2002:: 85 soldiers in crash of Russian military helicopter, coming from Mosdok, Ingushetia, overloaded with 132 soldiers, including 5 crew members (all 5 survive). The Mi-26 — the heaviest and most powerful transport helicopter in the world, designed to carry 82 persons — goes down with an engine on fire, shot down by a Zenith anti-aircraft gun of Chechen patriots, into a Russian-laid minefield near the Russian base at Khankala, Chechnya. Some of the dead are blown up by mines as they flee the burning helicopter.
2001 Samir Abu Zeid, Palestinian activist, his daughter Inez, 7, and son Suleiman, 5, when their their home in the town of Rafah, Gaza Strip, is hit, during an exchange of fire, by an Israeli rocket (according to the Palestinians) or a Palestinian mortar shell falling short of its target (according to the first Israeli version) or a bomb which Samir was preparing in his yard (the final Israeli version, the most likely one). This brings the al-Aqsa intifada body count to 575 Palestinians and 152 Israelis.
2001 Muhammad Arrar, 13, Palestinian shot in the chest by Israeli soldiers patrolling the Israel-Egypt border in the southern Gaza Strip, who were firing back at Palestinian militants throwing grenades and fired rifles at them.
2001 Moeen Abu Lawi, 38, Palestinian, shot in the neck by Israeli soldiers enforcing the blockade of Nablus, West Bank, from where Lawi was returning after having sneaked in to buy books for his shop in a neighboring community.
1991 Gavin Cato, 7, Black, and Yankel Rosenbaum, 29, Jewish. Rioting erupts in the Brooklyn NY neighborhood of Crown Heights after Gavin Cato is struck and killed by the car driven by Yosef Lifsh, a Jew from the ultra-Orthodox Lubavitch community. Three hours later, a gang of Blacks fatally stabs Rosenbaum, a rabinnical student. The violence rages over the next two days — including 188 injured and angry crowds breaking windows, shouting “Heil Hitler!” and burning the Israeli flag. A grand jury would decline to charge Lifsh, who would move to Israel. Lemrick Nelson Jr., 16, Black, would be charged with killing Rosenbaum but acquitted in state court. In federal court, he would be convicted of violating Rosenbaum's civil rights and be sentenced to 20 years in prison, along with Charles Price, another Black, who was videotaped provoking the rioters. But, on 07 January 2002, the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals would overturn their convictions, saying that the trial judge's efforts to secure an unbiased jury were unconstitutional and the defendants actually wound up with a juror who had shown bias during jury selection) and order a new trial before a properly chosen jury.
1980: 301 persons in plane crash of Saudi Arabian Lockheed Tristar, on landing at Riyadh
1978:: 422 moviegoers, in an arson fire at a cinema in Iran
1977 Julius (Groucho) Marx, 86, comedian (Marx Brothers)
| 1958 The Packard car.
^top^ The production of the elegant Packard line ends, soon after Packard’s acquisition of Studebaker. Studebaker-Packard attributes the decision to lagging luxury car sales. Many wondered why Packard, with its reputation for high-quality cars and knowledgeable management, would buy the debt-ridden Studebaker Company. Studebaker's management, not Packard's, took over after the merger. |
1955 Some 200 by floods in the US Northeast.
| 1942: 3600 Allied Dieppe raiders
and some Germans. ^top^ During World War II, General John H. Roberts leads an Allied force of some 7000 men carry out a large daytime raid against German positions at the French seaport of Dieppe. Aided by tanks and aircraft, the commando force — made up of approximately 5000 Canadians, 2000 British soldiers, and a handful of American and Free French troops — gain a foothold on the beach in the face of a furious German defense. During nine hours of fighting, the Allies fail to destroy most of their targets, and lose 3600 men, 106 aircraft, a destroyer, thirty-three landing craft, and thirty tanks. The Dieppe raid would provide information valuable for planning the successful Allied landings in Northern Africa, Sicily, and Normandy. |
 1936
Federico García Lorca, 38, Spanish poet and dramatist,
summarily executed. ^top^He is shot without trial, in the night of 19~20 August, shortly after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, by Franco's troops after being forced to dig his own grave, in the city where he had grown up, Granada, to which he had fled from Madrid is July. [The Falange has no need of poets?] Born on 05 June 1898, García Lorca was noted for his poems of death and for his trilogy of folk dramas Bodas de Sangre (1933), Yerma (1934), and La Casa de Bernarda Alba ( June 1936). His father made him study law, but Frederico abandoned it to study music, for which he was quite gifted, literature, and painting. In 1918 he published a prose book about a trip in Castile: Impresiones y Paisajes. As a student at the University of Madrid, he became known as a poet who said that verse is made to be recited, not laid dead in a book. García Lorca became friends with such contemporaries as painter Salvador Dali, filmmaker Luis Buñuel, and poet Rafael Alberti, and met older ones, such as poet Juan Ramón Jiménez. Eventually García Lorca did publish Libro de Poemas (1921), Primera Canciones (1936), Canciones (1927). His first play, El Maleficio de la Mariposa, closed after one night in 1920. He wrote Poema del Cante Jondo in 1922, Romancero Gitano in 1927. García Lorca had his first success in the theater in 1927 in Barcelona with the poetic and romantic drama Mariana Pineda, with scenery by Salvador Dali. The first public exhibition of García Lorca's drawings was held in 1927 in Barcelona. In 1929-1930 García Lorca made a trip to Cuba and to the US and wrote Poeta en Nueva York. Then he wrote the poems of Diván del Tamarit, the retabillos (puppet plays) Los Títeres de Cachiporra and Retabillo de Don Cristóbal. The inspiration for Bodas de Sangre came from a news item: a bride had fled on her wedding day with her secret lover, and groom and lover killed each other. Lorca makes pawns of fate out of the characters, trapped in a conflict between passion and civilization's code. Yerma, is about a childless woman who kills her sterile husband. La Casa de Bernarda Alba, almost entirely in prose, is about four hateful and lustful sisters who emprison their mother in a house of mourning. GARCIA LORCA ONLINE: Obras Completas — |
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| Los caballos negros son. Las herraduras son negras. Sobre las capas relucen manchas de tinta y de cera. Tienen, por eso no lloran, de plomo las calaveras. Con el alma de charol vienen por la carretera. [from Romance de la Guardia Civil: they are riding toward a gypsy village.] |
A las cinco de la tarde. Eran las cinco en punto de la tarde. Un niño trajo la blanca sábana a las cinco de la tarde. Una espuerta de cal ya prevenida a las cinco de la tarde. Lo demás era muerte y sólo muerte a las cinco de la tarde. [from Lamento por Ignacio Sánchez Mejía, a bullfighter friend who died in 1934 from a goring} |
1918 Roger Joseph Jourdain, French artist born on 11 December 1845.
1905 William Adolphe Bouguereau, French painter born on 30 November 1825. — MORE ON BOUGUEREAU AT ART “4” AUGUST — LINKS — Self Portrait — The Broken Pitcher — Love's Resistance — Dance — Fraternal Love — Mother — Nymphs — Birth of Venus — Rest — Seated Nude — Standing Angel — Bathers — Bohémienne — Destitute Family (Charity) — Nymphs and Satyr — The Education of Bacchus — Admiration
1895 John Wesley Hardin, one of the bloodiest killers of the Old West, is murdered in a saloon in El Paso, Texas, by off-duty policeman John Selman, who was under threat by Hardin for having arrested his girl friend. An El Paso jury would acquit Selman of the murder.
| 1862 Settlers, killed by Dakotas
bypassing Fort Ridgely ^top^ On the third day of the Dakota (Sioux) uprising in Minnesota, warriors debate whether they should attack a garrison inside of Fort Ridgely. Concluding that the fort was too strong, the Dakota moved on to the settlement of New Ulm, killing settlers along the way. The uprising began when the Dakota bands were pushed to the limit during a summer in which their crops were destroyed by insects and many families faced starvation. Attempts to get local merchants to extend them credit failed, and promised provisions from the Federal government were not forthcoming. This came after years of white settlement had whittled the Dakota territory down to a few small, temporary reservations. The uprising exploded on 17 August when some young Dakota men killed members of a nearby white family. Knowing that the tribe would be blamed for the atrocity, the Dakota, led by Taoyateduta (also known as Little Crow), began attacking local farms and killing settlers. A force of 46 soldiers was dispatched to head off the Dakota, but they were ambushed along the way, and more than half were killed. The Dakota next headed to the fort, where they found less than 50 soldiers and nearly 200 frightened settlers taking refuge in a cluster of buildings, as the fort had no stockade. On the morning of 19 August the warriors conferred in full view of the garrison and refugees. After deciding that the fort was too strong, the warriors attacked the nearby German community of New Ulm, killing 17 townspeople. The uprising would last for two more months before Union troops subdued the rebellion. More than 500 whites were killed and 2'000 Indians captured. On 26 December 1862, 38 Dakota warriors were hanged for their participation in the uprising. |
1782 Francesco de Mura, Italian painter born on 21 April 1696: — LINKS — Ecce Homo — Self Portrait — The Madonna and Child with the Infant St. John
1692 Five Salem "witches," hanged in Salem, Massachusetts after being convicted of the crime of witchcraft. Fourteen more people are executed that year and 150 others are imprisoned.
1665 Pierre Antoine Lemoyne, French artist born in 1605.
| 1662 Blaise
Pascal, 39, French mathematician, writer, religious
philosopher, and physicist. ^top^ The son of a judge in the French tax court, the teenage Pascal invented a calculating device to help his father's tax computations. The counting device relied on a series of wheels divided into 10 parts each, representing the integers 0-9. The wheels, which were connected by gears and turned by a stylus, kept track of sums as numbers were added and subtracted. PASCAL ONLINE: |
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1646 Francesco Furini, Florentine painter born in 1604. — MORE ON FURINI AT ART “4” AUGUST — LINKS — St John the Evangelist — Lot and his Daughters — Judith and Holofernes
1493 Frederick III Innsbruck Austria, German Emperor (1440-1493)
0440 Saint Sixtus III Pope
-14 -BC- Octavian [Augustus], 48, Roman general
