26 Sep History: This Date

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Events, deaths, births, of 26 SEP
[For Sep 26 Julian go to Gregorian date: 1583~1699: Oct 06 — 1700s: Oct 07 — 1800s: Oct 08 — 1900~2099: Oct 09]

ALTERNATE SITES ALL FOR 030926 ANY DAY OF THE YEAR IN HISTORY ART “4” SEP 26

On a 26 September:
2002 On the NASDAQ, the stock of Super Vision International (SUPVA) surges from its previous close of $1.90 to an intraday high of $4.24 and closes at $3.19. It had traded as high as $9.81 on 27 October 1997, and as high as $6.75 on 06 December 2001 but, it had lingered near $2 since 21 June 2002. [5~year price chart >] Super Vision International designs and manufactures fiber optic lighting products, signs and displays for applications in the signage, swimming pool, architectural and retail industries.
2002 German public television network ZDF claims that a study of photographs and films shows that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has at least three doubles substituting for him at public functions. — [Ought they not to be called “quadruples”? Vierergänger?]
2000 Slobodan Milosevic conceded that his challenger, Vojislav Kostunica, had finished first in Yugoslavia's presidential election and declared a runoff - a move that prompted mass protests leading to Milosevic's ouster.
1999 Kremlin debates land invasion in Chechnya while it continues bombing. (CNN)
1996 President Clinton signed a bill ensuring two-day hospital stays for new mothers and their babies.
1996 ValuJet received federal permission to fly again three months after it was grounded following a deadly crash.
1996 Richard Allen Davis, the killer of 12-year-old Polly Klaas, was sentenced to death in San Jose, Calif.

1996 US woman ends record space stay ^top^
US astronaut Shannon Lucid returned to earth in the US space shuttle Atlantis, after six months in orbit aboard the Russian space station Mir. On March 23, 1996, Lucid had transferred to Mir from the same space shuttle for a planned five-month stay. Lucid, a biochemist who shared Mir with Russian cosmonauts Yuri Onufriyenko and Yuri Usachev, conducted scientific experiments during her stay. Her scheduled return to earth was delayed more six weeks because of last-minute repairs to the booster rockets of the Atlantis and by a hurricane. Lucid's 188-day sojourn aboard Mir set a new space endurance record for an American, and a world endurance record for a woman.

1996 Borland's top technologist leaves for Microsoft. Several key managers left Borland International after its chief executive left in July. Paul Gross, Borland's senior vice president of research and development, becomes vice president of Internet platform and tools at Microsoft. Gross had been a key part of Borland's efforts in developing Internet tools, a crucial element of Borland's strategy.

1994 Home Shopping Network to go on the Net with Macromedia software. ^top^
Macromedia announces that the Home Shopping Network would use Macromedia software to sell merchandise over the Internet. The Home Shopping Network planned to launch a subsidiary called the Internet Shopping Network, which would use Macromedia Director to display goods on computers through graphics, animation, and video. At the time, online sales were largely unexplored, and the World Wide Web was not yet widely known or used: in fact, Netscape had been introduced only a few days before.

1991 Four men and four women began a two-year stay inside a sealed-off structure in Oracle, Ariz., called Biosphere Two. (They emerged on this date in 1993.)
1991 PNV (Partido Nacionalista Vasco) y PSE-PSOE (Partido Socialista de Euskadi) llegan a un acuerdo sobre la composición del nuevo Gobierno vasco de coalición.
1990 In the USSR, the Supreme Soviet ends decades of religious repression with a new declaration, forbidding government interference in religious activities and giving citizens the right to study religion in homes and private schools.

1990 US “X” rating of movies is abolished.         ^top^
     The Motion Picture Association of America abolishes the "X" rating, replacing it with "NC-17," a rating designating a film with content inappropriate for viewers under age 17. The change was prompted when the Code and Ratings System Administration of the Motion Picture Association of America gave 10 mainstream films the X rating, which had typically been reserved for pornography. When Henry and June was rated X, director Philip Kaufman teamed up with civil liberties advocate and law professor Alan Dershowitz to convince authorities to adopt the NC-17 category. Until the late 1960s, American films were unrated. Instead, the industry's self-imposed regulations, the Production Code, dictated permissible screen content. The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America adopted the code in 1930; it went into strict effect in 1934. The code outlined specific details of what was suitable for a film, including requirements that a movie not "lower the standards of those who see it." The code forbade the portrayal of drug trafficking, "excessive and lustful kissing," seduction, and mixed-race relationships. It also stated that movies should not portray villains sympathetically or make fun of clergy members.
      Though the code was a guideline rather than a law, few producers risked making films that violated its standards. Social changes in the 1960s rendered the code increasingly obsolete, though, and it was revised to suggest restraint in sexual themes (rather than forbidding them), among other changes. The industry then introduced its first ratings system, including categories G for general audience, MPG (all ages admitted but parental guidance suggested), and R (no one under 16 admitted). In 1970, MPG was replaced by PG (parental guidance suggested), and R movies restricted admission of people under the age of 17 unless accompanied by a parent or guardian. In 1984, the PG-13 rating was added at the request of moviemaker Steven Spielberg, who wanted to address concerns raised by parents of preteens who thought that some of his films, including the "Indiana Jones" series and Gremlins, were too scary for their children, even though they fit within the other guidelines for a PG movie.

1989 Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze calls for total destruction of Soviet and US chemical weapons, going a step further than President George Bush, who one day earlier proposed an 80% reduction.

1989 Anti-censorship law approved by Soviet legislature         ^top^
      In one of the most heartening indications that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's promise of political openness in Russia was becoming a reality, committees in the Soviet Duma pass a bill allowing the publication of books, newspapers, and magazines without government approval. The law was a break with the Soviet past, in which government censorship of the press was a fact of life.
      Throughout the post-World War II period, censorship in the Soviet Union grew even stronger than during the pre-war years. Under the cloak of "protecting" the Russian citizenry from "decadent" Western ideas and "reactionary" ideologies, the Soviet government routinely censored the press. Newspapers were merely organs of the Soviet Communist Party. Books and magazine articles had to be approved prior to publication. Authors like Boris Pasternak, whose novel Dr. Zhivago was banned in 1956, found it impossible to publish in the Soviet Union. Censorship also extended to the arts and music.
      In 1985, however, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in Russia, promising what he called "glasnost" — a freer political atmosphere in the Soviet Union. In the following years, he freed political prisoners and even permitted Pasternak to be posthumously readmitted to the Soviet writers' union. In September 1989, a particularly important step was taken to restrict the government's power of censorship. Important committees in the Soviet legislature approved a new law to which Gorbachev soon gave his own approval. It permitted Soviet citizens to publish books, newspapers, and magazines without prior government approval. Some restrictions still existed — all publishers had to register with the government, and their publications could be suspended if they were judged to "promote war or racism, advocate ethnic or religious intolerance, or appeal for the violent overthrow or change of the existing state and public order."
      Despite the restrictions, the 1989 law was evidence that Gorbachev was intent on making good his promise to open up the Soviet political system. Soviet journalists and writers celebrated the act, but Gorbachev's reforms to the Soviet system may have been too little, too late. In a little more than two years, economic and political turmoil in the Soviet Union destroyed his power base. In December 1991, he resigned as president and the Soviet Union ceased to exist as a nation.

1988 Polish Communist party picks propaganda chief Rakowski as new PM
1986 1986, William H. Rehnquist was sworn in as the 16th chief justice of the United States, while Antonin Scalia joined the Supreme Court as its 103rd member.
1985 Túnez rompe sus relaciones diplomáticas con Libia.

1984 Hong Kong to revert to China on 01 July 1997.        ^top^
      After two years of painstaking negotiation, Great Britain formally agreed to honor the expiration of its 99-year lease on the island of Hong Kong. The agreement, signed in Peking with the Chinese Communist authorities, approved the 1997 turnover date in exchange for a Chinese pledge to preserve Hong Kong's capitalist system. In 1839, at the outbreak of the First Opium War, Britain invaded and occupied Hong Kong, a sparsely inhabited island off the coast of southeast China. Two years later, China, defeated in its efforts to resist European interference in its economic and political affairs, formally ceded Hong Kong to the British with the signing of the Chuenpi Convention.
      Britain's new colony flourished as an East-West trading center and as the commercial gateway and distribution center for southern China. In 1898, Britain was granted an additional ninety-nine years of rule over Hong Kong under the Second Convention of Peking. In 1984, Britain and China approved the turnover, and on 01 July 1997, Hong Kong reverted back to Chinese rule during ceremonies attended by Chinese and British officials, including Prince Charles of Wales, heir to the British throne. The chief executive under the new Hong Kong government, Tung Chee Hwa, formulated a policy based upon the concept of "one country, two systems," thus preserving Hong Kong's role as a principal capitalist center in Asia.

1984 President Reagan vetoes US sanctions against apartheid South Africa
1983 Cosmonauts Titov and Strekalov are saved from exploding Soyuz T-10
1980 Cuban government closes Mariel Harbor ending "freedom flotilla"
1977 Israel announces a cease-fire on Lebanese border.
1977 Sir Freddie Laker begins cut-rate "Skytrain" service, London to NY
1973 Concorde flies from Washington DC to Paris in 3h33m
1972 Richard M. Nixon meets with Emperor Hirohito in Anchorage, Alaska, the first-ever meeting of a US President and a Japanese Monarch.

1969 Vietnam: The "Chicago Seven" go on trial         ^top^
      The trial of the "Chicago Seven" begins before Judge Julius Hoffman. The defendants, including David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, and Tom Hayden of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (MOBE), and Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman of the Youth International Party (Yippies), were accused of conspiring to incite a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
      At the height of the antiwar and civil rights movements, these young leftists had organized protest marches and rock concerts at the Democratic National Convention. During the event, clashes broke out between the protesters and the police and eventually turned into full-scale rioting, complete with tear gas and police beatings. The press, already there to cover the Democratic convention, denounced the overreaction by police and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's handling of the situation.
      The Chicago Seven were indicted for violating the Rap Brown law, which had been tagged onto the Civil Rights Bill earlier that year by conservative senators. The law made it illegal to cross state lines in order to riot or to conspire to use interstate commerce to incite rioting. President Johnson's attorney general, Ramsey Clark, refused to prosecute the case.
      Although Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers was originally a defendant in the trial as well, he angrily denounced Judge Hoffman as a racist for denying his request for a separate trial. He wanted to be represented by his own lawyer, who was recovering from surgery at the time, so he loudly protested by attempting to examine his own witnesses. Judge Hoffman took the unusual measure of having Seale bound and gagged at the defendant's table before eventually separating his trial and sentencing him to 48 months in prison.
      With encouragement from defense attorney William Kunstler, the seven other defendants did whatever they could to disrupt the trial through such acts as reading poetry and chanting Hare Krishna. While the jury was deliberating their verdict, Judge Hoffman held the defendants in contempt of court for their behavior and sentenced them to up to 29 months in jail. Kunstler received a four-year sentence, partly for calling Hoffman's court a "medieval torture chamber." Five of the Chicago Seven were convicted of lesser charges.
      In 1970, the convictions and contempt charges against the Chicago Seven were overturned on appeal. Abbie Hoffman remained a well-known counterculture activist until his death in 1989. Tom Hayden went on to marry Jane Fonda and is still a prominent liberal politician in California.

1969 Vietnam: Nixon calls for US "united front"         ^top^
      President Nixon, speaking at a news conference, cites “some progress” in the effort to end the Vietnam War and says, “We’re on the right course in Vietnam.” Urging the American people to give him the support and time he needed to end the war honorably, Nixon said, “If we have a united front, the enemy will begin to talk [at the negotiating table in Paris].”
      Nixon branded the attitude of Senator Charles Goodell (R-NY), and others like him in Congress as “defeatist.” Goodell had only days before proposed legislation which failed to pass, but would have required the withdrawal of US troops by the end of 1970, and barred the use of congressionally appropriated funds after 01 December 1970, for maintaining US military personnel in Vietnam.
      In response to Nixon’s remarks, 24 liberal Democratic congressmen held a private caucus. The group decided to endorse the nationwide protest scheduled for 15 October and agreed to press in Congress for resolutions calling for an end to the war and a withdrawal of US troops; over the next three weeks, there would be 10 such proposals. None of these passed, but they indicated the mounting opposition to “Nixon’s war.”

1967 Hanoi rejects a US peace proposal.
1963 España y EE.UU. renuevan los acuerdos de 1953 sobre las bases militares en territorio español.
1962 Yemen Arab Republic proclaimed (National Day)
1960 Longest speech in UN history (4h29m, by Fidel Castro)

1960 First US presidential campaign TV debate ^top^
For the first time in US history, a debate between presidential candidates is shown on television. The presidential hopefuls, John F. Kennedy, a Democratic senator of Massachusetts, and Richard M. Nixon, the vice president of the United States, met in a Chicago studio to discuss US domestic matters. Kennedy emerged the apparent winner from this first of four televised debates, partly owing to his greater ease before the camera than Nixon, who, unlike Kennedy, seemed nervous and declined to wear makeup. Nixon faired better in the second and third debates, and on 21 October, the candidates met to discuss foreign affairs in their fourth and final debate. Less than three weeks later, on November 8, Kennedy won 49.7% of the popular vote in one of the closest presidential elections in US history, surpassing by a fraction the 49.6% received by his Republican opponent. One year after leaving the vice presidency, Nixon returned to politics, winning the Republican nomination for governor of California. Although he lost the election, Nixon would return to the national stage in 1968 in a successful bid for the presidency.

1957 Dag Hammarskjöld re-elected secretary-general of the UN

1956 Ike's heart attack affects stocks ^top^
President Eisenhower suffers a heart attack and the NYSE promptly reacts with its largest drop since the Depression. The Dow-Jones Industrial Average loses 31.89 points in a frenzied day of trading. The president's team of doctors said the attack was moderate and predicted a complete recovery. The secretary of the Treasury assured investors that the situation, though "a cause for sadness," didn't warrant panic. Ike quickly recovered and headed back to the White House. The markets followed suit, as the various averages returned to their pre-attack levels.

1955 The New York Stock Exchange suffers a $44 million loss, its worst price decline since 1929.
1950 Because of forest fire in British Columbia, blue moon appears in England
1950 General Douglas MacArthur's American X Corps, fresh from the Inchon landing, links up with the US Eighth Army after its breakout from the Pusan Perimeter. UN troops recapture Seoul
1950 La OTAN acuerda admitir a la RFA en la alianza defensiva occidental.
1940 During the London Blitz, the underground Cabinet War Rooms suffer a hit when a bomb explodes on the Clive Steps.
1939 Le parti communiste français est dissous. La signature du pacte germano-soviétique par le Reich et l'Union soviétique le 23 Aug précédent, et le travail clandestin du PC contre la guerre, les tracts diffusés dans les usines invitant les travailleurs français à fraterniser avec les travailleurs allemands contre l'ennemi qu'est le " capitalisme international ", sont la cause de cette dissolution.
1934 Afganistán es admitida en la Liga de Naciones.
1918 Meuse-Argonne offensive begins, as a combined force of French and US troops attack fortified German positions along a 65-km front. The battle would rage until the war's end at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of November, 1918.
1918 German Ace Ernst Udet shoots down two Allied planes, bringing his total for the war up to 62.
1918 Se forma en París un Gobierno provisional checoslovaco, presidido por Tomas Garrigue Masaryk [07 Mar 1850 – 14 Sep 1937] principal fundador de Checoslovakia y padre de Jan Garrigue Masaryk [14 Sep 1886 – 10 Mar 1948 defenestrado por los comunistas], ministro de relaciones exteriores.
1913 The first boat is raised in the locks of the Panama Canal.

1910 Durant loses control of his GM, for the first time. ^top^
William C. Durant, carriage maker and entrepreneur, was the original patriarch of the corporate behemoth General Motors. But financial difficulties cost him control of the company on this day. Determined to regain control of his brainchild, Durant joined forces with Louis Chevrolet to establish the Chevrolet Motor Company. Five years later, Durant and Chevrolet acquired control of GM and extended the massive umbrella of the General Motors corporation, with Durant serving as president. Yet, he would go on to lose control of GM yet again in 1920, this time permanently.

1907 New Zealand becomes a dominion — Nueva Zelanda alcanza la autonomía, con el Rey de Inglaterra como jefe de Estado.
1902 The Mercédès trade mark is legally protected. During the preceding summer the Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft has introduced the Mercedes Simplex, far superior technically to most other automobiles of its time. [< photo]
1901 Leon Czolgosz, who murdered President William McKinley, is sentenced to death.
1890 US stops minting $1 & $3 gold coin and 3 cents piece
1864 General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his men assault a Federal garrison near Pulaski, Tennessee.

1864 Start of Battle of Pilot Knob.         ^top^
      Missouri Confederate General Sterling Price invades Missouri and attacks a Yankee garrison at Pilot Knob. Price's troops captured a fort and scattered the Union defenders, but also suffered heavy losses. The Confederate military fortunes were at an all-time low, and Price had hoped that the mission would destabilize Missouri just prior to the fall elections and give new hope to the Confederate cause. He also hoped to capture one of the major cities in Missouri and secure supplies for his troops.
      Price mounted his campaign from Pocahontas, Arkansas, and entered Missouri in mid-September. On 26 September he hurled his 12'000 soldiers at Fort Davidson at Pilot Knob. Two days later, the Confederates drove the 1400 Yankee defenders away, but the attack was time-consuming and costly. Price lost 1200 men and gained little in the way of strategic value or political impact.
      The rest of Price's raid didn't fare any better. He was harassed by state militia and had difficulty raising supplies; and Union resistance at important points such as the capital, Jefferson City, was much greater than expected. Through October, Price drove north to St. Louis, west to Kansas City, and then south into Texas. Much of his force disintegrated along the way, and in November Missouri voters elected Radical Republicans into office.

1861 Skirmish near Fort Thorn, New Mexico Territory

1861 Day of prayer and fasting in the Union states, on this last Thursday of the month, as called for by President Lincoln in his 12 August 1861 proclamation of a day of public humiliation, prayer and fasting "to be observed by the people of the United States with religious solemnities. . . . It is peculiarly fit for us to recognize the hand of God in this terrible visitation, and in sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and crimes as a nation and as individuals to humble ourselves before Him, and to pray for His mercy. . . ."

1854 Sébastopol assiégée. ^top^
Français et Anglais mettent le siège devant Sébastopol, puissante forteresse russe dans la presqu’île de Crimée. Quelques mois plus tôt, le tsar Nicolas 1er avait envahi la Turquie ottomane, qui était en pleine déliquescence («L’homme malade de l’Europe», selon le diplomate Gortchakov). Inquiets des ambitions de la Russie, l’empereur Napoléon III et le gouvernement de la reine Victoria font cause commune avec le sultan. C’est ainsi qu’un corps expéditionnaire franco-anglais débarque en Crimée. Les alliés remportent une victoire sur les bords du fleuve Alma avant d’assiéger enfin Sébastopol avec 185'000 hommes. Les assiégeants éprouvent les rigueurs de l’hiver et doivent mener une guerre de tranchées autour de la citadelle. La «charge de la brigade légère» de lord Cardigan contre des Cosaques est l’un des combats les plus marquants du siège. Mais on retient surtout le dévouement de Florence Nightingale, une Britannique de 34 ans qui organise avec talent des hôpitaux de campagne. Tandis qu’à Londres et Paris, l’opinion s’exacerbe devant l’enlisement du conflit, le général Mac-Mahon finit par s’emparer de la tour Malakoff le 8 septembre 1855 («J’y suis, j’y reste!» lance-t-il). Les Russes abandonnent Sébastopol deux jours plus tard. Leur pays, humilié, prend conscience de son retard et le nouveau tsar, Alexandre II, entreprend de vastes réformes. Napoléon III, quant à lui, tire fierté de sa victoire deux ans à peine après son avènement.

1830 Proclamación de la independencia de Bélgica.
1826 Battle of Ganja: The Persian cavalry is routed by the Russians in the Russian Caucasus.
1824 Kapiolani defies Pele (Hawaiian volcano goddess) and lives
1815 The Holy Alliance is formed by Alexander I of Russia, Francis I of Austria and Frederick William III of Prussia.— Se firma en París la Santa Alianza, pacto político-religioso firmado por el zar de Rusia, el emperador de Austria y el rey de Prusia.
1789 Thomas Jefferson appointed 1st US Sec of State; John Jay 1st chief justice; Samuel Osgood 1st Postmaster & Edmund J Randolph 1st Attorney General
1786 France and Britain sign a trade agreement in London. — L'Angleterre signe avec la France un traité de commerce et de navigation. C'est Charles de Vergennes qui en a négocié les clauses. Mais ce traité de libre-échange mécontente les industriels français.

1777 British occupy Philadelphia, in vain. ^top^
After defeating General George Washington at the Battle of Brandywine and the Battle of the Clouds, Sir William Howe marched his British and Hessian troops into Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Howe's forces easily captured the undefended Patriot capital, but the victory proved a hollow one as the Continental Congress had moved its operations to the more secure site of York, Pennsylvania, one week before. Nine months later, on June 18, 1778, the fifteen thousand British troops occupying Philadelphia departed. Their position had become untenable after France's entrance into the war on the side of the Americans. In order to avoid the French fleet, General Clinton was forced to lead his British-Hessian force to New York City by land. Other loyalists in the city sailed down the Delaware River to escape the Patriots, who returned to Philadelphia the day after the British departure. US General Benedict Arnold, who led the force that reclaimed the city without bloodshed, was appointed military governor. On June 24, the Continental Congress returned from York.

1687 Parthenon destroyed in war between Turks and Venetians.

1620 (16 September Julian) Mayflower sets sail         ^top^
      48 crew members and 101 colonists (including 35 Separatists from Leiden, Holland, known afterward as the Pilgrims). sail from Plymouth, England aboard the Mayflower. Their destination was Virginia in the New World. During the three-month voyage, two passengers died and two babies were born. Although they encountered stormy weather and treacherous seas, this hearty group of men, women and children; half religious dissenters and half entrepreneurs, arrived in Provincetown, Massachusetts, on 01 December (21 November Julian) 1620. After a month of exploring for a suitable site, the pilgrims founded the Plymouth Colony two days before Christmas.
      The Mayflower sails from Plymouth, England, bound for the New World with 102 passengers. The ship is headed for Virginia, where the colonists — half religious dissenters and half entrepreneurs — have been authorized to settle by the British crown. However, stormy weather and navigational errors would forced the Mayflower off course, and on 01 December the "Pilgrims" would reach Massachusetts, where they would found the first permanent European settlement in New England in late December.
      Thirty-five of the Pilgrims were members of the radical English Separatist Church, who traveled to America to escape the jurisdiction of the Church of England, which they found corrupt. Ten years earlier, English persecution had led a group of Separatists to flee to Holland in search of religious freedom. However, many were dissatisfied with economic opportunities in the Netherlands, and under the direction of William Bradford they decided to immigrate to Virginia, where an English colony had been founded at Jamestown in 1607. The Separatists won financial backing from a group of investors called the London Adventurers, who were promised a sizable share of the colony's profits. Three dozen church members made their way back to England, where they were joined by about 70 entrepreneurs — enlisted by the London stock company to ensure the success of the enterprise. On 15 August 1620, the Mayflower left Southampton with a smaller vessel — the Speedwell — but the latter proved unseaworthy and twice was forced to return to port. On 16 September the Mayflower alone left for America from Plymouth. In a difficult Atlantic crossing, the 27-meters-long Mayflower encountered rough seas and storms and was blown more than 800 km off course. Along the way, on 21 November (11 November Julian) 1620, 41 of the men aboard formulated and signed the Mayflower Compact, a brief agreement that bound the signatories into a "civil body politic." Because it implied constitutional law and the rule of the majority, the compact is regarded as an important precursor to US democracy.
      After a 66-day voyage, the ship landed on 21 November on the tip of Cape Cod at what is now Provincetown, Massachusetts. After coming to anchor in Provincetown harbor, a party of armed men under the command of Captain Myles Standish was sent out to explore the area and find a location suitable for settlement. While they were gone, Susanna White, aboard the Mayflower, gave birth to a son, Peregrine White [07 December (27 November Julian) 1620 – 02 August (22 July Julian) 1704]. He was the first English child born in New England.
      In mid-December, the explorers went ashore at a location across Cape Cod Bay where they found cleared fields and plentiful running water and named the site Plymouth. The expedition returned to Provincetown, and on 21 December the Mayflower came to anchor in Plymouth harbor. Just after Christmas, the pilgrims began work on dwellings that would shelter them through their difficult first winter in America. In the first year of settlement, half the colonists died of disease. In 1621, the health and economic condition of the colonists improved, and that autumn Governor William Bradford invited neighboring Indians to Plymouth to celebrate the bounty of that year's harvest season. Plymouth soon secured treaties with most local Indian tribes, and the economy steadily grew, and more colonists were attracted to the settlement.
      By the mid 1640s, Plymouth's population numbered 3000, but by then the settlement had been overshadowed by the larger Massachusetts Bay Colony to the north, settled by Puritans in 1629. The term "Pilgrim" was not used to describe the Plymouth colonists until the early 19th century and was derived from a manuscript in which Governor Bradford spoke of the "saints" who left Holland as "pilgrimes." The orator Daniel Webster spoke of "Pilgrim Fathers" at a bicentennial celebration of Plymouth's founding in 1820, and thereafter the term entered common usage.
Bradford's Journal

1580 Drake completes circumnavigation         ^top^
      Elizabethan seaman Francis Drake returned to Plymouth, England, aboard the Golden Hind, becoming the first British navigator to have circumnavigated the Globe. On 13 December 1577, Drake set out from England with five ships, on a mission to raid Spanish holdings on the Pacific coast of the New World. After crossing the Atlantic, Drake abandoned two of his ships in South America, and then sailed into the Straits of Magellan with the remaining three. A series of devastating storms besieged his expedition in the treacherous straits, wrecking one ship and forcing another to return to England. Only the Golden Hind reached the Pacific Ocean, but Drake continued unperturbed up the western coast of South America, raiding Spanish settlements and capturing a rich Spanish treasure ship.
      Drake then continued up the western coast of North American, searching for a possible northeast passage back to the Atlantic. Reaching as far north as present-day Washington before turning back, Drake paused near San Francisco Bay in June of 1579 to repair his ship and prepare for a journey across the Pacific. Calling the land "Nova Albion," Drake claimed the territory for Queen Elizabeth I. In July, the expedition set off across the Pacific, visiting several islands before rounding Africa's Cape of Good Hope and returning to the Atlantic Ocean. On 26 September 1580, the Golden Hind returned to Plymouth, England, bearing its rich captured treasure and valuable information about the world's great oceans. In 1581, Queen Elizabeth I knighted Drake during a visit to his ship. The most renowned of the Elizabethan seamen, he later played a crucial role in the defeat of the Spanish Armada.

1567 Condé tries to seize the young king of France, precipitating the second Huguenot war. It was this kind of action that made the Huguenots so repulsive to the Catholics.
1460 A speech too long. Pope Pius II assembles European leaders, then delivers a three-hour sermon to inspire them to launch a new crusade against the Turks. The speech works, but then another speaker, Cardinal Bessarion, adds a three-hour harangue of his own. After six hours of preaching, the European princes lose all interest in the cause and never mount the called-for crusade.
1255 St. Clare is canonized.

TO THE TOP

Deaths which occurred on a 26 September: ^top^
2003 Israelis man, 30; girl, 7 months; and Mahmoud Hamedan, 22, Palestinian who shoots them at 21:30 (18:30 UT) in a home in the enclave settlement Negohot, southwest of Hebron, West Bank. The baby's father and mother are wounded. Hamedan was released from an Israeli prison two months earlier, after serving a 14 month sentence.
2003 Vincent Humbert, 22, from overdose of sedatives put into his intravenous line by his mother, Marie Humbert, on 24 September 2003 resulting in a coma; in Berck-sur-Mer, France. A car accident on 24 September 2000 had left him paralyzed, mute, and almost blind, able to communicate only by thumb pressure, yet he managed to campaign for the right to die and to author the book Je vous demande le droit de mourir, which was published on 24 September 2003.
2003 Clément Roussenq, 56, dies soon after midnight shortly after being stabbed in the parking lot of the collège Virebelle in La Ciotat (Bouches-du-Rhône), France, of which he was principal. A 23:05 phone call had awakened him and gotten him to go to the port on the pretext that his boat had come loose, and he was returning home.
felly Joola at departure

2002 Alpha Oumar, 22, Yoro Mballo, 51, Mamadou Lamine Camara, 14, Françoise Tendang, 20, and all but 64 of the other 1807 passengers and 52 crew members aboard ferry Joola, 79 m long and top-heavy, designed for 536 passengers on the Rhine river, which, at 23:00 (local = UT), capsizes [photo below] off the coast of Gambia near the border town of Katon, on its way to Dakar, from Casamance province, Senegal [map >], starting at Ziguinchor, with 797 (supposedly) passengers [< photo], and making a stop at Carabane Island, where 185 (or more?) others boarded. The captain, Issa Diarra, is said to be among the survivors. Children under 5 travel free, so they are not counted. The ship was listing heavily to one side as it left port. It was only 5 hours after it capsized that fishing boats discovered the disaster and it was ten hours before any help arrived. The survivors were clinging to the overturned hull while some people below were still alive slowly suffocating in air pockets. (the number of passengers was established only months later, at first it was said to be 982 not including those under 5 years old). (most of the passengersead were from Ziguinchor, including some 400 students on this the last sailing to Dakar before the beginning of the school year)
The army-operated ship had been put back into service on 10 September (prematurely?), after one year of (shoddy?) repairs and this was the return leg of its third round-trip since. The people of the lush, agricultural Casamance region, in the south, are almost cut off from the rest of Senegal by a 20-year separatist rebellion by the Mouvement des Forces Democratiques de Casamance (MFDC), making road travel unsafe. That and the border crossings into and out of Gambia, a narrow nation which almost divides Senegal in two, make the sea journey the preferred choice.
copsized ferry Joola

     Le Joola venait de reprendre les eaux depuis seulement deux semaines, après une panne de moteur qui l’a cloué au port depuis sa dernière rotation entre Ziguinchor et Dakar qui remonte au 13 septembre 2001. Le 10 septembre dernier, le bateau devient fonctionnel et reprend service. Il avait, ce jour-là, à son bord le ministre de la Défense et son collègue de l’Equipement et des Transports.
      Construit par les chantiers navals Schittweri Germersheim” en Allemagne pour un coût de 3 milliards 900 millions Fcfa, le bateau Joola était conçu pour 536 passagers sur le Rhin. On en fit un transbordeur d’eaux côtières destiné à faire la liaison Ziguinchor-Dakar en remplacement du Casamance Express. Avec une longueur de 79,50 mètres, une largeur de 12,50 mètres et un tirant d’eau de 3,10 mètres, le Joola acquis grâce à un prêt consenti au Sénégal par la KFW avait une cale de chargement de 450 mètres cube et une vitesse économique de 14 nœuds. Son poids à l’eau est de 1532 tonnes et son poids d’emport était estimé à 550 tonnes. Il pouvait prendre jusqu’à 500 passagers et embarquer à son bord une quarantaine de voitures. Il servait surtout à désenclaver la partie sud du pays, et également, contribuer à faire écouler les produits de mer ainsi que les nombreux fruits et légumes récoltés dans la zone.
      Réceptionné officiellement le 12 novembre 1990 à Rotterdam en Hollande par le ministre de l’Equipement, des transports et du logement de l’époque, Robert Sagan, il a été baptisé au grand wharf de la Marine nationale le 10 decembre 1990. Quatre jours plus tard, il prenait le large pour son voyage inaugural. Le succès du bateau est tellement grand qu’après quelques années d’exploitation, il se révélera petit pour le transport des marchandises et des personnes qui l’empruntent, surtout au départ de la capitale de la région du sud. Déjà le 26 May 2001 le Joola avait angoissé ceux qui l'attendaient à son arrivée à Ziguinchor, qu'il n'atteignit qu'avec 23 heures de retard, propulsé par un seul moteur.

2002 Employees Lola M. Elwood, 43, Jo A. Mausbach, 42, Lisa J. Bryant, 29, Samuel C. Sun, 50; and customer Evonne Tuttle, 37, at one of the three Norfolk, Nebraska branches of US Bank, in a 40-second holdup at 08:45, by José Sandoval, 23, Jorge A. Galindo, 21, and Erick Fernando Vela, 21, who run into the bank shooting, apparently fail to get any money, run out to find their getaway Cadillac driven by Gabriel Rodriguez, 26, gone. They break into a house and steal at gunpoint the car of an elderly couple. After 15 km they exchange the car for a pickup truck they steal. In the bank were two other employees who are unhurt and a second customer, whose shoulder is wounded. The three holdup men are arrested the same day, and the failed getaway driver the next morning. All had previous criminal records. Tuttle was from Stanton, teller Mausbach from Humphrey; and from Norfolk: assistant branch manager in charge of sales and service Elwood, personal banker Bryant, and teller coordinator Sun. On 20 September 2002, Erick Fernando Vela had been stopped by state patrolman Mark Zach, 35, who ticketed him for carrying a concealed weapon. Zach transposed two digits when entering the gun's serial number into a police computer.Thus the gun was not signaled as stolen and Vela was not arrested, though the gun was confiscated. On 27 September at 13:00, officer Zach, who had been 12 years in the State Patrol, would kill himself with his service revolver.

2002 Gharam Manaa, 14-month-old Palestinian, from inhalation of tear gas thrown, to re-impose a curfew, by Israeli troops in the Hebron, West Bank, market, where the baby was with her grandmother. Three adults are injured by the tear gas, one by a rubber bullet.

2002 Abdel Rahim Hamdan, 27, and Issa Abu Ajra, 29, bodyguards of Mohammed Deif (the target — "Deif," a nom de guerre, means "visitor." ) when two Israeli helicopters fire rockets at Deif's Mercedes on a street in the Sheik Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City. Deif, 37, survives, wounded as are 35 others, including 15 children. Deif was one of the closest aides of Yahya ‘Ayyash, the commander of Hamas’ Iz al-Din al-Qassam military apparatus known as "the Engineer," who was killed by a very sophisticated bomb in January 1996. The death of ‘Ayyash brought about the division of the terrorist group into two parts: one in the West Bank, led by Muhi al-Din al-Sharif and the ‘Awadallah brothers until they were killed in 1998; the other in the Gaza Strip, led by Deif, who was considered the senior activist of the terrorist apparatus. Hamas responded to the assassination of Ayyash with four suicide bombings that killed dozens of Israelis. Deif, Hamas' chief bombmaker, was the target of today's strike. Deif has topped Israel's wanted list for several years, and escaped an Israeli air strike earlier in 2002. — In Ha'aretz, the next day, Danny Rubinstein ends his editorial “An outdated method” with: “For every terrorist assassinated, many others will rise to replace him.”

2002 Mahmoud Hasim, 52, innocent Palestinian, shot in his Jenin, West Bank, home by Israeli troops, when he opens his window shortly after midnight.

2002 Harel Marmelstein, and Nisa'at Talatin Jaber, a senior Hamas activist. Captain Marmelstein, 23 [photo >], from Mevasseret Zion, of the Naval Commandos, led a team of soldiers in a search for Jaber in the Tul Karm area. Jaber is believed to be responsible for a long series of terrorist attacks and the dispatch of suicide bombers on their missions. One of the squads saw an unarmed man moving suspiciously and called for reinforcements. They pursued the man, firing at him, but he managed to escape to a small cave in a wadi lined with olive trees near the village of Lebed. Jaber, for it was him, had hid an automatic rifle in the cave. Marmelstein had by then moved into the wadi to corner Jaber. At 06:00 Marmelstein passed by the small cave, not realizing that Jaber was hiding there. From 40 meters away, Jaber shot Marmelstein in the chest just below the shoulder, above his protective vest. He was evacuated by helicopter to Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, where he died. Two other soldiers were injured. One of the soldiers fired at the cave and followed with two LAW anti-tank missiles, killing Jaber.

2002:: Gervaise Roderick John “Roddy” Scott, 17 Russian servicemen and some 80 Chechen fighters (Russian-supplied numbers), near Galashki, Ingushetia, close to the Chechen border. At 08:00 local (04:00 UT) a Chechen shoulder-fired rocket downs onto the village a Russian Mi-24 helicopter gunship, killing its two-man crew. Then 100 Chechens try to seize control of bridges inside Galashki to secure passage into Chechnya. They are eventually beaten back and bombarded with Russian artillery fire and strafing from the air. Scott, a Britsh freelance cameraman, is found among the Chechen dead.

2001 Vingt-deux personnes, par des islamistes armés, à Larbâa, dans la plaine de la Mitidja à une trentaine de kilomètres au sud d'Alger. Quatre tueurs, vêtus d'uniformes militaires, ont fait irruption dans le domicile d'une famille qui célébrait un mariage et ont mitraillé l'assistance, tuant 12 personnes. Puis dix autres ont été tuées dans une maison située à environ un kilomètres de là
1997 All 234 aboard an Indonesian Airbus A-300 which crashes while approaching Medan Airport in north Sumatra.
1994 Un centenar de muertos, casi 300 enfermos y 300'000 personas huidas a causa de la epidemia de peste neumónica declarada en Surat (India).
1990 Alberto Pincherle ("Alberto Moravia"), 82, Italian writer (Woman in Red)
1976 Paul Turán, Budapest Jewish mathematician born on 28 August 1910.

1959 Solomon Dias Bandaranaike, Prime Minister of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) assassinated.
1954 Over 1600 killed by typhoon, Kakodate Bay, Japan
1952 George Santayana
1952 (24 Sep?) René Seyssaud, French painter born on 16 (15?) June 1867. — MORE ON SEYSSAUD AT ART “4” SEPTEMBER with links to three images.
1947 Hugh John Lofting, author. LOFTING ONLINE: The Story of Doctor Dolittle, The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle

1945 Vietnam: Peter Dewey, first American soldier killed by Viet Minh         ^top^
      Lt. Col. Peter Dewey, a US Army officer with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Vietnam, is shot and killed in Saigon. Dewey was the head of a seven-man team sent to Vietnam to search for missing American pilots and to gather information on the situation in the country after the surrender of the Japanese.
      According to the provisions of the Potsdam Conference, the British were assigned the responsibility of disarming Japanese soldiers south of the 16th parallel. However, with the surrender of the Japanese, Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh declared themselves the rightful government of Vietnam.
      This angered the French colonial officials and the remaining French soldiers who had been disarmed and imprisoned by the Japanese. They urged British Maj. Gen. Douglas D. Gracey to help them regain control. Gracey, not fond of the Viet Minh or their cause, rearmed 1400 French soldiers to help his troops maintain order. The next day these forces ousted the Viet Minh from the offices that they had only recently occupied.
      Dewey’s sympathies lay with the Viet Minh, many of whom were nationalists who did not want a return to French colonial rule. The American officer was an outspoken man who soon angered Gracey, eventually resulting in the British general ordering him to leave Indochina. On the way to the airport, accompanied by another OSS officer, Capt. Henry Bluechel, Dewey refused to stop at a roadblock manned by three Viet Minh soldiers. He yelled back at them in French and they opened fire, killing Dewey instantly. Bluechel was unhurt and escaped on foot. It was later determined that the Viet Minh had fired on Dewey thinking he was French. He would prove to be the first of nearly 59'000 Americans killed in Vietnam.

1945 Bela Bartok, compositor húngaro.

1944 Thousands of Allied and some German soldiers in Arnhem         ^top^
      Operation Market-Garden, a plan to seize bridges in the Dutch town of Arnhem, fails, as thousands of British and Polish troops are killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. British Gen. Bernard Montgomery conceived an operation to take control of bridges that crossed the Rhine River, from the Netherlands into Germany, as a strategy to make "a powerful full-blooded thrust to the heart of Germany."
      The plan seemed cursed from the beginning. It was launched on 17 September, with parachute troops and gliders landing in Arnhem. Holding out as long as they could, waiting for reinforcements, they were compelled to surrender. Unfortunately, a similar drop of equipment was delayed, and there were errors in locating the proper drop location and bad intelligence on German troop strength. Added to this, bad weather and communication confused the coordination of the Allied troops on the ground. The Germans quickly destroyed the railroad bridge and took control of the southern end of the road bridge. The Allies struggled to control the northern end of the road bridge, but soon lost it to the superior German forces.
      The only thing left was retreat—back behind Allied lines. But few made it: Of more than 10'000 British and Polish troops engaged at Arnhem, only 2900 escaped. Claims were made after the fact that a Dutch Resistance fighter, Christiaan Lindemans, betrayed the Allies, which would explain why the Germans were arrayed in such numbers at such strategic points. A conservative member of the British Parliament, Rupert Allason, writing under the named Nigel West, dismissed this conclusion in his A Thread of Deceit, arguing that Lindemans, while a double agent, "was never in a position to betray Arnhem." Winston Churchill would lionize the courage of the fallen Allied soldiers with the epitaph "Not in vain." Arnhem was finally liberated on 15 April 1945.

1936 Harriet Monroe , author. HARRIET MONROE ONLINE: The Passing Show: Five Modern Plays in Verse
1925: 54 Italian sailors on sub Sebastiano Veniero lost off Sicily.

1921 Robert Stanley Warren Bell, author. ROBERT BELL ONLINE: The "Medicine-Man", or, Indian and Eskimo Notions of Medicine (1886), editor of Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England
1917 Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas (or de Gas), French painter born on 19 July 1834. — MORE ON DEGAS AT ART “4” SEPTEMBER with links to many images.
1914 August Macke, German expresssionist painter born on 03 June (January?) 1887. — MORE ON MACKE AT ART “4” SEPTEMBER — LINKS — Selbstbildnis — Selbstporträt mit Hut — Four Women in the Forest — Three Girls in a Barque — Garden Gate — Hat Shop — Girls and Trees — Lady in the Green Coat — Lady in a Green Jacket — Tegernseer Bauernjunge — Der Sturm —Elisabeth Gerhardt Nähend — Frau des Künstlers mit Hut — Porträt mit Äpfeln: Frau des Künstlers — Bildnis Franz Marc — Der Mackesche Garten in Bonn — Farewell — Man Reading in the Park —
1910 Thorvald Nicolai Thiele, Copenhagen mathematician born on 24 December 1838.
1904 Patricio Lafcadio Tessima Carlos “Yakumo Koizumi” Hearn, multinational author. KOISUMI ONLINE: A Memory of Last Island, Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things , translator of Chin Chin Kobakama
1893 Edward Duffield Neill, author. NEILL ONLINE: A Hand Book for the Presbyterian Church in Minnesota
1893 Annie Feray Mutrie, British artist born in 1826.
1877 Hermann Günter Grassmann, Stettin Prussian mathematician born on 15 April 1809. He is chiefly remembered for his development of a general calculus for vectors. His most important work is Die lineale Ausdehnungslehre, ein neuer Zweig der Mathematik (1844).
1874 John Stephen Wright, author JOHN WRIGHT ONLINE: Chicago: Past, Present, Future
1873 Salustiano de Olózaga, político español.
1868 August Ferdinand Möbius, German mathematician born on 17 November 1790. He is best known for his work in topology, especially for his conception of the Möbius strip, a two dimensional surface with only one side and one edge, which is strikingly represented in the woodcut Moebius Strip II (Red Ants) (1963, 45x20cm) by M. C. Escher; or, in color, in this image

1828 John Gardiner Calkins Brainard, poet. BRAINARD ONLINE: The Poems of John G. C. Brainard, The Poems of John G. C. Brainard

1820 Daniel Boone, 85, pioneering frontiersman.         ^top^
     He dies quietly in his sleep at his son Nathan's home near present-day Defiance, Missouri. The indefatigable voyager was eighty-six. Boone was born in 1734 to Quaker parents living in Berks County, Pennsylvania. Following a squabble with the Pennsylvania Quakers, Boone's family decided to head south and west for less crowded regions, and they eventually settled in the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina. There the young Daniel Boone began his life-long love for wilderness, spending long days exploring the still relatively unspoiled forests and mountains of the region. An indifferent student who never learned to write more than a crude sentence or two, Boone's passion was for the outdoors, and he quickly became a superb marksman, hunter, and woodsman.
      Never satisfied to stay put for very long, Boone soon began making ever longer and more ambitious journeys into the relatively unexplored lands to the west. In May of 1769, Boone and five companions crossed over the Cumberland Gap and explored along the south fork of the Kentucky River. Impressed by the fertility and relative emptiness of the land—although the native inhabitants hardly considered it to be empty—Boone returned in 1773 with his family, hoping to establish a permanent settlement. An Indian attack prevented that first attempt from succeeding, but Boone returned two years later to open the route that became known as Boone's Trace (or the Wilderness Road) between the Cumberland Gap and a new settlement along the Kentucky River called Fortress Boonesboro. After years of struggles against both Amerindians and British soldiers, Boonesboro eventually became one of the most important gateways for the early American settlement of the Trans-Appalachian West.
      Made a legend in his own time by John Filson's The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boon (presented as an autobiography) and Lord Byron's depiction of him as the quintessential frontiersman in the book Don Juan, Boone became a symbol of the western pioneering spirit for many Americans. Ironically, though, Boone's fame and his success in opening the Trans-Appalachian West to large-scale settlement later came to haunt him. Having lost his Kentucky land holdings by failing to properly register them, Boone moved even further west in 1799, trying to escape the civilized regions he had been so instrumental in creating. Finally settling in Missouri—though he never stopped dreaming of continuing westward—he lived out the rest of his life doing what he loved best: hunting and trapping in a fertile wild land still largely untouched by the Anglo pioneers who had followed the path he blazed to the West.
— The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boon (illustrated, at another site)

1802 Georg (Jurij) Freiherr von Vega, Slovenian military mathematician born on 23 March 1754. He wrote about artillery but he is best remembered for his tables of logarithms and trigonometric functions. In 1789 he calculated p (pi) to 126 correct places, and in 1794 to 136 correct places (see Pi through the ages and A chronology of pi). Author of Vorlesungen über die Mathematik (4 volumes: 1782, 1784, 1788, 1800).
1787 Nicolas Desportes, French artist born on 17 July 1718.
1766 Giulio Carlo Fagnano dei Toschi, Sinigaglia Italian gonfaloniere and mathematician born on 06 December 1682.
1764 Fray Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro, escritor español.
1722 Pieter van der Werff, Dutch artist born in 1665.
1681 Willem Ruyter (or Reuter), Flemish artist born in 1642.
1670 Abraham Teniers, Flemish artist born on 01 March 1629.
1626 Lancelot Andrewes. He exerted a good deal of influence on the development of Anglican theology and authored the spiritual classic Private Devotions. He helped prepare the King James translation of the Bible.

Births which occurred on a 26 September:

2002 Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, new edition ^top^
The new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is published. It includes such words as Jedi, Klingons, Grinches, gearheads, bunny-huggers. The new edition, distilled from the massive Oxford English Dictionary, includes 3500 new words which have met the publisher's test of appearing in at least five printed sources within five years. Jedi from "Star Wars" and Klingons from "Star Trek" joined Grinches (spoilsports) which originated in the fantasies of Dr. Seuss. Bunny-hugger is defined as a conservationist or animal lover, while a bunny-boiler is a vindictive woman, a la Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction." A gearhead is a car enthusiast. Since the previous edition of the dictionary in 1993, other new words include alcopops, carjacking, control freaks, DVDs, line dancing, lap dancing, pashminas, road rage, shock jocks, speed cameras, or supermodels. From the dining table, new words include balsamic vinegar, BLTs, bruschetta, cava, chargrilling, dauphinois potatoes, and Heimlich maneuver.

1996 IBEX Internet business bidding system ^top^
A group of major US companies band together to create an online service to smooth business purchasing. The system, called the International Business Exchange, or IBEX, was created by AT&T, Dun and Bradstreet, General Electric, and the US Chamber of Commerce. The system would allow companies to request proposals for goods or services and allow vendors around the world to offer anonymous bids. Although consumer use of the Internet generated great media attention in the late 1990s, industry experts said business-to-business commerce would generate much larger revenues.

1949 Jane Smiley, novelist (A Thousand Acres, Moo).
1936 Pedro Antonio Urbina, poeta y escritor español.
1934 Queen Mary British liner is launched — Lancement du Queen Mary dans l'estuaire de la Clyde, en Écosse. Le paquebot, avec ses 81235 tonneaux de jauge et ses 300 mètres de long, est le plus grand navire du monde (à cette époque). Longtemps détenteur du "Ruban Bleu", il a transporté des centaines de milliers de voyageurs d'Europe en Amérique (et réciproquement). Réformé en 1967, il est devenu un hôtel-musée près de Los Angelès (USA).

1921 Unemployment Commission is created by President Hoover. ^top^
As more and more Americans lost their jobs, President Hoover stepped in on this day and convened a national conference on unemployment. On the agenda was not just the shortage of jobs, but how to address the discontentment of those US citizens who had previously been shortchanged by the labor system. After serving in World War I, US Blacks were beginning to protest job discrimination and their relegation to low-paying work. In response, the Hoover Commission suggested a jobs program, as well as a slash in prices. Although this wouldn't directly stimulate jobs, the Commission hoped it would make goods more readily available to all citizens.

1914 The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is created to enforce anti-trust and consumer protection legislation, and to be a link between government and business.
1914 Jack LaLanne exercise mogul
1902 Albert Anastasia head of Murder Inc
1898 Jacob Gershvin “George Gershwin”, Bkln NY, composer (Rhapsody in Blue). He wrote the music for many popular songs for musicals, with his brother Ira writing the lyrics. His greatest work work was the opera Porgy and Bess (1935), on a libretto by DuBose Heyward. George Gershwin died on 11 July 1937 after unsuccesful surgery on a brain tumor..

1897 Giovanni Battista Montini. ^top^ He was ordained in 1920, named a cardinal in 1958, and in June 1963 chosen successor to John XXIII as Pope Paul VI, 262nd Roman Pope (1963-78). His 15 years as pontiff saw a widening application of the decisions first made at the Vatican II Ecumenical Council (1962-65). PAUL VI ONLINE:
Ecclesiam Suam — On the Church (06 Aug 1964) Mense Maio — Praying to Mary During May (30 Apr 1965) Mysterium Fidei — On the Holy Eurcharist (03 Sep 1965) Address to last meeting of Vatican II — (1965) Christi Matri — On Prayers to Mary for Peace (15 Sep 1966) Populorum Progressio — Peoples' Development (26 Mar 1967) Signum Magnum — On Our Lady (1967)	Sacerdotalis Caelibatus — Celibacy Priests (24 Jun 1967) Indulgentiarum Doctrina — on Indulgences (01 Jan 1967) Humanae Vitae — On the Regulation of Birth (25 Jul 1968) Credo of the People of God — (03 Jun 1968) The Sacrament of Anointing the Sick — (30 Nov 1972) Marialis Cultus — Devotion to Virgin Mary (02 Feb 1974) Evangelii Nuntiandi — Evangelization (08 Dec 1975)

1891 Hans Reichenbach, German US mathematician born on 26 September 1891.
1889 Martin Heidegger Germany, Existentialist philosopher (Being & Time)

1888 Thomas Stearns Eliot, St Louis, poet, critic, and dramatist.        ^top^
     Eliot's distinguished family tree included an ancestor who arrived in Boston in 1670 and another who founded Washington University in St. Louis. Eliot's father was a businessman, and his mother was involved in local charities.
      Eliot took an undergraduate degree at Harvard, studied at the Sorbonne, returned to Harvard to study Sanskrit, and then studied at Oxford. After meeting poet and lifelong friend Ezra Pound, Eliot relocated to England. In 1915, he married Vivian Haigh-Wood, but the marriage was unhappy, partly due to her mental instability. She died in an institution in 1947.
      Eliot began working at Lloyd's Bank in 1917, writing reviews and essays on the side. He founded a critical quarterly, Criterion, and quietly developed a new brand of poetry. His first major work, The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, was published in 1917 and hailed as the invention of a new kind of poetry. His long, fragmented images and use of blank verse influenced nearly all future poets, as did his masterpiece The Waste Land, published in Criterion and the American review The Dial in 1922. While Eliot is best known for revolutionizing modern poetry, his literary criticism and plays were also successful. In 1925, he accepted a job as an editor at Faber and Faber, which allowed him to quit his job at the bank. He held the position for the rest of his life.
      Eliot lectured in the United States frequently in the 1930s and 1940s, a time when his own worldview was fluctuating: He converted to Christianity. In 1957, he married his assistant, Valerie Fletcher. The couple lived happily until his death in 1965.
ELIOT ONLINE: The Waste Land, The Waste Land, (Nobel 1948), Poems, Poems, Prufrock, and Other Observations, Prufrock, and Other Observations, The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism.

1887 Barnes Wallis, British aeronautical engineer who invented the "Bouncing Bombs" used to destroy German dams during World War II.

1877 Edmund Sidney Pollock Haynes, author. HAYNES ONLINE: The Decline of Liberty in England
1862 Arthur Bowen Davies, US painter and illustrator who died in 1928. — MORE ON DAVIES AT ART “4” SEPTEMBER with links to many images.
1859 Irving Addison Bacheller, author. BACHELLER ONLINE: Eben Holden: A Tale of the North Country
1854 Percy Alexander MacMahon, English mathematician who died on 25 December 1929. Author of Combinatory analysis (2 volumes: 1915, 1916), An introduction to combinatory analysis (1920), New Mathematical Pastimes (1921).
1849 Ivan Pavlov, Russian physiologist, famous for his Nobel Prize-winning behavioral studies on conditioned reflexes in dogs in the 1890s.
1848 Helen Allingham, English illustrator and painter who died on 28 September 1926. — more and links.
1846 Mary Hannay (Black) Foott, poet. FOOTT ONLINE: Where the Pelican Builds and Other Poems
1843 Joseph Furphy, author. FURPHY ONLINE: Such is Life: Being Certain Extracts from the Diary of Tom Collins (his pseudonym)
1829 Scotland Yard, the official British criminal investigation organization, is formed.
1823 William Henry Knight, British artist who died on 31 July 1863.
1820 Isvar Chandra Vidyasagar father of Bengali prose (Exile of Sita)
1803 Thomas Sidney Cooper, English painter, specialized in farm mammals, who died on 07 February 1902. — MORE ON COOPER AT ART “4” SEPTEMBER with links to many images.
1798 Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera y Arboleda, político y militar colombiano.
1797 James Wallis Eastburn, author. EASTBURN ONLINE: Yamoyden: A Tale of the Wars of King Philip
1791 Jean Louis André Théodore Géricault, French Romantic painter who died on 26 January 1824. — MORE ON GÉRICAULT AT ART “4” SEPTEMBER with links to many images.
1790 Nassau William Senior, economist. SENIOR ONLINE: Political Economy, Three Lectures on the Rate of Wages

1783 Jane Taylor, children's writer best known as the author of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. ^top^ JANE TAYLOR ONLINE:: Essays in Rhyme on Morals and Manners, Memoirs, Correspondence and Poetical Remains of Jane Taylor, co-author of Little Ann and Other Poems. In The Spider she made two mistakes: 1. calling it an insect. 2. saying it could do us no harm (it could if it were a Black Widow or of another venemous species).
Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky. Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are!	When the blazing sun is gone, When he nothing shines upon, Then you show your little light, Twinkle, twinkle, all the night. Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are!	Then the traveler in the dark Thanks you for your tiny spark; He could not see which way to go, If you did not twinkle so. Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are!
THE SPIDER. (from Little Ann and Other Poems) "OH, look at that great ugly spider!" said Ann; And screaming, she brush'd it away with her fan; "'Tis a frightful black creature as ever can be, I wish that it would not come crawling on me. " "Indeed," said her mother, "I'll venture to say, The poor thing will try to keep out of your way; For after the fright, and the fall, and the pain, It has much more occasion than you to complain. "But why should you dread the poor insect, my dear? If it hurt you, there'd be some excuse for your fear; But its little black legs, as it hurried away, Did but tickle your arm, as they went, I dare say. "For them to fear us we must grant to be just, Who in less than a moment can tread them to dust; But certainly we have no cause for alarm; For, were they to try, they could do us no harm. "Now look! it has got to its home; do you see What a delicate web it has spun in the tree? Why here, my dear Ann, is a lesson for you: Come learn from this spider what patience can do! "And when at your business you're tempted to play, Recollect what you see in this insect to-day, Or else, to your shame, it may seem to be true, That a poor little spider is wiser than you. "	REMONSTRANCE TO TIME. (June 1908, from Poetical Remains)
	STAY hoary Sage! one moment deign To hear thy duteous child complain; Nor scorn her pensive lay: But while a suppliant at thy side, Thy fearful scythe in pity hide, And that old hour-glass throw aside; They fright my song away. Regardless of thy hoary age, Thou indefatigable Sage, Incessant is thy toil: Thou canst, with an unnatural joy, Thine own ingenious works destroy; For 't is thy favorite employ To perfect and to spoil. And Beauty's temple, Wisdom's brow, Old Time! it well befits thee now, With pains to decorate: Scatter thy silver honors there, But, O, good father Time, forbear! I ask thee not to deck my hair; It ill becomes thy state. Go, bind thine ivy o'er the oak, And spread thy rich embroidered cloak Around his trunk the while; Or deck with moss the abbey wall, And paint grotesque the Gothic hall, And sculpture, with thy chisel small, The monumental pile: But oh! from such majestic height, Wilt thou, descending, stoop thy flight To seek my lowly door? What glory canst thou reap from me, By all neglected but by thee? Consider thine own dignity, And proudly pass me o'er.	But false the hope! and vain the prayer! Thy hand was never known to spare; Nor will thy speed delay: Yet hear thy trembling victim's sigh; If e'er thy microscopic eye Perchance one youthful grace espy, May that become thy prey! Thy wrinkles, and thy locks of snow (The choicest gifts thy hand bestow) At those I do not start: But come not thou a treacherous guest, To steal those feelings, dearest, best That glow that warms the youthful breast: With these I cannot part. Oh! should such joys supplanted be By frigid worldly policy; And cold distrust ensue; Adieu, ye dear poetic powers, And Fancy's fair enchanted bowers, And all the sweets that once were ours; A long, a sad adieu! But is it in thy power to chill Affection's dear transporting thrill, And Friendship's fervid glow? Ah! if thy cruel aim be this, I shudder at thy marble kiss, And clinging to my parting bliss, Call bitter tears to flow. But, Sire, command these fears away: Tell me, affection's milder ray Shall gild my wintry sky: That hope my fainting spirit cheers, Dispels my sighs, and dries my tears: Angelic now thy form appears, And mercy in thine eye.

1774 Johnathan Chapman (Johnny Appleseed), Leominster, Mass. pioneer environmentalist.         ^top^
            Distributing apple seeds and religious tracts from the Alleghenies to the Ohio Valley, Chapman's theology was strongly reminiscent of Swedenborgianism, which taught an empathy with the natural world. He was a missionary nurseryman of the North American frontier who helped prepare the way for 19th-century pioneers by supplying apple-tree nursery stock throughout the Middle West. The resulting apple trees, grown from seed without grafts, were unsuitable for anything but cider, which was greatly appreciated by the pioneers short on alcohol.
      Although the legendary character of "Johnny Appleseed" is known chiefly through fiction, John Chapman was a genuine and dedicated professional nurseryman who expected to make a profit from the sale of his seedlings. Around 1800 he started collecting apple seeds from cider presses in western Pennsylvania and soon began his long trek westward, planting a series of apple nurseries from the Alleghenies to central Ohio and beyond. He sold or gave away thousands of seedlings to pioneers, whose acres of productive apple orchards became a living memorial to Chapman's missionary zeal. He also was a medicine man to Native Americans.
      A variety of distinctive characteristics combined to create the "Johnny Appleseed" myth of the primitive natural man: his cheerful, generous nature, his affinity for the wilderness, his gentleness with animals, his devotion to the Bible, his knowledge of medicinal herbs, his harmony with the Indians, and above all his eccentric appearance — flowing hair under an inverted mush pan, bare feet, ragged trousers, and an old coffee sack over his shoulders with holes cut out for arms.
      John Chapman, owner of 500 hectares of planted land, died from preumonia on 18 March 1845, in the home of his friend, William Worth. near Fort Wayne, Ind., but the legend of “Johnny Appleseed” lives on in numerous literary works.

1729 Moses Mendelssohn philosopher/critic/Bible translator
1688 Willem Jacob 'sGravesande, Dutch lawyer, diplomat, mathematician, physicist, astronomer, philosopher, who died on 28 February 1742. Author of Mathematical Elements of Physics.

Holidays New Zealand : Dominion Day / Sri Lanka : Bandaranaike Day (1959) / Yemen Arab Rep, Yemen Peo Dem Rep : Revolution Day (1962) / Khmer Republic : Ceremony of the Dead

Religious Observances RC: SS Cosmas & Damian, martyrs, patrons of MDs (opt) / Ang : Lancelot Andrewes, bishop of Winchester / Santos Cosme, Damián, Amancio, Cipriano, Genaro y Justina. / Saints Côme et Damien: Ces deux médecins inséparables du IVe siècle ont inventé la Sécurité sociale avant l'heure, soignant gratuitement les malades et ne manquant pas de les convertir à la foi nouvelle. Ils subissent le martyre à Cyr, en Syrie. Ils sont considérés comme les saints patrons des médecins et des chirurgiens. Deux basiliques leur sont dédiées à Constantinople (Istanbul).

Thoughts for the day: “Your mind should not be like a bed in a guest room: always made-up because you never use it much.”
“Nature hates a vacuum, especially where there ought to be a brain.”
“Dust you are and to dust you shall return, so watch out for vacuum~cleaners.”
“Quel est l'avis russe sur la vie russe sans virus?”

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