CURRENT UPDATES: TODAY–2 TO TODAY+2
<< Aug 24|         HISTORY “4” “2”DAY         |Aug 26 >>
Events, deaths, births, of AUG 25
[For Aug 25 Julian go to  Gregorian date: 1583~1699: Sep 04 — 1700s: Sep 05 — 1800s: Sep 06 — 1900~2099: Sep 07]
ARCHIVE   ALL FOR 020825     CURRENT DAY in HISTORY, ART, etc.
IF SOMETHING'S WRONG HERE, TRY MIRROR 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, or 19
On an August 25:
2000 On the NASDAQ, high-tech firm Emulex Corp. (EMLX) stock falls $43 during the day, from its previous close of 113-1/16, on false news posted on the Internet by Internet Wire and repeated by Bloomberg and Dow Jones. Trading in the stock is stopped. It resumes after authoritative denials, and EMLX regains most of its loss, closing at 105-3/4. Mark Jakob, the author of the phony press release, would be sentenced to nearly four years in prison for wire and securities fraud.
1999 Chechnya war:      ^top^
Russian troops occupy villages abandoned by retreating fighters around Shamil Basayev, Russian and Dagestani units clearing the area of mines and snipers, Russian tank destroyed by a mine
Chechnya complains that Russia staged two air raids against Chechen targets, warns that Moscow may be starting a new war against the breakaway republic; women and children are reported to leaving areas hit by Russian aircraft
Russian Defense Ministry spokesmen in Dagestan confirms air raids against Chechnya, Russian Defense Minister Sergeyev in Moscow denies Chechnya was attacked — http://www.cdi.org/issues/Europe/aug.html
1996 Dow Jones Industrial Average at a record 3652.09, soon beaten, as stock prices would continue higher until the end of the decade.
1991 Thousands of abortion foes rallied at a stadium in Wichita, Kan., where six weeks of anti-abortion protests led by Operation Rescue resulted in more than 2600 arrests.
1990 UN security council authorizes military action against Iraq
1989 Voyager 2 makes its closest approach to Neptune (0400 GMT)
1987 Dow Jones industrial stock avg reaches record 2722.42
1983 US & USSR sign $10 billion grain pact
1981 The US spacecraft Voyager 2 came within 107'000 km of Saturn's cloud cover, sending back pictures of and data about the ringed planet.
1971 Vietnam: 173rd Airborne Brigade departs Vietnam      ^top^
      US 173rd Airborne Brigade, among the first US ground units sent to Vietnam, ceases combat operations and prepares to redeploy to the United States as part of Nixon's troop withdrawal plan.
      As the redeployment commenced, the communists launched a new offensive to disrupt the upcoming General Assembly elections in South Vietnam. The height of the new offensive occurred from 28 August to 30 August, when the Communists executed 96 attacks in the northern part of South Vietnam. US bases also came under attack at Lai Khe, Cam Ranh Bay, and other areas. Nixon's troop reduction plans were supposedly tied to the level of enemy activity on the battlefield, but once they began, very little attention was paid to what the enemy was doing and the withdrawals continued unabated.
1967 Paraguay accepts its constitution
1967 Vietnam: McNamara: bombing is ineffective      ^top^
      Defense Secretary McNamara concedes that the US bombing campaign has had little effect on the North's "war-making capability." At the same time, McNamara refuses a request from military commanders to bomb all MIG bases in North Vietnam.
      In Hanoi, North Vietnam's Administrative Committee orders all workers in light industry and all craftsmen and their families to leave the city; only persons vital to the city's defense and production are to remain.
1950 US President Truman orders army to seize control of the nation's railroads to avert a strike.
1944 Paris liberated      ^top^
     French General Jacques Leclerc enters the free French capital triumphantly, followed by the US Fourth Infantry Division.. In spite of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's orders to burn the city to the ground, German resistance was light and a quick surrender was negotiated. Pockets of German intransigence remain, but Paris is free from German control. Two days earlier, a French armored division had begun advancing on the capital. Members of the Résistance, now called Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur (FFI), proceeded to free all French civilian prisoners in Paris. The Germans were still counterattacking, setting fire to the Grand Palais, which had been taken over by the Résistance, and killing small groups of Résistance fighters as they encountered them in the city.
      On August 24, another French armored division entered Paris from the south, receiving an effusion of gratitude from French civilians who poured into the streets to greet their heroes — but still, the Germans continued to fire on French fighters from behind barricades, often catching civilians in the crossfire. But on 25 August, after general Dwight Eisenhower is assured by general Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French, that Allied troops could now virtually sweep into Paris unopposed, Ike ordered general. Jacques Philippe Leclerc (a pseudonym he assumed to protect his family while under German occupation; his given name was Philippe-Marie, vicomte De Hauteclocque) to enter the capital with his 2nd Armored Division. The remnants of German snipers were rendered impotent, and many German soldiers were taken prisoners. In fact, the animus toward the Germans was so great that even those who had surrendered were attacked, some even machine-gunned, as they were being led off to captivity. More than 500 Résistance fighters died in the struggle for Paris, as well as 127 civilians. Once the city was free from German rule, French collaborators were often killed upon capture, without trial.
      On 26 August, the triumphant de Gaulle would lead a joyous liberation march down the Champs Elysés.
1944 Allocution du général de Gaulle à l'Hôtel de Ville      ^top^
      Pourquoi voulez-vous que nous dissimulions l'émotion qui nous étreint tous, hommes et femmes, qui sommes ici, chez nous, dans Paris debout pour se libérer et qui a su le faire de ses mains. Non ! Nous ne dissimulerons pas cette émotion profonde et sacrée. Il y a là des minutes qui dépassent chacune de nos pauvres vies.
      Paris ! Paris outragé ! Paris brisé ! Paris martyrisé ! Mais Paris libéré ! Libéré par lui-même, libéré par son peuple avec le concours des armées de la France, avec l'appui et le concours de la France tout entière, de la France qui se bat, de la seule France, de la vraie France, de la France éternelle.
      Je dis d'abord de ses devoirs, et je les résumerai tous en disant que, pour le moment, il s'agit de devoirs de guerre. L'ennemi chancelle mais il n'est pas encore battu. Il reste sur notre sol. Il ne suffira même pas que nous l'ayons, avec le concours de nos chers et admirables alliés, chassé de chez nous pour que nous nous tenions pour satisfaits après ce qui s'est passé. Nous voulons entrer sur son territoire, comme il se doit, en vainqueurs. C'est pour cela que l'avant-garde française est entrée à Paris à coups de canon. C'est pour cela que la grande armée française d'Italie a débarqué dans le Midi et remonte rapidement la vallée du Rhône. C'est pour cela que nos braves et chères forces de l'intérieur vont s'armer d'armes modernes. C'est pour cette revanche, cette vengeance et cette justice, que nous continuerons de nous battre jusqu'au dernier jour, jusqu'au jour de la victoire totale et complète. Ce devoir de guerre, tous les hommes qui sont ici et tous ceux qui nous entendent en France savent qu'il exige l'unité nationale. Nous autres, qui aurons vécu les plus grandes heures de notre Histoire, nous n'avons pas à vouloir autre chose que de nous montrer jusqu'à la fin, dignes de la France.
      Vive la France !
1943 US forces overran New Georgia in Solomon Islands during WW II
1940 Baltic states annexed by the USSR      ^top^
      Soviet-occupied Lithuania was incorporated into the USSR along with the Baltic states of Estonia and Latvia. Lithuanians have lived along the Nemen River and the Baltic Sea as long as three thousand years, and during the medieval period, Lithuanian was one of the largest states in Europe, stretching from present-day European Russia to as far as the Black Sea. In the late fourteenth century, Lithuania united with Poland in forming a commonwealth. With the Third Partition of Poland in 1795, Lithuania was absorbed into Russia. However, a Lithuanian linguistic and cultural revival began in the nineteenth century, and with the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Levost between Russia and Germany in 1918, Lithuania achieved independence. For the next two decades, Poland, Germany, and the USSR all interfered with Lithuania's affairs. In 1940, Soviet forces occupied the country, but in 1941 they were replaced by the Nazis. During World War II, many Lithuanians fought alongside the Germans against the Soviet Union, but by 1944 the country was liberated and a pro-Soviet Communist regime was installed. In the late 1980s, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost, or "openness," led Lithuania to reassert its identity. On 11 March 1990, Lithuania proclaimed its independence from the USSR, the first Soviet republic to do so. Soviet authorities opposed the declaration and the subsequent calls for independence in Estonia and Latvia until September 6, 1991, when the crumbling Soviet Union agreed to grant independence to the Baltic republics.
1932 Amelia Earhart completes transcontinental flight
1929 Graf Zeppelin passes over SF for LA after trans-Pacific voyage
1921 US signs peace treaty with Germany
1919 1st scheduled passenger service by airplane (Paris-London)
1916 National Park Service established in the Dept of the Interior
1875 First swim crosssing the Channel      ^top^
      Matthew Webb, 27, merchant navy captain, became the first person to successfully swim the English Channel. Webb accomplished the grueling 32-km crossing, which really entails 56 km of swimming because of tidal currents, in 21h 45m. During his nearly daylong crossing from Dover, England, to Calais, France, Webb drank brandy and beef tea to keep his heat and strength up. He was later honored by the city of Dover, and its mayor proclaimed, "In the future history of the world, I don't believe that any such feat will be performed by anyone else." Since then, nearly three hundred intrepid swimmers have successfully crossed the Channel, the waters of which usually ranges between 13ºC and 17ºC.
1864 Petersburg Campaign — Second Battle of Reams' Station, Virginia
1863 Siege of Fort Wagner, Charleston Harbor, South Carolina continues
1862 Secretary of War authorizes Gen Rufus Saxton to arm 5000 slaves
1835 NY Sun publishes Moon hoax story about John Herschel
1830 Belgium revolts against Netherlands
1830 Locomotive loses race with horse      ^top^
      The first race between a locomotive and a horse-drawn vehicle is held on the 14 km between Relay and Baltimore. The locomotive is the Tom Thumb, and Peter Cooper the engineer. Despite a promising start, the Tom Thumb has an accident and the horse wins.
      The steam locomotive was first pioneered in England at the beginning of the nineteenth century by Richard Trevithick and George Stephenson. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad began operation in 1828 with horse-drawn cars, but after the run of the Tom Thumb, the steam train that nearly out-raced a horse in a public demonstration, steam power was added.
      By 1831, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad had completed a line from Baltimore to Frederick, Maryland, and two years later, Andrew Jackson rode the B&O and gave railroad travel its presidential christening. The acceptance of railroads came quickly in the 1830s, and by 1840, the nation had some 4800 km of railway, far greater then the combined European total of only 2900 km. The railroad network expanded quickly in the years before the Civil War, and by 1860, the American railroad system had become a national network of some 48'000 km. Nine years later, transcontinental railroad service became possible for the first time.
1825 Uruguay declares independence from Brazil (National Day)
1814 British capture Washington DC
1718 Hundreds of French colonists arrive in Louisiana; New Orleans, founded
1689 Montréal taken by Iroquois
1609 Galileo demonstrates his 1st telescope to Venetian lawmakers
1580 Battle of Alcantara, Spain defeats Portugal
1560 Protestantism was formally adopted at the First General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Scottish Parliament had earlier voted to accept a Calvinist confession of faith, declaring that the pope no longer had jurisdiction over Scotland.
0325 The General Council of Nicea ended. This first ecumenical conclave in the history of the Church was attended by 300 bishops, who together established the Nicene Creed and set down the lunar formula for celebrating Easter.
TO THE TOP
Deaths which occurred on an August 25:
2002 Per Anger, 88, of a stroke. He was a former Swedish diplomat, who was working as first secretary of the Swedish Legation in Budapest when Nazi Germany occupied Hungary in 1944. He began issuing temporary Schuetzpaesse (protective passports) that identified Jews as Swedes to keep them from being sent to Nazi death camps. He was soon joined (09 July 1944) by Raoul Wallenberg, who extended the practice and is credited with saving some 20'000 Jews from deportation before he was arrested on 17 January 1945 by invading Soviet troops and disappeared at the age of 32. After the war, Anger was one of the leading figures trying to learn what happened to Wallenberg, traveling to Moscow in the 1980s to appeal personally to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to reveal the diplomat's fate. Anger also was active in spreading information about Wallenberg's deeds around the world, believing that Wallenberg remained alive as late as 1989. In 2000 Russia acknowledged for the first time that Wallenberg and his driver were imprisoned for political reasons until they died allegedly in 1947 (Wallenberg “on 17 July 1947, of a heart attack”). The two men were officially rehabilitated as “victims of Soviet repression,”' but details were not provided. About 600'000 of Hungary's 1 million Jews died victims of the Nazis. Per Anger was the author of With Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest: memories of the war years in Hungary (1981), and the subject of Elisabeth Skoglund's A quiet courage: Per Anger, Wallenberg's co-liberator of Hungarian Jews (1997).
2001 Husband and wife, Yaniv and Sharon Ben-Shalom, as their car is ambushed by gunmen of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade on a road just north of Jerusalem, near the West Bank enclave settlement of Modi'in. Sharon's brother, who was driving, is critically injured after being hit in the head by a bullet. The couple's two children, aged 1 and 2, are lightly injured by flying glass from the windshield. The Ben-Shaloms were settlers from the West Bank enclave settlement of Ofarim.
Dead soldiers2001 Alla Abu Bakra, Palestinian police sergeant, killed by shrapnel from Israeli tanks making incursion in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip,
2001 Major Gil Oz, 30, and medic Staff Sergeant Kobi Nir, 21, [photos: >]; one other Israeli soldier; and Hisham Abu Jamous, 24, and Amin Muhamad Abu Khatam, 26, the two Palestinian attackers (belonging to the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine) of the Marganit military base ( in the southern Gaza Strip) at 03:00 with automatic rifles and hand grenades. Seven Israeli soldiers are wounded.
2001 André Mazmanian, 61, shot in his own home mistaken for a burglar, by a helpful neighbor, in Aix-en-Provence. The neighbor suspected burglars were watching the house while the Mazmanians were away on vacation. Armed with a rifle he breaks into the house when he notices activity in it. Hearing a strange voice coming from upstairs, he orders the presumed burglars to surrender and fires a warning shot. In fact he noise is coming from the television being watched by the Mazmanians already home from their vacation, unbeknown to their neighbor. Hearing the shouts and gunshot, they in turn grab guns and fired on the presumed intruder. In the exchange of gunfire Mazmanian is fatally wounded. The assailant would be charged with involuntary manslaughter. A wave of burglaries in the region had made the locals nervous.
2000 Ginetta "Topolino" Sagan, 75, in Atherton CA, of cancer.     ^top^
      She was imprisoned, raped and tortured by Italian fascists during World War II but survived to help build Amnesty International.
     Ginetta was born in Milan, as Benito Mussolini came to power, to a Jewish mother and Catholic father who were both physicians and anti-fascists. Ginetta began working for the northern Italian Resistance as a teenager. Never taller than 152 cm, Ginetta nicknamed "Topolino." As a clerk in Milan City Hall, she first supplied food and clothing coupons to help Jews in hiding, and then became a courier for the Resistance, helping some 300 Jews to flee to safety in Switzerland.
      During her clandestine work, her parents were seized, her father shot and her mother sent to Auschwitz, where she perished. Betrayed by an infiltrator, Sagan was captured in 1945 by Mussolini's Black Brigade, and imprisoned, raped and tortured for 45 days. She said later: "To all the torturers' questions I managed to answer, 'I don't know, I don't know,' even after the Black Brigade 'nurse' injected me with Sodium Pentothal."
      One night when Ginetta was being interrogated and beaten at a boarded-up villa in Sondria, Italy,. two German soldiers badgered her Italian fascist guards into releasing Sagan to them for their own questioning. They put her into a waiting car and sped toward what she assumed would be her execution. But the Germans were defectors working with the Resistance. They took her to a hospital run by Catholic nuns.
      After the war, Ginetta moved to Paris with her godfather and studied at the Sorbonne. She came to the United States in 1951, and in Chicago met and married a young medical student, San Francisco-born Leonard A. Sagano who also would work for human rights and died in 1997. As his career began, the couple lived for a time in Washington, D.C., where Ginetta taught cooking classes for congressional wives.
      Intensely interested in human rights, Ginetta Sagan helped establish Amnesty International. By 1968, when the Sagans moved permanently to Atherton, the US Amnesty had only 18 chapters with 700 members — all in the Eastern US. Mrs. Sagan, a homemaker and mother of three sons (Loring, Pico, and Duncan), formed the 19th chapter of Amnesty USA in her Atherton living room. By 1976, she had helped Amnesty International USA grow to 70'000 members. She also founded Aurora, an organization to document human rights abuses and raise money for families of prisoners of conscience.
1998 Lewis F. Powell, 90, in Richmond, Va., retired US Supreme Court Justice.
1985 Samantha Smith, 13, Arthur Smith, her father, and all 6 others aboard her plane, which crashed near Auburn, Maine.      ^top^
      Samantha was the girl who two years earlier had thought that the Cold War didn't make sense, wrote to the new president of the Soviet Union, Yuri Andropov, and, at his invitation, visited the Soviet Union. She then wrote the book Journey to the Soviet Union and worked for peace in the world.
      Samantha Smith dies in plane crash Samantha Smith, the 13-year-old "ambassador" to the Soviet Union, dies in a plane crash. Smith was best known for writing to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov in 1982 and visiting the Soviet Union as Andropov's guest in 1983. In late 1982, Smith, a fifth-grader at Manchester Elementary School in Manchester, Maine, wrote a plaintive letter to Soviet leader Andropov. She said that she was "worrying about Russia and the United States getting into a nuclear war. Are you going to have a war or not?" A few months later, Smith's letter was reprinted in Russia and it was announced that Andropov was writing a response. Smith received his letter in April 1983. Andropov assured Smith that he did not want a nuclear war with the United States or any other country. Calling Smith a "courageous and honest" little girl, Andropov closed the letter with an invitation for her to visit the Soviet Union. In July, accompanied by her parents, Smith embarked on a two-week trip. She was a hit in the Soviet Union, and although she did not get to meet with Andropov, she traveled widely and spoke to numerous groups and people. In the United States, some people branded her as a patsy for the communists and claimed that Soviet propagandists were merely using her for their own purposes, but Samantha's enthusiasm and contagious optimism charmed most Americans and millions of other people around the world. During the next two years, Smith became an unofficial US goodwill ambassador, speaking to groups throughout the United States and in foreign nations such as Japan. On August 25, 1985, while traveling with her father, their small plane crashed and both were killed. Smith's legacy lived on, however. Her mother began the Samantha Smith Foundation, which has as its goal bringing people from different nations and cultures together to share their experiences. In particular, the foundation established a student exchange program with the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union, news of Smith's death was met with great sadness. The Russian government responded by issuing a stamp in her honor and naming a mountain after the young girl.
Samantha Smith's letter:
Dear Mr. Andropov,
My name is Samantha Smith. I am ten years old. Congratulations on your new job. I have been worrying about Russia and the United States getting into a nuclear war. Are you going to vote to have a war or not? If you aren’t please tell me how you are going to help to not have a war. This question you do not have to answer, but I would like to know why you want to conquer the world or at least our country. God made the world for us to live together in peace and not to fight.
      Sincerely,
      Samantha Smith

Andropov's answer (received several weeks later):
Samantha Smith, Manchester, Maine USA
      Dear Samantha, I received your letter, which is like many others that have reached me recently from your country and from other countries around the world.
      It seems to me — I can tell by your letter — that you are a courageous and honest girl, resembling Becky, the friend of Tom Sawyer in the famous book of your compatriot Mark Twain. This book is well known and loved in our country by all boys and girls.
      You write that you are anxious about whether there will be a nuclear war between our two countries. And you ask are we doing anything so that war will not break out.
      Your question is the most important of those that every thinking man can pose. I will reply to you seriously and honestly.
      Yes, Samantha, we in the Soviet Union are trying to do everything so that there will not be war on earth. This is what every Soviet man wants. This is what the great founder of our state, Vladimir Lenin, taught us.
      Soviet people well know what a terrible thing war is. Forty-two years ago, Nazi Germany, which strived for supremacy over the whole world, attacked our country, burned and destroyed many thousands of our towns and villages, killed millions of Soviet men, women and children.
      In that war, which ended with our victory, we were in alliance with the United States: together we fought for the liberation of many people from the Nazi invaders. I hope that you known about this from your history lessons in school. And today we want very much to live in peace, to trade and cooperate with all our neighbors on this earth - with those far away and those near by. And certainly with such a great country as the United States of America.
      In America and in our country there are nuclear weapons - terrible weapons that can kill millions of people in an instant. But we do not want them to be ever used. That’s precisely why the Soviet Union solemnly declared throughout the entire world that never - never - will it use nuclear weapons first against any country. In general we propose to discontinue further production of them and to proceed to the abolition of all the stockpiles on earth.
      It seems to me that this is a sufficient answer to your second question:
“Why do you want to wage war against the whole world or at least the United States?” We want nothing of the kind. No one in our country — neither workers, peasants, writers nor doctors, neither grown-ups nor children, nor members of the government — want either a big or “little” war.
      We want peace — there is something that we are occupied with: growing wheat, building and inventing, writing books and flying into space. We want peace for ourselves and for all peoples of the planet. For our children and for you, Samantha.
      I invite you, if your parents will let you, to come to our country, the best time being this summer. You will find out about our country, meet with your contemporaries, visit an international children’s camp — “Artek” — on the sea. And see for yourself: in the Soviet Union — everyone is for peace and friendship among peoples.
      Thank you for your letter. I wish you all the best in your young life.
               Y. Andropov
1976: Eyvind Johnson, 76.      ^top^
      His early novels, influenced by Proust, Gide, and Joyce, are mainly concerned with man's frustration. In Bobinack (1932), an exposé of the machinations of modern capitalism, Regn i gryningen (1933; Rain at Daybreak), an attack on modern office drudgery and its effects, and Romanen om Olof, 4 vol. (1934-37), which tells of his experiences as a logger in the sub-Arctic, he begins to seek out the causes for that frustration. Just before and during World War II, Johnson's novels took the form of protest against totalitarian terror and attacks against neutralism. Strändernas svall (1946; Return to Ithaca, 1952) and Hans nädes tid (1960; The Days of His Grace) have been translated into many languages. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1974.
1984 Truman Capote, 59, author, found dead in a Los Angeles mansion.
1967 George Lincoln Rockwell head of American Nazi Party, assassinated
1956 Alfred C Kinsey,
1945 John Birch.      ^top^
     He was a Baptist missionary and US intelligence specialist with general Claire Chennault's "Flying Tigers," killed by Chinese Communists in Suchow, in the northern Chinese province of Anhwei.
      John Birch was considered by some to be the first American casualty in the struggle against communism. Robert H. Welch, Jr., later named the anti-Communist John Birch Society in his honor. Founded on 09 December 1958, the ultraconservative group was dedicated to fighting what it perceived to be the extensive infiltration of communism into American society.
      Initially established with only eleven members, the membership of the John Birch Society had by the early 1960s grown to nearly 100'000. It also enjoyed annual private contributions of several million dollars. The society revived the spirit of McCarthyism, claiming in unsubstantiated accusations that a vast Communist conspiracy existed within the US government. The organization even implicated, among others, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. However, after the debacle of Senator Joseph McCarthy's public hearings in the early 1950s, the US public was wary of radical anti-Communism, and few of the sensational charges were taken seriously by mainstream US society.
1926 Thomas Moran, US Hudson River School painter, born on 12 February 1837, specialized in Landscapes and the US West. — LINKS — Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, Wyoming — Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone — The Great Blue Spring of the Lower Geyser Basin — Grand Canyon with Rainbow — Venice — New York from the Bay — Mountain of the Holy Cross — Chasm of the Colorado — Children of the Mountain Sierra Nevada, California — Ponce De Leon in Florida — Salvador Rosa Sketching the Banditi — Rain in the Canyon — Old Faithful Geyser — Hotsprings of the Yellowstone — Hot Springs and Gardiner's River — Castle Geyser — Slaves Escaping Through the Swamp — The sacrifice of Isaac
1915 275 persons by hurricane in Galveston, Texas, with $50 million damage.
1912 Andrew Wilson, editor of World Scripture: A Comparative Anthology of Sacred Texts, Social and Environmental Aspects of Desertification
1912 José María Velasco, Mexican painter born on 06 July 1840 — Velasco at Arts History of Mexico — Self~Portrait — The Hacienda of Chimilpa
1904 Henri Théodore Jean Ignace Fantin~Latour, French painter, best known for his group portraits and flower paintings, born on 14 January 1836. — MORE ON FANTIN~LATOUR AT ART “4” 2~DAY — LINKS — White and Purple Stock — Asters — White Rockets and Fruit — Spray of Purple Lilac — Flowers in a Vase — Damnation of Faust. Apparition — Lohengrin — Baigneuses — Les Brodeuses — L'Enfance du Christ — Edouard Manet — Homage to Delacroix — An Atelier in the Batignolles — The Dream — Immortality — Helen — Delacroix.
1901 Clara Maass, 25, army nurse sacrificed her life to prove that the mosquito carries yellow fever
1900 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche philosopher, in Weimar, Germany (dies on 124th anniversary of the death of philosopher David Hume). NIETZSCHE ONLINE: (in English translations): The Antichrist, On the Use and Abuse of History for Life, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Thus Spake Zarathustra (other site)
1896 Bill Doolin, 38, outlaw, shot while resisting arrest by a posse in Lawson, Oklahoma, after his 05 July 1896 escape from Guthrie, Oklahoma, where he was awaiting trial since his January 1896 arrest by lawman Bill Tilghman . For six years, Doolin had participated in bank and train robberies. In 1895, Doolin and several of his partners went into hiding in New Mexico. Doolin made several offers to surrender in exchange for a light sentence, but his offers were rejected.
1876 Adolphe Tidemand, Norwegian artist born on 14 August 1814.
1768 Johann Joseph Konrad Seekatz, German artist born on 04 September 1719. — [Did Seekatz see cats as apt subjects for his paintings?]
1867 Michael Faraday, author. FARADAY ONLINE: The Chemical History of a Candle, A Course of Six Lectures on the Various Forces of Matter, and Their Relation to Each Other
1864 Battle of Ream's Station, Virginia      ^top^
      Confederate troops secure a vital supply line into Petersburg, Virginia, when they halt destruction of the Weldon and Petersburg Railroad by Union troops. The railroad, which ran from Weldon, North Carolina, was a major supply line for General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. For more than two months, Lee had been under siege at Petersburg by General Ulysses S. Grant's Army of the Potomac.
      Grant had tried to cut the rail line in June and again in August. On August 18, his troops succeeded in capturing a section of the track, but the Confederates simply began to stop the trains further south of Petersburg and haul the supplies by wagon into the city. Grant responded by ordering his troops to tear up the track and move further south. Soldiers from General Winfield Hancock's corps tore up 12 km of rail, but Lee moved quickly to halt the operation.
      On August 25, General Ambrose P. Hill's infantry and General Wade Hampton's cavalry were ordered to attack the Federals at Ream's Station, and they drove the Yankees into defensive positions. The Union earthworks, hastily constructed the day before, were arranged in a square shape that was too small and so Confederate shells easily passed over the top. The green troop in Union General John Gibbon's division was unnerved by the bombardment, and a Confederate attack broke through the Yankee lines. The Union force retreated in disarray.
      Hancock's corps lost 2700 men, most of whom were captured during the retreat. Hill and Hampton lost just 700. The battle was a stinging defeat for Hancock's proud Second Corps, which had held the Union line against Pickett's charge at Gettysburg, and was considered among the best in the Army of the Potomac. Gibbon and Hancock blamed each other for the disaster, and both soon left their positions in the Second Corps.
1822 William Herschel , 85, discovered Uranus. [be careful how you pronounce that]
1805 Alexander Carlyle, 83, Scottish clergyman, author of his Autobiography, which contains Anecdotes of David Hume (1800) dies on 29th anniversary of the death of David Hume.
1776 David Hume, 65, Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist.      ^top^
     He is known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism, born on 07 May 1711. Hume conceived of philosophy as the inductive, experimental science of human nature. Taking the scientific method of the English physicist Sir Isaac Newton as his model and building on the epistemology of the English philosopher John Locke, Hume tried to describe how the mind works in acquiring what is called knowledge. He concluded that no theory of reality is possible; there can be no knowledge of anything beyond experience. Despite the enduring impact of his theory of knowledge, Hume seems to have considered himself chiefly as a moralist. His curiously detached autobiography, The Life of David Hume, Esquire, Written by Himself is dated 18 April 1776.
     A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740) was Hume's attempt to formulate a full-fledged philosophical system. It is divided into three books: book I, on understanding, aims at explaining man's process of knowing, describing in order the origin of ideas, the ideas of space and time, causality, and the testimony of the senses; book II, on the "passions" of man, gives an elaborate psychological machinery to explain the affective, or emotional, order in man and assigns a subordinate role to reason in this mechanism; book III, on morals, describes moral goodness in terms of "feelings" of approval or disapproval that a person has when he considers human behavior in the light of the agreeable or disagreeable consequences either to himself or to others. Although the Treatise is Hume's most thorough exposition of his thought, at the end of his life he, with some justification, vehemently repudiated it as juvenile, avowing that only his later writings presented his considered views. The Treatise is not well constructed, in parts oversubtle, confusing because of ambiguity in important terms (especially "reason"), and marred by willful extravagance of statement and rather theatrical personal avowals. Book I, nevertheless, has been more read in academic circles than any other of his writings.
     Hume published Essays, Moral and Political in 1741-42 and Three Essays, Moral and Political in 1748. Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751) was a rewriting of book III of the Treatise.
     An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1758) is a mature rewriting of book I of the Treatise. It is an attempt to define the principles of human knowledge. It poses in logical form significant questions about the nature of reasoning in regard to matters of fact and experience, and it answers them by recourse to the principle of association. The basis of his exposition is a twofold classification of objects of awareness. In the first place, all such objects are either "impressions," data of sensation or of internal consciousness, or "ideas," derived from such data by compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing. That is to say, the mind does not create any ideas but derives them from impressions.
      From this Hume develops a theory of meaning. A word that does not stand directly for an impression has meaning only if it brings before the mind an object that can be gathered from an impression by one of the mental processes mentioned. In the second place, there are two approaches to construing meaning, an analytical one, which concentrates on the "relations of ideas," and an empirical one, which focuses on "matters of fact." Ideas can be held before the mind simply as meanings, and their logical relations to one another can then be detected by rational inspection. The idea of a plane triangle, for example, entails the equality of its internal angles to two right angles, and the idea of motion entails the ideas of space and time, irrespective of whether there really are such things as triangles and motion.
      Only on this level of mere meanings, Hume asserts, is there room for demonstrative knowledge. Matters of fact, on the other hand, come before the mind merely as they are, revealing no logical relations; their properties and connections must be accepted as they are given. That primroses are yellow, that lead is heavy, and that fire burns things are facts, each shut up in itself, logically barren. Each, so far as reason is concerned, could be different: the contradictory of every matter of fact is conceivable. Therefore, any demonstrative science of fact is impossible.
      From this basis Hume develops his doctrine about causality. The idea of causality is alleged to assert a necessary connection among matters of fact. From what impression, then, is it derived? Hume states that no causal relation among the data of the senses can be observed, for, when a person regards any events as causally connected, all that he does and can observe is that they frequently and uniformly go together. In this sort of togetherness it is a fact that the impression or idea of the one event brings with it the idea of the other. A habitual association is set up in the mind; and, as in other forms of habit, so in this one, the working of the association is felt as compulsion. This feeling, Hume concludes, is the only discoverable impressional source of the idea of causality.
HUME ONLINE:
  • Selected Works
  • A Treatise of Human Nature
  • A Treatise of Human Nature
  • A Treatise of Human Nature
  • My Own Life
  • My Own Life
  • My Own Life
  • Of Commerce
  • Of Commerce
  • Of Interest
  • Of Tragedy
  • On Essay Writing
  • On Interest
  • On Money
  • On Money
  • On Public Credit
  • On Public Credit
  • On Taxes
  • Of Taxes
  • Of the Balance of Trade
  • Of the Balance of Trade
  • The Natural History of Religion
  • The Natural History of Religion
  • The Natural History of Religion
  • Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
  • Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
  • Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
  • An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
  • An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
  • An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
  • An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
  • An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
  • An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
  • An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
  • An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
  • An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
  • An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
  • On the First Principles of Government
  • On the First Principles of Government
  • On the Jealousy of Trade
  • On the Origin of Government
  • Selected Essays
  • Essays on Suicide and the Immortality of the Soul
  • Essays on Suicide and the Immortality of the Soul
  • Essays on Suicide and the Immortality of the Soul
  • Essays on Suicide and the Immortality of the Soul
  • A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh
  • A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh
  • Cause and Effect (from The Enquiry)
  • Of Superstition And Enthusiasm
  • Of The Delicacy Of Taste And Passion
  • Of the Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature
  • Of the Jealousy of Trade
  • Of The Liberty Of The Press
  • Of the Origin of Government
  • Of the Refinement of the Arts
  • Of the Refinement of the Arts
  • Of The Rise And Progress of The Arts And Sciences
  • Of the Standard of Good Taste
  • Of the Standard of Good Taste
  • Of the Standard of Taste
  • Of the Standard of Taste
    • 1691 Jan van der Meer (or Vermeer of Haarlem), Dutch artist born on 22 October 1628. — Not to be confused with the great Jan Vermeer [born 31 Oct 1632 — buried 15 Dec 1675] who was of Delft.
    1685 Francisco de Herrera, el Mozo (or el Joven), in Madrid, Spanish artist born in Seville in a year variously given from 1612 to 1627. — MORE ON HERRERA AT ART “4” 2~DAY — LINKS — Christ Bearing the Cross — The Triumph of St. Hermengild — The Coronation of the Virgin —
    1679 Jonas Moore, mathematician
    1649 Thomas Shepard, author of The Change of the Sabbath
    Births which occurred on an August 25:
    1996 Navio Communications Inc. Netscape announces that it has started a new company, Navio Communications. The new company is dedicated to integrating Netscape software into televisions, phones, cars, and other electronic devices.
    1949 Martin Amis, novelist son of novelist Kingsley Amis, in Oxford      ^top^
          Amis' father is a prominent novelist whose 1954 book, Lucky Jim, an academic satire, brought him international fame. Martin Amis was the middle of three siblings. He attended 14 schools during the 1950s and 1960s as his father lectured at numerous universities in England and around the US His parents divorced when he was 12, and Amis spent his teenage years hanging out in bars with the mod and hippie crowds. He went to Oxford, where he excelled. When he graduated, he became a journalist working for London's elite literary publications.
          Martin Amis started writing fiction in his early 20s, and his first novel, The Rachel Papers, was published in 1973. His novels, including Money (1984), London Fields (1989), and The Information, all use innovative plot structure and energetic wordplay to explore, and often to satirize, grotesque and lurid topics. His 1991 book, Time's Arrow, shows the life of a former Nazi doctor in reverse, as if the doctor were living time backward. Amis married in 1984 and has two sons.
    1925 Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters organizes (Harlem NY)
    1925 Miniature TV tube patented
          Howard Weinhart of New Jersey receives a patent for a miniature television tube, which he calls an "electric discharge device." The patent was assigned to Western Electric Company. The tube, later known as the "peanut tube," was only two inches high and about half an inch in diameter, and it operated on a single dry cell.
    1919 George C Wallace (D-Governor of Alabama; candidate for US President: paralyzed by gunshot wounds as subject of assassination attempt [1972])
    1918 Leonard Bernstein (conductor: New York Philharmonic Orchestra; composer: West Side Story, On the Town, My Sister Eileen, On the Waterfront, Jeremiah, The Age of Anxiety, Kaddish, Chichester Psalms, Mass, Songfest)
    1916 The US National Park Service is established within the Department of the Interior.
    1913 Walt Kelly cartoonist, creator of "Pogo"
    1912 Erich Honecker Germany, East German political leader
    1910 The Yellow Cab      ^top^
          Walden W. Shaw and John D. Hertz formed the Walden W. Shaw Livery Company, which later became the Yellow Cab Company. In 1907 the Shaw Livery Company purchased a number of small taxicabs equipped with meters. The first yellow cab (the Model J) hit the streets in 1915, and its distinctive color became the company’s trademark. The company was also the first to use automatic windshield wipers, ultrahigh frequency two-way radios, and passenger seat belts.
    1906 William J Brennan Newark NJ, US supreme court justice (1957-90)
    1904 (August 12 Julian) Aleksey Nikolayevich, tsarevich.      ^top^
         He is the only son of Nicholas II, the last tsar of Russia, and the tsarina Alexandra. He was the first male heir born to a reigning tsar since the 17th century. Alexis was a hemophiliac. The mystic healer Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin was summoned to the palace to help the little tsarevich during one of his bleeding episodes, and he achieved marked success in relieving Alexis' suffering. . Rasputin's subsequent acquisition of enormous influence at the imperial court was due primarily to the relief and gratitude of the royal couple. Alexis was murdered with the other members of his immediate family (and his dog) and some servants by the Bolsheviks in the night of 16 July to 17 July 1918
    1898 Helmut Hasse. He would do fundamental work in algebra and number theory.
    1896: Atanasio Soldati, Italian artist of the Concrete Art Movement. He died on 27 August 1953. — Composizione
    1891 Alberto Savigno “Andrea de Chirico”, Italian artist who died in 1952, not to be confused with Giorgio de Chirico [10 July 1888 – 19 November 1978]
    1880 Cornelis Vreedenburgh, Dutch artist who died in 1946.
    1867 Herman Dudley Murphy, US artist who died in 1945.
    1867 Kolosov, mathematician
    1851 George Parsons Lathrop, editor of A Masque of Poets: Including Guy Vernon, a Novelette in Verse (page images at MOA)
    1850 Edgar Wilson Nye, under the pseudonym Bill Nye, he would become a journalist and one of the major American humorists in the last half of the 19th century. His columns were gathered in books from Bill Nye and Boomerang (1881) to Bill Nye's History of the US (1894). He died on 22 February 1896.
    1850 Marie Egner, Austrian artist who died in 1940.
    1845 Ludwig II mad king of Bavaria (1864-86)
    1844 Muir, mathematician
    1841 Theodor Kocher, Swiss surgeon, thyroid specialist (Nobel 1909)
    1837 Jacob Henricus (Hendricus) Maris, Dutch artist who died on 7 August 1899. — LINKS — The Tow Path (1860) — View of Amsterdam (1870) — View of Old Delft (1865) — Harbor of Amsterdam (1872)
    1836 Bret (Francis) Harte (writer: How Santa Claus Came to Simpson's Bar)
    1836 (Francis) Bret(t) Harte, US writer who helped create the local-color school in US fiction.      ^top^
          He published some verse at age 11.
          His Condensed Novels are brilliant parodies of James Fenimore Cooper, Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, and others.
         In 1868, after publishing a series of Spanish legends akin to Washington Irving's Alhambra, he was named editor of the Overland Monthly. For it he wrote "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and "The Outcasts of Poker Flat." Following The Luck of Roaring Camp, and Other Sketches (1870), he found himself world famous. He furthered his reputation with "Plain Language from Truthful James" (1870), better known as "The Heathen Chinee," a poem that attracted national attention. On it he based his best play, Ah Sin (1877), a collaboration with Twain.
         Harte in 1871 signed with The Atlantic Monthly for $10'000 for 12 stories a year, the highest figure offered a to a US writer up to that time.
         In 1885 he retired to London. His wife and family joined him at wide intervals, but he never returned to the United States. He found in England a ready audience for his tales of a past or mythical California long after American readers had tired of his formula. "Ingénue of the Sierras" and "A Protégée of Jack Hamlin's" (both 1893) are perhaps better than his earlier stories.
         Harte died on 05 May 1902 in London.     
    HARTE ONLINE:
  • The Argonauts of North Liberty
  • The Bell-Ringer of Angel's
  • By Shore and Sedge
  • Clarence
  • Colonel Starbottle's Client
  • Complete Poetical Works (1902)
  • Condensed Novels
  • Condensed Novels Second Series: New Burlesques
  • The Crusade of the Excelsior
  • Devil's Ford
  • Drift From Two Shores
  • East and West: Poems
  • A First Family of Tasajara
  • From Sand Hill to Pine
  • The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh, and Other Tales
  • In a Hollow of the Hills
  • In the Carquinez Woods
  • Maruja
  • A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready
  • Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation, and Other Stories
  • Mrs. Skagg's Husbands
  • On the Frontier
  • Openings in the Old Trail
  • A Phyllis of the Sierras
  • The Pliocene Skull (1871)
  • Poems
  • Poems and Stories (selected and edited for schools, 1912)
  • A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's, and Other Stories
  • The Queen of the Pirate Isle
  • Sally Dows, and Other Stories
  • Selected Stories of Bret Harte
  • Snow-Bound at Eagle's
  • Stories in Light and Shadow
  • The Story of a Mine
  • Susy, A Story of the Plains
  • Tales of Trail and Town
  • Thankful Blossom
  • The Three Partners
  • Trent's Trust and Other Stories
  • Two Men of Sandy Bar: A Drama
  • Under the Redwoods
  • A Waif of the Plains
  • A Ward of the Golden Gate
    • 1819 Allan Pinkerton, in Glasgow, Scotland.      ^top^
          He would be involved in one of the bloodiest incidents in economic history. Pinkerton founded a detective agency in Chicago that originally gained fame for solving a series of train robberies and later became known for helping management break strikes by the new labor unions. During the summer of 1892, his distaste for unions led Pinkerton to lend a hand to a fellow Scot, Andrew Carnegie.
          Tired of working in extreme heat for long hours and little pay, the workers at Carnegie's Homestead plant in Pennsylvania had threatened to strike. In response, Carnegie's partner slashed wages and erected a wall around the plant, effectively forcing a walk-off. Replacement workers were hired and Pinkerton's detectives were enlisted to ensure the workers safe passage to the plant. However, the appearance of Pinkerton's men led to violence, as the strikers and detectives clashed. Nine detectives died and nineteen of the striking workers were eventually hung for crimes related to the incident.
    1699 Camus, mathematician
    1688 Christian-Johann Bendeler, German artist who died on 19 November 1728.
    1661 Gregor Brandmüller, Swiss artist who died on 27 August 1691.
    1658 Claude Andran III, French artist who died on 27 May 1734.
    1623 Filippo Lauri, Italian artist who died on 12 December 1694.
    1561 Lansberge, mathematician
    1530 Ivan IV (the Terrible) 1st tsar of Russia (1533-84)
    Holidays France: Liberation Day (1944) / Paraguay: Constitution Day (1967) / Uruguay: Independence Day (1825)
    Religious Observances RC : St Genesius, Roman actor, patron of actors / RC, Ang : St Louis IX, king of France, confessor (opt) / RC : Joseph of Calasanz, priest (opt)
    Thoughts for the day :“While forbidden fruit may be sweeter, it spoils faster.” [or it ferments into alcohol]
    “While forbidden fruit may be sweeter, it may be poisonous.”
    “The forbidden fruit may turn out to be sour grapes.”
    “The chains which cramp us most are those which weigh on us least.” —     Anne Sophie Swetchine, Russian-French author (1782-1857).
    “The chains which cramp us the least as those that weigh the most on our enemies.”
    “The cramps that kill us the quickest are those we suffer while out of our depth in hot water.”
    TO THE TOP
    PLEASE CLICK HERE TO WRITE TO “TODAY IN HISTORY”
    updated 020827 17:11 UT
    safe site     site safe for children safe site
    http:// +
    canu.host.sk/history/h4aug/h4aug
    elpn.com/canu/history/h4aug/h4aug
    www.jcanu.hpg.com.br/history/h4aug/h4aug
    h42day.0catch.com/history/h4aug/h4aug
    www.hostultra.com/~canu/history/h4aug/h4aug
     + 25.html