^
2001 Mohammed Atef and 7 other al-Qaida members, by US bombing.
Atef was one of the 22 Most
Wanted Terrorists
Atef, the
military chief of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network is
killed along with seven colleagues in a US bombing raid in Afghanistan.
The death of Atef is considered a major blow to al-Qaida, already
reeling from the collapse of their Taliban hosts. An Egyptian believed
to be about 57 years old, Atef wrote al-Qaida's terrorism manual and
ran the organization's training camps. He was suspected of helping
plan the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon
that killed thousands.
He directly
planned the embassy bombings in Africa in 1998 that killed 224 persons,
according to a US indictment that charged him with murder. He also
was accused of helping plan a 1993 helicopter shootdown in Somalia
that killed 18 US soldiers. Atef was a close confidant of bin Laden,
and his daughter was married to bin Laden's son. He was often seen
at bin Laden's left or right hand in photographs and videotapes taken
in Afghanistan in recent years.
He came to prominence after he moved from Egypt to Afghanistan in
the mid-1980s to join Afghan guerrillas fighting Soviet forces. After
the Soviets pulled out, he joined bin Laden's al-Qaida network. Days
after the U.S began its airstrikes on Afghanistan, Atef warned, "America
will not realize its miscalculations until its soldiers are dragged
in Afghanistan like they were in Somalia." |
2000 Mohammed Ijla, 13, Palestinian from Gaza City, by
Israeli gunfire.
2000 Fader Barsh, 15, Palestinian
from the West Bank refugee camp of Al Amari,. by Israeli gunfire.
2000 Mustafa Mahmud Musa ‘Alyan, 47, Palestinian killed by Israeli
settlers throwing stones, near Kufur Malek, Ramallah district,
West Bank.
2000 Alfred Harding, shot dead by police
in La Clery, near St. Castries, St. Lucia. He is ordered by an off-duty
police officer to lie down and shot twice, once in the thigh and once in
the spine. The St. Lucia government would be highly critical of human rights
advocates who seek to bring the perpetrators to justice and Amnesty International
would take up his case.
1996 Cardinal Joseph Bernardin,
68, Archbishop of Chicago.
1992 Gregorio Prieto Muñoz,
pintor español.
1990 Malcolm Muggeridge, 87,
WW II spy for Britain, journalist. He became a Roman Catholic in his old
age, wrote a skeptical life of Christ and The Third Testament,
a look at some notable but eccentric Christians. He brought Mother Teresa
to world attention.
^
1985 Thousands dying in the mud a few hours after the eruption
of Nevado del Ruiz
Nevado
del Ruiz is the northernmost and highest Colombian volcano with historical
activity. With a summit elevation of 5389 m, the volcano is covered
with 25 km2 of snow and ice even though it's located only 500 km from
Earth's equator. From November 1984, the volcano began showing clear
signs of unrest, including earthquakes, increased fumarolic activity
from the summit crater, and small phreatic explosions.
An explosive eruption from Ruiz's summit crater on November 13, 1985,
at 21:08 generated an eruption column and sent a series of pyroclastic
flows and surges across the volcano's broad ice-covered summit. Within
minutes, pumice and ash began to fall to the northeast along with
heavy rain that had started earlier in the day. The crater was enlarged
slightly by the eruption, and the summit area was quickly covered
with layers of pyroclastic flow deposits as thick as 8 m. This eruption
was preceded by a strong phreatic (steam) explosion from the crater
at 15:05.
Hot rock fragments of
the pyroclastic flows and surges quickly eroded and mixed with Ruiz's
snow and ice, melting about ten% of the volcano's ice cover. In places,
channels 100 m wide and 2-4 m deep were eroded into the icecap. Flowing
mixtures of water, ice, pumice and other rock debris then poured from
the summit and sides of the volcano into rivers draining the volcano.
In one river, scientists found a piece of ice 2 m across about 3 km
from the crater.
Pumice and meltwater
produced by the hot pyroclastic flows and surges swept into gullies
and channels on the slopes of Ruiz as a series of small lahars. After
descending several thousand meters and eroding loose rock debris from
the sides of the volcano, the lahars were funneled into all six major
river valleys leading from Ruiz.
Flowing downstream from Ruiz at an average speed of 60 km per hour,
lahars eroded soil, loose rock debris and stripped vegetation from
river channels. By incorporating water and debris from along river
channels, the lahars grew in size as they moved away from the volcano
— some lahars increased up to 4 times their initial volumes.
In some of the narrow canyons downstream from the volcano, lahars
were as thick as 50 m.
Houses
and towns located high enough above river channels escaped damage
from the lahars. In the Gualí River valley, at least two lahar
pulses were reported by eyewitnesses, separated by 5 to 15 minutes
depending on distance from the volcano. Eyewitnesses reported that
the noise created by the passage of each pulse made their houses and
the ground shake and that conversation, even by shouting, was impossible.
Within four hours of the beginning
of the eruption, lahars had traveled 100 km and left behind a wake
of destruction: more than 23'000 people killed, about 5000 injured,
and more than 5000 homes destroyed along the Chinchiná, Gualí,
and Lagunillas rivers. Hardest hit was the town of Armero at the mouth
of the Río Lagunillas canyon. Three quarters of its 28'700
inhabitants perished. The last one to die was Omaira Sanchez, 13,
trapped to her neck in the mud, who survived until November 16, while
TV showed the vain efforts to rescue her.
Accounts from survivors indicate Armero was inundated with several
pulses of flowing material. The first arrived at 23:25 and consisted
of a flood of cold relatively clean water that overflowed the Río
Lagunillas channel, sweeping into downtown Armero. Only a few centimeters
deep in town, this water was from a lake located just upstream that
had been displaced when lahars entered the lake.
The second pulse arrived at 23:35. This was the largest pulse and
within 10 to 20 minutes, destroyed most of the buildings and swept
away most of the people in Armero. Flow depths of the lahar ranged
from 2 to 5 m. The third pulse arrived at 23:50 with a velocity of
about half of the second one. Then, in the next hour or so, a series
of smaller pulses (6 to 8) was experienced by survivors trapped in
the mud. These pulses lifted people floating in the mud and pushed
them a few meters ahead. One last pulse struck Armero a short time
after 01:00 on 14 November.
At 21:08 , Nevado del Ruiz, the highest active volcano in the Andes
Mountains of Colombia, suffers a mild eruption that generates a series
of lava flows and surges over the volcano's broad ice-covered summit.
Flowing mixtures of water, ice, pumice and other rock debris pour
off the summit and sides of the volcano, forming "lahars" that flood
into the river valleys surrounding Ruiz. The lahars join normal river
channels, and disastrous flooding and mudslides ensue. Within four
hours of the eruption, the lahars travel over sixty miles, killing
more than 23'000 people, injuring over 5000, and destroying more than
5000 homes. Hardest hit is the town of Armero, where three quarters
of the 28'700 inhabitants die. The volcano first began showing signs
of an imminent eruption a full year before, and most of the river
valley's residents would have survived had they have moved to higher
ground.
— Omaira Sánchez, 13, in Armero, Colombia,
spends all day trapped up to her neck in lahar (mud flow) caused by
the eruption of Nevado del Ruiz volcano shortly before midnight the
day before.Vain efforts to rescue her begin, but TV reporters are
entirely successful in broadcasting her ordeal, which her mother,
who is away for a few days, sees. Omaira will spend 60 hours in the
mud and die there of exposure on 16 November 1985. «Yo vivo porque
tengo que vivir; y apenas tengo 13 años (...) Yo quiero cuando
salga...» decía entre jadeos, con el agua llegando a su boca.
Nunca salió. |
1980 Gary Claeys, 28, and Matt Larson, 25, of hypothermia
at the 3000-meter level of Mount Adams, Washington, in a 7-day snowstorm
which dumped over a meter and a half of snow in a blizzard with winds in
excess of 150 km-h. Their bodies are frozen in the ice and would not be
recovered until 09 October 2001, as the snowpack melted to its lowest level
in 70 years. They were tied together by a rope. There was no sign of trauma.
They just went to sleep and didn't wake up. A hiker from Aloha, Oregon,
found a rope near the Crescent Glacier a couple of days earlier and chipped
away enough ice to realize the rope was connected to a body. A team from
the Central Washington Mountain Rescue squad went onto the 4092-meter mountain
in the Cascade Range on 09 October 2001 and chipped out the bodies, still
encased in ice. Gary Claeys's brother David flew to Yakima from his home
in Parsippany, New Jersey, to identify the climbers. He recognized his brother
right away. The two climbers were employed as psychiatric aides at Dammash
State Hospital in Wilsonville, Oregon, when they went on the fatal hiking
trip, disappearing on 14 November 1980.
1980 Juan
Lozano y Lozano, escritor, economista y político colombiano.
1971 Hanna
Neumann, mathematician.
1970:: 75 persons
as a Southern Airways jet carrying the Thundering Herd football team of
Marshall University back to Huntington, West Virginia., from a close loss
at East Carolina University, crashes into a hillside below the Tri-State
Airport. The dead are 37 Marshall football players, plus coaches, administrators,
students, boosters, and crew members. — (051108)
1968
Ramón Menéndez Pidal, filólogo e historiador
español.
^
1967 Major General Bruno Hochmuth, his aide Major Robert Crabtree,
Captain Milton Kelsey, pilot, 1st Lieutenant Thomas Carter, copilot,
crew chief Corporal Ronald Phelps, Vietnamese Liaison Major Nguyen
Ngoc Chuong, as their helicopter crashes in Vietnam
At about 10:40, Captain Milton George
Kelsey, 24, pilot, 1st Lt. Thomas Anthony Carter, 23, copilot, and
crew chief Cpl. Ronald Joseph Phelps, 20 (birthday the day before),
lifted from VMO-3’s mat at Phu Bai in BUNO 153757, designated
Scarface 1-0. At 11:45, they picked up Major General Bruno Arthur
Hochmuth, 56, commander of the 3rd Marine division, his aide Major
Robert Andrew Crabtree, 33, and Liaison Major Nguyen Ngoc Chuong to
visit Vietnamese Brigadier General Ngo Quang Truong in Hue. The aircraft
departed the hospital pad at Hue Citadel at 11:45, enroute to Dong
Ha and was chased by an HMM-364 UH-34 piloted by Captain J. A. Chancey.
At 11:50, the aircraft was flying northwest over Highway 1 at about
500 meters. At YD672266, Captain Chancey saw the aircraft’s
nose yaw to the right twice and at the same instant the aft/engine
section exploded in an orange fireball. The fuselage separated from
the rotor and the aircraft fell in pieces. The fuselage landed inverted
in a flooded rice paddy; the tail cone a short distance away.
A Sparrowhawk was immediately dispatched,
as well as an aircraft recovery team from VMO-3. Burning fuel on the
surface of the paddy hampered recovery, however there was no evidence
of explosion in the fuselage. The bodies were returned to Phu Bai
and pronounced by Lt. John Parrish; all are believed to have been
killed on impact. Immediately after the crash, and in the years since,
a great many rumors circulated concerning the cause, ranging from
enemy ground fire, to South Vietnamese artillery fire, to US friendly
fire, and even sabotage. General Hochmuth was the first and only Marine
general officer to die in Vietnam, and there was a good deal of pressure
to list his death as combat-related. Moreover, this was VMO-3’s
largest loss of life in Vietnam and it was difficult to accept that
these squadron-mates could have died in anything but combat. In fact,
the aircraft suffered a tail rotor gear box failure and the official
findings on the incident, submitted by Brigadier GeneralRobert Keller
in November 1967, states “there is no evidence to indicate this
mishap was caused either by hostile action or inadvertent friendly
fire.” — // http://www.scarface-usmc.org/the_price_we_paid.htm |
^
1965 First casualties at start of major battle in Vietnam
In the first major engagement of the
war between regular US and North Vietnamese forces, elements of the
3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) fight a pitched battle
with Communist main-force units in the Ia Drang Valley of the Central
Highlands. On this morning, Lt. Col. Harold G. Moore's 1st Battalion,
7th Cavalry conducted a heliborne assault into Landing Zone X-Ray
near the Chu Pong hills. At about noon, the North Vietnamese 33rd
Regiment attacked the US forces. The fight continued all day and into
the night. UN soldiers received support from nearby artillery units
and tactical air strikes. The next morning, the North Vietnamese 66th
Regiment joined the attack against the US unit. The fighting was bitter,
but the tactical air strikes and artillery support took their toll
on the enemy and enabled the 1st Cavalry troopers to hold on against
repeated assaults. At around noon, two reinforcing companies arrived
and Colonel Moore put them to good use to assist his beleaguered soldiers.
By the third day of the battle, the US troops had gained the upper
hand.
The three-day battle resulted
in 834 North Vietnamese soldiers confirmed killed, and another 1000
communist casualties were assumed. In a related action during the
same battle, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, was ambushed by North Vietnamese
forces as it moved overland to Landing Zone Albany. Of the 500 men
in the original column, 150 were killed and only 84 were able to return
to immediate duty; Company C suffered 93% casualties, half of them
deaths. Despite these numbers, senior American officials in Saigon
declared the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley a great victory. The battle
was extremely important because it was the first significant contact
between US troops and North Vietnamese forces. The action demonstrated
that the North Vietnamese were prepared to stand and fight major battles
even though they might take serious casualties. Senior American military
leaders concluded that US forces could wreak significant damage on
the communists in such battles — this tactic lead to a war of
attrition as the US forces tried to wear the communists down. The
North Vietnamese also learned a valuable lesson during the battle:
by keeping their combat troops physically close to US positions, US
troops could not use artillery or air strikes without risking injury
to US troops. This style of fighting became the North Vietnamese practice
for the rest of the war. |
1959 The Clutter family, murdered in Holcomb, Kansas. This
would become the subject of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood.
1955 Robert E Sherwood, 59, dramatist (Abe Lincoln in Illinois)
1954 Fischer,
mathematician.
1946 Manuel de Falla y Mateu, compositor
español.
^
1940: Hundreds in Coventry, on first of 2 days of German air raids
To start a devastating
two-day bombing of Coventry, a historical and industrial city in England,
nearly five hundred Luftwaffe bombers strike after nightfall, destroying
twelve factories and much of the city center, including a fourteenth-century
cathedral. Nearly four hundred people are killed and over eight hundred
injured. Winston Churchill later describes the attack on Coventry
as "the most devastating raid which we sustained." However, the effect
on the aircraft factories in the suburbs is slight and temporary,
and Coventry is soon able to resume its contribution to the impending
British victory in the Battle of Britain.
The air raid followed Hitler's public promise, after the British bombing
of Munich on 08 November, that "an attack on the capital of the Nazi
movement would not go unpunished." The punishment was indeed thorough.
German bombers decimated the city—dropping 150'000 fire bombs
and 503 tons of high explosives, as well as 130 parachute mines. Seven
vital war factories in Coventry were hit, halting production for months.
The bombardment also caused a firestorm that leveled the city center.
60'000 of the city's 75'000 buildings were destroyed or badly damaged;
568 people were killed. Most of the victims were too badly burned
to be identified and were buried in a communal grave. The attack
lent a new verb to the German language: koventrieren. "To coventrate"
means to annihilate, to reduce to rubble.
After the war, historians surmised that Prime Minister Churchill had
advance knowledge of the Coventry raids and chose not to inform city
officials. If this was the case, Churchill's seemingly barbaric decision
was actually an act of tactical genius. Had he informed Coventry officials,
they would have ordered at least a partial evacuation of the city
and saved hundreds. German pilots would have noticed such suspicious
preparation, though, and reported back to Hitler. This would surely
have revealed the existence of Ultra, Britain's top-secret system
for decoding German communications. Ultra proved to be an indispensable
resource for information about German troop movements throughout the
war and ultimately saved thousands of British lives.
—
La aviación alemana arrasa Coventry para asestar un golpe decisivo
a la industria bélica británica, en el contexto de la
Segunda Guerra Mundial . |
1939 Some 500 persons in oil refinery fire which destroys
Lagunillas, Venezuela
1915 Booker T Washington,
59, educator/organizer, in Tuskegee, Alabama.
1908 Lorenzo
Delleani, Italian artist born on 17 January 1840.
1908
Zaitian “Guangxu
Emperor“ [14 Aug 1871–] (Guangxu means Glorious
Succession), 10th emperor of the Manchu Qing dynasty, and 9th Qing emperor
to reign over China proper (from 25 Feb 1875). During his childhood Empress
Dowager Cixi
[29 Nov 1835 – 15 Nov 1908] remained regent, then from 1889 to 1898
he ruled under her influence. He initiated the Hundred Days' Reform, but
was abruptly stopped when Cixi launched a coup on 21 September 1898, after
which he was put under house arrest until his death by arsenic poisoning,
which she ordered. . —(081114)
1884 Frederick William
Hulme, British artist born on 22 October 1816.
1884
Abraham Hulk I, Dutch British artist born on 01 May 1813.
1857 Cornelis Kruseman, Dutch artist born on 25 September
1797. — more
with an image.
1813 Jean-Pierre-Louis-Laurent Hoüel,
French painter and engraver born in 1735. — more
with a link to links.
1797 Januarius Johann Rasso Zick,
German painter and architect born on 06 February 1730. — more
1793 (24 brumaire an II) Marie Jeanne Canu, veuve Fleury,
couturière de flanelle, domiciliée à Rouen, département
de la Seine Inférieure, condamnée à mort comme contre-révolutionnaire,
par le tribunal criminel dudit département (et très probablement
guillotinée le jour-même).
1676 Jacques Courtois “le Bourguignon”, French
painter specialized in cavalry battles, born on 12 February 1621. —
MORE
ON COURTOIS AT ART “4” NOVEMBER
with links to images.
1673 Mario Nuzzi (de Fiori,
della Penna), Italian artist born in 1603.
1625 Giulio Cesare
Procaccini, Italian painter and sculptor born in 1570. —
MORE
ON PROCACCINI AT ART “4” NOVEMBER
with links to images.
1540 Giovanni Battista di Jacopo Rosso
Fiorentino, Italian painter born on 08 March 1495.— MORE
ON ROSSO AT ART “4” MARCH
with links to images.— (060307)
0565 Justinian,
82, Roman emperor who reunited the Eastern and Western empires politically
and religiously, erected several basilicas and created an influential law
Code.
|
2005
Olusoga Akinlemibola “Uncle Soga” [Jan 1964–],
after 90 minutes of excessive exercise at the Ikoyi Club in Lagos, Nigeria.
He was an assistant general manager at First Security Discount House Ltd.
(owned by Hakeem “Keem” Belo-Osagie [02 Mar 1955~]) and head
of security of Fountain of Life Church. — (051213)
2002
(28 kartik 2059) At least 24 policemen, and uncounted civilians and Maoist
rebels attacking a police post in Gorkha district, Nepal.
