22 Oct History: This Date

<< Oct 21| HISTORY “4” “2”DAY |Oct 23 >>
Events, deaths, births, of 22 OCT
[For Oct 22 Julian go to Gregorian date: 1582~1699: Nov 01 — 1700s: Nov 02 — 1800s: Nov 03 — 1900~2099: Nov 04]

ALTERNATE SITES ALL FOR 031022 ANY DAY OF THE YEAR IN HISTORY ART “4” OCT 22

On a 22 October:
2002 On 21 October Swiss electrical engineering conglomerate ABB Ltd. said that it is considering Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for a US unit, Combustion Engineering, which is under pressure from mounting asbestos litigation. However, analysts said that they doubt such a move would insulate the wider ABB group from claims. In reporting earnings, ABB also said that it wouldn't make its 5% operating profit margin in 2002, and that its target of a 10% operating margin by 2005 is under review. The news led several banks to lower their recommendations on ABB stock, and Moody's Investors Service cut its rating on ABB debt to Baa3 from Baa2, and warned of further downgrades. The profit warning came as a surprise. Markets were slowly regaining faith in ABB after a new chief executive officer last month pledged to achieve the company's financial goals. Recent divestments of several noncore assets had also brightened sentiment as ABB's debt problem appeared to be under control. While ABB is still confident of trimming debt to $2.6 billion by year's end — from $4.1 billion in 2001 — analysts are increasingly worried that spiraling asbestos costs could again strain ABB's finances. So, on the New York Stock Exchange (ABB is much more activey traded on foreign exchanges), on 21 October 1 million of the 1.2 billion ABB shares are traded, dropping from their previous close of $3.52 to close at $2.50, and today 1.3 million shares are traded, plunging further, to an intraday low of 1.39, and close at $1.51. They had traded as high as $11.60 as recently as 23 November 2001, and $18.58 on 21 May 2001, after starting trading at $16.83 on 02 April 2001.

2002 Gaming software company THQ Inc. (THQI) announced poor earning prospects, at the close of the New York stock markets on 21 October. Today on the NASDAQ, 26 millions of the 40 million THQI are traded, drops from its previous close of $23.17 to an intraday low of $14.60 and closes at $14.80. It had traded as high as $43.40 as recently as 05 December 2001.

2002 The Audubon Society publishes its 2002 Watchlist of 201 bird species whose populations are dangerously low in the United States. One of the species is the California Condor, whose last chick hatched in the wild is found dead today.

2000 Controversial presidential election in Ivory Coast, boycotted by major opposition parties. Only one-third of citizens vote. Junta leader General Robert Guei, in power since December 1999 coup, tries to claim victory, but flees the country on 25 October, in face of popular opposition.
2000 Arab leaders meeting in Egypt conclude a two-day summit the Israeli-Palestinian violence of the al-Aqsa intifada with a declaration that stops short of an call for cutting ties with Israel.
1998 Massimo D'Alema se convierte en el primer ex comunista que dirige un gobierno en Europa Occidental al hacerse con el poder en Italia. uprising backing Laurent Gbagbo, who got over 50% of the votes.
1997 Yahoo completes purchase of Four-11
1997 Compaq testifies that Microsoft threatened to break Windows 95 agreement
1996 Truth Cannot Contradict Truth (On theories of evolution) by Pope John Paul II
1996 General Motors settled a three-week strike with its workers in Canada, resolving a walkout that had idled more than 46,000 workers across North America.
1996 Microsoft launches Expedia, which enables users to find the lowest listed airfares and make plane and hotel reservations. The company hopes to take advantage of the estimated $3 billion in online ticket sales expected by 1999.
1995 El presidente de EE.UU, Bill Clinton, inaugura los actos conmemorativos del cincuentenario de la ONU con la condena a Irán, Irak, Libia y Sudán por apoyar el terrorismo.

1993 Wang's chairman resigns
Michael Mee, chairman and CFO of Wang Laboratories, resigns. Wang, an early pioneer in word processing, had filed for bankruptcy in September 1992, following the death of founder An Wang. The company then emerged from bankruptcy the following year under Mee's leadership, and the company's fortunes continued to brighten despite Mee's departure. In 1995, Microsoft agreed to invest $90 million in Wang Laboratories. Microsoft planned to incorporate Wang's office automation and workflow technology into Microsoft Exchange, a rival to Lotus Notes. Exchange was released later in 1995.

1991 General Motors announces 9 month loss of $2.2 billion
1991 La CE y la Asociación Europea de Libre Comercio constituyen en Luxemburgo un Espacio Económico Europeo, que abarcará a partir del 1 de enero de 1993 a 400 millones de consumidores de los 19 países miembros. — The European Community and the European Free Trade Association concluded a landmark accord to create a free trade zone of 19 nations by 1993.
1989 El presidente del Parlamento húngaro, Matyas Szuros, proclama en Budapest el fin del Estado comunista, implantado en 1948, y anuncia el establecimiento de una nueva legalidad democrática.
1989 Khmer Rouge occupies Pailin in Cambodia
1988 US Congress cracks down on insider trading by doubling the maximum prison term for it to 10 years. The bill also raises the maximum fine for insider trading to $1 million for individuals and $2.5 million for corporations and partnerships. Along with stricter penalties, the new laws made companies responsible for improper trading committed by their employees.

1987 Trans-Americas drive completed
Canadian Garry Sowerby and American Tim Cahill completed the first trans-Americas drive on this day, driving from Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, in a total elapsed time of twenty-three days, twenty-two hours, and forty-three minutes. The pair drove the 23'720-km distance in a 1988 GMC Sierra K3500 4-wheel-drive pickup truck powered by a 6.2-liter V-8 Detroit diesel engine. Only on one occasion did Sowerby and Cahill trust another form of transportation to their sturdy Sierra: the vehicle and team were surface-freighted from Cartagena, Colombia, to Balboa, Panama, so as to bypass the roadless Darien Gap of Colombia and Panama.

1987 Nobel prize for literature awarded to Joseph Brodsky — disidente ruso con nacionalidad estadounidense. — MORE
1986 Reagan signs bill 11 tax brackets and removing millions of low-income people from the tax rolls.
1991 General Motors announces 9 month loss of $2.2 billion
1981 Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization decertified
1981 US national debt exceeds $1 trillion
1981 The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization is decertified by the US federal government for its strike the previous August.
1980 4th govt of Martens forms in Belgium
1980 New South Korean constitution comes into effect

1979 Ousted Iranian Shah arrives in New York
      The US government allows the ousted shah of Iran, Muhammad Reza Pahlevi, to travel to New York City for cancer treatment--a decision that precipitates the Iran hostage crisis. Less than two weeks later, militant Iranian students storm the US embassy in Teheran, demanding the deportation of their former shah back to Iran to stand trial on charges of political repression.
      The Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran's political and religious leader, takes over the hostage situation, refusing all appeals to release the hostages, even after the UN Security Council demands an end to the crisis in an unanimous vote. However, two weeks after the storming of the embassy, the Ayatollah begins to release all non-US captives, and all female and minority Americans, citing these groups as among the people oppressed by the government of the United States. The remaining fifty-two captives remain at the mercy of the Ayatollah for the next fourteen months.
      US President Jimmy Carter is unable to diplomatically resolve the crisis, and on April 24, 1980, he orders a disastrous rescue mission in which eight US military personnel are killed and no hostages are rescued. Three months later, the former shah dies of cancer in Egypt, but the crisis continues. In November of 1980, Carter loses the presidential election to Republican Ronald Reagan, and soon after, with the assistance of Algerian intermediaries, successful negotiations begin between the US and Iran. On the day of Reagan's inauguration, the US frees almost $8 billion in frozen Iranian assets, and the hostages are released after 444 days. The next day, Jimmy Carter flies to West Germany to greet the Americans on their way home.

1979 ETA interrumpe un programa de RTVE para pedir el "sí" al estatuto de Guernica.

1975 La sonda espacial soviética "Venus 9" se posa sobre la superficie del planeta Venus y transmite imágenes de su superficie.

1975 Less-than-honorable discharge from Air Force for homosexual
Air Force Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, is given a "general" discharge by the US Air Force after publicly declaring his homosexuality. Matlovich, who appeared in his Air Force uniform on the cover of Time magazine above the headline "I AM A HOMOSEXUAL," was challenging the ban against homosexuals in the US military. In 1979, after winning a much publized case against the Air Force, his discharge is upgraded to "honorable.” Nine years later, at the age of forty-four, Matlovich dies and is buried at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., with a tombstone that reads: "A gay Vietnam Veteran. When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.”

1973 Security Council Resolution 338--cease fire to the Yom Kippur War
1973 Israeli troops reconquer Mount Hermon
1972 Operation Linebacker I, the bombing of North Vietnam with B-52 bombers, ends. The war in neighboring Cambodia goes from bad to worse.

1972 President Thieu turns down peace proposal
      In Saigon, Henry Kissinger meets with South Vietnamese President Thieu to secure his approval of a proposed cease-fire that had been worked out at the secret peace talks with the North Vietnamese in Paris.
      The proposal presumed a postwar role for the Viet Cong and Thieu rejected the proposed accord point for point and accused the United States of conspiring with China and the Soviet Union to undermine his regime. Kissinger, who had tentatively agreed to initial the draft in Hanoi at the end of the month, cabled President Nixon that Thieu's terms "verge on insanity" and flew home.
      Meanwhile, in the countryside, with a future cease-fire under discussion, both sides in the conflict ordered their forces to seize as much territory as possible and the fighting continued. The Communists hit Bien Hoa airbase with rockets and South Vietnamese commanders in the field reported that the peace talks had no effect on military action. To support the South Vietnamese forces, US B-52 bombers continued to strike Communist positions in an arc north of Saigon, while other US planes flew 220 missions over North Vietnam.

1969 Golpe de estado frustrado en Chile del general Viaux.
1967 Se convocan numerosas manifestaciones contra la guerra de Vietnam en Washington y en otras ciudades del mundo.

1964 Sartre wins and declines Nobel Literature Prize
      Jean-Paul Sartre is awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, which he declines. In his novels, essays, and plays, Sartre advanced the philosophy of existentialism, arguing that each individual must create meaning for his or her own life, because life itself had no innate meaning.
      Sartre studied at the elite École Normale Superieure between 1924 and 1929. He met Simone de Beauvoir, who became his lifelong companion, during this time. The pair spent countless hours in cafés, talking, writing, and drinking coffee. Sartre became a philosophy professor and taught in Le Havre, Laon, and Paris. In 1938, his first novel, Nausea, was published-the narrative took the form of a diary of a café-haunting intellectual. In 1939, he was drafted into World War II, taken prisoner, and held for about a year; he later fought with the French Resistance. In 1943, he published one of his key works, L'Être et le Néant, where he argued that man is condemned to freedom and has a social responsibility. Sartre and Beauvoir engaged in social movements, supporting communism and the radical student uprisings in Paris in 1968.
      Also in 1943, he wrote one of his best-known plays, The Flies, followed by Huis Clos in 1945. In 1945, he began a four-volume novel called The Roads to Freedom but gave up the novel form after finishing the third volume in 1949. In 1946, he continued to develop his philosophy in Existentialism and Humanism. In the 1950s and 60s, he devoted himself to studies of literary figures like Baudelaire, Jean Genet, and Flaubert. The Family Idiot, his work on Flaubert, was massive, but only three of four volumes were published. Sartre's health and vision declined in his later years, and he died in 1980.
— MORE

1963 225'000 students boycott Chicago schools in Freedom Day protest

1962 Kennedy announces blockade of Cuba during the Missile Crisis
     During the day preparation are made to be ready for any Soviet or Cuban reaction to the address to the nation that US President Kennedy is scheduled to make at 19:00. The State Department informs US allies of Kennedy's decision. US Senate leaders are called in for a special briefing. Almost 300 Navy ships set sail, not yet having received specific orders for a quarantine. In Guantanamo Bay, three Marine battalions arrive to reinforce the base and military dependents are evacuated. Military alert is raised to DEFCON 3 and instructions are given to be ready to launch missiles within minutes of the President's speech. Twenty planes armed with nuclear bombs are in the air ready to strike the USSR.
      In a dramatic 17-minute televised address to the US public, President John F. Kennedy announces that the Soviet Union has placed nuclear weapons in Cuba and, in response, the United States will establish a blockade around the island to prevent any other offensive weapons from entering Castro's state. Kennedy also warned the Soviets that any nuclear attack from Cuba would be construed as an act of war, and that the United States would retaliate in kind.
      Kennedy charged the Soviet Union with subterfuge and outright deception in what he referred to as a "clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace.” He dismissed Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko's claim that the weapons in Cuba were of a purely defensive nature as "false.” Harking back to efforts to contain German, Italian, and Japanese aggression in the 1930s, Kennedy argued that war-like behavior, "if allowed to grow unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war.”
      The president outlined a plan of action that called for a naval blockade to enforce a "strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba.” He also issued a warning to the Soviets that the United States would retaliate against them if there was a nuclear attack from Cuba, and placed the US military in the Western Hemisphere on a heightened state of alert. Kennedy called upon the Organization of American States (an organization formed by the United States and Latin American nations in 1948 to help resolve hemispheric disputes) and the United Nations to help resolve the issue. Finally, he made a personal plea to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to cease his "reckless" course of action. Khrushchev, he stated, "has an opportunity now to move the world back from the abyss of destruction.”
      The world was now poised at the brink of a nuclear conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. In America, many citizens began building or replenishing bomb shelters, waiting anxiously to see what the Soviet response to Kennedy's speech would be. Kennedy and Khrushchev would agree on 28 October on a formula to end the crisis.
     In a televised speech of extraordinary gravity, President John F. Kennedy announces that US spy planes have discovered Soviet missile bases in Cuba. These missile sites--under construction but nearing completion--housed medium-range missiles capable of striking a number of major cities in the United States, including Washington DC. Kennedy announced that he was ordering a naval "quarantine" of Cuba to prevent Soviet ships from transporting any more offensive weapons to the island and explained that the United States would not tolerate the existence of the missile sites currently in place. The president made it clear that America would not stop short of military action to end what he called a "clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace."
      What is known as the Cuban Missile Crisis actually began on 15 October 1962--the day that US intelligence personnel analyzing U-2 spy plane data discovered that the Soviets were building medium-range missile sites in Cuba. The next day, President Kennedy secretly convened an emergency meeting of his senior military, political, and diplomatic advisers to discuss the ominous development. The group became known as ExCom, short for Executive Committee. After rejecting a surgical air strike against the missile sites, ExCom decided on a naval quarantine and a demand that the bases be dismantled and missiles removed. On the night of 22 October, Kennedy went on national television to announce his decision. During the next six days, the crisis escalated to a breaking point as the world tottered on the brink of nuclear war between the two superpowers. At 19:00, precisely as Kennedy begins his speech, jet fighters took off from bases in Florida and headed south towards Cuba. If Castro decides to respond militarily, they will be ready.
     Earlier in the day, Kennedy had sent to Khrushchev a copy of his speech. Khrushchev became angry with his military for not successfully hiding the missiles and he was infuriated by the US “quarantine” which, no matter what they called it, was a blockade, an act of war. Khrushchev's first response was to instruct the ships on their way to Cuba not to stop. Later that night, Khrushchev sends a response to Kennedy:
      I must say frankly that the measures indicated in your statement constitute a serious threat to peace and to the security of nations... We reaffirm that the armaments which are in Cuba, regardless of the classification to which they may belong, are intended solely for defensive purposes... I hope the United States Government will display wisdom and renounce the actions pursued by you, which may lead to catastrophic consequences for world peace.
     Castro mobilized all of Cuba's military forces. The Cubans, however, were not surprised by Kennedy, for, ever since the failed invasion of the Bay of Pigs, eighteen months earlier, the Cubans had been living under a constant fear of invasion.
     On 23 October, the quarantine of Cuba began, but Kennedy decided to give Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev more time to consider the US action by pulling the quarantine line back 500 miles. By 24 October, Soviet ships en route to Cuba capable of carrying military cargoes appeared to have slowed down, altered, or reversed their course as they approached the quarantine, with the exception of one ship--the tanker Bucharest. At the request of more than 40 nonaligned nations, UN Secretary-General U Thant sent private appeals to Kennedy and Khrushchev, urging that their governments "refrain from any action that may aggravate the situation and bring with it the risk of war." At the direction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, US military forces went to DEFCON 2, the highest military alert ever reached in the postwar era, as military commanders prepared for full-scale war with the Soviet Union.
      On 25 October, the aircraft carrier USS Essexand the destroyer USS Gearing attempted to intercept the Soviet tanker Bucharest as it crossed over the US quarantine of Cuba. The Soviet ship failed to cooperate, but the US Navy restrained itself from forcibly seizing the ship, deeming it unlikely that the tanker was carrying offensive weapons. On 26 October, Kennedy learned that work on the missile bases was proceeding without interruption, and ExCom considered authorizing a US invasion of Cuba. The same day, the Soviets transmitted a proposal for ending the crisis: The missile bases would be removed in exchange for a US pledge not to invade Cuba.
      The next day, however, Khrushchev upped the ante by publicly calling for the dismantling of US missile bases in Turkey under pressure from Soviet military commanders. While Kennedy and his crisis advisers debated this dangerous turn in negotiations, a U-2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba, and its pilot, Major Rudolf Anderson, was killed. To the dismay of the Pentagon, Kennedy forbid a military retaliation unless any more surveillance planes were fired upon over Cuba. To defuse the worsening crisis, Kennedy and his advisers agreed to dismantle the US missile sites in Turkey but at a later date, in order to prevent the protest of Turkey, a key NATO member.
      On 28 October, Khrushchev announced his government's intent to dismantle and remove all offensive Soviet weapons in Cuba. With the airing of the public message on Radio Moscow, the USSR confirmed its willingness to proceed with the solution secretly proposed by the Americans the day before. In the afternoon, Soviet technicians began dismantling the missile sites, and the world stepped back from the brink of nuclear war. The Cuban Missile Crisis was effectively over. In November, Kennedy called off the blockade, and by the end of the year all the offensive missiles had left Cuba. Soon after, the United States quietly removed its missiles from Turkey.
      The Cuban Missile Crisis seemed at the time a clear victory for the United States, but Cuba emerged from the episode with a much greater sense of security. A succession of US administrations have honored Kennedy's pledge not to invade Cuba, and the communist island nation situated just 130 km from Florida remains a thorn in the side of US foreign policy. The removal of antiquated Jupiter missiles from Turkey had no detrimental effect on US nuclear strategy, but the Cuban Missile Crisis convinced a humiliated USSR to commence a massive nuclear buildup. In the 1970s, the Soviet Union reached nuclear parity with the United States and built intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of striking any city in the United States.

1961 75'000 Flemings demand equal rights and Flemish language in Belgium
1957 Conrad Adenauer re-elected chancellor of West-Germany

1957 First US casualties in Vietnam
US military personnel suffer their first casualties in the war when 13 Americans are wounded in three terrorist bombings of Military Assistance Advisory Group and US Information Service installations in Saigon. The rising tide of guerrilla activity in South Vietnam reached an estimated 30 terrorist incidents by the end of the year and at least 75 local officials were assassinated or kidnapped in the last quarter of 1957.

1956. Budapest se soulève contre l'occupant soviétique.
     Les étudiants hongrois suivent l'exemple des Polonais (comme plus tard dans les années 1970-1980). Encouragés par la publication du rapport de Nikita Khrouchtchev au XXe Congrès du Parti communiste d'URSS, ces derniers ont obtenu, deux jours plus tôt, le retour au pouvoir du réformiste Gomulka.
     Les Hongrois réclament à leur tour le retour à la présidence du Conseil d'Imre Nagy , un communiste modéré qui avait été expulsé du pouvoir pour avoir dénoncé la stalinisation et les abus du régime. Ils placardent des tracts à Budapest.
     Dans un premier temps, les Soviétiques, qui dominent la Hongrie comme le reste de l'Europe de l'Est, s'inclinent. L'ambassadeur d'URSS, Youri Andropov qui prendra brièvement la tête du pays dans les années 80, accepte le retour d'Imre Nagy.
     Mais très vite, celui-ci est entraîné par le mouvement populaire plus loin que prévu dans la voie de la démocratie. Il annonce le retrait de la Hongrie du pacte de Varsovie. C'est plus que les Soviétiques n'en peuvent supporter. Dès le 4 novembre, leurs troupes investissent la capitale. La répression fait 200'000 morts tandis que les Occidentaux restent l'arme au pied, empêtrés par ailleurs dans l'affaire du canal de Suez et la guerre égypto-israélienne.
     La révolution avortée de Budapest est la première déchirure dans le voile qui cache le caractère féroce des régimes communistes. C'est aussi le début d'un processus de désintégration qui s'achèvera une génération plus tard.
     En Occident, un certain nombre de militants communistes perdent leurs illusions sur le parti qu'ils avaient rejoint à la faveur de la lutte contre les nazis.

1956 France intercept Moroccan plane, arrest Ben Bella
1956 Julio Lozano Díaz, presidente de Honduras, es derrocado.
1955 The prototype of the F-105 Thunder Chief makes its maiden flight. Republic Aircraft's F-105 Thunderchief, better known as the 'Thud,' would be the Air Force's warhorse in Vietnam.
1954 West Germany joins North Atlantic Treaty Organization
1954 As a result of the Geneva accords granting Communist control over North Vietnam, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorizes a crash program to train the South Vietnamese Army.
1953 Laos gains full independence from France

1952 The complete Jewish Torah is published in English for the first time. A collection of oral and written commentary (dating 200 BC to AD 500) on the first five books of the Old Testament, the Torah comprises the basic religious code of Judaism.
     Torah, in the broadest sense, is the substance of divine revelation to Israel, the Jewish people: God's revealed teaching or guidance for mankind.
      The meaning of "Torah" is often restricted to signify the first five books of the Old Testament, also called the Law or the Pentateuch. These are the books traditionally ascribed to Moses, the recipient of the original revelation from God on Mt. Sinai. Jewish, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant canons all agree on their order: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The written Torah, in the restricted sense of the Pentateuch, is preserved in all Jewish synagogues on handwritten parchment scrolls in Hebrew that reside inside the ark of the Law. They are removed and returned to their place with special reverence. Readings from the Torah (Pentateuch) form an important part of Jewish liturgical services.
      The term Torah is also used to designate the entire Hebrew Bible. Since for some Jews the laws and customs passed down through oral traditions are part and parcel of God's revelation to Moses and constitute the "oral Torah," Torah is also understood to include both the Oral Law and the Written Law. Rabbinic commentaries on and interpretations of both Oral and Written Law have been viewed by some as extensions of sacred oral tradition, thus broadening still further the meaning of Torah to designate the entire body of Jewish laws, customs, and ceremonies

1951 Se firma en Londres el protocolo de entrada de Grecia y Turquía en la OTAN.
1948 Egyptian flagship King Farouk sunk by Israel
1948 El PCE (Partido Comunista de España) y el Partido Socialista Unificado de Cataluña (PSUC) abandonan la lucha armada.

1944 Vice-admiral Kurita's fleet leaves North-Borneo
1944 Comienza la batalla naval de Leyte, crucial en el desarrollo de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, que duró cinco días y en la que EE.UU. destruyó el poder naval japonés.
1940 Se producen conversaciones entre Adolf Hitler y su títere francés Pierre Laval en Montoire.

1938 The first xerographic copy is made by Chester Floyd Carlson on this day in 1938 in Astoria, Queens, New York. Carlson makes the copy by pressing wax paper against an electrostatically-charged, sulfur-coated zinc plate covered with fine, dark powder. The paper that was copied read "10-22-38, Astoria.” Carlson worked in the patent department of an electronics firm and was frustrated by the difficulty of making copies of patent drawings. He investigated various processes and developed xerography after four years of experiments. He patented the process in 1940 but failed to interest companies in producing copy machines until 1947, when the Haloid Company of Rochester, New York, licensed the process. The company, which later changed its name to Xerox, introduced its first copy machine in 1958.

1937 El general Alberto Enríquez Gallo sucede a Páez en la presidencia de Ecuador.
1936 Se dan cita en la ciudad de Valencia para representar la solidaridad de la intelectualidad francesa en la lucha contra el fascismo Louis Aragon, Elsa Triolet y dos escritores alemanes.

1936 First tests of the Volkswagen car
      In 1934, German automaker Ferdinand Porsche submitted a design proposal to Adolf Hitler's new German Reich government, calling for the construction of a small, simple, and reliable car that would be affordable enough for the average German. Only about one in fifty Germans owned cars at the time, and the motor industry had only a minor significance in Germany's economy. Nazi propagandists immediately embraced the idea, coining "Volkswagen," which translates as "people's car," at an automobile show later in the year. Hitler himself hoped the "people's car" would achieve the kind of popularity in Germany as Ford's Model T had in the United States, and began calling the Volkswagen the "Strength Through Joy" car. Porsche received a development budget from the Reich's motor industry association, and began working on the Volkswagen immediately. Porsche completed the first prototype in secret in October of 1935.
      The simple, beetle-shaped automobile was sturdily constructed with a kind of utilitarian user-friendliness scarcely seen in an automobile before. On this day in 1936, the first test-drives of the Volkswagen vehicle began, and employees drove the VW 3-series model over 800 kilometers a day, making any necessary repairs at night. After three months of vigorous testing, Porsche and his engineers concluded, in their final test verdict, that the Volkswagen "demonstrated characteristics which warrant further development.”
      In 1938, the first Volkswagen in its final form was unveiled, a 38-series model that the New York Times mockingly referred to as a "Beetle.” However, the outbreak of World War II prevented mass-production of the automobile, and the newly constructed Volkswagen factory turned to war production, constructing various military vehicles for the duration of the conflict. After the war, the Allies approved the continuation of the original Volkswagen program, and, under the leadership of Heinrich Nordhoff in the late 1940s and 1950s, sales of the Volkswagen Beetle began to take off. In the 1960s and early 1970s, sales of the compact Volkswagen Beetle worried even America's largest automakers, as the Third Reich's simple people's car became a popular symbol of the growing American counterculture.

1932 Charles de Broqueville becomes premier of Belgium
1931 La Sociedad de Naciones exige a Japón que abandone los territorios chinos ocupados.
1929 James H Scullin forms Australian government
1929 French government of Briand falls — En Francia cae el gobierno de Aristide Briand.
1928 China expels all Russian instructors and civil servants
1928 Republican presidential nominee Herbert Hoover spoke of the "American system of rugged individualism" in a speech at New York's Madison Square Garden
1922 Dimite el Gobierno italiano y el rey encarga a Benito Mussolini formar Gabinete, lo que da origen a la dictadura fascista.
1918 The cities of Baltimore and Washington run out of coffins during the "Spanish Influenza" epidemic.
1916 Former Secretary of War William H. Crawford takes the oath to become US Secretary of the Treasury on this day, replacing Albert Gallatin, who becomes ambassador to France.
1914 The US Congress passes the Revenue Act on 22 October 1914, mandating the first tax on incomes over $3000, to compensate for lower customs revenue as a result of the protectionist Underwood-Simmons Act,
1911 Se restablecen las garantías constitucionales en toda España.
1907 Ringling Brothers Greatest Show on Earth buys Barnum & Bailey.
1906 3000 blacks demonstrate & riot in Philadelphia
1899 British troops flee Dundee, Natal South Africa
1885 Un dictamen arbitral del papa León XIII, reconoce el derecho de posesión de España sobre las Carolinas frente a las pretensiones alemanas hacia estas islas del Pacífico.
1884 General Gordon receives letter of Mahdi
1867 Giuseppe Garibaldi, que había logrado reunir un ejército con ayuda extraoficial, traspasa la frontera de los Estados Pontificios con el propósito de culminar la unificación italiana.
1864 Battle of Byram's Ford, Missouri. Confederate General Sterling Price's month-old raid on Missouri pushes aside a small Union force attached to General Samuel Curtis's army. But the rest of Curtis's men waits at Westport to the northwest, where Price would engage battle the next day, with Yankee cavalry under Alfred Pleasonton moving in on him from the southeast.

1864 A bridge too few for Hood's Rebs at Guntersville, Alabama.         ^top^
      Confederate General John Bell Hood pulls his battered army into Guntersville, Alabama, but finds the Tennessee River difficult to cross. Plotting another attack against the Yankees, he continues traveling westward with his defeated army. Hood's Army of Tennessee had been having a difficult time in the previous months. Hood became commander in July 1864 as the army was pinned inside of Atlanta by Union General William T. Sherman. Hood made a series of desperate attacks to drive the Yankees away, but failed and nearly destroyed his force. After holding Sherman off for a month, Hood was forced to evacuate Atlanta to the south. After Union troops captured the city, Hood moved his force west and attacked Sherman's supply line, which ran from Chattanooga, Tennessee, 160 km northwest of Atlanta. On 05 October, Union troops held off the Confederates at Allatoona, Georgia. Over the next two weeks, Hood did capture parts of Sherman's supply line and forced the Union general to move back toward Chattanooga to take on Hood. Hood hoped to draw Sherman into battle, but his own generals were unanimously opposed to such a move. A shocked Hood consented to their opinion, though, and he headed into Alabama before Sherman arrived.
      Hood had no intention of retreating for long. Although his army was demoralized after Atlanta, Hood still hoped to draw Sherman from Georgia. He planned an invasion of Union-held Tennessee, where he hoped he could recapture Chattanooga and Nashville. But now Hood, usually confident and determined, began to show signs of confusion and timidity. On 22 October Hood's army marched from Gadsden to Guntersville to cross the mighty Tennessee River. Unfortunately, Hood forgot to retrieve his army's pontoon bridge, which lay across the Coosa River in eastern Alabama. Hood's superior officer, General Pierre G.T. Beauregard, sent the bridge to Guntersville but arrived to find that the army was gone. Hood had continued west past Decatur, Alabama, before finally crossing the Tennessee at Courtland. The move took the Rebels more than 80 km out of their way and made a surprise attack on the state of Tennessee unlikely. When Hood did move into Tennessee, Sherman's force was ready and waiting. In November and December, Hood nearly destroyed the remnants of his army at the Battles of Franklin and Nashville.

1862 Confederate troops reconquer Cumberland Gap, Tennessee
1862 Skirmish at Old Fort Wayne, Indian Territory (now Oklahoma)
1862 Union troops push 5000 confederates out of Maysbille, Ark., at the Second Battle of Pea Ridge.
1861 1st telegraph line linking US West & East coasts completed
1859 Spain declares war on the Moors in Morocco.
1844 The "Great Disappointment" begins when this latest date, a Saturday, set for "The Day of Atonement" (the return of Christ) by Baptist lay preacher William Miller, passes without event. Over 100'000 disillusioned followers return to their former churches, abandon the Christian faith altogether, or form various new groups, including the Seventh-Day Adventists. Miller retained his faith in Christ's imminent return until his death, blamed human mistakes in Bible chronologies for his failed prediction.
1836 Sam Houston sworn in as the first president of the Republic of Texas.
1824 The Tennessee Legislature adjourns ending Davy Crockett's state political career. Crockett would die at the siege of the Alamo in 1836

1812 Conspiration échouée montre la fragilité du régime de Napoléon.
Tandis que Napoléon 1er et la Grande Armée sont embourbés dans la campagne de Russie, un intrigant, le général Claude François de Malet, s'échappe d'une clinique où il était gardé pour s'être compromis dans un complot républicain contre l'empereur. Il se présente en uniforme à la caserne de la garde nationale Popincourt en annonçant la mort de l'empereur. Ses complices arrêtent le préfet de police et le ministre de la police, Savary. Ils se préparent à former un gouvernement provisoire. La conspiration échoue en quelques heures et quatorze comparses seront rapidement fusillés. En dépit de son échec, la conspiration révèle la fragilité du régime. Et l'empereur peut constater avec affliction que nul n'a songé que son fils, le Roi de Rome, devait normalement lui succéder à l'annonce de sa mort.

1797 The first parachutist         ^top^
      The first parachute jump of note is made by André-Jacques Garnerin from a hydrogen balloon 1000 meters above Paris.
      Leonardo da Vinci conceived the idea of the parachute in his writings, and the Frenchman Louis-Sébastien Lenormand fashioned a kind of parachute out of two umbrellas and jumped from a tree in 1783, but André-Jacques Garnerin was the first to design and test parachutes capable of slowing a man's fall from a high altitude.
      Garnerin first conceived of the possibility of using air resistance to slow an individual's fall from a high altitude while a prisoner during the French Revolution. Although he never employed a parachute to escape from the high ramparts of the Hungarian prison where he spent three years, Garnerin never lost interest in the concept of the parachute. In 1797, he completed his first parachute, a canopy 23 feet in diameter and attached to a basket with suspension lines.
      On 22 October 1797, Garnerin attaches the parachute to a hydrogen balloon and ascends to an altitude of 1000 meters. He then climbs into the basket and severs the parachute from the balloon. As he failed to include an air vent at the top of the prototype, Garnerin oscillated wildly in his descent, but he landed shaken but unhurt 800 meters from the balloon's takeoff site. In 1799, Garnerin's wife, Jeanne-Genevieve, became the first female parachutist. In 1802, Garnerin made a spectacular jump from 2400 meters during an exhibition in England. He died in a balloon accident in 1823 while preparing to test a new parachute.

1721 Czar Peter the Great becomes "Emperor of All Russias".
1439 Juan II, Rey de Castilla y Leon, firma el acuerdo de Castronuño por el que su favorito, Álvaro de Luna, vuelve a ser desterrado.
1335 Ex-emperor Hanazono becomes a Zen priest
0451 During the Fifth Session of the Council of Chalcedon, the final form of the Chalcedonian Creed was drafted. It became the Early Church's highest and most enduring "definition" of the person and work of Jesus Christ.
--2136 -BC- Chinese make 1st record of a solar eclipse
--4004 -BC- Universe created at 20:00 UT, according to the 1650 pronouncement of Anglican archbishop James Ussher

TO THE TOP

Deaths which occurred on a 22 October:
2002 California Condor, found dead in the Los Padres National Forest, California. It is the third and last hatched in the wild (end of May 2002) since 1982 when there were only 22 California Condors left in the world. Hatchings in captivity have increased the number to 201 as of this date, 75 of them in the wild. The California Condor is one of the 201 species of birds on the Audubon Societies Watchlist published today. [the dead condor youngster watched over by its father >]
2002 Conrad Johnson, 35, in surgery, a couple of hours after being shot with a single bullet from high-powered .233 caliber rifle “X”, of which he is the 13th victim, just before 06:00 as he stood on the steps of the city bus he was about to drive, at a staging area near an apartment building and wooded area along Connecticut Avenue in Aspen Hills, Maryland, 25 km north-by-northwest of downtown Washington DC. The 12th victim of “rifle X”, and the third to survive, is a 37-year-old man who was critically wounded in the abdomen on 18 October 2002 in Virginia. The first victim was killed on 02 October 2002. Since then intense publicity and immense but ineffective law enforcement activity has resulted in much anxiety and disruption of daily life in DC and neighboring areas of Maryland and Virginia.
2002 All 44 crew members and 7 passengers aboard ferry Mercury II of CASPAR shipping company, which sinks in Caspian Sea on its way from Aktau, Kazakhstan, to Baku, Azerbaijan.
2002 German woman tourist, 24, by crocodile, at 23:30 in the Sandy Billabong (water hole) in the Kakadu National Park, south of Jabiru, Northern Territories, Australia. She among seven tourists, including her sister, in an aventure tour of the outback who went swimming under a full moon, disregarding signs warning of crocodiles and prohibiting swimming. The crocodile, with the woman still in its jaws, would be located and killed 2 km away, at dawn the next morning.
2002 Jodie Cearns, 35, at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, to which she had been evacuated after the 12 October 2002 explosion and fire at the Sari Club in Bali, in which she suffered horrendous burns, lost her right eye, had her foot and pelvis broken. In the hospital her left leg had to be amputated and she needed a machine to help her breathe. She dies late at night, a few hours after undergoing emergency surgery.
2001 “More than 100 patients and doctors martyred in a 100-bed hospital in Herat, Afghanistan, bombed by American and British jets,” according to the Taliban. The UK has aircraft that are assisting the US by refueling and reconnaissance, but no strike aircraft in this mission. The Taliban does not allow independent reporters, but belatedly the Pentagon admits that some of its bombs have malfunctioned including one that hit a military hospital within a military compound in Herat.
2001 Ayman Khaliwa, as his car explodes in the evening next to the al-Najakh University in the West Bank city of Nablus. Three other Palestinians are injured. Khaliwa, a Hamas activist, appeared on an Israeli "most-wanted" list of ten Palestinians on suspicion of being involved in several suicide bombings including the 01 June 2001 attack at the Dolphinarium in Tel Aviv in which 21 Israelis were killed, the 20 May 2001 attack at the Netanya shopping center in which 5 Israelis were killed, and an attack at Neve Yamin in which two high school students were killed. Israel had asked the Palestinian Authority on several occasions to arrest him.
2001 Yusuf Ayish, 37, Palestinian from the Artis village near Bethlehem, shot repeatedly by an Israeli soldier who happened to be nearby, as Ayish was reloading his handgun after shooting first his former employer at an auto mechanics shop and then three passers-by (all four were only wounded) in the Talpiot industrial area in south Jerusalem. Ramin Rosenblatt, a 20-year-old soldier who was at the site, ran toward the gunman and ordered him to halt. "He stopped, turned and aimed his weapon toward a person who was near him. I fired one bullet that hit him in the leg and stopped him. Then I fired several more shots until he was dead," Rosenblatt said.
2001 Nidal Alian, 19, Palestinian, from injuries sustained on 20 October in an Israeli missile attack against a building in downtown Bethlehem.
2001 Joseph P. Curseen, 47, of respiratory anthrax, 6 hours after he arrived in the morning at Southern Maryland Hospital Center in Clinton in the morning with flu-like symptoms and respiratory distress. He was a postal worker at the Brentwood facility serving the Washington DC area, through which had passed a letter containing anthrax spores that was opened that was opened on 15 October 2001 in Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) and led the House of Representatives to an unprecedented closing-down from 17 to 23 October 2001 (while the Senate bravely continued work). The blowers the postal system uses to clear the dust from its automatic sorting machines are suspected of spreading the spores.
2000 Joseph Land, 40, dragged several hundred meters tied to pickup truck by Robert E. Freed, 45, whom he had just met in a bar, in Lewiston, Pennsylvania. Both drunk.
2000 Máximo Casado, funcionario de prisiones, asesinado en Vitoria por ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna).

1999 Carla June Hochhalter, 48, suicide, mother of crippled Columbine victim.
Hochhalter asks to see a .38-caliber handgun in the Alpha Pawn Shop in Englewood, a Denver suburb near Littleton, in the morning. She loads it with bullets she apparently brought with her and shoots herself in the right temple.
Her daughter, Anne Marie, survived the 20 April 1999 massacre at Columbine High School but was paralyzed from the waist down. She had begun to regain some movement in her legs, and the family was preparing to move into a new home equipped for her wheelchair.

1996 Thirty-four persons, as a flaming Boeing 707 jet slices through dozens of homes minutes after takeoff from Ecuador's Manta airport.
1995 Simone Gallimard, 77, publisher
1995 Ralph Whitlock, 81, writer
1995 Kingsley Amis, 73, author, of injuries from a fall
1994 Harold Horace Hopkins, 75, inventor (Endoscope)
1990 Louis Althusser, filósofo marxista y escritor francés.
1986 Albert Szent-Györgyi, 93, bio-chemist (Vitamin C, Nobel 1937). — MORE ON HIS NOBEL PRIZE
1979 Reinhold Baer, mathematician
1977 Beniamino Segre, mathematician
1975 Arnold Toynbee, 86, English historian/cultural sociologist.
1973 Pau Casals Defillo, en San Juan de Puerto Rico, violoncelista, compositor y director de orquesta catalán y autor, entre otras muchas composiciones famosas, del Himno de las Naciones Unidas. — Spanish cellist, conductor and composer Pablo Casals, 96, died in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico.
1970 René Schneider, Chilean general/supreme commander, murdered
1966 Hewlett Johnson, Red Dean of Canterbury
1965 Paul Tillich, German/US Theologian (Courage To Be)
1965 Dipa Nusantara Aidit, 42, Indonesian leader (PKI 1951-65), murdered

1965 Milton Lee Olive III, shielding 4 from grenade explosion
In action near Phu Cuong, about 35 miles northwest of Saigon, PFC Olive of Company B, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry, throws himself on an enemy grenade and saves four soldiers, including his platoon leader, 1st Lt. James Sanford. The action came during a patrol that made contact with Communist forces on the southern fringes of the infamous "Iron Triangle," a traditional Communist stronghold. Private Olive's body absorbed the full, deadly blast of the grenade and he died saving his comrades. Lieutenant Sanford later said of Olive's act that "It was the most incredible display of selfless bravery I ever witnessed.” Olive, a native of Chicago, was only 18 years old when he died; he received the Medal of Honor posthumously six months later. The city of Chicago honored its fallen hero by naming a junior college, a lakefront park, and a portion of the McCormick Place convention center after him

1941 Louis Casimir Ladislas Marcoussis (originally Markus), Polish French Cubist painter and printmaker born on 14 November 1883. — more with links to two images.

1934 Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd, 30, shot in the back by FBI
     Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd is shot in the back by FBI agents as he attempts to run, in a cornfield in East Liverpool, Ohio. Famed agent Melvin Purvis asked the dying man, "Are you Pretty Boy Floyd?" to which he replied, "I am Charles Arthur Floyd. You got me this time.” Floyd, who had been a hotly pursued fugitive for four years, used his last breath to deny his involvement in the infamous Kansas City Massacre, in which four officers were shot to death at a train station. Over a twelve-year period he had robbed as many as thirty banks, and killed at least ten men.
     The notorious bank robber and folk hero is fatally shot by Federal agents near a farm in East Liverpool, Ohio. Floyd, who grew up in a small farming community in Oklahoma, entered a life of crime at the age of 18. The young criminal was soon convicted for armed robbery of a St. Louis payroll delivery and sent to the Jefferson City Penitentiary for three years.
     After being paroled in 1929, he learned that Jim Mills had shot his father to death. Since Mills, who had been acquitted of the charges, was never heard from or seen again, Floyd was believed to have killed him.
      Floyd moved to Kansas City, Missouri, and found work in organized crime as a hired gun. During this period a Kansas City madam gave him the nickname "Pretty Boy", which he hated. “Pretty Boy" Floyd soon went into business on his own, and over a twelve-year period he robbed as many as thirty banks, and killed at least ten men. The well-groomed Floyd became a folk hero to the people of Oklahoma, who believed him a "Sagebush Robin Hood" who stole from the wealthy banks to help the poor.
     Along with a couple of friends he had met in prison, he robbed several banks in Missouri and Ohio, but was eventually caught in Ohio and sentenced to 15 years. On the way to prison, Floyd kicked out a window and jumped from the speeding train. He made it to Toledo, where he hooked up with Bill "The Killer" Miller.
     The two went on a crime spree across several states until Miller was killed in a spectacular firefight in Bowling Green, Kentucky, in 1931. Once he was back in Kansas City, Floyd killed a federal agent during a raid and became a nationally known criminal figure. This time he escaped to the backwoods of Oklahoma. The locals there, reeling from the Depression, were not about to turn in an Oklahoma native for robbing banks. They considered him a "Sagebush Robin Hood". Even the Joads, characters in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, spoke well of Floyd. However, Oklahoma's governor put out a $6000 bounty on his head.
      On June 17, 1933, law enforcement officials were ambushed by a machine-gun attack in the "Union Station Massacre" in Kansas City, while transporting underworld figure Frank "Gentleman" Nash to prison, Five men, including an FBI agent, were killed,. Although it was not clear whether or not Floyd was responsible, both the FBI and the nation's press pegged the crime on him and pursued him and his associates in an intensive national manhunt.

1932 Anna Dickinson, just a week shy of her 90th birthday
1919 Bruce F Cummings, 30, English author (Enjoying Life)
1913 263 mine workers in explosion at Dawson NM coal mine
1906 Paul Cézanne, French painter born on 19 January 1839. — MORE ON CÉZANNE AT ART “4” OCTOBER with links to images.
1903 Tom Horn, 43, hanged in Wyoming, officially (on flimsy evidence) for the murder of Willie Nickell, 14, son of a southern Wyoming sheep rancher, but more likely for the many murders he had committed previously as a hired killer for the Wyoming Cattlemen's Association in their war against of small farmers, sheep ranchers, and rustlers who were resisting their domination.
1902 John Faed, Scottish painter born in 1820. — MORE ON FAED AT ART “4” OCTOBER with links to images.
1900 Anders Monsen Askevold, Norwegian artist born on 25 December 1834.
1882 János Arany, Hungarian poet (Toldi Szerelme).
1828 José Prudencio Padilla López, primer almirante colombiano.
1818 Joachim H Campe, 72, German theory/author
1763 Frans van Mieris II, Dutch historian and painter artist born on 24 December 1689 — nephew of Jan van Mieris [1660-1690], son of Willem van Mieris [03 Jun 1662 – 27 Jan 1747], grandson of Frans van Mieris the Elder [16 Apr 1635 – 12 Mar 1681]
1725 Pietro Alessandro Gaspare Scarlatti, 65, composer,
1383 Ferdinand I, the wise, king of Portugal
1035 Sancho III, rey de Navarra.
0996 Hugues Capet (date présumée). Il est inhumé à Saint-Denis. Son fils, Robert le Pieux, a été sacré roi du vivant de son père dès le 30 décembre 987. Le nom de ce premier des Carolingiens sera par dérision donné comme un nom de famille roturière à Louis XVI pendant la Révolution.
0741 Charles Martel of Gaul, 63, at Quiezy. His mayoral power is divided between his two sons, Pepin III and Carloman. -- Il décéde à Quierzy et sera inhumé à Saint-Denis. S'il n'a pas été roi, Charles Martel, avec son fils Carloman, est à l'origine d'une dynastie

Births which occurred on a 22 October:
1939, Joaquim Chissano, president of Mozambique (1986- )
1938 The photocopier is invented by Chester Carlson. He tries to sell the machine to IBM, RCA, Kodak and others, but they see no use for a gadget that makes nothing but copies
1925 Robert Rauschenberg US, painter (Gloria) — Original name Miston Rauschenberg. US painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the Pop art movement. — MORE ON RAUSCHENBERG AT ART “4” OCTOBER with links to images.
1921 Georges Brassens, French poet/cabaret singer
1920 Timothy Leary Harvard prof, American psychologist who experimented with psychedelic drugs (including "acid"). He said: "There are three side effects of 'acid'. Enchanced long term memory, decreased short term memory, and I forget the third.” .
1919 Doris Lessing, British novelist (Children of Violence, Golden Notebook) 1919 - Doris Lessing (Taylor) (novelist: Children of Violence, African Stories)
1918, René de Obaldia, French writer/screenwriter (Fugue … Waterloo)
1915 Harry Hickox Big Springs Tx, (Herb-Please Don't Eat the Daisies)
1913 Bao Dai, last emperor of Vietnam
1907 Chowla, mathematician
1907 Henriette Wyeth, 1st lady of american art
1906 Sidney Kingsley, author (Darkness at Noon)
1905 Karl Jansky discovered cosmic radio emissions in 1932
1900, Edward R Stettinius, US, Secretary of State (1944-45)/diplomat
1903 George Beadle, US geneticist. (Medicine Nobel Prize [1958]: genetic research; President: University of Chicago; Harvard professor of genetics) . — MORE ON HIS NOBEL PRIZE
1898 Damaso Alonso Spanish poet (Hijos de la ira)
1896 Charles Glenn King biochemist (discovered vitamin C)
1895 Nevanlinna, mathematician
1887 John Reed, journalist, poet, and revolutionary who reported on Mexican, Russian revolutions (Ten Days That Shook the World).
1883, Adolf A Joffe, Russian revolutionary/writer (Brest-Litovsk)
1882 Newell Convers Wyeth, US painter famous for his illustrations of Treasure Island and Robin Hood. He died on 19 October 1945 — Not to be confused with his son Andrew Wyeth [12 Jul 1917~] — MORE ON WYETH AT ART “4” OCTOBER with links to images.
1879 Matthew Smith, English painter who died on 29 September 1959. — MORE ON SMITH AT ART “4” OCTOBER with links to images.

1878 L'ampoule électrique est inventée par Edison
      Après d'innombrables essais, l'Américain Thomas Edison réussit à produire un éclairage durable en faisant passer du courant à travers un filament de carbone, dans une ampoule sous vide. La première lampe à incandescence dure pendant quarante heures. Elle soulève les Etats-Unis d'enthousiasme. C'en est bientôt fini de l'éclairage au gaz ou au pétrole, odorant et dangereux.
      Celui-ci avait remplacé un siècle plus tôt les chandelles de suif et les cierges de cire, eux-mêmes apparus au Moyen Âge en substitution aux lampes à huile de l'Antiquité.
      Né dans l'Ohio, Thomas Edison a tout juste 30 ans et un bagage scolaire limité à 3 mois. Vendeur de journaux à 12 ans, il n'a de cesse d'étudier les sciences et de tenter les expériences les plus farfelues. Par accident, il met le feu à un wagon, ce qui lui vaut à 15 ans d'être licencié de son emploi.
      Mais ses brevets lui valent vite la fortune et il installe son propre laboratoire à West Orange (New Jersey), où il invente le phonographe avant d'atteindre les sommets de la gloire avec l'ampoule électrique. La liste de ses inventions ne cessera jamais de s'allonger jusqu'à sa mort en 1931.
      Thomas Edison se montre un homme d'affaires avisé. Il installe à New York un générateur de courant pour alimenter les ampoules qu'il vend à la ville. Il industrialise ses inventions au sein de sa propre société. Elle a nom aujourd'hui General Electric et c'est l'une des plus grandes entreprises du monde.

1871 Carlo Fornara, Italian artist who died in 1968.
1870 Ivan Bunin Russia, poet/novelist (Gentleman from SF-Nobel 1933) — MORE ON HIS NOBEL PRIZE
1861 Charles Amable Lenoir, French artist who died in 1940.
1854 Walter Herbert Withers, British artist who died on 13 October 1914.
1850 Heinrich Johann Zugel, German artist who died on 30 January 1941.

1818 Charles-Marie René Leconte de Lisle, French poet. ^top^ Leconte de Lisle was born on the island of Réunion, and educated chiefly at Rennes, France. After 1846 he lived in Paris, where he wrote and was assistant librarian of the Luxembourg Museum. Leconte de Lisle became a leader of the Parnassians, writers who stressed poetic discipline. His work is marked by classical correctness of style, coldness of emotion, and a pessimistic and scornfully aloof attitude toward life. It includes the volumes Poèmes antiques (1852), Poèmes et poésies (1854), Poèmes barbares (1862), and Derniers poèmes (1899); and the tragedy in verse, modeled on an ancient Greek tragedy, Les Erinnyes (1872). His Parnassian view of art lost favor with the advent of Charles Baudelaire and the symbolists. Leconte de Lisle was elected to the French Academy in 1886. He died on 17 July 1894. Qaïn is one of the most impressive short epics of the 19th century. — LECONTE DE LISLE ONLINE: Poèmes antiques I _ Poèmes antiques II — Poèmes tragiques — Poèmes barbares — Poèmes barbares (page images) — Oeuvres : derniers poèmes (page images)
Qaïn (un des Poèmes barbares) En la trentième année, au siècle de l'épreuve, Etant captif parmi les cavaliers d'Assur, Thogorma, le Voyant, fils d'Elam, fils de Thur, Eut ce rêve, couché dans les roseaux du fleuve, A l'heure où le soleil blanchit l'herbe et le mur. Depuis que le Chasseur Iahvèh, qui terrasse Les forts et de leur chair nourrit l'aigle et le chien, Avait lié son peuple au joug assyrien, Tous, se rasant les poils du crâne et de la face, Stupides, s'étaient tus et n'entendaient plus rien. Ployés sous le fardeau des misères accrues, Dans la faim, dans la soif, dans l'épouvante assis, Ils revoyaient leurs murs écroulés et noircis, Et, comme aux crocs publics pendent les viandes crues, Leurs princes aux gibets des Rois incirconcis Le pied de l'infidèle appuyé sur la nuque Des vaillants, le saint temple où priaient les aïeux Souillé, vide, fumant, effondré par les pieux, Et les vierges en pleurs sous le fouet de l'eunuque Et le sombre Iahvèh muet au fond des cieux.	Or, laissant, ce jour-là, près des mornes aïeules Et des enfants couchés dans les nattes de cuir, Les femmes aux yeux noirs de sa tribu gémir, Le fils d'Elam, meurtri par la sangle des meules, Le long du grand Khobar se coucha pour dormir. Les bandes d'étalons, par la plaine inondée De lumière, gisaient sous le dattier roussi, Et les taureaux, et les dromadaires aussi, Avec les chameliers d'Iran et de Khaldée. Thogorma, le Voyant, eut ce rêve. Voici: C'était un soir des temps mystérieux du monde, Alors que du midi jusqu'au septentrion Toute vigueur grondait en pleine éruption, L'arbre, le roc, la fleur, l'homme et la bête immonde Et que Dieu haletait dans sa création [passage omis]. Thogorma dans ses yeux vit monter des murailles De fer d'où s'enroulaient des spirales de tours Et de palais cerclés d'airain sur des blocs lourds; Ruche énorme, géhenne aux lugubres entrailles Où s'engouffraient les Forts, princes des anciens jours. Ils s'en venaient de la montagne et de la plaine, Du fond des sombres bois et du désert sans fin, Plus massifs que le cèdre et plus hauts que le pin, Suants, échevelés, soufrant leur rude haleine Avec leur bouche épaisse et rouge, et pleins de faim.	C'est ainsi qu'ils rentraient, l'ours velu des cavernes A l'épaule, ou le cerf, ou le lion sanglant. Et les femmes marchaient, géantes, d'un pas lent, Sous les vases d'airain qu'emplit l'eau des citernes, Graves, et les bras nus, et les mains sur le flanc. Elles allaient, dardant leurs prunelles superbes, Les seins droits, le col haut, dans la sérénité Terrible de la force et de la liberté, Et posant tour à tour dans la ronce et les herbes Leurs pieds fermes et blancs avec tranquillité [passage omis] Puis, quand tout, foule et bruit et poussière mouvante, Eut disparu dans l'orbe immense des remparts, L'abîme de la nuit laissa de toutes parts Suinter la terreur vague et sourdre l'épouvante En un rauque soupir sous le ciel morne épars. Et le Voyant sentit le poil de sa peau rude Se hérisser tout droit en face de cela, Car il connut, dans son esprit, que c'était là La Ville de l'angoisse et de la solitude, Sépulcre de Qaïn au pays d'Hévila. Le lieu sombre où, saignant des pieds et des paupières, Il dit à sa famille errante: -bâtissez Ma tombe, car les temps de vivre sont passés. Couchez-moi, libre et seul, sur un monceau de pierres ; Le rôdeur veut dormir, il est las, c'est assez. [suite]

1816 Frederick William Hulme, British artist who died on 14 November 1884.
1811 Franz Liszt Raiding, Hungary, romantic composer/virtuoso pianist -- Il naît à Doborjan, en Hongrie, sur les terres du Prince Nicolas Eszterhazy, dans la nuit où une comète traverse le firmament. Les Bohémiennes y voient un signe du ciel et prédisent au nouveau-né gloire et prospérité. Son père, intendant du Prince, lui donnera ses premières leçons de piano. La prédiction se réalisera.
1796 Achille Etna Michallon, French painter who died on 24 September 1822. — MORE ON MICHALLON AT ART “4” OCTOBER with links to images.
1791 Franz Xaver Petter, Austrian painter specialized in Still Life.He died on 11 May 1866.. — MORE ON PETTER AT ART “4” OCTOBER — with links to images.
1788 Bertrand-Georges de Bayle, French artist who died on 26 May 1851.
1689, João V, Rei Fidelissimo, king of Portugal (1706-50)
1628 Jan Vermeer (van der Meer) van Haarlem the Elder, Dutch painter who died on 25 August 1691. — more
1587 Jungius, mathematician

1511 Erasmus Reinhold Sr., Saalfeld, Germany, mathematician (calculated planetary table). He died in 1553. He was the father of Erasmus Reinhold Jr. (15380122-15921130)
He was born in on 22 Octobernd, 1511. His father, Johann Reinhold, was first privy secretary of the last abbot in Saalfeld, Georg von Thüna, later both steward of the former Bededictine monastery (which became secular property in 1534) and alderman in the town council of Saalfeld. After attending the Saalfeldian town school Erasmus Reinhold was enrolled at the University Wittenberg for the winter term 1530 to study mathematics. There the academic degree master of science was bestowed on him and in 1536 he got a professorship. In 1540 he became dean of the philosophical faculty and taught based on ancient knowledge geometry of Euclid, arithmetics, the science of the circle and Ptolemy's geography. He was on friendly terms with Philipp Melanchton.
The studies in mathematics became the basis of his astronomical research. In 1540 he used the camera obscura for observation for the first time and proved, that the moon's orbit was not circular, but elliptic. In 1541 he published a manuscript on the horizon; in 1542 a work on the planets by the master of astronomy Georg Purbach was edited, completed with Reinhold's remarks and drawings. After decades of research Erasmus Reinhold's most important work The Prussian Tables of Celestrial Motion was printed in Tübingen, in which he as a supporter of Copernicanism published calculations of the movement of the planets and the to be expected solar eclipses. In 1549 his results obtained were appreciated by reelecting him dean of the philosophical faculty. In the winter term 1549/50 he was even invested with the duty of the rector. In summer 1552 he returned to his parents' home in Saalfeld in order to recover from physical and private ailments. Here he died in February 1553, aged 42 years. --// http://www.erg.slf.th.schule.de/reinhold/kurzbio-e.htm

Holidays India, Mauritius, Singapore : Deepavali Day / Japan : Jidai Matsuri/Festival of the Eras (1895) / Puerto Rico : Veterans Day / Vatican City : National Day / US : Mother-in-Law's Day - ( Sunday )

Religious Observances Christian: SS Philip, bishop of Heraclea, and his companions, martyrs / RC: St Theodoret, priest/martyr / Santos María Salomé y Córdula, Heraclio, Marcos y Alodia./ Sainte Elodie: Nées en Espagne d'une chrétienne et d'un musulman, Elodie et sa sœur Nunilon désobéissent au décret de l'émir de Cordoue qui leur enjoint d'embrasser la religion de leur père. Elles sont décapitées.

PERGUNTA:
Se eu quiser que a minha senha de acesso a Internet seja *******, como eu faço para que ela não apareça na tela e todo mundo descubra?

Thoughts for the day : “The picture of health requires a happy frame of mind.”
“Money often costs too much.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, US essayist, poet, and philosopher [1803-1882]. [When it does, the US relies on the Federal Reserve Board to reduce short-term interest rates]
“Essays, poetry, and philosophy often cost too much.”

TO THE TOP

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO WRITE TO “HISTORY 4 2DAY”
http://www.jcanu.hpg.com.br/history/h4oct/h4oct22.html
http://members.xoom.virgilio.it/all42day/history/h4oct/h4oct22.html
http://www.safran-arts.com/42day/history/h4oct/h4oct22.html
http://www.ifrance.com/ojourdui/history/h4oct/h4oct22.html
updated Wednesday 22-Oct-2003 3:21 UT

site safe for children