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On an August 16:
2002 The flood that is receding in Prague has moved downriver from the Vltava into the Elbe and is now in Dresden. The Elbe rises from a normal summer level of about two meters to 9.16 meters, well surpassing the 8.77 meter record of 1845. Among other disastrous consequences: the priceless artwork at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (= Zwinger museum of art?) is endangered [and that link, temporarily, does not work]. [note: it is the Zwinger palace, NOT the Swinger palace.]
[Photo below: the Zwinger palace and its flooded court]
the Zwinger palace as it is normally
1999 Chechnya war: Chechnya mobilizes reservists and veterans of the 1994-96 war with Russia.
5000 people at a rally in the capital of Grozny protest hostilities in Dagestan
President Yeltsin rules out imposing a state of emergency in Russia, claims the situation in the country is "normal." But his envoy to the Russian Duma asks the legislators to approve a law on state of emergency, saying that Dagestan conflict proves that "this law is essential."
1996 AT&T's Internet service is announced      ^top^
      Newspapers announce that AT&T will start an Internet service called WorldNet. The president of AT&T's business communications division says that the company plans to make the Internet as widely available as the telephone. The move comes at a time when many companies are focusing efforts on creating online services akin to AOL: Microsoft is planning to launch the Microsoft Network the following week, and MCI had joined forces with News Corp. to create an online service. However, WorldNet's focus on the Internet would prove to be a more successful strategy than online service development, as users fled from proprietary services to the Internet.
1995 El presidente de Colombia, Ernesto Samper, decreta el estado de emergencia para combatir la crisis social existente en el país.
1994 Alianza del Pueblo, coalición socialista en la oposición, gana las elecciones legislativas en Sri Lanka.
1994 AOL announces that it has one million members. America OnLine had tripled in size in a single year and was positioned to become the dominant online service (but not necessarily the best).
1991 US President Bush (Sr.) declares that the recession is near an end.
1990 Iraq orders 4000 British and 2500 US nationals in Kuwait to Iraq.
1989 Miles de personas hacen vigilia para ver el eclipse total de Luna, de tres horas y 35 minutos.
1989 El presidente de Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, inicia el proceso de excarcelación de 1200 "contras".
1988 IBM introduces software for artificial intelligence
1988 Jailed black nationalist Nelson Mandela struck with tuberculosis
1983 Oficiales franceses llegan al Chad para unirse a los 3000 soldados allí acantonados y contrarrestar la presencia de tropas libias en el norte del país.
1972 Vietnam: Heavy air attacks on North Vietnam US fighter-bombers fly 370 air strikes against North Vietnam, the highest daily total of the year; additionally, there are eight B-52 strikes in the North. Meanwhile, US warplanes flew 321 missions (including 27 B-52 strikes) in South Vietnam, mostly in Quang Tri province. Despite this heavy air activity, hopes for an agreement to end the war rise as Henry Kissinger leaves Paris to confer with President Thieu and his advisers. —
1972 Moroccan King survives attack by his Air Force      ^top^
      One year after he survived an abortive coup against his rule, the Moroccan Air Force fires on the airliner taking King Hassan II back to Rabat. Several members of the Air Force would be court-martialed for their grievous error.
      Hassan, former chief of staff of the Moroccan army, ascended to his country's throne in 1961 upon the death of his father, King Muhammad V. In 1965, political unrest and economic difficulties in Morocco led Hassan to declare a state of emergency and assume full executive and legislative control. In the late 1960s, some authority was restored to the elected Moroccan parliament, but in 1970 he declared a second state of emergency. In 1971, he restored token powers to the parliament after a coup threatened his rule; although ultimate authority over his country's affairs remained in his hands.
      As king, Hassan pursued a neutralist foreign policy, receiving aid from both the West and from Communist nations. Unlike other Arab leader, Hassan also undertook a moderate policy in regard to Israel, and guaranteed the safety of the sizeable Jewish population in Morocco. In 1976, he attempted, largely successfully, to incorporate the former Spanish Sahara into Morocco. King Hassan's thirty-eight years of autocratic rule came to end with his death in 1999.
1972 African-American Methodist clergyman from Dominica, West Indies, Philip A. Potter, 51, is named general secretary of the World Council of Churches. Serving until 1984, Potter gave strong spiritual guidance to the work of the WCC.
1967 Vietnam: Tonkin Gulf Resolution challenged President Johnson's broad interpretation of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution is attacked in the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee by the Chairman, Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas, who feels that Johnson has no mandate to conduct the war on the present scale.
1966 Vietnam: Congress investigates antiwar demonstrators The House Un-American Activities Committee investigates US citizens who have given aid to the Viet Cong, with a view toward introducing legislation to make such activities illegal. Demonstrators disrupted the hearings and before it was over, more than 50 people were arrested for disorderly conduct. The Chairman of the subcommittee, Representative J. R. Pool (D-Texas) announced that the hearings had revealed that key leadership of groups supporting the Viet Cong were comprised of revolutionary, hard-core Communists.
1965 Six-day Watts riot ends      ^top^
      With the assistance of 20'000 National Guardsmen, a race riot in south-central Los Angeles, California, is suppressed after six days of violence, mass arrests, and property damage. On 11 August, racial tension in the city reached a breaking point after police brutally beat an African-American motorist suspected of drunken driving in the Watts section of Los Angeles.
      Widespread rioting, arson, and looting rapidly spread across largely African-American south-central LA and police were unable to suppress the rioters. The National Guard was called in. The riots had left thirty-four dead, 857 injured, over 2200 arrested, and property valued at $200 million destroyed. The Watts riot was the worst race riot in America to that date, but only two years later would be superseded by a race riot in Detroit, Michigan, that was to leave forty-three dead.
1964 Vietnam: General Khanh ousts General Minh as chief of state General Nguyen Khanh, elected president by the Military Council, ousts Duong Van Minh as South Vietnamese chief of state and installs a new constitution, which the US Embassy had helped to draft. Khanh said that he was not becoming a military dictator, but it was clear that he was now the chief power in the Saigon government. Within the week, student demonstrations against Khanh and the military government quickly turned into riots. Meanwhile, Henry Cabot Lodge, former ambassador to South Vietnam, went to Western Europe as a personal emissary of President Johnson to explain US policy in Vietnam and to obtain more support from allies. Lodge returned with pledges from West Germany, Holland, Belgium, Great Britain, and Spain to provide nonmilitary technical aid to South Vietnam, but none agreed to provide military support.
1963 Independence is restored to Dominican Republic.
1962 Argelia se convierte en miembro de la Liga Árabe.
1960 Britain grants independence to crown colony of Cyprus.
1960 Joseph Kittinger parachutes from balloon at 31'330 m.
1960 Republic of the Congo (later called Zaïre) forms.
1956 Adlai E. Stevenson is nominated as Democratic presidential candidate.
1955 Paul Robeson loses appeal over his passport      ^top^
      Famous entertainer and civil rights activist Paul Robeson loses his court appeal to try to force the Department of State to grant him a passport. The continued government persecution of Robeson illustrated several interesting points about Cold War America. Robeson was the most famous African-American entertainer in the world, renowned for his work on Broadway, in films, and his incredibly powerful bass-baritone singing voice. Beyond these dramatic talents, Robeson was also an extremely intelligent advocate of civil rights in the United States. He became so dismayed about segregation and racism in America that he left the country in 1928, and lived in Europe until the outbreak of World War II in 1939. During his time abroad, Robeson became enamored with the Soviet Union, particularly its very public disavowals of racism and discrimination.
      During World War II, when the United States was allied with the Russians against Hitler, Robeson's views were tolerated and he gave numerous performances to US troops around the world. After the war, as the Cold War developed, Robeson's very public statements in support of the Soviet Union began to cause problems. In 1950, he attempted to renew his passport so that he could travel abroad to fulfill contracts for singing and acting performances. The State Department insisted that Robeson sign an affidavit declaring that he was not a member of the Communist Party and that he was loyal to the United States. Robeson refused and filed suit in federal court. In August 1955, a federal judge ruled that the State Department was within its legal rights to refuse Robeson a passport. After the decision, Robeson declared that it was "rather absurd" that he was not "allowed to travel because of my friendship — open, spoken friendship — for the Soviet people and the peoples of all the world."
      Robeson was seen as a danger because he often interspersed his performances with comments about race relations in the United States. Before and after his performances, he gave numerous interviews condemning segregation and discrimination in America. For some US policymakers, who viewed America's poor record of race relations as the nation's "Achilles' heel" in terms of the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, having a well known African-American denounce segregation and praise the Russians was unacceptable. In 1958, Robeson finally won his court case and his passport was grudgingly restored. The damage to Robeson's career, however, was already done. He performed for a few more years, and then retired in the 1960s, although the FBI kept up its investigations of Robeson until his death in 1976.
1945 Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright, who was taken prisoner by the Japanese on Corregidor on 06 May 1942, is released from a POW camp in Manchuria by US troops.
1937 Harvard Traffic School Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, became the first school to institute graduate study courses in traffic engineering and administration.
1934 US ends occupation of Haiti (been there since 1915)
1934 William Beebe [29 July 1877 – 04 June 1962] and engineer Otis Barton, in the bathysphere they invented in 1930, descend to a record depth of 923 meters, in Bermuda waters. The spherical steel bathysphere had portholes and was suspended by a steel cable from a ship. Because of the danger of rupture of that cable, it was dangerous, and was supplanted in 1948 by the navigable bathyscaphe of Auguste Piccard [28 January 1884 – 24 March 1962]. US biologist, explorer, and writer on natural history, Beebe is the author of Jungle Days (1925), Pheasants, Their Lives and Homes (1926), Beneath Tropic Seas (1928), High Jungle (1949), The Edge of the Jungle (1950), Unseen Life of New York (1953), Half Mile Down (1951).
1923 Though its late founder wasn’t always the best friend of labor, Carnegie Steel establishes the eight-hour day for its workers.
1921 The Times of London exposes the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as a forgery, plagiarized from an anti-Napoleon work.      ^top^
      Regretfully, Mr. Henry Ford Snr. initiated a campaign of Jew-hate in 1920. His Book, "THE INTERNATIONAL JEW" WAS BASED MAINLY ON "THE PROTOCOLS'. However Mr. Ford completely retracted his views expressed in his book:

"To my great regret I learn that in the Dearborn Independent and in reprint pamphlets entitled, 'THE INTERNATIONAL JEW', there have appeared articles which induce the Jews to regard me as their enemy, promoting anti-Semitism.

"As a result of this survey I am deeply mortified that this journal, which is intended to be constructive and not destructive, has been made the medium for resurrecting exploded fictions, for giving currency to the so-called Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion, which have been demonstrated, as I learn, to be gross forgeries, and for contending that the Jews have been engaged in a conspiracy to control the capital and the industries of the world, besides laying at their door many offences against decency, public order and good morals...I deem it to be my duty as an honourable man to make amends for the wrong done to the Jews as fellow men and brothers, by asking their forgiveness for the harm which I have unintentionally committed, by retracting, as far as lies within my power the offensive charges laid at their door by these publications, and by giving them the unqualified assurance that henceforth they may look to me for friendship and good will...

"Had I appreciated even the general nature to say nothing of the details of these utterances, I would have forbidden their circulation without a moment's hesitation...This statement is made on my own initiative and wholly in the interest of right and justice, and is in accordance with what I regard as my solemn duty as a man and as a citizen."

What are the Protocols?

As many of our readers may not be familiar with this infamous forgery the following is a brief summary of its evil ingredients. The Protocols are set forth as the minutes of twenty-four secret sessions of "the innermost circle of the rulers of Zion". These fictitious minutes are thus laid down as twenty-four Protocols or master plan to enslave the world by the most dastardly and unscrupulous methods imaginable. here are a few examples:

  • "Our right lies in force. The word "right" is an abstract thought and proved by nothing. The word means no more than: Give me what I want in order that thereby I may have a proof that I am stronger than you." - Protocol 1. Article 12.
  • "The administrators, whom we shall choose from among the public, with strict regard to their capacities for servile obedience, will not be persons trained in the arts of government, and will therefore easily become pawns in our game in the hands of men of learning and genius who will be their advisors, specially bred and reared from early childhood to rule the affairs of the whole world."- Protocol 2. Article 2.
  • "In order to put public opinion into our hands we must bring it into a state of bewilderment by giving expression from all sides to so many contradictory opinions and for such length of time as will suffice to make the gym (Gentiles) lose their heads in the labyrinth and come to see that the best thing is to have no opinion of any kind in matters political, which is not given to the public to understand, because they are understood only by him who guides the public. This is the first secret."- Protocol 5. Article 10.
  • "The Press, which with a few exceptions that may be disregarded, is already entirely in our hands."- Protocol 7. Article 5.

How Did the Protocols Originate?

In 1901 a Russian official in the Chancery of the Synod of Moscow named Serge A. Niles published a strange work entitled, The Great in the Little and the AntiChrist as a Proximate Political Possibility. Nilus expressed the view that only the Holy Russian Empire could save the world from the rule of Antichrist. The idea behind the book was to bolster the absolute authority of the Czarist regime. In 1905 a second edition of the book appeared with one significant addition - the Protocols! Thus was born one of the most infamous documents ever published. And only Nilus himself ever claimed to have seen the original.

The Protocols Exposed as an Infamous Forgery

In August 1921 Mr. Phillip Graves, correspondent of the London Times in Constantinople came into the possession of a small book in a tattered condition. Such an insignificant incident may well have passed unnoticed and been swallowed into oblivion had not Mr. Graves recognized a sentence as being identical with one of the Protocols. Yet, THIS BOOK HAD THE NAME "JOLI" AS THE AUTHOR!

Mr. Graves compared the book written by Monsieur Joli with a copy of the Protocols and in it he found repeated word for word, paragraph for paragraph and page for page the text of the earlier book written by Joli. The only alteration was that instead of the word "Zion" Joli had written "France", and instead of "We the Jews" the original book had "The Emperor"!

The book written by Joli was a satire directed against Napoleon III and was entitled "Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu". IT HAD NOTHING WHATEVER TO DO WITH THE JEWS!

In three consecutive issues dated 16 August, 17 August, and 18 August, 1921 the London "Times" printed long extracts from the Protocols side by side with Joli's "Dialogue in Hell". Thus was the infamous forgery exposed as ONE OF THE MOST INSOLENT FORGERIES OF ALL TIME.

Count Heinrich Coudenhove-Kalergi in his book "ANTI-SEMITISM THROUGHOUT THE AGES" (English translation, Hutchinson, 1935) writes: "This plagiarism is an anti-Semitic forgery from the beginning to the end without any connection whatever with Jewish personalities, groups, organizations or conferences. The publication is in no wise, whether directly or indirectly, a product of the Jewish spirit, or Jewish tradition, or of Jewish sentiments and opinions.

"In the entire fraud committed against humanity which the Protocols represents, the Jews are merely innocent objects, while the anti-Semites were the guilty agents. Thousands of Jews have been massacred, maltreated, plundered and imprisoned in the Ukraine and in Germany on account of this forgery. At the same time many millions of non-Jews have been deceived by the Protocols, they have been induced to commit deeds and to utter words which they would most deeply regret were the facts of the forgery known to them. No book and no event in the history of modern anti-Semitism has played such an important part as this plagiarism; it constitutes the piece de resistance, the choice morsel of after-war anti-Semitism.

"It is, therefore, they duty of all decent men in the world, be they non-Jews or Jews, Anti-Semites or Philo-Semites, to work with all their might and see to it that this shameless lie, forgery and calumny disappears from the world.

"It ought to be made clear to all those who know the Protocols that the publication is a plagiarism of fatal world importance. The work of enlightenment is not only a duty to the calumniated Jews, but also to truth, for it is no exaggeration to say that the so called "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" are both one of the most insolent forgeries of all time and one of the meanest calumnies which has existed in human history."

Hitler knew only too well how to manipulate the masses with lies of great magnitude and he exploited the Protocols to the fullest extent. Four years after the publication of the warning contained in Count Kalergi's book the harvest of hatred against the Jews began in Europe, and the flames of the holocaust were not extinguished until six million innocent Jewish victims had perished.

The Law Steps In

Dr. A. Zander, editor of a Swiss Nazi organ, published a series of articles on the acceptability of the Protocols. But Swiss law offered redress and community leaders in that country determined to expose the fraudulent basis of the iniquitous document before a well-respected court of justice.

Trial began in Berne on 29 October 1934, the plaintiffs being Dr. J. Dreyfus-Brodsky, Dr. Marcus Cohen, and Dr. Marcus Ehrenpreis.

On 19 May, the Cantonal Court of Berne, after full investigation declared the Protocols to be forgeries, plagiarisms, and obscene literature and gave judgment in favor of the Cantonal Bernese Act. The Nazi, Dr. Zander, was fined.

At Grahamstown, South Africa, in August, 1934, the Court imposed fines totalling 1775 pounds ($4,500) on three men for concocting a modern version of the Protocols.

1915 I Guerra Mundial: El crucero inglés "Baralong" hunde el submarino alemán "U-27".
1914 Liege, Belgium, falls to the German army.
1912 Motion Picture Patents Company sued      ^top^
      The US government sues the Motion Picture Patents Company. A week later, the court ruled that the company could not claim exclusive rights to the machines used in movie cameras. The ruling, along with subsequent court cases, ended the effective monopoly of the company, formed in 1908 by the nine leading film companies. The Patents Company refused to let other companies use their patented film equipment and distributed films only to theater owners who agreed to their terms. Kodak agreed to sell raw film stock only to members of the company. In 1913, the government continued its anti-trust suits against the company, and within four years the company's power had dissolved.
1907 Muley Haffiz es proclamado sultán de Marruecos.
1898 Publicación en España del famoso artículo "Sin pulso", de Francisco Silvela, que inició la llamada "Literatura del desastre".
1898 Roller coaster patented
1896 Klondike gold discovered.      ^top^
     Gold is discovered in the Klondike of Canada's Yukon Territory (at Bonanza Creek, Alaska ?), setting off the Klondike Gold Rush.
      Sometime prospector George Carmack stumbles across gold while salmon fishing along the Klondike River in the Yukon. George Carmack's discovery of gold in that region sparked the last great western gold rush, but it was pure chance that he found it. In contrast to the discoverers of many of the other major American gold fields, Carmack was not a particularly serious prospector. He had traveled to Alaska in 1881 drawn by the reports of major gold strikes in the Juneau area, but failing to make a significant strike, he headed north into the isolated Yukon Territory. There he spent his days wandering the wilderness with the friendly Tagish Indians and fishing for salmon.
      On this day, Carmack and two Tagish friends were salmon fishing on Rabbit Creek, a tributary of the Klondike River. As he habitually did, Carmack occasionally stopped to swirl a bit of the river sand in his prospector's pan. He had seen a little gold, but nothing of particular note. At day's end, the men made camp along the creek, and Carmack said he spotted a thumb-sized nugget of gold jutting out from the creek bank. The two Tagish Indians later said that Carmack had been napping that evening and one of them found the nugget while washing a dishpan.
      Regardless, further investigation revealed gold deposits "lying thick between the flaky slabs of rock like cheese in a sandwich." Subsequent expeditions in the spring and summer of the following year turned up other sizeable gold deposits. In part, because the summer of 1897 was a slow one for news, the major mass-circulation newspapers played up the story of the gold strikes, sparking a nationwide sensation.
      In the years to come, as many as 50'000 eager gold seekers arrived in the Klondike-Yukon region. Few found any wealth, though their hardships and adventures inspired the highly romanticized Yukon tales of Jack London and the poems of Robert Service. Carmack did get rich, reportedly taking a million dollars worth of gold out of his Klondike claims and retiring to Vancouver. He died in 1922 at the age of 61, a wealthy and honored benefactor of the city.
1896 Se recibe en España la primera noticia de la nueva insurrección filipina, que terminará con el dominio español en aquellas islas.
1890 Census machines blamed for low count
      After six weeks of counting, the US Census Bureau announced that the current population of the United States was about 62.6 million. The public, however, had expected the population to exceed 75 million, and many were outraged and expressed distrust of the new automatic counting machines used for the first time in the 1890 census. However, the results of the system were not revised, and census officials estimated that the new system, invented by Herman Hollerith, had saved some $5 million in labor.
1864 Engagement at Guard Hill (Front Royal), Virginia
1863 Emancipation Proclamation signed
1863 La República Dominicana comienza una guerra contra España por la restauración de su soberanía.
1863 Union General William S. Rosecrans moves his army south from Tullahoma, Tennessee to attack Confederate forces in Chattanooga.
1863 Siege of Fort Wagner, Charleston Harbor, South Carolina continues
1861 Union and Confederate forces clash near Fredericktown and Kirkville, Missouri.
1861 US President Lincoln prohibits the states of the Union from trading with the seceding states of the Confederacy.
1858 Buchanan and Queen Victoria inaugurate transatlantic cable
      Across the Atlantic Ocean, US President James Buchanan and Queen Victoria exchanged introductory and complimentary messages to inaugurate the first transatlantic telegraph line. . However, the cable proved weak and the current insufficient, and by the beginning of September the telegraph line had ceased working
      The telegraph was first developed by Samuel F. B. Morse, an accomplished American painter who learned of a French inventor's idea of the electric telegraph in 1832. For the next twelve years, Morse worked to perfect a working telegraph instrument, and also composed Morse code, a set of signals that could represent language in telegraph messages. On 24 May 1844, inside the US Capitol, Morse inaugurated the world's first commercial telegraph line with a memorable message sent to a railroad station in Baltimore, Maryland: "What hath God wrought." Just a decade after the first line opened, over thirty thousand kilometers of telegraph cable crisscrossed the country. The rapid communication it made possible greatly aided American expansion, making railroad travel safer as it provided a boost to business conducted across the great distances of a growing United States.
      In 1854, American merchant Cyrus West Field conceived the idea of the telegraph cable, and secured a charter to lay a line across the Atlantic. Obtaining the aid of British and American naval ships, he made four unsuccessful attempts made beginning in 1857. In July of 1858, four British and American vessels — the Agamemnon, the Valorous, the Niagara, and the Gorgon — met in midocean for the fifth attempt. On 29 July, the Niagara and the Gorgon, with their load of cable, departed for Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, while the Agamemnon the Valorous embarked for Valentia, Ireland. By 05 August, the cable had been successfully laid, stretching 3000 km across the Atlantic at a depth often of more than 3000 m.
      After the 1858 failure, Field persisted in accomplishing what many thought to be an impossible undertaking, and following the interruption of the American Civil War, the Great Eastern succeeded in laying the first permanent telegraph line across the Atlantic Ocean in 1866. . Field later promoted other oceanic cables, including telegraph lines that stretched from Hawaii to Asia and Australia.
1841 Whigs riot at veto against Second Bank of US
      In 1841, former Whig ally President John Tyler vetoed a bill that would have established the Second Bank of the United States. The move sparked a riot outside the White House, as incensed — and drunk — members of the Whig party bombarded the White House with stones, fired their guns in the air and burned Tyler in effigy. In response to the outburst — which still stands as the most violent demonstration ever held outside the White House — the government formed the District of Columbia’s police force.
1829 In 1829, the original Siamese twins, Chang and Eng Bunker, arrived in Boston to be exhibited.
1812 Cowardly US general surrenders Detroit without a fight
      During the War of 1812, US General William Hull, 60, surrendered Fort Detroit without resistance to a smaller British force under General Issac Brock. Hull, a veteran of the American Revolution, had lost hope of defending the settlement after seeing the large English and Indian force gathering outside Detroit's walls. Hull was also preoccupied with the presence of his daughter and grandchildren inside the fort. Of his 2000-man army, most were militiamen, and General Brock allowed them to return home to their homes on the frontier. The regular US army troops were taken as prisoners to Canada.
      With the capture of Fort Detroit, Michigan was declared a possession of Great Britain and Shawnee chief Tecumseh was able to increase his raids against American positions on the Western frontier. On 17 September 1813, US General William Henry Harrison, the future president, recaptured Detroit. In 1814, Hull was court-martialed for cowardice and neglect of duty in surrendering the fort, and sentenced to die. However, because of Hull's service in the Revolution, President James Madison commuted his sentence.
1807 Le gaz d 'éclairage, obtenu à partir de la distillation du charbon est utilisé pour la première fois dans les rues de Londres. Le chimiste français Philippe Lebon avait " inventé " le gaz d'éclairage en 1787. L'Écossais William Murdock l'étendit à l'éclairage urbain.
1780 British decisively defeat American Patriots in Battle of Camden, SC
1777 France declares bankruptcy.
1777 Americans defeat British in Battle of Bennington, Vermont.
1773 Publicación del Breve de Clemente XIV que disuelve la Compañía de Jesús en todo el mundo.
1772 Quaker journal entry compassionate to horses and coachmen.
     Like many of the Society of Friends (Quakers), John Woolman resisted use of the "heathen" names of months or days. This particular date, the 16th of the 8th month of 1772 was a Sunday. Two months earlier Woolman had arrived in England to visit fellow Quakers. He made the arduous, six week trip in steerage, feeling that the ornaments carved on the main cabin were ostentatious and unnecessary.
      In England he refused to use the stage coaches even to send or receive his post. His entry for this day gives the reason: "...I have heard Friends say in several places that it is common for horses to be killed with hard driving, and that many others are driven till they grow blind. Post-boys pursue their business, each one to his stage, all night through the winter. Some boys who ride long stages suffer greatly in winter nights, and at several places I have heard of their being frozen to death. So great is the hurry in the spirit of this world, that in aiming to do business quickly, and to gain wealth, the creation at this day doth loudly groan."
      He spent no more time on his own trade than was necessary to maintain himself and his family in austere simplicity. The rest of his hours were spent in travels and meetings at which he urged Quakers to resist the slave trade and other abuses, such as the cruel labor practices forced on children. His influence toward abolition was great. Two decades after his death, the Quakers of America banned slave-holding among their members. Quaker concern also helped achieve the vote for women and to free children from harsh labor practices. The 16th of the 8th was almost the last entry in Woolman's journal. Two months later he was dead at 52. His journal, which modestly does not describe his own influences, is recognized as a masterpiece of American literature and unaffected simplicity of style.
WOOLMAN ONLINE: The Journal , The Journal (another site)
1570 Se establece la Inquisición en las colonias españolas de América, por cédula de esta fecha dada en Madrid.
1519 Tras deshacerse de sus naves, Hernán Cortes se adentra con sus hombres en territorio de México.
1513 Henry VIII of England and Emperor Maximilian defeat the French at Guinegatte, France, in the Battle of the Spurs.
TO THE TOP
Deaths which occurred on an August 16:
2002 Sabri al-Banna “Abu Nidal”, 65, found dead in his Baghdad apartment with multiple gunshot wounds. He was a Palestinian terrorist leader whose gang, since the mid-1970s, opposed Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Liberation Organization and murdered some of its leaders. Abu Nidal had been suffering from leukemia. Abu Nidal ("father of the struggle") was born in Jaffa in 1937. The family later moved to Nablus, and he left to organize opposition to the establishment of Israel. He masterminded the killings of both Jews and fellow Palestinians who opposed him. He is reported to run an international extortion racket running into millions of dollars, shaking down governments with threats of attacks. He has been accused of dealing in arms and of being a hit man for his various Arab backers. The chain-smoking schoolteacher-turned-terrorist has struck targets from Paris to Pakistan. His followers bombed US airliners, shot travelers in airports, machine-gunned sidewalk cafés and synagogues and blew up hotels. His most famous — but not most fatal — attacks were twin assaults on the Israeli airline El Al's ticket counters at Rome and Vienna airports on 27 December 1985, killing 18 wounding 120. — MORE ON ABU NIDAL'S TERRORISM
2002 Edward McBride, 37, drowns in the Arkansas River, with, in a bag and in his pockets, some 25 kg of goods he had just burglarized from a home in Tulsa, Oklahoma, fleeing from police who try to rescue him, but reach too late the spot, 40 meters from the river bank, where McBride sinks into 3 meters of water after calling for help.
2001 Kamal Musalem, 52, Ayman Musalem, 22, Aref Musalem, 50, Ahmed Musalem, 45, Tayal Furej, 36.      ^top^
     Members of the Musalem clan from the village of Talfit arrive at Rafidia hospital in the West Bank city of Nablus, after the body of taxi driver Kamal Musalem is brought there. Musalem was killed when Israelis in a passing car threw a rock at his taxi, hitting him and causing his vehicle to overturn.
      At the hospital, Musalem's relatives come face to face with Tayal Furej, 36, from the same village who had a history of conflict with the Musalems. The dead taxi driver's cousin, Ayman Musalem, draws a pistol and shoots Furej, the director of the Palestinian Ministry of Religious Affairs and a member of the high committee of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. Furej's companions fire their automatic weapons, killing Ayman, his father Aref Musalem, and another relative Ahmed Musalem. Six innocent bystanders are wounded in the cross fire.
1991 Shamu the Orca, 16, from respiratory failure.
1990 Clark Alan Jacobsen, martyr, arrested and killed in Liberia by government troops.
1987:: 156 as Northwest Flight 255 crashes at take off in Detroit.
Elvis stamp1977 Elvis Aron Presley, 42, of a heart attack.
     The death of the king of rock and roll brought legions of mourning fans to Graceland, his home in Memphis, Tennessee. Doctors claimed he died of a heart attack induced by barbiturates; although some later reports suggested suicide. Elvis Presley, born on 08 January 1935, recorded twenty-five golden records, nine more than the Beatles, which is why "Long Live the King" remains a fitting epitaph. Presley would become the subject of urban legends by being alleged sighted alive after his death. His picture would be put on a US postage stamp [>>>], after the public voted between a youthful picture and an older, fatter one.
     Elvis Presley Enterprises would turn Graceland, on Elvis Presley Boulevard, into a prosperous tourist attraction, together with the grave of Elvis (no last name needed), the jet airplanes he owned, and a number of related restaurants, shops and museums, not to mention licensed products and memorabilia.
     Among other tributes for the 25th anniversary of his death was made a toast portrait of Elvis.
1973 Fulgencio Batista, dictador cubano
1973 Selman A. Waksman, microbiólogo estadounidense de origen ruso, descubridor de la estreptomicina. Premio Nobel en 1952.
1963 Joan Kathleen Harding Eardley, Scottish painter born in 1921. — MORE ON EARDLEY AT ART “4” AUGUST — Salmon Net Posts
1948 Babe Ruth, 53, baseball legend, a candy bar bears his name.
1920 Norman Lockyer, editor of Nature, discoverer of helium in the Sun.
1916 Umberto Boccioni, Italian futurist painter and sculptor born on 19 October 1882. — MORE ON BOCCIONI AT ART “4” AUGUST — LINKS — Study of a Female Face — Street Noises Invade the House — States of Mind I: Those who Leave — States of Mind II: Those who Stay — The City Rises
1910 Pedro Montt, presidente de Chile.
1893 Jean Martin Charcot, neurólogo francés.
1888 John Stith Pemberton, estadounidense creador de la Coca-Cola.
1864 John Chambliss, Confederate General      ^top^
      Confederate General John Chambliss is killed during a cavalry charge at Deep Bottom, Virginia—one of the sieges of Petersburg. Union General Ulysses S. Grant had bottled the army of Confederate General Robert E. Lee behind a perimeter that stretched from Petersburg to the Confederate capital at Richmond, 30 km north. By June 1864, the armies had settled into trench warfare, with little movement of the lines.
      In August, Grant sought to break the stalemate by attacking the Southern defenses near Richmond. In an attempt to regain control of a section of trenches breached by the Yankees, the Confederates counterattacked, and Chambliss was killed. His body was recovered by a former West Point classmate, Union General David Gregg, who made a surprising discovery: a detailed map of the Richmond defenses. Gregg gave the plan to Union topographical engineers, who then looked for a way to copy and distribute the map through the army's command structure. Using a new photographic technique known as Margedant's Quick Method, which did not require a camera, the engineers traced Chambliss's map and laid it over a sheet of photographic paper. The paper was then exposed to the sun's rays, which darkened the paper except under the traced lines. The result was a mass-produced negative of the map, which was distributed to all Union officers in the area within 48 hours. It may not have helped the Union capture Richmond—that would take another seven months—but it may have reduced casualties by preventing foolhardy attacks on well-defended positions.
1837 William Daniell, British painter born in 1769. — LINKS — Camoes Grotto, Macau (colored engraving)
1836 Parseval, mathematician
1835 Jean-Baptiste Mallet, French painter born in 1759 — Young French Marquise in Exile in Lausanne
1819 Eleven persons who want reform, in the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester, England: troops charged through a peaceful crowd assembled to hear speakers demanding parliamentary reform. In the aftermath, the troops were praised, the speakers were arrested and condemned to prison, and the reporters who published the event suffered the same penalty.
1727 Jakob van Waltskapelle, Dutch artist born in May 1644.
1708 Michel Corneille des Gobelins, French artist born on 29 September 1642.
1705 Jacob Bernoulli, 51, mathematician who was the first to use the term integral. He studied the catenary, the curve of a suspended string. He was an early user of polar coordinates and discovered the isochrone.
1665 Pieter Janszoon Zaenredam (or Saenredam), Dutch painter who was born on 9 June 1597.— MORE ON ZAENREDAM AT ART “4” AUGUST — LINKS — Interior of the Church of St Bavo in Haarlem — Interior of the Church of St Odulphus at Assendelft, seen from the Choir to the West — The Old Town Hall of Amsterdam
1532 John the Constant,      ^top^
    At 17 he became co-ruler of a German state with his brother Frederick III. He declared in favor of the Reformation and, in 1526, joined the League of Torgau, hindering the agitation of the followers of the old faith and placing his co-reformers in a position to form a unanimous party at the Diet of Spires that year. He was a leader of the princes who protested the measures taken by the Catholic-dominated Diet of Spires in 1529 (thus becoming one of the first to be named a “Protestant.” He signed the Augsburg Confesssion (1530) and helped organize the Schmalkaldic League (1530-32).
Births which occurred on an August 16:
1930 Ted Hughes England, poet laureate (1984- )
1928 Eduardo Cote Lamus, poeta y político colombiano.
1923 Simon Peres, político israelí.
1920 Charles Bukowski, US poet and novelist.
1923 Shimon Peres, Israeli Prime Minister, later relatively dovish Foreign Minister in coalition cabinet presided by his archrival, alleged war criminal Ariel Sharon.
1913 Menachem Begin Israeli PM (1977-83, Nobel 1978) 1913 - Menachem Begin (Israeli Prime Minister: signed peace treaty w/Egypt's President Anwar Sadat [1979])
1906 Franz Josef II prince of Liechtenstein (1938- )
1904 Wendell Stanley biochemist, first to crystallize a virus (Nobel '46)
1902 Georgette Heyer England, novelist (Friday's Child)
1897 Robert Ringling, circus master.
1894 George Meany NYC, labor leader, first president of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.
      Meany was originally the head of the AFL and was named president of the AFL-CIO after the merger in 1955. However, he maintained a stiff cordiality with the other labor leaders, including Walter Reuther, president of the CIO. In 1957, Meany expelled Jimmy Hoffa’s Teamsters Union after disclosures of corruption and labor racketeering were made about the union. Shortly afterward, Meany also succeeded in dismissing Reuther from the federation’s executive board. This action quickly prompted the withdrawal of the United Automobile Workers (UAW), the automotive industry’s largest union, from the AFL-CIO. The UAW had traditionally been aligned with the CIO and chose to remain loyal to Reuther. The UAW, in fact, did not rejoin the AFL-CIO until after Meany’s retirement.
1892 Harold Foster, autor de historietas estadounidense.
1888 Rey Pastor, mathematician.
1886 Angel Zárraga, Mexican painter who died on 23 September 1946. — MORE ON ZARRAGA AT ART “4” AUGUST —  LINKS — Ex Voto: San Sebastián
1884 Hugo Gernsback sci-fi writer (1960 Hugo)
1877 Augusto Giacometti, Swiss artist who died on 09 July 1947.
1874 Arthur Meighen Canada, PM of Canada (1920,1,6)
1860 Jules Laforgue Uruguay, French symbolist poet, noted for his ironic, pessimistic point of view and his innovations in free verse. Notable among his works are Les complaintes (1885), L'imitation de Notre-Dame la Lune (1886), and Le concile féerique (1886). Laforgue's fresh imagery, loosely woven style, and coinage of new words made him an important influence on 20th-century poets.. He died in 1887 — LAFORGUE ONLINE: Les Complaintes — Les Complaintes — Imitation de Notre-Dame la Lune —
1852 Adolf von Schlatter, Swiss Protestant New Testament scholar. His 1921 History of Christ maintained that the success of any systematic theology had to be based on a foundation of solid biblical exegesis.
1842 Rosanes, mathematician
1638 Nicolás Malebranche, sabio francés.
1837 Tilly, mathematician
1821 Arthur Cayley , mathematician whose most important work would be in the algebra of matrices and in non-euclidean and n-dimensional geometry.
1815 Giovanni Melchior Bosco (St. John Bosco), Italian educator. Poverty among the children in the city of Turin led him in 1859 to establish the Society of St. Francis de Sales (the Salesians). Bosco was canonized by Pius XI in 1934.
1773 Francoeur, mathematician
1658 Jan Frans van Zoon, Flemish painter who died in 1718.
1645 Jean de La Bruyère (born in August 1645, exact day uncertain), satiric moralist. He died in the night of 10 May 1696.
— Né à Paris, Jean de La Bruyère était de famille bourgeoise. Il fréquenta le collège des Oratoriens, puis fit des études de droit à Orléans. Devenu avocat, il acheta une charge de trésorier des Finances (1673) puis mena à Paris une vie modeste et simple. En 1684, grâce à Bossuet, il fut nommé précepteur du duc de Bourbon, petit-fils du Grand Condé, et, à partir de 1686, il en devint le secrétaire. Ce sont ces charges qui lui procurèrent l'occasion d'observer les mœurs de la cour.
      De ses observations, il tira les Caractères de Théophraste traduits du grec, avec les caractères ou les mœurs de ce siècle. Publiée en 1688, cette œuvre connut un vif succès. Lors de la querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, La Bruyère prit parti pour les Anciens, défenseurs des valeurs de l'Antiquité et du classicisme. Il s'attira d'ailleurs l'hostilité des Modernes par certaines des remarques acerbes figurant dans les Caractères. Son élection à l'Académie française (1693), après deux échecs, fut un triomphe pour les Anciens; dans son discours de réception, il brava à la fois les Modernes et les défenseurs de Corneille, en réservant ses louanges à La Fontaine, Bossuet, Boileau et Racine, qui sont tous des Anciens. La Bruyère mourut subitement dans la nuit du 10 au 11 mai 1696, à Versailles, d'une attaque d'apoplexie.
      Les Caractères se présentent comme un recueil de maximes et de portraits, destinés à dépeindre les mœurs de l'époque. En son temps, La Bruyère pensait donner de l'importance à son œuvre en la présentant comme inspirée par Théophraste, mais à nos yeux elle surpasse celle de son modèle.
      L'art de La Bruyère est classique par excellence!; il exposa, après Montaigne, Pascal et La Fontaine, la doctrine de l'«imitation créatrice», où «tout est dit, et l'on vient trop tard depuis plus de sept mille ans qu'il y a des hommes, et qui pensent». Il esquissa aussi, dès le premier chapitre, l'essentiel de la doctrine classique : nécessité de travail, croyance en un goût absolu pour retranscrire les idées et les mots avec naturel et justesse, imitation des Anciens (les auteurs de l'Antiquité), liens étroits entre l'esthétique et la morale. Il résuma en ces quelques mots ses idées sur l'écriture classique : «C'est un métier que de faire un livre».
      Les maximes étaient alors un genre à la mode; celles de La Bruyère font d'ailleurs écho à celles de La Rochefoucauld, puisque les unes et les autres présentent, de façon laconique et brève, des commentaires sur les mœurs. Avec les Caractères, La Bruyère poursuivait un double objectif : dépeindre ses contemporains d'après nature et, par là, les aider à se corriger de leurs défauts, mais aussi saisir l'universalité de la nature humaine.
      L'œuvre comprend seize chapitres, «Des ouvrages de l'esprit», «Du mérite personnel», «Des femmes», «Du cœur», «De la société et de la conversation», «Des biens de fortune», «De la ville», «De la cour», «Des grands», «Du souverain et de la république», «De l'homme», «Des jugements», «De la mode», «De quelques usages», «De la chaire», «Des esprits forts». Les principaux thèmes abordés, on le voit, sont la critique littéraire, la peinture de mœurs (La Bruyère dénonce la superficialité des mœurs de la cour), la critique sociale et politique (il s'en prend à l'organisation du pays et fustige une société de privilèges), mais le thème prédominant reste la dénonciation du faux-semblant, sous tous ses aspects : pour ce moraliste, il n'était pire chose que la manie du masque et l'incapacité d'être vrai.
      Les portraits de La Bruyère sont le travail d'un fin observateur, qui analyse les hommes avec justesse et les dépeint avec une ironie mordante tout en dénonçant les travers du temps. Plus vivants que ses maximes, ils présentent non des individus mais des types humains, où le public de l'époque tenta de reconnaître un certains nombre de contemporains. Prudent, La Bruyère se défendait, peut-être à juste titre, d'avoir voulu peindre des personnes particulières. Il n'en reste pas moins que ces types sont si vivants et si criants de vérité que le soupçon des contemporains s'explique, et que la tentation est forte de chercher les modèles réels de cette amusante galerie de portraits. Il est possible aussi que le dessin d'un type plutôt que d'une personne donnée, en favorisant la généralisation, ait paru à l'auteur plus édifiant moralement.
      Le style des Caractères est précis, finement ciselé, et la présentation des portraits varie constamment (anecdotes, dialogues, etc.)!; le trait dominant autour duquel s'organise le caractère est toujours indiqué soit en début, soit en fin.
— L'élection de La Bruyère à 1'Académie française fit faire cet injuste quatrain, inspiré sans doute par la rancune d'un personnage qui s'était reconnu dans les Caractères: “Quand La Bruyère se présente, / Pourquoi faut-il crier haro? / Pour faire un nombre de quarante / Ne fallait-il pas un zéro?”
— “La Bruyère, le seul dont dix lignes lues au hasard ne déçoivent jamais.” — Jules Renard, dans son Journal au 28 Aug 1908
LA BRUYERE ONLINE: LA BRUYÈRE ONLINE:
  • Les Caractères de Théophraste traduits du grec; avec Les Caractères ou Les Moeurs de ce Siècle (1688), a masterpiece of French literature.
  • Les Caractères ou Les Moeurs de ce Siècle
  • Oeuvres de La Bruyère, Tome I , Tome II, Tome III-1, Tome III-2
    • 1592 Wybrand Simonszoon Geest “l'Aigle de Frise”, Dutch artist who died in 1659.
    Holidays Cyprus : Independence Day (1960) / Dominican Republic : Restoration Day (1963) / Liechtenstein : Prince Franz-Josef II Day / Vermont : Bennington Battle Day (1777)
    Religious Observances old RC : St Joachim, father of Mary, confessor / RC : St Stephen, apostle of Hungary (opt) / Santos Esteban de Hungría, Eleuterio, Cosme, Basilia, Arsacio, Roque y Teodoro.
    Thoughts for the day: “Fame is proof that people are gullible.” [Humans, yes, but are gulls gullible? Would they believe a canard?]
    “You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.” — Henry Ford, US auto manufacturer (1863~1947) [political campaigners, please note!]
    “You can build a reputation on what you are going to do, a reputation of unfaithfulness to your promises.” — me, international sayings manufacturer (1930~2002+x)
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