Births which
occurred on a May 09:
1955 Ato Meles
Zenawi, presidente de Etiopía.
1954 Paloma
Díaz Mas, profesora y escritora española.
1934
Alan Bennett, actor-writer.
1924 Bulat Shalvovich
Okudzhava, poeta, novelista y cantautor ruso.
1923
Carlos Bousoño, poeta y filólogo español.
1916 William
du Bois, US author and illustrator of children's books. He died
on 05 February 1993.
1898 Arend
Heyting, Dutch mathematician who died on 09 July 1980. He is
important in the development of intuitionistic logic and algebra.
1891 George
Barker Jeffrey, English mathematician who died on 27 April
1957.
1883 José Ortega y Gasset, Spanish philosopher
and humanist (Revolt of the Masses) who died on 18 October 1955. —
José Ortega y Gasset, escritor y filósofo español.
  1882
Henry John Kaiser, US industrialist who built dams, bridges, Liberty
Ships, Jeeps; aviation, aluminum, steel, magnesium; founder of Hawaii Kai
residential neighborhood in Honolulu. He died on 24 August 1967.
1883
José Ortega y Gasset, escritor y filósofo español.
1881 Mary
Electa Bidwell, [< photos: as a baby, and in 1995 >].
She would die on 25 April 1996.
1881 Carrie Harrison,
who would die on 23 December 1991.
1876 Gilbert
Ames Bliss, Illinois mathematician who died on 08 May 1951.
1873 Howard Carter, Egyptologist who found King Tutankhamen's
tomb.
1860
James Barrie, creator of Peter Pan, in Scotland
^top^
Barrie attended the University of Edinburgh and worked as a reporter
for the Nottingham Journal for two years after college. He moved to
London in 1885 and became a freelance writer. His first collection
of sketches, Auld Licht Idylls, was published in 1888 and
became a success, followed by an account of his newspaper days, When
a Man's Single. He published a collection of stories in 1889
and a bestselling novel, The Little Minister, in 1891, which
was dramatized in 1897, and then Barrie shifted his focus from prose
to drama, enjoying a series of successes. In 1904, he wrote Peter
Pan. Although he wrote many other plays (The Admirable Crichton,
What Every Woman Knows, Dear Brutus), few are still performed
today, and none had the staying power of Peter
Pan (alternatively titled Peter
and Wendy). In 1913, he was made a baronet and in 1922 received
the Order of Merit. He became president of the Society of Authors
in 1928 and Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh in 1930. Barrie
died in London on 19 June 1937.
BARRIE ONLINE:
The
Little White Bird — The
Little White Bird — Margaret
Ogilvy —
Margaret Ogilvy —
Peter and Wendy =
Peter Pan — Peter
Pan in Kensington Gardens — co-author of libretto
of
Jane Annie (multimedia) |
1845 Carl Gustaf Laval, Swedish scientist, engineer and
inventor who died on 02 February 1913. In 1878 he invented the centrifugal
cream separator. Later he applied rotation to the manufacture of bottles.
He built an impulse steam turbine in 1882 and then perfected it. In 1883
he patented a reaction turbine that could reach 42'000 RPM. In 1893 he built
and operated a reversible marine turbine. With his continually improved
turbines, by 1896 he was operating a power plant using an initial steam
pressure of 10 tons per square centimeter. He invented and developed the
divergent nozzle to shoot the steam at the turbine blades. Most later steam
turbines used Laval inventions: the flexible shaft which eliminates wobbling,
and the double helical gear.
1844 Belle Boyd, US
actress and Confederate spy during the Civil War. She died on 11 June 1900.
1843 Anton Alexander von Werner, German painter and illustrator
who died on 04 January 1915. — more
1810 Joseph Banvard, author, in New York City. He was graduated
at Newton theological institute in 1835, and has been pastor of Baptist
Churches in Salem, Boston, and West Cambridge, Massachusetts, New York City,
Pawtucket, Rhode Island, Paterson, New Jersey, and Independence, Missouri.
He was chosen president of the National theological institute and University
at Washington, District of Columbia, but resigned. He has written Priscilla,
a historical tale (1854); Novelties of the New World; The Romance
of American History ; Tragic Scenes in the History of Maryland
(1856) ; The American Statesman, a memoir of Daniel Webster (1853);
Wisdom. Wit, and Whims of the Old Philosophers (1854); Plymouth
and the Pilgrims ; many books for children on natural history, and
a large number of Sunday-school question-books. His brother John, famous
for painting a 370-meter panorama of the Mississippi, was born on 15 November
1815.
1800
John Brown, violent abolitionist, would lead attack
on Harper's Ferry in 1859 ^top^
Brown, born in Connecticut in
1800, first became militant during the mid-1850s, when as a leader
of the Free State forces in the territory of Kansas he fought pro-slavery
settlers, contributing to the sharply divided territory's popular
designation as "Bleeding Kansas." Achieving only moderate success
against slavery on the Kansas frontier, Brown settled on a more ambitious
plan in 1859.
On 16 October
1859 , leading a group of 21 racially mixed followers, Brown set out
to Harpers Ferry ( in present-day West Virginia), intending to seize
the Federal arsenal of weapons and retreat to the Appalachian Mountains
of Maryland and Virginia, where they would establish an abolitionist
republic of liberated slaves and abolitionist whites. Their republic
would form a guerilla army to fight slaveholders and ignite slave
insurrections, and its population would grow exponentially with the
influx of liberated and fugitive slaves. At Harpers Ferry, Brown's
well-trained unit was initially successful, capturing key points in
the town, but Brown's plans began to deteriorate after his raiders
stopped a Baltimore-bound train, and then allowed it to pass through.
News of the raid spread quickly and militia companies from Maryland
and Virginia arrived the next day, killing or capturing several raiders.
On 18 October, US Marines commanded by Colonel Robert E. Lee
and Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart, both of whom were destined to become
famous Confederate generals, recaptured the Federal arsenal, taking
John Brown and several other raiders alive. On 02 November, Brown
was sentenced to death by hanging, and on the day of his execution,
ten months before the outbreak of the Civil War, he prophetically
wrote, "The crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but
with blood."
John Brown of Kansas
was a militant abolitionist who attempted to use force to free the
slaves in the South. On the night of 16 October 1859, Brown and
a small band of followers seized the Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry.
The weapons were to be used by his "army of emancipation."
They took 60 hostages and held out against the local militia, but
were then attacked by US Marines under the command of Col. Robert
E. Lee (who would later command the Confederate Armies). Two of Brown's
sons and ten others were killed in the fighting. Brown was wounded
and taken prisoner. He was tried by the Commonwealth of Virginia and
convicted of treason, murder and inciting slaves to rebellion. He
was sentenced to death and hanged on 02 December 1859. In Charles
Town, Virginia (now West Virginia), militant abolitionist John Brown
is executed on charges of treason, murder, and insurrection.
[click
for reproduction of painting John Brown's Last Moments by
Hovenden] |
1764 Johann Nepomuk Mayrhofer, Austrian artist who died
in 1832.
1746 Gaspard
Monge, French mathematician who died on 28 July 1818. He is
considered the father of differential geometry because of his work Application
de l'analyse à la géométrie where he introduced the concept of lines of
curvature of a surface in 3-space.
1699 Gregorio Mayáns y
Siscar, erudito español.
1638 Gregorio Vásquez de
Arce y Ceballos, pintor colombiano. |
On
a May 09: 
