacy of French military means and French inability to deal with Viet Minh tactics. Ultimately, the French were decisively defeated by the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954.
      When the US took over the role of stopping Communism in South Vietnam, they ran into the same kind of military problems that had plagued the French. Nevertheless, there was a widespread feeling that the United States would not make the same mistakes that the French had. In late 1967, Gen. William Westmoreland, commander of US Military Assistance Command Vietnam, used similar language to Navarre's when he asserted that the US "had turned the corner in the war." His credibility was seriously damaged on 29 January 1968, when the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese launched a massive attack that became known as the Tet Offensive. Conditioned by Westmoreland's overly optimistic assessments of the war's progress, many Americans were stunned that the Communists could launch such a ferocious attack. In the end, the Communists were defeated on the battlefield, but achieved a great psychological victory that caused many in America to question the wisdom of continuing US involvement in the war.
^ 1946 W.H. Auden becomes a US citizen
      The English poet was born in 1907 in England, had his first poem published in a collection called Public School Verse when he was 17. He entered Oxford the following year and befriended several men who became important intellectuals, including Cecil Day-Lewis and Christopher Asherwood. His friend Stephen Spender published Auden's first poetry collection in 1928, the year Auden graduated from Oxford.
      Two years later, Auden's second book, Poems, was published. Auden spent a year in Berlin, then worked for five years as a teacher in Scotland and England. He later worked for a government film bureau. In the 1930s, Auden's work was highly political. He embraced leftist causes and went to Spain intending to drive an ambulance during the Spanish Civil War. However, he was so appalled by the sacking of Roman Catholic churches that he returned to England.
      In 1935, he married Thomas Mann's daughter Erika, whom he had never met, to help her escape Nazi Germany. In 1936, he published On This Island. In 1939, Auden moved to the US, and his work became less political as he turned to Christianity. During this time, he wrote such major works as Another Time (1940) and The Double Man (1941). In 1948, Auden won the Pulitzer Prize for his long poem The Age of Anxiety (1947), which explores human isolation and spiritual emptiness in the modern city. In 1956, he accepted a position as professor of poetry at Oxford, back in England. He stayed at Oxford until 1960 and died in Austria in 1973.
1941 Germany invades Crete
A Moncornet et Crépy-sur-Serre, le colonel de Gaulle et la 4ème DC ont arrêté depuis le 17 la progression allemande; mais il ne peuvent plus tenir un jour de plus.
^ 1940 Panzers at Abbeville
     The German army in northern France reaches the English Channel. In reaching Abbeville, German armored columns, led by General Heinz Guderian (a tank expert), severed all communication between the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in the north and the main French army in the south. He also cut off the Force from its supplies in the west. The Germans now faced the sea, England in sight.
      Winston Churchill was prepared for such a pass, having already made plans for the withdrawal of the BEF (the BEF was a home-based army force that went to northern France at the start of both World Wars in order to support the French armies) and having called on the British Admiralty to prepare "a large number of vessels" to cross over to France if necessary. With German tanks at the Channel, Churchill prepared for a possible invasion of England itself, approving a plan to put into place gun posts and barbed wire roadblocks to protect government offices in Whitehall as well as the prime minister's dwelling, 10 Downing Street.
     The first German panzers of General Guderian reach the Somme estuary at Abbeville. Immediately their armored columns start a sweep north, toward the seaports of Boulogne, Calais, and Dunkirk. Boulogne falls on May 23. Calais holds out for three days, then fall, while the panzers pour north toward Dunkirk.
2. General Lord Gort of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF)
A crucial decision was forced on the commander of the BEF. General Lord Gort was a brave, stubborn, intellectually limited man. His French colleagues described him condescendingly as a "jovial battalion commander"; yet his troops called him "The Tiger" -a tribute to his personal courage. His mind was all too readily bogged down by detail; at an important conference in November 1939, he had astounded his colleagues by choosing as the first subject of a discussion whether a helmet, when not on a soldier's head, should be slung over the left shoulder or the right.
3. Could the BEF make it?
The great question was: Could the BEF make it? At the time of Gort's decision the Germans were much closer to Dunkirk than the BEF were. But what made Gort's decision the right one-though of course he could not know it-was the fact that the Germans chose, unwittingly, to help him by making strategic mistakes.
4. Hitler's mistake
The chief error was made by Hitler himself. Despite the heroic defenses of Boulogne and Calais, Guderian's panzers found themselves almost in sight of Dunkirk by 24 May. They were halted by the Aa Canal, 10 meters wide, 20 km from Dunkirk, the last tank obstacle in Guderian's way. By the morning of the 25 May, pontoon bridges were spanning the canal. A few tanks were across, roaring and throbbing as their crews waited for the rest of the panzer division to form up. But the order to advance was held up-that day and the next-by the intercession of Hitler.
5. "A small price to pay" for Paris
The Fuhrer felt that victory was certain if they took their time to make sure of it-step by step. The tanks that had made this victory possible should not now be expended where they were not needed; they should be husbanded for bigger battles to come. After all, the rest of France remained to be conquered. The goal, in the end, was Paris, not an unimpressive port city like Dunkirk. If gaining that goal meant that some British soldiers would manage to escape across the Channel, it was a small price to pay. And Goring's air force could play an important part in minimizing the number of soldiers who escaped. — // http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/text/x18/xr1847.html
6. Churchill was ready
       Winston Churchill was prepared for the Germans reaching the English Channel. Now General Heinz Guderian and his tanks had severed all communication between the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in the north and the main French army in the south, and also cut off the Force from its supplies in the west. Churchill had already made plans for the withdrawal of the BEF (the BEF was a home-based army force that went to northern France at the start of both World Wars in order to support the French armies) and had called on the British Admiralty to prepare "a large number of vessels" to cross over to France if necessary. Churchill also prepared for a possible invasion of England itself, approving a plan to put into place gun posts and barbed wire roadblocks to protect government offices in Whitehall as well as the prime minister's dwelling, 10 Downing Street.
1939 Regular transatlantic passenger and air mail service begins as a Pan American Airways plane, the Yankee Clipper, took off from Port Washington, N.Y., bound for Marseille France.
1932 Amelia Earhart took off from Newfoundland for Ireland to become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.
^ Lindbergh1927 Spirit of St. Louis departs
      At 07:52, American aviator Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., 25, takes off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island, New York, on the world’s first solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
Spirit of St.Louis      Lindbergh, a young airmail pilot, was a dark horse when he entered a competition with a $25'000 payoff to fly nonstop from New York to Paris. He ordered a small monoplane, configured it to his own design, and christened it the Spirit of St. Louis.
      On this rainy morning, he takes off from Roosevelt Field, but his monoplane is so loaded down with fuel that it barely clears the trees at the end of the runway. He flies north and then westward from Newfoundland, Canada. The next afternoon, after flying 5810 km in thirty-three-and-a-half hours, Lindbergh would land at Le Bourget field in Paris, becoming the first pilot to accomplish the nonstop transatlantic crossing. Lindbergh’s achievement made him an international celebrity, and won widespread public acceptance of the airplane and commercial aviation.
1927 Great Britain via treaty grants independence to Saudi Arabia's kingdom
1926 Thomas Edison says Americans prefer silent movies over talkies
1916 Codell, Kansas hit by tornado (also on same date in 1917 and 1918)
1902 US military occupation of Cuba (since 01 Jan 1899) ends
1875 Intl Bureau of Weights and Measures established by treaty
1874 Levi Strauss markets blue jeans with copper rivets, price $13.50 doz
^ 1862 The Homestead Act
      In an important milestone in the settlement of the American West, President Abraham Lincoln signs into law the Homestead Act, a program designed to grant public land to small farmers at low cost. The act gives 160 acres of land (1/4 of a square mile, or hectares) to any applicant who is a head of a household and twenty-one years or older, provided that the person settles on the land for five years and then pays a small filing fee. If settlers wished to obtain title earlier, they could do so after six months by paying $1.25 an acre.
      The Homestead Act was first proposed in the 1850s, but, concerned free land would lower property values and reduce the cheap labor supply, Northern businessmen opposed the movement. Southern congressmen feared that the settlement of the West by small farmers would the creation of additional free states that would provide an agricultural alternative to the Southern slave system. In 1858, a homestead bill was defeated by only one vote in the Senate and in the next year a bill was passed in both houses but vetoed by President James Buchanan. Passage of the bill was high on President Lincoln’s agenda, and the loss of Southern congressmen in the succession removed most of the bill’s congressional opposition.
      The president signs the Homestead Act into law on May 20, 1862, and, by the end of the Civil War, some 15'000 land claims had been made. Most homesteaders were experienced farmers from the crowded East or Europe, and by 1900, 600'000 claims had been made for some 80 million acres of public land. Although, numerous claims continued to be made into the twentieth century, the mechanization of American agriculture in the 1930s and 1940s led to the replacement of individual homesteads with a smaller number of much larger farms.
      The Union Congress passes the Homestead Act, allowing an adult over the age of 21, male or female, to claim 160 acres of land from the public domain. Eligible persons had to cultivate the land and improve it by building a barn or house, and live on the claim for five years, at which time the land became theirs with a $10 filing fee. The government of the United States had long wrestled with the problem of how to get land into the hands of productive farmers. Throughout the 19th century, politicians had pursued a variety of schemes to raise revenues from land sales, but the results were always mixed. By the 1830s, Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton proposed a program that would allow citizens to claim land from the public domain to develop farmland. By the mid-19th century the issue of land became embroiled in sectional politics. In the 1850s, the fledgling Republican Party endorsed a homestead act as a way to develop an alliance between the Northeast and Midwest. But the South wanted no part of such a scheme. The expansion of slavery had become too important to the South, and they felt expansion to the west was the only way to keep the institution healthy. Filling the West with small individual farmers did not sit well with Southerners. Consequently, it was impossible to agree upon a proposal while the struggle over slavery continued. The Republicans were strong enough by 1859 to push an act through Congress, but Democratic president James Buchanan vetoed the measure. However, the events of the war soon removed all obstacles to the bill. The secession of Southern states opened the way for passage of the Homestead Act of 1862. The Homestead Act was important symbolically if not in practice. By 1890, only about three percent of the lands west of the Mississippi had been given away under the act. This measure was far less effective in making vacant land productive than were liberal mining laws and grants to railroads. Nevertheless, it stands as a shining example of legislation that passed in the North while the South had seceded from the Union.
1861 North Carolina becomes 11th and last state to secede from Union
1861 the capital of the Confederacy is moved from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia
1861 Kentucky proclaims its neutrality in Civil War
1845 first legislative assembly convenes in Hawaii
1795 (1 prairial an III) MIGELLI Charlotte Françoise Carle, âgée de 21 ans, native de Paris, département de la Seine, y demeurant, marchande fripière, coopère volontairement, sans provocation violente, sans la nécessité actuelle de la défense légitime de soi-même, ou d'autrui, et avec préméditation, à l'homicide du représentant du peuple Ferraud. Ce pourquoi elle sera condamnée à mort le 25 prairial an 4 (13 Jun 1796), par le tribunal criminel du département de la Seine, et en plus pour avoir dans les 1er jours de prairial an 4, participé volontairement sans provocation violente, sans la nécessité actuelle de la défense légitime de soi-même où d'autrui et avec préméditation aux attaques qui ont été faites à dessein de tuer les représentants du peuple Boissy-d'Anglas et Camboulas; elle sera exécutée le 21 fructidor an 4 (07 septembre 1796).
1775 Citizens of Mecklenburg County, NC declare independence from Britain.
1774 Britain gives Québec, Labrador and territory north of the Ohio.
1690 England passes Act of Grace, forgiving followers of James II
^ 1498 Vasco da Gama reaches India
      Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama becomes the first European to reach India via the Atlantic Ocean or Mediterranean Sea when he arrives at Calicut on the Malabar Coast. Da Gama sailed from Lisbon, Portugal, in July 1497, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and anchored at Malindi on the east coast of Africa. With the aid of an Indian merchant he met there, he then set off across the Indian Ocean. The Portuguese explorer was not greeted warmly by the Muslim merchants of Calicut, and in 1499 he had to fight his way out of the harbor on his return trip home. In 1502, he led a squadron of ships to Calicut to avenge the massacre of Portuguese explorers there and succeeded in subduing the inhabitants. In 1524, he was sent as viceroy to India, but he fell ill and died in Cochin.
0325 first Christian ecumenical council opens at Nicea, Asia Minor
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^  Deaths which occurred on a 20 May:

2005 A woman and Zagir Arukhov, Dagestan's minister for ethnic policy, by an explosion in an apartment building in Makhachkala, Dagestan, Russia.

2004:: 41 persons massacred in a refugee camp near Gulu Uganda, by by rebels belonging to the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), who also burn hundreds of huts, making thousands of people homeless. The LRA is a so-called Christian group with no clear objectives except to discredit President Yoweri Museveni. It has abducted thousands of children since 1997 and forced them to serve as fighters, porters, and sex slaves in camps in Sudan. Some 1.5 million people have fled the fighting between government troops and the rebels. Many now live in 60 squalid camps, set up in the remote north of the country. In February, the LRA rebels had shot, clubbed and burned to death 200 people during an attack at a camp near the town of Lira. LRA, led by self-proclaimed prophet Joseph Kony, has become notorious for its brutality, often slicing off the lips and ears of its victims. Kony and some of his associates are being investigated by the International Criminal Court for war crimes.
Gould in 1999
2004 Palestinian boy, 13, shot by Israeli troops during demonstrations in the Fawar refugee camp, near Hebron, West Bank, against the continuing deadly attack of Israel against the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.
Jibril
2004 Mazen Yassin, local head of Hamas, in Qalqilyah, West Bank, shot by Israeli troops when he did not obey their order to stop. He was armed but made no attempt to shoot.

2004 Three Palestinian fighters, by an Israel Air Force helicopter missile, in the early hours, as Israelis extend to the Brazil neighborhood their attack on the Rafah refugee camp, Gaza Strip, which they began on 18 May in the Tel Sultan neighborhood.

2003 Linda Chioino of Italy, born on 26 February 1892.

2002 Stephen Jay Gould [1999 photo >], 60, of adenocarcinoma of the lung, evolutionary biologist born on 10 September 1941. One of his controversial theories was that evolution occurs jerkily. Author of such books as Ontogeny and Phylogeny, Ever Since Darwin, The Panda's Thumb, The Mismeasure of Man (on intelligence testing), Bully for Brontosaurus, Dinosaur in a Haystack, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (March 2002, 1464 pages).

2002 Jihad Jibril [< photo], 38, lieutenant colonel in the terrorist Syrian-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, and son of its general secretary Ahmed Jibril, who founded it in 1968. Jihad Jibril was driving his Peugeot sedan down a street off the busy Corniche Mazraa in west Beirut when a bomb under his seat detonated at midday. Israel denies involvement.

2001:: 26 of the 32 prisoners in a prison dorm in Iquique, Chile, in fire started by prisoners in mattresses and blankets. Most of the 32 were young, first-time offenders.

^ 1999 Massimo D'Antona, 51
     Massimo D'Antona fu freddato da due killer con tre colpi di pistola al torace in Via Salaria a Roma. D'Antona, docente di diritto del lavoro all'Università La Sapienza, era stato sottosegretario ai Trasporti nel Governo Dini e aveva collaborato con il ministro del Lavoro Treu. Bassolino gli aveva affidato l'incarico di coordinare sia la commissione di esperti per la riforma degli ammortizzatori sociali sia il comitato consultivo per la riforma della legislazione del lavoro. L'omicidio D'Antona fu rivendicato dalle Brigate rosse-Partito Comunista Combattente, con un documento di 28 pagine recapitato al Messaggero e al Corriere della Sera. Nel testo contrassegnato dalla stella a 5 punte, riferimenti alla guerra dei Balcani, accuse all'imperialismo Usa e alla nuova linea dei Ds. D'Antona era indicato come uno dei protagonisti della politica economica del Governo. Tra i libri di testo che Massimo D'Antona aveva fatto adottare ai suoi studenti l'anno della sua uccisione uno era stato scritto nel 1996 da Giugni.
     D'Antona e le riforme del pubblico impiego
      Un riformista impegnato nel sindacato e nel Governo. Una delle menti più acute al servizio prima della Cgil e poi dell'Esecutivo, senza nascondere la sua scelta di campo: prima nel Pci poi nei Ds, ma senza estremismi. La serietà e l'onestà intellettuale di D'Antona erano state riconosciute anche dalle controparti: la Confindustria lo ricordava come “un leale interlocutore”.
      Proprio D'Antona aveva scritto le regole per la privatizzazione del rapporto di lavoro nel pubblico impiego e poi quelle per la rappresentanza sindacale nel lavoro pubblico. E sempre D'Antona aveva la paternità della proposta per la revisione della legge sullo sciopero (la “legge Piazza”) accolta in gran parte del "Patto di Natale" del dicembre 1998. Atti, impegni e scelte che lo avevano trasformato in un bersaglio per gli assassini delle Br-PCC che il 20 May 1999 lo freddarono sotto casa. Massimo D'Antona era ordinario di diritto del Lavoro all'Università La Sapienza di Roma e aveva ricoperto l'incarico di sottosegretario ai Trasporti (con delega per la Marina mercantile) nel governo Dini con il ministro Giovanni Caravale. Al momento del suo assassinio D'Antona era uno dei più stretti collaboratori del ministro del Lavoro Antonio Bassolino. Quest'ultimo gli aveva affidato negli ultimi mesi diversi incarichi, come quelli di coordinare sia la commissione di esperti per la riforma degli ammortizzatori sociali che il comitato consultivo per la riforma della legislazione del lavoro.
      D'Antona, 51 anni, di Roma, era uno dei giuristi del lavoro più autorevoli. Autore di numerose pubblicazioni, era soprattutto un esperto di mercato del lavoro e degli aspetti giuridici della contrattazione collettiva e degli scioperi nei servizi pubblici. Aveva alle spalle una brillante carriera che, dall'insegnamento nella Scuola della pubblica amministrazione, lo aveva portato nel '96 a divenire uno dei consulenti dell'allora Presidente del consiglio Dini e poi sottosegretario ai Trasporti nello stesso governo. Il ministro del Lavoro Treu lo aveva poi voluto al dicastero di via Flavia, chiamandolo a coordinare la commissione che lavorò al disegno di legge sulla rappresentatività sindacale.
      Durante il Governo Prodi, D'Antona era stato nominato dirigente generale della Funzione pubblica dall'allora ministro Franco Bassanini ed era poi divenuto consigliere giuridico della Presidenza del consiglio con la responsabilità dell'attuazione delle deleghe legislative in materia di privatizzazione del pubblico impiego.
      Al di fuori della carriera universitaria e degli incarichi governativi, D'Antona — sposato con una figlia — era stato in gioventù simpatizzante del Pci. Nella Cgil D'Antona era approdato intorno alla fine degli anni '80. Faceva parte del nucleo di giuristi della Consulta giuridica, insieme, tra gli altri, a Giorgio Ghezzi e Pier Giovanni Alleva. E a lui venivano affidate le questioni più delicate. Fu anche direttore della Rivista giuridica del lavoro, pubblicazione di area Cgil.
      Il suo impegno politico e sindacale non aveva impedito a D'Antona di affermarsi nel mondo accademico. Aveva cominciato la sua carriera universitaria con un saggio sui licenziamenti. Poi aveva proseguito cimentandosi su tutti gli argomenti del diritto del lavoro e di quello sindacale. Insieme a Franco Carinci ha curato la stesura del manuale sul lavoro nella pubblica amministrazione. D'Antona aveva insegnato a Catania, Napoli e poi a Roma, nella stessa facoltà di Scienze politiche che era stata di Aldo Moro e Vittorio Bachelet. Accanto al lavoro politico D'Antona, che aveva continuato a fare l'avvocato, svolgeva una rilevante attività pubblicistica, scrivendo articoli anche per l'Unità e Il Sole 24 Ore.
— 17 May 2004: A quasi cinque anni dall' omicidio del giuslavorista Massimo D'Antona, la procura di Roma ha chiuso l'inchiesta e depositato gli atti riguardanti le posizioni di 17 persone. A sette di loro i pm Franco Ionta e Pietro Saviotti contestano i reati di concorso in omicidio e di banda armata; agli altri dieci il solo reato di banda armata. Il deposito degli atti prelude alla richiesta di rinvio a giudizio. Per i magistrati romani l' accusa di concorso in omicidio del consulente del ministero del lavoro deve essere contestata a Marco Mezzasalma, Nadia Desdemona Lioce, Laura Proietti, Cinzia Banelli, Roberto Morandi, Federica Saraceni e Paolo Broccatelli.
William KinkelFaith Kinkel^ 1998 William P. Kinkel, 59, Faith M. Kinkel, 57
shot dead by their son, Kipland P. Kinkel, 15, in Springfield, Oregon. He first shoots his father in the back of the head at about 17:00. When his mom comes home at about 18:00, he says: "I love you mom, and shoots her dead.. He writes a note:
      "I have just killed my parents! I don't know what is happening. I love my mom and dad so much. I just got two felonies on my record. My parents can't take that! It would destroy them. The embarrassment would be too much for them. They couldn't live with themselves. I'm so sorry. I am a horrible son. I wish I had been aborted. I destroy everything I touch. I can't eat. I can't sleep. I didn't deserve them. They were wonderful people. It's not their fault or the fault of any person, organization, or television show. My head just doesn't work right. God damn these VOICES inside my head. I want to die. I want to be gone. But I have to kill people. I don't know why. I am so sorry! Why did God do this to me. I have never been happy. I wish I was happy. I wish I made my mother proud. I am nothing! I tried so hard to find happiness. But you know me I hate everything. I have no other choice. What have I become? I am so sorry"
      The next morning he would go to Thurston High School and shoot 48 shots from a semi-automatic rifle, killing Mikael Nickkolauson, and wounding more than 20 other people, one of which, Ben Walker, 16, died the next day from his injuries.. — MORE
1997 Ezequiel Hernandez, 18, shot in the side, without a warning, by Cpl. Banuelos, 22, of a squad of 4 camouflaged Marines on drug surveillance duty near Mexican border in Redford, Texas, while Ezequiel was herding his goats. Ezequiel had a .22-caliber rifle which he did NOT fire at the Marines. They followed him for 20 minutes before killing him, and then let him bleed to death, calling for medical help only after 22 minutes, and attempting no first-aid. On 14 August 1997, a grand jury would refuse to indict the killer, who claimed he was acting in self-defense.
1975 Barbara Hepworth, British abstract sculptor and draftswoman born on 10 January 1903. — link to images.
1965 Charles Camoin, French Fauvist painter born on 23 September 1879. — MORE ON CAMOIN AT ART “4” MAY with links to images.
1956 Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm, English caricaturist, writer, dandy, and wit, born on 24 August 1872. — MORE ON BEERBOHM AT ART “4” MAY with links to images.
^ 1948 Syrian attackers and Israeli defenders of Degania.
     The Syrian invaders of the new state of Israel attack kibbutz Degania A starting at dawn. The main objectives of the Syrian advance are the Jordan river bridges north of Degania A. They shell the center of the kibbutz with mortars and tank guns. An integrated Syrian force comprised of tanks, armored cars, and infantry attacks the defense positions at the outer perimeter of Degania A. They forced the defenders, 70 in number, out of their positions and into the communication trenches. Some of the Syrian tanks and armored vehicles are able to advance close to and eventually penetrate the kibbutz fence. But they are stopped by 20 mm cannons, Piat antitank shells, and Molotov cocktails. One Renault 35 tank which penetrates into the kibbutz was attacked by Molotov cocktails and hand grenades . It would remain in the kibbutz as a permanent monument.
      Syrian infantry troops who approach the kibbutz perimeter are stopped by the defenders. During the attack, Syrian artillery interdicts the roads thus preventing reinforcements from arriving. The defenders' positions are hit and the defenders suffered casualties. Yet despite their losses and lack of appropriate weapons and ammunition, the defenders are able to hold their positions and the Syrians retreat after several of their armored vehicles are hit.
      The battle for Degania A over, the Syrians now attacked kibbutz Degania B. They shell the kibbutz with mortars as tanks and armored cars approached the kibbutz. This time the tanks stop at a safe distance of 400 meters from the fence and shell the defenders' positions. Syrian infantry that attempts to approach the kibbutz are driven back. A second assault by infantry and armored vehicles is also repelled. At this time new Israeli field artillery pieces arrive . They are thrown into action before their crews have time to train with them. However the artillery barrages cause surprise and confusion among the Syrian troops who began to withdraw. The battle ends with the Syrian retreat. Israeli forces capture the village of Zemah, North-East of Degania.
1943 Henry Seely White, on his 82nd birthday, US research mathematician. He worked on invariant theory, the geometry of curves and surfaces, algebraic curves and twisted curves. Here is a theorem proved by White in 1915:
If seven points on a twisted cubic be joined, two and two, by twenty-one lines, then any seven planes that contain these 21 lines will osculate a second cubic curve.
      In 1896 he instigated the Colloquium Lectures of the American Mathematical Society. He was a Colloquium Lecturer himself in 1903 when he lectured on Linear systems of curves on algebraic surfaces. White was president of the American Mathematical Society from 1907 to 1908.
1886 Pierre-Édouard Frère, French painter born on 10 January 1819.
^ 1834 Marie Jean Paul Joseph Roche Yves Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, born on 06 September 1757. He fought on the side of the American colonists against the British in the US War of Independence. Later, by allying himself with the revolutionary bourgeoisie, he became one of the most powerful men in France during the first few years of the French Revolution.
      Born into an ancient noble family, Lafayette had already inherited an immense fortune by the time he married the daughter of the influential duc d'Ayen in 1774. He joined the circle of young courtiers at the court of King Louis XVI but soon aspired to win glory as a soldier. Hence, in July 1777, 27 months after the outbreak of the US War of Independence, he arrived in Philadelphia. Appointed a major general by the colonists, he quickly struck up a lasting friendship with the American commander in chief, George Washington. Lafayette fought with distinction at the Battle of Brandywine, Pennsylvania, on 11 September 1777, and, as a division commander, he conducted a masterly retreat from Barren Hill on 28 May 1778. Returning to France early in 1779, he helped persuade the government of Louis XVI to send a 6000-man expeditionary army to aid the colonists. Lafayette arrived back in America in April 1780 and was immediately given command of an army in Virginia. After forcing the British commander Lord Charles Cornwallis [31 Dec 1738 – 05 Oct 1805] to retreat across Virginia, Lafayette entrapped him at Yorktown in late July. A French fleet and several additional American armies joined the siege, and on 19 October 178 Cornwallis surrendered. The British cause was lost. Lafayette was hailed as “the Hero of Two Worlds,” and on returning to France in 1782 he was promoted maréchal de camp (brigadier general). He became a citizen of several states on a visit to the United States in 1784.
      During the next five years, Lafayette became a leader of the liberal aristocrats and an outspoken advocate of religious toleration and the abolition of the slave trade. Elected as a representative of the nobility to the States General that convened in May 1789, Lafayette supported the maneuvers by which the bourgeois deputies of the Third Estate gained control of the States General and converted it into a revolutionary National Assembly. On 11 July1789 he presented to the Assembly his draft of a Déclaration des droits de l'Homme et du citoyen. After extensive revisions the document was adopted on 26 August 1789. Meanwhile on 15 July1789, the day after a crowd stormed the Bastille, Lafayette had been elected commander of the newly formed national guard of Paris. His troops saved Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette from the fury of a crowd that invaded Versailles on 06 October 1789, and he then carried the royal family to Paris, where they became hostages of the Revolution.
      For the next year, Lafayette's popularity and influence were at their height. He supported measures that transferred power from the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie, but he feared that further democratization would encourage the lower classes to attack property rights. Hence, he became alarmed as republicans began to assail the new system of constitutional monarchy. When a crowd of petitioners gathered on the Champ de Mars in Paris (17 July 1791) to demand the abdication of the King, Lafayette's guards opened fire, killing or wounding about 50 demonstrators. The incident destroyed his popularity, and in October he resigned from the guard.
      Appointed commander of the army at Metz in December 1791, Lafayette hoped to suppress the radical democrats (and perhaps rule in the King's name) after France went to war with Austria in April 1792. His plans failed, and on 10 August 1792, the monarchy was overthrown in a popular insurrection. Lafayette would have been tried for treason had he not defected (19 Aug 1792) to the Austrians, who held him captive until 1797. When Napoléon Bonaparte came to power in 1799, Lafayette returned to France and settled down as a gentleman farmer.He sat in the Chamber of Deputies during most of the reign of King Louis XVIII (1814–1824), and in 1824–1825 he visited the United States, where he was received with wild adulation. In July 1830 he commanded the national guard that helped overthrow King Charles X and install Louis-Philippe on the throne. Lafayette retired six months later.
— 1825 portrait by Charles Cromwell Ingham.
— A Horse at Yorktown glaring at slave James Armistead and ignoring General Lafayette, 1783 painting by Jean-Baptiste-Louis Le Paon [1737 – 27 May 1785]
1824 Thomas Hickey, Irish portrait painter born in 1741, who worked in Dublin, London, and India. — more with links to images.
1798 Erland Samuel Bring, Swedish mathematician born on 19 August 1736.
^ Condamnés à mort par la Révolution:
1794 (1 prairial an II):
LANDROITTE Cornille, âgé de 38 ans, né à Conty en Brabant, célibataire, jardinier, à Arras
Comme distributeurs de faux assignats, par le tribunal criminel du département de la Seine:
BASTIEN Aimé, domicilié à Valenciennes (Nord). — FLAMME Catherine Marie Joseph, institutrice, domiciliée à Paris.
Par le tribunal révolutionnaire de Paris:
HENNEVEUX Marie Pierrette, femme Lesclapart, libraire, 47 ans, née et domiciliée à Paris, comme convaincue d’être auteur ou complice d’une conspiration contre la république en vendant des écrits, contenant des principes contraires au gouvernement républicain, destructeurs de la liberté, et provoquant la dissolution de la représentation nationale et le rétablissement de la royauté.
HOUSSAYE Joseph, (dit Laviolette), bijoutier, adjudant général de l’armée révolutionnaire, 21 ans, né à Amiens (Somme), domicilié à Paris, par le tribunal révolutionnaire de Paris, comme contre-révolutionnaire, pour avoir tenu des propos tendants à l’avilissement des autorités constituées.
CLERSE Marie Thérèse, femme Roland, 49 ans, femme de chambre de la femme Dutillet, domiciliée à Provins (Seine et Marne), comme conspiratrice.
CONSTANT Jean Pierre, (dit la Barthe), 74 ans, né à Cezac (Lot), négociant, domicilié à Pradinere (Lot), comme conspirateur .
FILSAC Jean, ex avocat, secrétaire général du département du Lot, âgé de 36 ans, né et domicilié à Cahors (Lot) comme conspirateur.
1793:
DUPERRAY Louis Henry, chirurgien, domicilié à Paris, comme distributeur de faux assignats, par le tribunal criminel dudit département.
Domiciliés dans le département de la Vendée, comme brigands de la Vendée, par la commission militaire séante aux Sables:
GRIVET Jean, tisserand, domicilié à Commequière — ROQUAUD Jacques, laboureur, domicilié à St Christophe-de-Ligneron.
1673 Michiel Simons, Dutch artist born in 1620.
^ 1506 Christopher Colombus, 55, explorer, without due recognition.
     The great Italian explorer Christopher Columbus dies in Valladolid, Spain. Columbus was the first European to explore the Americas since the Vikings set up colonies in Greenland and Newfoundland in the 10th century. He explored the West Indies, South America, and Central America, but died a disappointed man, feeling he had been mistreated by his patron, King Ferdinand of Spain.
      Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy, in 1451. Little is known of his early life, but he worked as a seaman and then a sailing entrepreneur. He became obsessed with the possibility of pioneering a western sea route to Cathay (China), India, and the fabled gold and spice islands of Asia. At the time, Europeans knew no direct sea route to southern Asia, and the route via Egypt and the Red Sea was closed to Europeans by the Ottoman Empire, as were many land routes. Contrary to popular legend, educated Europeans of Columbus' day did believe that the world was round, as argued by St. Isidore in the seventh century.
      However, Columbus, and most others, underestimated the world's size, calculating that East Asia must lie approximately where North America sits on the globe (they did not yet know of that the Pacific Ocean existed). With only the Atlantic Ocean, he thought, lying between Europe and the riches of the East Indies, Columbus met with King John II of Portugal and tried to persuade him to back his "Enterprise of the Indies," as he called his plan. He was rebuffed and went to Spain, where he was also rejected at least twice by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.
      However, after the Spanish conquest of the Moorish kingdom of Granada in January 1492, the Spanish monarchs, flush with victory, agreed to support his voyage. On August 3, 1492, Columbus set sail from Palos, Spain, with three small ships, the Santa María, the Pinta, and the Niña. On 12 October 1492, the expedition sighted land, probably Watling Island in the Bahamas, and went ashore the same day, claiming it for Spain.
      Later that month, Columbus sighted Cuba, which he thought was mainland China, and in December the expedition landed on Hispaniola, which Columbus thought might be Japan. He established a small colony there with 39 of his men.
      The explorer returned to Spain with gold, spices, and "Indian" captives in March 1493, and was received with the highest honors by the Spanish court. He was given the title "admiral of the ocean sea," and a second expedition was promptly organized. Fitted out with a large fleet of 17 ships, with 1500 colonists aboard, Columbus set out from Cádiz in September 1493 on his second voyage to the New World. Landfall was made in the Lesser Antilles in November. Returning to Hispaniola, he found the men he left there slaughtered by the natives, and he founded a second colony. Sailing on, he explored Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and numerous smaller islands in the Caribbean.
      Columbus returned to Spain in June 1496 and was greeted less warmly, as the yield from the second voyage had fallen well short of its costs. Isabella and Ferdinand, still greedy for the riches of the East, agreed to a smaller third voyage and instructed Columbus to find a strait to India. In May 1498, Columbus left Spain with six ships, three filled with colonists and three with provisions for the colony on Hispaniola. This time, he made landfall on Trinidad. He entered the Gulf of Paria in Venezuela and planted the Spanish flag on South America. By the scope of the Orinoco River in Venezuela, he realized he had stumbled upon another continent, which Columbus, a deeply religious man, decided after careful thought was the outer regions of the Garden of Eden.
      Returning to Hispaniola, he found that conditions on the island had deteriorated under the rule of his brothers, Diego and Bartholomew. Columbus' efforts to restore order were marked by brutality, and his rule came to be deeply resented by both the colonists and the native Taino chiefs. In 1500, Spanish chief justice Francisco de Bobadilla arrived at Hispaniola, sent by Isabella and Ferdinand to investigate complaints, and Columbus and his brother were sent back to Spain in chains. He was immediately released upon his return, and Ferdinand and Isabella agreed to finance a fourth voyage in which he was to search for the earthly paradise and the realms of gold said to lie nearby. He was also to continue looking for a passage to India.
      In May 1502, Columbus left Cádiz on his fourth and final voyage to the New World. After returning to Hispaniola against his patron's wishes, he explored the coast of Central America looking for a strait and for gold. Attempting to return to Hispaniola, his ships, in poor condition, had to be beached on Jamaica. Columbus and his men were marooned, but two of his captains succeed in canoeing the 450 miles to Hispaniola. Columbus was a castaway on Jamaica for a year before a rescue ship arrived. In November 1504, Columbus returned to Spain. Queen Isabella, his chief patron, died less than three weeks later.
      Although Columbus enjoyed a substantial revenue from Hispaniola gold during the last years of his life, he repeatedly attempted (unsuccessfully) to gain an audience with King Ferdinand, whom he felt owed him further redress. Columbus dies on 20 May 1506, without realizing the great scope of his achievement: He had discovered for Europe the New World, whose riches over the next century would help make Spain the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth.
0526 Some 250'000 by earthquake in Antioch, Syria
< 19 May 21 May >
^  Births which occurred on a 20 May:

Desmond MacCarthy1919 Bernard Cathelin, French artist.

1915 Moshe Dayan Israeli general/politician

1901 Max Euwe Netherlands, world chess champion (1935-1937)

1882 Sigrid Undset Norway, novelist (Kristin Lavransdatter, Nobel 1928)

1877 Desmond Charles Otto MacCarthy, English journalist, best known as a drama and literary critic, who died on 08 June 1952. — <<< portrait by Duncan Grant [21 Jan 1885 – 08 May 1978]
^ 1873 Copper-riveted jeans are patented by Levi Strauss.
      Acting at the behest of a Reno, Nevada, tailor who had invented the idea, Levi Strauss secures the necessary patents for canvas pants with copper rivets to reinforce the stress points. Born in Buttenheim, Bavaria, in 1829, the young Levi Strauss emigrated to the United States in 1847. Strauss initially went into business selling dry goods along the East Coast, but in 1852, his brother-in-law encouraged him to relocate to the booming city of San Francisco.
      He arrived in San Francisco in 1853 with a load of merchandise that he hoped to sell in the California mining camps. Unable to sell a large supply of canvas, Strauss hit on the idea of using the durable material to make work pants for miners. Strauss' canvas pants were an immediate success among hardworking miners who had long complained that conventional pants wore out too quickly.
      In 1872, Strauss received a letter from Jacob Davis, a customer and tailor who worked in the mining town of Reno, Nevada. Davis reported that he had discovered canvas pants could be improved if the pocket seams and other weak points that tended to tear were strengthened by copper rivets.
      Davis' riveted pants had proven popular in Reno, but he needed a patent to protect his invention. Intrigued by the copper-riveted pants, Strauss and his partners agreed to undertake the necessary legal work for the patent and begin large-scale production of the pants. Davis' invention was patented on this day in 1873. In exchange for his idea, Strauss made the Reno tailor his production manager. Eventually, Strauss switched from using canvas to heavyweight blue denim, and the modern "blue jeans" were born. Since then, Levi Strauss & Company has sold more than 200 million pairs of copper-riveted jeans. By the turn of the century, people outside of the mining and ranching communities had discovered that "Levi's" were both comfortable and durable. Eventually, the jeans lost most of their association with the West and came to be simply a standard element of the casual American wardrobe.
1861 Henry White, mathematician (would die on this date in 1943)
1857 Herman Gustaf Sillen, Swedish artist who died on 29 December 1908.
1856 Henri-Edmond Delacroix “Cross”, French Pointillist painter who died on 16 May 1910. — MORE ON “CROSS” AT ART “4” MAY with links to images.
1851 Emile Berliner Germany, inventor (flat phonograph record)
1843 Emil Adam, German painter, specialized in race horses, who died in 1924.
1822 Frédéric Passy co-winner of first Nobel Peace Prize (1901)
1818 William George Fargo, who would help to found Wells, Fargo and Co.
1815 Barthélémy Menn, Swiss painter and teacher who died on 13 (11?) October 1893. — more
^ 1806 John Stuart Mill, English philosopher, economist, exponent of Utilitarianism, prominent as a publicist, he remains of lasting interest as a logician and an ethical theorist. He died on 08 May 1873.
     He would be the leader of the utilitarian movement,: editor: Westminster Review; philosopher: (System of Logic, Principles of Political Economy, Utilitarianism, On Liberty, The Subjection of Women)
     The eldest son of the British historian, economist, and philosopher James Mill [06 April 1773 – 23 Jun 1836], John Stuart Mill was born in his father's house in Pentonville, London. He was educated exclusively by his father, who was a strict disciplinarian. By his eighth year he had read in the original Greek Aesop's Fables, Xenophon's Anabasis, and the whole of the historian Herodotus. He was acquainted with the satirist Lucian, the historian of philosophy Diogenes Laërtius, the Athenian writer and educational theorist Isocrates, and six dialogues of Plato. He had also read a great deal of history in English. At the age of eight he started Latin, the geometry of Euclid, and algebra andbegan to teach the younger children of the family. His main reading was still history, but he went through all the Latin and Greek authors commonly read in the schools and universities and, by the age of 10 could read Plato and the Athenian statesman Demosthenes with ease. About the age of 12, he began a thorough study of Scholastic logic, at the same time reading Aristotle's logical treatises in the original. In the following year he was introduced to political economy and studied the work of the Scottish political economist and philosopher Adam Smith and that of the English economist David Ricardo.
      While the training the younger Mill received has aroused amazement and criticism, its most important aspect was the close association it fostered with the strenuous character and vigorous intellect of his father. From his earliest days he spent much time in his father's studyand habitually accompanied him on his walks. He thus inevitably acquired many of his father's speculative opinions and his father's way of defending them. But he did not receive the impress passively and mechanically. The duty of collecting and weighing evidence for himself was at every turn impressed upon the boy. His childhood was not unhappy, but it was a strain on his constitution and he suffered from the lack of natural, unforced development.
      From May 1820 until July 1821, Mill was in France with the family of Sir Samuel Bentham, brother of Jeremy Bentham [15 Feb 1748 – 06 Jun 1832], the English Utilitarian philosopher, economist, and theoretical jurist. Copious extracts from a diary kept at this time show how methodically he read and wrote, studied chemistry and botany, tackled advanced mathematical problems, and made notes on the scenery and the people and customs of the country. He also gained a thorough acquaintance with the French language. On his return in 1821 he added to his work the study of psychology and of Roman law, which he read with John Austin, his father having half decided on the bar as the best profession open to him. This intention, however, was abandoned, and in 1823, when he had just completed his 17th year, he entered the examiner's office of the India House. After a short probation he was promoted in 1828 to assistant examiner. For 20 years, from 1836 (when his father died) to 1856, Mill had charge of the British East India Company's relations with the Indian states, and in 1856 he became chief of the examiner's office.
      In 1822 Mill had read P.-E.-L. Dumont's exposition of Bentham's doctrines in the Traités de Législation, which made a lasting impression upon him. The impression was confirmed by the study of the English psychologists and also of two 18th-century French philosophers, Étienne Bonnot de Condillac [30 Sep 1705 – 02 Aug 1780], who was also a psychologist, and Claude-Adrien Helvétius, who was noted for his emphasis on physical sensations. Soon after, in 1822–1823, Mill established among a few friends the Utilitarian Society, taking the word, as he tells us, from Annals of the Parish , a novel of Scottish country life by John Galt.
      Two newspapers welcomed his contributions, The Traveller, edited by a friend of Bentham's, and The Morning Chronicle, edited by his father's friend John Black. One of his first efforts was a solid argument for freedom of discussion in a series of letters to the Chronicle on the prosecution of Richard Carlile, a 19th-century English radical and freethinker. Mill seized every chance for exposing departures from sound principle in Parliament and courts of justice. Another outlet was opened up for him (April 1824) with the founding of the Westminster Review, which was the organ of the philosophical radicals. In 1825 he began work on an edition of Bentham's Rationale of Judicial Evidence (5 vol., 1827). He took part eagerly in discussions with the many men of distinction who came to his father's house and engaged in set discussions at a reading society formed at the home of English historian George Grote in 1825 and in debates at the London Debating Society, formed in the same year.
      The Autobiography tells how in 1826 Mill's enthusiasm was checked by a misgiving as to the value of the ends that he had set before him. At the London Debating Society, where he first measured his strength in public conflict, he found himself looked upon with curiosity as a precocious phenomenon, a “made man,” an intellectual machine set to grind certain tunes. The elder Mill, like Plato, would have put poets under ban as enemies of truth; he subordinated private to public affections; and Landor's maxims of “few acquaintances, fewer friends, no familiarities” had his cordial approval. The younger Mill now felt himself forced toabandon these doctrines. Too much in awe of his father to make him a confidant, he wrestled with his doubts in gloomy solitude. He emerged from the struggle with a more catholic view ofhuman happiness, a delight in poetry for its own sake, a more placable attitude in controversy, a hatred of sectarianism, and an ambition no less noble and disinterested but moderated to practical possibilities. Gradually, the debates in the Debating Society attracted men with whom contact was invigorating and inspiring. Mill ceased to attend the society in 1829, but he carried away from it the conviction that a true system of political philosophy was something much more complex and many-sided than he had previously had any idea of,and that its office was to supply, not a set of model institutions but principles from which the institutions suitable to any given circumstances might be deduced.
      Mill's letters in The Examiner in the autumn of 1830, after a visit to Paris, where he made the acquaintance of the younger liberals, may be taken as marking his return to hopeful activity; and a series of articles on “The Spirit of the Age” appeared in the same paper in 1831. During the years 1832 and 1833 he contributed many essays to Tait's Magazine, The Jurist, and The Monthly Repository. In 1835 Sir William Molesworth founded The London Review, with Mill as editor. It was amalgamated with The Westminster (as The London and Westminster Review) in1836, and Mill continued as editor (latterly as proprietor, also) until 1840. In and after 1840 he published several important articles in The Edinburgh Review. Some of the essays written for these journals were reprinted in the first two volumes (1859) of Mill's Dissertations and Discussions and give evidence of the increasing width of his interests. Among the more important are “Thoughts on Poetry and Its Varieties” (1833), “Writings of Alfred de Vigny” (1838), “Bentham” (1838), “Coleridge” (1840), “M. De Tocqueville on Democracy in America”(1840), “Michelet's History of France” (1844), and “Guizot's Essays and Lectures on History” (1845). The twin essays on Bentham and Coleridge show Mill's powers at their splendid best and indicate very clearly the new spirit that he tried to breathe into English radicalism.
      During these years Mill also wrote his great systematic works on logic and on political economy. His reawakened enthusiasm for humanity had taken shape as an aspiration to supply an unimpeachable method of proof for conclusions in moral and social science; the French positivist philosopher Auguste Comte had some influence here, but the main inspiration undoubtedly came from the English scientist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton,whose physics had already been accepted as a model of scientific exposition by such earlier British philosophers as John Locke, David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, and James Mill. But he was determined that the new logic should not simply oppose the old logic. In his Westminster review (of 1828) of Elements of Logic of Richard Whately [01 Feb 1787 – 08 Oct 1863], he was already defending the syllogism against the Scottish philosophers who had talked of superseding it by a supposed system of inductive logic. He required his inductive logic to “supplement and not supersede.” For several years he searched in vain for the means of concatenation. Finally, in 1837, on reading Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences of William Whewell [24 May 1794 – 06 Mar 1866] and rereading Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy of John F.W. Herschel, Mill at last saw his way clear both to formulating the methods of scientific investigation and to joining the new logic onto the old as a supplement. A System of Logic, in two volumes, was published in 1843 (3rd–8th editions, introducing many changes, 1851–1872). Book VI is his valiant attempt to formulate a logic of the human sciences, including history, psychology, and sociology, based on causal explanation conceived in Humean terms, a formulation that has lately come in for radical criticism.
      Mill distinguished three stages in his development as a political economist. In 1844 he published the Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy, which he had written several years earlier, and four out of five of these essays are solutions of perplexing technical problems—the distribution of the gains of international commerce, the influence of consumption on production, the definition of productive and unproductive labour, and the precise relations between profits and wages. Here for the most part Mill appears as the disciple of David Ricardo, striving after more precise statements and reaching forward to further consequences. In his second stage, originality and independence become more conspicuous as he struggles toward the standpoint from which he wrote his Principles of Political Economy . This was published in 1848 (2 vol.; 2nd and 3rd eds., with significant differences, 1849, 1852), and, at about the same time, Mill was advocating the creation of peasant proprietorships as a remedy for the distresses and disorder in Ireland. Thereafter, he made a more thorough study of Socialist writers. He was convinced that the social question was as important as the political question. He declined to accept property, devised originally to secure peace in a primitive society, as necessarily sacred in its existing developments in a quite different stage of society. He separated questions of production and distribution and could not rest satisfied with the distribution that condemned the labouring classes to a cramped and wretched existence, in many cases to starvation. He did not come to a Socialist solution, but he had the great merit of having considered afresh the foundations of society. This he called his third stage as a political economist, and he says that he was helped toward it by Mrs. Taylor (Harriet Hardy), who became his wife in 1851.
      It is generally supposed that Mill writes with a lover's extravagance about Harriet's powers. He expressly says, indeed, that he owed none of his technical doctrine to her, that she influenced only his ideals of life for the individual and for society, and that the only work directly inspired by her is the essay on the “Enfranchisement of Women” (Dissertations, vol. 2). Nevertheless, Mill's relations with her have always been something of a puzzle.
      During the seven years of his marriage Mill became increasingly absorbed in the work of the British East India Company and in consequence published less than at any other period of his life. In 1856 he became head of the examiner's office in the India House, and for two years, tillthe dissolution of the company in 1858, his official work kept him fully occupied. It fell to him as head of the office to write the defense of the company's government of India when the transfer of its powers was proposed. Mill opposed the transfer, and the documents in which he defended the company's administration are models of trenchant and dignified pleading. On the dissolution of the company, Mill was offered a seat in the new council but declined it and retired with a pension of £1500. His retirement from official life was followed almost immediately by his wife's death at Avignon, France. He spent most of the rest of his life at a villa at Saint-Véran, near Avignon, returning to his house at Blackheath only for a short period in each year.
     Mill sought relief by publishing a series of books on ethics and politics that he had meditated upon and partly written in collaboration with his wife. The essay On Liberty appeared in 1859 with a touching dedication to her and the Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform in the same year. In his Considerations on Representative Government (1861) he systematized opinions already put forward in many casual articles and essays. It has been remarked how Mill combined enthusiasm for democratic government with pessimism as to what democracy was likely to do; practically every discussion in these books exemplifies this. His Utilitarianism (in Fraser's Magazine, 1861; separate publication, 1863) was a closely reasoned attempt to answer objections to his ethical theory and to remove misconceptions about it. He was especially anxious to make it clear that he included in “utility” the pleasures of the imagination and the gratification of the higher emotions; and to make a place in his system for settled rules of conduct.
      Mill also began to write again on the wider philosophical questions that had occupied him in the Logic. In 1865 he published both his Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy and his Auguste Comte and Positivism, but in both writings his motives were largely political. It was because he regarded the writings and sayings of Sir William Hamilton as the great fortress of intuitional philosophy in Great Britain that Mill undertook to counter his pretensions. In dealing with Comte, Mill distinguished sharply between Comte's earlier philosophical doctrine of Positivism and his later religion of humanity. The doctrine he commended (as he had frequently done previously) because he regarded it as a natural development of the outlook of George Berkeley and Hume; the religion he attacked because he saw in it merely another attempt to foist a priestly hierarchy upon suffering humanity. It is noticeable that Mill's language in these books is much closer to the language of Bentham and James Mill than it had been since his boyhood, and it was as an act of piety that in 1869 he republished his father's Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind with additional illustrations and explanatory notes.
      While engaged in these years mainly with theoretical studies, Mill did not remit his interest in current politics. He supported the North in the US Civil War, using all his strength to explain that the real issue at stake in the struggle was the abolition of slavery. In 1865 he stood as parliamentary candidate for Westminster, on conditions strictly in accordance with his principles. He would not canvass or pay agents to canvass for him, nor would he engage to attend to the local business of the constituency. He was with difficulty persuaded even to address a meeting of the electors but was elected. He took an active part in the debates preceding the passage of the 1867 Reform Bill, and helped to extort from the government several useful modifications of the bill, for the prevention of corrupt practices. The reform of land tenure in Ireland (see his England and Ireland, 1868, and his Chapters and Speeches on the Irish Land Question, 1870), the representation of women (see below), the reduction of the national debt, the reform of London government, and the abrogation of the Declaration of Paris (1856), concerning the carriage of property at sea during the Crimean War—were among the topics on which he spoke. He took occasion more than once to enforce what he hadoften advocated, England's duty to intervene in foreign politics in support of freedom. As a speaker Mill was somewhat hesitating, but he showed great readiness in extemporaneous debate. Elected rector of St. Andrews University, he published his “Inaugural Address” in 1867.
      Mill's subscription to the election expenses of the freethinker and radical politician Charles Bradlaugh and his attack on the conduct of Gov. E.J. Eyre in Jamaica were perhaps the main causes of his defeat in the general parliamentary election of 1868. But his studied advocacy of unfamiliar projects of reform had made him unpopular with “moderate Liberals.” He retired with a sense of relief to Avignon. His villa was filled with books and newspapers; the country round it furnished him with a variety of walks; he read, wrote, discussed, walked, botanized. He was extremely fond of music and was himself a fair pianist. His stepdaughter, Helen Taylor [–Jan 1907], was his constant companion after his wife's death. Mill was an enthusiastic botanist all his life and a frequent contributor of notes and short papers to The Phytologist. During his last journey to Avignon he was looking forward to seeing the spring flowers and completing a flora of the locality.
      Mill did not relax his laborious habits or his ardent outlook on human affairs. The essays in the fourth volume of his Dissertations (1875; vol. 3 had appeared in 1867), on endowments, on land, on labor, and on metaphysical and psychological questions, were written for The Fortnightly Review at intervals after his short parliamentary career. In 1867 he had been one of the founders, with Mrs. P.A. Taylor, Emily Davies, and others, of the first women's suffrage society, which developed into the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, and in 1869 he published The Subjection of Women (written 1861), the classical theoretical statement of the case for woman suffrage. His last public activity was concerned with the starting of the Land Tenure Reform Association, for which he wrote in The Examiner and made a public speech a few months before his death; the interception by the state of the unearned increment on land and the promotion of cooperative agriculture were the most striking features in his program, which he regarded as a timely compromise in view of the impending struggle between capital and labor in Europe. He died in 1873, and his Autobiography and Three Essays on Religion (1874) were published posthumously.
      Mill was a man of extreme simplicity in his mode of life. The influence that his works exercised upon contemporary English thought can scarcely be overestimated, nor can there be any doubt about the value of the liberal and inquiring spirit with which he handled the great questions of his time. Beyond that, however, there has been considerable difference of opinion about the enduring merits of his philosophy. At first sight he is the most lucid of philosophers. Many people have spoken of the marvelous intelligibility of his writing. Usually,however, it is not long before doubts begin to creep in. Although the lucidity remains, its span is seen to be somewhat limited, and one sometimes has the uneasy feeling that he is being equally lucid on both sides of a question.
     Oddly enough, however, this judgment has not led to any neglect of Mill. Little attention is now paid to Hamilton or to Whewell, but Mill's name continually crops up in philosophical discussions. This is partly due to the fact that Mill offers a body of doctrine and a set of technical terms on many subjects (notably on induction) that have proved extremely useful in the classroom. But a more important reason is that he has come to be regarded as a sort of personification of certain tendencies in philosophy that it is regarded as continually necessary to expound or expose because they make such a powerful appeal to serious minds.Thus he is or says he is a Utilitarian; yet nothing, it is pointed out, could tell more strongly against Utilitarianism than certain passages in his writings. Then again, he is said to be an Empiricist (although he says himself that he is not), and his theories of the syllogism and of mathematics are constantly used to demonstrate the fatal consequences of this way of thinking.
      It is misleading to speak without qualification of Mill's Utilitarianism. Nor is it sufficient to add that Mill modified the Utilitarianism that he inherited from Bentham and from his father in one way and another in order to meet the criticisms that it encountered in Victorian times. He does, it is true, sometimes give that impression (as in his essay Utilitarianism); but elsewhere (as in his essay On Liberty) he scarcely attempts to conceal the fact that his premises are completely independent of Bentham's. Thus, contrary to the common belief, it appears to be very hazardous to characterize offhand the precise position of Mill on any major philosophical topic. He sometimes behaved with a reckless disregard of consequences more suitable to a Romantic than to a Utilitarian. He is thoroughly romantic, again, and thoroughly representative of his age in the eagerness with which he seeks out and endeavours to assimilate every last exotic line of thought which shows any signs of vitality. He himself claimed to be superior to most of his contemporaries in “ability and willingness to learn from everybody,” and indeed, for all his father's careful schooling, there was never anybody less buttoned up against alien influences than Mill. In his writings there can be discerned traces of every wind of doctrine of the early 19th century.

JOHN STUART MILL ONLINE:
  • Autobiography
  • Autobiography
  • Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy (PDF)
  • On Liberty
  • On Liberty
  • On Liberty
  • Principles of Political Economy
  • Representative Government
  • The Subjection of Women
  • The Subjection of Women
  • Utilitarianism
    • 1799 Honoré de Balzac, French novelist.       ^top^
          Born in Tours, France, Balzac was educated in Paris, where he started writing plays at the age of 20 while working as a lawyer's apprentice. His plays bombed, and he took to writing thrillers under an assumed name. Needing money, he launched disastrous ventures in printing and silver mining and went bankrupt. While struggling under his debts, he resumed writing, and by 1829 he was publishing under his own name, convinced that he was a genius. By 1830, he had become a celebrated writer who frequented literary salons. Balzac drove himself ruthlessly, working 14 to 16 hours at a stretch, aided by some 50 cups of coffee a day. He completed 90 novels, all part of a single series, La Comédie Humaine, and died in Paris in on 18 August 1850 at age 51. He helped to establish the orthodox classical novel and is generally considered to be one of the greatest fiction writers of all time.
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    Balzac
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  • · Le Colonel Chabert
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