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Events, deaths, births, of 27 AUG
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On a 27 August:
2003 At 09:51 UT Mars is at its closest to the Earth since 12 September 57'617 BC: 55'760'000 km. For several weeks it has appeared brighter than any star or planet except Venus. It will not be that close until 28 August 2287.
2002 HealthSouth Corporation (HRC) announces plans to split in two to shield its strong surgery center division from expected earnings weakness in its rehabilitation services, due to changes in Medicare [next story]. The stock of Healthsouth Corporation (HRC) is downgraded by UBS Warburg from Strong Buy to Buy. On the New York Stock Exchange, HRC drops from its previous close of $11.97 to an intraday low of $6.24 and closes at $6.71. It had started trading on 29 September 1997, at $26.63, and then rose to $30.56 on 27 April 1998. From there it dropped as low as $4.81 on 27 December 1999, but then recovered to as much as $18.48 on 04 September 2001. [5~year price chart >]
2002 Older people in 23 states of the US will have a new option in Medicare: managed care plans that offer prescription drug coverage and are more flexible than HMOs, much like those chosen by many people under age 65. Under an experimental plan announced today, up to 11 million Medicare participants in 23 states can sign up for preferred provider organizations, where coverage is cheap as long as patients use doctors and hospitals that are on the insurance company's list. Unlike health maintenance organizations, PPOs allow subscribers to visit doctors outside the network, but they have to pay extra. All 33 health plans participating in the program intend to offer prescription drug coverage. The traditional Medicare program, where patients can see any doctor they want, has never offered drug coverage outside of hospitals. So older people who want coverage have been forced to buy expensive supplementary coverage or join HMOs. Officials hope the new plans prove both popular with seniors and financially viable for insurance companies, who have pulled out of the Medicare HMO program in droves. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson noted that nearly half of all people in the US under age 65 are in PPOs. "If this is so popular with Americans under 65, we should provide the same choices for our seniors," he said. Congress has been debating how to add prescription drug coverage to Medicare so that all participants can get help with their drug bills. Disagreements over how to structure the program and how much to spend have tied up the issue, and no bill is expected to pass this year. Many seniors signed up for HMOs to get drug coverage, but those plans have complained that they didn't get enough money to cover participants and many have dropped out. About 12% of Medicare participants remain in HMOs now. Under the pilot program announced Tuesday, plans agree to offer coverage for at least three years. They will typically be paid more per enrollee than health plans offering HMOs are paid. If spending on participants winds up being significantly higher or significantly lower, the loss or the savings will be shared with the federal government. Seniors can sign up for the new plans beginning in November 2002, with coverage starting on 01 January 2003. The option will be available to about 11 million Medicare participants. Plans intend to offer PPOs in all or parts of 23 states: Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington.
2002 Evidence for van der Waals adhesion in gecko setae
      The Proceedings of the National Acadamy of Science Online publish a study of one of the most versatile and effective adhesives known, evolved by geckos. The mechanism of dry adhesion in the millions of setae on the toes of geckos has been the focus of scientific study for over a century.
      The researchers provide the first direct experimental evidence for dry adhesion of gecko setae by van der Waals forces, and reject the use of mechanisms relying on high surface polarity, including capillary adhesion. The toes of live Tokay geckos were highly hydrophobic, and adhered equally well to strongly hydrophobic and strongly hydrophilic, polarizable surfaces. Adhesion of a single isolated gecko seta was equally effective on the hydrophobic and hydrophilic surfaces of a microelectro-mechanical systems force sensor.
      A van der Waals mechanism implies that the remarkable adhesive properties of gecko setae are merely a result of the size and shape of the tips, and are not strongly affected by surface chemistry. Theory predicts greater adhesive forces simply from subdividing setae to increase surface density, and suggests a possible design principle underlying the repeated, convergent evolution of dry adhesive microstructures in gecko, anoles, skinks, and insects.
      Estimates using a standard adhesion model and the measured forces come remarkably close to predicting the tip size of Tokay gecko seta. The researchers verified the dependence on size and not surface type by using physical models of setal tips nanofabricated from two different materials. Both artificial setal tips stuck as predicted and provide a path to manufacturing the first dry, adhesive microstructures.
2001 In Afghanistan, the theocratic Taliban dictator Mullah Mohammed Omar adds to the long list of repressive worse~than~medieval measures imposed in the name of a brand of Islam accepted nowhere else. Now he bans the use of the Internet, except in Kandahar, where most of the senior Taliban leaders are based. It is not clear whether the death penalty will be encurred by violators (as it is, for example, by those committing the crime of speaking well of Christianity). Perhaps, mercifully, they will just have their eyes put out and their hands cut off. Many Afghan men and, especially, women (who, to put it briefly, are forbidden just about everything) must be longing for the good old days of Soviet aggression (1979~1989), from which the Taliban (with CIA support) “freed” them.
2001 The Norwegian cargo ship Tampa rescues 434 refugees from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka from crippled Indonesian ferry KM Palapa early in the day. The refugees insist that their rescuers take them to Australia and not back to Indonesia. But when the overloaded Tampa, with the suffering refugees on deck under the tropical sun, approaches Australia's Christmas Island, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, in a demagogic move as elections approach, inhumanely refuses it entry. The refugees would continue to suffer until at last, on 3 September 2001, they are transfered to a troop ship that takes some of them to more hospitable New Zealand, and the others to be “processed” to be sent anywhere but Australia, on tiny Nauru island.
1999 Chechnya war: Russian parliament approves $4.1 million in emergency reconstruction for Dagestan and $500 thousand for assistance for displaced persons, estimated at over 10'000. — http://www.cdi.org/issues/Europe/aug.html
1997 Feds accused of violating Internet privacy
      A watchdog group, OMB Watch, said most US federal agencies that collected personal information over the Internet failed to explain adequately how that information would be protected or used. Concerns over personal privacy grew steadily in the late 1990s. In 1999, the White House appointed a "privacy czar" to examine privacy issues on the Internet.
1997 Internet gossip monger sued by White House adviser. Sidney Blumenthal sues Internet gossip writer Matt Drudge for $30 million for defamation, challenging an online story which alleged that Blumenthal had concealed a history of spousal abuse.
1991 Warning of impending "catastrophe," Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev threatened to resign unless the Soviet Union's splintering republics could at least preserve a military and economic alliance.
1989 100 march through Bensonhurst protesting racial killings
1984 President Reagan announces the Teacher in Space project
1981 Divers begin to recover a safe found aboard the sunken Andrea Doria
1979 The US IRS establishes the position of Taxpayer Ombudsman, the "taxpayer's advocate in resolving problems,”
1975 Veronica and Colin Scargill (England) complete tandem bicycle ride, a record 29'000 km around the world
1972 Vietnam: Heavy US bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong
      In the heaviest bombing in four years, US aircraft flatten North Vietnamese barracks near Hanoi and Haiphong as part of ongoing Operation Linebacker I, part of President Nixon's response to the NVA Easter Offensive. Planes also hit bridges on the northeast railroad line to China.
      In an associated action, four US ships raided the Haiphong port area after dark, shelling to within 3 km of the city limits. As the US ships withdraw from the area, the cruiser USS Newport News sinks one of two North Vietnamese patrol boats in pursuit, and destroyer USS Rowan sets the other on fire.
1970 Vietnam: Agnew meets with President Thieu
     US Vice President Spiro Agnew meets with South Vietnamese president Nguyen Van Thieu in Saigon. In a speech at Ton Son Nhut air base, Agnew praises the South Vietnamese people for suffering "so much in freedom's cause" and promised that "there will no lessening of US support,”
      MACV (Military Assistance Command Vietnam) reports that 52 US soldiers died and 358 were wounded during the week of 16 August to 22 August, the lowest casualty toll since the week of 03 December 1966.
1966 Francis Chichester begins the first solo sail around the world
1966 Race riot in Waukegan Illinois
1963 Cambodia severs ties with South Vietnam. .
1962 Mariner 2 launched to Venus      ^top^
      The unmanned US spacecraft Mariner 2 was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on an exploratory mission to Venus. On September 4, a successful mid-course correction would be made. On November 15, one of Mariner's two solar panels failed, but the spacecraft had come close enough to the sun that a single panel could supply adequate power. On December 14, 1962, Mariner 2 passed within just over 30'000 km of Venus, reporting an 425ºC surface temperature, high surface pressures, a predominantly carbon dioxide atmosphere, continuous cloud cover, and no detectable magnetic field. Mariner 2 was the first human spacecraft to pass close enough to Venus to take scientific measurements of the planet.
1952 Red Scare is front page news.
      As the presidential election of 1952 begins to heat up, so do accusations and counteraccusations concerning communism in America. The "Red Scare" — the widespread belief that international communism was operating in the United States — came to dominate much of the debate between Democrats and Republicans in 1952.
      On 27 August 1952, the New York Times front page contained three stories suggesting the impact of the Red Scare on the upcoming election. In the first story, the Republican-dominated Senate Internal Security Subcommittee released a report charging that the Radio Writers Guild was dominated by a small number of communists. The Guild, whose members were responsible for producing more than 90 percent of the programs on radio, had purportedly been run by a small clique of communists for at least the last nine years. According to the subcommittee report, communist subversion of the Guild was merely one step in a larger effort to control the media of the United States-including radio, television, movies, and book publishing.
      The second front-page story was a report that the American Legion was demanding, for the third year in a row, that President Harry S. Truman dismiss Secretary of State Dean Acheson for his lack of vigor in dealing with the communist threat. The Legion report declared that the Department of State was in desperate need of "God-fearing Americans" who had the "intestinal fortitude not to be political puppets,” The organization demanded a quick and victorious settlement of the Korean War, even if this meant expanding the war into China.
      The third story provided a counter of sorts to the previous two stories. It reported a speech by Democratic nominee for president Governor Adlai E. Stevenson, in which he strongly criticized those who used "patriotism" as a weapon against their political opponents. In an obvious slap at the Senate Subcommittee and others, such as Senator Joseph McCarthy, Stevenson repeated the words of the writer Dr. Samuel Johnson: "Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels,” The governor claimed that it was "shocking" that good Americans, such as Acheson and former secretary of state General George C. Marshall, could be attacked on the grounds that they were unpatriotic.
      The three related stories from the front page of the Times indicated just how deeply the Red Scare had penetrated American society. Accusations about communists in the film, radio, and television industries, in the Department of State and the US Army, in all walks of American life, had filled the newspapers and airwaves for years. By 1952, many Americans were convinced that communists were at work in the United States and must be rooted out and hunted down. Republicans and their allies were obviously planning to use the Red Scare to their advantage in the presidential election of that year, while the Democrats were going to have to battle the perception that they had been "soft" on communism during the administration of President Truman (who came to office in 1945 following the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt). The Republicans were eventually victorious, with Dwight D. Eisenhower scoring a victory over Stevenson.
1945 US troops land in Japan after Japanese surrender.
1945 B-29 Superfortress bombers begin to drop supplies into Allied prisoner of war camps in China.
1941 Konoye seeks summit with Roosevelt      ^top^
      Prince Fumimaro Konoye, prime minister of Japan, announces that he would like to enter into direct negotiations with President Roosevelt in order to prevent the Japanese conflict with China from expanding into world war.
      Konoye, a lawyer by training and well studied in Western philosophy, literature, and economics, had entered the Japanese Parliament's upper house by virtue of his princely status and immediately pursued a program of reform. High on his agenda was a reform of the army general staff in order to prevent its direct interference in foreign policy decisions. He also sought an increase in parliamentary power. An antifascist, Konoye championed an end to the militarism of Japanese political structures, especially in light of the war in Manchuria, which began in 1931.
      Appointed prime minister in 1933, Konoye saw his first cabinet fall apart after full-blown war broke out between Japan and China. In 1940, Konoye was asked to form a second cabinet. But as he sought to contain the war with China, relations with the United States deteriorated, to the point where Japan was virtually surrounded by a US military presence and threats of sanctions.
      On 27 August 1941, Konoye requested a summit with President Roosevelt in order to diminish heightening tensions. Envoys were exchanged, but no direct meeting with the president took place. The US did not want China to think the US was on the side of Japan.
      In October, Konoye would resign because of increasing tension with his army minister, Tojo Hideki, who would succeed him as prime minister. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Konoye was put under military surveillance, his political career all but over until 1945, when the emperor considered sending him to Moscow to negotiate peace terms. That meeting never came off either. The grand irony of Prince Konoye's career came at the war's conclusion, when he was served with an arrest warrant by the US occupying force for suspicion of war crimes. Rather than submit to arrest, he committed suicide by drinking poison.
1939 Erich Warsitz makes first jet-propelled flight (in a Heinkel He-178)
1938 (or 1937???) Car reaches 556 km/h      ^top^
      At the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, Captain George E. T. Eyston establishes a new land speed record of 556 km/h in a Rolls-Royce-powered Thunderbolt. The land speed trials have been held every year since 1903, serving as a test of automotive technology and proof of climbing speeds. Captain Eyston’s record one of the few not held by Malcolm Campbell, who dominated the trials for almost thirty years. The current (1999) record is held by Richard Noble at 1029.66 km/h.
1937 George E.T. Eyston sets world auto speed record at 556 km/h.
1928 Fifteen nations sign the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact, outlawing war and calling for the settlement of disputes through arbitration. Forty-seven other countries eventually sign the pact.
1916 Italy declares war on Germany.
1913 Lt Peter Nestrov, of Imperial Russian Air Service, performs a loop in a monoplane at Kiev (first aerobatic maneuver in an airplane)
1910 Thomas Edison demonstrates the first "talking" pictures — using a phonograph — in his New Jersey laboratory.
1910 First radio broadcast from an airplane in flight, over Sheepshead Bay, New York.
1904 First jailing of a speeder, in Newport, Rhode Island. This was a harsh sentence in 1904 because traffic laws were still relatively new — the first traffic code wasn’t implemented until 1903, when New York introduced a two-page book of regulations. Early traffic regulations varied drastically from state to state, some having no speed limits at all.
1900 Researcher has yellow fever mosquito sting him.      ^top^
      In Havana, Cuba, US Army physician James Carroll allows an infected mosquito to feed on him in an attempt to isolate the means of transmission of yellow fever. Several days later, Carroll developed a severe case of yellow fever, helping his colleague, Army pathologist Walter Reed, prove that mosquitoes transmit the often-deadly disease.
      In 1881, Cuban physician C. J. Finlay first suggested that mosquitoes could be the carrier. In 1900, Walter Reed was sent to Havana as head of an army commission to investigate an outbreak of yellow fever among American soldiers. In 1901, his team would publish its findings that yellow fever was caused by a virus borne by the Stegomyia fasciata mosquito, which breeds in stagnant water near human habitations in tropical and subtropical regions.
      Over the next decade, W. C. Gorgas, an army physician and sanitation expert, succeeded in controlling the disease in the Panama Canal Zone through mosquito-eradication measures. The adoption of his techniques in other affected areas, in addition to the later development of an immunizing vaccine and strict quarantine measures, has led to the control of yellow fever in most parts of the world.
      Prior to the US Army discoveries, outbreaks of yellow fever periodically occurred in the American South. The symptoms of the disease can vary from only a mild fever to internal hemorrhaging, coma, and death. Uncertain of how the disease was transmitted, Southerners with the means would leave the South for the summer when the epidemics were most common, returning after the first frost. The last recorded epidemic of yellow fever in the United States occurred in New Orleans in 1905.
1896 Zanzibar loses to England in a 38 minute war (9:02 AM-9:40 AM) — La guerre la plus courte de l'histoire: le temps pour les anglais, à qui le sultan de Zanzibar avait déclaré la guerre, de le mettre en fuite après avoir détruit son palais.
1894 Congress passes first US graduated income tax law.      ^top^
      The tax is included in the Wilson-Gormann Tariff, a major piece of trade legislation passed by Congress on this day. However, both the income tax and the tariff have their high-powered critics. President Grover Cleveland refuses to sign the bill on the grounds the tariff provisions were too protectionist. Meanwhile, the tax law becomes mired in legal wrangles. The Supreme Court effectively squashed it in the ruling on Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Company 157 US 429 (8 April 1895). The Court interpreted the income tax as a direct tax which, according to the Constitution, isn't within the federal government's legislative powers. The Wilson-Gormann Tariff only served to put the income tax on the legislative map. With the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913, the tax made its way into the US's law and pocketbooks.
1881 New York state's Pure Food Law goes into effect to prevent "the adulteration of food or drugs,”
1876 At age 13, future English clergyman G. Campbell Morgan preaches his first sermon. He later grew to become one of the most famous expository preachers and writers of late 19th century England and US.
1865 Rhenish missionary Ludwig I. Nommensen, 31, baptizes four families of the Batak tribe in North Sumatra (Indonesia) the first to be converted to the Christian faith. Nommensen later established a theological training school and in 1878 completed a translation of the New Testament into the Batak language.
1863 Skirmish at Bayou Meto (Reed's Bridge), Arkansas.
1863 Siege of Fort Wagner, Charleston Harbor, South Carolina continues.
1862 As the Second Battle of Bull Run rages, Confederate soldiers attack Loudoun County, Virginia. The Quaker-dominated Loudoun Rangers openly defied Virginia tradition to serve the Union.
1862 Stonewall Jackson captures and plunders Union supply depot at Manassas Junction, Virginia.
1861 Union attack on Cape Hatteras begins
      Union ships sail into North Carolina's Hatteras Inlet, beginning a two-day operation that secures the area for the Federals and denies the Confederates an important outlet to the Atlantic. The Outer Banks is a series of long, narrow islands that separate Pamlico Sound from the Atlantic, with Hatteras Inlet as the only deep-water passage connecting the two. In the first few months of the war, the Outer Banks were a haven for Confederate blockade runners and raiders. During the summer of 1861, one Rebel ship, the Winslow, wreaked havoc on Union shipping off North Carolina, and Federal naval and army officials mounted a combined operation to neutralize the area. To protect the passage, the Confederates erected two fortresses of sand and wood, garrisoned by 350 soldiers. Eight Union warships and 800 soldiers under the command of Commodore Silas Stringham and General Benjamin Butler anchored off Cape Hatteras on 27 August. Butler's men slogged ashore the next day with wet powder, hardly in shape to attack a fortified position. Fortunately for the Yankee infantry, the squadron off shore began a devastating bombardment that forced the Confederates to abandon one of the strongholds, Fort Clark. The Confederates gathered inside of the larger Fort Hatteras, but the shelling from the Union ships was more than the garrison could stand. The force surrendered on 29 August. The capture of Cape Hatteras was an important victory for the Union, especially after the disaster at Bull Run one month earlier. It also gave the Union a toehold on the North Carolina coast, and it sealed an important outlet to the Atlantic.
1859 First oil well      ^top^
      Edwin Drake struck oil 21 m down, near Titusville, Pennsylvania — the world’s first successful oil well. This source of crude oil, or petroleum, opened up a new inexpensive source of power and quickly replaced whale oil in lamps. Within a few decades of Drake’s discovery, oil drilling was widespread in the US, Europe, the Middle East, and the East Indies. However, it was the development of the automobile that catapulted petroleum into a position of paramount importance, for petroleum is the primary source of gasoline. Asphalt, also derived from petroleum, is used to surface roads and highways.
1813 Battle of Dresden: the Allies defeat Napoléon.
1793 Maximilien Robespierre is elected to the Committee of Public Safety in Paris, France.
1789 French Natl Assembly issues "Decl of the Rights of Man and the Citizen"
1783 first hydrogen balloon flight (unmanned); reaches 900 m altitude
1665 Ye Bare and Ye Cubb is first play performed in N. America (Acomac, Va)
1660 Milton's works ordered burned.      ^top^
      The works of John Milton (who supported Parliament in the late strife with the king) are burned by royal decree when the monarchy is restored. Milton will be imprisoned for a short while but will continue work on his epic Paradise Lost. The charge against him was that he supported elder-run church (Presbyterianism), not bishop-run churches (Episcopalianism) and attacked the English monarchy.
     MILTON ONLINE:
  • Areopagitica
  • Areopagitica
  • Areopagitica
  • Colasterion
  • Colasterion
  • Comus, A Mask
  • The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce
  • The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce
  • The History of Britain
  • Il Penseroso
  • L'Allegro
  • Lycidas
  • Milton Reading Room.
  • Of Education
  • Of Education
  • Paradise Lost
  • Paradise Lost
  • Paradise Lost
  • Paradise Lost (1667 ed.)
  • Paradise Lost: A Poem in Twelve Books (1674.)
  • Paradise Regained
  • Paradise Regained
  • Paradise Regained
  • Poems of Mr. John Milton, Both English and Latin, Compos'd at Several Times (1645)
  • The Poetical Works of John Milton
  • Samson Agonistes
  • Samson Agonistes
  • Tetrachordon
    • 1640 Rhode Island agreement allows religious freedom, the first colony to grant full religious tolerance.
    1626 The Danes are crushed by the Catholic League in Germany, marking the end of Danish intervention in European wars.
    — 26 -BC- Origin of Egyptian Era
    — 65 av. J.C. Jules César s'apprète à débarquer en Grande Bretagne. Il est le seul à avoir réalisé ce rêve de tous les grands conquérants. De retour à Rome, César, qui veut accéder à l'empire, sera assassiné par des nobles républicains. Ce grand soldat fut aussi un grand homme d'état et un réformateur très avisé.
    TO THE TOP
    Deaths which occurred on a 27 August:
    2003 Alan Weiner, 50; his brother Howard Weiner, 59; Howard's son Daniel Weiner, 30; Robert Lee Taylor, 53; Juan Valles, 34; Calvin Ramsey, 44; and Salvador Tapia, 36, who is shot by police after shooting the others at 08:30, in the Weiners' auto part warehouse Windy City Core Supply, 3912 S. Wallace St., Chicago, of which the other three victims were employees. Tapia was a convicted felon with a history of weapons and violence arrests and had been fired from the warehouse in March 2003 for not showing up for work and causing trouble at work. A co-owner and other employees of the business arrive a few minutes late for work, after all the shooting is over.
    2003 Seetadevi Saken, 55; Ramaswardevi Rajkishorsingh Saken, 55; Sumitradevi Saken, 53, (all 3 from Bihar); Selewala Mohanty, 70, from Kolkata; Indiraben Patel, from Surat; Shanti Das, from Jammu and Kashmir; Sitadevi Bahadur Sharan, 50; and her sister Ramkumari Sharma, 60, both from Jehanabad, Bihar; Seetadevi Jeetbahadur Singh; Mahendiyadevi; Sumitradevi Laxmisharan; Mogilal Gundecha; Selubala Mohanty; Bachhindradevi Sahay; and 25 other pilgrims; by stampede and drowning during the Kumbh Mela in Nashik, India, at 14:00. The dead include 28 women. Some 140 are injured. Lakhs (1 lakh = 100'000) of devotees had gathered on the banks of the Godavari for the `maha snan' or holy bath. Over 30'000 pilgrims were being held back by barricades in a narrow street leading to the Ramkund, a holy spot, so that the sadhus could take the ceremonial dip first. Most of the victims died of asphyxiation. An estimated 70'000 sadhus were to take a dip in the Ramkund. The waiting crowd of devotees had become restive as the sadhus took a long time to take the dip. When the authorities felt that sadhus belonging to a particular sect, who had decided to boycott the `maha snan' would stay away, they began to allow people to the river. Then all of a sudden, the sadhus of that sect arrived and asserted their right for priority in taking their dip, adding to the confusion. It seems that at this moment a sadhu threw some silver coins into the crowd, and the scramble for the coins led to the stampede.
    2003 Khusal Narayanbhai Patel, 52, by ingesting pesticides, in Valsad, Gujarat, India. Patel, a police inspector, left a 9-page suicide note, saying that he did thin because of his wife's extra-marital affair.
    2002 Raymond Levi Boothe, 11, stabbed with needle-nosed pliers by his father Raymond Boothe, 34, of Cameron, Missouri, left along Interstate 70 near Leavenworth, Kansas, and struck by a car, at mid-afternoon. Autistic Levi, with brain tumors, unable to speak, fitted with a leg brace, had been taken at 13:00 from the group home Midwest Opportunities in which he had lived in Creston, Iowa, since 1995. His father got mad because he thought Levi had made an obscene gesture at him. The father has a history of alcoholism, drug addiction, and mental problems since he was 19. After abandoning Levi, Raymond Boothe at 18:00 takes from his sister Stacy Perry's home in Osborn, Missouri, his other children: Makayla, 6; Nicole, 9; and Mitchell, 7 (they were living there while their mother, Lisa Boothe, was in a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program). That night, with them in the car, Raymond Boothe crashes in an alleged murder-suicide attempt, quite ineffectual as the four suffer nothing more than cuts and bruises, and police find them early in the morning walking along a street in Lawrence, Kansas..
    2001 Mohammed Samur, 25, Palestinian policeman, in a firefight with Israelis making a night incursion with tanks and bulldozers into the village of Beit Jalla, from which there had been some firing on the Jewish neighborhood of Gilo at the southern edge of Jerusalem. This brings the al-Aqsa intifada body count to 589 Palestinians and 162 Israelis.
    2001 Mustafa Zibri “Abu Ali Mustafa”, 63, by Israeli helicopter rockets fired into his office in Ramallah, West Bank. He led the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, opposed to peace talks with Israel. Israel says that Zibri was involved in seven terrorist bomb attacks in the previous six months.
    2001 Ian Collins, 20, by a block of concrete thrown by Macedonian youths, as he was driving an armored vehicle under an overpass on a main road outside Skopje. Collins belonged to the British 9 Parachute Squadron Royal Engineers, in Macedonia on a NATO mission to collect weapons voluntarily surrendered by Albanian ethnic rebels, under a cease~fire agreement with the Macedonian government.
    2001 Larry Groff, and Lars Stratte, pilots of two Grumman S-2 tanker planes colliding, while fighting a 1-square-kilometer wildfire, near Hopland, California. Frank Brady, 50, and Richard Mortensen, 43, would be charged with second-degree murder for starting the fire while operating an illegal metamphetamine lab.
    2000 Three persons by fire in Moscow's landmark Ostankino television tower .
    2000 Three Israeli soldiers accidentally killed by their comrades. in a botched Israeli military raid on an Islamic militant hide-out in the West Bank.
    2000 Michael Edwards, 39, of Cairns, Queensland, Australia, trawler fisherman, falls from the deck of the fishing boat Loray near Slashers Reef, 90 km northeast of Townsville, early in the day. It is not known exactly how he dies, BUT on 000829 a seafood wholesaler finds a human head inside a 1.6 m, 44 kg cod, which was caught by a trawler in the same general area, quite possibly on 27 August. Probably the body was dismembered by small reef sharks in a feeding frenzy, and the cod, a known scavenger, came upon the severed head. The cod's teeth are not sharp.
    1988 Many of the villagers of Warmeli, Iraqi occupied Kurdistan, gassed by the army of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
    1979 Louis Mountbatten, 70, Nicholas Brabourne, 14, Paul Maxwell, 15, Lady Brabourne.
         In Sligo, Ireland, their sail boat is blown up by an Irish Republican Army bomb. Lord Louis Mountbatten — military man, sailor, and statesman — was a man of many talents. A great-grandson of Queen Victoria, he was an Allied commander in World War II and as the last viceroy in India assisted in the transition to independence. Admiral of the Fleet, in 1959, he became Britain's chief of military staff.
          Lord Louis Mountbatten is killed when Irish Republican Army (IRA) terrorists detonate a 50-pound bomb hidden on his fishing vessel Shadow V. Mountbatten, a war hero, elder statesman, and second cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, was spending the day with his family in Donegal Bay off Ireland's northwest coast when the bomb exploded. Three others were killed in the attack, including Mountbatten's 14-year-old grandson, Nicholas.
          Later that day, an IRA bombing attack on land killed 18 British paratroopers in County Down, Northern Ireland.
          The assassination of Mountbatten was the first blow struck against the British royal family by the IRA during its long terrorist campaign to drive the British out of Northern Ireland and unite it with the Republic of Ireland to the south. The attack hardened the hearts of many Brits against the IRA and convinced Margaret Thatcher's government to take a hard-line stance against the terrorist organization.
          Louis Mountbatten, the son of Prince Louis of Battenberg and a great-grandson of Queen Victoria I, entered the Royal Navy in 1913, when he was in his early teens. He saw service during World War I and at the outbreak of World War II was commander of the 5th destroyer flotilla. His destroyer, the HMS Kelly, was sunk off Crete early in the war. In 1941, he commanded an aircraft carrier, and in 1942 he was named chief of combined operations. From this position, he was appointed supreme Allied commander for Southeast Asia in 1943 and successfully conducted the campaign against Japan that led to the recapture of Burma.
          In 1947, he was appointed the last viceroy of India, and he conducted the negotiations that led to independence for India and Pakistan later that year. He held various high naval posts in the 1950s and served as chief of the United Kingdom Defense Staff and chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. Meanwhile, he was made Viscount Mountbatten of Burma and a first earl. He was the uncle of Philip Mountbatten and introduced Philip to the future Queen Elizabeth. He later encouraged the marriage of the two distant cousins and became godfather and mentor to their first born, Charles, prince of Wales.
          Made governor and then lord lieutenant of the Isle of Wight in his retirement, Lord Mountbatten was a respected and beloved member of the royal family. His assassination on 27 August 1979, was perhaps the most shocking of all horrors inflicted by the IRA against the United Kingdom. In addition to his grandson Nicholas, 15-year-old boat hand Paul Maxwell was killed in the attack; the Dowager Lady Brabourne, Nicholas' grandmother, was also fatally injured. Mountbatten's grandson Timothy — Nicholas' twin — was injured; as was his daughter, Lady Brabourne; and the twins' father, Lord Brabourne. Lord Mountbatten was 70.
          The IRA immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it detonated the bomb by remote control from the coast. It also took responsibility for the same-day bombing attack against British troops in County Down, which claimed 18 lives.
          IRA member Thomas McMahon was later arrested and convicted of preparing and planting the bomb that destroyed Mountbatten's boat. A near-legend in the IRA, he was a leader of the IRA's notorious South Armagh Brigade, which killed more than 100 British soldiers. He was one of the first IRA members to be sent to Libya to train with detonators and timing devices and was an expert in explosives. Authorities believe the Mountbatten assassination was the work of many people, but McMahon was the only individual convicted. Sentenced to life in prison, he was released in 1998 along with other IRA and Unionist terrorists under a controversial provision of the Good Friday Agreement, Northern Ireland's peace deal. McMahon claimed he had turned his back on the IRA and was becoming a carpenter.
    1975 Haile Selassie, 83, in Addis Ababa, last emperor of Ethiopia's 3000-year-old monarchy, almost a year after being overthrown.
    1963 W E B Du Bois, 95, scholar/founder (NAACP), in Accra, Ghana
    1958 Dr Ernest O Lawrence , 57, inventor (Cyclotron-Nobel 1939)
    1953 Atanasio Soldati, Italian artist of the Concrete Art Movement, born on 25 August 1896. — Composizione
    1914 The fallen of the 2nd of the 5 days of the Battle of Tannenberg, which started on 26 August and in which the Russian Second Army under Aleksandr Vasilyevich Samsonov would be enveloped and destroyed by the Germans under P.K. Rennenkampf. The battle would end on 30 August with 13'000 Germans and 30'000 Russians killed or wounded, 92'000 Russians prisoner, 400 Russian cannons captured. Samsonov would commit suicide on 29 August 1914.
    1912 Mikhail Egorovich Vashchenko-Zakharchenko, Ukrainian mathematician born on 12 November 1825. He worked on the theory of linear differential equations, the theory of probability, non-euclidean geometry, and the history of mathematics.
    1912 José María Velasco, Mexican painter and teacher born on 06 July 1840. — Velasco at Arts History of Mexico — Self~Portrait — The Hacienda of Chimilpa
    1900 Antoine Vollon, French painter born on 23 April 1833. — MORE ON VOLLON AT ART “4” AUGUST — LINKS — Self-Portrait — Vue d'Anvers — A Still Life with a Basket of Flowers, Oranges and a Fan on a Table — A Still Life with a Bowl of Fruit — Portrait of a Man — Motte de Beurre
    1883 Some 3000 victims of volcano's climactic explosion
    and 31'000 victims of consequent tsunami.              ^top^
          Krakatoa, active since 20 May and in eruption since 19 June, started undergoing a series of increasingly violent explosions the previous day. The climax is reached at 10:00 on 27 August with tremendous explosions, that are heard 3500 km away in Australia and propel ash to a height of 80 km. Sea waves reach Cape Horn. Pressure waves in the atmosphere are recorded around the Earth. It is the most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded history, estimated to equal 1300 megatons of TNT.
         The volcano collapses, which causes a series of tsunamis, recorded as far away as South America and Hawaii. The greatest wave, which reaches a height of 40 m, takes 31'000 lives in nearby coastal towns of Java and Sumatra, just after the climactic explosion. All life on the Krakatoa island group is buried under a thick layer of sterile ash, and reestablishment of plant and animal life would not begin for five years.
          Explosions diminish throughout that day, and by the morning of August 28, the volcano is quiet.
          The discharge of Krakatoa threw into the air nearly 21 cu km of rock fragments, and large quantities of ash fell over 800'000 sq km. Near the volcano, masses of floating pumice were so thick as to halt ships. The surrounding region was plunged into darkness for two and a half days because of ash in the air. The fine dust drifted several times around the Earth, causing cold summers and spectacular red sunsets throughout the following year. In addition to Krakatoa, which is still active, Indonesia has another 130 active volcanoes, the most of any country in the world.
          [Knakatoa recently: photos, more photos]
    1879 Sir Rowland Hill, 84, introduced postage stamps
    1876 Eugène Dupeux Fromentin, French painter born on 24 October 1820. — MORE ON FROMENTIN AT ART “4” AUGUST — LINKS — Arabes (main detail _ ZOOM TO FULL PICTURE) — Orientaux (main detail _ ZOOM TO FULL PICTURE) — La Chasse au Faucon en Algérie aka The Quarry (ZOOM) — Voleurs de Nuit aka Sahara Algerien — Abreuvage des Chevaux — Chevaux s'Abreuvant dans une Rivière — Étang dans une Oasis - Sahara — Cavaliers Arabes — Arabes en Chasse — Centaures et Centauresses s'Exerçant au Tir de l'Arc — Dans le Nil — Deux Arabes sur une Terrace — Arab Encampment in the Atlas Mountains — Le Simoun — Dans le Désert
    1875 William Ralston, disgraced banker, drowns, probable suicide.
          Hours after being asked to resign as president of the Bank of California, the powerful western capitalist William Ralston is found drowned in San Francisco Bay. One of the first men to build a major financial empire in the Far West, Ralston was born in Ohio in 1826. In 1854, he immigrated to the booming town of San Francisco, a once sleepy Spanish missionary village that had become the center of the California Gold Rush five years earlier. There he became a partner in a steamship company, and 10 years later he used his profits to organize the Bank of California.
          Ralston's bank quickly became one of the most important financial institutions in the West. Starved for capital, western businessmen were happy to deal with a reliable bank in their own region instead of the New York and Boston banks. Ralston committed his own funds as well as those of the bank to a wide array of western businesses. Many were unexciting but essential enterprises like water companies. Ralston also had an adventurous side, though, and used his money to support lavish hotels and theaters in San Francisco as well as the hugely profitable Comstock Lode silver mine in Nevada.
          The always-treacherous world of mining, however, eventually proved to be Ralston's undoing. Having made millions in the Comstock Lode, Ralston gambled on several silver mines that proved busts. News of the failed mining investments sparked a run on the bank, forcing the bank to close its doors on August 26, 1875.
          The next day, a somber board of directors asked for and received Ralston's resignation as bank president. A few hours later, after Ralston had gone for his usual morning swim in San Francisco Bay, his body was discovered. Whether Ralston had accidentally drowned or deliberately killed himself remains a mystery.
    1866 John Pierpont, author.      ^top^
    PIERPONT ONLINE:
  • Anti-Slavery Poems
  • Anti-Slavery Poems (another site)
  • Airs of Palestine: A Poem
    editor of:
  • The American First Class Book: or, Exercises in Reading and Recitation
  • Introduction to the National Reader
  • Lays for the Sabbath: A Collection of Religious Poetry
    • 1865: Thomas Chandler Haliburton, author.      ^top^
    HALIBURTON ONLINE:
  • The Attache, Or, Sam Slick in England volume I   volume II
  • The Clockmaker, Or, The Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick, of Slickville
  • The Letter-Bag of the Great Western, Or, Life in a Steamer
  • Nature and Human Nature
    co-author of:
  • A General Description of Nova Scotia: Illustrated By a New and Correct Map
    • 1831 François Dumont l'aîné, French artist born on 07 January 1751.
    1798 Louis Joseph Watteau de Lille, French artist born on 10 April 1731. Not to be confused with his famous uncle, Antoine Watteau [10 Oct 1684 – 18 Jul 1721] — MORE ON THIS WATTEAU AT ART “4” AUGUST — An assemblage of apes, in a park, dressed as humans — Venus châtiant Amour — La 14ème Expérience Aérostatique de M. Blanchard Accompagné du Chevalier Lépinard, Faite à Lille le 26 Août 1785 — The Storm
    1776 Hundreds of British and more Americans at the Battle of Brooklyn      ^top^
          During the American Revolution, British forces under General William Howe defeated Patriot forces under General George Washington at the Battle of Brooklyn (or of Long Island) in New York. On 22 August, Howe's large army had landed on Long Island, hoping to capture New York City and gain control of the Hudson River, a victory that would divide the rebellious colonies in half. On 27 August the Red Coats march against the Patriot position at Brooklyn Heights, overcoming the Americans at Gowanus Pass and then outflanking the entire Continental Army.
          However, Howe failed to follow the advice of his subordinates and storm the redoubts at Brooklyn Heights, and on August 29 General Washington ordered a brilliant retreat to Manhattan by boat, thus saving the Continental Army from capture.
          At the Battle of Brooklyn, the Americans suffered 1000 casualties to the British loss of only 400 men.
          On 15 September the British captured New York City.
    1748 James Thomson, Scottish poet born on 11 September 1700. His best verse foreshadowed some of the attitudes of the Romantic movement. His poetry also gave expression to Newtonian science and to England's increasing political power based on commercial and maritime expansion. His masterpiece is the blank verse poem The Seasons: Winter , Summer , Spring , Autumn. — JAMES THOMSON ONLINE: A Poem Sacred to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton — excerpt from The Castle of Indolence — Hymn on Solitude — Rule Britannia from Alfred, a Masque — brief excerpt from The Seasons: Summer — brief excerpts of The Seasons: Winter — Winter: A Poem — Not to be confused with Scottish poet James Thomson “Bysshe Vanolis” [23 November 1834 – 03 June 1882], author of The City of Dreadful Night; nor with James Thomson, math professor at the University of Glasgow, author of An Introduction to the Differential and Integral Calculus (1849)
    1691 Gregor Brandmüller, Swiss artist born on 25 August 1661.
    1681 (17 August Julian) Nikita Minin Patriach Nikon, 76.      ^top^
         In 1652 he accepted to be patriarch of Moscow and all Russia (1652) on condition that he be given full authority in matters of dogma and ritual. He ordered what he considered rectifications of traditional Russian ritual, alienating many in the faithful and the clergy. He exiled or excommunicated those who resisted his reforms. He claimed supremacy of the Church over the State, which turned against him the tsar's family and the boyars. On 20 July 1658 he theatrically announced his resignation and left Moscow, hoping thus to force tsar Alexis to recognize his authority. Instead the tsar ignored him and finally, in November 1666, convened a council to defrock Nikon and exile him as a monk to Beloozero, some 560 km north of Moscow. The council retained Nikon's reforms, which provoked a schism (raskol) with those who held to the previous practice, the Old Believers.
         The next tsar, Fyodor III, recalled Nikon from exile. That is when he died on his way back to Moscow.
    1664 Francisco Zurbarán, Spanish Baroque painter baptized as an infant on 07 November 1598 — MORE ON ZURBARÁN AT ART “4” AUGUST — LINKS — Saint Apolonia — Apostle Saint Andrew — The Lying-in-State of Saint Bonaventura — Saint Margaret — The Vision of Saint Peter of Nolasco = The Apparition of Apostle Saint Peter to Saint Peter of Nolasco — Adoration by the Shepherds _ the same Adoration by the Shepherds — Saint Hugo of Grenoble in the Carthusian Refectory — Still-life — Still Life with Oranges — Still-life with Lemons, Oranges and Rose — Saint Casilda of Burgos — Rest on the Flight to Egypt — La Purisíma — The House of Nazareth — Saint Francis [biography] — Saint Luke as a Painter before Christ on the Cross _ the same Saint Luke as a Painter before Christ on the Cross — Defense of Cadiz against the English
    1664 Cornelis-Pieterszoon Bega, Dutch painter born on 15 November 1620. — MORE ON BEGA AT ART “4” AUGUST — LINKS — The Alchemist — The Duet — same The Duet — The Lute Player — Tavern Scene — Woman Playing a Lute — 32 prints at FAMSF
    1651 Jacob-Adriaensz Backer, Dutch Baroque era portrait and history painter, born in 1608. — MORE ON BACKER AT ART “4” AUGUST — LINKS — A man (ZOOM) — Johannes Lutma, Amsterdam Silversmith — The Hearing — A Woman
    1635 Lope Félix de Vega Carpio , 72, dramatist/poet (Angelica, Arcadia)
    1576 Tiziano di Gregorio Tiziano “Titian”, Italian painter born in 1489 approximately. — Portrait of Titian engraved by Agostino Carracci [1557 - 1602] after a Titian self~portrait. — MORE ON TITIAN AT ART “4” AUGUST with links to too many pictures to list here more than a few of the best: — Portrait of a Friend — The Sacrifice of Isaac (ZOOM _ ZOOM++) — Venus and Adonis — Philip II — Doge Andrea Gritti — Pietro Bembo — Eleonora Gonzaga della Rovere — St. John the Baptist — Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and a Rabbit — Madonna and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist and Saint Catherine [detail] — Mater Dolorosa — Assumption of the Virgin _ detail 1 _ detail 2 _ detail 3
    Tian Tian eating bambooBirths which occurred on a 27 August:
    Tian Tian in Chinese1997 Tian Tian (= “More and More”) [photo grown-up >], male giant panda (tiny at birth), at the Research and Conservation Center for the Giant Panda in Wolong, China. He came to the US in December 2000 together with female giant panda Mei Xiang (=“Beautiful Fragrance”, born on 22 July 1998) on loan for 10 years to the National Zoo in Washington DC, for $10 million.So, assuming that the two pandas “work” 40 hours a week of regular time and 16 hours of overtime, they each earn for China $150 an hour for regular time and $225 an hour for overtime, plus they are housed and fed for free and they don't have any income tax, social security, or health insurance withheld. If you wanted a deal like that, you should have been born a member of a cute species of which there are not much more than 1000 left in the world.
    1985 Alexandra Nechita, in Romania, child prodigy artist. She began working in pen and ink at the age of two. By age five she had graduated to watercolors. At seven she was using oils and acrylics.
    1943 Luis Caballero, Colombian artist who died in 1995. —
    1932 Antonia Fraser, biographer (Mary Queen of Scots)
    1929 Ira Levin author (Rosemary's Baby, Sleuth, This Perfect Day)
    1912 Tarzan, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, first appears, in a magazine.
         Burroughs was born on 1 September 1875 in Chicago, the son of a wealthy businessman.He was educated at private schools in Chicago, at the prestigious Philips Academy, Andover, Mass. (from which he was expelled), and at Michigan Military Academy, where he subsequently taught briefly. He spent the years 1897 to 1911 in numerous unsuccessful jobs and business ventures in Chicago and Idaho.
          Eventually settling in Chicago with a wife and three children, Burroughs began writing advertising copy and then turned to pulp fiction. His first published piece, in the adventure magazine All-Story in 1911, was Under the Moons of Mars, introducing the invincible hero John Carter, who is transported to Mars apparently by astral projection, following a battle with Apaches in Arizona. The story was so successful that Burroughs turned to writing full-time. The 'Martian' series eventually reached eleven books.
         The first Tarzan story appears on 27 August 1912, followed in 1914 by Tarzan of the Apes in book form, the first of 25 such books about the son of an English nobleman abandoned in the African jungle during infancy and brought up by apes. Burroughs created in Tarzan a figure that instantly captured the popular fancy, as did his many tales set on Mars. The Tarzan stories were translated into more than 56 languages and were also popular in comic-strip, motion-picture, television, and radio versions.
     Tarzan     The protagonist in the Tarzan books is John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, whose aristocratic parents, John Clayton and his wife, Lady Alice, are abandoned on the west coast of Africa by mutinous sailors. Lady Alice dies insane and Tarzan's father is killed by a great ape named Kerchak. Tarzan is raised by an ape, Kala, and grows into a leader of the hairy tribe due to his intelligence and fighting skills. In the jungle Tarzan learns to read when he finds a book in the remnants of his parents hut. As he grows older, he finds that he had grown away from his ape people. Their interests and his were far removed. Another party of whites is marooned at the same west coast — the Porters from Baltimore and William Clayton, the present Lord Greystoke. During the tale, Tarzan finds love, becomes a hero, and finds his aristocratic roots. Tarzan falls in love with Jane Porter, but in Tarzan of the Apes, Jane rejects his offer of marriage and accepts the proposal of William Greystoke. Nevertheless, eventually Jane Porter becomes Tarzan's wife, and they also have a son. With the help of animals — mostly elephants and apes — Tarzan gains the unofficial status of the king of the jungle, and gains immortality through an African shaman's secret formula.
          In several Tarzan books the invincible hero is involved with lost races, hidden cultures, or even with an entire lost continent. During his long career in the jungle, Tarzan battles against Germans, Japanese, and Communists. In the first four books the hero is known variously as "Tar-Zan" ("white-skin" in the ape tongue), "John Clayton," and "Lord Bloomstoke" (later changed to "Lord Greystoke")    .
          Other popular series from Burroughs's pen were The Carson of Venus books, blending romance and comedy, the Pellucidar tales, located inside the Earth, and The Land That Time Forgot trilogy — in total some 68 titles.
          In 1913 Burroughs founded his own publishing house Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. Burroughs-Tarzan Enterprises and Burroughs-Tarzan Pictures were founded in 1934.
          In addition to his four major adventure series, Burroughs wrote between the years 1912 and 1933 several other adventure novels, among them The Cave Girl (1925), in which a weak aristocrat develops into a warrior; two Western novels about a white Apache, The War Chief (1927) and Apache Devil (1933), sympathetic to Amerindians; and Beyond the Farthest Star, in which science-fiction is used to depict the brutality of war.
          In 1919 Burroughs purchased a large ranch in the San Fernando Valley, which he later developed into the suburb of Tarzana. To support his expensive lifestyle and to cover losses in financial investments, he wrote an average of three novels a year.
          The first Tarzan film was produced in 1918, When the Olympic swimming champion Johnny Weissmuller took the role in the 1930's, the films became very popular, though they were even worse than the novels, which Burroughs himself admitted were hardly “literature.”.
          In 1933 Burroughs was elected mayor of California Beach. During World War II Burroughs was a war correspondent in the South Pacific. He died of heart disease on 19 March 1950.
    — LINKS
    BURROUGHS ONLINE:
  • Tarzan of the Apes
  • Tarzan the Terrible
  • Tarzan the Untamed
  • Tarzan the Untamed
  • Jungle Tales of Tarzan
  • Jungle Tales of Tarzan
  • The Return of Tarzan
  • The Son of Tarzan
  • Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
  • Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
  • The Beasts of Tarzan
  • At the Earth's Core
  • At the Earth's Core
  • Beyond Thirty
  • The Efficiency Expert
  • The Efficiency Expert
  • The Eternal Savage
  • The Girl From Farris's
  • The Lost Continent
  • Out of Time's Abyss
  • The People That Time Forgot
  • The Land That Time Forgot
  • The Land That Time Forgot
  • The Monster Men
  • The Monster Men
  • The Mad King
  • The Mucker
  • The Oakdale Affair
  • The Outlaw of Torn
  • Pellucidar
  • The Chessmen of Mars
  • The Gods of Mars
  • The Gods of Mars
  • A Princess of Mars
  • Thuvia, Maid of Mars
  • The Warlord of Mars
  • Warlord of Mars
    • 1910 Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu “Mother Teresa”, Yugoslavia, founder of the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta and 1979 Nobel Peace Prize winner (1979). She died on 05 September 1997.
    1908 Lyndon Baynes Johnson, near Stonewall, Texas, (D) 36th president of the United States (1963-1969). He died on 22 January 1973.
    1899 C.S. Forester English journalist and historical novelist, created Horatio Hornblower series. He died on 02 April 1966.
    1890 Emmanuel Rudnitsky “Man Ray”, US photographer, painter, and filmmaker, who died on 18 November 1976. — MORE ON “MAN RAY” AT ART “4” AUGUST — LINKS — Return to Reason — ...istan/islam — Peggy Guggenheim — Dance in the Subway — Imaginary Portrait of the Marquis de Sade — Pisces aka La Femme et son Poisson — Silhouette
    1877 Lloyd C. Douglas, American Lutheran clergyman and religious novelist. Douglas published his first best-seller, Magnificent Obsession, in 1929, followed later by The Robe (1942) and The Big Fisherman (1948).
    1884 Vincent Auriol, French politician.
    1882 Samuel Goldwyn pioneer film maker/producer (MGM)
    1874 Carl Bosch, German 1931 Nobel Prize-winning industrial chemist, who died on 26 April 1940.
    1871 Theodore Dreiser      ^top^
         Dreiser was the 12th of 13 children born to a poor, unhappy family. Except for one brother who became a songwriter, most of the Dreiser children failed to rise above their squalid roots. Starting in his early teens, Dreiser supported himself with menial jobs. A sympathetic teacher helped him get into Indiana University, but he stayed only one year. In 1892, he began working as a journalist for the Chicago Globe. He continued working in journalism while writing his first novel, Sister Carrie, which was published in 1900. The novel was a major break from the Victorian propriety of the time, and the printer refused to promote the book. Fewer than 500 copies were sold.
          Dreiser had a mental breakdown in the early 1900s but was nursed back to health by his songwriter brother. He became a successful magazine editor until he was forced to resign in 1910 following a scandal involving an employee's daughter. Dreiser was frequently linked to immoral behavior during his lifetime. Sister Carrie was reissued in 1907 and gradually increased in popularity. Dreiser turned to writing full time.
          He published several more novels between 1911 and 1915, including Jennie Gerhardt (1911), The Financier (1912), and The Titan (1914). In 1925, his novel An American Tragedy drew his largest popular success to date. Based on a famous murder trial, the book criticized the US legal system, and Dreiser became a spokesman for reform. In 1927, he visited the Soviet Union and published Dreiser Looks at Russia in 1928. Associated with radical politics and the Communist Party in the 1930s, Dreiser focused on political writing until his death on 28 December 1945.
    DREISER ONLINE: Sister Carrie — Sister Carrie — The Financier
    1865 Charles Gates Dawes (R) 30th VP (1925-1929) and diplomat. 1925 Nobel Peace laureate. He died on 23 April 1951.
    1858 Giuseppe Peano, Piemontese mathematician who was the founder of symbolic logic and his interests centered on the foundations of mathematics and on the development of a formal logical language. He died on 20 April 1932.
    1841 Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb , translator into English of SOPHOCLES ONLINE: Ajax — Antigone — Electra — Oedipus at Colonus — Oedipus Tyrannus — Philoctetes — The Trachiniae //— other English translations of Sophocles (not by Jebb): Ajax — Antigone — Oedipus Rex — Oedipus the King — Oedipus the King — The Oedipus Trilogy — Philoctetes — Philoktetes.
    1809 Hannibal Hamlin (R) 15th US Vice-President (1861-1865), who died on 04 July 1891.
    1791 Jozef T.L. Geirnaert, Belgian artist who died on 20 March 1859. —
    1770 Georg Wilhelm F Hegel, in Stuttgart, German idealist philosopher (dialectic) — HEGEL ONLINE: (in English translations): The Shorter Logic — The Phenomenology of Mind — The Philosophy of History (PDF) — Philosophy of Right (PDF).
    — 551 B.C. Confucius (K'ung Fu-tzu), philosopher. CONFUCIUS ONLINE: (in English translations): Analects of Confucius — Analects of Confucius — Analects of Confucius — The Doctrine of the Mean — The Doctrine of the Mean — The Great Learning — The Great Learning
    Religious Observances RC : St Monica, mother of St Augustine of Hippo / Old RC : St Joseph Calasanctius, confessor
    Thoughts for the day: “A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval,”
    “A man cannot be comfortable without his wife's approval,”
    “A woman cannot be without her own approval,”
    “A man cannot be comfortable with his enemy's approval,”
    “A man cannot be comfortable with his mother-in-law's arrival,”
    “A man cannot be comfortable without his own comfort table,”     (loaded with snacks, in front of the TV)
    “A man cannot be comfortable without his wife being uncomfortable,”
    “A man cannot be comfortable without his own recliner,”
    “A man cannot be comfortable without his own delusions,”
    “A man cannot be comfortable with his teenager's approval,”
    “A man cannot be comfortable without wondering why.”
    “A man cannot wonder when he is too comfortable.”
    “A man cannot but wonder whether he is too comfortable.”
    “A man cannot be comfortable without ceasing to be a man,”
    “You can talk the walk, but you can't walk the talk.”
    “It is far easier to start something than it is to fi
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