06 Dec History: This Date

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Events, deaths, births, of DEC 06
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On a December 06:
2002 Following a forecast of declining earnings, due mainly to a slowdown of sales to China, Wavecom SA (WVCM) is downgraded by Soundview Technology from Outperform to Neutral, and by RTX Securities from Buy to Reduce. On the NASDAQ, 4.4 of the 14.8 WVCM are traded, dropping from the previous close of $31.10 to an intraday low of $13.50, and close at $15.50. They had traded as high as $43.41 as recently as 22 October 2002 and $168.88 on 14 February 2000. They had started trading on 09 June 1999, at $14.00. [< 4~year price chart]. French company Wavecom is the world number 1 provider of digital wireless standard modules (WISMO modules). The module is used in wireless telephones, wireless modems and such.
2002 It is announced that in a mere 400 hours in September 2002, the value of pi was calculated to 1.24 trillion places, by a Hitachi supercomputer programmed by a team of ten led by Professor Yasumasa Kanada at the Information Technology Center at Tokyo University. [click here to download the complete number. Download time depends on the speed of your internet connection. For a typical 2002 vintage dial-up connnection it is 120 years; with a high-speed connection, it could be as little as 5 years. Warning: if the download is interrupted for any reason, you will have to start over from the beginning.]
2002 In Kansas City, Missouri, pharmacist Robert Courtney, 50, is sentenced to 30 years in prison without possibility of parole. He had pleaded guilty in February 2002 to 20 counts of misbranding, tampering with or adulterating chemotherapy drugs. He diluted the drugs out of greed. 4200 patients may have been affected.
2000 Florida Republican leaders announced the Legislature would convene in special session to appoint its own slate of electors in the state's contested presidential race; Democrats denounced the action as unnecessary.
2000 Pope sentenced to 20 years in prison, for espionage, by a Moscow court; however, Pope (US businessman Edmond Pope) was pardoned by Russian President Vladimir Putin and released eight days after his sentencing.
2000 Web browser Opera 5 for Windows is made available in a free version (with limited advertising) at http://www.opera.com/
2000 Mei Xiang ("beautiful fragrance"), 2, and Tian Tian ("more and more"), 3 [photo >], giant pandas (respectively female and male), arrive at the National Zoo in Washington for a 10-year stay. The Chinese government loaned the pandas in exchange for a $10 million donation to promote panda conservation in China. Only about 1000 pandas remain in the wild, mostly in western and central China. Five other pandas live in US zoos -- two in Atlanta and three in San Diego.
2000 “If you could learn to speak one other language, what would it be?” was asked of 1008 persons across the US in a recent Zogby poll, whose results are released today. The leading answers were Spanish (44%), French (23%), German (9%), Italian (7%); Chinese (3%), Russian (2%). Hispanic respondents were mostly interested in learning French (40%), while 12% had yet to learn Spanish, and would like to do so.
1999 Twin boy Myanmar guerrilla leaders give interview. [< photo] Johnny Htoo, left, a 12-year old Karen boy watches as his twin brother Luther smokes a Myanmar cigar during a meeting with The Associated Press at their jungle base of Ka Mar Pa Law in Myanmar, opposite Thailand's Ratchaburi province, 95 km west of Bangkok, 06 December 1999. Johnny and Luther, the twin adolescent leaders of a mystical Myanmar rebel group, and 14 followers would surrender to Thai authorities on 16 January 2001.
1998 Hugo Rafael Chávez Frias gana las elecciones presidenciales en Venezuela con ventaja de 16,53 puntos sobre el independentista de centroderecha Henrique Salas.
1997 The Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia's Far East is hit by one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded, measuring 8.5 to 9 in magnitude. Probably because the area is sparsely populated, there are no reported deaths.
1997 Fernando de la Rúa, alcalde de la capital argentina, fue designado líder del Partido Radical, lo que supuso un gran paso hacia la presidencia conseguida en las elecciones de 1999.
1996 Stock markets around the world plunged after comments by US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan were taken to mean that US stock prices were too high

1995 US Communications Decency Act wording finalized
After a long and heated debate, House and Senate committee members agreed on the final wording of the Communications Decency Act, which made it a crime to provide pornography to minors over the Internet. The act was voted into law as part of the sweeping Telecommunication Reform Act of 1996. The act would have required a number of online services to restructure their business models, many of which depended at least partly on a steady stream of sex chat. Because filtering technology could not easily distinguish racy adult chat from pornography, online services would have had to cut off that arm of their businesses.
Civil rights groups immediately challenged the act, and exactly one year later, on 6 December 1996, the Supreme Court agreed to review the constitutionality of the act. In 1997, the act was declared unconstitutional. 1922 Electric power line company The first commercial carrier of electricity launched its service on this day in 1922 in Utica, New York. General Electric built the Utica Gas and Electric Company plant, which consisted of transmitters, power lines, and receivers. The lines could carry both power and voice signals, and one line could carry numerous frequencies simultaneously. 1994 Apple sues rivals over QuickTime theft On December 6, 1994, Apple filed a lawsuit against a San Francisco software firm called Canyon Co., alleging the company had stolen thousands of lines of code from Apple's QuickTime for Windows. The following February, Apple also added Microsoft and Intel to the lawsuit. Microsoft countersued, claiming that Apple was deliberately spreading misinformation about Microsoft's Video for Windows product.

1994 Orange County, California, goes bankrupt
Financial disaster hits Orange County, as a dalliance with high-risk investing forced the affluent California community to file for bankruptcy. The move, which marked the single biggest bankruptcy filing by a municipality, capped off a disastrous run for Orange County and its multi-billion-dollar investment fund. Though top-heavy with low-risk bonds, the fund was a ticking time bomb. Indeed, Orange County officials had built up their holdings through reverse repurchase agreements, a potentially perilous strategy in which investors borrow money to buy securities. In return for the loan, investors put up the securities as collateral; brokers also require additional collateral when "adverse" market events occur. Orange County's fund had been struggling for well over a year, forcing the brokers, which included a number of Wall Street firms, to seek more collateral. Heavily leveraged and heading for trouble, the fund's losses wandered into the neighborhood of $2 billion before county officials decided it was time to raise the white flag and file for Chapter 9. 1887 Cleveland Fights Tariffs By the late 19th century, the nation was engulfed in a debate over tariffs. Indeed, projectionists, who heralded tariffs as a necessary measure to safeguard American goods, clashed with a growing portion of the public who felt that product protection was an unnecessary crutch for the nation's businesses. On this day in 1887, President Grover Cleveland called for significant tariff reductions and, during the next decade, Cleveland did his best to roll back tariffs, supporting various bills designed to ease foreign trade restrictions.

1992 Riots follow Hindu attack on Ayodha Mosque in India
1992 Se celebran en Eslovenia las primeras elecciones democráticas, en las que vence para presidente Milan Kucan.
1991 The US Food and Drug Administration requires more detailed listing of contents on food labels.
1990 Saddam Hussein tells the Iraqi Parliament to authorize the release of all hostages being held by Iraq. The legislature complies the next day and all Americans who wish to leave would be out a week later.
1989 Egon Krenz resigned as Communist leader (dictator) of East Germany.
1989 Felipe González Márquez promete ante el Rey como presidente del Gobierno español y confirma en sus cargos a todos los miembros de su anterior Gabinete.
1989 ETA (Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna) comete un atentado con granadas en los Países Bajos contra la legación española en La Haya.
1988 El Tribunal Europeo de los Derechos Humanos condena a España por defectos procesales en el juicio contra los asesinos del industrial Bultó.
1988 Nelson Mandela is transferred to Victor Vester Prison, Capetown

1987 Protests against Soviet treatment of Jews ignored
      On the eve of Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev's arrival in the United States for a summit meeting with President Ronald Reagan, more than 200,000 protesters in Washington, and a much smaller number in Moscow, protest Soviet policies concerning Russian Jews. The protests succeeded in focusing public attention on human rights abuses in Russia but had little impact on the summit.
      The agenda for the Gorbachev-Reagan summit largely focused on weapons control issues, particularly the elimination of intermediate-range nuclear missiles from Europe. The Soviet presence in Afghanistan and support of the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua were also topics for discussion. Over 200'000 protesters in Washington attempted to shift the focus to another issue-the Soviet government's treatment of Russian Jews. In particular, they called on the Soviets to allow Jewish emigration from Russia and for an end to Soviet oppression of Jewish dissidents and critics of the Soviet government. In a letter that was read to appease the protesters, President Reagan stated that he would "not be satisfied with less" than the "release of all refuseniks [jailed dissidents] and for complete freedom of religious and cultural expression.” A demonstration set to coincide with the protests in Washington was roughly disrupted by Soviet plainclothes police in Moscow. The few dozen protesters had their signs and banners seized and destroyed and some were physically assaulted.
      Despite the protests and Reagan's rhetoric, the issue of Soviet human rights abuses played almost no role at the summit. The Soviets insisted that the protesters be ignored and US officials, anxious to get an arms control agreement out of the summit, essentially complied with the Russian requests. A major arms agreement was, in fact, signed during the meeting.

1986 US President Reagan admits that "mistakes were made" in executing his policy involving arms sales to Iran.
1984 Children picket the Mendiola Bridge in Manila, demand release of their parents, who are being held as political prisoners by the Marcos regime.
1983 Se conceden los Premios Nacionales españoles de Artes Plásticas al fotógrafo Francesc Catalá Roca y a los pintores Alfonso Fraile, Lucio Muñoz, Daniel Valdés y Darío Villalba.
1978 Es aprobada en referéndum la nueva Constitución Española, con cerca de un 33% de abstención.
1977 South Africa grants Bophuthatswana independence
1976 Democrat Tip O'Neill is elected speaker of the House of Representatives. He will serve the longest consecutive term as speaker.
1975 The US Senate authorizes a $2.3 billion emergency loan to save New York City from bankruptcy.

1973 Ford replaces Agnew as US Vice President
Gerald Rudolph Ford is sworn in as vice president of the United States, the first to take office under the terms of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the US Constitution. The Twenty-fifth Amendment, ratified in 1967, enabled the president to nominate a vice president in the event that the office becomes vacant. On 10 October 1973, Spiro T. Agnew, vice president to President Richard M. Nixon, resigned from his office and pleaded no contest to one charge of income tax invasion in return for the dropping of all other charges. Agnew, the only US vice president to resign in disgrace, was fined $10'000 and given three year's probation.
On October 12, President Nixon appointed Representative Gerald Ford of Michigan to the vice presidency, and shortly thereafter he was confirmed by Congress. On August 9, 1974, only eight months after becoming vice president, Gerald Ford assumes the presidency of the United States after the escalating Watergate scandal forces President Nixon's resignation. Thus Ford was an unelected Vice President and then an unelected President.

1972 Vietnam: fighting continues during peace talks
Fighting in South Vietnam intensifies as the secret Paris peace talks resume after a 24-hour break. The renewed combat was a result of both sides trying to achieve a positional advantage in the countryside in preparation for the possibility that a cease-fire might be worked out in Paris. Tan Son Nhut, one of two major airports near Saigon, is hit by the heaviest communist rocket attack in four years. One US rescue helicopter was destroyed and a fuel dump was set ablaze. In response, US planes bombed suspected Viet Cong positions within 10 miles of the airport. These strikes were followed by South Vietnamese troop attacks against the area from which the rockets were fired. Elsewhere in South Vietnam, fighting continued around Quang Tri, south of the Demilitarized Zone. Quang Tri fell to the North Vietnamese during their spring offensive earlier in the year. South Vietnamese forces reclaimed the city from the communists in September, but fighting continued in the areas around the city.

1971 Lewis Franklin Powell confirmed as US Supreme Court justice
1966 Dimite en Argentina el Comandante en Jefe del Ejército, y el presidente Juan Carlos Onganía le sustituye por el general Alsogaray.
1964 Antonio Segni dimite como presidente de Italia por motivos de salud.

1961 Vietnam: US Air Force goes into combat
      US Joint Chiefs of Staff authorize combat missions by Operation Farm Gate pilots. With this order, US Air Force pilots were given the go-ahead to undertake combat missions against the Viet Cong as long as at least one Vietnamese national was carried on board the strike aircraft for training purposes. The program had initially been designed to provide advisory support to assist the South Vietnamese Air Force in increasing its capability. The gradual but dramatic expansion of Operation Farm Gate reflected the increasing involvement of the United States in Vietnam.
      President John F. Kennedy originally ordered the Air Force to send a combat detachment to South Vietnam to assist the Saigon government in developing its own counterinsurgency capability. The Air Force formed the 4400th Combat Crew Training Squadron, which arrived at Bien Hoa Airfield in November 1961. Under Operation Farm Gate, the 4400th used older, propeller-driven aircraft to train South Vietnamese Air Force personnel. With the new order from the Joint Chiefs, the 4400th mission was expanded to include limited combat missions in support of South Vietnamese ground forces.
      Farm Gate pilots began flying reconnaissance missions and providing logistical support to US Army Special Forces units. The rules of engagement for combat missions dictated that American pilots only fly missions that the South Vietnamese were unable to undertake. The first Operation Farm Gate mission was flown on 16 December 1961. However, by late 1962, the communist activity and combat intensity had increased so much that President John F. Kennedy ordered a further expansion of Farm Gate. In early 1963, additional aircraft arrived and new detachments were established at Pleiku and Soc Trang.
      In early 1964, Farm Gate was upgraded again with the arrival of more modern aircraft. By March 1965, Washington had altogether dropped the requirement that a South Vietnamese national be carried on combat missions. In October 1965, another squadron of A-1E aircraft was established at Bien Hoa. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara approved the replacement of South Vietnamese markings on Farm Gate aircraft with regular US Air Force markings. By this point in the war, the Farm Gate squadrons were flying 80% of all missions in support of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). With the buildup of US combat forces in South Vietnam and the increase in US Air Force presence there, the role of the Farm Gate program gradually decreased in significance. The Farm Gate squadrons were moved to Thailand in 1967, where they launched missions against the North Vietnamese forces in Laos.

1957 AFL-CIO votes to expel the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (readmitted in October 1987)
1956 Nelson Mandela & 156 others arrested for political activities in S Africa
1955 US national standard for car license plates. Previously, individual states had designed their own license plates, resulting in wide variations.
1954 La escritora francesa Simone de Beauvoir recibe el premio Goncourt.
1952 Tiene lugar en Túnez una huelga general y el alejamiento forzoso de los líderes sindicales y del Neo Destur.
1949 Robert Merle gana el premio Goncourt por Fin de Semaine.
1948 The "Pumpkin Spy Papers" are found on the Maryland farm of Whittaker Chambers. They become evidence that State Department employee Alger Hiss is spying for the Soviet Union.
1945 The United States extends a $3 billion loan to Great Britain to help compensate for the termination of the Lend-Lease agreement.

1941 US President asks Japanese emperor to intervene for peace.
      President Roosevelt--convinced on the basis of intelligence reports that the Japanese fleet is headed for Thailand, not the United States--telegrams Emperor Hirohito with the request that "for the sake of humanity," the emperor intervene "to prevent further death and destruction in the world.”
      The Royal Australian Air Force had sighted Japanese escorts, cruisers, and destroyers on patrol near the Malayan coast, south of Cape Cambodia. An Aussie pilot managed to radio that it looked as if the Japanese warships were headed for Thailand-just before he was shot down by the Japanese. Back in England, Prime Minister Churchill called a meeting of his chiefs of staff to discuss the crisis. While reports were coming in describing Thailand as the Japanese destination, they began to question whether it could have been a diversion. British intelligence had intercepted the Japanese code "Raffles," a warning to the Japanese fleet to be on alert-but for what?
      Britain was already preparing Operation Matador, the launching of their 11th Indian Division into Thailand to meet the presumed Japanese invasion force. But at the last minute, Air Marshall Brooke-Popham received word not to cross the Thai border for fear that it would provoke a Japanese attack if, in fact, the warship movement was merely a bluff.
      Meanwhile, 1000 km northwest of Hawaii, Admiral Yamamoto, commander of the Japanese fleet, announced to his men: "The rise or fall of the empire depends upon this battle. Everyone will do his duty with utmost efforts.” Thailand was, in fact, a bluff. Pearl Harbor in Oahu, Hawaii was confirmed for Yamamoto as the Japanese target, after the Japanese consul in Hawaii had reported to Tokyo that a significant portion of the US Pacific fleet would be anchored in the harbor-sitting ducks. The following morning, Sunday, 07 December, was a good day to begin a raid.” The son of man has just sent his final message to the son of God," FDR joked to Eleanor after sending off his telegram to Hirohito, who in the Shinto tradition of Japan was deemed a god. As he enjoyed his stamp collection and chatted with Harry Hopkins, his personal adviser, news reached him of Japan's formal rejection of America's 10-point proposals for peace and an end to economic sanctions and the oil embargo placed on the Axis power.” This means war," the president declared. Hopkins recommended an American first strike.” No, we can't do that," Roosevelt countered.” We are a democracy and a peaceful people.”

1940 Comienza en Libia la contraofensiva del general inglés Archibald Percival earl Wavell.
1939 Britain agrees to send arms to Finland, which is fighting off a Soviet invasion.
1938 France and Germany sign a treaty of friendship (a hypocrisy which won't last more than a few months).— Los ministros de Asuntos Exteriores de Alemania y Francia, Joachim Von Ribbentrop y Georges Bonnet, respectivamente, firman una declaración de paz en París.
1934 American Ambassador Davis says Japan is a grave security threat in the Pacific.

1933 Ulysses is judged not obscene
     A US federal judge rules that Ulysses by James Joyce is not obscene. The book had been banned immediately in both the United States and England when it came out in 1922. Three years earlier, its serialization in an American review had been cut short by the US Post Office for the same reason. Fortunately, one of James' supporters, Sylvia Beach, owner of the bookstore Shakespeare and Co. in Paris, published the novel herself in 1922.
      James Joyce was born in Dublin, the eldest of 10 children of a cheerful ne'er-do-well who eventually went bankrupt. Joyce attended Catholic school and University College in Dublin, where he learned Dano-Norwegian so he could read the plays of Henrik Ibsen in the original. In college, he began a lifetime of literary rebellion when he self-published an essay rejected by the school's literary magazine adviser.
      After graduation, Joyce moved to Paris. He resolved to study medicine to support himself while writing but soon gave it up. He returned to Dublin to visit his mother's deathbed and remained to teach school and work odd jobs. On June 16, 1904, he met Nora Barnacle, whom he convinced to return to Europe with him. The couple settled in Trieste, where they had two children, and then in Zurich. Joyce struggled with serious eye problems, undergoing 25 operations for various troubles between 1917 and 1930.
      In 1914, he published Dubliners and his 1915 novel, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, brought him fame and the patronage of several wealthy people, including Edith Rockefeller. Ulysses, with its radical stream-of-consciousness narrative, deeply influenced the development of the modern novel. Joyce's final novel, Finnegans Wake, was published in 1939, and Joyce died in 1941.
more JOYCE ONLINE: Dubliners at another site, Chamber Music, Chamber Music.

1933 In the US people crowd into liquor stores, bars and cafes to buy their first legal alcoholic beverages in 13 years, following repeal of Prohibition.
1932 La Sociedad de Naciones condena a Japón por invadir Manchuria.
1929 Se produce en Guatemala una nueva erupción del volcán Santa María.
1923 Estalla en México un movimiento revolucionario, dirigido por el general Guadalupe Sánchez e inspirado por el general Victoriano Huerta Ortega.
1923 Los conservadores pierden escaños en las elecciones celebradas en Gran Bretaña, en provecho de los laboristas y los liberales, pero conservan la mayoría en la Cámara de los Comunes.
1923 1st US presidential address broadcast on radio (President Calvin Coolidge speaking to a joint session of Congress) [How long does it take to say: “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue”?]
1922 Benito Mussolini threatens Italian newspapers with censorship if they keep reporting "false" information.

1922 First constitution of Irish Free State comes into operation
      The terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty had been accepted by the Irish signatories only because British prime minister Lloyd George had threatened war on Ireland if they were rejected. Particularly obnoxious were a prescribed oath of allegiance to the British crown and the provisions allowing Northern Ireland to remain outside the new state. Eamon de Valera and the Republicans immediately repudiated the treaty, and, after its passage in the Dáil Éireann (Irish Assembly), de Valera resigned the presidency. Michael Collins, chairman of the provisional government set up according to the terms of the treaty, and Arthur Griffith, the new president of the Dáil, desired an immediate general election to obtain a verdict on the treaty; in the deteriorating conditions Collins eventually made with de Valera an agreement known as the Pact (20 May 1922), in which it was settled that government and Republican candidates would not oppose each other and that de Valera would consider resuming office. But the Pact naturally could not bind other parties, and at the election (16 June) Republicans were ousted in favour of members of a labor party and a farmers' party and by independents, thus reducing the antitreaty vote to a small minority.
      Before the Dáil could meet, civil war had broken out between the government and the extremist Republicans, who were allegedly accessories to the assassination (22 June) in London of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson soon after his acceptance of the position of military adviser to the government of Northern Ireland. The Republicans in Dublin had occupied the Four Courts (central courts of justice) in April and in late June. Under pressure from Britain, which also provided military equipment, Collins ordered them to retire. Serious fighting ensued for a week, until the Courts were blown up, and Rory O'Connor, the Dublin Republican leader, surrendered. Meanwhile, de Valera, who had escaped to the southwest, was openly supporting the Republicans. Griffith and Collins decided that no further compromise was possible, and military operations were begun. The strain had weighed so heavily on Griffith that he died suddenly on August 12, and Collins, inspecting the military operations, was killed in an ambush on 22 August.
      The government had thus lost two of its most prominent leaders, and surviving ministers could not appear openly without armed protection. Moreover, there was urgency in that, by the terms of the treaty, the newly elected Dáil was required to frame its constitution before 06 December 1922. It met on 09 September, elected as the new president William Thomas Cosgrave, and, in the absence of the Republican deputies, quickly passed the clauses of the constitution defining the relations of the Free State with the British crown and outlining arrangements for imperial defense. Timothy Michael Healy, a veteran follower of Charles Stewart Parnell who had later supported Sinn Féin, was then appointed governor-general, and Cosgrave became president of the executive council. The new constitution was also ratified at Westminster.

1921 The Anglo-Irish Treaty
    It is signed on behalf of Great Britain by prime minister David Lloyd George and leading members of his cabinet and on behalf of Ireland by Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins, and other members of the Republican cabinet.
     The Anglo-Irish Treaty provides that Ireland should in future have the "same constitutional status in the community of Nations known as the British Empire as the Dominion of Canada, the Commonwealth of Australia, the Dominion of New Zealand, and the Union of South Africa with a parliament having powers to make laws for the peace, order and good government of Ireland and an Executive responsible to that parliament.” The new dominion is to be known as the Irish Free State.
      This peace agreement, ratified by the British Parliament, would become operative when also passed (January 1922) by a meeting of the Dáil Éireann (Irish Assembly) . The new state comprises only 26 of the 32 counties; the northeastern area, known as Northern Ireland, remain part of the United Kingdom.
      The Irish Free State, comprising four-fifths of Ireland, is declared, ending a five-year Irish struggle for independence from Britain. Like other autonomous nations of the former British Empire, Ireland was to remain part of the British Commonwealth, symbolically subject to the king. The Irish Free State later severed ties with Britain and was renamed Éire, and is now called the Republic of Ireland.
      English rule over the island of Ireland dates back to the 12th century, and Queen Elizabeth I of England encouraged the large-scale immigration of Scottish Protestants in the 16th century. During ensuing centuries, a series of rebellions by Irish Catholics were put down as the Anglo-Irish minority extended their domination over the Catholic majority. Under absentee landlords, the Irish population was reduced to a subsistence diet based on potatoes, and when a potato blight struck the country in the 1840s, one million people starved to death while nearly two million more fled to the United States.
      A movement for Irish home rule gained momentum in the late 19th century, and in 1916 Irish nationalists launched the Easter Rising against British rule in Dublin. The rebellion was crushed, but widespread agitation for independence continued. In 1919, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) launched a widespread and effective guerrilla campaign against British forces. In 1921, a cease-fire was declared, and in January 1922 a faction of Irish nationalists signed a peace treaty with Britain, calling for the partition of Ireland, with the south becoming autonomous and the six northern counties of the island remaining in the United Kingdom.
      Civil war broke out even before the declaration of the Irish Free State on 06 December 1922, and ended with the victory of the Irish Free State over the Irish Republican forces in 1923. A constitution adopted by the Irish people in 1937 declared Ireland to be "a sovereign, independent, democratic state," and the Irish Free State was renamed Éire. Éire remained neutral during World War II, and in 1949 the Republic of Ireland Act severed the last remaining link with the Commonwealth.
      Conflicts persisted over Northern Ireland, however, and the IRA, outlawed in the south, went underground to try to regain the northern counties still ruled by Britain. Violence between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland escalated in the early 1970s, and to date the fighting has claimed more than 3000 lives.

1918 US Dept. of War abolishes the practice of manacling defiant prisoners to the walls of their cells in solitary confinement, used to torture conscientious objectors in US prisons during World War I.
1917 Finland declares independence from Russia (National Day)
1917 The Bolsheviks imprison Czar Nicholas II and his family at Tobolsk. — El zar de Rusia, Nicolás II, y su familia son hechos prisioneros en Tsárskoie Seló y trasladados a Tobolsk (Siberia Occidental).
1914 The troops of Pancho Villa & Emiliano Zapata enter Mexico City.
1911 Mongolia se convierte en protectorado ruso.
1903 Tras la dimisión de Francisco Silvela y la Vielleuze y su Gobierno, se forma uno nuevo en España presidido por Antonio Maura y Montaner .
1903 Completando la Doctrina Monroe de 1823, el presidente estadounidense Theodore Roosevelt declara que los Estados Unidos se consideran "el gendarme de América Latina".
1889 Great trial of the Chicago Haymarket anarchists begins.
1882 Atmosphere of Venus detected during transit
1877 Thomas A. Edison makes the first sound recording when he recites "Mary had a Little Lamb" into his phonograph machine.
1876 Descubrimiento de las tumbas de Micenas por el arqueólogo Heinrich Schliemann.
1875 44th US Congress (1875-77) convenes
1866 Chicago water supply tunnel 3227 m into Lake Michigan completed
1865 The 13th Amendment to the U.S Constitution was ratified, abolishing slavery in the United States.

1865 Slavery abolished by 13th Amendment to US Constitution.
      The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, officially ending the institution of slavery, is ratified. "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." With these words, the single greatest change wrought by the Civil War was officially noted in the US Constitution.
      The ratification came eight months after the end of the war, but it represented the culmination of the struggle against slavery. When the war began, many in the North were against fighting what they saw as a crusade to end slavery. Although many northern Democrats and conservative Republicans were opposed to slavery's expansion, they were ambivalent about outlawing the institution entirely. The war's escalation after the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861 caused many to rethink the role that slavery played in creating the conflict. By 1862, Lincoln realized that it was folly to wage such a bloody war without plans to eliminate slavery. In September 1862, following the Union victory at Antietam, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that all slaves in territory still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, would be declared forever free. The move was largely symbolic, as it only freed slaves in areas outside of Union control, but it changed the conlfict from a war for the reunification of the states to a war for the destruction of slavery.
      Lincoln believed that a constitutional amendment was necessary to ensure the end of slavery. In 1864, Congress debated several proposals. Some insisted on including provisions to prevent discrimination against blacks, but the Senate Judiciary Committee provided the eventual language. It borrowed from the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, when slavery was banned from the area north of the Ohio River. The Senate passed the amendment in April 1864.
    Republican victory in the 1864 election would guarantee the success of the amendment. The Republican platform called for the "utter and complete destruction" of slavery, while the Democrats favored restoration of states' rights, which would include at least the possibility for the states to maintain slavery. Lincoln's overwhelming victory set in motion the events leading to ratification of the amendment. The House passed the measure in January 1865 and it was sent to the states for ratification. When Georgia ratified it on 06 December 1865, the institution of slavery ceases to exist in the United States.

1864 Salmon P. Chase named Chief Justice of the United States
1863 The monitor Weehawken sinks in Charleston Harbor.
1862 President Abraham Lincoln orders the hanging of 39 of the 303 convicted Indians who, lied to and mistreated by the US, had participated in the desperate Sioux Uprising in Minnesota. They are to be hanged on December 26.
1861 Union General George G. Meade leads a foraging expedition to Gunnell's farm near Dranesville, Virginia.
1849 Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery in Maryland
1812 The majority of the remnants of Napoléon Bonaparte's Grande Armée staggers into Vilna, Lithuania, ending the failed Russian campaign.
1811 The first in a series of earthquakes rocked the Midwest, in and around New Madrid, Missouri.
1810 Miguel Hidalgo issues a decree abolishing slavery in Mexico.
1797 Mme de Stael meets Napoléon, who takes an immediate dislike to her.

1790 US Congress convenes in Philadelphia
In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the US Congress opens its legislative session, and Philadelphia replaces New York City as the capital of the United States. Congress convenes in Congress Hall, adjacent to Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution were all signed. From 1774 to the capture of Philadelphia by the British in 1777, Philadelphia served as the meeting place of the First and Second Continental Congresses. Following the recapture of the city by the Patriots in 1778, the Continental Congress returned from its exile in York, Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia was officially made capital of the United States under the Articles of Confederation in 1787. In 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed ending the American War for Independence, and Annapolis, Maryland, was chosen as the new nation's capital for its central location in the United States. After two years, the capital returned north to New York City, and in 1789, following the ratification of the US Constitution, New York became the first capital of the modern United States. One year later, Philadelphia became the second capital of the US under the Constitution, a distinction it holds until the completion of the new capital city of Washington, D.C., a decade later.

1631 1st predicted transit of Venus (Kepler) is observed
1534 Quito, Ecuador founded by Spanish
1492 Hispaniola (now Haiti-Santo Domingo) discovered by Columbus (in search of gold), at Mole Saint Nicolas
1240 Mongols under Batu Khan occupy & destroy Kiev.

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Deaths which occurred on a December 06:
2002 Keyla Guerrero, 17; Josefina Inciarte, 70; Jaime Federico Jirabo Rodríguez; all three hit in the head by gunfire directed at a crowd of anti-government demonstrators on Plaza Altamirana in Caracas, 19:15. 18 are wounded.
2002 Ahlam Riziq Kandil, 31; Osama Hassan Tahrawi, 31, and 2 of his brothers; and 6 other Palestinians; by missile fired from an Israeli helicopter, as Israeli troops, tanks, and helicopters firing missiles and machine guns attack the Bureij refugee camp, Gaza Strip, starting at 00:15, seeking Aiman Shasniyeh, a local leader of the Popular Resistance Committee, believed to be behind a bomb attack on a heavily armored Merkava-3 tank that killed three Israeli soldiers in March 2002. For three hours, there are gunbattles with Palestinians summoned through mosque loudspeakersp. They had been celebrating Eid el-Fitr for the end of Ramadan. Kandil was an elementary school teacher, she died some time after being hit by shrapnel. Tahrawi was a school attendant. Both were among the 10'000 Palestinian employees of UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, where it runs some 260 schools and 50 clinics serving more than 1.5 million registered refugees
2001 One employee shot by a disgruntled employee who then shoots himself, at the Nu-Wood Decorative Millwork simulated wood factory in Goshen, Indiana. [Gruntled employees never make the news]
2000 Hemayatollah Hamed Akhundzada, executed after being tortured.
Amnesty International has condemned the execution of six prisoners in the Afghan province of Panjshir. The human rights organization has urged Ahmad Shah Masood, whose forces control the area, to refrain from ordering the execution of anyone in the territories under his control. The organization also calls on him to ensure that no one in the custody of his personnel is subjected to torture, and to provide detailed information on the trial processes. The prisoners were arrested on the evening of 04 December hours after a United Front Commander and Governor of Laghman Province, Abdullah Jan Wahedi, was shot dead in an ambush while on his way to the Panjshir valley. Wahedi's five bodyguards and another United Front commando were reportedly wounded in the ambush. Ahmad Shah Masood's administration has claimed that the prisoners were tried by a court before they were executed. However, it has provided no information about the nature of their trial. At least one of the prisoners had reportedly been severely tortured : the family of Hemayatollah Hamed Akhundzada claim they saw his nails had been pulled out, and there were signs of violence on the rest of his body when he was being buried. Information on the treatment of the others is not available.” The circumstances of the men=s alleged trial and their execution raise serious concerns," Amnesty International said. First, they were executed hastily within 40 hours of their arrest. If a trial did take place in such a short period of time, the prisoners are likely to have been deprived of the right to adequate time and facilities to prepare a defense.
2000 Enrique Anderson Imbert, escritor argentino.

1992 First of some 2500 killed in riots after destruction of Mosque in India
Religious tension between India's majority Hindu and minority Muslim population reaches a breaking point when Hindu extremists destroy a mosque in Ayodhya in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. The Ayodhya mosque, allegedly built on the site of a former Hindu temple, was at the center of the campaign by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a nationalist Hindu party, to challenge the secular tradition of Indian politics and to enshrine Hinduism as a virtual state religion. To the apprehension of India's one hundred million Muslims, the BJP experienced rapid growth in Indian politics in the late 1980s and early 1990s, thanks in part to the publicity surrounding the Ayodhya mosque campaign. The demolition of the Ayodhya mosque by Hindu extremists sets off deadly riots across India, resulting in the deaths of some 2500 people.

1989 Fourteen women and one man who shot them and them himself, at University of Montreal, killed by one man, worst Canadian mass murder
1987 Boy bludgeoned to death by 3 satanist Missouri teenagers, just for "fun"
1984 A hostage, killed by hijackers aboard Kuwaiti jetliner. He is their 2nd victim.
1983 Six Israelis, by a bomb planted on a bus in Jerusalem
1982: 11 soldiers and 6 civilians die by bomb planted by Irish National Liberation Army exploded in a pub in Ballykelly, Northern Ireland
1959 Erdard Schmidt, mathematician.
1952 Some 500 persons in London, choked on the second day of the Great Killer Fog. As it blocks sunlight and the temperature drops, people put more coal on their home fires, the smoke worsening the fog.

1952 Some 500 choked by the Great Killer Smog in London.        ^top^
         With weather colder than usual a fog had formed on 05 October over London under a stagnant inversion, and loaded by coal smoke and other pollutants had thickened by evening reducing the visibility to a few meters.
     During the day of 06 October, the sun was too low in the sky to make much of an impression on the fog. That night and the following two, the fog again thickened. In many parts of London, it was impossible at night for pedestrians to find their way, even in familiar districts. In the Isle of Dogs, the visibility was at times nil. The fog there was so thick that people could not see their own feet! Even in the drier thoroughfares of central London, the fog was exceptionally thick. Not until 09 December did it clear. In central London, the visibility remained below 500 meters continuously for 114 hours and below 50 meters continuously for 48 hours. At Heathrow Airport, visibility remained below 10 meters for almost 48 hours from the morning of 06 December.
      Worse than the minimal visibility is the effect on the lungs, people feel like they are breathing a poisonous gas. Some 500 persons die as a direct consequence of the smog on this its first full day.

1943 Ricardo León y Román, escritor español. — [Il écrivait des romans?]
1942 Louis Marie de Schryver, French artist born on 12 October 1862.

1939 Day 7 of Winter War: USSR aggression against Finland. [Talvisodan 7. päivä]
More deaths due to Stalin's desire to grab Finnish territory.

Helsinki: Foreign Minister Väinö Tanner hosts an Independence Day reception for the diplomatic corps in the banqueting hall of the Kämp Hotel.

Kiviniemi: the last part of the covering force in front of the main defensive position on the Isthmus pulls back to the north of Vuoksi.The work of the covering force comes to an end.

Eastern Isthmus: fighting begins at Taipale. A Soviet division launches an attack across the River Taipaleenjoki. By nightfall a Russian battalion has crossed River Taipaleenjoki at Koukkuniemi.

Ladoga Karelia: General Headquarters forms Group Talvela to cover the Tolvajärvi-Ägläjärvi sector.

Sweden: 80 leading public figures call on the country to help Finland.

1917: 1654 die in munitions ship explosion in Halifax harbor.
      At 09:05, in the harbor of Halifax in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, the most devastating man-made explosion in the pre-nuclear age occurs when the Mont Blanc, a French munitions ship, explodes twenty minutes after colliding with another vessel. As World War I raged in Europe, the port city of Halifax bustled with the movement of ships carrying troops, relief supplies, and munitions across the Atlantic Ocean.
      On the morning of December 6, the Belgium steamship Imo left its mooring in Halifax harbor, bound for New York City. At the same time, the French freighter Mont Blanc, its cargo holds packed with highly explosive munitions--2300 tons of picric acid, 200 tons of TNT, thirty-five tons of high octane gasoline, and ten tons of gun cotton--was forging through the harbor's narrows to join a military convoy that would escort it across the Atlantic.
      At approximately 08:45 the two ships collide, setting the picric acid ablaze. The Mont Blanc is propelled towards the shore and the crew rapidly abandons ship, attempting without success to alert the harbor of the peril of the burning ship. Spectators gathered along the waterfront to witness the spectacle of the blazing ship, and minutes later it brushed by a harbor pier, setting it ablaze. The Halifax Fire Department responds quickly, and is positioning its engine up to the nearest hydrant when the Mont Blanc explodes at 09:05 in a blinding white flash. The massive blast kills 1654 people, injures over 8000, and destroys almost the entire north-end of the city of Halifax. Windows 60 km away are shattered and the sound of the explosion can be heard hundreds of kilometers away.

1910 Vittorio Avondo, Italian artist born on 10 August 1836.

1907: 361 in mine explosion in Monongah WV
      In West Virginia's Marion County, an explosion at a mine owned by the Fairmont Coal Company in Monongah kills 361 coal miners. It is the worst mining disaster in American history.
      In 1883, the creation of the Norfolk and Western Railway opened a gateway to the untapped coalfields of southwestern West Virginia. New towns sprung up in the region virtually overnight as European immigrants and African-Americans from the south rushed into southern West Virginia in pursuit of the economic opportunities of the new industry.
      By the late nineteenth century, West Virginia, now a national leader in the production of coal, fell far behind other major coal-producing states in regulating mining conditions. In addition to the poor economic conditions, West Virginia had a higher mine death rate than any other state in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.
      The Monongah disaster of 1907 came only eleven months after a disaster in Stuart, West Virginia, claimed the lives of eighty-four miners. West Virginia was also far behind other states in the development of labor unions. In 1902, after several unsuccessful efforts, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) finally achieved some recognition in West Virginia, although it would take several more decades of protests and violence before the UMWA finally was able to force noticeable improvements to the poor working conditions in West Virginia's coal mines.

1893 Wolf, mathematician.
1892 Ernst Werner von Siemens, ingeniero e industrial alemán.
1889 Jefferson Davis, first and only President of Confederate States of America (1861-5)
1884 Jean Baptiste van Moer, Belgian artist born on 17 December 1819.

1882 Anthony Trollope, in Hastings, Sussex novelist, poet, born on 06 April 1815. ^top^ TROLLOPE ONLINE:
Barchester Towers Barchester Towers Can You Forgive Her? Dr. Wortle's School The Eustace Diamonds Hunting Sketches	Ayala's Angel Ayala's Angel Lady Anna Phineas Finn Phineas Redux Phineas Redux	North America volume I — volume II North America (page images) The Prime Minister Rachel Ray Short Stories of Today and Yesterday The Warden

1873 Manuel Acuña, poeta mexicano.
1865 Sebastián Iradier, compositor español.
1852 George Duncan Beechey, British artist born in 1798. — Relative? of Sir William Beechey [1753-1839]?
1835 Ignacio Alonso Zapatero, guerrillero y militar español.
1823 Edmundo Samuel Castaing, envenenador francés.
1810 John Francis Rigaud, British painter born in 1742. — LINKS
1791 Christian Georg Schüz (or Schütz) I, German artist born on 27 September 1718.
1779 Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, French painter specialized in still life, born on 02 November 1699. — MORE ON CHARDIN AT ART “4” DECEMBER — LINKS — Bubbles — The Buffet — The Ray — The Silver Tureen — A "Lean Diet" with Cooking Utensils — The House of Cards — another The House of Cards — The Draftsman — Still-Life with Pipe and Jug — The Attentive Nurse

1749 La Verendrye, 64, French-Canadian explorer
      In the midst of planning another expedition to search for the elusive Northwest Passage, French-Canadian explorer La Verendrye dies in Montréal, Canada. Born in 1685 in the small frontier town of Trois-Rivières, New France (now the Canadian province of Québec), La Verendrye exhibited an adventurous spirit from an early age. When he was only 12 years old, he joined in the French-Indian raid on Deerfield, Massachusetts, and then sailed across the Atlantic to fight for France in the War of the Spanish Succession. After spending time as a soldier, he returned to New France, and in 1726, he became a fur trader in the frontier region north of Lake Superior.
      Native Americans in the area told La Verendrye stories of a great river that flowed out of the West-they were speaking of the river we now know as the Missouri. None of the Native Americans had ever followed the river all the way to the headwaters, but they heard it led to a giant western ocean. La Verendrye realized that if the stories were true, the river could be the hoped-for Northwest Passage to the Pacific.
      La Verendrye's exploration was motivated by a desire to discover the secrets of the West, and a financial interest in discovering new sources of furs. He and his sons built up a string of trading posts that probed deep into the unknown western territories. In 1738, armed with several crude maps--given to him by Indians--that supposedly showed the all-water route to the "western sea," La Verendrye reached the Mandan Indian villages along the Missouri River in present-day North Dakota, some sixty years before Lewis and Clark reached the same area. From this base, two of his sons continued westward; it is possible they may have traveled far enough into Montana and Wyoming to see the massive Rocky Mountains in the distance.
      Unfortunately, La Verendrye and his sons never found the elusive Northwest Passage, and their failure earned them only scorn from the French authorities in Montreal. This derision was perhaps unfair, since Lewis and Clark discovered in 1805 that the passage for which La Verendrye had been searching did not actually exist, and La Verendrye did deserve credit for opening new areas to French fur traders. Without his exploration, those areas likely would have been claimed by British competitors. At entirely his own expense, La Verendrye pushed farther into the West than any other Frenchman, at least temporarily strengthening French political claims in North America. Despite the poor treatment he received from French leaders, La Verendrye remained determined to find the coveted path to the western sea.

1658 Baltasar Gracián, escritor español.
1562 Jan van Scorel, Dutch painter born on 01 August 1495 — MORE ON VAN SCOREL AT ART “4” DECEMBER — LINKS — Joris van Egmond, Bishop of Utrecht — Landscape with Bathsheba — Mary Magdalen _ Mary Magdalen — Portrait of a Man (1529)
1504 Pasqualino di Niccolo da Venezia (Veneto), Italian artist.
1300 San Pedro Nicolás Pascual, santo español.

Births which occurred on a December 06:
1993 Elian González, to Elizabet Brotón and Juan Miguel González, in Cárdenas, Cuba. The boy would become a celebrity after his rescue at sea near Miami on Thanksgiving Day, 1999. His mother and ten others had drowned after the small boat in which they were fleeing Cuba capsized. Cuban exiles made him the poster boy of their anti-Castro cause, and Castro seized upon the opportunity to criticize them and the US's immigration policices. News media and politicians focused on him for months until at long last the father came to take his son back to Cuba with him.

1971 Ryan Wayne White born with hemophilia, later to contract AIDS from blood-clotting products and died of it in 1990. --
      "At 13, all-American kid and honors student Ryan White learned he had a deadly disease with no cure. AIDS. He had contracted it through the blood products he received for his hemophilia. His home town of Kokomo, Indiana, responded -- not with compassion, but with fear and hate. When Ryan White was told he couldn't return to school, he decided to fight back. He went to court and won. But that was only the beginning of his fight to educate the public about AIDS. This young teenager dared to speak out when others kept silent. And the whole world listened.”
      Ryan White, at the time he wal perhaps the world's most famous thirteen-year-old pediatric patient from Kokomo Indiana, was a prime example of one whose community rejected him because of his health status. On 26 December 26 1984, Ryan's mother, Jeanne, told him that he had AIDS, which he contracted through a transfusion of tainted blood used in treating his hemophilia. He was one of many victims of discrimination because of his problem: "A bullet was fired into his house. Children called him names. Adults refused to shake hands with the White family at church" . Ryan stated, "A lot of people would back away from me on the street...[or] they'd run from me" .
      Furthermore, when Ryan started school in 1985, classmates "taunted and ostracized [him]" . Because "AIDS was a new and alien specter then...the public fear and early ignorance led frightened parents to ask that Ryan be kept out of school" , and as a result, officials prevented him from attending classes . Because Ryan had a great love for learning, he fought to continue his education by pursuing a court case, which he ultimately won, against the school board. His perseverance to attend school and learn was evident through the action he took to solve the problem. Ryan not only showed that gaining knowledge was important to him, but also that it was important to everyone. During the 1980's, the people within a community had to acquire knowledge about AIDS in order for them to accept AIDS patients and focus on preventing the spread of AIDS. One author expressed, "The fight to stay in school pushed the sometimes reluctant teen into the limelight, but transformed him into an eloquent spokesman [for AIDS]"
      Ryan still felt uncomfortable in Kokomo, though. The community of Cicero, Indiana welcomed Ryan with open arms after his move there. His actions thus far had already made an impact on others. The people in Cicero and the students of Hamilton Heights High School expressed no signs of discrimination. They had already accepted Ryan for who he was. The school directors "arranged for each student to attend a two-hour seminar on AIDS. Teachers sent AIDS material home with all students and asked them to be sure their parents read it" .
      During his presence, Ryan was an influence on the initiation of AIDS awareness programs. John Mortimer, AIDS Project Los Angeles' educational director, started one such program called "Southern California Cares". The program was "for multiple target groups, mostly toward the heterosexual general public" . This program "[was] a collaborative effort of APLA and nine other area AIDS agencies to get information to the general public about AIDS through a campaign titled, 'AIDS: Fight the Fear with the Facts'".
      Even after Ryan's death, the story about his courageous battle with AIDS continues to impact the common man. In his article, author George Stuteville states that Jeanne "plunged into a chain of events that honored her son, and projects on behalf of AIDS patients and medical research...and made appearances at dozens of schools to talk about Ryan's struggle" . Furthermore, students have shown interest in contributing to AIDS research. Students of Hauser Junior-Senior High School collected money to donate to the Ryan White Fund for Childhood Infections . In terms of media coverage, the federal government started an information campaign against AIDS: "Twenty-nine different spot ads were sent free of charge to thousands of television and radio stations across the country". The government designed the ads "to avoid the repellent, [and] to humanize AIDS" . Overall, the media now strove to prevent the spread of AIDS ,to prevent panic, and to support those already afflicted with the AIDS or the virus. More concrete facts were the prime focus rather than the misleading, doubtful information that had been broadcast beforehand.

1942 Peter Handke, escritor austriaco.
1941 Bruce Nauman, US Installation artist — LINKS — War (1971, 57x72cm)
1941 Richard Speck mass murderer (killed 8 student nurses in 1966).
1933 Catholic Worker newspaper is started by Dorothy Day & others, New York City; House of Hospitality opened soon after.
1932 Talismán, obra póstuma de Amadeu Vives, se estrena en el Teatro Lírico Nacional de Madrid.
1930 Eladio Cabañero, poeta español.
1922 William P. McGivern, US novelist, screenplay writer, who published over 20 novels covering the wide genre of thrillers — homicide detection, espionage, political corruption, the world of psychopath, and the crooked cop.
1913 Mercedes Ballesteros Gaibrois, escritora española.
1908 Herta Freitag, mathematician.
1901 Eliot Porter, nature photographer.
1900 Uhlenbeck, mathematician.
1900 Germán Arciniegas Angueyra, escritor e historiador colombiano.
1898 Gunnar Myrdal Sweden, sociologist/economist (Nobel 1974)
1898 Alfred Eisenstaedt, photojournalist.
1896 Ira Gershwin, American lyricist and musical collaborator with his brother George. ('S Wonderful, I Got Rhythm, Lady Be Good, The Man I Love, The Man That Got Away)
1893 Sylvia Townsend Warner, in Harrow, Middlesex, England. Self-proclaimed "accidental" writer whose career began when she was given paper with a "particularly tempting surface" & whose first novel, Lolly Willowes, or the Loving Huntsman (1926), was written because she "happened to find very agreeable thin lined paper in a job lot.”
1892 Osbert Sitwell London, poet/writer (Out of the Flame)

1886 Joyce Alfred Kilmer US, poet. KILMER ONLINE: Main Street, and Other Poems -- Main Street, and Other Poems -- Trees and Other Poems

TREES

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

1884 Leon Abraham Kroll, US painter who died in 1974. — LINKS — Summer — Girl in a Hammock
1883 Kahlil Gibran, poet (The Prophet), in Bisharri, Lebanon.
1880 Boutroux, mathematician.
1877 Washington Post publishes 1st edition
1856 Walther von Dyck, mathematician.
1856 François Flameng, French artist who died on 28 February 1923.
1855 Frank Myers Boggs (“Frank-Boggs), US French painter who died on 08 August 1926. — The Seine, Outside Paris
1841 Jean Frédéric Bazille, French Impressionist painter who died on 28 November 1870. — MORE ON BAZILLE AT ART “4” DECEMBER — LINKS — Self-Portrait — Bazille's Studio; 9 rue de la Condamine — Pierre-Auguste Renoir — View of the Village
1822 John Eberhard built 1st large-scale pencil factory in US.
1821 Manuel Fernández y González, escritor español.
1814 Juan Prim y Prats, militar y político español.
1812 Ana María Martínez de Nisser, heroína y escritora colombiana.
1791 José Gutiérrez de la Vega, pintor español.
1778 Louis-Joseph Gay-Lussac, French chemist
1768 Encyclopedia Brittanica's first edition is published (Scotland)
1750 Pierre Henri de Valenciennes, French painter specialized in landscapes, who died on 16 February 1819. — MORE ON VALENCIENNES AT ART “4” DECEMBER — LINKS — Éruption du Vésuve Arrivée le 24 Aug de l'an 79 de J.C. Sous le Règne de Titus — A Capriccio of Rome with the the Finish of a Marathon — Italian Landscape — Landscape of Ancient Greece
1732 Warren Hastings England, 1st governor-general of India (1773-84)
1682 Giulio Fagnano, mathematician.
1668 Nicolas Vleughels (or Wleughels), French artist who died on 11 December 1737.
1534 La ciudad de San Francisco de Quito (Ecuador) es fundada por Sebastián de Belalcázar.

1478 Baldassare Castiglione. Italian humanist, diplomat, courtier.
     He would be famous for his The Book of the Courtier (1528), which was translated into many languages and made Castiglione the arbiter of aristocratic manners during the Renaissance. He wrote also Italian and Latin poems, and letters illustrating political and literary history.
     Count Baldassare Castiglione, Italian courtier and writer, was born near Mantua. In 1505, he was sent by the Duke of Urbino as envoy to Henry VII of England, who made him a knight, and was later Mantuan ambassador at the papal court in Rome (1513-1524). He was papal nuncio for Pope Clement VII in Spain, from 1524. His chief work, Il Cortegiano (1528), is a manual for courtiers. His Italian and Latin poems are models of elegance. His Letters (1760-1771) illustrate political and literary history.
—     Baldassarre Castiglione nacque a Casatico nel 1478 da una nobile famiglia, imparentata con i Gonzaga. Come per numerosi intellettuali di piccola e media nobiltà dell’epoca, la sua vicenda biografica fu scandita da numerosi viaggi e missioni diplomatiche al servizio di alcune tra le maggiori famiglie dell’Italia centro-settentrionale. Compiuta la sua prima formazione a Milano, fu al servizio alternativamente dei Gonzaga, signori di Mantova, dei Montefeltro signori di Urbino e dei Della Rovere, partecipando, con incarichi diplomatici diversi, alle complicate vicende che coinvolsero lo Stato Pontificio e gli stati dell’Italia settentrionale a cavallo tra XV° e XVI° secolo.
      Nel 1521 Castiglione abbracciò la vita ecclesiastica e nel 1524 fu nominato da Leone X nunzio apostolico a Madrid. I rapporti tra Spagna e Chiesa purtroppo precipitarono rapidamente, giungendo ad una esplicita contrapposizione tra Papa e Imperatore, che ebbe come devastante esito il Sacco di Roma del 1527; Castiglione fu accusato di avere pesanti responsabilità nella condotta diplomatica tra Spagna e Chiesa e rimase in Spagna fino alla morte.
      Negli ultimi anni di vita si dedicò principalmente a completare e rivedere la sua maggiore opera, Il Cortegiano. Il dialogo in quattro libri, cominciato nel 1513-14, era diffuso e conosciuto prima ancora che fosse dato alle stampe: la prima edizione risale al 1528, ad opera di Aldo Manuzio e Andrea Asolo, stampatori a Venezia. L’opera ebbe un’immediata e fortunatissima diffusione in tutta Europa: il Cortegiano infatti, non è un semplice manuale di comportamento ad uso delle corti quanto piuttosto una stilizzazione della società cortigiana ideale a cui l’aristocrazia rinascimentale tendeva ma che di rado poteva realizzarsi nella tempesta delle vicende storico-politico che si susseguirono rapidamente per tutto il Rinascimento. Castiglione morì a Toledo nel 1529.

CASTIGLIONE ONLINE: Libro del Cortegiano — (in English translation): The Book of the Courtier.

1421 Henry VI king of England (1422-61, 1470-71), the youngest king of England to accede to the throne (only 269 days old)
1285 Fernando IV, rey de Castilla y León.

Holidays Bahrain : Ruler's Ascension Day / Ecuador : Day of Quito (1534) / Finland : Independence Day (1917)

Religious Observances Ang, RC, Luth : Nicholas, Archbp of Myra patron of children / Santos Nicolás de Bari, Apolinar, Emiliano y Pascasio; santas Dionisia, Leoncia y Gertrudis.

DICTIONNAIRE TICRANIEN: Souffrance: pays au sud des Pyrénées.

Thoughts for the day : “Clean mind, clean body: take your pick.”
“Clean pick, clean shovel: make up your mind.”
” The early bird, the early worm: take your pick.”
” Early to bed, early to rise: take your pick.”
“Clean ground, clean body: take your pick and dig.”
“Clean mine, clean yours: take your pick.”
“Clean mine, clean shaft: take your pick and dig.”
“Clean mine, clean bomb: take your pick.”
“Marriage is a lottery in which men stake their liberty and women their happiness.” — Madame Virginie de Rieux, 16th-century French writer.
“Life is a lottery in which tickets are inherited or earned by hard work.”

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