Deaths which
occurred on a 21 August:
2002 Adelina Domingues, who was recognized as the oldest living
person in the US, dies at the age of 114. Domingues died in her sleep
Wednesday afternoon 21 August 2002, in San Diego at Brighton Place, the
nursing home where Domingues lived since 1995. Though Domingues had remained
physically active and mentally sharp, her health had declined over the
last month. Domingues was born in the Cape Verde Islands and insisted
her birth year was 1887, which would have made her 115 and the oldest
person in the world. But a search turned up a baptism date of 1888. The
Guinness Book of Records ruled she was 114 with a birthdate of 19 February
1888.
The oldest known living person is Kamato
Hongo of Japan, who was born on 16 September 1887.
John McMorran of Florida is now the oldest
person in the US. Born on 19 June 1889, he is 113.
Born to an Italian sea captain and a Cape
Verdean woman, Domingues was 18 when she married Jose Domingues, a whaling
captain. The couple moved to New Bedford, Mass., in 1907. They raised
four children while Adelina worked as a seamstress. After her husband
died in 1950, Domingues moved to Southern California to be near her son
Frank, who died in Palm Desert in 1998. This was devastating to her,
who lost her first son when he was 2 and another son and a daughter when
they were teenagers. She asked why she would still be alive and have
to bury her last child. That was the hardest thing for her, to still
be alive and having buried all four of her children and her husband and
brothers and sisters.
Domingues lived on her own until she was
107. She voted well into her 100s, and often wrote admiring letters to
Ronald Reagan. She was quite opinionated, very clear in her wants and
needs. Domingues herself never tried to offer a secret for her longevity,
though she ate a diet rich in fresh fruits and vegetables, and abstained
from alcohol and tobacco. She never took any credit for anything she
achieved in life. She always gave credit to God and to his plan and purpose
in life. Domingues is survived by six grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
2001 Maria A. Caraveo, 36, and her daughters, Sharon Denise Mar, 13;
Kelsey Idette Mar, 10; and Nerissa Aileen Mar, 9, each shot in the
head and chest while in a car and the body dragged into a cornfield near
Guadalajara. The bodies, in swimsuits, would be found the next morning
near the abandoned car, with dozens of 9 mm shell casings lying next
to towels, empty soft-drink bottles and pairs of flip-flops. The children
were US citizens from Texas, and the mother a permanent legal resident
of the US, from the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. .
1995 Chandrasekhar,
mathematician — Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, astrofísico
estadounidense originario de la India, Premio Nobel de Física.
1993 Kasdi Merbah, ancien Premier ministre d'Algérie et ex-chef
de la Sécurité militaire, son frère, son fils, et 2 gardes du corps,
assassinés à Bordj El-Bahri,. Alger.
1986 1746 persons, by toxic gas from Lake Nios volcanic eruption
in Cameroon.
1983 Benigno “Ninoy” Simeon Aquino Jr., 50, the most
serious challenger to Ferdinand Marcos’ dictatorship of the Philippines,
gunned down by Marcos agents as he deplanes at Manila Airport, back from
exile in the US. to campaign for the presidency in an election Marcos
had promised. Born on 27 November 1932, Aquino had been the chief opposition
leader during the era of martial law in the Philippines (1972–81) under
Marcos. The assassination only increased opposition to Marcos, and Benigno's
widow, Maria Corazon (Cojuangco) Aquino, 50, daughter of one of the largest
landowners and manufacturers in the Philippines. became its leader, overthrowing
Marcos on 25 February 1986. She served a 6-year term as president, unable
to effect needed reforms.
1971 George Jackson murdered
1964 Palmiro Togliatti, secretario general del PCI.
1947 Ettore Bugatti,
French car manufacturer. ^top^
He specialized in racing and luxury
automobiles. His factory in Alsace turned out some of the most
expensive cars ever produced. The best-known Bugatti car was
Type 41, known as the “Golden Bugatti” or “La Royale.” It was
produced in the 1920s, meticulously constructed and inordinately
expensive — only a few were ever built. After Bugatti’s death,
the firm failed to survive, at least in part because Ettore’s
eldest son and chosen successor died before Bugatti himself.
|
1943 Henrik Pontoppidan,
86, Danish realist writer. ^top^
He had shared with Karl Gjellerup
the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1917 for "his authentic descriptions
of present-day life in Denmark." Pontoppidan's novels and short
stories — informed with a desire for social progress but despairing,
later in his life, of its realization — present an unusually
comprehensive picture of his country and his epoch. |
1940 Trotsky, from wounds inflicted
by assassin the day before ^top^
In Mexico on 20 August, exiled
Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky was fatally wounded by an
ice-axe-toting assassin in Mexico City. The assassin —
Ramón Mercader — was a Catalan Communist and probable agent
of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
Trotsky, a Marxist born of Russian-Jewish
parents in 1879, was first arrested for revolutionary activities
in 1898. Two years later, he was exiled to Siberia, but in 1902
he escaped to England using a forged passport under the name
of Leon Trotsky (his original name was Lev Davidovich Bronstein).
In London, he collaborated with fellow Russian revolutionary
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Expelled from several countries because
of his radicalism, he lived in Switzerland, Paris, and New York
City before returning to Russia at the outbreak of the Revolution
in 1917.
Trotsky played a leading role
in the Bolshevik's seizure of power, and he was appointed Lenin's
secretary of foreign affairs. In 1924 Lenin died and was succeeded
by Joseph Stalin, who distrusted Trotsky and his calls for a
continuing revolution that would inevitably result in the dismantling
of the Soviet state. In 1927, Trotsky was expelled from the
Communist party, and in 1929 was ordered to leave the USS.R.
He lived in Turkey, France, and Norway, and in absentia was
found guilty of treason during Stalin's purges of his political
foes. Settling with his family in a suburb of Mexico City in
1939, he survived several assassination attempts before falling
prey to a Spanish Communist on August 20, 1940. He dies from
his wounds the next day. |
1936 los defensores del cuartel de Simancas, en Gijón, tras una
heroica resistencia de un mes, durante la Guerra Civil española:
1932 Lorenzo Coullaut y Valera, escultor e ilustrador español.
1927 William
Burnside , mathematician who wrote the first treatise on groups
in English and was the first to develop the theory of groups from a modern
abstract point of view.
1926 Stuart Pratt Sherman, co-editor of The
Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia
in 18 Volumes
1909 Three drivers, at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, before
201000 spectators. Meanwhile Barney Oldfield breaks five world records
in his Benz before the three-day meet is ended early.
|
On
an 21 August: 
