On
a June 13: 2002 The Afghan grand council (loya jirga), by 1295 out 1575 votes, elects Karzai [14 Jun 2002 photo >] as interim president for the next two years. The council goes on to discuss the structure of the interim government. Hamid ebn Abdul Ahad Karzai, born on 24 December 1957, has since 22 December 2001 headed the first transitional government after being chosen (05 December 2001) by Afghan leaders meeting in Bonn, Germany, under the auspices of the United Nations.
2002 The stock of communications services company Alamosa Holdings (APS), which on 12 June had fallen from its 11 June close of $1.92 to an intraday low of $1.05 and closed at $1.10, makes a new intraday low of $1.03 at 09:48 and then recovers steadily to make an intraday high of $1.55 several times (14:20, 14:59, 15:26) and closes at $1.47.
2002 The stock of Tyco International (TYC) confirms its 12 June recovery in after-hours trading (from its $10.15 close) by opening at $13.00, making an intraday high of $13.95 (at 15:45) and closing at $13.80. Tyco had announced the authorization of its sale of a subsidiary.
2002 Supreme Court Justice Steven Fisher vacates the conviction and dismisses the indictment of Angelo Martinez, 36, for the 10 April 1985 bingo hall murder of Rudolph Marasco, 70, for which on 24 October 1986 Martinez was sentenced him to 26 1/2-years-to-life in prison. In 1989, Charles Rivera, a federal prisoner in the witness protection program, confessed to the killing. Authorities didn't believe Rivera because he failed a lie detector test. But now investigators were able to confirm Rivera's account through new evidence (a witness who confirmed Rivera's guilt). Martinez will remain in prison until he can convince a federal judge that his 1993 24-year sentence for peddling cocaine while in prison should be reduced.
2000 The presidents of South Korea and North Korea opened a summit in the northern capital of Pyongyang with pledges to seek reunification of the divided peninsula.
2000 Italy pardoned Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who'd tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981.
1996 The US Supreme Court placed greater limits on congressional districts intentionally drawn to get more minorities elected to Congress.
1996 The 81-day-old Freemen standoff ended as 16 remaining members of the anti-government group surrendered to the FBI and left their Montana ranch.
1991 The US Supreme Court ruled a jailed suspect represented by a lawyer in one criminal case sometimes may be questioned by police about another crime without the lawyer present.
1990 Wash DC mayor Marion Barry announces he will not seek a 4th term.
| 1986
Bishop Tutu meets President Botha
^top^ Bishop Desmond Tutu, winner of the 1984 Nobel Prize for Peace, meets with South African President P.W. Botha to discuss the nationwide state of emergency declared by Botha in response to the anti-apartheid protests. "This is not likely to help restore law and order and peace and calm," Tutu said of the government crackdown after the meeting. "If we do have any calm, it will be very brittle, it will be superficial, it will be sullen, and at the slightest chance, it will be broken again." In 1948, South Africa's white minority government institutionalized its policy of racial segregation and white supremacy known as apartheid--Afrikaans for "apartness." Eighty percent of the country's land was set aside for white use, and black Africans entering this territory required special passes. Blacks, who had no representation in the government, were subjected to different labor laws and educational standards than whites and lived in extreme poverty while white South Africans prospered. Organized anti-apartheid protests began in the 1950s, and in the 1960s Nelson Mandela and other anti-apartheid leaders were imprisoned. In the 1970s, a new phase of protest began, with black trade unions organizing strikes and Steve Biko, leader of the Black Consciousness movement, calling on blacks to defend their African culture. After the Soweto uprising of June 1976, more than 500 black activists, including Biko, were killed by police. By the time Pieter W. Botha took power as South African prime minister in 1978, ongoing domestic turmoil and increasing international condemnation made it clear that the South African government could not long sustain the apartheid status quo. Botha's administration undertook many reforms, including an end to some racial segregation, a repeal of the "pass laws," and an end to the ban on black trade unions, but made no fundamental change to South Africa's power structure. Protests continued, and Botha resorted to violent tactics, using the military and police to suppress opposition to his minority government. Thousands of blacks were killed. Meanwhile, a black Anglican minister named Desmond Tutu, who in 1975 became the first black dean of St. Mary's Cathedral in Johannesburg, was emerging as an important leader of the anti-apartheid movement. He advocated nonviolence and pushed for international sanctions against South Africa. In 1984, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. The next year, he was installed as Johannesburg's first black Anglican bishop. In 1984, a new constitution took effect that made Botha president of South Africa but failed to grant blacks representation in his government. Demonstrations escalated, and on June 12, 1986, Botha declared martial law as a means of preventing demonstrations planned to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 1976 Soweto uprising. Thousands of black community leaders, clergymen, union organizers, and anti-apartheid activists were arrested, and heavily armed policemen and troops patrolled the black ghettoes. On June 13, as a conciliatory gesture, Botha meets with Desmond Tutu in Cape Town, but the meeting failed to temper Tutu's public criticism of Botha's policies. In the fall of 1986, the US government and the European Community authorized economic sanctions against South Africa in an effort to end apartheid. In September, Desmond Tutu was elected the first black archbishop of Cape Town, thus becoming the spiritual leader of three million Anglicans in southern Africa. In his new position, he continued his outspoken criticism of apartheid and the oppressive South African government. With the South African economy in decline, P.W. Botha stepped down as president in 1989 and was succeeded by F.W. de Klerk, who set about dismantling apartheid. Nelson Mandela was freed, a new constitution enfranchised blacks, and in 1994 Mandela and the African National Congress were elected to power in South Africa's first free elections. Desmond Tutu retired as Anglican archbishop in 1996. |
| 1983
First man-made object to leave Solar System
^top^ After over a decade in space, Pioneer 10, the world's first outer-planetary probe, leaves the solar system. The next day, it radioes back its first scientific data on interstellar space. On March 2, 1972, the NASA spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a mission to Jupiter, the solar system's largest planet. On December 3, 1973, after successfully negotiating the asteroid belt and a distance of 620 million miles, Pioneer 10 reached Jupiter, and sent back to earth the first close-up images of the spectacular gas giant. NASA officially ended the project on March 31, 1997, with the spacecraft having traveled a distance of some ten billion km. Headed in the direction of the Taurus constellation, Pioneer 10 will pass within three light years of another star--Ross 246--in the year 34'600 A.D. Bolted to the probe's exterior wall is a gold-anodized plaque, 15 by 23 cm, that displays a drawing of a human man and woman, a star map marked with the location of the sun, and another map showing the flight path of Pioneer 10. The plaque, intended to seen by intelligent life forms elsewhere in the galaxy, was designed by astronomer Carl Sagan. |
1979 Sioux Indians are awarded $105 million in compensation for the US seizure in 1877 of their Black Hills in South Dakota.
1978 Israelis withdraw the last of their invading forces from Lebanon. (They went back in some years later)
1977 James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., was recaptured following his escape three days earlier from a Tennessee prison.
| New
Vietnam peace agreement ^top^ Representatives of the original signers of the January 27 cease-fire sign a new 14-point agreement calling for an end to all cease-fire violations in South Vietnam. Coming at the end of month-long negotiations between Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, the settlement included an end to all military activities at noon on June 15; an end to US reconnaissance flights over North Vietnam and the resumption of US minesweeping operations in North Vietnamese waters; the resumption of US talks on aid to North Vietnam; and the meeting of commanders of opposing forces in South Vietnam to prevent outbreaks of hostilities. Fighting had erupted almost immediately after the original cease-fire that had been initiated as part of the Paris Peace Accords. Both sides repeatedly violated the terms of the cease-fire as they jockeyed for position and control of the countryside. This new agreement proved no more effective than the original peace agreement in stopping the fighting, which continued into early 1975 when the North Vietnamese launched a massive offensive that overran South Vietnam in less than 55 days. The war was finally over on April 30, 1975, when North Vietnamese tanks rolled into Saigon. |
| 1971
The
New York Times begins publishing the Pentagon Papers,
a secret study of America's involvement in Vietnam. The New York Times begins publishing portions of the 47-volume Pentagon analysis of how the US commitment in Southeast Asia grew over a period of three decades. Daniel Ellsberg, a former Defense Department analyst who had become an antiwar activist, had stolen the documents. After unsuccessfully offering the documents to prominent opponents of the war in the US Senate, Ellsberg gave them to the Times. Officially called The History of the US Decision Making Process on Vietnam, the "Pentagon Papers" disclosed closely guarded communiques, recommendations, and decisions concerning the US military role in Vietnam during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, along with the diplomatic phase in the Eisenhower years. The publication of the papers created a nationwide furor, with congressional and diplomatic reverberations as all branches of the government debated over what constituted "classified" material and how much should be made public. The publication of the documents precipitated a crucial legal battle over "the people's right to know," and led to an extraordinary session of the US Supreme Court to settle the issue. Although the documents were from the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, President Richard Nixon opposed their publication, both to protect the sources in highly classified appendices, and to prevent further erosion of public support for the war. On 30 June the Supreme Court ruled that the Times had the right to publish the material. The publication of the "Pentagon Papers," along with previous suspected disclosures of classified information to the press, led to the creation of a White House unit to plug information leaks to journalists. The illegal activities of the unit, known as the "Plumbers," and their subsequent cover-up, became known collectively as the "Watergate scandal," which resulted in President Nixon's resignation in August 1974 The New York Times begins to publish sections of the so-called "Pentagon Papers," a top-secret Department of Defense study of America's involvement in the Vietnam War. The papers indicated that the American government had been lying to the people for years about the Vietnam War and the papers seriously damaged the credibility of the US's Cold War foreign policy. In 1967, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered his department to prepare an in-depth history of US involvement in the Vietnam War. McNamara had already begun to harbor serious doubts about US policy in Vietnam, and the study--which came to be known as the "Pentagon Papers"--substantiated his misgivings. Top-secret memorandums, reports, and papers indicated that the US government had systematically lied to the American people, deceiving them about American goals and progress in the war in Vietnam. The devastating multi-volume study remained locked away in a Pentagon safe for years. In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg, a Vietnam veteran and Defense Department employee who had turned completely against the war, began to smuggle portions of the papers out of the Pentagon. These papers made their way to The New York Times, and on 13 June 1971, the US public read them in stunned amazement. The publication of the papers added further fuel to the already powerful antiwar movement and drove the administration of President Richard Nixon into a frenzy of paranoia about information "leaks." Nixon attempted to stop further publication of the papers, but the Supreme Court refused to issue an injunction. The "Pentagon Papers" further eroded the US public's confidence in their nation's Cold War foreign policy. The brutal, costly, and seemingly endless Vietnam War had already damaged the government's credibility, and the publication of the "Pentagon Papers" showed people the true extent to which the government had manipulated and lied to them. Some of the most dramatic examples were documents indicating that the Kennedy administration had openly encouraged and participated in the overthrow of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963; that the CIA believed that the "domino theory" did not actually apply to Asia; and that the heavy American bombing of North Vietnam, contrary to US government pronouncements about its success, was having absolutely no impact on the communists' will to continue the fight. |
| 1967
Thurgood Marshall appointed to Supreme Court
^top^ President Lyndon Johnson nominated Solicitor-General Thurgood Marshall to become the first black justice on the US Supreme Court. President Lyndon B. Johnson appoints US court of appeals judge Thurgood Marshall to the US Supreme Court to fill the seat of retiring associate justice Tom C. Clark. On August 30, after a heated debate, the Senate confirmed Marshall's nomination by a vote of sixty-nine to eleven. Two days later, he was sworn in by Chief Justice Earl Warren, making him the first African-American in history to sit on America's highest court. The great-grandson of slaves, Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1908. In 1933, after studying under the tutelage of civil liberties lawyer Charles H. Houston, he received his law degree from Howard University in Washington, D.C. In 1936, he joined the legal division of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), of which Houston was director, and two years later succeeded his mentor in the organization's top legal post. As the NAACP's chief counsel from 1938 to 1961, he argued thirty-two cases before the US Supreme Court, successfully challenging racial segregation, most notably in public education. He won twenty-nine of these cases, including a groundbreaking victory in 1954's Brown v. Board of Education, in which the Supreme Court ruled that ruled that segregation violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution and was thus illegal. The decision served as a great impetus for the African-American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and ultimately led to the abolishment of segregation in all public facilities and accommodations. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to the US Court of Appeals, but his nomination was opposed by many Southern senators, and he was not confirmed until the next year. In June of 1967, President Johnson nominated him to the Supreme Court, and in late August he was confirmed. During his twenty-four years on the high court, Associate Justice Marshall consistently challenged discrimination based on race or sex, opposed the death penalty, and supported the rights of criminal defendants. He also defended affirmative action and women's right to abortion. As appointments by a largely Republican White House changed the politics of the Court, Marshall found his liberal opinions increasingly in the minority. He retired in 1991, and two years later, died. |
1951 UN troops seize Pyongyang, North Korea. Lt. Joe Kingston finds himself retreating and advancing in a single day.
1949 Installed by the French, Bao Dai enters Saigon to rule Vietnam.
| 1944 Wire recorder for audio
patented The wire recorder for sound recording was invented in the late 1930s by a student at the Armour Institute of Technology in Chicago and is patented on June 13, 1944. The US Navy used the device in 1941. |
1940 Paris ville ouverte -- Paris is evacuated before the German advance on the city. Four years later, with the Allies marching on Paris, Adolf Hitler decreed that the city should be left a smoking ruin.
1933 first sodium vapor lamps installed (Schenectady NY)
| 1933
Home Owners Refinancing Act ^top^ America's beleaguered homeowners get a dose of relief on this day in 1933, as Congress votes the Home Owners Refinancing Act. The legislation, passed during the furious first 100 days of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Dealing administration, is designed to help Depression-stricken citizens refinance their homes. Towards that end, Act establishes the HomeOwners Loan Corporation (HOLC), a typical Roosevelt-era administration which uses federal funds to fight the Depression. Chaired for a spell by New Deal stalwart Jesse Holman Jones, HOLC helped finance mortgages and even helped pay for repairs on some people's homes. Though HOLC lasted but three years, it doled out loans for roughly one million mortgages. |
| 1925 Telecast of a moving object
^top^ The first telecast of a moving object shows a model windmill with rotating blades. A radio station in Washington, D.C., transmitted the image to a laboratory elsewhere in the city. Previous telecasts had only transmitted still images. Within three years, the first regularly scheduled television programs would be broadcast. However, the radio industry would outstrip the fledgling television industry in profits until 1953. |
1923 The French set a trade barrier between the occupied Ruhr and the rest of Germany.
1920 The US Post Office Department rules that children may not be sent by parcel post.
| 1917
Pershing arrive. ^top^ Le Général Américain Pershing, le plus jeune des " hauts-gradés " américains, prend en main l’organisation d’une structure d’accueil pour les Américains en France. Quelques mois plus tôt, le Congrès Américain a donné son accord pour l’entrée en guerre des E.U. C’est quelque chose de phénoménal pour l’époque. 2 millions de soldats vont ainsi entrer en France avant d’être redistribués sur différents fronts. Avec obstination, il lutte pied à pied contre Français et Anglais, pour que les Américains gardent leur autonomie de commandement. En quelques mois, il crée ainsi un instrument que ne possédaient pas encore les E.U. d’Amérique, un corps expéditionnaire opérationnel et une armée de métier. |
1900 China's Boxer Rebellion against foreigners and Christians erupts into full-scale violence.
| 1900 Soulèvement des Boxers
^top^ Les adeptes de cette société secrète avaient juré de se débarrasser des Occidentaux. Ils envahissent toutes les ambassades de Pékin (Chine). Les autorités chinoises n'interviennent pas. De durs combats se déroulèrent. Les pays européens concernés devront envoyer leurs propres troupes pour écraser la rebellion et dissoudre la société. |
1895 Emile Levassor wins first Paris-Bordeaux-Paris auto race (24 km/h)
1888 US Congress creates the Department of Labor
1876 The Presbyterian Church in England merges with the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, in creating a more uniform representation of the Reformed faith in the British Isles.
1866 US House of Representatives passes 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
1863 Confederate forces on their way to Gettysburg clash with Union troops at the Second Battle of Winchester, Virginia
1863 Siege of Port Hudson, Louisiana continues
1863 Siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi continues
1863 Samuel Butler publishes first part of Erewhon, Christchurch, NZ
1862 Federals, after a brief skirmish, occupy Romney, Virginia (now West Virginia)
1862 Skirmish at New Market, Virginia
| 1848 Validation de l'élection
de Louis-Napoléon ^top^ Le 04 Jun, Louis Napoléon Bonaparte a été triomphalement élu dans quatre départements. A Paris, sur les boulevards, on réclame "Poléon" sur l'air des lampions. Ce jour, l'Assemblée valide l'élection de Louis Napoléon qu'une commission exécutive a refusée. Malgré la décision prise, trois jours plus tard, invoquant les soupçons injurieux dont il a été l'objet, il démissionne. Commentaire de Napoléon III quelques années plus tard: " Mieux valait laisser aux utopies et aux passions le temps de s'user. " |
| 1805
Meriwether Lewis reaches the Great Falls
^top^ Having hurried ahead of the main body of the expedition, Meriwether Lewis and four men arrive at the Great Falls of the Missouri River, confirming that the explorers are headed in the right direction. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark had set out on their expedition to the Pacific the previous year. They spent the winter of 1804 with the Mandan Indians in present-day North Dakota. The Hidatsa Indians, who lived nearby, had traveled far to the West, and they proved an important source of information for Lewis and Clark. The Hidatsa told Lewis and Clark they would come to a large impassable waterfall in the Missouri when they neared the Rocky Mountains, but they assured the captains that portage around the falls was less than 800 m. Armed with this valuable information, Lewis and Clark resumed their journey up the Missouri accompanied by a party of 33 in April. The expedition made good time, and by early June, the explorers were nearing the Rocky Mountains. On 03 June, however, they came to a fork at which two equally large rivers converged. "Which of these rivers was the Missouri?" Lewis asked in his journal. Since the river coming in from the north most resembled the Missouri in its muddy turbulence, most of the men believed it must be the Missouri. Lewis, however, reasoned that the water from the Missouri would have traveled only a short distance from the mountains and, therefore, would be clear and fast-running like the south fork. The decision was critical. If the explorers chose the wrong river, they would not be able to find the Shoshone Indians from whom they planned to obtain horses for the portage over the Rockies. Although all of their men disagreed, Lewis and Clark concluded they should proceed up the south fork. To err on the side of caution, however, the captains decided that Lewis and a party of four would speed ahead on foot. If Lewis did not soon encounter the big waterfall the Hidatsa had told them of, the party would return and the expedition would backtrack to the other river. On this day, four days after forging ahead of the main body of the expedition, Lewis is overjoyed to hear "the agreeable sound of a fall of water." Soon after he "saw the spray arise above the plain like a column of smoke.... [It] began to make a roaring too tremendous to be mistaken for any cause short of the great falls of the Missouri." By noon, Lewis had reached the falls, where he stared in awe at "a sublimely grand specticle [sic].... the grandest sight I had ever held." Lewis and Clark had been correct--the south fork was the Missouri River. The mysterious northern fork was actually the Marias River. Had the explorers followed the Marias, they would have traveled up into the northern Rockies where a convenient pass led across the mountains into the Columbia River drainage. However, Lewis and Clark would not have found the Shoshone Indians nor obtained the horses. Without horses, the crossing might well have failed. Three days after finding the falls, Lewis rejoined Clark and told him the good news. However, the captains' elation did not last long. They soon discovered that the portage around the Great Falls was not the easy half-mile jaunt reported by the Hidatsa, but rather a punishing 29-km trek over rough terrain covered with spiky cactus. The Great Portage, as it was later called, would take the men nearly a month to complete. By mid-July, however, the expedition was again moving ahead. A month later, Lewis and Clark found the Shoshone Indians, who handed over the horses that were so critical to the subsequent success of their mission. |
1789 Mrs Alexander Hamilton serves ice cream for dessert to Washington
1777 Marquis de Lafayette lands in the United States to assist the colonies in their war against England.
1774 Rhode Island becomes first colony to prohibit importation of slaves
1525 German Reformer Martin Luther, 42, marries former nun Katherine von Bora, 26. Their 21-year marriage would bear six children. Kate would outlive her husband (who died in 1546) by six years.
1642 Arrestation de Cinq-Mars qui est incarcéré dans la citadelle de Montpellier.
1415 Henry the Navigator, the prince of Portugal, embarks on an expedition to Africa. This marks the beginning of Portuguese dominance of West Africa.
| 1389
Défaite des Serbes par les Ottomans, au Kossovo.
^top^ Les Turcs Ottomans organisent l’administration des Balkans comme en Turquie. Les Balkans adoptent ainsi progressivement la religion musulmane. Les guerres des Balkans au XXème siècle, ne peuvent se comprendre sans cette notion d’opposition multi-séculaire entre Chrétiens Serbes (et Orthodoxes, aidés par la Russie) et Musulmans Turcs (aidés par tout l’Islam). L’armée Turque se compose de soldats, les Janissaires, étrangers, encadrés par des Turcs. Ces soldats étrangers sont des jeunes chrétiens arrachés à leur famille dès 12 ans et élevés dans des établissements de formation militaire. La discipline et l’obéissance à la loi musulmane sont leurs seules règles; ils ne craignent plus la mort et leur efficacité est légendaire. |
| 1381
Peasant army marches into London
^top^ During the Peasant's Revolt, a large mob of English peasants led by Wat Tyler marches into London and begins burning and looting the city. Several government buildings are destroyed, prisoners are released, and a judge is beheaded along with several dozen other leading citizens. The Peasant's Revolt had its origins in a severe manifestation of bubonic plague in the late 1340s, which killed nearly a third of the population of England. The scarcity of labor brought on by the Black Death led to higher wages and a more mobile peasantry. However, Parliament resisted these changes to its traditional feudal system, and passed laws to hold down wages while encouraging landlords to reassert their ancient manorial rights. In 1380, peasant discontent reached a breaking point when Parliament restricted voting rights through an increase of the poll tax, and the Peasant's Revolt began. In Kent, a county in southeast England, the rebels chose Wat Tyler as their leader, and he led his growing "army" toward London, capturing Maidstone, Rochester, and Canterbury along the way. After he was denied a meeting with King Richard II, he leads the rebels into London on June 13, 1381, burning and plundering the city. The next day, the fourteen-year-old king meets with peasant leaders at Mile End, and agrees to their demands to abolish serfdom and restrictions on the marketplace. However, at the same time, fighting continues elsewhere, and Tyler leads a peasant force against the Tower of London, capturing the fortress and executing the archbishop of Canterbury. The next day, the king meets Tyler at Smithfield, and Tyler presents new demands, including one that calls for the abolishment of church property. During the meeting, the mayor of London, angered at Tyler's arrogance in the presence of the king, lunges at the rebel leader with a sword, fatally wounding him. As Tyler lies dying on the ground, Richard manages to keep the peasant mob calm until the mayor returns with armed troops. Hundreds of rebels are executed and the rest dispersed. Over the next few days, the Peasant Revolt is put down with severity all across England, and Richard revokes all the concessions he had made to the peasants at Mile End. For several weeks, Wat Tyler's head is displayed on a pole in a London field. |
| 1378
Déposition du Doge de Gênes, la grande rivale de Venise.
^top^ Né d’une famille de marchands génois, au début du XIVe siècle, un certain Rolando Fregoso est châtelain de Voltaggio, de Gavi et de Portovenere. En 1370, son fils Domenico (1325-1390) fait déposer le doge Gabriel Adorno et se fait proclamer à sa place, au terme d’un coup d’État. Pendant un siècle et demi, d’inexplicables luttes familiales entre les Fregoso et les Adorno vont désoler Gênes, allant jusqu’à provoquer des interventions étrangères. La famille fournit treize doges à la république génoise. Domenico est doge pendant huit ans; les aléas de la guerre dite de Chioggia contre Venise sont à l’origine de sa déposition, le 13 juin 1378. Violents, factieux et volontiers prêts aux coups de main, les Fregoso sont souvent de remarquables hommes de guerre : Piero, frère de Domenico, conquiert Chypre (1373) ; Abramo, fils de Piero, gouverneur de Corse en 1416, empêche les Aragonais de s’emparer de l’île. Quant à Paolo Fregoso (1430-1498), Cardinal, il mène une vie d’aventurier ambitieux. Doge à Gênes, il se montre si rapace et si brutal que les Génois font appel au Prince Sforza pour le chasser en 1464. De même, en 1488, une insurrection met fin à sa seconde expérience de pouvoir seigneurial à Gênes. Comme chez la plupart des membres de sa famille, la culture et le raffinement intellectuel se mêlent chez lui à l’ambition, à la cruauté et à la perfidie. La famille se divise aux XVe et XVIe siècles en de nombreuses branches. Son importance politique décroît et s’éteint à la fin du XVIe siècle. |
