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PHAR price chartOn a 29 August:
2002 The US Food and Drug Administration approves the Enox test of Pharmanetics Inc (PHAR). On the NASDAQ its stock rises phar above its previous close of $4.31 to an intraday high of $7.50 and closes at $6.20. PHAR started trading on 30 November 1998 at $5.63 and traded as high as $10.00 on 09 January 2002. But then it dropped as low as $2.80 on 17 July 2002 (not phar from its all-time low of $2.63 on 22 March 1999). [3~year price chart]
2000 Pope John Paul II sets moral guidelines for medical research in the 21st century, endorsing organ donation and adult stem cell study, but condemning human cloning and embryo experiments.
1999 Chechnya war: Russian forces open second stage of conflict by attacking strongholds of Islamic fundamentalists in Karamakhi and Chabanmakhi villages after their population refuses calls to disarm.
Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov dismisses Movladi Udugov from Chechnya's National Security Council, accuses him of "large-scale ideological sabotage against the Chechen state." Udugov has been serving as a spokesman for Shamil Basayev. http://www.cdi.org/issues/Europe/aug.html
1997 Dell offers to lease computers. Dell announces a program to allow customers to lease computers. The move aimed to increase Dell's business among home users. Leasing gave consumers some measure of protection against purchasing equipment that quickly became obsolete.
1997 Publishers abandon web rating plan. An association of publishers, including the New York Times, CNN, and Dow Jones, gave up attempts to create a special Web site rating label that would exempt news agencies from software that blocked access to sites portraying violence, profanity, nudity, and adult content. The publishers had proposed the creation of an "N" label to distinguish news sites, but the difficulty of enforcing and policing the label proved too complicated to adopt.
1996 H&R Block keeps CompuServe... for now. Newspapers report that H&R Block had postponed plans to spin off its 80 percent share of CompuServe. The online service had performed poorly in recent quarters as online services lost ground to the burgeoning World Wide Web. The spin-off was originally slated for November 1.
1995 Georgian leader Eduard Shevardnadze survives an assassination attempt when a car explodes near his motorcade.
1992 Thousands of Germans demonstrate against a wave of racist attacks aimed at immigrants.
1991 In a stunning blow to the Soviet Communist Party, the Supreme Soviet legislature votes to suspend the activities of the organization and freeze its bank accounts because of the party's role in the failed coup.
1990 Saddam Hussein declares America can't beat Iraq.
1990 Airline reservation gridlock
      The nation's computerized airline reservation systems were gridlocked when travelers rushed to reserve last-minute low fares on this day in 1990. System jams created by the flood of reservation requests kept many agents from quickly booking tickets, and many travelers were required to pay fares 20 to 40% higher than those they thought they had booked. Sabre, the country's largest computer reservation system, said it set a single-day record, handling 100 million electronic messages — 25% more than on a typical day.
1975 Light reaches Earth from star in Cygnus gone nova, it becomes 4th brightest in sky
1972 Vietnam: President Nixon sets 01 December as the target date for reducing US troops strength in Vietnam by 12'000, to 27'000, an all-time low since the American troop buildup began in 1965.
1972 Vietnam: 1964 South Vietnam president resigns
      Nguyen Khanh steps down as president of South Vietnam and Xuan Oanh, former professor at Trinity College in Connecticut, is named prime minister. Khanh had been a major player in the instability that followed the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem in November 1963. This period was marked by ten successive governments in Saigon within 18 months. A military junta headed by General Duong Van Minh as chief of state assumed control of the government upon Diem's death.
      On 30 January 1964, Khanh, a 37-year-old Major General, led a bloodless coup against Minh, but allowed him to stay on as titular head of state. What followed was a series of governments, none of which was able to govern; one Johnson administration official suggested that the coat of arms of the South Vietnamese government should be a turnstile.
      With the passing of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution earlier in August, General Khanh sought to take advantage of the new situation. He promoted himself to the presidency, hastily issued a new constitution, and dismissed former figurehead chief of state Minh. These moves were answered by protests when students and Buddhist took to the streets demonstrating against Khanh's new government and the continuing influence of Catholics in the government. Khanh spoke with some of the demonstrators but said he would have to discuss their complaints with US ambassador Maxwell Taylor. Two days later, he resigns.
      The Military Revolutionary Council made up of top South Vietnamese generals meets to choose a new head of state. They chose a triumvirate of Generals Khanh, Minh, and Tran Thien Kheim as an interim government to restore order. Xuan Oanh was chosen prime minister of the new government, but Khanh retained the premiership. However, he was ousted in February 1965 by Generals Nguyen Cao Ky and Nguyen Van Thieu.
      Khanh then went to the United States and settled in Palm Beach, Florida. Washington had watched the political instability in South Vietnam with great alarm and hoped that Ky and Thieu could establish a viable government that would fight the communists.
1971 Vietnam: President Nguyen Van Thieu retains control of National Assembly of South Vietnam, as candidates backing him sweep the opposition in the Mekong Delta, with a solid majority in the 159-member lower house. Thieu will be re-elected in October amid charges of corruption that resulted in the withdrawal of his two opponents, General Duong Van Minh and Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky. The election insured one man rule in Saigon and greatly damaged the government's image and credibility with the South Vietnamese people.
1968 Democrats nominate Humphrey for President of the US
      In Chicago, the Democratic National Convention nominates Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey for the presidency, bringing to a close the most violent political convention in US history. In the week before the convention, thousands of antiwar demonstrators had descended on Chicago's streets to protest the Vietnam War and its support by Humphrey, the top Democratic presidential candidate.
      In response, Richard Daley, Chicago's heavy-handed mayor, called in 7500 US Army troops and 6000 National Guardsmen to back up his 12'000 police officers. On 26 August, the convention got underway, and, on 28 August, police and national guardsmen clashed with protesters outside the International Amphitheater, and hundreds of people, including innocent bystanders, were beaten by the Chicago police. The violence even spilled into the convention hall, as guards roughed up delegates and members of the press, including CBS News correspondent Mike Wallace, who was punched in the face.
      On 29 August Humphrey secures the nomination and the convention ends. In the convention's aftermath, a federal commission investigating the convention described one of the confrontations as a "police riot" and blamed Chicago Mayor Richard Daley for inciting his police to violence. Nevertheless, eight political radicals — the so-called "Chicago Eight" — were arrested on charges of conspiring to incite the violence, and in 1969 their trial began in Chicago, sparking new waves of protest in the city.
1962 Robert Frost leaves for a goodwill tour of USSR
      The goodwill tour is sponsored by the US State Department in an effort to thaw Cold War relations. Frost's poetry has established his international reputation as American's unofficial poet laureate. While his best work appeared in earlier decades, he is nevertheless seen as an elder statesman of literature. He was much admired for his depictions of the rural life of New England, his command of American colloquial speech, and his realistic verse portraying ordinary people in everyday situations.
      Despite his close association with New England, Robert Frost was born in in California (26 March 1874), where he lived until his father, a journalist, died when Robert was 11. His mother brought him to Massachusetts, where he graduated as co-valedictorian of his high school class. He attended Dartmouth and Harvard, but didn't complete a degree at either school. Three years after high school, he married his high school co-valedictorian, Elinor White. Frost tried unsuccessfully to run a New England farm, and the family, which soon included four children, struggled with poverty for two decades. Frost became more and more depressed.
      In 1912, he moved his family to England to make a fresh start. There he concentrated on his poetry and published a collection called A Boy's Will in 1913, which won praise from English critics and helped him win a US publishing contract for his second book, North of Boston (1914). The American public took a liking to the 40-year-old Frost, who returned to the US when World War I broke out. He bought another farm in New Hampshire and continued to publish books. He taught and lectured at Amherst, University of Michigan, Harvard, and Dartmouth, and read from his work at the inauguration of President Kennedy. He also endured personal tragedy when a son committed suicide and a daughter had a mental breakdown. While Frost never graduated from a university, he collected 44 honorary degrees before he died on 29 January 1963. His last poetry collection, In the Clearing, was published in 1962.
FROST ONLINE: A Boy's Will, Miscellaneous Poems to 1920, Mountain Interval, North of Boston
1957 US Senate passes Civil Rights Act of 1957 as South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond (then a Democrat, later turned Republican) ends a filibuster against a civil rights bill after talking for more than 24 hours.
1953 USSR explodes its 1st hydrogen bomb.
1952 In the largest bombing raid of the Korean War, 1403 planes of the Far East Air Force bomb Pyongyang, North Korea.
1950 US State Department official discusses "captive populations"
      Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Edward W. Barrett declares that most of the "captive populations" in Soviet satellite nations oppose the Russians. Barrett called for an accelerated program of US propaganda designed to capitalize on this weakness in the communist bloc. Speaking before a luncheon for the Overseas Writers Organization, Barrett said, "Stalin has completely failed to win over the satellite populations even though he has them under his complete control." The citizens of these "satellites" — the nations of Eastern Europe occupied by Soviet forces after World War II — hated their Russian masters. "Despite four years of intensive Soviet propaganda, any informed visitor will tell you that between 60 and 90% of the captive populations are today anti-Soviet."
      Barrett reassured his audience that despite the recent massive Soviet propaganda efforts around the world, the United States was winning the war of words. It was "high time for Americans to stop being defeatist about the so-called propaganda war. We have not lost it; we are not losing it. We can win it." Despite the fact that the Soviets seemed to be scoring some propaganda successes (such as attacks against America's racism and treatment of its African-American population), Barrett believed that the Russians "have increasingly proved that they are blunderers in this field." Most notably, the Soviets had wasted "hundreds of millions of dollars" trying to unsuccessfully portray the United States as the aggressor in the Korean War.
      Barrett's comments indicated that the United States was prepared to engage more actively and aggressively in the propaganda war with Russia. In the years that followed Barrett's speech, the Department of State committed more and more resources to the "war of words" with the Soviet Union. Accordingly, the United States Information Agency was established in 1953 to serve as America's worldwide publicist. In the Cold War, the battle for the "hearts and minds" of people was often as important as the military confrontations.
1949 Soviets explode nuclear fission device
      At a remote test site at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, the USS.R. successfully detonated its first atomic bomb, code-named "First Lightning." In order to measure the effects of the blast, the Soviet scientists had constructed buildings, bridges, and other civilian structures in the vicinity of the bomb. They had also placed animals in cages nearby so that they could test the effects of nuclear radiation on human-like mammals. The atomic explosion, which at twenty kilotons was roughly equal to "Trinity," the first US atomic explosion, destroyed these structures and incinerated the animals.
      According to legend, the Soviet physicists who worked on the bomb were honored for their achievement based on the penalties they would have suffered had the test failed. Those who would have been executed if the bomb failed to detonate were honored as "Heroes of Socialist Labor," and those who would have been merely imprisoned were given "the Order of Lenin," a slightly less prestigious award.
      On 03 September, a US spy plane flying off the coast of Siberia picked up the first evidence of radioactivity from the explosion. On 22 September the United States, Britain, and Canada announce they have detected the Russian bomb.
      In late December, Klaus Fuchs, a German-born physicist who had helped the US build its first atomic bombs, was arrested for passing nuclear secrets to the Soviets. While stationed at US atomic development headquarters during World War II, Fuchs had given the Soviets precise information about the US atomic program, including a blueprint of the "Fat Man" atomic bomb later dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, and everything that the Los Alamos scientists knew about the hypothesized hydrogen bomb. The revelations of Fuchs's espionage, coupled with the loss of US atomic supremacy, led President Truman to order development of the fusion bomb, a weapon theorized to be hundreds of times more powerful than the fission bombs dropped on Japan.
      On 01 November 1952, the United States successfully detonated "Mike," the world's first hydrogen bomb, on the Elugelab Atoll in the Pacific Marshall Islands. The 10.4-megaton thermonuclear device instantly vaporized an entire island and left behind a crater more than a mile wide. Two years later, on 22 November 1954, the Soviet Union detonated its first hydrogen bomb on the same principle of radiation implosion. Both superpowers were now in possession of the so-called "superbomb," and the world lived under the threat of thermonuclear war for the first time in history.
1945 US airborne troops land in transport planes at Atsugi airfield, southwest of Tokyo, beginning the occupation of Japan.
1944 15'000 US soldiers marched down the Champs Elysées avenue in Paris as the French capital continued to celebrate its liberation from the Nazis.
1943 Responding to a clampdown by Nazi occupiers, Denmark managed to scuttle most of its naval ships.
1942 Japan refuses supplies for US POWs, Red Cross reveals.
      The Red Cross announces that Japan has refused free passage of ships carrying food, medicine, and other necessities for American POWs held by Japan.
      In January 1941, the US government requested that the American Red Cross begin a blood-donor program to provide ready and ample supplies of blood plasma and serum albumin for transfusions for wounded soldiers. More than 13 million donations (each about a pint) were collected.
      Among other grassroots efforts organized by local Red Cross chapters were bandage-making "assembly lines," working out of local churches, synagogues, and town halls. Abroad, volunteers worked in military hospitals, reading and writing letters for the wounded.
      Tens of millions of food packages were prepared and funneled to Allied POWs through Geneva, which served as a clearinghouse. But getting such packages to prisoners in Japan proved particularly difficult. Japan refused to allow even "neutral" ships to enter Japanese waters, even those on humanitarian errands.
      Despite protests by the Red Cross, Japan allowed just one-tenth of what POWs elsewhere received to reach prisoners in their territories. As the war came to a close, the Red Cross followed on the heels of liberating military forces to supply relief and aid to those suffering from the ravages of battle. Approximately 20'000 professional Red Cross workers served during the war, along with countless other volunteers.
1939 Chaim Weizmann informs England that Palestine Jews will fight in WW II.
1929 German airship Graf Zeppelin ends a round-the-world flight
1914 Arizonan is 1st vessel to arrive in SF via Panama Canal
1911 “Last Stone Age Indian” discovered in California.
      Ishi, described as the last surviving Stone Age Indian in the contiguous United States, is discovered in California. By the first decade of the 20th century, Euro-Americans had so overwhelmed the North American continent that scarcely any Native Americans remained who had not been assimilated into Anglo society to some degree. Ishi appears to have been something of an exception. Found lost and starving near an Oroville, California, slaughterhouse, he was largely unfamiliar with white ways and spoke no English. Authorities took the mysterious Indian into custody for his own protection. News of the so-called "Stone Age Indian" attracted the attention of a young Berkeley anthropologist named Thomas Waterman. Gathering what partial vocabularies existed of northern California Indian dialects, the speakers of which had mostly vanished, Waterman went to Oroville to meet the Indian. After unsuccessfully hazarding words from several dialects, Waterman tried a few words from the language of the Yana Indians. Some were intelligible to Ishi, and the two men were able to engage in a crude dialogue. The following month, Waterman took Ishi to live at the Berkeley University museum, where their ability to communicate gradually improved. Waterman eventually learned that Ishi was a Yahi Indian, an isolated branch of the northern California Yana tribe. He was approximately 50 years old and was apparently the last of his people. Ishi said he had wandered the mountains of northern California for some time with a small remnant of the Yahi people. Gradually, accident or disease had killed his companions. A white man murdered his final male companion, and Ishi wandered alone until he reached Oroville. For five years, Ishi lived at the Berkeley Museum. He and Waterman became close friends, and he spent his days describing his tribal customs and demonstrating his wilderness skills in archery, woodcraft, and other traditional techniques. He learned to understand and survive in the white world, and enjoyed wandering the Bay area communities and riding on the trolley cars. Eventually, though, Ishi contracted tuberculosis. He died on March 25, 1916, at an estimated age of 56. His body was cremated according to the customs of his people.
1909 AH Latham of France sets world airplane altitude record of 155 m
1883 Seismic sea waves created by the Krakatoa eruption create a rise in the English Channel 32 hrs after the explosion.
1863 Siege of Fort Wagner, Charleston Harbor, South Carolina continues.
1862 Union General John Pope's army is defeated by a smaller Confederate force at the Second Battle of Bull Run.
1862 Battle of Aspromonte — Italian royal forces defeat rebels.
1862 2nd Battle of Bull Run (Manassas) begins.
1862 Battle of Brawner's Farm (Groveton), Virginia.
1861 Capture of Forts Hatteras and Clark, North Carolina
1842 The unequal treaty of Nanking ends the first Opium War (1839-42). Under the terms of this agreement, China pays the British an indemnity, cedes the territory of Hong Kong, and agrees to establish a "fair and reasonable" tariff. Moreover, British merchants, who were previously allowed to trade only at the South China port of Canton, are now allowed to trade at five ports (called treaty ports), including Canton and Shanghai.
1793 Slavery is abolished in Santo Domingo.
1852 The Latter Day Saints first published their doctrine of "celestial marriage," popularly known as polygamy. The Mormon Church maintained this teaching until the Manifest of 1890 (and later Congressional legislation) outlawed the practice.
1842 Fin de la guerre de l'opium.
      Le traité de Nankin met fin à la «guerre de l'opium» entre la Chine et la Grande-Bretagne. Quelques décennies plus tôt, l'empereur de Chine avait fermé son pays aux commerçants et aux missionnaires européens pour mettre ses sujets à l'abri de leur influence. Les Anglais prirent fort mal cette mesure. Eux-mêmes continuaient d'acheter en Chine le thé dont ils étaient friands. Ils avaient par ailleurs développé aux Indes la culture du pavot et initié les Chinois à la consommation de l'opium. Sans égard pour la décision de l'empereur, la Compagnie britannique des Indes orientales prit le parti de développer ses ventes illégales d'opium en Chine, de 100 tonnes vers 1800 à 2600 tonnes en 1838. En 1839, le gouverneur de Canton, excédé, fait saisir et brûler 20'000 caisses de drogue. En riposte, les Anglais bombardent Canton tandis qu'une escadre remonte le Yang Tsé Kiang jusqu'à Nankin, obligeant l'empereur Tao-kouang à capituler. Cette «diplomatie de la canonnière» débouche sur le traité de Nankin par lequel les vainqueurs gagnent le droit de commercer librement dans cinq ports chinois. Ils obtiennent en prime la cession de Hongkong. Comble de l'humiliation, l'empereur doit accorder un privilège d'extra-territorialité aux Britanniques et leur verser 21 millions de dollars. Les Français et les Américains s'empressent d'exiger des avantages équivalents. Le traité de Nankin sera à l'origine de soulèvements populaires contre le gouvernement impérial. Le plus notable sera celui des Tai p'ing (20 millions de morts).
1786 Shay's Rebellion in Springfield, Mass
1776 General George Washington retreats during the night from Manhattan to Westchester
1758 1st indian reservation established
1708 Haverhill, Massachusetts, destroyed by French & Indians
1526 Battle of Mohacs: Ottoman Suleiman the Magnificent crushes a Hungarian army under Lewis II.
0284 Origin of Era of Diocletian (Martyrs)
0070 After a 9-month siege, Romans burn the gates and enter the Temple courtyards of Jerusalem. The temple is destroyed by fire. Within a month, Jewish resistance ends. The refusal of many Christian Jews to join the futile resistance, which they felt had been foretold by Christ, led to tension between Jew and Christian and a final parting of paths.
— 5502 -BC- Origin of Alexandrian Era
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Deaths which occurred on a 29 August:
2002 Ruwaida al-Hajeen, 45, her sons, Ashraf, 23, and Mehad, 17, and a cousin, Mohammed, 20, Palestinian Beduins, shortly after midnight, by Israeli tank shells which fired at their shack in the Gaza Strip coastal village Sheikh Ijleen near the Jewish enclave settlement Netzarim. Ruwaida's son Khaled Said, 4 [photo >], is critically wounded; her husband and two others are wounded. The family was planning to get up at 04:00 to harvest figs before the heat of the day. According to Reuters the al-Aqsa intifada body count is now “at least 1516 Palestinians and 589 Israelis.”
2001 Leticia Aguilar, 31, her children Claudia, 12, Zach, 11, Larry, 9, Lisa, 7, and Michael, 6, and Ronald Fish, 58.
      In Sioux City, Iowa, they are brutally murdered by Adam Matthew Moss, 23, Leticia Aguilar's boy friend. He is arrested on 31 August 2001. Fish was the owner of a tire store and service station, whose body would be found on 30 August 2001 at his home in a country club neighborhood. The Aguilars' bodies would be found at the same time, 3 km away in their home in a poor area of the city's west side.
2001 Yolanda Paternina, 50, shot twice as she was returning home from work in the city of Sincelejo, Colombia. She was a prosecutor investigating state complicity in a January 2001 massacre in which dozens of paramilitary gunmen hacked to death 26 people in the northern village of Chengue after accusing them of collaborating with leftist guerrillas. The massacre raised fresh doubts about the government's willingness to rein in the paramilitary Autodefensa Unida de Colombia (AUC). The 8000-strong AUC is responsible for the most of the human rights atrocities committed in Colombia in its 37-year civil war. Two investigators working with Paternina on the case disappeared in June 2001 and are feared dead.
1975 Eamon de Valera, 92, great Irish independence leader and statesman
      Born in New York in 1882, de Valera emigrated to Ireland as a child and joined the Easter Rebellion of 1916 against British rule. Saved from execution because of his American citizenship, he was released under a general amnesty in 1917. The same year, he became leader of Sinn Fein, a political party dedicated to achieving a unified and independent Ireland.
      In 1919, Sinn Fein achieved an electoral majority in Ireland and de Valera was imprisoned, but he escaped to the United States. During his exile, he was elected president of Ireland by the Dail Eireann, a revolutionary parliament that proclaimed Irish independence. When he returned to Ireland in 1920, Sinn Fein and the Irish volunteers were engaged in a widespread and effective guerrilla campaign against British forces. The same year, a cease-fire was declared and in 1922, Arthur Griffith and other former Sinn Fein leaders broke with de Valera in signing a treaty with Britain, calling for the partition of Ireland, with the south becoming autonomous and the six northern counties of the island remaining part of Great Britain. De Valera deplored the period of civil war that followed, but maintained his opposition to the British government.
      In 1926, he left Sinn Fein, which had become the unofficial political wing of the underground movement for Northern independence, and entered Irish Free State politics. He formed the Fianna Fail political party, and in 1932, was elected Irish president as the party gained control of the Irish Free State government. For the next sixteen years, President de Valera pursued a policy of complete political separation from Great Britain, including the introduction of a new constitution declaring Ireland a fully sovereign state and a policy of neutrality during World War II. In 1948, he narrowly lost a reelection vote and was forced to resign, but in 1951, he returned as Irish prime minister, and in 1959, as president. On 24 June 1973, de Valera, then the world's oldest statesman, retired from Irish politics at the age of ninety.
1970 A Philadelphia police officer, in confrontation with Black Panthers
1967 George Rockwell, US Nazi party leader, murdered
1960 Hazza el-Majali, PM of Jordan, assassinated
1942 Alfred Wallis, British artist born on 18 August 1855.
1941 Henri Honoré d'Estienne d'Orves, Résistance fighter, executed by the Germans.
1937 Otto Hölder Hölder worked on the convergence of Fourier series and in 1884 he discovered the inequality now named after him. He became interested in group theory through Kronecker and Klein and proved the uniqueness of the factor groups in a composition series.
1916 Some 1000 drowned as steamer Hsin Iu sinks off China coast.
1914 Russian general Aleksandr Vasilyevich Samsonov, suicide, and the fallen of the 4th of the 5 days of the Battle of Tannenberg, which started on 26 August and in which Samsonov's Russian Second Army is being 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.
1877 Brigham Young 1877, in Salt Lake City, the second president of the Mormon Church.
1873 Hermann Hankel, 34, mathematician.
1862 Thousands of Rebs and more Yanks as the 2nd Battle of Bull Run begins.
      Confederate General Robert E. Lee deals a stinging defeat to Union General John Pope at the Second Battle of Bull Run (or Manassas) — a battle that arose out of the failure of Union General George McClellan's Peninsular campaign earlier in the summer. Frustrated with McClellan, who was still camped on the James Peninsula southeast of Richmond, President Lincoln and General-in-Chief Henry Halleck decided to pull a substantial part of McClellan's Army of the Potomac and send it to General John Pope's newly formed Army of Virginia. Lee correctly guessed that McClellan had no plans to attack Richmond, so he sent General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson north to keep an eye on Pope's force. When it became clear that the Yankees were abandoning the peninsula, Lee moved more of his force northward to defeat Pope before reinforcements arrived. The plan worked perfectly, and Jackson raided a major Union supply depot at Manassas. Realizing that the Confederates were split, Pope began to pursue Jackson. But he could not find the Rebel force, which was hidden in the woods around Bull Run, the site of the war's first major battle more than a year earlier. Pope was confused, and issued contradictory orders that frustrated his troops, who marched back and forth for two days.
      By August 28, Jackson knew that help was nearby in the form of General James Longstreet's corps. Jackson's men emerged from the woods and attacked a Union division late in the day, but the fighting ended in a standstill. On 29 August Pope attacked, but his army did not fare well. The Confederates mauled the Union troops, and by August 30 Pope had to retreat. His army lost over 16'000 men to the Confederates' 9'000. Most shocking was the response of McClellan, now back from the peninsula. He was in nearby Alexandria, Virginia, and resisted sending a corps to aid Pope. Still smarting from the transfer of his troops to Pope's command, he "wanted Pope defeated," as Lincoln later wrote. But Lincoln could not remove McClellan for his treachery, because Lee soon began moving his army into Maryland for an invasion of the North.
1848 Martinus Christian Wesseltoft Rorbye, Danish artist born on 19 May 1803.
1797 Joseph Wright of Derby, British painter born on 03 September 1734. — MORE ABOUT WRIGHT AT ART “4” 2~DAYLINKSExperiment with the Air~PumpThe Alchemist in Search of the Philosophers' Stone
1777 Charles Joseph Natoire, French painter born on 03 Mars 1700. . — MORE ABOUT NATOIRE AT ART “4” 2~DAY LINKSTruthLe Siège de Bordeaux (Histoire de Clovis) _ inspired by a passage from heroic poem Clovis ou La France chrestienne by Jean Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin [1595 – 28 October 1676]. — Télémaque dans l'Ile de Calypso
1769 Edmond Hoyle games expert.
1653 Gysbert-Gilliszoon d'Hondecoeter, Dutch painter of birds, born in 1604.
1625 John Fletcher, author. FLETCHER ONLINE: Studies on Slavery, in Easy Lessons, co-author of Philaster: or, Love Lies A-Bleeding, and of The Two Noble Kinsmen
1533 Atahualpa, last Inca emperor, treacherously murdered by Pizarro
    The vicious Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro had imprisoned him and exacted a room full of gold as ransom for his life.
      High in the Andes of Peru, the Incas had built a dazzling civilization. Although they had no writing system, they had an elaborate government, great public works, and a brilliant agricultural system. However, two hundred Spanish conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro destroyed the thriving civilization.
     Francisco Pizarro murders Atahualpa, in Cajamarca, Inca empire [now in Peru].
     Atahuallpa (or Atahualpa) was born in about 1502. He was the 13th and last emperor of the Inca, who was victorious in a devastating civil war with his half brother, only to be captured, held for ransom, and then executed by Francisco Pizarro.
      Atahuallpa was a younger son of the Inca ruler Huayna Capac and an Ecuadorian princess; although not the legitimate heir, he seems to have been his father's favorite. When the old Inca chief died (c. 1527), the kingdom was divided between Atahuallpa, who ruled the northern part of the empire from Quito, and Huáscar, the legitimate heir, who ruled from Cuzco, the traditional Inca capital. Depicted by contemporary chroniclers as brave, ambitious, and extremely popular with the army, Atahuallpa was soon embroiled in a civil war with his older half brother for control of the empire. The war ravaged Inca cities, wreaked havoc on the economy, and decimated the population. Early in 1532, near Cuzco, Atahuallpa's army defeated the army of Huáscar in what was perhaps the greatest military engagement in Inca history. Huáscar and his family were captured and later executed under Atahuallpa's orders. While Atahuallpa was enjoying the hot springs in the small Inca town of Cajamarca, preparatory to entering Cuzco in triumph, Francisco Pizarro entered the city with a force of about 180 men.
      On Nov. 15, 1532, Pizarro and Atahuallpa met in what was to prove one of the most fateful encounters in the New World. Invited by the Spaniard to attend a feast in his honor, the Inca chief accepted. The next day, he arrived at the appointed meeting place with several thousand unarmed retainers; Pizarro, prompted by the example of Hernán Cortés and Montezuma in Mexico, had prepared an ambush. Atahuallpa rejected demands by the friar Vicente de Valverde, who had accompanied Pizarro, that he accept the Christian faith and the sovereignty of Charles V of Spain, whereupon Pizarro signaled his men. Firing their cannons and guns and charging with their horses (all of which were unknown to the Inca), the conquistadores captured Atahuallpa and slaughtered thousands of his men. Perceiving the avarice of his captors, Atahuallpa offered to fill a room with gold as a ransom for his release. Pizarro accepted the offer, and from throughout the empire the Incas brought gold and silver statues, jewelry, and art objects. The Spaniards had the Indians melt it all down into bullion and ingots, accumulating 24 tons of gold and silver, the richest ransom ever received.
      Once the full amount was acquired, the conquistadores ordered Atahuallpa burned to death (Aug. 29, 1533). When Atahuallpa was at the stake, de Valverde offered him the choice of being burned alive or dying by the more merciful garrote if he became a Christian. Atahuallpa, who had resisted proselytization throughout his captivity, agreed to the conversion and so died that day by strangulation. The execution of Atahuallpa, the last free reigning emperor, marked the end of the Inca civilization.
     — Atahuallpa, the 13th and last emperor of the Incas, dies by strangulation at the hands of Francisco Pizarro's Spanish conquistadors. The execution of Atahuallpa, the last free reigning emperor, marked the end of 300 years of Inca civilization.
      High in the Andes Mountains of Peru, the Inca built a dazzling empire that governed a population of 12 million people. Although they had no writing system, they had an elaborate government, great public works, and a brilliant agricultural system. In the five years before the Spanish arrival, a devastating war of succession gripped the empire. In 1532, Atahuallpa's army defeated the forces of his half-brother Huáscar in a battle near Cuzco. Atahuallpa was consolidating his rule when Pizarro and his 180 soldiers appeared.
      Francisco Pizarro was the son of a Spanish gentleman and worked as a swineherd in his youth. He became a soldier and in 1502 went to Hispaniola with the new Spanish governor of the New World colony. Pizarro served under Spanish conquistador Alonso de Ojeda during his expedition to Colombia in 1510 and was with Vasco Núñez de Balboa when he discovered the Pacific Ocean in 1513. Hearing legends of the great wealth of an Indian civilization in South America, Pizarro formed an alliance with fellow conquistador Diego de Almagro in 1524 and sailed down the west coast of South America from Panama. The first expedition only penetrated as far as present-day Ecuador, but a second reached farther, to present-day Peru. There they heard firsthand accounts of the Inca empire and obtained Inca artifacts. The Spanish christened the new land Peru, probably after the Virú River.
      Returning to Panama, Pizarro planned an expedition of conquest, but the Spanish governor refused to back the scheme. In 1528, Pizarro sailed back to Spain to ask the support of Emperor Charles V. Hernán Cortés had recently brought the emperor great wealth through his conquest of the Aztec Empire, and Charles approved Pizarro's plan. He also promised that Pizarro, not Almagro, would receive the majority of the expedition's profits. In 1530, Pizarro returned to Panama.
      In 1531, he sailed down to Peru, landing at Tumbes. He led his army up the Andes Mountains and, on 15 November 1532, reached the Inca town of Cajamarca, where Atahuallpa was enjoying the hot springs in preparation for his march on Cuzco, the capital of his brother's kingdom. Pizarro invited Atahuallpa to attend a feast in his honor, and the emperor accepted. Having just won one of the largest battles in Inca history, and with an army of 30'000 men at his disposal, Atahuallpa thought he had nothing to fear from the bearded white stranger and his 180 men. Pizarro, however, planned an ambush, setting up his artillery at the square of Cajamarca.
      On November 16, Atahuallpa arrived at the meeting place with an escort of several thousand men, all apparently unarmed. Pizarro sent out a priest to exhort the emperor to accept the sovereignty of Christianity and Emperor Charles V, and Atahuallpa refused, flinging a Bible handed to him to the ground in disgust. Pizarro immediately ordered an attack. Buckling under an assault by the terrifying Spanish artillery, guns, and cavalry (all of which were alien to the Incas), thousands of Incas were slaughtered, and the emperor was captured.
      Atahuallpa offered to fill a room with treasure as ransom for his release, and Pizarro accepted. Eventually, some 24 tons of gold and silver were brought to the Spanish from throughout the Inca empire. Although Atahuallpa had provided the richest ransom in the history of the world, Pizarro treacherously put him on trial for plotting to overthrow the Spanish, for having his half-brother Huáscar murdered, and for several other lesser charges. A Spanish tribunal convicted Atahuallpa and sentenced him to die. On 29 August 1533, the emperor was tied to a stake and offered the choice of being burned alive or strangled by garrote if he converted to Christianity. In the hope of preserving his body for mummification, Atahuallpa chose the latter, and an iron collar was tightened around his neck until he died.
      With Spanish reinforcements that had arrived at Cajamarca earlier that year, Pizarro then marched on Cuzco, and the Inca capital fell without a struggle in November 1533. Huáscar's brother Manco Capac was installed as a puppet emperor, and the city of Quito was subdued. Pizarro established himself as Spanish governor of Inca territory and offered Diego Almagro the conquest of Chile as appeasement for claiming the riches of the Inca civilization for himself. In 1535, Pizarro established the city of Lima on the coast to facilitate communication with Panama. The next year, Manco Capac escaped from Spanish supervision and led an unsuccessful uprising that was quickly crushed. That marked the end of Inca resistance to Spanish rule.
       Diego Almagro returned from Chile embittered by the poverty of that country and demanded his share of the spoils of the former Inca empire. Civil war soon broke out over the dispute, and Almagro seized Cuzco in 1538. Pizarro sent his half brother, Hernando, to reclaim the city, and Almagro was defeated and put to death. On June 26, 1541, allies of Diego el Monzo — Almagro's son — penetrated Pizarro's palace in Lima and assassinated the conquistador while he was eating dinner. Diego el Monzo proclaimed himself governor of Peru, but an agent of the Spanish crown refused to recognize him, and in 1542 Diego was captured and executed. Conflict and intrigue among the conquistadors of Peru persisted until Spanish Viceroy Andrés Hurtado de Mendoza established order in the late 1550s.
L'Inca Atahualpa est assassiné sur ordre de Pizarre.
      Le 15 novembre 1532, l'Inca Atahualpa s'était rendu en grande pompe auprès de Francis Pizarre dans l'espoir de sauver son pays, l'empire inca.
      Francis Pizarre est un soldat espagnol brutal et illettré. Après la découverte du Nouveau Monde par Christophe Colomb, il a quitté l'Estrémadure natale et s'est embarqué en quête d'aventures. Déjà quinquagénaire, il rêve de renouveler l'exploit d'Hernan Cortez, un aristocrate de sa région qui a soumis le royaume aztèque, dans l'actuel Mexique. Pizarre s'associe avec un autre "conquistador" de son espèce, Diego de Almagro. Ensemble, ils explorent la côte occidentale de l'Amérique du sud. Forts de leurs découvertes, ils obtiennent le soutien de l'empereur Charles Quint pour la conquête de l'empire inca, au coeur de la chaîne montagneuse des Andes.
      C'est ainsi qu'ils débarquent à Tumbes, au nord du Pérou, à la tête de 183 aventuriers... et avec 37 chevaux. La petite troupe s'engage dans l'ascension de la cordillère des Andes, à la rencontre de l'Inca, ou "fils du Soleil", le souverain de ces montagnes. En chemin, Pizarre obtient confirmation de l'existence de fabuleuses mines de métaux précieux, or et argent. Le conquérant apprend aussi que l'Inca Atahualpa est en butte à une rébellion conduite par son propre frère Huascar. Il joue de la rivalité entre les deux hommes pour imposer sa médiation. C'est ainsi qu'il invite Atahualpa à lui rendre visite dans la localité de Cajamarca.
Un crime crapuleux
      Quand l'Inca arrive avec sa suite, le chapelain espagnol l'exhorte à se convertir et lui tend la Bible. L'Inca la rejette. Le chapelain, alors, se tourne vers son chef et lui dit: "Je vous absous" (sous-entendu: pour tous les crimes que vous allez commettre). A ce signal, les cavaliers dissimulés derrière les maisons massacrent les Indiens au canon et à l'arquebuse. Plusieurs milliers succombent.
      Atahualpa disait: "Dans ce royaume, aucun oiseau ne vole, aucune feuille ne bouge, si telle n'est pas ma volonté". L'Espagnol n'en a cure et se saisit de lui. Le prisonnier promet une rançon fabuleuse contre la promesse de la vie sauve. Pendant des mois, les sujets de l'Inca amènent à Pizarre des caravanes chargées de métaux précieux. Au total l'équivalent de 4.600.000 ducats espagnols.
      Enfin comblé, Pizarre fait étrangler l'Inca dans sa cellule le 29 août 1533. L'empereur Charles Quint condamnera vivement ce crime mais n'y pourra rien changer. C'est la fin de l'empire inca qui domina les Andes pendant quelques décennies et développa une civilisation originale, fondée sur l'adoration du soleil et la culture de la pomme de terre. Pizarre achève la conquête du pays et fonde la ville de Lima.
      Bientôt, il ne tarde pas à se disputer avec ses compagnons de fortune. Il fait exécuter Almagro mais mourra lui-même assassiné par les amis de ce dernier le 26 juin 1541... La colonisation espagnole peut commencer. Sur les ruines de l'empire inca naîtront le Pérou, l'Equateur et la Bolivie. Leurs origines dramatiques leur valent encore de nos jours un sort pitoyable.
0029 John the Baptist beheaded (exact date uncertain)
Births which occurred on a 29 August:
1936 John McCain, would become a US Senator (R-Ariz.), would campaign on a campaign finance reform platform for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, celebrate his 65th birthday by undergoing surgery for a benign prostate enlargement.
1929 Thom Gunn Kent England, poet (The Wound)
1909 Roy Reuther Wheeling WV, labor leader
1904 Roth, mathematician
1899 Lyman L Lemnitzer US Army General (WW II), Chief of Staff, US Army and Nato Commander
1898 The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. is incorporated in Ohio. Originally founded as a rubber company by the Seiberling brothers, the company would begin manufacturing tires shortly afterwards. Today, Goodyear makes passenger and industrial tires, in addition to producing rubber, chemical, and plastic products. The company also is well known for its marketing skill — its Goodyear blimp is one of the most recognizable corporate symbols in America.
1896 Chop suey invented in NYC by chef of visiting Chinese Ambassador.

1885 The motorcycle


      The world’s first motorcycle, made by Gottlieb Daimler, is patented. The two-wheeled vehicle would gain immense popularity after 1910, when it would used extensively by all branches of the armed forces during World War I.

      The motorcycle’s popularity lagged during the Great Depression, but came back with a vengeance after World War II and remains popular today. Often associated with a rebellious image, the vehicle is often used for high-speed touring and sport competitions.

     Daimler registers his Reitwagen ("Riding Carriage") with a "Gas or Petroleum Engine" as patent DRP No. 36423. The "Reitwagen" is the world's first motor cycle.
1881 Valery Nicolas Larbaud France, novelist/translator (Enfantines)
1876 Charles F. Kettering, inventor of the electric starter, in Ohio.
      Kettering, along with Edward A. Deeds, founded Delco (Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company). He and his company invented countless improvements for the automobile, including lighting and ignition systems, lacquer finishes, antilock fuels, and leaded gasoline. The Cadillac was, in 1912, the first car to use the electric starter, and Delco would later become a subsidiary of General Motors. Incidentally, Kettering also invented the first electric cash register before he started working on cars.
1871 Jack Butler Yeats II, Irish artist who died on 28 March 1957. — MORE ABOUT YEATS AT ART “4” 2~DAYLINKSThe Small RingReturning from the Bathe, Mid-DayThe Shanachie
1864 Louis Hayet, French artist who died on 27 December 1940.
1862 Maurice Polydore-Marie-Bernard Maeterlinck, in Ghent, Belgium
      He would grow up to be a Symbolist poet, playwright, and essayist whose dramas are the outstanding works of the Symbolist theatre. Maeterlinck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1911. He wrote in French.
     His first verse collection, Serres chaudes, and his first play, La Princesse Maleine, were published in 1889. In 1890 he wrote two one-act plays, L'Intruse and Les Aveugles. His Pelléas et Mélisande (1892) is the unquestioned masterpiece of Symbolist drama and provided the basis for an opera (1902) by Claude Debussy. Set in a nebulous, fairy-tale past, the play conveys a mood of hopeless melancholy and doom in its story of the destructive passion of Princess Mélisande, who falls in love with her husband's younger brother, Pelléas.
     Maeterlinck wrote historical dramas such as Monna Vanna (1902). L'Oiseau bleu (1908) is an allegorical fantasy conceived as a play for children, it portrays a search for happiness in the world, its optimism now seems facile. Maeterlinck's Le Bourgmestre de Stilmonde (1917) is a patriotic play about Flanders under the wartime rule of an unprincipled German officer.
     Maeterlinck's prose writings are blends of mysticism, occultism, and interest in the world of nature, in Symbolist reaction against materialism, science, and mechanization. They are concerned with the immortality of the soul, the nature of death, and the attainment of wisdom. They include Le Trésor des humbles (1896) and La Sagesse et la destinée (1898). His nature books, La Vie des abeilles (1901; The Life of the Bee) and L'Intelligence des fleurs (1907) are not works of science but are philosophical essays on the human condition. Maeterlinck died in Nice, France, on 6 May 1949.
MAETERLINCK ONLINE (in English translations): The Double Garden, The Life of the Bee, The Massacre of the Innocents, The Unknown Guest.
1860 Edward Denny Bacon, author. EDWARD BACON ONLINE: Among the Cotton Thieves
1855 Erik Ludwig Henningsen, Danish artist who died in 1930.
1844 Edward Carpenter, author. CARPENTER ONLINE: The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and Women (zipped), Ioläus: An Anthology of Friendship, Pagan and Christian Creeds: Their Origin and Meaning, Pagan and Christian Creeds: Their Origin and Meaning (another site)
1826 Emile Lévy, French Academic painter who died on 04 August 1890. — LINKSMort d'Orphée.
1815 Anna Ella Carroll US, civil war writer (Reconstruction)
1811 Henry Bergh, first president of SPCA.
1809 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., physician, poet, essayist and father of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES ONLINE:
  • The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table
  • The Common Law
  • Elsie Venner
  • Grandmother's Story, and Other Poems
  • The Guardian Angel
  • Illustrated Poems of Oliver Wendell Holmes
  • The Iron Gate, and Other Poems
  • The Last Leaf
  • The Last Leaf
  • Medical Essays, 1842-1882
  • A Mortal Antipathy: First Opening of the New Portfolio
  • Over the Teacups
  • Pages From an Old Volume of Life: A Collection of Essays
  • The Path of the Law
  • Poems (1853 edition)
  • The Poet at the Breakfast Table
  • The Professor at the Breakfast Table
  • Selected Works
  • 1805 "Parson" William Gannaway Brownlow, author. BROWNLOW ONLINE: Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy, co-author of Ought American Slavery to be Perpetuated? A Debate Between Rev. W. G. Brownlow and Rev. A. Pryne
    1780 Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, in Montauban, France, great neoclassical painter, specialized in portraits and orientalism, who died on 14 January 1867. — MORE ABOUT INGRES AT ART “4” 2~DAYLINKSMolièreSelf~PortraitSelf~PortraitThe Artist and his WifeBonaparte as First ConsulNapoléon on the Imperial ThroneThe Apotheosis of Homer _ detail: Poussin and Corneille _ detail: Racine, Molière, BoileauCountess D'Haussonville _ detail: headJeanne d'Arc au Sacre de Charles VII dans la Cathédrale de ReimsRaphael and the FornarinaPaganiniThe Ambassadors of Agamemnon in the Tent of AchillesNapoléon on the Imperial ThroneSelf~PortraitMademoiselle RivièreMme DuvauçayJoseph~Antoine Moltedo,Charles-Joseph-Laurent CordierCount Nikolay GourievLa Grande OdalisqueMartyrdom of St. SymphorienLouis-François BertinMadame IngresBaroness James de RothschildMadame GonseMadame Moitessier SittingM. BertinLe Bain Turc
    1701 Félix Anton Scheffler, German artist who died on 10 January 1760.
    1632 John Locke, in Somerset, England, empiricist philosopher; disproved substance, famous for his treatise An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. His ideas of liberalism influenced the American founding fathers.
    ONLINE:
  • A Letter Concerning Toleration
  • Some Thoughts Concerning Education
  • Some Thoughts Concerning Education
  • Of the Conduct of the Understanding
  • Second Treatise of Government
  • Second Treatise of Government
  • Two Treatises of Government (PDF)
  • Short Observations on a Printed Paper, Entitled "For Encouraging the Coining Silver Money in England, and After For Keeping it Here"
  • Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and the Raising the Value of Money
  • Further Considerations Concerning Raising the Value of Money
  • An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
  • An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
  • 1619 Jean-Baptiste Colbert, à Reims, sera ministre. Son prénom (comme celui d'Ingres) vient de ce que le 29 août était naguère consacré à la Passion de Saint Jean-Baptiste.
    1609 Giovanni-Battista Salvi “il Sassoferrato”, Italian artist who died on 8 August 1685. — MORE ABOUT SALVI AT ART “4” 2~DAYLINKSThe Mystic Marriage of St. CatherineThe Virgin in PrayerMadonna and ChildMonsignor Ottaviano Prati
    Czecoslovakia : Slovak National Uprising Day / Afghanistan : Jeshyn-Afghan Day/Independence Day (1920)
    Religious Observance RC : Beheading of St John the Baptist / Sainte Sabine, une martyre légendaire des premiers siècles. On lui attribue une basilique romaine, Sainte-Sabine de Rome.
    Thought for the day :“In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes, Youth on the bow, Pleasure at the helm.” [unsuspected icebergs ahead ! U~boat wolfpack approoaching !]
    “It ain't enough to get the breaks. You gotta know how to use 'em.” — Huey P. Long, American politician (1893-1935).
    “When Huey Long got the breaks, he used them to break his opponents.”
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