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Events, deaths, births, of
MAR 29
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ALTERNATE SITES    ALL FOR 20040329      ANY DAY  OF THE YEAR IN HISTORY     ART “4” MAR 29    wikipedia
• Le dernier chef vendéen est fusillé... • Victimes de la Terreur... • Condorcet dies in a prison of the Revolution... • Mariner 10 visits Mercury... • Death of leading woman mathematician... • British defeat Zulus... • Wal~Mart founder is born... • Mexicans surrender Vera Cruz to US... • Death sentence for murderous cultists... • The first Tatras... • Rosenbergs convicted of espionage... • Parents of Frankenstein's author marry... • Survey of Cumberland Road... • Prodigy VP quits... • HP technology advances networking... • IBM sues for patent infringement... • Mass murderer's punishment: 3 years at home... • Armée en terre cuite... • Last US troops leave Vietnam... • Electricity futures... • US Army conquers Frankfurt...
On a 29 March:
2001 Caterina Provenzano, 8 months old, is kidnapped in the morning from her home in Alcamo, Sicily, by two men posing as gas company workers. 14 hours later, thanks to an anonymous call, she is found alive and well in a blanket in a cardboard box on the side of a road near a refinery. Her grandfather is a well-off marble merchant, but no ransom was paid.
1999 The Dow Jones industrial average closes at 10'006.78, first time above 10'000.
1999 Luis González Macchi se convierte en el nuevo hombre fuerte de Paraguay tras la dimisión del presidente Raúl Alberto Cubas Grau. [en cambio el hombre fuerte de Cuba nunca se llamó Fidel Paraguas].
1997 El Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU envía una fuerza internacional a Albania con 2500 soldados de España, Francia y Grecia, entre otros países.
1996 Electricity futures start trading.       ^top^
      Tthe New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) opens a new commodities market for power supplies. The power contract, set to be delivered that summer at the California-Oregon border, hit the board shortly after the opening bell. The power market enjoyed a lively first day of action as more than 1000 contracts changed hands. Still, some traders remained cautious about Wall Street’s newest trading pit. As one electricity trader noted, the electricity market had the potential to be extremely "volatile." But, for financial experts like Stephen Fleishman, a utility analyst with Dean Witter, the wild fluctuations were precisely what made the power market so appealing. According to Fleishman, the volatility would help establish a "transparent, competitive price" for power and thus nourish the power industry’s move to a newly deregulated playing field.
     Nevertheless the limit imposed by California on the price of electricity to consumers would result in a shortage of electricity in that state, leading to a crisis in 2001.
electricity symbolCalifornia/Oregon Border Electricity
      In the development of the electricity futures contract, the Exchange has recognized that the market is currently divided into three broad regions: the eastern United States, the western part of the continent, and Texas. These contracts focus on the western United States which encompasses a large geographical area with a number of major suppliers representing virtually every available source of electric generation - oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear, hydro, and geothermal. The suppliers are the core of an active wholesale market, and are a diverse group: investor-owned utilities, municipally owned utilities, co-generators, government power authorities, and power marketers. The region also has an active wholesale market, and utilities in California have recently begun operating under a performance-based ratemaking policy. The Exchange has electricity futures and options contracts based on two delivery locations: one based on delivery at the California/Oregon border, the other at the Palo Verde switchyard in Arizona. Both sites are major market centers. Given the rapid development in the power markets in this region, the Exchange felt it was prudent to offer contracts representing both delivery sites in order to ensure the futures market will coincide with the industry's need for a price reference and risk management tool. The contracts are traded on the NYMEX Division of the Exchange. Under the terms of the NYMEX/COMEX merger, COMEX Division members will have proprietary trading rights for two years from the date of its launch. On March 29, 1996, the New York Mercantile Exchange launched two electricity futures contracts - one based on delivery at the California/Oregon border, the other at the Palo Verde switchyard in Arizona - providing the industry with a price reference and risk management tool. One month later, on April 26, the Exchange launched companion options contracts.
1995 IBM sues for patent infringement       ^top^
      Conner Peripherals, a disk-drive maker based in San Jose, filed a lawsuit against IBM, accusing the company of patent infringement. The company said IBM had infringed on its power-management technology patent, which prevented unnecessary disk-drive operation and could extend battery life in portable computers. In 1993, IBM had sued Conner for allegedly infringing on data storage technology patents.
1995 Hewlett-Packard technology advances networking       ^top^
      Hewlett-Packard announced a new technology that would simplify document printing across computer networks. Previously, sending documents through a network to a distant location could be problematic, but improved networking capabilities throughout the '90s smoothed this and other network issues. Novell had recently announced similar network printing technology.
1995 Prodigy VP quits       ^top^
      Scott Kurnit, executive vice president of Prodigy Service Company, abruptly resigned to join an online venture started by MCI Communications Corporation on this day in 1995. Prodigy, one of the earliest online services, had fallen behind America Online and CompuServe in subscribers and had laid off 14 percent of its seven hundred employees in December 1994. The joint venture between Sears and IBM had lost more than $1 billion without turning a profit since it was founded in the mid-1980s. Under Kurnit, Prodigy became the first commercial online service to offer Internet access.
1995 The US House of Representatives rejects 227-204 a constitutional amendment that would have limited terms to 12 years in the House and Senate.
1993 El presidente François Mitterrand nombra primer ministro de Francia al neogaullista Edouard Balladur.
1992 El Partido Democrático gana las elecciones legislativas de Albania al partido ex comunista, en la segunda vuelta.
1990 Checoslovaquia pasa a ser la República Federal Checa y Eslovaca.
1989 I.M. Pei's pyramidal entrance to the Louvre opens in Paris.
1985 España llega a un acuerdo histórico con la Comunidad Económica Europea en Bruselas para su integración en esta organización, tras 23 años de negociaciones con la CEE.
1984 El ex presidente de Senegal Leopold Sedar Senghor ingresa en la Academia Francesa y se convierte en el primer escritor de raza negra admitido en esta institución.
1983 El democristiano Helmut Kohl, canciller de la RFA tras el triunfo de su partido en las elecciones.
1975 Last US troops leave Vietnam.       ^top^
     Under the provisions of the Paris Peace Accords signed on 27 January, 1973, the last US troops depart South Vietnam, ending nearly 10 years of US military presence in that country. The US Military Assistance Command Vietnam headquarters was disestablished. Only a Defense Attache Office and a few Marine guards at the Saigon American Embassy remained, although roughly 8500 US civilians stayed on as technical advisers to the South Vietnamese. Also on this day: As part of the Accords, Hanoi releases the last 67 of its acknowledged American prisoners of war, bringing the total number released to 591.  
     In Saigon, some 7000 US Department of Defense civilian employees remained behind to aid South Vietnam in conducting what looked to be a fierce and ongoing war with communist North Vietnam. In 1961, after two decades of indirect military aid, US President John F. Kennedy sent the first large force of US military personnel to Vietnam to bolster the ineffectual autocratic regime of South Vietnam against the communist North. Three years later, with the South Vietnamese government crumbling, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered limited bombing raids on North Vietnam, and Congress authorized the use of US troops.
      By 1965, North Vietnamese offensives left President Johnson with two choices: escalate US involvement or withdraw. Johnson ordered the former, and troop levels soon jumped to more than 300'000 as the US began the largest aerial bombing campaign in history. During the next few years, the extended length of the war, the high number of US casualties, and the exposure of US involvement in war crimes, such as the massacre at My Lai, helped turn many in the United States against the Vietnam War. The communists' Tet Offensive of 1968 crushed US hopes of an imminent end to the conflict and galvanized US opposition to the war. In response, Johnson announced in March 1968 that he would not seek reelection, citing what he perceived to be his responsibility in creating a perilous national division over Vietnam. He also authorized the beginning of peace talks. In the spring of 1969, as protests against the war escalated in the United States, US troop strength in the war-torn country reached its peak at nearly 550'000 men. Richard Nixon, the new US president, began US troop withdrawal and "Vietnamization" of the war effort that year, but he intensified bombing. Large US troop withdrawals continued in the early 1970s as President Nixon expanded air and ground operations into Cambodia and Laos in attempts to block enemy supply routes along Vietnam's borders. This expansion of the war, which accomplished few positive results, led to new waves of protests in the United States and elsewhere.
      Finally, in January 1973, representatives of the United States, North and South Vietnam, and the Vietcong signed a peace agreement in Paris, ending the direct US military involvement in the Vietnam War. Its key provisions included a cease-fire throughout Vietnam, the withdrawal of US forces, the release of prisoners of war, and the reunification of North and South Vietnam through peaceful means. The South Vietnamese government was to remain in place until new elections were held, and North Vietnamese forces in the South were not to advance further nor be reinforced. In reality, however, the agreement was little more than a face-saving gesture by the US government. Even before the last American troops departed on 29 March, the communists violated the cease-fire, and by early 1974 full-scale war had resumed. At the end of 1974, South Vietnamese authorities reported that 80'000 of their soldiers and civilians had been killed in fighting during the year, making it the most costly of the Vietnam War. On 30 April 1975, the last few Americans still in South Vietnam were airlifted out of the country as Saigon fell to communist forces. North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin, accepting the surrender of South Vietnam later in the day, remarked, "You have nothing to fear; between Vietnamese there are no victors and no vanquished. Only the Americans have been defeated." The Vietnam War was the longest and most unpopular foreign war in US history and cost 58'000 US lives. As many as two million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians were killed.
1974 Mariner 10 visits Mercury       ^top^
      The unmanned US space probe Mariner 10, launched by NASA on 03 November 1973, becomes the first spacecraft to visit the planet Mercury, sending back close-up images of a celestial body usually obscured because of its proximity to the sun. Mariner 10 had visited the planet Venus eight weeks before, but only for the purpose of using Venus’ gravity to whip it toward the closest planet to the sun. In three fly-bys of Mercury between 1974 and 1975, the NASA spacecraft took detailed images of the planet, and succeeded in mapping about 35% of the planet’s heavily cratered, moonlike surface. Mercury is the second smallest planet in the solar system and completes its solar orbit in only eighty-eight earth days. Data sent back by Mariner 10 discounts a previously held theory that the planet does not spin on its axis; in fact, the planet has a very slow rotational period that stretches over fifty-eight earth days. Mercury is a waterless, airless world that alternately bakes and freezes as it slowly rotates. Highly inhospitable, Mercury’s surface temperature varies from 800 degrees Fahrenheit when facing the sun and –279 degrees when facing away. Mercury has no known satellites. Mariner 10 is the only human spacecraft that has visited the planet to this date.
1974 Eight Ohio National Guardsmen are indicted on charges stemming from the shooting deaths of four students at Kent State University. The guardsmen would be acquitted (one more example of the license to kill innocent people given to the armed forces and police).
1974 Une armée en terre cuite apparait.       ^top^
      Au nord de la Chine, des paysans creusent un puits près du mont Li. Cette colline est consacrée à un empereur dont le souvenir se noie dans la légende. Tout à coup, les paysans découvrent... un guerrier en terre cuite! Il appartient à l'armée qui garde pour l'éternité la dépouille dudit empereur. C'est la plus fabuleuse découverte archéologique depuis la tombe de Touthankamon.
      Le premier empereur chinois est resté dans l'Histoire sous le nom de Qin Shi Huangdi, qui signifie «Premier empereur Ts'in» en mandarin, la langue de la Chine du nord. Il monte sur le trône du royaume Qin à l'âge de 13 ans, en 247 avant JC. Le Qin fait partie des multiples principautés chinoises qui se déchirent en cette époque dite des «Royaumes combattants». Dès l'âge de 21 ans, le roi de Qin se lance à la conquête des autres royaumes. Devenu empereur, il fait table rase du passé et centralise l'administration. Il unifie la monnaie, les mesures, l'écartement des essieux et surtout l'écriture (en Chine, où l'on parle encore aujourd'hui de multiples langues, les idéogrammes restent le principal facteur d'unité)... Par crainte de la contestation, Qin Shi Huangdi détruit les livres des lettrés confucéens. 460 de ceux-ci sont enterrés vivants.
      Le despote lance par ailleurs de gigantesques travaux de génie civil et multiplie les canaux d'irrigation dont beaucoup sont encore en service. Enfin, il réunit en une ligne continue les fortifications éparses des confins septentrionaux de la Chine. C'est ainsi que naît la «Grande Muraille», le plus long monument créé de main d'homme (2000 km de long). L'empereur est l'objet de plusieurs attentats qui ébranlent son équilibre et le poussent dans une quête désespérée de l'immortalité, d'où la construction de son fabuleux tombeau récemment mis à jour avec ses 7000 guerriers en terre cuite. En dépit de ses efforts, Qin Shi Huangdi n'échappe pas au sort commun. Il meurt de maladie en 210 avant JC. C'est aussitôt le retour des guerres civiles. Un aventurier va restaurer l'œuvre du Premier Empereur mais en prenant soin de flatter les lettrés confucéens, ce qui vaudra à sa dynastie, les Han, de durer quatre siècles.
1973 Last US troops leave Vietnam, 9 years after Tonkin Gulf Resolution
1971 US Army Lt. William L. Calley Jr. was convicted of murdering at least 22 Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai massacre. Calley ended up spending three years under house arrest.
1971 Guilty of My Lai massacre, Calley will serve only 3 years in house arrest       ^top^
      Lt. William L. Calley is found guilty of premeditated murder at My Lai by a US Army court-martial at Fort Benning, Georgia. Calley, a platoon leader, had led his men in a massacre of Vietnamese civilians, including women and children, at My Lai 4, a cluster of hamlets in Quang Ngai Province on March 16, 1968. The unit had been conducting a search-and-destroy mission to locate the 48th Viet Cong (VC) Local Force Battalion. The unit entered Son My village but found only women, children, and old men. Frustrated by unanswered losses due to snipers and mines, the soldiers took out their anger on the villagers, indiscriminately shooting people as they ran from their huts. The soldiers rounded up the survivors and led them to a nearby ditch where they were shot.
      Calley was charged with six specifications of premeditated murder. During the trial, Chief Army prosecutor Capt. Aubrey Daniel charged that Calley ordered Sgt. Daniel Mitchell to "finish off the rest" of the villagers. The prosecution stressed that all the killings were committed despite the fact that Calley's platoon had met no resistance and that he and his men had not been fired on. The My Lai massacre had initially been covered up but came to light one year later. An Army board of inquiry, headed by Lt. Gen. William Peers, investigated the massacre and produced a list of 30 persons who knew of the atrocity, but only 14 were charged with crimes. All eventually had their charges dismissed or were acquitted by courts-martial except Calley, whose platoon allegedly killed 200 innocents. Calley was found guilty of personally murdering 22 civilians and sentenced to life imprisonment, but his sentence was reduced to 20 years by the Court of Military Appeals and further reduced later to 10 years by the Secretary of the Army. Proclaimed by much of the public as a "scapegoat," Calley was paroled in 1974 after having served, in house arrest, about a third of his 10-year sentence.
1971 Manson and followers sentenced to die.       ^top^
      In Los Angeles, California, cult leader Charles Manson and three followers, Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten, and Patricia Krenwinkle, are sentenced to death for the brutal 1969 murders of actress Sharon Tate and six others. In 1967, Manson, a lifetime criminal, was released from a federal penitentiary in Washington State and traveled to San Francisco, California, where he attracted a following among rebellious young women with troubled emotional lives. Manson established a cult based on his concept of "Helter Skelter"--an apocalyptic philosophy predicting that out of an imminent racial war in America would emerge five ruling angels: himself, who would have taken on the role of Jesus Christ, and the four members of the Beatles, the popular British rock group. Manson convinced his followers that it would be necessary to murder celebrities in order to attract attention to the cult, and in 1969, they targeted Sharon Tate, a marginally successful actress who was married to Roman Polanski, a film director. On 07 August 1969, Manson’s followers murdered Rosemary and Leno LaBianca, a Los Angeles married couple, in a dress rehearsal for the planned Tate murder. Late the next night, under Manson’s detailed instructions, four of his followers drove up to Cielo Drive above Beverly Hills and burst into Polanski and Tate’s home. Over the next few hours, they engaged in a murderous rampage that left five dead, including a very pregnant Sharon Tate, three of her friends, and an eighteen-year-old male who was visiting the caretaker of the estate. The case went unsolved for over a year before the Los Angeles Police Department discovered the Manson connection, and, following confessions by various members of his cult, Manson and five others were indicted on charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. On 25 January 1972, Manson and three others were found guilty and on 29 March, all four were sentenced to death.
      The trial of another defendant, Charles "Tex" Watson, was delayed by extradition proceedings, but he was likewise found guilty and sentenced to death.
      In 1972, the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty in California, and Manson and his followers’ death sentences were reduced to life imprisonment.
1961 23rd Amendment ratified, allows Washington DC residents to vote for president.
1961 After a 4-year trial Nelson Mandela is acquitted on treason charge.
1951 Rosenbergs convicted of espionage.       ^top^
      In one of the most sensational trials in American history, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for their role in passing atomic secrets to the Soviets during and after World War II. The husband and wife were later sentenced to death and were executed in June 1953. The conviction of the Rosenbergs was the climax of a fast-paced series of events that were set in motion with the arrest of British physicist Klaus Fuchs in Great Britain in February 1950. British authorities, with assistance from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, gathered evidence that Fuchs, who worked on developing the atomic bomb both in England and the United States during World War II, had passed top-secret information to the Soviet Union. Fuchs almost immediately confessed his role and began a series of accusations. Fuchs confessed that American Harry Gold had served as a courier for the Soviet agents to whom Fuchs passed along his information. American authorities captured Gold, who thereupon pointed the finger at David Greenglass, a young man who worked at the laboratory where the atomic bomb had been developed. Gold claimed Greenglass was even more heavily involved in spying than Fuchs. Upon his arrest, Greenglass readily confessed and then accused his sister and brother-in-law, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, of being the spies who controlled the entire operation.
      Both Ethel and Julius had strong leftist leanings and had been heavily involved in labor and political issues in the United States during the late-1930s and 1940s. Julius was arrested in July and Ethel in August 1950. By present-day standards, the trial was remarkably fast. It began on 06 March, and the jury had convicted both of conspiracy to commit espionage by 29 March. The Rosenbergs were not helped by a defense that many at the time, and since, have labeled incompetent. More harmful, however, was the testimony of Greenglass and Gold. Greenglass declared that Julius Rosenberg had set up a meeting during which Greenglass passed the plans for the atomic bomb to Gold. Gold supported Greenglass's accusation and admitted that he then passed the plans along to a Soviet agent. This testimony sealed Julius's fate, and although there was little evidence directly tying Ethel to the crime, prosecutors claimed that she was the brain behind the whole scheme. The jury found both guilty. A few days later, the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death. They were executed on 19 June 1953 in Sing Sing Prison in New York. Both maintained their innocence to the end.
      The Rosenberg case got worldwide attention. Their supporters claimed they were being made scapegoats to the Cold War hysteria that was sweeping the US. The French writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called their execution a "legal lynching." In any case Ethel was innocent of any grave crime and was accused only in order to bring pressure on Julius (who didn't give in to it). Others pointed out that even if the Rosenbergs did pass secrets along to the Soviets during World War II, Russia had been an ally, not an enemy, of the United States at the time. Those who supported the verdict insisted that the couple got what they deserved for endangering national security by giving top-secret information on a devastating weapon to Communists.
1947 Comienza en Madagascar el movimiento de liberación contra la administración colonial francesa.
1945 II Guerra Mundial: los rusos cruzan la frontera austriaca.
1945 US Army conquers Frankfurt.       ^top^
      General George S. Patton's 3rd Army takes Frankfurt, as "Old Blood and Guts" continues his march east. Frankfurt am Main, literally "On the Main" River, in western Germany, was the mid-19th century capital of Germany (it was annexed by Prussia in 1866, ending its status as a free city). Once integrated into a united German nation, it developed into a significant industrial city-and hence a prime target for Allied bombing during the war. That bombing began as early as July 1941, during a series of British air raids against the Nazis. In March 1944, Frankfurt suffered extraordinary damage during a raid that saw 27'000 tons of bombs dropped on Germany in a single month. Consequently, Frankfurt's medieval Old Town was virtually destroyed (although it would be rebuilt in the postwar period-replete with modern office buildings).
      In late December 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, General Patton broke through the German lines of the besieged Belgian city of Bastogne, relieving its valiant defenders. Patton then pushed the Germans east. Patton's goal was to cross the Rhine, even if not a single bridge was left standing over which to do it. But as he reached the banks of the river on 22 March 1945, he found that one bridge--the Ludendorff Railway Bridge, located south of Mainz at Oppenheim--had not been destroyed. American troops had already made a crossing on 07 March — a signal moment in the war and in history, as an enemy army had not crossed the Rhine since Napoleon accomplished the feat in 1805. Patton grandly made his crossing at Oppenheim, and from the bridgehead created there, Old Blood and Guts and his 3rd Army headed east and captured Frankfurt on the 29th. Patton then crossed through southern Germany and into Czechoslovakia, only to encounter an order not to take the capital, Prague, as it had been reserved for the Soviets. Patton was, not unexpectedly, livid.
1943 Beginning of meat, butter and cheese rationing in US during WW II.
1936 Amplio apoyo en plebiscito de los alemanes a la política internacional de Adolf Hitler.
1935 French liner Normandie begins its maiden voyage.
1933 Se constituye en Berlín un comité central, patrocinado por el Partido Nacionalsocialista, para dirigir el boicot contra los judíos.
1927 first auto to exceed 200 mph (322 km/h), Henry Segrave, Daytona Beach.
1908 La Cámara de los Comunes británica concede el derecho de voto a las mujeres.
1885 Una escuadra francesa se apodera de las islas de los Pescadores, tras un combate con la flota china.
1882 The Knights of Columbus, founded by Father Michael J. McGivney, is chartered by the General Assembly of Connecticut. Established as a lay fraternal society, the K of C encourages benevolence, patriotism and racial tolerance among its members.
1879 British victory at Khambula       ^top^
      At Khambula in northwest Zululand, a force of 2000 British and Colonial troops under the command of British Colonel Henry Evelyn Wood defeats 20'000 Zulus under King Cetshwayo, turning the tide in the favor of the British in the Zulu War. In 1843, Britain succeeded the Boers as the rulers of Natal, which administered Zululand, the neighboring kingdom of the Zulu people. Boers, also known as Afrikaners, were the descendants of the original Dutch settlers who came to South Africa in the seventeenth century. Zulus, a migrant people from the north, had also come to southern Africa during the seventeenth century, settling around the Tugela River region. In 1838, the Boers, migrating north to elude the new British dominions in the south, first came into armed conflict with the Zulus, who were under the rule of King Dingane at the time. The European migrants succeeded in overthrowing Dingane in 1840, replacing him with his son Mpande, who became a vassal of the new Boer republic of Natal. In 1843, the British took over Natal and Zululand. In 1872, King Mpande died and was succeeded by his son Cetshwayo, who was determined to resist European domination in his territory. In December 1878, King Cetshwayo rejected the British demand that he disband his troops, and in January of the next year, British forces invaded Zululand to suppress Cetshwayo. The British suffered grave defeats at Isandlwana, where 1300 British soldiers were killed or wounded, and at Hlobane Mountain, but, on 29 March, the tide turned in favor of the British at the Battle of Khambula. At Ulundi in July, Cetshwayo’s forces were utterly routed and the Zulus were forced to surrender to the British. In 1887, faced with continuing Zulu rebellions, the British formally annexed Zululand and, in 1897, it became a part of Natal, which joined the Union of South Africa in 1910.
1867 The British Parliament passes the North America Act to create the Dominion of Canada.
1865 Engagement at Lewis Farm, Virginia
1865 Appomattox Campaign begins
1865 Siege at Spanish Fort, Alabama continues.
1848 Ice jam on the Niagara!
      An enormous ice dam forms at the source of the Niagara River on the eastern shore of Lake Erie. Just after midnight, the thunderous sound of water surging over the great falls at Niagara comes to a halt. The eery silence persists throughout the day and into the next evening until the waters of Lake Erie break through the blockage and resume their course down the river and over the falls.
1847 Scott takes San Juan de Ulua       ^top^
      During the Mexican-American War, Mexican forces surrender the fortified city of Vera Cruz and its massive fortress, San Juan de Ulua, after a massive one-week bombardment by US artillery. On 09 March, US forces under General Winfield Scott invaded Mexico three miles south of Vera Cruz. Encountering little resistance from the 5000 Mexican troops massed in the fortified city of Vera Cruz, by nightfall the last of Scott’s 10'000 men had come ashore without the loss of a single life. It was the largest amphibious landing in US history, and was not surpassed until World War II. The Mexican-American War began with a dispute over the US government’s 1845 annexation of Texas. In January 1846, President James K. Polk, a strong advocate of westward expansion, ordered General Zachary Taylor to occupy disputed territory between the Nueces and Rio Grande rivers. Mexican troops attacked Taylor’s forces, and on 13 May 1846, Congress approved a declaration of war against Mexico. On 09 March, 1847, General Scott’s forces landed near Vera Cruz, and, by 29 March, with very few American casualties, they had taken the city and its fortress, San Juan de Ulua. On April 9, Scott began a devastating march to Mexico City, ending on 14 September, when triumphant US forces entered the Mexican capital and raised the American flag over the Hall of Montezuma. On 02 February, 1848, representatives from the US and Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, formally ending the Mexican War, recognizing Texas as part of the United States, and extending the boundaries of the United States west to the Pacific Ocean.
1830 El Rey de España Fernando VII promulga la Pragmática Sanción de 1789 para restablecer la ley de Partida que autoriza la sucesión femenina al trono.
1806 US Congress authorizes survey of Cumberland Road.       ^top^
      Congress authorizes surveying to begin for the construction of the Cumberland Road, which sped the way for thousands of Americans heading west. Four years earlier, Congress had recognized the importance of building a network of national roads to facilitate western immigration. The 1803 act that admitted Ohio into the Union included a provision setting aside money from the sale of public lands to use in "laying out, opening, and making roads." By 1806, enough funds had accumulated to begin surveying a proposed national road from Cumberland, Maryland, through the Appalachian Mountains to Wheeling, Virginia, on the Ohio River. The task of surveying the route for the new national road went to the Army's Corps of Engineers, setting an important precedent for the military's involvement in building transportation routes that would be used for non-military purposes. The Corps of Engineers also built the road once construction began in 1811. Progress was slow, and the Corps did not complete the 220-km road until 1818. Its value, though, became apparent well before it was completed. Stagecoaches, heavy freight wagons, and droves of stock animals soon crowded the route in numbers far surpassing those expected. The Corps even had to maintain and repair older sections of the road before the entire route was completed. The Cumberland Road proved such a success that Congress agreed to continue extending it westward. By 1850, this National Road, as it came to be called, reached all the way to Indianapolis. By that time, mid-western excitement over the National Road was fading in favor of a fever for canal building. The Cumberland-National Road, however, set the precedent for further government involvement in road building. The resulting network of roads greatly facilitated American expansion into western territory, and parts of the route blazed for the Cumberland Road are still followed to this day by interstate and state highways.
     The Great National Pike, also known as the Cumberland Road, became the first highway funded by the national treasury. Built between 1806 and 1840, the Great National Pike stretched from Cumberland, Maryland, to Vandalia, Illinois. On this day the first appropriation of $30'000 was made by congressional act. Eventually over $6 million was appropriated for the highway. In 1856, control over the road was turned over to the states through which it ran. Roads would be left to the devices of the states almost exclusively until the dawn of the automobile. Henry Ford and other leaders of the automotive industry were instrumental in encouraging the federal funding of national highways.
1797 Future parents of Frankenstein's author marry.       ^top^
      Social critic Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the earliest and most eloquent proponents of women's rights, marries William Godwin, the most famous radical reformer of his time. Wollstonecraft, who had been raised by a tyrannical, abusive, and alcoholic father, was philosophically opposed to marriage, as was Godwin. However, the two decided to marry after Wollstonecraft became pregnant with his child. Wollstonecraft supported herself from age 19 as a companion, governess, and teacher. When her sister fled an unhappy marriage, Wollstonecraft took her in and hid her for months from her abusive husband, who had the legal right to force his spouse to return to him. The two, along with another sister, started a school. Initially a success, the school eventually went bankrupt and left Wollstonecraft burdened with debt.
      At age 27, Wollstonecraft published a semi-autobiographical novel and a children's book, the latter of which became a smashing success. She began publishing book reviews in a journal of political reform and writing social criticism. In 1790, she wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Man, about the French Revolution. Two years later, she produced A Vindication of the Rights of Women, a coolly reasoned, well-balanced argument for women's rights, published at a time when women had no rights or property of their own. A supporter of the ideals behind the revolution, she moved to France in 1793, where she fell in love with an American man. After she gave birth to his child, he abandoned her. Depressed, she tried unsuccessfully to kill herself. She returned to London and became part of an influential group of radical intellectuals. In 1796, she fell in love with William Godwin, a well-known writer who associated with the same circles. The couple married when they discovered she was pregnant and lived happily for six months—until Wollstonecraft died after giving birth on 30 August 1797 to a daughter who would become Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of Frankenstein and wife of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.
1638 Swedish colonists settle in present-day Delaware.
TO THE TOP
Deaths which occurred on a March 29:
2003 Muhammed Darwish, 17, Palestinian, shot in the chest by Israeli troops who fire at Palestinians who throw stones at their armored vehicles, in a refugee camp in Nablus, West Bank. The Reuters body count of the al-Aqsa intifada is now “at least” 1957 Palestinians and 727 Israelis.
2003 Suicide bomber Ali Hammadi al-Namani; and an Iraqi cyclist, and Pfc. Michael Russell Creighton Weldon, 20; Pfc. Diego Fernando Rincon, 19; Specialist Michael Edward Curtin, 23, of South Plains, NJ; and Sgt. Eugene Williams, 24, US soldiers of the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, manning a checkpoint on the Highway 9 to Kerbala, at Al Kifl, just north of Najaf, Iraq, as they have al-Mani open the trunk of the taxi he is driving and he detonates it, while the cyclist just happens to be passing by. Al-Namani was an Iraqi army noncomissioned officer.
2003 Lance Cpl. William W. White, 24, of Brooklyn, N.Y., of the 3rd Amphibious Assault Battalion, 1st Marine Division, dies in a vehicle accident in Iraq.
2003 Two US Special Forces soldiers, when their four vehicle-mounted reconnaissance patrol is attacked near Geresk, Helmand province, Afghanistan, by four Taliban gunmen riding on two motorcycles. Another US Special Forces soldier and three Afghan soldiers are wounded.
2003 Carlo Urbani, 46, of SARS, in Bangkok, Thailand, where he had been hospitalized for 15 days. An Italian physician, president of Medici Senza Frontiere Italia, he was working for the World Health Organization in the Hanoi, Vietnam, French International Hospital, and became the first to identify Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome as he was treating a US-born Chinese businessman, 48, arriving from Shanghai, who became its first recognized fatality. 28 February 2003 was when Dr. Urbani first saw the patient, who had been admitted to the hospital on 26 February 2003, with high fever, dry cough, myalgia (muscle soreness) and mild sore throat and, over the next four days developed increasing breathing difficulties, severe thrombocytopenia (low platelet count) and signs of adult respiratory distress syndrome requiring ventilator support.Israeli shell exploding in Arafat's compound On 02 March 2003, he was transfered to Hong Kong, where he died on 13 March 2003. Of the more than 30 who got SARS among the staff of the Hanoi hospital, a nurse, 46, who had treated the businessman died on 15 March 15; a French doctor, 66, on 19 March; a Vietnamese nurse and doctor on 24 March. To date, SARS has killed at least 54 persons and sickened at least 1550, with the biggest number of cases and deaths in China's Guangdong province, where an earlier outbreak began, unrecognized, in November 2002.
2002 Five Palestinians; and Israelis First Lieutenant Boaz Pomerantz, 22, from Kiryat Shmona; and Staff Sergeant Roman Shliapstein, 22, of Ma'ale Efraim; as Israelis attack Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah in the afternoon, tanks firing directly at his private office (which he had left), and taking control of most of the buildings in the complex, including the prison holding the suspects in the assassination of Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Ze'evi in October 2002. [photo: tank shell explodes inside Arafat's headquarters >]
2002 Israelis Rachel Levy, 17; and Haim Smadar, 55, security guard; and Ayat Akhras, 16, girl suicide bomber from the Deheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem, of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, in a supermarket on Uruguay Street in Jerusalem's Kiryat Yovel neighborhood shortly before 14:00.
2002 Michael Orlanski, 70, Tuvia Wisner, 79, and a Palestinian who stabs them, in the Netzarim enclave settlement in the Gaza Strip, hides for over six hours, then tries to attack a settler and is shot by him. Orlanski and Wisner, Jews from Tel Aviv, were visiting their son Yossi Orlanski, a settler.
1994 All 4 passengers and 2 crew members aboard a Beech Queen Air B80 of Kiwi West Aviation which, at 12:10, crashes into trees in a residential neighborhood near Hamilton, New Zealand, after experiencing an engine failure while taking off.
1991 Lee Atwater, 40, political strategists, of brain tumor.
1991 Gerardo Molina Ramírez, ideólogo y político colombiano.
29 March 1985 The Singing Nun and her friend Annie Pêcher, hounded by tax collectors, commit suicide in Belgium with an overdose of alcohol and barbiturates. The Singing Nun was Jeanine Deckers, born on 17 October 1933, who joined the Dominican Fichermont Convent in Belgium. Popular in the convent for her music, she was encouraged by the other nuns to record an album in 1963, and one song, "Dominique," soared to the top of the charts in the United States. Overnight, the Dominican nun was an international celebrity with the stage name of Soeur Sourire. She performed in concerts and appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. In 1965, a movie called The Singing Nun, starring Debbie Reynolds, was made about her, though she rejected the film as "fictional." As the 1960s progressed, the Singing Nun stopped performing and entered a rigorous religious life in the convent in 1965. In 1967, however, she left the convent to pursue her musical career, though most of her earnings still went to the convent. Nevertheless, she was a one-hit wonder, who gradually faded into obscurity, not least because of her own disdain for fame: her second album, released in 1967, was aptly titled I Am Not a Star. Though she was deeply religious, she was also increasingly critical of the conservatism of the Roman Catholic Church, and she became an advocate of birth control. Having faded into obscurity, she opened a school for autistic children in Belgium with a close friend, Annie Pêcher. By the early 1980s the Belgian government began claiming that she owed back taxes; she claimed that the money was given to the convent and therefore exempt from taxes.
1983 Maurice Kendall, mathematician.
1982 Indalecio Liévano Aguirre, historiador, político y estadista colombiano.
1980 José María Peiró, de 13 años, alcanzado por la explosión de una carga depositada por ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna) en una bolsa de deportes bajo el coche de un guardia civil, en Azcoitia (Guipúzcoa), es el primer niño muerto por el terrorismo en España.
1980 Cochran, mathematician.
1977:: 13 of the 20 passengers and 2 of the 3 crew members aboard a de Havilland Canada DCH-6 Twin Otter 300 of Merpati Nusantara Airlines which stalls and crashes into trees in the Bainaha Valley of Indonesia, as a result of the pilot applying full power and going into too steep a climb in an effort to clear a mountain that he had suddenly noticed just ahead.
1891 Georges Pierre Seurat, French Pointillist painter born on 02 December 1859. — MORE ON SEURAT AT ART “4” MARCH with links to images.
1885 George Rouse, Black, lynched in Dooly County, Georgia, accused of the rape and murder of a White woman.
1882 Thomas Jones Barker, British artist born in 1815.
Grace Chilholm Young1868 Grace Chisholm (Young), English mathematician, first woman Ph.D. in Germany..    ^top^
      Grace Chisholm was born on 15 March 1868 in Haslemere, near London, the youngest of three surviving children. Her father was Warden of the Standards in the British government, in charge of the department of weights and measures. Her brother was sent to grammar school, a prestigious boarding school, and then earned a top scholarship to Oxford, but in the custom of the times in England, Grace and her sister were taught at home by their mother and a governess. At the age of 17 Grace Chisholm passed the Cambridge Senior Examination.
      Her family encouraged her to become involved in social work among the London poor but Grace wanted to continue her studies. Her mother would not allow her to study medicine so she decided to study mathematics at Girton College, part of Cambridge University. Girton, opened in 1869, was the first school in England dedicated to educating women at the university level. Grace Chisholm entered Girton in 1889 at the age of 21. At Girton her tutor was William Young. Women could not earn formal degrees at Cambridge at that time, but in 1893 she passed her final examinations (Mathematics Tripos) and scored the equivalent of a first-class degree.
      Grace Chisholm wanted to continue in mathematics but women were not yet admitted to graduate schools in England so she went to Göttingen in Germany to study with Felix Klein. This was one of the major mathematical centers in the world. The decision to admit her had to be approved by the Berlin Ministry of Culture.
     Under Klein's supervision, Grace Chisholm earned the Ph.D. magna cum laude, in 1895. Her thesis was on The algebraic groups of spherical trigonometry. Again government approval had to be obtained to allow her to take the examination. She thus became the first woman to officially receive a doctorate in any field in Germany. Although Sofia Kovalevskaia had been awarded a doctorate in mathematics in absentia from Göttingen in 1874 after submitting a thesis, the rules for doctoral degrees had become stricter, and Grace was required to take courses and pass a difficult examination showing broader knowledge as well as prepare a thesis in order to receive her degree.
Grace Chisholm Young      The year after her Ph.D., Grace Chisholm married William Henry Young, who had been her tutor at Girton College. William Young was also a mathematician. Between them they wrote about 220 mathematical articles, several books, and had 6 children within the span of 9 years. It is not clear how much of the collaboration is really Grace's work and how much is her husband's, but it is now generally agreed that William Young would probably have accomplished very little without the help of his wife, a fact he often acknowledged. Grace wrote up his papers for publication, often filling in proofs and correcting mistakes. But she also produced a substantial amount of excellent work herself despite the fact that her husband was often away from the family for large parts of the year, leaving Grace to take care of the children and home at La Conversion, near Lausanne in Switzerland, to where they had moved from Germany before WW I, as anti-British sentiment was increasing in Germany. In 1915, she wrote a paper on the foundations of calculus that won the Gamble Prize at Cambridge, and later published a book on geometry and one on set theory with her husband.
Grace Chisholm Young      Besides her extensive work in mathematics, Grace Chisholm Young completed all the requirements for a medical degree except the internship, learned six languages, and taught each of her six children a musical instrument. She left Switzerland in 1940 with the approach of World War II, but her husband could not get out. He died in 1942, and two years later Grace suffered a heart attack and died on 29 March 1944. The Fellows of Girton College had just recommended that she be awarded an honorary degree, but she died before it could be given to her.
Of her six children,
  • the first son, Francis (1897-1917), a Royal Flying Corps aerial observer, was killed in World War I;
  • the oldest daughter, Cecily (later: Mrs. R.C. Tanner, 1900-1992), took a doctorate in mathematics at Girton but was still not able to receive a formal degree from Cambridge (1929) since such degrees were not yet being granted to women. Despite this, she went on to become a tenured member of the University of London;
  • Grace Chisholm Young and child the second daughter, Janet (born in 1901), became a physician and the first female member of the Royal College of Surgeons. She married a Jewish refugee from Germany, Stephen Michael, a research chemist. They had children, William, Dorothy, and Ptk.
  • the third daughter, Helen Marion (born 20 September 1903 in Göttingen), completed her undergraduate studies in mathematics at the University of Lausanne. She did additional graduate work in other subjects at Bryn Mawr. In 1929 she married a Frenchman, Jean-Marie-Félix Canu, a professor of history at Bryn Mawr. They had two children in Bryn Mawr, Jean-François (born 27 February 1930) and Anne-Marie (born 9 December 1932). That family settled in France in 1934 and weathered the World War II in occupied France, in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. There the third child was born, Pierre-Henri-Raimond-Maximilien, on 16 February 1943. Helen Young Canu died of cancer on 24 December 1947. Jean-François Canu obtained a degree in mathematics and became successively a research mathematician, a Catholic priest, and a school teacher, before retiring in 1999. Anne-Marie Canu became a cloistered Benedictine nun for some ten years, and then a pediatric psychoanalyst in Paris. Pierre Canu became a corporate lawyer in the US.
  • the second son, Laurence (born in 1905), was also a mathematician, teaching at the University of Capetown, South Africa, and later at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was also a chess grandmaster. His children were Frank, Rosalind, David, Sylvia, Beatrice, Angela.
  • the youngest son, Patrick (born in 1908), did his academic training in science, but pursued a career in finance and business.
          One of Grace Young's fourteen grandchildren, Sylvia Wiegand, fifth of the six children of Laurence Young, is a mathematician at the University of Nebraska (as is her husband Roger A. Wiegand) and a past president of the Association for Women in Mathematics.
  • 1818 Alexandre Sabès Pétion, 47, Haitian liberator and president-for-life (of Southern Haiti) remembered by the Haitian people for his liberal rule and by South Americans for his support of Simón Bolívar during the struggle for independence from Spain. Rival of Henri Christophe (king Henri I of Northern Haiti)
    1812 Johann Friedrick Dryander, German artist born on 26 April 1756.

    de la Contrie1796 CHARRETTE-de-la-CONTRIE François Athanase, âgé de 33 ans, né à Couffé, département de la Loire Inférieure, avant la révolution, lieutenant de vaisseau, et depuis chef des royalistes de la Vendée et lieutenant général des armées de Louis XVIII, condamné à mort le 9 germinal an 4, par le conseil militaire, séant à Nantes, pour avoir fromenté et dirigé en chef la guerre civile de la Vendée, faussé son serment de soumission aux loi de la République, entretenu des correspondance avec les ci-devant princes, les émigrés, les chouans et autres ennemis intérieurs et extérieurs de la République, et comme ayant été pris les armes à la main. Il est fusillé le même jour, à Nantes, sur la place des Agriculteurs (aujourd'hui place Viarmes). [< clic sur le portrait pour l'agrandir]
         Né le 21 Apr 1763, il était le brigand bien-aimé des humbles et des grandes dames, incapable de se plier à quelque discipline que ce fût. Ancien lieutenant de vaisseau dans la marine royale, il émigre en 1790 mais revient en France au printemps 1792. Il participe, comme Lescure et Henri de La Rochejaquelein, à la défense des Tuileries le 10 Aug 1792. Depuis lors, il vit retiré sur ses terres, dans son manoir de Fonteclose, près de Machecoul.
          Quand les paysans du Marais viennent lui demander de se mettre à leur tête, il accepte avec réticence. Il s'entend mal avec les autres chefs de l'insurrection et les troupes qu'il dirige ne se joignent que rarement à l'Armée Catholique et Royale. N'ayant pas participé à la virée de Galerne, il continue le combat dans le marais nantais. A partir de la fin de 1794, c'est lui qui incarne la lutte de la Vendée que la répression des Bleus a relancée. En 1795 il signe avec les Républicains la paix de la Jaunaye, dans l'espoir qu'on lui confiera le petit Louis XVII. Après la mort de "l'enfant du temple", il reprend bientôt le combat, mais la politique d'amnistie conduite par Hoche le coupe rapidement du soutien des paysans. Charette est capturé, un mois après Stofflet, dans les bois de la Chabotterie.
    1794 BUCHOT Charles André, âgé de 61 ans, né à Colmar, demeurant à Doulens, général de brigade, époux de Claire Lenseigne, condamné à mort à Arras le 09 germinal an II
    1794 COLIGNON Jean Baptiste, imprimeur, âgé de 61 ans, né et domicilié à Metz, département de la Moselle, condamné à mort le 9 germinal an 2, par le tribunal révolutionnaire de Paris, comme conspirateur en imprimant et distribuant des ouvrages tendants à ébranler la fidélité des citoyens.
    1794 DELMOTTE Louis Joseph, âgé de 32 ans, né à Bertincourt, manouvrier, époux de Telle Angélique, condamné à mort à Arras le 09 germinal an II
    1794 HARELLE J. val. Marie, marchand âgé de 30 ans, né et domicilié à l’Aigle, département de l’Orne, condamné à mort, le 09 germinal an 2, par le tribunal révolutionnaire de Paris, comme conspirateur.
    1794 MARCHAND Jeanne, veuve Loudais, domiciliée à St Germain-de-Lasignan, département de la Charente Inférieure, condamnée. à mort comme conspiratrice, le 09 germinal an 2, par le tribunal criminel dudit département.
    1794 POIRÉ François, huissier à la convention nationale, ci-devant, domestique de Talleyrand-Perigord, puis de la Polignac, né à Outrebois, domicilié à Paris, département de la Seine, condamné à mort le 09 germinal an 2, par le tribunal révolutionnaire de Paris, comme convaincu d'avoir entretenu des intelligences et correspondances avec les Anglais, au moyen desquelles ils ont été instruits de plusieurs des plans du gouvernement français, et des mesures secrètes de la Convention de ses comités et du pouvoir exécutif.
    1794 (9 germinal an II) Les trois derniers bénédictins de Saint-Martin-des-Champs.       ^top^
    ADAM Jacques Nicolas, âgé de 36 ans, né à Paris, ex-religieux bénédictin, domicilié à Paris, condamné à mort le 09 germinal, an 2, par le tribunal révolutionnaire de Paris, comme fanatique pratiquées en 1792-93, à paris rue St Martin, tendant à ébranler la fidélité des citoyens envers la nation, et en montrant dans le secret des objets de superstition, et des signes de royauté.
    COURTIN Jean Baptiste, ex bénédictin, âgé de 79 ans, né et domicilié à Paris, département de la Seine, condamné à mort comme contre-révolutionnaire, le 09 germinal an 2, par le tribunal révolutionnaire de Paris.
    MEIFFRE Joseph Antoine, bénédictin, maître des novices du prieuré de St Martin, âgé de 57 ans, né à Aubignan, département de la Drôme, domicilié à Paris, département de la Seine, condamné à mort le 09 germinal an 2, par le tribunal révolutionnaire séant à Paris, comme contre révolutionnaire en remettant, citant et montrant dans le secret des objets de superstition, des signes de royauté, des brevets du pape, en abusant de ces objets pour égarer et enflammer par le fanatisme royal et religieux des rassemblements dans lesquels on célébrait des prétendus mystères.
          Don Courtin, don Meiffre et don Adam, restés dans leur ancien monastère dépouillé de ses richesses, n'avaient pas été inquiétés jusqu'au début de 1794; une démarche imprudente de son certificat de civisme au Comité de surveillance de la Section des Gravilliers, a attiré l'attention sur les religieux; une perquisition dans leur logis a amené la découverte d'images armoriées de la Vierge miraculeuse de la rue aux Ours; la status elle-même a été retrouvée, saisie, en même a été retrouvée, saisie, en même temps qu'une quantité considérable de reliques; l'arrestation des trois moines s'en est suivie et, après quelques semaines d'incarcération à Sainte-Pélagie et à la Conciergerie, ils ont été traduits au tribunal révolutionnaire comme " prévenus d'avoir conspiré contre la République et la Liberté, en cherchant à égarer le peuple par la superstition"... Le soir même, les Bénédictins sont exécutés.
    1794 (9 germinal an II) Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet, 50, in prison.
         Born on 17 September 1743, Condorcet was a French philosopher of the Enlightenment, advocate of educational reform, and mathematician. He was one of the major Revolutionary formulators of the ideas of progress, or the indefinite perfectibility of mankind.
         Condorcet was a zealous propagator of the progressive views then current among French men of letters. A protégé of the French philosopher and mathematician Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, he took an active part in the preparation of the Encyclopédie. He was elected to the permanent secretaryship of the Academy of Sciences in 1777 and to the French Academy in 1782 and was a member of other European academies.
          Condorcet published his Vie de M. Turgot in 1786 and his Vie de Voltaire in 1789. These biographies of his friends reveal his sympathy with Turgot's economic theories about mitigating the suffering of the French populace before the French Revolution and with Voltaire's opposition to the church.
          The outbreak of the French Revolution, which he greeted with enthusiasm, involved him in a great deal of political activity. He was elected to represent Paris in the Legislative Assembly and became its secretary; was active in the reform of the educational system; was chief author of the address to the European powers in 1791; and in 1792 he presented a scheme for a system of state education, which was the basis of that ultimately adopted. Condorcet was one of the first to declare for a republic, and in August 1792 he drew up the declaration justifying the suspension of the king and the summoning of the National Convention.
          In the convention he represented the département of Aisne and was a member of the committee on the constitution. His draft of a new constitution, representative of the Girondins, the more moderate political group during the Revolution, was rejected, however, in favor of that of the Jacobins, a more radical political group whose dominating figure was Robespierre. In the trial of Louis XVI he voted against the death penalty. But his independent attitude became dangerous in the wake of the Revolution when Robespierre's radical measures triumphed, and his opposition to the arrest of the Girondins led to his being outlawed. To occupy his mind while he was in hiding, some of his friends prevailed on him to engage in the work by which he is best known, the Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain (1795).
         In March 1794 Condorcet thought that the house in which he was hiding in Paris was being watched by his enenies and he no longer felt safe. He fled from Paris and after three days he was arrested and imprisoned in Bourg-la-Reine on 27 March 1794. Two days later he is found dead in his prison cell and it is not known whether he died from natural causes, was murdered, or took his own life.
         Dans la liste des victimes de la Terreur, on trouve cette notation:
    CARITAT, ci-devant marquis de Condorcet, né et domicilié à Paris, député à la convention nationale du département de l’Aisne, mis hors la loi, par décret de la convention du 28 Jul 1793 pour s’être soustrait au décret d’accusation, et par suite des malheureuses journées des 31 mai, 1 et 2 juin; il s’est soustrait au jugement; mais il est mort de misère dans une prison aux environs de Paris, ayant été arrêté au Bourg-Egalité, comme suspect et sous un autre nom.
    — Fragonard engraving CONDORCET SE DONNANT LA MORT DANS SA PRISON; le 28 Mars 1794 ou 8 Germinal de l'an 2 de la Révolution. [Fragonard's own version of date and cause of death].
    CONDORCET ONLINE:
    Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humainEsquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain
    1792 King Gustav III king of Sweden, of wounds.
    1631 Jorge Manuel Theotocopuli, Spanish (not Greek?) artist born in 1578.
    1629 Jacob Gheyn II, Dutch draughtsman, engraver, and painter, born in 1565 MORE ON GHEYN AT ART “4” MARCH with links to images.
    Births which occurred on a March 29:
    1954 Karen Anne Quinlan, comatose patient in famous right-to-die case.       ^top^
         Born, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, at age 21 Quinlan would collapse after swallowing alcohol and tranquilizers at a party on 15 April 1975. Doctors saved her life, but she suffered brain damage and lapsed into a "persistent vegetative state." Her Catholic family waged a much-publicized legal battle for the right to remove her life support machinery. They succeeded, but in a final twist Quinlan kept breathing after the respirator was unplugged. She remained in a coma for almost 10 years in a New Jersey nursing home until her 11 June 1985 death from pneumonia.. [key excerpts from Supreme Court of New Jersey decision]
    1943 John Major, British prime minister.
    1935 Angel García López, escritor español.
    1927 John Robert Vane, investigador británico, P. Nobel de Fisiología y Medicina 1982.
    1919 The First Tatras.       ^top^
          The First Tatra vehicle, a TL4 truck, was completed. The truck was Tatra’s first offering to the automotive world but it was the Tatra car that had inspired engineer Hans Ledwinka to found Tatra. Just after the war, Hans Ledwinka began construction of a new automobile to be marketed under the marque Tatra, a division of the newly named Koprivnicka Wagenbau of Czechoslovakia.
          The Tatra High Mountains are among the highest mountains in the Carpathian Mountain Range, the legendary home of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Ledwinka settled on the name Tatra in 1919, when an experimental model of his car with four-wheel brakes passed a sleigh on an icy mountain road, prompting the sleigh riders to exclaim, "This is a car for the Tatras." In 1923 the first official Tatra automobile, the Tatra T11, was completed, and Ledwinka’s hope for an affordable "people’s car" was realized. The reliable, rugged T11, like Ford’s Model T, gave many Czechoslovakians their first opportunity to own an automobile. In 1934, Tatra achieved automotive press with the introduction of the Tatra 77, the world’s first aerodynamically styled automobile powered by a rear-mounted air-cooled engine.
    1918 Samuel Moore Walton.       ^top^
          Samuel Moore Walton, US retail magnate; founded Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Walton began his retail career at J.C. Penney in Des Moines, Iowa in 1940 earning $75 per month. In 1945, Sam borrowed $5000 from his wife and $20'000 from his wife’s family to open a Ben Franklin five-and-dime franchise in Newport, Arkansas. In 1950, he relocated to Bentonville, Arkansas, and opened a Walton 5&10.
          Over the next 12 years they built up and grew to 15 Ben Franklin Stores under the name of Walton 5&10. When the Ben Franklin management rejected his idea of opening discount stores in small towns, Sam and his brother James (Bud) opened up their first Wal-Mart Discount City store in Rogers, Arkansas, in 1962. Walton and his wife Helen had to put up everything they had, including their house and property to finance that first, 1700-square-meter, store.
          They went public in 1970 with 18 stores and sales of $44 million. By 1980, there were 276 stores with revenues of over $1.2 billion. In the early 1980’s, Wal-Mart opened the membership only Sam’s Wholesale Clubs. In 1985 Walton's 39% ownership in Wal-Mart made him the richest multi-billionaire in the US. In 1991 Wal-Mart surpassed Sears to become the country's biggest retailer. When Walton died in 1992, the family's net worth approached $25 billion.Today, Wal-Mart has over 700'000 “associates“ (employees) worldwide with more than 3000 stores, annual sales of over $100 billion, is in operation in all 50 US states and it’s still growing. He wrote Sam Walton, Made in America: My Story. Walton died on 05 April 1992, with his family's net worth at $25 billion.
    1916 Eugene McCarthy (Sen-D-Minn, presidential candidate 1968)
    1905 Edward Burra, British artist who died in 1976.
    1902 Sir William Walton, England, composer (Troilus and Cressida). He died on 08 March 1983.
    1902.Marcel Aymé, à Joigny, écrivain.
    1899 (17 March Julian) Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria, Russian director of the Cheka in Georgia, then head of the NKVD succeeding Nikolay I. Yezhov (who was shot on orders from Stalin in 1938). Beria carried out purges and (as head of the MVD “Ministry for Internal Affairs”) administered the Gulag. After Stalin died in 1953, Beria tried to succeed him as dictator, but was outmaneuvered by a coalition led by Malenkov, Molotov, and Krushchev, who accused him of being an “imperialist agent” and of conducting “criminal antiparty and antistate activities”, for which they had him executed on 23 December 1953. — The Soviet secret police started in December 1917 as the Bolshevik Cheka (short for VECHEKA “All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution and Sabotage), then in 1922 was supplanted by the GPU (“State Political Administration”) renamed in 1923 OGPU (“Unified S.P.A.”). In 1934 was created the NKVD (“People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs”) which took over the secret police. In 1954 it became the KGB (“Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti” “Committee for State Security”) which started by purging Beria supporters. — Having joined the Communist Party in 1917, Beria participated in revolutionary activity in Azerbaijan and Georgia before he was drawn into intelligence and counterintelligence activities (1921) and appointed head of the Cheka (secret police) in Georgia. He became party boss of the Transcaucasian republics in 1932 and personally oversaw the political purges in those republics during Stalin's Great Purge (1936–1938). Beria was brought to Moscow in 1938 as the deputy to Nikolay Yezhov, head of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), the Soviet secret police. Yezhov was apparently arrested and shot on Stalin's orders, and Beria became head of the secret police (1938–1953). He supervised a purge of the police bureaucracy itself and administered the vast network of labour camps set up throughout the country. In February 1941 he became a deputy prime minister of the U.S.S.R., and during World War II, as a member of the State Defense Committee, he not only controlled the Soviet Union's internal-security system but also played a major role in raw-materials production using the slave labour in the camps. He was made a marshal of the U.S.S.R. in 1945. He was also a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party from 1934 and of the executive policy-making committee,the Politburo, from 1946. When the Politburo was reorganized as the Presidium in 1952, Beriaretained his seat. Two days after the death of Stalin [21 Dec 1879 – 05 Mar 1953], Beria became one of four deputy prime ministers as well as head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, an organization which at that time combined both the secret political and regular police functions. During the ensuing struggle for power, Beria apparently attempted to use his position as chief of the secret police to succeed Stalin as sole dictator. By July 1953, however, he had been defeated by an anti-Beria coalition (led by Georgy M. Malenkov [13 Jan 1902 – 14 Jan 1988], Vyacheslav M. Molotov, and Nikita S. Khrushchev). He was arrested, deprived of his government and party posts, and publicly accused of being an “imperialist agent” and of conducting “criminal antiparty and antistate activities.” Convicted of these charges at his trial, Beria was immediately executed, on 23 December 1953.
    1896 Ackermann, mathematician.
    1895 Anne Redpath, British artist who died on 07 January 1965.
    1895 Ernst Junger, escritor y filósofo alemán.
    1892 Jozsef Mindszenty, Hungarian Catholic priest; Cardinal, opposed totalitarianism of Nazis and Communists, was persecuted, imprisoned. He died on 06 May 1975.
    1892 Maria Muraro, Italian who live past her 2004 birthday.
    1889 Howard Lindsay, US playwright, producer and partner of Russel Crouse. Lindsay died on 11 February 1968.
    1888 United Parcel Service is founded by James E Casey.
    1886 Coca-Cola
    created (with cocaine)
    1882 The Knights of Columbus are chartered in Connecticut.
    1853 Elihu Thomson, US engineer and inventor; founder of US electrical industry, who died on 13 March 1937.
    1873 Tullio Levi-Cività, mathematician.
    1829 Ritta and Christina Siamese twins, in Sardinia.
    1826 Wilheim Liebknecht, dirigente socialdemócrata alemán.
    1825 Faà di Bruno, mathematician.
    1819 Isaac Mayer Wise, Bohemian-born US rabbi; organized Reform Jewish institutions in US. [That was Wise.] He died on 26 March 1900.
    1819 Edwin Drake drilled first productive US oil well.
    1818 Gonsalvo Carelli, Italian artist who died in 1900.
    1802 Johann Moritz Rugendas, German artist who died on 29 May 1858. — LINKSVolcán de ColimaLlegada del Presidente Prieto a la Pampilla _ detail 1 _ detail 2
    1790 John Tyler, in Charles City County, Virginia, 10th Pres (1841-1845) (the first president to marry while in office). He died on 18 January 1862.
    1788 Carlos María Isidro de Borbón, aspirante carlista al trono de España.
    1758 Scott-Pierre-Nicolas Legrand de Lérant, French artist who died on 11 May 1829.
    1561 Santorio Sanctorius, Trieste, Italy, Italian physician; introduced use of precision instruments in medicine. He was burned at stake as a heretic on 22 February 1636.
    Holidays Central African Republic : Death of President Boganda Day (1959) / Delaware : Delaware Swedish Colonial Day (1638) / Madagascar : Commemoration /Day/Memorial Day (1947) / Taiwan : Youth Day/Martyr's Day / Vietnam : Veterans' Day (1973)
    Religious Observances  Luth : Hans Hauge, renewer of the Church / Ang : John Keble, priest / Santos Raimundo Lulio, Jonás, Cirilo, Segundo y Eustaquio. / Saint Jonas fut martyrisé en Perse en 327 pour avoir tenté de défendre les chrétiens face aux persécutions d'un roi adepte du mazdéisme.
    Holy Thursday in 1877, 1888, 1923, 1934, 1945, 1956, 2018, 2029, 2040, 2108.
    Good Friday in 1907, 1918, 1929, 1991, 2002, 2013, 2024, 2086, 2097.
    Easter Sunday in 1891, 1959, 1964, 1970, 2043, 2054, 2065, 2111, 2116, 2122.

    Thoughts for the day: “Can tolerance tolerate the intolerable?”
    “If you find the above question intolerable, just don't read it.”
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