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On a September 02:
1998 First international conviction for genocide.      ^top^
      A United Nations court finds Jean-Paul Akayesu, the former mayor of a small town in Rwanda, guilty of nine counts of genocide, marking the first time that the 1948 law banning genocide is enforced. Because mass killings had occurred in several countries since the law went into effect, the UN received heavy criticism for waiting 50 years before finally enforcing it.
      The crimes for which Akayesu was held responsible took place during the 1994 mass slaughter of the Tutsi minority population by the Hutu tribespeople. It is estimated that 800'000 Tutsis were killed by roving bands of Hutus armed with machetes. The killers brutally murdered Tutsi men, women, and children, and even moderate Hutus who attempted to protect them. One Red Cross worker told of how he was forced to stand aside while all the patients in his hospital were hacked to death in their beds.
      Conflict between the Hutus and the Tutsis had been a part of Rwandan life for years. Since the 15th century, the Tutsis dominated the Hutu people as ancient feudal lords. When the Belgians gained power of Rwanda in 1919, they ruled through Tutsi chiefs. However, during a Hutu uprising in 1959, 100'000 Tutsis were massacred, while twice as many were forced to flee the country.
      In 1962, Rwanda gained independence from Belgium under a Hutu-led government. The killings continued for another decade, until Rwanda was taken over in a military coup led by General Juvenal Habyarimana. Rwanda enjoyed a period of relative stability under Habyarimana until 1990, when the Rwanda Patriotic Front, a group of Tutsi rebels aided by Uganda, started a civil war against the Rwandan government. The war was temporarily halted when a cease-fire was signed in August 1992.
      However, after Habyarimana died in an unexplained plane crash in April 1994, the fighting resumed. Hutu government militiamen, blaming the Tutsis for the crash, began a 90-day murdering spree as Tutsi rebels fought back. The killing finally came to an end when the Tutsis gained power in July 1994.
      Jean-Paul Akayesu was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the deaths of 2000 Tutsis who had sought his protection, as well as 80 years in prison for other crimes, including rape. Although Akayesu claimed that he was powerless to stop the killings, Judge Laity Kama ruled that the mayor was "individually and criminally responsible for the deaths.” The ruling not only marked the first time a guilty verdict was handed down on the basis of the 1948 Genocide Convention, but also the first time in international law that mass rape was considered an "act of genocide.”
1997 AOL announces nine million members.      ^top^
      America Online announces that it has nine million subscribers. Many industry observers had long doubted AOL's ability to dominate the online arena, partly because of stiffened competition from the Internet and partly because AOL's rapid growth had resulted in a series of frustrating shut downs and technical problems. However, its growth to nine million members indicated that AOL was becoming a dominant company after all and that the Internet itself was becoming more of a mass medium.
1997 Apple drops clone licenses      ^top^
      Apple Computer announced that it will buy most of the assets of Power Computing, the largest manufacturer of Apple clones. The purchase was part of an overall reversal in Apple's policy on cloning. Two years earlier, the company had decided to license its Macintosh technology, which it had refused to do in the past. Apple's no-clone policy in the mid-1980s was viewed by many industry observers as the strategic blunder that allowed Microsoft to gain the lead in operating systems. Apple's management implemented an aggressive licensing strategy in 1995, as a belated correction; however, cofounder and interim CEO Stephen Jobs felt the licensing program was hurting Apple and reversed the cloning policy in 1997.
1996 The operator of the world's largest anonymous e-mail service, headquartered in Finland, shuts down his company after a local court ordered him to identify a user. John Helsinguis had run the service for more than three years. Concerns about child pornography led to a backlash against anonymous e-mail services.
1996 Muslim rebels and the Philippine government signed a pact ending a 26-year insurgency that killed more than 120'000 persons.
1992 President Bush's vain effort to "bribe" voters. Republican US President George Bush's reelection campaign is lagging behind Democratic challenger Bill Clinton. In a desperate effort to woo voters, Bush promises an economic plan that includes $2 billion in aid for farmers, as well as the profits from a lucrative fighter-jet sale for his adopted home-state of Texas.
1992 Vehicles running on clean-burning natural gas      ^top^
      The Southern California Gas Company purchased the first motor vehicles powered by natural gas on this day. Spurred on by a new California law promoting the commercialization of alternative fuel vehicles, the company put fifty of the new vehicles into service and began promoting the natural gas vehicles (NGVs) as a viable option for the future. Compressed natural gas costs 25 to 30% less than gasoline and has an octane rating of 130 — meaning it burns much cleaner than even premium unleaded gasoline. The NGVs can also go 16'000 km between oil changes, 64'000 km between tune-ups, and 120'000 km between spark plugs. However, the most compelling argument for natural gas is its environmental advantages. NGVs reduce NOx emissions and reactive hydrocarbons by as much as 95%. The new vehicles also reduce carbon monoxide by 85% and carcinogenic particulate emissions by 99%.
1991 In Moscow, the Soviet Congress of People's Deputies opened its first session since the failed coup, taking up proposals aimed at drastically restructuring the country.
1989 Rev. Al Sharpton leads a civil rights march through Bensonhurst
1987 Trial of pilot who landed in Red Square.     ^top^
      The trial of Mathias Rust, 19, pilot who flew his Cessna plane into Red Square in May 1987, begins in Moscow. Rust had become an international celebrity following his daring intrusion into Soviet airspace and landing in the center of Moscow, but the Soviet government condemned his actions. Rust, a West German, had taken off in his aircraft in May 1987. He flew completely undetected through Soviet airspace and then guided his plane to a landing near the Kremlin in Red Square in Moscow. A crowd of onlookers mobbed the young man, many of whom sought his autograph. Soviet officials were less amused by Rust and arrested him. He was charged with several violations, the most serious being that he had illegally entered Soviet airspace. Rust argued that he was merely trying to promote world peace. He carried with him copies of a plan he had developed for a worldwide democracy, which he referred to as "Iagonia.”
      Russian officials dismissed Rust's arguments (and his plan), and tried to portray the naive young West German as part of a larger plot to sow discord in the Soviet Union. More likely, the Soviets were simply embarrassed by Rust's flight, since it indicated that the vaunted Soviet air defense system was imperfect. Following a brief and perfunctory trial, Rust was found guilty of violating Soviet airspace and sentenced to prison. He served 18 months. After his release, Rust enjoyed a short period of fame before he retreated from the public eye and became involved with several utopian and religious groups. The repercussions in the Soviet Union were more far-reaching. Dozens of Soviet military officers, including the defense minister and commander of Soviet air defense, were fired or disciplined following Rust's escapade.
1983 Yitzhak Shamir (Herut) endorsed by Menachem Begin for Israelli PM
1969 Unions want wage and price controls. Sensing a slide in the nation's economy, long-standing AFL-CIO leader George Meany calls on the government in 1969 to implement wage and price controls. It wasn't until two years later that President Nixon heeded his advice and installed a wage and price freeze. However, the move did little to revive the slumping economy.
1963 Alabama troopers prevent desegregation. . . for 8 days      ^top^
      Governor George C. Wallace, 44, prevents the racial integration of Tuskegee High School in Tuskegee, Alabama, by encircling the building with state troopers. Eight days later, President John F. Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard and called them to the area, forcing Wallace to abandon his attempt to block the desegregation of Alabama public schools.
      George Wallace, one of the most controversial politicians in US history, was elected governor of Alabama in 1962 under an ultra-segregationist platform. In his 1963 inaugural address, Wallace promised his white followers: "Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!" However, the promise lasted only six months. In June of the same year, under federal pressure, he was forced to end his blockade of the University of Alabama and allow the enrollment of African-American students.
      Despite his failures in slowing the accelerating civil-rights movement in the South, Wallace became a national spokesman for resistance to racial change, and in 1964 entered the race for the US presidency. Although defeated in most Democratic presidential primaries he entered, his modest successes demonstrated the extent of popular backlash against segregation. In 1968, he made another strong run as the candidate of the American Independent party, and managed to get on the ballot in all fifty states. On election day, he drew ten million votes from all across the country.
      In 1972, Governor Wallace returned to the Democratic party for his third presidential campaign, and under a slightly more moderate platform was showing promising returns when he was shot by Arthur Bremer on 15 May 1972. Three others were wounded, and Wallace was permanently paralyzed from the waist down. The next day, while fighting for his life in a hospital, he won major primary victories in Michigan and Maryland. However, Wallace remained in the hospital for several months, bringing his third presidential campaign to an irrevocable end. After his recovery, he faded from national prominence and made a poor showing in his fourth and final presidential campaign in 1979.
      During the 1980s, Wallace's politics shifted dramatically, especially in regard to race. In 1983, he was elected Alabama governor for the last time with the overwhelming support of African-American voters. Over the next four years, the man who had promised segregation forever made more African-American political appointments than any other figure in Alabama history. He died on 13 September 1998.
1962 The Soviet Union agrees to send arms to Cuba to help it meet "threats from aggressive imperialist elements".
1956 Tennessee National Guardsmen halt rioters protesting the admission of 12 African-Americans to schools in Clinton.
1946 O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh opens on Broadway      ^top^
      Hailed by many critics as Eugene O’Neill’s finest work, The Iceman Cometh opens at the Martin Beck Theater. The play, about desperate tavern bums clinging to illusion as a remedy for despair, would be the last O’Neill play to be produced on Broadway before the author’s death in 1953. Like many of his other works, the play drew on O’Neill’s firsthand experiences with all-night dive bars and desperate characters.
      Although his actor father sent him to top prep schools and to Princeton, O’Neill dropped out of college after a year. He went to sea, searched for gold in South America, haunted the waterfront bars in Buenos Aires, Liverpool, and New York, and married briefly. He drank heavily. In 1912, when O’Neill was nearly 30, he came down with tuberculosis and was sent to a sanitarium in Connecticut. While recovering, he wrote his first play and decided to devote himself to drama. He began churning out gritty, realistic plays about lives on the margins of society. He wrote nine plays from 1913 to 1914, six from 1916 to 1917, and four in 1918. In 1917, a Greenwich Village theater group, the Provincetown Players, performed his one-act play Thirst. The group became closely associated with O’Neill’s future work. In 1920, his first full-length play, Beyond the Horizon, was produced on Broadway.
      Between 1920 and 1943, O’Neill wrote 20 long plays and several short ones. His work was groundbreaking in its use of slangy, everyday dialogue, its dingy, run-down settings, and his experimental use of light, sound, and casting to set an emotional tone.
      O’Neill’s family life had been very unhappy. His father became rich playing just one theater role, the Count of Monte Cristo, for many years and never succeeded in becoming a more serious actor. His mother used morphine, and his beloved older brother became an alcoholic. All three died between 1920 and 1923. O’Neill wrote several autobiographical plays about his family after they died, including A Moon for the Misbegotten (produced in 1957) and Long Day’s Journey Into Night (produced in 1956). Other major works include The Hairy Ape (1923) and Mourning Becomes Electra (1931).
      Although O’Neill was an outgoing host with an active social life during his second marriage, he became reclusive during his third. In the 1940s, he developed a degenerative nervous disease, and he died in Boston in 1953. Many critics call O’Neill America’s first major playwright.
1945 Ho Chi Minh declares Vietnamese Independence      ^top^
      Hours after the unconditional Japanese surrender in World War II, Ho Chi Minh, 65, the veteran Vietnamese Communist, proclaims the independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Near the end of World War I, Ho Chi Minh emigrated to France where, in 1920, he became a founding member of the French Communist Party. He later traveled to the Soviet Union, where he became a Comitern member and studied revolutionary tactics.
      Returning to East Asia in the mid-1920s, he set about organizing revolutionaries in China, and with the outbreak of World War II, returned to his Vietnamese homeland. He organized a Vietnamese independence movement — the Viet Minh — and raised a guerilla army to oppose the Japanese occupation of Vietnam.
      On 02 September 1945, Ho proclaims the independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam, hoping to prevent the French from reclaiming their former colonial possession. In 1946, he would be elected president of Vietnam, but in the same year, grudgingly accept the French demand that Vietnam exist as an autonomous state within the French Union.
      Nevertheless, fighting between Vietnamese nationalists and the French broke out soon afterwards, and in 1949, the French named Bao Dai their puppet emperor of all Vietnam. In the same year, with military and economic assistance of newly Communist China, Ho Chi Minh began a war of resistance against French and Southern Vietnamese forces, who were armed largely by the US
      In 1954, the French suffered, from the forces of general Giap, a major defeat at Dien Bien Phu in northwest Vietnam, prompting the division of Vietnam along the seventeenth parallel at the conference of Geneva. Ho Chi Minh became president of North Vietnam and set about organizing a Communist guerrilla movement in the South, the "National Liberation Front," also known as the Viet Cong. Ho and the Viet Cong successfully opposed a series of ineffectual US-backed South Vietnam regimes and beginning in 1963, withstood a decade-long military intervention by the United States. Ho Chi Minh died in 1969, the day after the 14th anniversary of his declaration of independence, and six years later Vietnam was reunited as an independent Communist nation.
     Vietnam declares its independence and Nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh proclaims himself first president.
      The proclamation paraphrased the US Declaration of Independence in declaring, "All men are born equal: the Creator has given us inviolable rights, life, liberty, and happiness!" and was cheered by an enormous crowd gathered in Hanoi's Ba Dinh Square. It would be 30 years, however, before Ho's dream of a united, communist Vietnam became reality. Born in 1890, Ho Chi Minh left Vietnam as a cook on a French steamer in 1911. After several years as a seaman, he lived in London and then moved to France, where he became a founding member of the French Communist Party in 1920. He later traveled to the Soviet Union, where he studied revolutionary tactics and took an active role in the Communist International. In 1924, he went to China, where he set about organizing exiled Vietnamese communists. Expelled by China in 1927, he traveled extensively before returning to Vietnam in 1941. There, he organized a Vietnamese guerrilla organization — the Viet Minh — to fight for Vietnamese independence. Japan occupied French Indochina in 1940 and collaborated with French officials loyal to France's Vichy regime. Ho, meanwhile, made contact with the Allies and aided operations against the Japanese in South China. In early 1945, Japan ousted the French administration in Vietnam and executed numerous French officials.
      When Japan formally surrendered to the Allies on 02 September 1945, Ho Chi Minh felt emboldened enough to proclaim the independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam. French forces seized southern Vietnam and opened talks with the Vietnamese communists. These talks collapsed in 1946, and French warships bombarded the northern Vietnamese city of Haiphong, killing thousands. In response, the Viet Minh launched an attack against the French in Hanoi on 19 December 1945 — the beginning of the First Indochina War.
      During the eight-year war, Mao Zedong's Chinese Communists supported the Viet Minh, while the United States aided the French and anti-communist Vietnamese forces. In 1954, the French suffered a major defeat at Dien Bien Phu, in northwest Vietnam, prompting peace negotiations and the division of Vietnam along the 17th parallel at a conference in Geneva. Vietnam was divided into northern and southern regions, with Ho in command of North Vietnam and Emperor Bao Dai in control of South Vietnam.
      In the late 1950s, Ho Chi Minh organized a Communist guerrilla movement in the South, called the Viet Cong. North Vietnam and the Viet Cong successfully opposed a series of ineffectual US-backed South Vietnam regimes and beginning in 1964 withstood a decade-long military intervention by the United States. Ho Chi Minh died on 02 September 1969, 25 years after declaring Vietnam's independence from France and nearly six years before his forces succeeded in reuniting North and South Vietnam under communist rule. Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, was renamed Ho Chi Minh City after it fell to the communists in 1975.
1945 Japan signs unconditional surrender ending WW II.      ^top^
     It is still 01 September in the US when USS Missouri hosts formal surrender of Japanese government to Allies. Representing the Allied victors are Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commander of the US Army forces in the Pacific, and Adm. Chester Nimitz, commander of the US Pacific Fleet, now promoted to the newest and highest Navy rank, fleet admiral. Among Allied officers from all of the participating countries, present was Lt. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, who had taken command of the forces in the Philippines upon MacArthur's departure and had been recently freed from a Japanese POW camp in Manchuria.
      Shigemitsu would be found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to seven years in prison subsequent to the surrender. The grand irony is that he had fought for concessions on the Japanese side in order to secure an early peace. He was paroled in 1950 and went on to become chairman of Japan's Progressive Party.
      By the summer of 1945, the defeat of Japan was a foregone conclusion. The Japanese navy and air force were destroyed. The Allied naval blockade of Japan and intensive bombing of Japanese cities had left the country and its economy devastated. At the end of June, the Americans captured Okinawa, a Japanese island from which the Allies could launch an invasion of the main Japanese home islands. US General Douglas MacArthur was put in charge of the invasion, which was code-named "Operation Olympic" and set for November 1945. The invasion of Japan promised to be the bloodiest seaborne attack of all time, conceivably 10 times as costly as the Normandy invasion in terms of Allied casualties.
      On 16 July, a new option became available when the United States secretly detonated the world's first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert. Ten days later, the Allies issued the Potsdam Declaration, demanding the "unconditional surrender of all the Japanese armed forces." Failure to comply would mean "the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitable the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland." On 28 July, Japanese Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki responded by telling the press that his government was "paying no attention" to the Allied ultimatum. US President Harry Truman ordered the devastation to proceed, and on 06 August, the US B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing an estimated 80'000 and fatally wounding thousands more. After the Hiroshima attack, a faction of Japan's supreme war council favored acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, but the majority resisted unconditional surrender. On 08 August, Japan's desperate situation took another turn for the worse when the USSR declared war against Japan. The next day, Soviet forces attacked in Manchuria, rapidly overwhelming Japanese positions there, and a second US atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese coastal city of Nagasaki.
      Just before midnight on 09 August, Japanese Emperor Hirohito convened the supreme war council. After a long, emotional debate, he backed a proposal by Prime Minister Suzuki in which Japan would accept the Potsdam Declaration "with the understanding that said Declaration does not compromise any demand that prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as the sovereign ruler." The council obeyed Hirohito's acceptance of peace, and on 10 August the message was relayed to the United States. Early on 12 August, the United States answered that "the authority of the emperor and the Japanese government to rule the state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers." After two days of debate about what this statement implied, Emperor Hirohito brushed the nuances in the text aside and declared that peace was preferable to destruction. He ordered the Japanese government to prepare a text accepting surrender.
      In the early hours of 15 August, a military coup was attempted by a faction led by Major Kenji Hatanaka. The rebels seized control of the imperial palace and burned Prime Minister Suzuki's residence, but shortly after dawn the coup was crushed. At noon that day, Emperor Hirohito went on national radio for the first time to announce the Japanese surrender. In his unfamiliar court language, he told his subjects, "we have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable." The United States immediately accepted Japan's surrender. President Truman appointed MacArthur to head the Allied occupation of Japan as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers.
      For the site of Japan's formal surrender, Truman chose the USS Missouri, a battleship that had seen considerable action in the Pacific and was named after Truman's native state. MacArthur, instructed to preside over the surrender, held off the ceremony until 02 September in order to allow time for representatives of all the major Allied powers to arrive. On Sunday, 02 September more than 250 Allied warships lay at anchor in Tokyo Bay. The flags of the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and China fluttered above the deck of the Missouri. Just after 09:00 Tokyo time, Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signed on behalf of the Japanese government. General Yoshijiro Umezu then signed for the Japanese armed forces, and his aides wept as he made his signature. Supreme Commander MacArthur next signed on behalf of the United Nations, declaring, "It is my earnest hope and indeed the hope of all mankind that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out the blood and carnage of the past." Ten more signatures were made, by the United States, China, Britain, the USSR, Australia, Canada, France, the Netherlands, and New Zealand, respectively. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz signed for the United States. As the 20-minute ceremony ended, the sun burst through low-hanging clouds. The most devastating war in human history was over.
1944 Troops of the US First Army enter Nazi-occupied Belgium.
1944 During WW II, George Bush (Sr.) ejects from a burning plane
Anne Frank 1944 Anne Frank is sent to Auschwitz     ^top^
      In Nazi-occupied Holland, thirteen-year-old Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family were forced to take refuge in a secret sealed-off area of an Amsterdam warehouse on 6 July 1942. The day before, Anne's older sister, Margot, had received a call-up notice to be deported to a Nazi "work camp.”
      Born in Germany on 12 June, 1929, Anne Frank fled to Amsterdam with her family in 1933 to escape Nazi persecution. In the summer of 1942, with the German occupation of Holland underway, twelve-year-old Anne began a diary relating her everyday experiences, her relationship with her family and friends, and observations about the increasingly dangerous world around her.
      Just a few months later, under threat of deportation to Nazi concentration camps, the Frank family was forced into hiding in a secret sealed-off area of an Amsterdam warehouse. Over the next two years, under the threat of murder by the Nazi officers patrolling just outside the warehouse, Anne kept a diary that is marked by poignancy, humor, and insight.
      On 04 August 1944, just two months after the successful Allied landing at Normandy, the Nazi Gestapo discovers the Frank’s "Secret Annex.” Along with another Jewish family with whom they had shared the hiding place, and two of the Christians who had helped shelter them, the Franks were sent to the Nazi death camps. Anne, on 02 September 1944, and most of the others ended up at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, although her diary was left behind, undiscovered by the Nazis. On 30 October 1944, Anne was moved to Belsen.
      In early 1945, with the Soviet liberation of Poland underway, Anne was moved with her sister, Margot, to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. Suffering under the deplorable conditions of the camp, the two sisters caught typhus and died in early March, probably on 12 March in the case of Anne.
      After the war, Anne’s diary was discovered undisturbed in the Amsterdam hiding place, and in 1947, was translated into English and published. An instant bestseller which was eventually translated into over thirty languages, The Diary of Anne Frank has served as a literary testament to the six million Jews, including Anne herself, who were silenced in the Holocaust.
1936 1st transatlantic round-trip air flight
1930 The first non-stop airplane flight from Europe to the US is completed in 37 hours as Capt. Dieudonné Coste and Maurice Bellonte of France arrived in Valley Stream, N.Y., aboard the Point d'Interrogation.
1915 Austro-German armies take Grodno, Poland.
1914 Le gouvernement français se réfugie à Bordeaux. Les troupes allemandes ont appliqué le plan Schlieffen en contournant les défenses françaises après avoir envahi la Belgique neutre. Elles sont à Senlis. Le gouvernement et le président de la République Poincaré quittent par un train spécial Paris menacé pour Bordeaux.
1901 US Vice President Theodore Roosevelt advises, "Speak softly and carry a big stick," in a speech at the Minnesota State Fair. — It was neither the first nor the last time he would say that. During TR's term as Governor of NY State he fought with the party bosses, particularly Boss Tom Platt regarding a political appointment. Roosevelt held out, although the boss threatened, to "ruin" him. In the end the boss gave in. Looking back upon his handling of the incident, Roosevelt thought he 'never saw a bluff carried more resolutely through to the final limit.' And writing to a friend a few days later, he observed: 'I have always been fond of the West African proverb: "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far." The proverb and the policy followed him into numerous instances in his career, including his policies abroad during his presidency.
1898 Battle of Omdurman: Sir Herbert Kitchner leads the British to victory over the Mahdists, and takes Khartoum.
1890 The Property Tax Party At a meeting on 02 September 1890, delegates of the Single Tax National League stuck to their ideological guns and passed the main — and only — plank of their party platform: a single tax that would be assessed on all property.
1870 At Sedan, having surrendered the previous evening, Napoléon and 83'000 French soldiers are taken prisoner by the Prussians.
1864 The forces of Union General William T. Sherman march into Atlanta, Georgia—one day after the Confederates evacuate the city.
1863 Siege of Fort Wagner, Charleston Harbor, South Carolina continues
1862 McClellan is restored to full command      ^top^
      President Lincoln reluctantly restores Union General George B. McClellan to full command after General John Pope's disaster at Second Bull Run on 29 August and 30 August. McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac, saw much of his army transferred to Pope's Army of Virginia after his failure to capture Richmond during the Seven Days' Battles in June 1862.
      Pope, who had one chance to prove his leadership at Second Bull Run against Confederate General Robert E. Lee, failed miserably and retreated to Washington. He had not received any help from McClellan, who sat nearby in Alexandria and refused to go to Pope's aid. After a summer of defeats, the Union forces in the east were now in desperate need of a boost in morale. Even though McClellan was, in part, the architect of those losses, Lincoln felt he was the best available general to raise the sagging spirits of the men in blue. The president recognized McClellan's talent for preparing an army to fight, even if he had proven to be a poor field commander. Lincoln wrote to his secretary John Hay: "We must use the tools we have. There is no man in the Army who can man these fortifications and lick these troops into shape half as well as he. If he can't fight himself, he excels in making others ready to fight.”
      There was little time for the Union to dawdle after Second Bull Run. Lee's army lurked just 40 km from Washington, and had tried to cut off the Union retreat at Chantilly on 01 September. Even as Lincoln restored McClellan's command, the Confederates were starting to move northward. McClellan was soon on the road in pursuit of Lee's army.
1798 The Maltese people revolt against the French occupation, forcing the French troops to take refuge in the citadel of Valetta in Malta.
1792 Verdun, France, surrenders to the Prussian Army.
1784 English clergyman Thomas Coke, 37, is consecrated, the first "bishop" of the Methodist Episcopal Church, by founder John Wesley. Coke afterward journeyed to America, where he and Francis Asbury oversaw Methodism in the Colonies.
1752 Last day of Julian calendar in Britain, British colonies
1715 Début de la régence de Philippe d'Orléans. .     ^top^
      Le roi Louis XIV est mort, il y a seulement un jour. Un testament fait de Philippe d'Orléans le régent du royaume. Louis XIV a écrit : "Mon neveu, je vous fait régent du royaume. Vous allez voir un roi dans le tombeau et un autre dans le berceau. Souvenez-vous toujours de la mémoire de l'un et des intérêts de l'autre.” Mais il a subordonné son pouvoir à celui du duc du Maine. Philippe s'élève lors de la lecture du testament contre cette clause. Le Parlement consent à le casser, en échange de la restitution du droit de remontrance, supprimé soixante ans plus tôt. Pour qu'aucune contestation soit possible, le Régent demande au nouveau roi, qui n'a que cinq ans, de le désigner pour seul régent lors d'un lit de justice devant le Parlement le 12 septembre suivant.
1636 Jean de Brébeuf, Jesuit missionary, baptizes the first Iroquois ever to become a Christian. The man, a Seneca chief, is later tortured to death.
1415 Bohemian and Moravian nobles send a document to the Council of Constance upholding Hus and saying they will fight
1192 Richard I ("The Lionhearted," who will become king of England) negotiates a treaty with Muslim general Saladin to allow access of Christians to the Holy City, ending the third crusade.
0909 A French Duke offers Berno of Blaume the land for a monastery at Cluny. Cluny becomes a center of reform for three centuries.
— 31 B.C. Battle of Actium: Octavian's victory at sea.      ^top^
      At the naval battle of Actium in the Ionian Sea, Roman leader Octavian defeated the alliance of Roman Mark Antony and Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. Antony's fleet was burned and five thousand of his men were killed. The Roman world, previously divided between Mark Antony and Octavian, was now solely in the hands of Octavian, who as Augustus Caesar becomes the first Roman emperor. Mark Antony and Cleopatra would commit suicide in the following year.
     With the assassination of Roman dictator Julius Caesar in 44 B.C., Rome fell into civil war. To end the fighting, a coalition — the Second Triumvirate — was formed by three of the strongest belligerents. The triumvirate was made up of Octavian, Caesar's great-nephew and chosen heir; Mark Antony, a powerful general; and Lepidus, a Roman statesman. The empire was divided among the three, and Antony took up the administration of the eastern provinces. Upon arriving in Asia Minor, he summoned Queen Cleopatra to answer charges that she had aided his enemies. Cleopatra, ruler of Egypt since 51 B.C., had once been Julius Caesar's lover and had borne him a child, who she named Caesarion, meaning "little Caesar." Cleopatra sought to seduce Antony as she had Caesar before him, and in 41 B.C. arrived at Tarsus on a magnificent river barge, dressed as Venus, the Roman goddess of love. Successful in her efforts, Antony returned with her to Alexandria, where they spent the winter in debauchery.
      In 40 B.C., Antony returned to Rome and married Octavian's sister Octavia in an effort to mend his increasingly strained relationship with Octavian. The triumvirate, however, continued to deteriorate. In 37 B.C. Antony separated from Octavia and traveled to the East, arranging for Cleopatra to join him in Syria. In their time apart, Cleopatra had borne him twins, a son and a daughter. According to Octavian's propagandists, the lovers were then married, which violated the Roman law restricting Romans from marrying foreigners. Antony's disastrous military campaign against Parthia in 36 B.C. further reduced his prestige, but in 34 B.C. he was more successful against Armenia. To celebrate the victory, he staged a triumphal procession through the streets of Alexandria, in which Antony and Cleopatra sat on golden thrones, and their children were given imposing royal titles. Many in Rome, spurred on by Octavian, interpreted the spectacle as a sign that Antony intended to deliver the Roman Empire into alien hands. After several more years of tension and propaganda attacks, Octavian declared war against Cleopatra, and therefore Antony, in 31 B.C. Enemies of Octavian rallied to Antony's side, but Octavian's brilliant military commanders gained early successes against his forces.
      On 02 September 31 B.C., their fleets clashed at Actium in Greece. After heavy fighting, Cleopatra broke from the engagement and set course for Egypt with 60 of her ships. Antony then broke through the enemy line and followed her. The disheartened fleet that remained surrendered to Octavian. One week later, Antony's land forces surrendered. Although they had suffered a decisive defeat, it was nearly a year before Octavian reached Alexandria and again defeated Antony. In the aftermath of the battle, Cleopatra took refuge in the mausoleum she had had built for herself. Antony, informed that Cleopatra was dead, stabbed himself with his sword. Before he died, another messenger arrived, saying Cleopatra still lived. Antony was carried to Cleopatra's retreat, where he died after bidding her to make her peace with Octavian. When the triumphant Roman arrived, she attempted to seduce him, but he resisted her charms. Rather than fall under Octavian's domination, Cleopatra committed suicide on 30 August 31 B.C., possibly by means of an asp, a poisonous Egyptian serpent and symbol of divine royalty. Octavian then executed Cleopatra's son, Caesarion, annexed Egypt into the Roman Empire, and used Cleopatra's treasure to pay off his veterans. In 27 B.C., Octavian became Augustus, the first and arguably most successful of all Roman emperors. He ruled a peaceful, prosperous, and expanding Roman Empire until his death in 14 A.D. at the age of 75.
— 490 -BC- Phidippides runs 1st marathon, seeking aid from Sparta vs Persia.
TO THE TOP
Deaths which occurred on a September 02:      ^top^
2002 Brenda Scott, 47, over 140 kg, from peritonitis caused by stomach perforations accidentally made during Lap-Band Adjustable Gastric Banding surgery on 30 August 2002 at Port Huron Hospital in Detroit. She was a city councilwoman. The procedure was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration on 05 June 2001, for severely obese people (at least 50 kg overweight or twice their ideal weight) who have failed to lose weight by diet, exercise, and other means. It involves placing an adjustable silicone band around the upper part of the stomach, creating a small gastric pouch that limits food consumption and creates an earlier feeling of fullness. Once in place, the device is inflated with saline solution and can be tightened or loosened. It is intended to remain in place permanently but can be removed if necessary. Surgeons use keyhole surgery to put it in place. Since 1993 the procedure has been done on nearly 90'000 persons outside the US, mostly in Europe. Only 4 of them have died as a result, according to INAMED Corp. in Santa Barbara, California, manufacturers of the Lap-Band device.
2001 (Sunday) James Wallace, 6, shot by his mother, Leslie Ann Wallace, 39, as he watches television, in Fort Myers, Florida. Mom Wallace then goes to a storefront church in North Fort Myers, approached her son Kenneth, 16, and fired a round from her shotgun. His Bible receives most of the birdshot and he suffers only minor wounds. Leslie Wallace then drives to a pizza restaurant where her son Gregory, 19, works. But he had been warned and did not leave the building. Wallace called the 911 police emergency number from a pay phone and says that she has killed her young son. She drove away from the restaurant and police chase her for a short time. She is shot and seriously injured by a deputy after firing a shotgun round upon emerging from her car.
2001 David Peltier, 10, from shark attack the previous day, in 1m20 of water 50 m from shore at Sandridge Beach just south of Virginia Beach, Virginia..
2001 Christiaan Neethling Barnard, 78, of a heart attack while vacationing in Cyprus. He performed the world's first heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town in 1969 (? or 03 Dec 1967?). The patient, dentist Louis Washkansky, 53, lived 18 days before succumbing to rejection of the new heart. After crippling arthritis forced Barnard to retire from surgery in 1983, he wrote a distinguished cardiology text, several lesser nonfiction books about cardiology, a scandalously honest autobiography and four novels that received a lukewarm reception. Barnard was born on 08 November 1922
2001 At least 40 persons in train collision with locomotive, Cirebon, Java. More than 60 are injured.
1998 All 229 aboard a Swissair MD-11 jetliner crashing off Nova Scotia.
1973 John Ronald Reul Tolkien, 81, English Christian language scholar and novelist. His 1954-55 Lord of the Rings trilogy describes a war between good and evil in which evil is routed through courage and sacrifice. — A linguist and novelist, he was also a devout Catholic and created the fantasy favorites The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Fans of C. S. Lewis know that Tolkien helped lead him to Christ. 1973: co-editor of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
1972 47th North Vietnamese MiG shot down Phuc Yen, 10 miles north of Hanoi, and one of the largest air bases in North Vietnam, is smashed by US fighter-bombers. During the attack, a MiG was shot down, bringing the total to 47 enemy aircraft shot down since the beginning of the North Vietnamese offensive. At this point in the war, 18 US planes had been shot down by MiGs.
1969 Ho Chi Minh, 79, his death stalls the Vietnam peace negotiations.      ^top^
      Though America was thoroughly ensnared in the Vietnam War, the summer of '69 brought several signs that the conflict might actually come to close: there were talks of a treaty and various officials had landed in Paris for peace talks. However the glimmer of hope for peace disappears with the news that Ho Chi Minh, the North Vietnamese President, has died from natural causes. Pessimism inspired by his death quickly spread to Wall Street, as investors engaged in an outburst of precautionary trading. After a day of steady selling, the Dow had dropped 10.37 points to close at 825.30. Wall Street's reaction was well-founded. Ho Chi Minh was a revered figure who had passionately led his people's charge to independence, and, despite assurances otherwise by US officials, there was every reason to believe that his death would imperil the peace process. The ensuing weeks — and years — bore out these fears, as the war dragged on, taking a heavy toll on the US economy.
     Ho Chi Minh of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam dies of a heart attack in Hanoi. North Vietnamese officials announced his death the next day. Ho Chi Minh had been the heart and soul of Vietnamese communism since the earliest days of the movement. Born in 1890, he was the son of a Vietnamese government official who resigned in protest against French domination of his country. He was educated in Hue and as a young man worked as a cook on a French steamship, travelling to the United States, Africa, and then Europe, where he took work in London and Paris. In 1920, having accepted Marxist Leninism because of its anticolonial stance, he changed his name to Nguyen Ai Quoc (“Nguyen the Patriot”) and helped found the French Communist Party. He traveled to Moscow in 1923 for study and training. In 1924, he went to Canton, China, to meet with Phan Boi Chau, one of the leading Vietnamese nationalists of the era. While in China, Ho played the leading role in the founding of the Indochinese Communist Party in 1929.
      Ho spent most of the next 10 years writing and organizing, all while outside Vietnam. When the Japanese invaded Vietnam at the beginning of World War II, he changed his name to Ho Chi Minh (“Ho, the Bringer of Light”) and moved his revolutionary group to the caves of Pac Bo in northern Vietnam. There, in May 1941, he organized the Viet Minh, a nationalist and communist organization created to mobilize the people. During the war, Ho and the Viet Minh entered into a loose alliance with the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS), helping to rescue downed American pilots. In 1945, when the Japanese surrendered, the Viet Minh seized power and proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam with Ho as president.
      However, the French, wanting to reimpose colonial rule, refused to grant independence to the Vietnamese. In late 1946, war broke out between the Viet Minh and the French. It lasted for eight bloody years, ending finally with the Viet Minh defeating the French at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. The subsequent Geneva Accords divided Vietnam into North and South Vietnam. Ho devoted his efforts to constructing a communist society in North Vietnam. In the early 1960s, a new war broke out in the South, where communist-led guerrillas mounted an insurgency against the US-supported regime in Saigon. When the United States intervened militarily, Ho directed his forces in a protracted war against the Americans. During this period, Ho continued to provide inspirational leadership to his people, but as his health deteriorated, he increasingly assumed a more ceremonial role as policy was shaped by others. Still, he was the embodiment of the revolution and remained a communist icon after his death in 1969.
1956 Some 120 in a train, in India, as RR bridge collapses under it
1949 Some 1700 Chungking residents, in riverfront fire.
1943 Sir Arthur Ernest Streeton, Australian painter specialized in landscapes, born on 08 April 1867. LINKSMORE ON STREETON AT ART “4” SEPTEMBER Evening with bathersNear HeidelbergThe purple noon's transparent mightAt TemplestoweGolden Summer, EaglemontEaglemontThe Selectors Hut: Whelan On The LogAbove Us The Great Grave Sky Still Glides The Stream And Shall Forever GlideNear HeidelbergSpringFire's OnAustralia FelixGolden Afternoon, OlindaView From Farmer's, OlindaSilvan DamThe Cloud
1940 Maude Elizabeth Seymour Abbott: author. MAUDE ABBOTT ONLINE: On So-called Functional Heart Murmurs
1937 Baron Pierre de Coubertin , 74, revivor of Olympics
1932 Jules Charles Clément Taupin, French artist born on 08 August 1863.
1919 Georges Jules Victor Clairin, French painter born on 11 September 1843. — Photo of a sculpture of Clairin's head. MORE ON CLAIRIN AT ART “4” SEPTEMBERLINKSElegant Figures Watching the RegattaThe Sultan's FavoritesEntering the HaremA Bride's FantasyLa Fête FleurieOn the Balcony
1913 Kakuzo Okakura, author. OKAKURA ONLINE: The Book of Tea, The Book of Tea
1910 J. Henri Fabre, entomologist. FABRE ONLINE: (in English translation): The Life of the Caterpillar, The Life of the Spider
1910 Henri Rousseau “le Douanier”, French Primitive painter born on 21 May 1844. MORE ON ROUSSEAU AT ART “4” SEPTEMBER LINKS Le RêveSurprise!Les Joueurs de Football — La Bohémienne EndormieBoy on Rocks — Eclaireur attaqué par un tigre — Combat Entre Tigre et Buffle — Les Artilleurs — La Tour Eiffel — Moi: Portrait~Paysage — Femme se Promenant Dans un Jardin Exotique — Le Repas du Lion — Le Rêve — La GuerreL'OctroiThe Tiger HuntTropical Forest with Apes and Snake — Apes in the Orange GroveHorse Attacked by a JaguarWoman with an Umbrella in an Exotic ForestPaysage ExotiqueJungle avec Lion — Surprise Désagréable [English title should be: Bare Gets Shock, Bear Gets Shot] — The Snake CharmerThe FlamingosThe Little Cavalier, Don JuanHappy QuartetThe Representatives of Foreign Powers Coming to Greet the Republic as a Sign of PeaceOld Junier's CartJoseph Brummer103 images at Webshots
1885: 28 Chinese laborers are killed and hundreds more chased out of town by striking coal miners, in Rock SpringsWyoming Territory, .      ^top^
     The Rock Springs Massacre takes place as 150 white miners brutally attack their Chinese coworkers, killing 28, wounding 15 others, and driving several hundred more out of town. The miners working in the Union Pacific coal mine had been struggling to unionize and strike for better working conditions for years. But at every juncture the powerful railroad company had bested them. Searching for a scapegoat, the angry miners blamed the Chinese. The Chinese coal miners were hard workers, but the Union Pacific had initially brought many of them to Rock Springs as strikebreakers, and they showed little interest in the miners' union.
      Outraged by a company decision to allow Chinese miners to work the richest coal seams, a mob of white miners impulsively decided to strike back by attacking Rock Spring's small Chinatown. When they saw the armed mob approaching, most of the Chinese abandoned their homes and businesses and fled for the hills. But those who failed to escape in time were brutally beaten and murdered.
      A week later, on 09 September, US troops escorted the surviving Chinese back into the town where many of them returned to work. Eventually the Union Pacific fired 45 of the white miners for their roles in the massacre, but no effective legal action was ever taken against any of the participants. The Rock Springs massacre was symptomatic of the anti-Chinese feelings shared by many Americans at that time. The Chinese had been victims of prejudice and violence ever since they first began to come to the West in the mid-nineteenth century, fleeing famine and political upheaval. Widely blamed for all sorts of social ills, the Chinese were also singled-out for attack by some national politicians who popularized strident slogans like "The Chinese Must Go" and helped pass an 1882 law that closed the US to any further Chinese immigration. In this climate of racial hatred, violent attacks against the Chinese in the West became all too common, though the Rock Springs massacre was notable both for its size and savage brutality.

1885 The Rock Springs Massacre On 02 September 1885, a mob of white coal miners violently attacked their Chinese co-workers in Rock Springs, Wyoming. Twenty-eight Chinese were killed and fifteen wounded, some of whom later died. The homes of seventy-nine Chinese people were set ablaze and the bodies of many of the dead and wounded thrown into the flames. Hundreds of Chinese workers fled into the surrounding desert. Violence exploded after Chinese workers refused to participate in a strike for higher wages planned by Euro-American miners. A week later, federal troops escorted Chinese laborers back to the mines. After restoring order, federal troops remained at Rock Springs until 1898. Although the federal government refused responsibility for actions in a territory, President Grover Cleveland requested a compliant Congress to indemnify the Chinese for $150'000.

     150 white miners in Rock Springs, Wyoming, brutally attack their Chinese coworkers, killing 28, wounding 15 others, and driving several hundred more out of town. The miners working in the Union Pacific coal mine had been struggling to unionize and strike for better working conditions for years. But at every juncture the powerful railroad company had bested them. Searching for a scapegoat, the angry miners blamed the Chinese. The Chinese coal miners were hard workers, but the Union Pacific had initially brought many of them to Rock Springs as strikebreakers, and they showed little interest in the miners' union. Outraged by a company decision to allow Chinese miners to work the richest coal seams, a mob of white miners impulsively decided to strike back by attacking Rock Spring's small Chinatown. When they saw the armed mob approaching, most of the Chinese abandoned their homes and businesses and fled for the hills. But those who failed to escape in time were brutally beaten and murdered. A week later, on September 9, US troops escorted the surviving Chinese back into the town where many of them returned to work. Eventually the Union Pacific fired 45 of the white miners for their roles in the massacre, but no effective legal action was ever taken against any of the participants. The Rock Springs massacre was symptomatic of the anti-Chinese feelings shared by many people in the US at that time. The Chinese had been victims of prejudice and violence ever since they first began to come to the West in the mid-nineteenth century, fleeing famine and political upheaval. Widely blamed for all sorts of social ills, the Chinese were also singled-out for attack by some national politicians who popularized strident slogans like “The Chinese Must Go” and helped pass an 1882 law that closed the US to any further Chinese immigration. In this climate of racial hatred, violent attacks against the Chinese in the West became all too common, though the Rock Springs massacre was notable both for its size and savage brutality.
1865 William Rowan Hamilton, Dublin mathematician born on 04 August 1805. In 1843 he discovered the quaternions, the first noncommutative algebra to be studied. He felt this would revolutionize mathematical physics and he spent the rest of his life working on quaternions. — HAMILTON ONLINE: Lectures on Quaternions
1865 Henri Auguste Calixte César Serrur, French painter born on 09 February or 11 February 1794.— Ajax
1854 Pierre Alphonse Laurent, Parisian engineer and mathematician born on 18 July 1813.
1806 Some 500 as a side of Rossberg Peak collapses into Goldau Valley, Switzerland.
1792 La princesse de Lamballe et maint autres ci-devants, le premier jour des “massacres de septembre”.      ^top^
      Paris craint le pire. Les troupes autrichiennes peuvent être là d'une heure à l'autre. A la tribune de l'Assemblée, Danton tonne: “Le tocsin qui sonne n'est point un signal d'alarme, c'est la charge contre les ennemis de la patrie. Pour les vaincre, messieurs, il nous faut de l'audace, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace, et la France est sauvée.” Une folie meurtrière s'empare des Parisiens. Ceux qui doivent partir se battre ne veulent pas laisser derrière eux des traîtres, des royalistes et des prêtres réfractaires ou autres d'ailleurs. Où commencent les massacres? Nul ne le sait. A la prison de l'Abbaye? Au carrefour de Buci, où passe un transfert de détenus? Mais ils commencent ...
      En quelques heures toutes les prisons deviennent des lieux de massacres. La princesse de Lamballe est dépecée. Sa tête, plantée sur une pique, est brandie devant les fenêtres de Marie-Antoinette au Temple. Le 6 septembre au soir, après quatre jours d'atrocités, l'ivresse de la violence et du sang s'épuise. Il y a quelque 1500 morts. Mme. Roland, écrit: “Vous connaissez mon enthousiasme pour la révolution. Eh bien! j'en ai honte. Elle est ternie par des scélérats, elle est devenue hideuse.”
1768 Antoine Deparcieux, French mathematician born on 28 October 1703. Author of Nouveaux traités de trigonométrie rectiligne et sphérique (1741) and Essai sur les probabilités de la durée de la vie humaine (1746).
1677 Wallerant Vaillant, Flemish artist born on 30 May 1623.— LINKSSelf~portrait, (or portrait of the artist's brother) — Self~portrait
1666 A baker's maid, in the bakery where the Great Fire of London starts, a few other persons, also some pigeons, and, undoubtedly, many plague-carrying rats.      ^top^
The Great Fire of London

FIRST DAY Sunday 02 September 1666

     Before going to bed at about 22:00 last night, Thomas Farrinor, baker to King Charles II of England, must have neglected to extinguish completely his oven. He thought the fire was out, he would later claim, but apparently the smoldering embers ignited some nearby firewood and by 01:00, his house in Pudding Lane is in flames [however a Frenchman was later hanged for setting the fire]. Farrinor, along with his wife and daughter, and one servant, luckily escape from the burning building through an upstairs window, but the baker's maid pays dearly for his carelessness, becoming the Great Fire's first victim.

     The fire then leaps across Fish Street Hill and engulfs the Star Inn. The London of 1666 is a city of half-timbered, pitch-covered medieval buildings that can ignite at the touch of a spark — and a strong wind on this September morning makes the sparks fly everywhere. From the Inn, the fire spreads into Thames Street, where riverfront warehouses are full of oil, tallow, and other combustible goods. By now the fire has grown too fierce to combat with the crude firefighting methods of the day, which consist of little more than bucket brigades armed with wooden pails of water. The customary recourse during a fire of such magnitude is to demolish every building in the path of the flames in order to deprive the fire of fuel, but the city's mayor hesitates, fearing the high cost of rebuilding. Meanwhile, the fire spreads out of control, doing far more damage than the most overzealous firefighters could possibly have managed.

Soon the flames are visible from Seething Lane, near the Tower of London, where diarist Samuel Pepys first notes them without concern:

Some of our maids sitting up late last night to get things ready against our feast today, Jane called up about three in the morning, to tell us of a great fire they saw in the City. So I rose, and slipped on my night-gown and went to her window, and thought it to be on the back side of Mark Lane at the farthest; but, being unused to such fires as followed, I thought it far enough off, and so went to bed again, and to sleep. . . . By and by Jane comes and tells me that she hears that above 300 houses have been burned down tonight by the fire we saw, and that it is now burning down all Fish Street, by London Bridge. So I ... walked to the Tower; and there got up upon one of the high places, . . .and there I did see the houses at the end of the bridge all on fire, and an infinite great fire on this and the other side . . . of the bridge. . . .

So down [I went], with my heart full of trouble, to the Lieutenant of the Tower, who tells me that it began this morning in the King's baker's house in Pudding Lane, and that it hath burned St. Magnus's Church and most part of Fish Street already. So I rode down to the waterside, . . . and there saw a lamentable fire. . . . Everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that lay off; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the waterside to another. And among other things, the poor pigeons, I perceive, were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconies, till they some of them burned their wings and fell down.

Having stayed, and in an hour's time seen the fire rage every way, and nobody to my sight endeavouring to quench it, . . . I [went next] to Whitehall (with a gentleman with me, who desired to go off from the Tower to see the fire in my boat); and there up to the King's closet in the Chapel, where people came about me, and I did give them an account [that]dismayed them all, and the word was carried into the King. so I was called for, and did tell the King and Duke of York what I saw; and that unless His Majesty did command houses to be pulled down, nothing could stop the fire. They seemed much troubled, and the King commanded me to go to my Lord Mayor from him, and command him to spare no houses. . . .

[I hurried] to [St.] Paul's; and there walked along Watling Street, as well as I could, every creature coming away laden with goods to save and, here and there, sick people carried away in beds. Extraordinary goods carried in carts and on backs. At last [I] met my Lord Mayor in Cannon Street, like a man spent, with a [handkerchief] about his neck. To the King's message he cried, like a fainting woman, 'Lord, what can I do? I am spent: people will not obey me. I have been pulling down houses, but the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it.' . . . So he left me, and I him, and walked home; seeing people all distracted, and no manner of means used to quench the fire. The houses, too, so very thick thereabouts, and full of matter for burning, as pitch and tar, in Thames Street; and warehouses of oil and wines and brandy and other things.
     The fire, lasting four days, would destroy about four-fifths of the city, including roughly 13'200 houses, nearly 90 parish churches, and nearly 50 livery company halls — in all an area of more than 430 acres.
      In the aftermath, Sir Christopher Wren, the great architect, designed and oversaw the construction of 49 new churches, as well as the new St. Paul's Cathedral. Amazingly, the fire claimed only 16 lives and may actually have saved countless more. After 5th September, the Black Plague, which had ravished London since 1664, abruptly declined, probably because so few of the rats that helped to transmit the disease escaped the flames.

      Samuel Pepys is the best known diarist of his day. Although he was a minor public official, his diary contains more details of his private life than of London politics. Still, his accounts of both the Black Death and the Great Fire show that he was less than in awe of persons holding high office. — ONLINE: The Concise Pepys (1825 edition),
Pepys' diary entry for 24 February 1667 mentions that there is still smoke from the "late fire" and contains this:
     . I enquired about the Frenchman that was said to fire the City, and was hanged for it by his own confession, that he was hired for it by a Frenchman of Roane, and that he did with a stick reach in a fire-ball in at a window of the house: whereas the master of the house, who is the King’s baker, and his son, and daughter, do all swear there was no such window, and that the fire did not begin thereabouts. Yet the fellow, who, though a mopish besotted fellow, did not speak like a madman, did swear that he did fire it: and did not this like a madman; for being tried on purpose, and landed with his keeper at the Town-Wharf, he could carry the keeper to the very house. Asking Sir R. Viner what he thought was the cause of the fire, he tells me, that the baker, son, and his daughter, did all swear again and again, that their oven was drawn by ten o’clock at night: that having occasion to light a candle about twelve, there was not so much fire in the bakehouse as to light a match for a candle, so that they were fain to go into another place to light it: that about two in the morning they felt themselves almost choked with smoke, and rising did find the fire coming upstairs; so they rose to save themselves; but that at that time the bavins were not on fire in the yard. So that they are, as they swear, in absolute ignorance how this fire should come; which is a strange thing, that so horrid an effect should have so mean and uncertain a beginning.
In the early morning hours, the Great Fire of London breaks out in the house of King Charles II's baker on Pudding Lane near London Bridge. It soon spread to Thames Street, where warehouses filled with combustibles and a strong easterly wind transformed the blaze into an inferno. When the Great Fire finally was extinguished on 06 September, more than four-fifths of London was destroyed. Miraculously, only 16 persons were known to have died. The Great Fire of London was a disaster waiting to happen. London of 1666 was a city of medieval houses made mostly of oak timber. Some of the poorer houses had walls covered with tar, which kept out the rain but made the structures more vulnerable to fire. Streets were narrow, houses were crowded together, and the firefighting methods of the day consisted of neighborhood bucket brigades armed with pails of water and primitive hand pumps.
      Citizens were instructed to check their homes for possible dangers, but there were many instances of carelessness. So it was on the evening of 01 September 1666, when Thomas Farrinor, the king's baker, failed to properly extinguish his oven. He went to bed, and sometime around midnight sparks from the smoldering embers ignited firewood lying beside the oven. Before long, his house was in flames. Farrinor managed to escape with his family and a servant out an upstairs window, but a bakery assistant died in the flames — the first victim. Sparks from Farrinor's bakery leapt across the street and set fire to straw and fodder in the stables of the Star Inn. From the Inn, the fire spread to Thames Street, where riverfront warehouses were packed full with flammable materials such as tallow for candles, lamp oil, spirits, and coal. These stores lit aflame or exploded, transforming the fire into an uncontrollable blaze. Bucket-bearing locals abandoned their futile efforts at firefighting and rushed home to evacuate their families and save their valuables. It had been a hot, dry summer, and a strong wind further encouraged the flames.
      As the conflagration grew, city authorities struggled to tear down buildings and create a firebreak, but the flames repeatedly overtook them before they could complete their work. People fled into the Thames River dragging their possessions, and the homeless took refuge in the hills on the outskirts of London. Light from the Great Fire could be seen 50 km away. On 05 September, the fire slackened, and on 06 September it was brought under control. That evening, flames again burst forth in the Temple (the legal district), but the explosion of buildings with gunpowder extinguished the flames.
      The Great Fire of London engulfed 13'000 houses, nearly 90 churches, and scores of public buildings. The old St. Paul's Cathedral was destroyed, as were many other historic landmarks. As estimated 100'000 people were left homeless. Within days, King Charles II set about rebuilding his capital. The great architect Sir Christopher Wren designed a new St. Paul's Cathedral with dozens of smaller new churches ranged around it like satellites. To prevent future fires, most new houses were built of brick or stone and separated by thicker walls. Narrow alleyways were forbidden and streets were made wider.
      Permanent fire departments, however, did not become a fixture in London until well into the 18th century. In the 1670s, a memorial column commemorating the Great Fire of London was erected near the source of the calamity. Known as the Memorial, it was probably designed by the architect Robert Hooke, though some sources credit Christopher Wren. The column stands 202 feet above the pavement and features sculpture and engravings that tell the story of the conflagration. Even though an official inquiry into the Great Fire concluded that "the hand of God, a great wind, and a very dry season" caused it, an inscription on the Memorial (removed in 1830) blamed the disaster on the "treachery and malice of the Popish faction."
      In 1986, London's bakers finally apologized to the lord mayor for setting fire to the city. Members of the Worshipful Company of Bakers gathered on Pudding Lane and unveiled a plaque acknowledging that one of their own, Thomas Farrinor, was guilty of causing the Great Fire of 1666.
1606 Karel van der Mander, Dutch painter born in May 1548. — LINKSThe Continence of Scipio
1566 Taddeo Zuccaro, Italian Mannerist draftsman, designer, painter, born on 01 September 1529. — MORE ON ZUCCARO AT ART “4” 2~DAY LINKSAdoration by the MagiJustice (drawing) — Funeral of Saint Bernardino (drawing) — Madonna with Angels _ detailConversion of Saint Paul _ detailThe Beheading of Saint John the Baptist
1547 Hernan Cortés, Spanish general defeated Aztec Indians
0459 Simeon Stylites, who spent 36 years on top of a pillar praying, fasting, and preaching. His first pillar was 3 meters high, his last more than 15 meters.
Births which occurred on a September 02:      ^top^
2002 The cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels is dedicated in Los Angeles.
1948 Sharon Christa Corrigan McAuliffe teacher/astronaut (Challenger). Would have a 73-seconds ride to death, as the highly publicized first civilian passenger on a space mission. millions of school children and others watched in horror TVshe six other crew members perished shuttle Challenger exploded.
1935 The music of the opera Porgy and Bess      ^top^
      George Gershwin signs his name to the completed orchestral score of the opera, Porgy and Bess. The composer called the seven- hundred-page score his masterpiece and never ceased to marvel that he had created it. Many critics consider Porgy and Bess to be the first and finest American opera.
      In February 1934, George and Ira Gershwin and Dubose and Dorothy Heyward had begun their collaboration on a libretto, songs, and music for Heyward's novel, Porgy, about the African-American "Gullah" culture of South Carolina. During the summer of 1934, George Gershwin spent several weeks on Folly Island off the coast of Charleston, where the Heywards owned a beach cottage. There, he and Heyward observed customs of the local people and listened to their music. Gershwin joined in their "shouting" which involved rhythms created by hands and feet as accompaniment to the spirituals.
Thom2002 René Thom [photo >], French topologist, born on 02 September 1923. His work on topology, in particular on characteristic classes, cobordism theory, and the Thom transversality theorem led to his being awarded a Fields Medal in 1958. Thom pontificated outside his field: Structural Stability and Morphogenesis (1972, his “catastrophe theory”, a mathematical treatment of continuous action producing a discontinuous result), linguistics, philosophy, theoretical biology. He inspired Salvador Dali's painting Topological Abduction of Europe: Homage to René Thom (1983). — Cobordism theory is a way of organising and classifying manifolds whose stable tangent bundles admit additional structure. The study of complex cobordism energized homotopy theory for at least 20 years after its introduction by Thom, and then found applications in quantum field theory. It branched into complex cobordism, framed cobordism, and symplectic cobordism. Several problems remain unsolved, which require an understanding of the stable homotopy groups of spheres, or the framed cobordism ring.
1919 Communist Party of America organized in Chicago 
1918 Allen Drury author (Advise & Consent-1960 Pulitzer Prize). He died on 2 September 1998.
1917 Cleveland Amory (writer: The Cat and the Curmudgeon, The Cat Who Came for Christmas, TV Guide columnist; died on 14 October 1998)
1914 (1911?) Romare Howard Bearden, US Black social realist Harlem Renaissance painter, collagist, printmaker, who died in 1988. — LINKSBlue Silk StockingsHeavy Freight/Mecklenburg EveningMecklenburg Autumn/Morning RitualMecklenburg Autumn/September: Sky and MeadowSmall Island FlowersBefore the First WhistleCaribbean MermaidJazzMecklenburg AutumnMemories (12 Trains)MorningQuilting TimeRed Woman in LandscapeTenor SermonThe BurialMorning of Red BirdPiano LessonQuilting TimeSaturday MorningSunset Limited Wrapping it up at the Lafayette _ more
1913 Israil Moiseevich Gelfand, Ukrainian mathematician and biological physicist.
1889 Isaac Grünewald, Swedish artist who died in 1946.
1884 Frank Laubach Benton Pa, educator, taught reading through phonetics
1878 Maurice René Fréchet, French mathematician who died on 04 June 1973. He made major contributions to the topology of point sets and defined and founded the theory of abstract spaces. Fréchet's most important books include Les Espaces abstraits (1928), Récherches théoretiques modernes sur la théorie des probabilités (1938), Pages choisies d'analyse générale (1953), Les Mathématiques et le concret (1955).
1877 Frederick Soddy, named an isotope and received 1921 Nobel prize for chemistry.
1871 John Le Gay Brereton, author. BRERETON ONLINE: The Burning Marl, Swags Up!
1864 Louis Séraphine de Senlis, French artist who died on 11 December 1942.
1857 Karl Stauffer~Bern, Swiss artist who died on 25 January 1891. — Gustav Freitag
1856 Yang Hsiu-ch'ing commander in chief of the Taiping Rebellion
1856 Friedrich Wilhelm Franz Meyer, German mathematician who died on 11 June 1934. He studied algebraic geometry, algebraic curves and invariant theory.
1853 Wilhelm Ostwald Germany, physical chemist (Nobel 1909)
1852 Franz von Persoglia, Austrian artist who died in 1912.
1850 Albert Spaulding baseball player/founded Spaulding sports company
1850 Eugene Field author/journalist (Little Boy Blue)
1850 Alfred Pringsheim, Jewish German mathematician who became a refugee in Switzerland, where he died on 25 June 1941.
1850 Eugene Field, poet and journalist.      ^top^
FIELD ONLINE:
  • Christmas Tales and Christmas Verse
  • The Holy Cross, and Other Tales
  • The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac
  • Love-Songs of Childhood
  • Love-Songs of Childhood
  • Lullaby Land: Songs of Childhood
  • Second Book of Verse
  • Songs and Other Verse
  • With Trumpet and Drum
  • 1841 Matthieu Paul Hermann Laurent, Luxembourgian mathematician who died on 19 February 1908. He wrote 30 books on infinite series, equations, differential equations and geometry. He also developed statistical and interpolation formulas for calculating actuarial tables. He was the contemporary of the only other well-known Luxembourgian mathematician, Joseph Jean Baptiste Neuberg [30 Oct 1840 – 22 Mar 1926]
    1836 Anton Braith, German artist who died on 03 January 1905.
    1839 Henry George land reformer — GEORGE ONLINE: Progress and Poverty
    1838 Queen Lydia Kamekeha Liliuokalani last queen of Hawaii (1891-93) 1838 Lydia Kamekeha Liliuokalanilast sovereign before annexation of Hawaii by the United States.
    1836 Anton Braith, German artist who died on 03 January 1905.
    1826 Alberto Pasini, Italian artist who died on 15 December 1899.
    1820 Lucretia Peabody Hale, author. — HALE ONLINE:: The Peterkin Papers
    1789 US Treasury founded      ^top^
          Its roots can be traced back to the American Revolution. Back in 1775, the Revolutionary leaders were groping with ways to fund the war. Their solution — issuing cash that doubled as redeemable "bills of credit" — raised enough capital to fuel the Revolution. However, the war notes also led to the country's first debt. The Continental Congress attempted to reign in the economy, even forming a pre-Constitutional version of the Treasury. Neither this move, nor the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which enabled the US to seek loans from foreign countries, proved effective. The debt kept mounting, while war notes rapidly deflated in value. With the ratification of the Constitution in 1789, the Government established a permanent Treasury Department in hopes of quelling the debt. President Washington named his former "aide-de-camp," Alexander Hamilton, to head the new office. The former New York lawyer and staunch Federalist stepped in as Secretary of the Treasury on September 11. Hamilton soon outlined a practical plan for reviving the nation's ailing economy: the Government would pay back its $75 million war debt and thus repair its badly damaged public credit.
    1722 Virgilius Erichsen, Danish painter who died on 23 May 1782.— Grand Prince Pavel Petrovich in his StudyCatherine the Great
    1711 Noël Hallé, French painter, draftsman, and printmaker, who died on 05 June 1781. MORE ON HALLÉ AT ART “4” SEPTEMBERHippomenes and Atalanta _ According to the legend related by Ovid (Metamorphoses 10:560-707), Atalanta was an athletic huntress who could outrun any man. When Hippomenes ran a race against her, he dropped apples of gold, which she slowed down to pick up, and so he won the race and her hand in marriage. — La Prédication de Saint Vincent de PaulThe Death of Seneca
    Holidays Vietnam : Independence Day (1945)
    Religious Observances
    Luth : Bp Nikolai Grundtvig, renewer of the Church / Old Catholic : St Stephen, 1st King of Hungary / Christian : St William, English bishop, apostle to Danes / RC : Bl Andre Grasset, Canadian Holy Cross brother / Ang : the martyrs of New Guinea
    Thoughts for the day :“Share your happiness with others today.”
    “Share others' happiness every day.”
    “Misery loves company.”
    [company does not reciprocate]
    “Misery loves anti-depressant manufacturing company.”
    “Miserliness loves a company that pays big dividends.”
    “ Laugh and the world laughs with you.”
    “Laugh and the world laughs at you.”
    “If you can't laugh at yourself, don't worry, others will.”
    “Invent a better mousetrap and the world will invent a better mouse.” —
    [Not waiting for a better mousetrap, teams of scientists are peppering learned journals with their research into improving memory in mice]
    “Invent a better mousetrap and the world will beat you to it.”
    “Invent a better mouse and Microsoft will steal it from you.”
    “Invent a better mousetrap and the world will beat you up.”
    “Invent a better mousetrap and the world will say it wanted a better lousetrap.”
    “Invent a better mousetrap and the world will declare the mouse an endangered species.”
    “Invent a better mouse strap and the world will know you are crazy.”
    “Nothing succeeds, they say, like success. And certainly nothing fails like failure.” —
    Margaret Drabble, British author.
    “Failure never fails those who don't succeed.”
    “Failure succeeds success of the overconfident.”
    “There is no succedaneum for success.”
    “Le succès n'admet pas de succédané.”
    “Le succédané c'est le succès damné.”
    “Nothing succeeds like failure, when you want to avoid a chore.”
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