CURRENT UPDATES: TODAY–2 TO TODAY+2
<< Jul 29|     HISTORY “4” “2”DAY      |Jul 31 >>
Events, deaths, births, of JUL 30

[For Jul 30 Julian go to  Gregorian date: 1583~1699: Aug 091700s: Aug 101800s: Aug 111900~2099: Aug 12]
ARCHIVE    ALL FOR 020730     CURRENT DAY in HISTORY, ART, etc.      Search this site or the web
IF SOMETHING'S WRONG HERE, TRY MIRROR 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, or 19
On a 30 July:
2002 Peace at last for the Congo?
      In Pretoria, South Africa, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo (capital Kinshasa) sign a peace agreement aimed at ending a devastating war which has killed about two million people. South Africa and the United Nations act as guarantors for a deal which optimists hope will mark the beginning of the end of the four-year-old war in Congo. Rwanda pledges to withdraw thousands of troops from eastern Congo, while Congo undertakes to help disarm Rwandan Hutu gunmen blamed for the slaughter of the Tutsi minority in Rwanda's 1994 genocide. “It's a bright day for the African continent,” says South African President Thabo Mbeki. Of the countries involved, Uganda, which backs the smaller MLC Congo rebel force, has already pulled out the majority of its soldiers under the 1999 Lusaka agreement. Among Kinshasa's backers, Namibia has withdrawn most of its soldiers. Kinshasa regards forces from Zimbabwe and Angola as guests of the government who will depart as soon as the latest peace accord is seen to be operating successfully. After the collapse of previous cease-fires the success of today's deal is uncertain. Kabila says that it re-affirms the often-violated Lusaka peace agreement. Mbeki says that Kabila has pledged to return to all-party, all-inclusive talks under the so-called Inter-Congolese dialogue on the country's future. The initial talks were abandoned in South Africa in April 2002 after Kabila struck a private deal with the MLC rebel group backed by Uganda. The Inter-Congolese dialogue seeks to create an all-party transitional government to prepare for elections.
      The agreement calls for all Rwandan forces to pull out within 90 days and to provide a detailed program for doing this within five days. It also calls for the repatriation of former Rwandan soldiers opposed to their government and the Hutu gunmen within 90 days. But Christophe Hakizabera, leader of the Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda, an umbrella group representing Hutu forces in Congo, says: “They must not try to force anything on us or it will be our legitimate right to resist.” However a top Congolese rebel, Bizima Karaha, security chief of the Rwandan-backed Rally for Congolese Democracy, says, in Goma, Congo, that he believes that Kabila is likely to comply with the peace accord: “For the first time, Kinshasa admits that they have been recruiting, training, and arming that Interahamwe [Hutu militia]. So we believe that this time, they will stop and will contribute to resolve that problem.
      An additional 30 days are stipulated in the accord to verify that all parties have met their obligations. Kabila, Kagame and Mbeki will meet every 30 days to review progress.


Todas las noches,
Pedro de Betancur
salía por las calles
en busca de enfermos,
tocando una campanilla.

2002 Brother Pedro is canonized      ^top^
      On the second day of his third and last visit to Guatemala, Pope John Paul II canonizes missionary Brother Pedro de San José Bentancur [19 Mar 1626 – 25 Apr 1667] [image >].
     Pedro de Betancur nació el 19 de marzo de 1626, y fue bautizado el 21 del mismo mes, en la parroquia San Pedro, en Chasna de Vilaflor, poblado de Tenerife, en las Islas Canarias, España.
      Pedro fue hijo de Amador González y Ana García. La línea paterna desciende del caballero normando Maciot de Betancourt, señor de Lanzarote.
      Don Amador cambia su apellido a Betancur, ya que la mayoría de los pobladores del lugar se apellidaban González, de allí que Pedro adquiere ese apellido.
      Pasa su infancia entregado al pastoreo del rebaño de su padre. Muy pequeño estuvo un tiempo paralítico, por lo que ofrece hacer una visita a la ermita de San Amaro, a pocos kilómetros de Chasna, donde se curó en poco tiempo.
      En los valles de la Escalona y en las playas del Médano encuentra un lugar propicio para meditar y hacer oración.
      Después de la muerte de su padre, su mamá hace planes de matrimonio para él, pero desde el día en que escucha de un pariente suyo, fray Luis de Betancur, hablar de América, de sus selvas y de sus indios, sólo sueña con viajar a Honduras y entregarse a la evangelización de los nativos.
      Pedro confía a una tía suya su inquietud de viajar a “las indias” y ella le aconseja seguir los dictados de su conciencia: “Debes salir al encuentro de Dios, como Pedro sobre las aguas”, le dice.
      Estas palabras hacen que el joven tome la determinación de ir al Nuevo Mundo. Se dirige, al puerto de Santa Cruz de Tenerife, desde donde emprende su viaje a América. Antes de partir escribe una carta a su madre donde explica sus razones de que “Un amor mayor y un servicio más comprometido lo impulsan a dejarlo todo”.
      Desembarca en La Habana en 1649, a la edad de 23 años. Dos años después sale hacia Honduras como mozo de abordo para pagar su pasaje. Durante su viaje padece de fiebres que hacen peligrar su vida, por lo que la tripulación decide dejarlo en la playa donde lo encuentra un pescador que le habla de Guatemala.
      Al recuperarse sale a pie de Trujillo hacia Guatemala, y llega a Santiago de los Caballeros el 18 de febrero de 1651. Se cuenta que al entrar en la ciudad besa el suelo como agradecimiento; en ese momento se produce un fuerte temblor que interpretó como una señal del cielo.
      En la ciudad de Santiago trabajó como tejedor en los telares de don Pedro de Almengor, de 1651 a 1653.
      Estudió para sacerdote en el Colegio de la Compañía de Jesús hasta 1654, y el 08 Dec firma con su sangre el juramento de defender hasta con su propia vida la Inmaculada Concepción de María. Sin embargo, uno de los requisitos para ser sacerdote era hablar el latín, y tras reprobar un examen de dicha lengua fue rechazado.
      Al fracasar en su intento de ser sacerdote ingresó a la orden terciaria de los franciscanos. Se retiró a vivir en la iglesia El Calvario donde inició a la fundación de la Orden de Hermanos de Belén.
      El 14 Jan 1655, recibió el hábito exterior de Terciario, y se retira al Calvario donde ejerce el oficio de sacristán, lugar donde se dedica a la oración. El 24 febrero de 1658 compra la casa de María de Esquivel, por 40 pesos, que la convierte en sala de enfermería por la noche, y oratorio y escuela para niños pobres, de día.
      A esta casa la bautiza con el nombre de Nuestra Señora de Belén, primera escuela gratuita de alfabetización de América Central, y primer hospital de convalecientes en las colonias de España en América.
      El 18 de abril de 1667, el Hermano Pedro vuelve a padecer fiebres muy altas, que lo postran en cama. Su estado de salud se deteriora de tal forma que decide dictar su testamento, donde solicita ser enterrado en el convento de San Francisco.
      Cuando tenía 41 años, el 25 Apr 1667, a las 14:00 en el Hospital de Belén, mirando un cuadro de San José exclamó: “Esta es mi Gloria”, y expiró.
      Al morir deja su obra y su familia religiosa a cargo de Fray Rodrigo de la Cruz, Anteriormente Rodrigo Arias de Maldonado, Marques de Talamanca y exgobernador de Costa Rica, milagrosamente transformado por la vida y ejemplo del Hermano Pedro.
      El 02 mayo de 1667, ocho días después de la muerte del Hermano Pedro, llega a Guatemala la Real Cédula, que doña Mariana de Austria, Reina Gobernadora, regente de Don Carlos II, había expedido el 10 de noviembre de 1666 otorgando la autorización para la fundación del Hospital de Belén.
      Su legado El obispo Don Payo de Rivera, el 20 Aug 1667, aprueba las primeras constituciones de los hermanos seguidores de las obras. Con este acto nace jurídicamente la nueva orden de los Hermanos Betlemitas, autorizados los pronuncia como hermanos hospitalarios, el 25 de enero de 1668, y autoriza el uso del nuevo hábito; desde entonces comenzó a llamarse Compañía de Belén.
      Las Madres Betlemitas fueron iniciadas en el obispado de Don Juan Ortega y Montañez por dos terciarias franciscanas, madre e hija, ambas viudas: Agustina Delgado y Mariana de Jesús, con aprobación de Fray Rodrigo de la Cruz.
      El 25 de julio de 1771, el Papa Clemente XIV decretó que el Hermano Pedro había practicado las virtudes teologales y morales en grado heroico, declarándolo Venerable.
      Tras un proceso de más de tres siglos fue beatificado el 22 junio de 1980, y canonizado el 30 julio de 2002.
2000 President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela wins a new six-year term in a landslide re-election.
1998 Hercules pays double price to buy BetzDearborn      ^top^
      Hercules Inc., a specialty chemicals concern, forks over a tidy $2.4 billion in cash to acquire industry cohort, BetzDearborn Inc. The deal capped off Hercules' frantic quest to snag a large-scale partner who could bolster its product line. Hercules' acquisitive odyssey began in January of 1998, when it marshaled its forces for a hostile takeover of British-based Allied Colloids PLC; however, Ciba Specialty Chemicals topped Hercules' bid and ended up winning the Allied sweepstakes. Undeterred, Hercules cut a "modest" deal to acquire a paper chemicals company, Houghton International Inc., before setting its sights on BetzDearborn.
      Though the acquisition fulfilled Hercules' expansionist goals, and boosted its bottom line (the company's combined revenue in 1997 was reportedly in the $3.5 billion range), BetzDearborn did not come cheap: along with paying the $2.4 billion sticker price, Hercules also agreed to swallow up $700 million of the company's debts. These hefty figures caused more than a few raised eyebrows on Wall Street; as some analysts noted, Hercules had essentially paid $72 a share for the company, a 100 percent markup on BetzDearborn's trading price of 35-7/8.
1998 Federal court orders Microsoft to share Windows 95 source code with Caldera, a tiny Utah software maker who had sued Microsoft for trying to crush a Caldera's DR-DOS.
1996 A US federal law enforcement source says that security guard Richard Jewell has become a focus of the investigation into the bombing at Centennial Olympic Park. (Jewell would be cleared as a suspect by the Justice Department, after months of the misdirected investigation which let the real culprit go undetected and irresponsibly ruined Jewell's reputation and career.)
1991 US President Bush (Sr.) and Soviet President Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev began their face-to-face meetings in Moscow.
1991 Prodigy denies invading internet users' privacy      ^top^
      Newspapers report that Prodigy Services is taking steps to protect users' privacy. Prodigy members had complained that Prodigy was capturing snippets of their personal files when members used the company's online information and shopping service. Prodigy announces that the problems arose from a bug in IBM operating software, not from attempts on Prodigy's part to capture user information. The company vehemently denies reading members' personal files.
1990 La URSS y Albania restablecen sus relaciones diplomáticas, interrumpidas en 1961.
1989 The Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls agrees to relax restrictions on the export of computers like the IBM PS/2 Model 30 and the Apple Macintosh Plus to Soviet bloc countries.
1987 Tres mil soldados indios desembarcan en Ceilán para imponer el alto el fuego a los guerrilleros tamiles y a las fuerzas del Gobierno de Colombo, según el acuerdo firmado entre Rajiv Gandhi y el presidente cingalés, Junius Jayewardene.
1985 Saturn plant location chosen      ^top^
      The Saturn Corporation announced that its first plant will be built in Spring Hill, Tennessee. In 1982, General Motors (GM) initiated a small car project code-named Saturn. Once the design was set a new idea was posed — that Saturn should become a unique factory experiment. In January 1985, GM announced Saturn as a subsidiary to function with relative autonomy from other GM divisions. The first Saturn car was driven off the assembly line in 1990. The company announced its “Saturn Philosophy,” detailing a unique attitude towards manufacturer-dealer-customer relations as well as providing for a labor contract with the United Auto Workers (UAW), separate from GM’s existing contract, in which Saturn employees were to have direct input into the management of the company. Saturn was an attempt to break down the historically vertical management structure of US car companies.
      After its release, Saturn scored high marks with J.D. Power and Associates rankings of quality by consumers, setting an historic trend of customer satisfaction for the company. In May 1993 Saturn had its first profitable month, and in 1995 Saturn enjoyed record sales, expanding its operation to Japan. After a successful three-year stretch, 1998 saw Saturn’s first year-to-year sales decline, dropping 9.9% in volume from 1997. The auto manufacturer announced that operation would cease, in order to reorganize inventory and respond to the downturn. That same year saw Saturn’s unique labor contract suffer. After a bitter, hard-fought feud within the union membership, Saturn workers voted overwhelmingly to retain their original UAW contract rather than adopt the master contract used at other GM auto plants. Just a few months later, Saturn workers went on strike, protesting that the automaker had failed to live up to its promise to give workers a voice in the plant’s operation and strategy.
1984 Alvenus tanker at Cameron, Louisiana, spills 2.8 million gallons of oil .
1984 Mobutu Sese Seko es reelegido nuevamente Presidente de Zaire.
1983 Entra en vigor en España la ley de las 40 horas semanales de trabajo y 30 días de vacaciones al año.
1980 British New Hebrides becomes independent & takes name Vanuatu
1976 El rey Juan Carlos I decreta una amnistía política en España que afecta a 500 personas encarceladas por su ideología.
1975 Summit meeting in Helsinki begins
      Thirty-five nations, called together by the United States and the Soviet Union, begin a summit meeting in Helsinki, Finland, to discuss some pressing international issues. The meeting temporarily revived the spirit of detente between the United States and Russia. By 1975, the policy of detente — the lessening of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union — was slowly deteriorating. Richard Nixon, under whose administration detente began, had resigned from office in disgrace in August 1974. The collapse of South Vietnam in April 1975 left many Americans worried that the US was losing the Cold War. In an effort to reawaken the policy of detente, President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger joined with the Soviet Union in calling for a multination summit in Helsinki in July 1975. Officially known as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the meeting was attended by the United States, the Soviet Union, Canada, and all European nations (except Albania, which continued to plot its own very independent, and confusing, foreign policy).
      On 01 August 1975, the summit attendees issued a "Final Act," outlining the broad agreements that had been reached at the conference. All signatories to the Final Act agreed to respect the state boundaries established after World War II and abide by the rule of international law. In addition, human rights were emphasized and all states agreed to protect the basic rights of their people. Finally, all nations agreed to pursue arms reduction treaties in the future. The agreements reached at Helsinki gave a temporary jumpstart to the idea of detente, but in the years to come most aspects of the Final Act were disregarded or forgotten. Although the Soviet Union agreed to respect human rights, it savagely attacked human rights groups in Russia (known informally as the "Helsinki groups"). And discussion about arms reduction treaties disappeared and was not revived until the mid-1980s. On a positive note, however, the Helsinki agreements did establish a foundation for more fruitful US-Soviet relations in later years. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev used the basic premises of the Final Act to pursue a number of diplomatic initiatives in the mid- and late-1980s, including dramatic breakthroughs in nuclear arms control.
1975 Teamsters Pres Jimmy Hoffa disappears in suburban Detroit
1974 Watergate: tapes released, impeachment recommended      ^top^
      Under coercion from the US Supreme Court, President Nixon M. Nixon releases subpoenaed White House recordings, suspected to prove his guilt in the Watergate cover-up, to special prosecutor Leon Jaworski. This same day, the House Judiciary Committee votes a third article of impeachment against the president: contempt of Congress in hindering the impeachment process. The committee had already voted two other impeachment articles against Nixon: obstruction of justice and abuse of presidential powers.
      On 17 June 1972, seven men, including two members of the Nixon reelection campaign, had been arrested for breaking into and illegally wiretapping the Democratic National Convention headquarters in Washington, D.C.'s Watergate Hotel. Journalists and the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities discovered a higher-echelon conspiracy surrounding the incident, and a political scandal of unprecedented magnitude erupted.
      On 17 May 1973, the special Senate committee began televised proceedings on the rapidly escalating Watergate affair, and one week later, Harvard law professor Archibald Cox was sworn in as special Watergate prosecutor. During the Senate hearings, former White House legal counsel John Dean testified that the Watergate break-in had been approved by former Attorney General John Mitchell with the knowledge of chief White House advisers John Ehrlichman and H. R. Haldeman, and that the president had been aware of the cover-up.
      Meanwhile, Cox and his staff began to uncover widespread evidence of political espionage by the Nixon reelection committee, illegal wiretapping of thousands of citizens by the administration, and corporate contributions to the Republican Party in return for political favors. In July, the existence of what were to be called the Watergate tapes, official recordings of White House conversations between Nixon and his staff, was revealed during the Senate hearings. Cox subpoenaed these tapes, and after three months of delay, President Nixon agreed to send summaries of the recordings. Cox rejected the summaries, and Nixon fired him. His successor as special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, leveled indictments against several high-ranking administration officials, including Mitchell and Dean, who were duly convicted.
      Public confidence in the president rapidly waned, and on 30 July 1974, Nixon finally releases the Watergate tapes as the House Judiciary Committee recommends impeachment. On 05 August, transcripts of the recordings would be revealed, including a segment in which the president instructs Haldeman to order the FBI to halt the Watergate investigation. Four days later, Richard M. Nixon would become the first president in US history to resign. On September 16, he would be pardoned preemptively from any criminal charges by his successor, President Gerald Ford.
1973 Watergate: H.R. Haldeman testifies before the Senate Committee. He denies participation in the cover-up and denies that the President knew of the cover-up, but admits approving money for "dirty tricks".
1967 General William Westmoreland claims that he is winning the war in Vietnam but needs more men
1965 US President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Medicare bill, which went into effect the following year.
1964 South Vietnamese boats raid islands in the Tonkin Gulf
      At about midnight, six "Swifts," special torpedo boats used by the South Vietnamese for covert raids, attack the islands of Hon Me and Hon Ngu in the Tonkin Gulf. Although unable to land any commandos, the boats fired on island installations. Radar and radio transmissions were monitored by a US destroyer, the USS Maddox, which was stationed about 200 km away. The South Vietnamese attacks were part of a covert operation called Oplan 34A, which involved raids by South Vietnamese commandos operating under American orders against North Vietnamese coastal and island installations. Although US forces were not directly involved in the actual raids, US Navy ships were on station to conduct electronic surveillance and monitor North Vietnamese defense responses under another program, Operation De Soto.
      The Oplan 34A attacks played a major role in events that led to what became known as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. On 02 August North Vietnamese patrol boats attacked the Maddox, which had been conducting a De Soto mission in the area. Two days after the first attack, there was another incident that still remains unclear. The Maddox, joined by destroyer USS C. Turner Joy, engaged what were thought at the time to be more attacking North Vietnamese patrol boats. Although it was questionable whether the second attack actually happened, the incident provided the rationale for retaliatory air attacks against the North Vietnamese and the subsequent Tonkin Gulf Resolution. The resolution became the basis for the initial escalation of the war in Vietnam and ultimately the insertion of US combat troops into the area.
1960 Over 60'000 Buddhists march in protest against the Diem government in South Vietnam.
1957 Gran Bretaña concede la autonomía a Nigeria.
1956 By an act of Congress, signed by President Eisenhower, 'In God We Trust' becomes the official US motto.
1943 Hitler learns that Italy is about to surrender to Allies      ^top^
      Adolf Hitler reads a message from his security police chief in Zagreb that an Italian general had confided to a Croat general that Italy's assurances of loyalty to Germany were "designed merely to gain time for the conclusion of negotiations with the enemy." Hitler had feared that such a turn of events was possible, if not probable. He had gone to Italy on July 19 to meet Mussolini, who promised that Italy would continue to fight.
      Hitler nevertheless began preparing for the prospect of Italy's surrender to the Allies. When Mussolini was ousted from power and arrested by his own police six days later. Hitler gathered Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Rommel, and the commander in chief of the German navy, Karl Doenitz, at his headquarters to reveal the plans of action he had already been formulating. Among them: (1) Operation Oak, in which Mussolini would be rescued from captivity; (2) the occupation of Rome by German forces and the reinstallation of Mussolini and his fascist government; (3) Operation Black, the German occupation of all Italy; and (4) Operation Axis, the destruction of the Italian fleet (in order to prevent it from being commandeered for Allied use).
      Hitler's advisers had urged caution, especially since it would require recalling troops from the Eastern front. The Allies had not made a move on Rome yet, and although Mussolini was under arrest, the Italian government had not formally surrendered. Germany had received assurances from Mussolini's successor, General Badoglio, that Italy would continue to fight at Germany's side.
1940 A bombing lull ends the first phase of the Battle of Britain.
1936 Margaret Mitchell sells film rights to Gone With the Wind
      Author Margaret Mitchell sells film rights for Gone With the Wind to MGM. Although film magnate David O. Selznick of Selznick International Pictures had expressed interest in the rights earlier in the year, he had balked at Mitchell's asking price of $50,000 — more than any studio had ever paid for rights to a first novel. He gave in, however, just before the book was released, and the deal was finalized on 30 July 1936.
      The book went on to win the Pulitzer Prize and become one of the best-selling novels of all time. The film, which took three years, three directors, and 15 screenwriters to create, became one of the most profitable in history. Margaret Mitchell was born in Atlanta in 1900. She became a journalist, reporting for The Atlanta Journal from 1922 to 1926. She married in 1925 and stopped working after a foot injury. She spent the next 10 years writing and researching the antebellum South and the Civil War in order to create Gone With the Wind. The book broke publishing records, selling one million copies within six months and more than 12 million copies during the next three decades. Mitchell never tried writing a sequel to the book, but in 1988 her estate sold sequel rights to Warner Books for nearly $5 million. The sequel, Scarlett, by Alexandra Ripley, was published in 1991 and topped the best-seller list despite a chilly response from critics.
      After Selznick purchased the book's film rights, he launched a nationwide search for an actress to play Scarlett O'Hara — the search lasted for more than a year. Meanwhile, he agreed to let MGM distribute the film in return for permission to use MGM's star, Clark Gable, as Rhett Butler. Filming on the movie began in December 1938, but the Scarlett role still hadn't been cast. British actress Vivien Leigh visited the set on the day filming began; by the end of the month, she was cast as Scarlett.
      The film debuted in Atlanta on 15 December 1939, and became an instant hit. The film was nominated for more than a dozen Oscars and won nine, including Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actress (which went to Hattie McDaniel, the first black actress to win the award). The movie was digitally restored and the sound remastered for its 1998 re-release by New Line Pictures.
     In 2001 the copyright holder to Gone With the Wind objected to an unlicensed take-off book, The Wind Done Gone, told from the point of view of a Black slave.
1932 Elecciones en Alemania: los nazis duplican sus escaños en el Reichstag (230), pero no logran la mayoría, por lo que iniciaron una campaña terrorista.
1931 El Congreso de los Diputados ratifica los poderes del Gobierno provisional de la República española para que prosiga su labor hasta la constitución definitiva del Estado.
1928 George Eastman demonstrates 1st color movie
1923 New Zealand claims Ross Dependency.
1919 Federal troops are called out to put down Chicago race riots.
1918 I Guerra Mundial: Finaliza la larga batalla del Marne, en la que vencen los aliados.
1915 I Guerra Mundial: Retirada rusa de la región polaca de Galitzia.
1913 Conclusion of the 2nd Balkan War.
1910 El Gobierno español, presidido por José Canalejas, suspende sus relaciones diplomáticas con el Vaticano.
1909 US Army accepts delivery of 1st military airplane
1908 Around the World Autombile Race ends in Paris.
1907 Rusia y Japón firman un tratado sobre China, en el que garantizan la integridad del territorio y la libertad de comercio.
1906 Gabriel Lippmann presenta en la Academia de Ciencias de París un método para la reproducción fotográfica de los colores.
1905 El general Lapunov, jefe de las fuerzas rusas en la isla de Sajalín, se rinde a los japoneses.
1889 Start of Sherlock Holmes adventure The Naval Treaty
1887 Concluidos los trabajos de cimentación de la parisina torre Eiffel.
1864 Capture and burning of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania
1881 Firma en Pretoria de un convenio por el que Inglaterra otorga a los boers una República bajo protectorado británico en asuntos exteriores.
1864 Combat at Macon, Georgia on Stoneman's Raid
1863 US President Lincoln issues "eye-for-eye" order to shoot a Rebel prisoner for every Black prisoner shot by the Confederates.
1863 Siege of Fort Wagner, Charleston Harbor, South Carolina continues
1863 Chief Pocatello signs peace treaty      ^top^
      The Shoshone chief Pocatello signs the Treaty of Box Elder, bringing peace to the emigrant trails of southern Idaho and northern Utah. Pocatello was a Bannock Shoshone, one of the two major Shoshone tribes that dominated modern-day southern Idaho. Once a large and very powerful people, the Shoshone lost thousands to a smallpox epidemic in 1781. The fierce Blackfoot Indians took further advantage of the badly weakened Shoshone to push them off the plains and into the mountains. The first representatives of a people who would soon prove even more dangerous than the Blackfoot arrived in August 1805: The expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Anxious to establish good relations with the Americans in hopes of someday obtaining guns to fight the dreaded Blackfoot, the Shoshone welcomed Lewis and Clark and gave them the horses they needed to cross the Rocky Mountains.
      However, by the time Pocatello had become a chief 50 years later, the Shoshone realized that the White people were more of a threat than the Blackfoot. By 1857, Pocatello was a young chief who controlled an extensive territory around present-day Pocatello, Idaho. Pocatello was greatly alarmed by the growing number of Mormons who were traveling north from Salt Lake City and settling in Shoshone territory. The Indians and Mormons increasingly clashed, with both sides committing brutal and unjustified murders. Pocatello was determined to resist the white settlement. He led several attacks on the Mormons, killing or wounding several of them and stealing their horses.
      In 1863, the US government sent Colonel Patrick Connor and a company of soldiers into the region to protect US telegraph lines and, secondarily, the Mormon settlers. That May, Connor set out to track down Pocatello and his followers, but the Shoshone chief managed to evade the soldiers. On his own initiative, Pocatello then proposed a peace agreement. If the Mormons provided the Shoshone with compensation for lost game and land, Pocatello promised to cease his attacks. The Mormons accepted his terms. On this day in 1863, Pocatello signed his "X" on the Treaty of Box Elder and the overt hostilities ended. As the Anglo settlers in the region grew more numerous and gained the support of the US government, the Shoshone were confined to a reservation within their traditional territory. Pocatello died on the reservation in 1884. The nearby Idaho city of Pocatello was named for him.
1839 Slaves rebel, take over slaver ship Amistad
1838. "In charity to all mankind, bearing no malice or ill-will to any human being, and even compassionating those who hold in bondage their fellow-men, not knowing what they do." John Quincy Adam writes this in a letter to A. Bronson.
      This may have inspired this, from Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address: "With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right."
1830 Luis Felipe de Orleáns (nacido el 6 de octubre 1773 en Paris, murió el 26 de agosto 1850 en Inglaterra) aprovecha el Golpe del 9 de thermidor (??? del año II ??? 1794???) para aparecer en París, donde la gente que lo apoyaba le proclama rey de Francia. — In the July Revolution of 1830, Louis Philippe was made lieutenant general of the realm and, with the support of the marquis de Lafayette, was chosen "king of the French. His reign, known as the July Monarchy, marked the triumph of the wealthy bourgeoisie and a return to influence of many former Napoleonic officials. — July Revolution, revolt in France in July, 1830, against the government of King Charles X. The attempt of the ultraroyalists under Charles to return to the ancien régime provoked the opposition of the middle classes, who wanted more voice in the government. The banker Jacques Laffitte was typical of the bourgeois who supported liberal journalists, such as Adolphe Thiers, in opposing the government. Liberal opposition reached its peak when Charles called on the reactionary and unpopular Jules Armand de Polignac to form a new ministry (Aug 1829). When the chamber of deputies registered its disapproval, Charles dissolved the chamber. New elections (July 1830) returned an even stronger opposition majority. Charles and Polignac responded with the July Ordinances, which established rigid press control, dissolved the new chamber, and reduced the electorate. Insurrection developed, and street barricades and fighting cleared Paris of royal troops. Charles X was forced to flee and abdicated in favor of his grandson, Henri, conte de Chambord. Henri was set aside, and, although there was a movement for a republic, the duc d'Orléans was proclaimed (31 July 1830) king of the French as Louis Philippe. His reign was known as the July Monarchy.
1822 Pioneer church founder James Varick, 72, is consecrated the first bishop of theAfrican Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.
1808 José Bonaparte abandona Madrid precipitadamente al conocer la noticia de la victoria de las tropas españolas sobre las francesas en la Batalla de Bailén.
1799 The French garrison at Mantua, Italy surrenders to the Austrians.
1792 500 Marseillais men sing la Marseillaise for 1st time. Rouget de Lisle had entitiled it "Chant de guerre de l'armé du Rhin" when he had composed it in the night of 24 April 1792. It would become France's national anthem by the 14 July 1795 decree of the Convention. Its melody was used by Tchaikowsky in his 1812 overture.

LA MARSEILLAISE
Paroles et musique de Rouget de Lisle (1760-1836)



1. Allons enfants de la Patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé !
Contre nous de la tyrannie !
L'étendard sanglant est levé (bis)
Entendez-vous dans nos campagnes
Mugir ces féroces soldats ?
Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras.
Egorger nos fils, nos compagnes !

Aux armes citoyens,
Formez vos bataillons
Marchons, marchons
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons

2. Que veut cette horde d'esclaves,
De traîtres, de rois conjurés ?
Pour qui ces ignobles entraves
Ces fers dès longtemps préparés ? (bis)
Français, pour nous, ah! quel outrage
Quels transports il doit exciter ?
C'est nous qu'on ose méditer
De rendre à l'antique esclavage !

3. Quoi ces cohortes étrangères !
Feraient la loi dans nos foyers !
Quoi ! ces phalanges mercenaires
Terrasseraient nos fils guerriers ! (bis)
Grand Dieu! par des mains enchaînées
Nos fronts sous le joug se ploieraient
De vils despotes deviendraient
Les maîtres des destinées.

4. Tremblez, tyrans et vous perfides
L'opprobre de tous les partis,
Tremblez ! vos projets parricides
Vont enfin recevoir leurs prix ! (bis)
Tout est soldat pour vous combattre,
S'ils tombent, nos jeunes héros,
La France en produit de nouveaux,
Contre vous tout prêts à se battre

5. Français, en guerriers magnanimes
Portez ou retenez vos coups !
Épargnez ces tristes victimes,
A regret s'armant contre nous (bis)
Mais ces despotes sanguinaires,
Mais ces complices de Bouillé,
Tous ces tigres qui, sans pitié,
Déchirent le sein de leur mère !

6. Nous entrerons dans la carrière
Quand nos aînés n'y seront plus,
Nous y trouverons leur poussière
Et la trace de leurs vertus (bis)
Bien moins jaloux de leur survivre
Que de partager leur cercueil,
Nous aurons le sublime orgueil
De les venger ou de les suivre !

7. Amour sacré de la Patrie,
Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs
Liberté, Liberté chérie
Combats avec tes défenseurs ! (bis)
Sous nos drapeaux, que la victoire
Accoure à tes mâles accents
Que tes ennemis expirants
Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire !

1787 The French parliament refuses to approve a more equitable land tax.
1762 Tropas inglesas ocupan el castillo del Morro, en La Habana, pese a la resistencia que ofrecieron los españoles.
1676 Nathaniel Bacon Jr., in rebellion against governor William Berkeley of colonial Virginia, issues his "Declaration of the People", stating that Berkeley is corrupt, plays favorites and protects the Indians for his own selfish purposes
1619 First legislative assembly in America      ^top^
      In Jamestown, Virginia, the first elected legislative assembly in the New World — the House of Burgesses — convenes in the choir of the town's church.
      Earlier in the year, the London Company, which had established the Jamestown settlement twelve years before, directed Virginia Governor Sir George Yeardley to summon a "General Assembly" elected by the settlers, with every free adult male voting. Twenty-two representatives from the eleven Jamestown boroughs were chosen, and Master John Pory was appointed the assembly's speaker.
      On 30 July the House of Burgesses (an English word for citizens) convenes for the first time. Its first law, which, like all of its laws, would have to be approved by the London Company, requires tobacco to be sold for at least three shillings per pound. Other laws passed during its first six-day session would included prohibitions against gambling, drunkenness, and idleness, and a making observance of the Sabbath mandatory. The creation of the House of Burgesses, along with other progressive measures, made Sir George Yeardley exceptionally popular among the colonists, and he served two terms as Virginia governor.
0657 St Vitalian begins his reign as Pope.
TO THE TOP
StuckeyMooreDeaths which occurred on a 30 July:
crashed van2002 Anthony Stuckey, 49, and Jack Moore, 62, [smaller photo >] after being punched, kicked, and beaten by a half-dozen bystanders with bricks that came off the side of the building (in the 3900 block of South Lake Park Avenue in the Oakland neigborhood of Chicago's South Side) into which their rental van [< photo] crashed at 18:35 after jumping a curb and hitting Shauna Lawrence, 26 (in critical condition), her cousin Jenny Lawrence, 18 (in fair condition), and a 17-year-old girl (in fair condition), who have to be hospitalized. Stuckey [larger photo >] did not have a driver's license. It is not known which of the two was driving.
2002 Suicide bomber, 17, Palestinian from Bethlehem, whose explosives detonate as, at about 13:00, after noticing policemen, he enters the Yemenite Felafel Stand on Hanevi'im Street in downtown Jerusalem. No one else is killed but give persons are injured. [felafel = fried chickpea patties]
2002 Brothers Shlomo Odesar, 60, and Mordechai Odesar, 50, Israelis from the Tapuah enclave settlement, shot while selling diesel fuel to a cement factory in the Palestinian village of Jama'in, close to the West Bank enclave settlement of Ariel. While settlers in Jewish enclaves taken from Palestinian territory constitute some 3% of the Israeli population, they make up 20% of all Israeli fatalities since the 28 September 2000 start of the al-Aqsa intifada. Jama'in is in “Area B”, which is under Palestinian civilian administration and full Israeli security control. The military wing of the Fatah, the al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade, took responsibility for the attack.
2002 Palestinian shot by an Israeli soldier and a security officer of the the Jewish enclave settlement Itamar, West Bank, where a married couple had just been injured, awakened in their bedroom at 03:00 by the Palestinian stabbing them with two knives.
2001 Michelle Enrile, 12, choked on “deadly mouthful” candy, in San José, California.
     Deven Joncich, 3, of Morgan Hill, California, died from the same cause on 05 November 2000. In both cases, rescue workers said they couldn't dislodge the sticky gel from the children's throats. Despite over a dozen similar deaths, mostly in Asia, Taiwan-based Sheng Hsiang Jen Foods Co., the manufacturer of the gel candies, maintains that it is safe. The gel does not readily dissolve in the mouth and often come with a fruit chunk in the middle.
     In mid-August 2001, Safeway pulled the candy (sold as Jelly Yum) from 200 of its Northern California stores, and Albertson's (which sold it as Fruit Poppers and Gel-ly Drop) from 195 stores in Northern California. Neither Safeway nor Albertson's removed the candies from stores in other states.
     On 15 August 2001, the Santa Clara County Department of Public Health warned the public about the candy, recommending that it be cut in pieces before it's given to small children.
1989 Ramón Areces, empresario español, fundador de El Corte Inglés.
1985 Julia Robinson, mathematician
1978 Bowen, mathematician
1978 Umberto Nobile, general y aeronauta italiano.
1976 Rudolf Bultmann, 92, German Bible scholar and one of the three major pioneers of modern form 'criticism' (i.e., 'analysis') of the New Testament Gospels.
1971 Japanese Boeing 727 collides with an F-86 fighter killing 162
1968 Unas 70 personas por erupción del volcán Arenal en Costa Rica. Otras 90 personas desaparecen.
1967 Race riot in Milwaukee (4 killed)
1945 Hundreds of sailors of the USS Indianapolis, sunk by Japanese sub
     At 00:14 the USS Indianapolis is torpedoed by three torpedoes of a salvo of six from Japanese Sub I-58 with Commander Machitsura Hashimoto in command. The explosions were against her starboard side and the battle cruiser sinks in 12 minutes, at 12º02' N, 134º48' E.
in the Philippine Sea.. Of 1196 men on board, approximately 300 go down with the ship. The remainder, about 900 men were left floating in shark infested waters with no lifeboats and most with no food or water. The ship was never missed, and by the time the survivors were spotted by accident four days later only 316 men went on to survive.
      The ship's captain, the late Charles Butler McVay III, 47, is wounded but survives and would be court-martialed and convicted of "hazarding his ship by failing to zigzag" despite overwhelming evidence that the Navy itself had placed the ship in harm's way, despite testimony from the Japanese submarine commander that zigzagging would have made no difference, and despite that fact that, although 700 navy ships were lost in combat in WWII, McVay was the only captain to be court-martialed. Material declassified some 50 years later added to the evidence that McVay was a scapegoat for the mistakes of others. Though he was restored to duty and retired as a Rear Admiral in 1949, he was hounded by some of the families of the dead sailors and commited suicide on 6 November 1968. He would be rehabilitated posthumously by the US Congress in October 2000.
1942 Some 25'000 Jews in Minsk, Belorussia, massacred by German SS.
1916 Two victims of munitions explosion by German saboteurs      ^top^
     Millions of New York and Jersey City windows are shattered this Sunday morning, by an explosion that rocks the docks of the Lehigh Valley Railroad on Black Tom Island, New Jersey. The island, opposite the Statue of Liberty, was the storage center for 1000 tons of TNT, dynamite and shrapnel awaiting shipment to the Allies. Two fires had started earlier in a munitions car and a barge tied to a pier. Firemen waged a futile battle to put out the flames until the men were blown into the air by the blast. Three-inch projectiles arched over the harbor while crowds watched from the Manhattan shore and others fled in panic on the New Jersey side.
      When the smoke cleared, two persons had died and property damage was estimated at $22 million. Documents, carelessly left on a New York subway seat by a German Consulate attache, pointed to sabotage plans by that country. But the sabotage and other disruptive actions did not achieve Germany's objective — to cripple American industrial activity. In the end, US public opinion turned against Germany and prepared the ground for the entrace of America into the war against her. The United States Secret Service later obtained documents, signed by German Ambassador Bernstorff and Captain Franz Von Papen, that corroborated German sabotage in the United States. A mixed claims commission (June 15, 1939) found Germany guilty of this explosion and another one on January 11, 1917. Germany never paid the $5 million in damages http://n3-ex.evsp.icair.org/webext/texts/ve0077.html
1914 Jean Jaurès, leading socialist, assassinated in Paris
1864 Thousands of soldiers in the saddest battle of the US Civil War      ^top^
      During the siege of Petersburg, Union forces attempt to break through Confederate lines by exploding some 3600 kg of gunpowder under their trenches. Amid rivalries and dissenssion among the Union generals, the 48th Pennsylvania, made up of former coal miners from the Schuylkill Valley, had dug the 150-meter-long tunnel under the Confederate entrenchments, which was exploded at dawn. The blast killed hundreds of Confederates and blew a four-hundred-yard gap in their lines. However, it also created a bloody, rubble-filled crater 60 m long, 20 m wide, and 10 m deep.
      The Federals, nearly as shocked as the rebels by the massive explosion, hesitated in the attack, but eventually some 20'000 Union troops joined in the assault. However, the Confederates, under the direct command of General P. G. T. Beauregard, 46, reacted quickly and in a murderous fire slaughtered the Union soldiers advancing across the crater. The pit rapidly filled with a mass of confused Federal troops attempting to escape the Confederate volleys, and Southern infantry surged up to the crater's rim and began mowing down the trapped Yankees.
      After nearly four hours of bloodshed, Union General George G. Meade, 48, finally called off the attack. His forces had suffered nearly 4000 casualties in the disastrous attack, compared to 1500 lost by the Confederates. After the battle, Union forces returned to their trenches, and resumed their siege of attrition against Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. General Ulysses S. Grant, the commander-in-chief of all Union forces at Petersburg, later called the Battle of the Crater "the saddest affair I have witnessed in this war."
     The Union's ingenious attempt to break the Confederate lines at Petersburg by blowing up a tunnel that had been dug under the Rebel trenches fails. Although the explosion created a gap in the Confederate defenses, a poorly planned Yankee attack wasted the effort and the result was an eight-month continuation of the siege. The bloody campaign between Union General Ulysses S. Grant and Confederate Robert E. Lee ground to a halt in mid-June, when the two armies dug in at Petersburg, south of Richmond. For the previous six weeks, Grant had pounded away at Lee, producing little results other than frightful casualties. A series of battles and flanking maneuvers brought Grant to Petersburg, where he opted for a siege rather than another costly frontal assault. In late June, a Union regiment from the 48th Pennsylvania Infantry began digging a tunnel under the Rebel fortifications. The soldiers, experienced miners from Pennsylvania's anthracite coal regions, dug for nearly a month to construct a horizontal shaft over 150 m long. At the end of the tunnel, they ran two drifts, or side tunnels, totaling 25 m along the Confederate lines to maximize the destruction. Four tons of gunpowder filled the drifts, and the stage was set.
      Union soldiers lit the fuse before dawn on 30 July. The explosion that came just before 05:00 blew up a Confederate battery and most of one infantry regiment, creating a crater 50 m long, 20 to 25 m wide, and 10 m deep. As one Southern soldier wrote, "Several hundred yards of earth work with men and cannon was literally hurled a hundred feet in the air." However, the Union was woefully unprepared to exploit the gap. The Yankees were slow to exit the trenches, and when they did the 15'000 attacking troops ran into the crater rather than around it. Part of the Rebel line was captured, but the Confederates that gathered from each side fired down on the Yankees. The Union troops could not maintain the beachhead, and by early afternoon they retreated back to their original trenches.
      This failure led to finger pointing among the Union command. General Ambrose Burnside, the corps commander of the troops involved, had ordered regiments from the United States Colored Troops to lead the attack, but the commander of the Army of the Potomac, George G. Meade, nixed that plan shortly before the attack was scheduled. Fearing that it may be perceived as a ploy to use African-American soldiers as cannon fodder, Meade ordered that white troops lead the charge. With little time for training, General James H. Ledlie was left to command the attack. The Battle of the Crater essentially marked the end of Burnside's military career, and on April 15, 1865, he resigned from the army.
1898 Otto von Bismarck, estadista alemán.
1834 Diego Clemencin, periodista y político español.
Thomas Gray
1771 Thomas Gray
, English poet born on 26 December 1716. He is buried in the country churchyard in which he wrote an elegy (Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire).

     Although Gray wrote only 49 poems, he was the dominant poet in mid-18th century Great Britain and a precursor of the Romantic movement.

[Appropriately in shades of gray: Gray's portrait, from an engraving after a painting by Benjamin Wilson  >]



GRAY ONLINE:
All 49 Poems
The Bard
Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard (with other poems)
["The paths of glory lead but to the grave. “; "...where ignorance is bliss / 'Tis folly to be wise. “]
Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard


The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimm'ring landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such, as wand'ring near her secret bow'r,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,
The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,
If Mem'ry o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where thro' the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd,
Or wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre.

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page
Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;
Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flow'r is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.

Th' applause of list'ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their hist'ry in a nation's eyes,

Their lot forbade: nor circumscrib'd alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confin'd;
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
Yet ev'n these bones from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by th' unletter'd muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply:
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing, ling'ring look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
Ev'n from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
Ev'n in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who mindful of th' unhonour'd Dead
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
"Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.

"There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Mutt'ring his wayward fancies he would rove,
Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
Or craz'd with care, or cross'd in hopeless love.
"One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill,
Along the heath and near his fav'rite tree;
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

"The next with dirges due in sad array
Slow thro' the church-way path we saw him borne.
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay,
Grav'd on the stone beneath yon aged thorn. “
1762 Braikenridge, mathematician.
1746 Francesco Trevisani, cavaliere romano, Italian Rococo Era painter who born on 09 April or 17 April 1656. — LINKS
1718 William Penn, 74, English Quaker and founder of American colony of Pennsylvania. Penn permitted in his colony all forms of public worship compatible with monotheism and religious liberty.
1528 Jacopo d'Antonio de Negreto (or Negretti) “Palma il Vecchio”, Italian High Renaissance painter born in 1480. — MORE ON PALMA AT ART “4” JULY LINKSPortrait of a Woman with Her LoverJacob and RachelSacred ConversationThe Three Sisters (detail)Portrait of a Woman (La Bella)Diana and Callisto
1419 Catholiques défenestrés par hussites pour venger le martyre de Jan Hus (au bûcher 6 juillet 1415)      ^top^
     Le mouvement hussite souleva toute la Bohême. Le 30 juillet 1419, une foule en délire envahissait les rues de Prague et procédait à la défenestration de notables catholiques. Ainsi commençaient dix-huit années de guerres hussites. Rassemblés derrière la bannière au Calice (qui symbolisait leur volonté utraquiste de retourner à la communion sous les deux espèces), les hussites se donnèrent une forme de programme commun (les Quatres Articles) et recrutèrent une armée capable de les défendre contre les impériaux de Sigismond, le frère de Venceslas IV.
     The Four Articles of Prague formulated by Jakoubek of Stríbro, Hus's successor: (1) freedom of preaching; (2) communion in both kinds; (3) poverty of the clergy and expropriation of church property; (4) punishment of notorious sinners.
1233 Conrad of Marburg, murdered on the highway, as he travels as directed by the first Papal ordinance directly dealing with witchcraft: the bull addressed to him by Pope Gregory IX bidding him to proceed against the Luciferians.
0579 Benedict I
, Pope
Births which occurred on a 30 July:
1942 “Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service” (WAVES) is created as part of the US Navy by a bill signed by President Franklin Roosevelt.
1940 Patricia Schroeder (Rep-D-Colo)
1924 William Gass Fargo, ND, novelist, philosopher (Omensetter's Luck)
1913 Alfonso López Michelsen, político liberal, novelista y ensayista colombiano.
1909 Juan Bosch Gaviño, escritor y político dominicano.
1909 Cyril Northcote Parkinson England, historian (Pursuit of Progress)
1898 Henry Moore, British sculptor. As a child, he drew inspiration from the work of Renaissance master Michelangelo. Moore later developed a more personal modernist style, but it was some time before his radical but majestic stone figures began to win approval. Moore evoked form from empty space as much as he did from solids, and he claimed that it took a lifetime to learn how to set his sculptures into a landscape. — (Vertebrae)
      English sculptor Henry Moore is born in Castleford, Yorkshire. The son of a coal miner, he overcame early criticism of his work to become one of the most acclaimed sculptors of the 20th century. His majestic, semi-abstract sculptures of the human figure are characterized by their smooth, organic shape and often include empty hollows that evoke form as meaningfully as solid mass.
      The seventh of eight children, Moore grew up in the small coal-mining town of Castleford in northern England. His father was an ambitious man who taught himself advanced mathematics in order to rise from ordinary miner to the position of mining engineer. Moore decided he wanted to become a sculptor at age 11, after hearing a Sunday school story about Michelangelo. He served in France during World War I and in 1917 was injured in a gas attack. After being demobilized in 1919, he won a veteran's grant to study at the Leeds School of Art in West Yorkshire. In 1921, he was awarded a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art in London.
      At London's libraries and museums, he studied Egyptian, Etruscan, Pre-Columbian, Oceanic, and African sculpture, and he brought the vital spirit of this artwork into his early sculpture. This effort was often ridiculed by his instructors, and in his first year at the Royal College one of his teachers remarked, "this young man has been feeding on garbage." He was also deeply influenced by the semi-abstract paintings of Paul Cézanne, such as the Large Bathers (1900-1905), which shows monumental reclining nudes integrated into an abstract landscape. The reclining human figure would become a central theme in Moore's sculpture.
      After graduating from the Royal College in 1924, he traveled and taught art and in 1928 was given his first one-man exhibition at the Warren Gallery in London. Appreciated by his fellow avant-garde artists but lacking a wider public audience, Moore taught to support himself as he continued to develop his art. His first major mature work was Reclining Figure in Wood (1936), a highly abstract depiction of the human form. That year, Moore was included in the "Cubism and Abstract Art" show at New York City's Museum of Modern Art, which became an important patron of the English artist.
      During World War II, Moore's studio was damaged by bombs, and sculpture material was difficult to come by. He turned to drawing and as a commissioned war artist produced a series of drawings of Londoners huddled in the underground bomb shelters. The Shelter Drawings (1940) seemed to capture the spirit of the times and brought Moore his first great fame. In 1946, he was given a major retrospective by the Museum of Modern Art, and in 1948 he won the Grand Prize for Sculpture at the 24th Venice Biennale. From thereon, Moore's reputation was firmly established, and he began to receive major public commissions for sculptures in bronze and marble.
      In addition to the reclining figure, other common themes of Moore's sculpture includes the mother and child, family groups, and fallen warriors. Among his major commissions were sculptures for UNESCO headquarters in Paris (1957-58), for Lincoln Center in New York City (1963-65), for the University of Chicago (1964-66), and for the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (1978). For the last four decades of his life, he lived unostentatiously in a farmhouse in Much Hadham, 50 km north of London. He died in 1986.
     — LINKSBlack FiguresFigures in a Setting Nº1
Not to be confused with marine painter and watercolorist Henry Moore (1831~1895) who painted, for example, the watercolor: Marshy Landscape With Rainbow.
1889 Vladimir Zworykin electronics engineer/inventor, father of TV.
1882 Julian Onderdonk, US artist who died in 1922.
1880 Robert Rutherford McCormick US, editor/publisher Chicago Tribune
1869 Cristóbal Magallanes Jara, in Totaltiche, Jalisco.      ^top^
      He would grow up to be the Catholic pastor of his native village. He was a missionary among the Huichol Indians. When the Guadalajara seminary was closed by the Mexican anti-Catholic revolution, he oped one in his parish. He was executed by firing squad on 25 May 1927, in Colotlán, Jalisco. As he was facing the firing squad, to his companion of martyrdom, Father Agustín Caloca Cortés, he said: "Tranquilízate, hijo, sólo un momento y después el cielo." To the soldiers he said: "Yo muero inocente, y pido a Dios que mi sangre sirva para la unión de mis hermanos mexicanos."
     Father Magallanes, Father Caloca, and several other martyrs of the Mexican revolution were canonized by pope John Paul II on 21 May 2000.
1863 Henry Ford.      ^top^
      Trente ans plus tard, sa première voiture à moteur faisait sensation. Ford fut le premier à fabriquer des automobiles en série. Aujourd'hui encore, les usines Ford de Détroit (USA) fabriquent des millions de voitures par an. — Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company and developer of the Model T, who led American war production with the gigantic facility at Willow Run.
1858 Ignacio Ugarte y Bereciarte, pintor español.
1857 Thorsten Veblen US, economist (Theory of the Leisure Class-1899) — VEBLEN ONLINE: The Engineers and the Price System (PDF) — The Higher Learning in America: A Memorandum of the Conduct of Universities by Business MenAn Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of Its PerpetuationThe Theory of Business EnterpriseThe Theory of the Leisure ClassThe Vested Interests and the Common Man
1853 Julian Falat, Polish artist who died in 1929.
1826 Achille Jean-Baptiste Zo, French artist who died on 03 March 1901.
1818 Emily Brontë, novelist, fifth-born of the six Brontë children, three of whom will grow up to write fiction.
      The Brontë family lived in the remote village of Haworth on the bleak Yorkshire moors and were largely left to their own devices after the death of their mother when Emily was two. A shy, reclusive child, Emily suffered intensely from homesickness whenever she left the parsonage. She joined her three older sisters at a school for clergymen's children when she was six, but the two oldest died, partly because of the school's harsh and unhealthy conditions. She and Charlotte returned home.
      The girls, along with sister Anne and brother Branwell, read voraciously and created their own elaborate stories about mythical lands. Many of Emily's poems were written about these imaginary realms. Brontë was well educated at home and worked several short, unhappy stints as a governess and schoolteacher. In 1842, Emily and Charlotte went to Brussels to study school administration, hoping to open their own school in Haworth one day, which they never accomplished.
      In 1845, Charlotte came across some poems Emily had written and revealed that she too had secretly been writing verse. So had Anne, they learned. Charlotte published their joint work, Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, in 1846. Although the book sold only two copies, the sisters continued writing.
      Jane Eyre appeared in 1847, an instant success. Emily's Wuthering Heights and Anne's Agnes Grey were printed later that year. Unfortunately, neither one caught on with the public. Emily died of tuberculosis a year after her novel was published. A second edition of Wuthering Heights, published in 1850, included a preface by Charlotte, explaining that the book was superior to her own Jane Eyre. Wuthering Heights is now considered a classic.
ONLINE: by Emily, Charlotte, and Anne (two different sites):     Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell,     Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
Emily online: (five different sites):
  • Wuthering Heights
  • Wuthering Heights
  • Wuthering Heights
  • Wuthering Heights
  • Wuthering Heights (zipped PDF)
  • Charlotte online: (different sites)
  • Jane Eyre   Jane Eyre   Jane Eyre
  • Jane Eyre (zipped PDF)
  • The Professor     The Professor
  • The Professor (zipped PDF)
  • Shirley     Shirley
  • Villette
  • Anne online: (different sites)
  • Agnes Grey
  • Agnes Grey
  • Selected Works and Commentary.
  • The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
  • The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
  • 1729 The city of Baltimore is founded.
    1699 Giuseppe Marchesi “il Sansone”, Italian artist who died on 16 February 1771.
    1581 Alonso Jerónimo de Salas Barbadillo, escritor español.
    1511 Giorgio Vasari, Italian Mannerist painter, architect, and writer of Le vite de' più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani, da Cimabue insino a' tempi nostri [1550, zipped]. In 1568 Vasari added his autobiography and the lives of Michelangelo and other major painters of the time. Vasari died on 27 June 1574. — writings by VASARI ONLINE: Lives of the Most Excellent Italian Architects, Painters, and Sculptors, from Cimabue Until Our Times [selections in English translation] [illustrations with quotes from English translation]
    MORE ON VASARI AT ART “4” JULY LINKSFigure CompositionToeletta VenereThe Holy Family Christ at GethsemaniThe Prophet ElishaPerseo e Andromeda
    Holidays Cuba : Day of Martyrs of the Revolution / France : Marseillaise Day (1792) / Thailand : Asalha Puja / Virginia : Crater Day (1864)

    Religious Observances Buddhist-Bhutan : Buddha's 1st preaching / Christ : SS Abdon & Sennen, martyrs / RC : Peter Chrysologus, bishop & doctor / Ang : William Wilberforce / Santos Pedro Crisólogo, Abdón, Senén, Gerardo, Germán y Silvano. Santas Máxima, Julita, Segunda y Augusta.
    Thoughts for the day: “Too many pray for peace with their fists clenched.”
    "Prayers for peace are more likely to be heard when each side believes it would lose a war."
    "In any war, both sides lose."
    “In any war, neither side believes that both sides lose.”
    "Si vis pacem, para bellum."
    "War is the continuation of diplomacy by other, abhorrent, means.”
    “Who from the battle runs away, lives to fight another day.”
    “Don't die for your country: make the enemy die for his!”
    “Give your life for your country, not your death.”

    TO THE TOP
    PLEASE CLICK HERE TO WRITE TO “TODAY IN HISTORY”
    updated 020731 22:26 UT
    safe site
    site safe for children safe site
    http:// +
    canu.host.sk/history/h4jul/h4jul
    elpn.com/canu/history/h4jul/h4jul
    www.jcanu.hpg.com.br/history/h4jul/h4jul
    h42day.0catch.com/history/h4jul/h4jul
    www.hostultra.com/~canu/history/h4jul/h4jul
    + 30.html