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Events, deaths, births, of 19 DEC
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RohOn a December 19:

2002 Presidential election in South Korea. Roh Moo Hyun, 56 [< photo], of the governing Millenium Democratic party, who wants better relations with North Korea, wins with 49% of the vote over Lee Hoi Chang, 67, of the conservative Grand National Party, who distrusts North Korea, and gets 47%.

2001 President Fernando de La Rua declares a state of siege in Argentina as riots and looting worsens in response to government austerity measures and worsening poverty.

Popocatepetl early 001219 2000 Popocatepetl erupts [photo >]. It may be the most dangerous volcano in the world. Most people in the vicinity have heeded government advice to flee. There are no casualties so far, but volcanologists warn it might get worse.
1999 China recupera el enclave de Macao tras 442 años en manos de Portugal, que de esta forma pierde su última colonia.
1999 La elecciones legislativas celebradas en Rusia confirman el ascenso del primer ministro Vladimir Putin y de su partido, Unidad, además de la fortaleza de los comunistas, que pese a ser el partido más votado perdió el control de la Duma.
1998 US President Clinton is impeached.
     After nearly 14 hours of debate, the House of Representatives approves two articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, charging him with lying under oath to a federal grand jury and obstructing justice. Clinton, the second president in American history to be impeached, vowed to finish his term.
      In November 1995, Clinton began an affair with Monica Lewinsky, a 21-year-old unpaid intern. Over the course of a year and a half, the president and Lewinsky had nearly a dozen sexual encounters in the White House. In April 1996, Lewinsky was transferred to the Pentagon. That summer, she first confided in Pentagon co-worker Linda Tripp about her sexual relationship with the president. In 1997, with the relationship over, Tripp began secretly to record conversations with Lewinsky, in which Lewinsky gave Tripp details about the affair.
      In December, lawyers for Paula Jones, who was suing the president on sexual harassment charges, subpoenaed Lewinsky. In January 1998, allegedly under the recommendation of the president, Lewinsky filed an affidavit in which she denied ever having had a sexual relationship with him. Five days later, Tripp contacted the office of Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater independent counsel, to talk about Lewinsky and the tapes she made of their conversations. Tripp, wired by FBI agents working with Starr, met with Lewinsky again, and on 16 January, Lewinsky was taken by FBI agents and US attorneys to a hotel room where she was questioned and offered immunity if she cooperated with the prosecution. A few days later, the story broke, and Clinton publicly denied the allegations, saying, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky."
      In late July, lawyers for Lewinsky and Starr worked out a full-immunity agreement covering both Lewinsky and her parents, all of whom Starr had threatened with prosecution. On 06 August, Lewinsky appeared before the grand jury to begin her testimony, and on 17 August President Clinton testified. Contrary to his testimony in the Paula Jones sexual-harassment case, President Clinton acknowledged to prosecutors from the office of the independent counsel that he had had an extramarital affair with Ms. Lewinsky.
      In four hours of closed-door testimony, conducted in the Map Room of the White House, Clinton spoke live via closed-circuit television to a grand jury in a nearby federal courthouse. He was the first sitting president ever to testify before a grand jury investigating his conduct. That evening, President Clinton also gave a four-minute televised address to the nation in which he admitted he had engaged in an inappropriate relationship with Lewinsky. In the brief speech, which was wrought with legalisms, the word "sex" was never spoken, and the word "regret" was used only in reference to his admission that he misled the public and his family.
      Less than a month later, on 09 September, Kenneth Starr submitted his report and 18 boxes of supporting documents to the House of Representatives. Released to the public two days later, the Starr Report outlined a case for impeaching Clinton on 11 grounds, including perjury, obstruction of justice, witness-tampering, and abuse of power, and also provided explicit details of the sexual relationship between the president and Ms. Lewinsky. On October 8, the House authorized a wide-ranging impeachment inquiry, and on December 11, the House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment. On 19 December the House impeaches Clinton.
      On 07 January 1999, in a congressional procedure not seen since the 1868 impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson, the trial of President Clinton got underway in the Senate. As instructed in Article 1 of the US Constitution, the chief justice of the US Supreme Court (William Rehnquist at this time) was sworn in to preside, and the senators were sworn in as jurors.
      Five weeks later, on 12 February, the Senate voted on whether to remove Clinton from office. The president was acquitted on both articles of impeachment. The prosecution needed a two-thirds majority to convict but failed to achieve even a bare majority. Rejecting the first charge of perjury, 45 Democrats and 10 Republicans voted "not guilty," and on the charge of obstruction of justice the Senate was split 50-50. After the trial concluded, President Clinton said he was "profoundly sorry" for the burden his behavior imposed on Congress and the American people.
1997 El Gobierno irlandés libera a nueve presos del IRA, en un gesto de gracia del Gobierno de Dublín. Este indulto colectivo se interpreta como una muestra de apoyo al proceso de paz.
1994 La escultora austriaca Eva Lootz, Premio Nacional español de Artes Plásticas 1994.
1991 Boris Yeltsin takes control of Kremlin
1991 El primer ministro de Australia, el laborista Bob Hawke, dimite tras perder una moción de confianza a causa de la crisis económica.
1989 American Airlines purchases Eastern Airline's Latin American route
1988 NASA unveils plans for lunar colony and manned missions to Mars
1987 El soviético Gari Kimovich Kasparov, campeón mundial de ajedrez, al empatar a doce puntos con el aspirante, Anatoli Evgenievich Karpov, en Sevilla.
1986 Gorbachev releases the Sakharovs from internal exile
      Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev releases Andrei Sakharov and his wife, Elena Bonner, from their internal exile in Gorky, a major city on the Volga River that was then closed to foreigners. The move was hailed as evidence of Gorbachev's commitment to lessening political repression inside the Soviet Union.
      Sakharov was a long-time critic of government policies in Russia. He was sentenced to internal exile in 1980 following his denunciations of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Through the years, Sakharov emerged as a symbol of Soviet dissidents, and became a hero to many in the West. Gorbachev, who pledged to ease Soviet political restrictions, recognized that releasing Sakharov and his wife would legitimize his program of "glasnost," political openness. For his part, Sakharov was happy about Gorbachev's attempts to ease the harsh communist rule in Russia and even traveled to the United States to ask the American people to assist the Soviet Union during its period of reform.
      As Gorbachev discovered, however, Sakharov was no puppet. When the former political prisoner became a member of the Congress of People's Deputies in 1989, he continued to support Gorbachev's reform plans, but also harshly criticized the slow pace of change. During a December 1989 speech in which Sakharov demanded a new multiparty political system for Russia, Gorbachev quickly cut him off. Later that same day, Sakharov died of a heart attack.
1986 Independent Counsel named to investigate Iran-Contra Affair
      A special panel of three federal judges appoints Lawrence E. Walsh to investigate the escalating Iran-Contra scandal as independent counsel. The Iran-Contra affair first became public in late 1986, when it was revealed that members of the Reagan administration, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the armed forces were illegally selling arms to Iran for two purposes: to help secure the release of American hostages held in Lebanon by pro-Iranian groups, and to raise funds for the illicit support of the Contras in their guerrilla war against Nicaragua's Communist government.
      Revelations about the Iran-Contra connection cause outrage in Congress, which in 1983 had passed the Boland amendments prohibiting the Defense Department, the CIA, or any other government agency from providing military aid to the Contras. In December 1986, Lawrence E. Walsh was named special prosecutor to investigate the matter, and over the course of the investigation thirteen top White House, State Department, and intelligence officials are found guilty of charges ranging from perjury to charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States. Although President Reagan is heavily implicated in the final congressional report, neither he nor Vice President George Bush is directly indicted in the subsequent criminal trials.
1984 UK agrees to return Hong Kong to China in 1997.
      In the Hall of the People in Beijing, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang sign an agreement committing Britain to return Hong Kong to China in 1997 in return for terms guaranteeing a 50-year extension of its capitalist system. Hong Kong--a small peninsula and group of islands jutting out from China's Kwangtung province--was leased by China to Great Britain in 1898 for 99 years.
      In 1839, in the First Opium War, Britain invaded China to crush opposition to its interference in the country's economic, social, and political affairs. One of Britain's first acts of war was to occupy Hong Kong, a sparsely inhabited island off the coast of southeast China. In 1841, China ceded the island to the British with the signing of the Convention of Chuenpi, and in 1842 the Treaty of Nanking was signed, formally ending the First Opium War. At the end of the Second Opium War (1856-1860), China was forced to cede the Kowloon Peninsula, adjacent to Hong Kong Island, along with other area islands.
      Britain's new colony flourished as an East-West trading center and as the commercial gateway and distribution center for southern China. On July 1, 1898, Britain was granted an additional 99 years of rule over the Hong Kong colony under the Second Convention of Peking. Hong Kong was occupied by the Japanese from 1941 to 1944 during World War II but remained in British hands throughout the various Chinese political upheavals of the 20th century.
      On 19 December 1984, after years of negotiations, British and Chinese leaders signed a formal pact approving the 1997 turnover of the colony in exchange for the formulation of a "one country, two systems" policy by China's communist government. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher called the agreement "a landmark in the life of the territory, in the course of Anglo-Chinese relations, and in the history of international diplomacy." Hu Yaobang, the Chinese Communist Party's secretary-general, called the signing "a red-letter day, an occasion of great joy" for China's one billion people.
      At midnight on 01 July 1997, Hong Kong was peaceably handed over to China in a ceremony attended by numerous international dignitaries, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Prince Charles, Chinese President Jiang Zemin, and US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. A few thousand citizens of Hong Kong protested the turnover, which was otherwise celebratory and peaceful. The chief executive of the new Hong Kong government, Tung Chee Hwa, did enact a policy based upon the concept of one country, two systems, thus preserving Hong Kong's role as a principal capitalist center in Asia.
1984 El presidente del Gobierno vasco, Carlos Garaikoetxea, es obligado a dimitir de su cargo por la Asamblea Nacional del PNV (Partido Nacionalista Vasco).
1983 Greyhound strike settled
      After a grueling and sometimes bloody six weeks on the picket line, striking Greyhound workers agreed to sign off on a new contract and head back to work. Though the Amalgamated Transit Union overwhelmingly approved the deal, voting 7404 to 2596 in its favor, the strike was a hardly a victory for the workers. Indeed, the new contract carried severe cuts, including a 14.8% annual reduction in wages and benefits. Greyhound officials were pleased with the pact, which, during the first year of the contract, promised to pad the company's coffers by roughly $40 million to $60 million. Greyhound chief John W. Teets defended the hard-ball economics as a necessity for keeping pace with the rail, plane and other bus lines that were all jockeying for the nation's transportation dollars. However, this was cold comfort for Greyhound workers, as well as the nation's labor movement, which, in the wake of the disastrous air traffic controllers strike of 1981, hardly needed to suffer another humiliating defeat.
1979 The US Senate approves a $1.5 billion loan to the Chrysler Corporation. In July, its chairman John J. Ricardo had announced that Chrysler had second-quarter losses of some $200 million. Nevertheless Chrysler's 1980 losses would be over $1.7 billion.
1980 Anguilla becomes a British dependency separate from St Kitts
1980 Iran requests $24 billion in US guarantees to free hostages
1975 John Paul Stevens becomes a Supreme Court Justice
1974 Nelson A Rockefeller is sworn in as 41st vice president of the United states after a House of Representatives vote.
1972 World revulsion against "Christmas bombing".
      Hanoi's foreign ministry, calling the new B-52 raids against Hanoi and Haiphong "extremely barbaric," predictably accuses the United States of premeditated intensification of the war and labels the actions "insane. “
      On December 13, North Vietnamese negotiators walked out of secret talks in Paris with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger. President Nixon issued an ultimatum to Hanoi to send its representatives back to the conference table within 72 hours "or else. “ The North Vietnamese rejected Nixon's demand and the president ordered Operation Linebacker II, a full-scale air campaign against the Hanoi area. During the 11 days of Linebacker II, 700 B-52 sorties and more than 1000 fighter-bomber sorties were flown. These planes dropped roughly 20'000 tons of bombs, mostly over the densely populated area between Hanoi and Haiphong.
      Nixon was severely criticized both by American antiwar activists and in the international community for ordering what became known as the "Christmas bombing. “ Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, China and the Soviet Union officially condemned the resumption of American bombing above the 20th parallel. The French newspaper Le Monde compared the attacks to the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, when German planes from the Condor Legion attacked the Spanish city and caused great devastation and loss of life. In England, the Manchester Guardian called the bombing "the action of a man blinded by fury or incapable of seeing the consequences of what he is doing. “ Pope Paul VI and United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim expressed concern for world peace.
      American antiwar activists charged that Linebacker II involved "carpet bombing"--deliberately targeting civilian areas with intensive bombing designed to "carpet" a city with bombs. Though the bombing was focused on specific military targets, it did result in the deaths of 1,318 civilians in Hanoi. The "Christmas bombing" was deemed a success by the US, since it caused the North Vietnamese to return to the negotiating table, where the Paris Peace Accords were signed less than a month later.
1972 Last manned lunar mission ends.
      Apollo 17, the sixth and last of the Apollo landing missions, safely returns to earth, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. On 07 November, Apollo 17 was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with astronauts Eugene A. Cernan, Ronald E. Evans, and Harrison H. Schmitt aboard. On 11 December, Cernan and Schmitt descended to the surface of the moon, where they stayed a record seventy-five hours. During three separate surface excursions, the astronauts discovered what they describe as orange soil, which Schmitt, a geologist, believed to be a possible indication of volcanic activity on the moon. The astronauts also employed the Lunar Rover vehicle to help them collect some 110 kg of rock and soil samples.
1968 La Asamblea General de la ONU pide al Reino Unido que descolonice Gibraltar antes del 01 octubre de 1969.
1965 Charles André de Gaulle es reelegido presidente de Francia.
1964 Another bloodless coup topples the government in Saigon
      Another bloodless coup occurs when Maj. Gen. Nguyen Khanh and a group of generals led by Air Commodore Nguyen Cao Ky and Army Gen. Nguyen Van Thieu arrest three dozen high officers and civilian officials. The coup was part of the continuing political instability that erupted after the November 1963 coup that resulted in the murder of President Ngo Dinh Diem. The period following the overthrow of Diem was marked by a series of coups and "revolving door" governments. The coup on this day was engineered by a faction of younger military officers known as the "Young Turks," who were fed up with what they believed was the ineffective government headed by a group of older generals known as the Military Revolutionary Council. Khanh and the newly formed Armed Forces Council, made up of the generals who had participated in the coup, restored civilian control on 07 January 1965, under Tran Van Huong. Hunon proved unable to put together a viable government and the Armed Forces Council ousted him on January 27 and installed Gen. Khanh in power. Khanh was ousted by yet another coup on 18 February led by Ky and Thieu. Khanh then went to the United States and settled in Palm Beach, Florida. A short-lived civilian government under Dr. Phan Huy Quat was installed, but it lasted only until 12 June 1965. At that time, Thieu and Ky formed a new government with Thieu as the chief of state and Ky as the prime minister. Thieu and Ky were elected as president and vice-president in general elections held in 1967.
1962 Nyasaland secedes from Rhodesia & Nyasaland
1950 Eisenhower named NATO Supreme Commander
      Dwight D. Eisenhower, one of the most highly regarded American generals of World War II, is named supreme commander of the combined land and air forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). NATO was a permanent military alliance established in 1949 by the democracies of Western Europe and North America as a safeguard against the threat of Soviet aggression. In 1942, Eisenhower commanded American forces in Great Britain, in 1943 led the invasions of North Africa and Italy, and in 1944 was appointed supreme commander of the Allied invasion of Western Europe. After the war, he briefly served as president of Columbia University, before returning to military service in 1951 as supreme commander of NATO. However, pressure on Eisenhower to run for US president is great, and in the Spring of 1952, he relinquishes his NATO command to run for president on the Republican ticket. In November of 1952, "Ike" wins a resounding victory in the presidential elections, and in 1956 he is reelected in a landslide.
1946 War breaks out in Indochina as Ho Chi Minh attacks French in Hanoi
1945 Austrian Republic re-established
1945 Congress confirms Eleanor Roosevelt as US delegate to the United Nations.
1944 During the Battle of the Bulge, American troops begin pulling back from the twin Belgian cities of Krinkelt and Rocherath in front of the advancing German Army.
1941 Hitler takes command of the German army
      In a major shake-up of the military high command, Adolf Hitler assumes the position of commander in chief of the German army. The German offensive against Moscow was proving to be a disaster. A perimeter had been established by the Soviets 320 km from the city-and the Germans couldn't break through. The harsh winter weather — with temperatures often dropping to minus 35ºC — had virtually frozen German tanks in their tracks. Soviet General Georgi Zhukov had unleashed a ferocious counteroffensive of infantry, tanks, and planes that had forced the flailing Germans into retreat. In short, the Germans were being beaten for the first time in the war, and the toll to their collective psyche was great. “The myth of the invincibility of the German army was broken,“ German General Franz Halder would write later.
      But Hitler refused to accept this notion. He began removing officers from their command. General Fedor von Bock, who had been suffering severe stomach pains and who on 01 December had complained to Halder that he was no longer able to "operate" with his debilitated troops, was replaced by General Hans von Kluge, whose own 4th Army had been pushed into permanent retreat from Moscow. General Karl von Runstedt was relieved of the southern armies because he had retreated from Rostov. Hitler clearly did not believe in giving back captured territory, so in the biggest shake-up of all, he declared himself commander in chief of the army. He would train it "in a National Socialist way" — that is, by personal fiat. He would compose the strategies and the officers would dance to his tune.
1941 Japanese land on Hong Kong and clash with British troops.
1942 The British advance 60 km into Burma in a drive to oust the Japanese from the colony.
1932 British Broadcasting Corp begins transmitting overseas
1928 1st autogiro (predecessor of helicopter) flight in US
1924 The last Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost manufactured in England is sold in London. The Silver Ghost, a custom touring car, was introduced in 1906, and was called by some the "Best Car in the World. “ The Silver Ghost was followed by the Twenty, the Phantom, the Silver Cloud, the Silver Shadow, and the Silver Wraith. 1994 German Under the Hood Great Britain's prestigious Rolls-Royce, a luxury automobile maker, announced that its future cars would feature 12-cylinder motors manufactured by Germany's BMW. It was an ironic change; in earlier years, Rolls-Royce made a name for itself in automobile and aircraft engines.
1922 Mrs Theres Vaughn, 24, confessed in court to being married 62 times
1910 Rayon 1st commercially produced, Marcus Hook PA
1900 The French Parliament votes amnesty for everyone involved in the Dreyfus Affair.
1891 First Negro Catholic priest ordained in US, Charles Uncles, Baltimore
1890 Start of Sherlock Holmes The Adventure of The Beryl Coronet
1864 Skirmish at Rutherford Creek, Tennessee
1862 Confederate General Nathan B. Forrest begins tearing up the railroads in the rear of Union generals Grant and Rosecrans, causing considerable delays in the movement of Union supplies.
1861 Battle of Black Water.
1848 Napoléon Bonaparte (futuro Napoléon III, emperador de Francia) es elegido presidente de la República.
1842 US recognizes independence of Hawaii
1828 South Carolina declares the right of states to nullify federal laws
1793 French troops recapture Toulon from the British.
1777 Patriot soldiers enter winter camp at Valley Forge
     After the fall of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, General George Washington's army, still in the field, enters winter camp at Valley Forge, twenty miles from Philadelphia. During 1777, Patriot forces under General Washington suffered major defeats against the British at the battles of Brandywine and Germantown, and Philadelphia, the former capital of the United States, fell firmly into British hands. The particularly severe winter of 1777 to 1778, proved to be a great tribulation for the American army, and of the 11'000 soldiers stationed at Valley Forge, nearly 3000 of these men died. However, the suffering troops were held together by loyalty to the Patriot cause and to General Washington, and when they marched out of Valley Forge in June of 1778, Washington's army was better trained and stronger in spirit than when it had entered.
1776 Thomas Paine published his first 'American Crisis' essay, writing: ''These are the times that try men's souls.''
1732 Poor Richard's Almanack is published
      In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin, 26, begins publication of Poor Richard's Almanack under the pseudonym of Richard Saunders. In an advertisement for the humorous publication in The Pennsylvania Gazette, a successful newspaper that Franklin himself established during the 1720s, Franklin promises "many pleasant and witty verses, jests and sayings. “ The Almanack is an instant success, and a new issue follows each year for the next twenty-five years, selling an average of 10'000 copies yearly. It becomes one of the most popular writings from the colonial period, and greatly influences American popular culture with such light-hearted aphorisms as "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man, healthy, wealthy, and wise. “
      Franklin was born in Boston in 1706 and was apprenticed to his brother, a printer, at age 12. In 1729, Franklin became the official printer of currency for the colony of Pennsylvania. He began publishing Poor Richard's, as well as the Pennsylvania Gazette, one of the colonies' first and best newspapers.
      By 1748, Franklin had become more interested in inventions and science than publishing. He spent time in London representing Pennsylvania in its dispute with England and later spent time in France. He returned to America in March 1775, with war on the horizon. He served on the Second Continental Congress and helped Thomas Jefferson draft the Declaration of Independence. As a diplomat in France he was also instrumental in persuading the French to lend military assistance to the colonies. Benjamin Franklin died in Philadelphia in 1790. [Poor Richard's Almanack selections]
Other works by Franklin online: The Autobiography and Other Writings -- The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin -- Experiments and Observations on Electricity, Made at Philadelphia in America
A few aphorisms from Poor Richard's Almanack:
  • Visits should be short, like a winter's day, / Lest you're too troublesome, hasten away.
  • A house without woman and firelight, is like a body without soul or sprite.
  • Kings and bears often worry their keepers.
  • Light purse, heavy heart
  • Ne'er take a wife till thou hast a house (and a fire) to put her in.
  • Love well, whip well
  • Hunger never saw bad bread.
  • Great talkers, little doers.
  • The favour of the great is no inheritance.
  • Fools make feasts, and wise men eat 'em.
  • Beware of the young doctor and the old barber.
  • The poor have little, beggars none, the rich too much, enough not one.
  • To lengthen thy life. lessen thy meals.
  • He that lies down with dogs, shall rise up with fleas.
  • Distrust and caution are the parents of security.
  • Tongue double, brings trouble.
  • Great famine when wolves eat wolves.
  • Men and melons are hard to know.
  • He's the best physician that knows the worthlessness of the most medicines.
  • A fine genius in his own country, is like gold in the mine.
  • There is no little enemy.
  • Cheese and salt meat, should be sparingly eat.
  • Without justice, courage is weak.
  • Many dishes, many diseases.
  • Many medicines, few cures.
  • Where carcasses are, eagles will gather, and where good laws are, much people flock thither.
  • Would you live with ease, do what you ought, and not what you please.
  • Blame-all and praise-all are two block heads.
  • What pains our justice takes his faults to hide, / With half that pains sure he might cure 'em quite.
  • In success be moderate.
  • Take this remark from Richard, poor and lame, / What e'er's begun in anger ends in shame.
  • No man e'er was glorious, who was not laborious.
  • All things are easy to industry, all things difficult to sloth.
  • A new truth is a truth, an old error in an error, tho's Clodpate won't allow either.
  • Don't think to hunt two hares with one dog.
  • Fools multiply folly.
  • Hope of gain lessens pain.
  • Lawyers, preachers, and tom-tit's eggs, there are more of them hatched than come to perfection.
  • All things are cheap to the saving, dear to the wasteful.
  • Would you persuade, speak of interest, not of reason.
  • Do good to thy friend to keep him, to thy enemy to gain him.
  • Laws like to cobwebs, catch small flies, / Great ones break through before your eyes.
  • An egg to-day is better than a hen to-morrow.
  • He does not possess wealth, it possesses him.
  • A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.
  • Approve not of him who commends all you say.
  • By diligence and patience, the mouse bit in two the cable.
  • Full of courtesie, full of craft.
  • Some are weatherwise, some are otherwise.
  • Necessity never made a good bargain.
  • Nothing but money is sweeter than honey.
  • Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
    ENIGMATICAL PROPHECIES [from the 1736 Almanack, with the original spelling].
    Which they that do not understand, cannot well explain.
         1. Before the middle of this year, a wind at N. East will arise, during which the water of the sea and rivers will be in such manner raised, that great part of the towns of Boston, Newport, New-York, Philadelphia, the low lands of Maryland and Virginia, and the town of Charlstown in South Carolina, will be under water. Happy will it be for the sugar and salt, standing in the cellars of those places, if there be tight roofs and cielings overhead; otherwise, without being a conjurer, a man may easily foretel that such commodities will receive damage.
         2. About the middle of the year, great numbers of vessels fully laden will be taken out of the ports aforesaid, by a Power with which we are not now at war, and whose forces shall not be descried or seen either coming or going. But in the end this may not be disadvantageous to those places.
         3. However, not long after, a visible army of 30000 musketers will land, some in Virginia and Maryland, and some in the lower counties on both sides of Delaware, who will over-run the country, and sorely annoy the inhabitants; but the air in this climate will agree with them so ill towards winter, that they will die in the beginning of cold weather like rotten sheep, and by Christmas the inhabitans will get the better of them.
    [These 3 prophecies did indeed come to pass, but Franklin's readers had to wait one year for the 1737 Almanack to understand them. I will not make you wait that long, so make sure you read This Day in History for the next few days.]
                  THE BENEFIT OF GOING TO LAW.
    Two beggars travelling along, / One blind, the other lame.
    Pick'd up an oyster on the way / To which they both laid claim:
    The matter rose so high, that they / Resolv'd to go to law,
    As often richer fools have done, / Who quarrel for a straw.
    A lawyer took it strait in hand, / Who knew his business was,
    To mind nor one nor t'other side, / But make the best o'th'cause;
    As always in the law's the case; / So he his judgment gave,
    And lawyerlike he thus resolv'd, / What each of them should have;
    Blind plaintif, lame defendant, share / The friendly law's impartial care,
    A shell for him, a shell for thee, / The middle is the     lawyer's fee.
    • 1776 Thomas Paine publishes his first The American Crisis essay.
    1686 Robinson Crusoe leaves his island after 28 years (as per Defoe)
    1562 The French Wars of Religion between the Huguenots and the Catholics begin with the Battle of Dreux.
    1406 El cardenal Angelo Carrer es coronado Papa con el nombre de Gregorio XII.
    Henry II is crowned king of England.
    1154 Henri Plantagenêt devient roi d'Angleterre
          Henri d'Anjou (21 ans) et sa femme, Aliénor d'Aquitaine (32 ans) ceignent la couronne d'Angleterre le 19 décembre 1154. Leur couronnement à Westminster est le résultat d'un incroyable concours de circonstances. Tragédie à la cour 34 ans plus tôt, le 25 Dec 1120, un navire, La Blanche Nef, fait naufrage au large de l'Angleterre avec, à son bord, les fils du roi Henri 1er Beauclerc. Celui-ci est le fils cadet de Guillaume le Bâtard, duc de Normandie, que l'on appela plus tard le Conquérant en raison de son débarquement triomphal en Angleterre. Il est devenu roi d'Angleterre après avoir évincé Robert Courteheuse, son frère aîné, pendant qu'il était à la Croisade!
          Désespéré par la perte de ses fils, Henri 1er Beauclerc désigne sa fille Mathilde pour héritière. Celle-ci épouse d'abord l'empereur d'Allemagne. Devenue veuve, elle est remariée par son père au comte d'Anjou Geoffroi le Bel (on le surnomme Plantagenêt parce que son père portait une branche de genêt piquée dans son chapeau!). Cependant, à la mort d'Henri 1er, c'est son neveu, Etienne de Blois, qui hérite de la couronne. Le nouveau roi n'a de cesse de combattre les prétentions de Mathilde. En 1153, Etienne perd son fils unique et se résigne à désigner le fils de Mathilde, Henri, pour lui succéder.
    L'empire angevin
          Or, Henri a épousé opportunément la duchesse Aliénor d'Aquitaine l'année précédente, après qu'elle eût divorcé de son premier époux, le roi de France Louis VII. Le nouveau roi inaugure la dynastie des Plantagenêts sous le nom d'Henri II. Il apporte au royaume d'Angleterre un vaste domaine qui couvre l'Ouest et le Sud-Ouest de la France et auquel on donnera le nom d'«Empire angevin».
          Mais cet empire survivra moins de dix ans à la mort d'Henri II. Il sera victime des querelles entre les fils du roi, de l'impéritie de Jean sans Terre et de l'habileté de Philippe Auguste. L'avènement des Plantagenêt sera à l'origine d'un très long contentieux entre la France et l'Angleterre, marqué par deux Guerres de Cent Ans. Il ne sera clos qu'avec la prise de Calais, dernière possession anglaise sur le Continent, le 06 janvier 1558.
    1118 Alfonso I el Batallador Rey de Aragón y Navarra conquista Zaragoza.
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    Deaths which occurred on a December 19:
    2002 Nadda Maddi, 11, Palestinian girl, by Israeli troops at the Termit outpost on the Egyptian border in Rafah, Gaza Strip, machine-gunning a residential area in a gunfight with Palestinians.
    2002 Asif Ramzi and 3 others, by accidental explosion while they were making terrorrist bombs in Karachi. Ramzi was the leader of a faction of the outlawed Sunni Muslim group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, and was believed to be involved in attacks on members of Pakistan's Shi'ite Muslim minority, and in the murder (probably on 01 Feb 2002) of US reporter Daniel Pearl, 38, South Asia bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal, who had been kidnapped on 23 January 2002 while researching a story on Islamic militants in Pakistan, and who was videotaped having his throat slit. On 15 July 2002 British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, 27, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani court for masterminding Pearl's kidnapping and murder, and Salman Saquib, Fahad Nasim, and Sheikh Adil were sentenced to life imprisonment.
    2001 Wang Ruowang, 83, prominent Chinese dissident writer who was jailed by China's Communist government and later became an exile.
    2000 Son Sann, 89, of heart attack, in Paris, Cambodian economist, intellectual, guerrilla leader, peace broker and politician.
    2000 John V. Lindsay, 79, Republican Congressman, mayor of New York, candidate for 1972 Democratic presidential nomination, author of novel The Edge.
    1997: Tsu Way Ming, pilot of SilkAir plane, in suicide crash that also kills the other 103 on board.
         Three years later, US investigators would conclude that pilot suicide likely caused that crash, contradicting findings by Indonesian authorities. In a Dec. 11, 2000, letter to Indonesian investigators, National Transportation Safety Board chairman Jim Hall said there was nothing wrong with the Boeing 737 and "the accident can be explained by intentional pilot action. “
          The nearly new Boeing 737-300 crashed into a jungle river on Dec. 19, 1997, killing all 104 people aboard. The Singapore-bound flight plunged to the ground from 11'000 m shortly after leaving Jakarta, Indonesia.
          On Thursday 14 December 2000, Indonesian investigators ruled out pilot suicide in a final report on the crash. Singapore officials said they accepted that report's findings. SilkAir is a subsidiary of Singapore Airlines. But the US investigators had a different take. “The evidence suggests that the cockpit voice recorder was intentionally disconnected," the NTSB letter said. It said pilots could have reversed the plane's nosedive but that it was "not attempted. “
          A separate report from the US board argued that the plane could not have acted as it did without deliberate action from the pilot. “It is very likely from the time it departed from cruise flight until the end of the recorded data that the airplane was responding to sustained flight control inputs from the cockpit," the report said, rebutting the Indonesian claims. The report said wreckage showed the plane's engines were set to high power and that controls were set to a "nose-down" position.
          A day earlier, Singapore police and Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee had issued separate statements saying Singaporean pilot Tsu Way Ming showed no suicidal tendencies. The final Indonesian report said investigators were unable to determine the cause "due to the highly fragmented wreckage and the nearly total lack of useful data, information and evidence. “ In-flight data and voice recorders were disabled moments before the crash but showed no signs of "unusual behavior," it said. Both pilots were properly trained, licensed and well-rested, the Indonesian report said. It said there "was no evidence found to indicate that the performance of either pilot was adversely affected by any medical or psychological conditions. “
          But the US board said Tsu "was experiencing significant financial difficulties" and that the pilot had been reprimanded by airline management several times in the weeks before the crash. It said the Indonesian report failed to analyze information about the pilot's financial debts, calling the omission "disappointing. “ Even though the plane crashed in Indonesia, the United States was asked to participate in the investigation because the plane was made by Seattle-based Boeing Co. Legal actions have been filed against the plane's manufacturer, Boeing, by the relatives of more than 50 crash victims. A number of families have also filed claims against SilkAir.
    1990 Sadiq Ganji, murdered. in Lahore, Pakistan. He was the director of the Iranian Cultural Center. Haq Nawaz, a Sunni activist from the Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP, a militant Sunni organization), would be executed for this murder, on 28 February 2001, at Mianwali Jail in central Punjab province.
    1990 Xavier Benguerel, alias Daniel Rovira, escritor español.
    1986 José Antonio Maravall Cases Noves, historiador español.
    1980 Alexei Nikolaievich Kosygin, ex presidente de Gobierno soviético.
    1968 Norman Thomas, 84, a founder of the ACLU
    1961: 23 personas al estrellarse una avioneta que llevaba a Sevilla socorro para los damnificados de unas graves inundaciones.
    1959 Walter Williams, 117, in Houston, claimed to be last survivor of US Civil War
    1952 Szász, mathematician.
    1939 Graf von Spee, acorazado alemán, hundido por sus propios tripulantes para no caer en poder de los ingleses tras la batalla del Río de la Plata.
    1939 Day 20 of Winter War: USSR aggression against Finland. [Talvisodan 20. päivä]
    More deaths due to Stalin's desire to grab Finnish territory.
  • Karelian Isthmus: the main thrust of the continuing Soviet offensive on the Isthmus is at Summa in the central Isthmus. The enemy can manage only temporary breakthroughs. By evening the Soviet infantry has been repulsed and around 20 of the 100 tanks used in the offensive have been destroyed. However, the Finnish troops are unable to retake the village of Oinala.
  • Koivisto: Saarenpää Fortress and a Russian naval detachment led by the battleship Marat begin an artillery exchange at 12.15. Combat is broken off at 13.04.
  • Ladoga Karelia: Finnish troops in the Tolvajärvi sector launch a new offensive to retake Ägläjärvi.
  • Northern Finland: troops from Detachment Roininen attack the flank of the Soviet 122nd Division from the south at Joutsijärvi and inflict considerable losses in men and materials. Our own losses are 22 dead and 29 wounded.
  • Turku: the enemy bombs the city for the first time. Soviet aircraft also hit Hanko, Helsinki, Viipuri, Jänisjärvi and other targets.
  • Abroad: the renowned Finnish composer Jean Sibelius' appeal to the American people is published in a number of daily newspapers in the USA. Sibelius emphasizes that the fate of the Finnish people lies primarily in their own hands, although it will also depend to some extent on the actions of other freedom-loving peoples.
    • 1939 Grave, mathematician.
    1931 Raffaelo Sorbi, Italian artist born on 24 February 1844.
    1915 Alois Alzheimer German psychiatrist.
    1907: 239 miners, in a coal mine explosion in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania.
    1890 Henry Bull Head, First Lieutenant of Police, dies in the evening, from injuries received 82 hours earlier in the fight that resulted from the attempt to arrest Sitting Bull by 39 Indian policemen directed by James McLaughlin Indian Agent at Standing Rock Reservation. (The report says it happened early on 16 December, Britannica has 15 December)
    http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/wpages/wpgs680/sbarrest.htm (An Account of Sitting Bull's Death by McLaughlin, dated 12 January 1891)
    1890 Eugène Louis Lami, French artist born on 12 January 1800. — LINKS
    1873 Henri Pierre Pharamond Blanchard, French artist born on 27 February 1805.
    1851 Joseph Mallord William Turner, British artist born on 23 April 1775, specialized in landscapes and seascapes, considered by the French Impressionists as a precursor. — MORE ON  TURNER AT ART “4” DECEMBER — LINKS — The Unpaid Bill (The Dentist Reproving his Son's Prodigality) — The Grand Canal, Venice — View of Kenilworth Castle — Dido Building Carthage (The Rise of the Carthaginian Empire) — Bay of Baiae with Apollo and the Sibyl — Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus — Snow Storm: Steam Boat Off a Harbor's Mouth — The Approach to Venice — Fishermen at Sea — The Shipwreck — Snow Storm: Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps — A Storm (Shipwreck) — Shipwreck off Hastings — Fire at Sea — Snow Storm - Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth — The Battle of Trafalgar, as Seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory — The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire — Childe Harold's Pilgrimage — A Ship Aground — The Fighting Téméraire Tugged to Her Last Berth to Be Broken up — The Fighting Téméraire — Peace - Burial at Sea — Peace – Burial at Sea — The Dogana, San Giorgio, Citella, From the Steps of the Europa — Light and Color (Goethe's Theory) - The Morning after the Deluge - Moses Writing the Book of Genesis — Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway — Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway
    1851 Marie-Philippe Coupin de la Couperie, French artist born in 1773.
    1665 Gerard Pieterszoon Zyl, Dutch artist born in 1607.
    1741 Vitus Bering Dutch navigator & explorer
    0401 St Anastasius I, Pope
    0079 Flavio Tito Vespasiano, emperador de Roma.
    Births which occurred on a December 19:
    1974 Altair 8800 computer goes on sale
          The personal computer revolution begins quietly with the Altair 8800, a do-it-yourself computer kit, going on sale for $397. The primitive computer used switches for input and flashing lights as a display. The Altair was featured on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics, where it caught the attention of Harvard student Bill Gates. Gates and his high school buddy Paul Allen had written programs for large business computers during high school, and they realized that the Altair would need a programming language. The two quickly created a version of BASIC (Beginners' All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), which they thought would run on Altair, and they went to Albuquerque to sell Ed Roberts, founder of Altair's maker Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), on the product. Their demonstration of BASIC for Altair worked perfectly, even though the two had never seen a working Altair before. Gates dropped out of Harvard, and the two established their own company, Micro-Soft (later Microsoft), in Albuquerque, and later moved to Seattle, where the two had gone to high school. The first commercially successful personal computer, the Commodore PET, came out in early 1977, followed by the Apple II later that year.
    Leakey1946 Eduardo Serra Rexach, político y abogado español.
    1944 Richard E. Leakey, palaeontologist. [photo >]
    1924 Michel Tournier, escritor francés.
    1919 William Nunn Lipscomb, químico estadounidense, premio Nobel de Química en 1976.
    1918 Leon Mirsky, mathematician.
    1918 Believe It or Not     of Robert Ripley begins in The New York Globe.
    1915 Edith Piaf, in Paris, internationally famous French cabaret singer, best remembered for her songs "La Vie en rose" and "Non, je ne regrette rein. “
    1910 Jean Genet France, novelist/playwright (The Blacks) -- Jean Genet, poète maudit. Il sera confié à l'Assistance publique et connaîtra la prison. Il séjournera ainsi à Fontevraud, non loin des gisants des Plantagenêt.
    1910 Helmut Wielandt, mathematicia
    1906 H Allen Smith US, humorist/author (Low Man on the Totem Pole)
    1906 Leonid Brezhnev Ukraine, Soviet General Secretary of the Communist party and President of the Supreme Soviet from 1964 until 1982. He died on 10 November 1982
    1903 George Davis Snell, científico estadounidense, premio Nobel de Medicina y Fisiología en 1980.
    1901 Oliver Lafarge novelist (Laughing Boy)
    1886 Ángel Herrera Oria, periodista y cardenal español.
    1869 Edward Willis Redfield, Pennsylvania Impressionist painter who died in 1965. — MORE ON REDFIELD AT ART “4” DECEMBER — LINKS — The Burning of Center Bridge — The Island.
    1861 Ettore Schmitz “Italo Svevo”, Trieste, novelist.
         Italian novelist, whose real name was Ettore Schmitz. A businessman of Trieste, he wrote several works of fiction, which remained practically unknown until discovered by James Joyce. His fiction is psychological and introspective, his characters mainly narcissistic, and his style witty. His best-known work is La coscienza di Zeno (1923, tr. The Confessions of Zeno, 1930); also translated is Una burla riuscita (1928, tr. The Hoax, 1929).
         Italo Svevo, (vero nome Ettore Schmitz) nacque a Trieste. Il padre era un facoltoso commerciante e cercò di avviare il figlio sulla stessa strada, un mestiere verso il quale il giovane Ettore non provava alcuna simpatia, anche se diverse circostanze della sua vita lo costrinsero in seguito ad esercitarlo.
          Italo Svevo (questo il nome d'arte che si scelse, volto ad indicare la propria doppia componente culturale) compì gli studi a Trieste ed in Germania e ben presto scoprì la sua passione per la letteratura, una passione che lo spinse a pubblicare a sue spese i primi romanzi, dai quali ottenne scarso successo.
          Queste delusioni e le sue frustrazioni lavorative (fu malvolentieri impiegato di banca), lo trattennero dal pubblicare altre opere finché non ebbe come insegnante d'inglese James Joyce. L'attenzione di quest'ultimo e quella di Eugenio Montale nei confronti del suo romanzo La coscienza di Zeno, fecero sì che, dopo oltre 25 anni dalla sua prima pubblicazione, il successo internazionale arridesse allo scrittore dell'inettitudine e dei fallimenti, i temi privilegiati della letteratura di Svevo.
          La componente psicoanalitica delle sue opere si contrapponeva visibilmente tanto al verismo quanto all'estetismo dannunziano ed "il caso Svevo" divenne uno degli argomenti privilegiati dalla critica italiana. Italo Svevo morì in seguito ad un incidente automobilistico nel 1928.
    — SVEVO ONLINE: (*zipped text, #HTML)
    — *Commedie _ #Commedie
    — *Corto viaggio sentimentale _ #Corto viaggio sentimentale _ #Corto viaggio sentimentale (risulta incompleto per la morte dell'autore)
    — *La coscienza di Zeno _ #La coscienza di Zeno _ #La coscienza di Zeno _ L'ultimo e il più famoso romanzo di Svevo, una lunga canzonatura dell'allora nuovissima psico-analisi, ambientato nella Trieste austriaca degli anni immediatamente precedenti la prima guerra mondiale.
         The pliant protagonist of Italo Svevo's 1923 classic Confessions of Zeno is, among other things, a bumbling businessman, a guilt-ridden adulterer, and a hardcore nicotine addict. What Zeno Cosini most definitely is not is wordless. For the novel is in fact a dense and comically excruciating exercise in self-revelation, undertaken by the narrator as part of his psychoanalytic treatment. As a form of therapy, Zeno's doctor advises him to write his memoirs. The patient reconstructs the events in his life into a palatable reality founded upon compromise and rationalization.
          Zeno never finds a cure for his affliction, which seems to be a strain of continental angst. Yet his reflections remain as audacious as they are exhaustive--and, much of the time, masterfully absorbing. As we soon discover, Zeno is a master is the convoluted rationalization. He concocts numerous reasons why his "last cigarette" needn't truly become his last; he strives endlessly to convince himself that he loves his wife; he tirelessly justifies an awkward affair, all the while vacillating between a paralysis of action and a lazy submission. "My resolutions are less drastic and, as I grow older, I become more indulgent to my weaknesses," Zeno proclaims early on. (Later he backpedals even further, confessing that his "resolutions existed for their own sake and had no practical results whatever.")
          As a last-ditch tactic, he transmutes his disappointments into inevitabilities--an act of creative bookkeeping that becomes steadily creepier as the narrative unfolds. There are times, to be sure, when Zeno seems to grasp that life isn't merely feints and games, that subterfuge and dark motivation aren't the whole of human transaction. Yet he always retreats back into his extravagant, consoling fantasies. Perhaps that's why Svevo's book still has the power to discomfit: Zeno's ingenious whitewashing of an indifferent world feels alarmingly like the fictions we tell ourselves on a daily basis.
    — *La novella del buon vecchio e della bella fanciulla. _ #La novella del buon vecchio e della bella fanciulla.
    — *Senilità _ #Senilità _ Scritto nel 1898 ha per protagonista un uomo abulico e infelice, incapace di affrontare la realtà e che ad essa costantemente soccombe, ma che al tempo stesso tenta di nascondere a se stesso la propria inettitudine, sognando evasioni, cercando diversivi, giustificazioni e compensi. Attraverso una lucida analisi dei processi dell'inconscio, delle sue canalizzazioni e delle sue mascherature, Svevo smonta l'io del protagonista, rivelando le complesse stratificazioni della psiche umana, la sua fluente instabilità, in cui passato e presente, ricordi e desideri si intrecciano e si condizionano reciprocamente.
    — *Una vita.
    1854 Marcel Brillouin, mathematician.
    1852 Albert A Michelson established c (speed of light in a vacuum) as universal constant (Nobel 1907)
    1843 A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, is first published..
    1835 Antonio Gisbert, pintor español.
    1831 Princess Ke Kamali'iwahine Bernice Pauahi (Bishop) Hawaii. (d. 1884), the last direct descendant of Kamehameha the Great. She would die in 1884 and her memory would be perpetuated by her will which left the bulk of her estate "to erect and maintain in the Hawaiian Islands two schools, each for boarding and day scholars, one for boys and one for girls, to be known as, and called the Kamehameha Schools. “
    1817 James Archer, future Confederate General.
         Archer is born in Harford County, Maryland. Archer received his education at Princeton University and Boston College before serving in the Maryland volunteers during the Mexican War. He earned a brevet promotion (an honorary promotion usually given for battlefield heroism) to major for bravery at the Battle of Chapultepec during the Mexico City campaign. After the war, he practiced law until he joined the US Army in 1855. Archer served in the Pacific Northwest, and when the Civil War broke out, he joined General John Bell Hood's Texas Brigade in the Confederate Army.
          Archer fought with the Army of Northern Virginia throughout the war. He earned a promotion to brigadier general for his gallantry at the Battle of Seven Pines in June 1862, and his brigade played a key role during the Seven Days' battles later that month. He was ill during the army's invasion of Maryland in September 1862, so he relinquished his command for the Battle of Antietam.
          In 1863, Archer marched north to Gettysburg as part of Henry Heth's division in A.P. Hill's corps. This placed him in the middle of battle's initial action on 01 July. Archer led an attack on the center of the Union line on Seminary Ridge that was so successful that Archer and his men were cut off from the rest of the Confederates. He was captured, the first Confederate general from the Army of Northern Virginia to be captured since Robert E. Lee assumed command on 01 June 1862. Ironically, Archer's old friend, General Abner Doubleday, commanded the Union force that captured Archer. When he saw Archer being led to the rear, he rode up and extended a handshake and said he was happy to see his old friend. Archer reportedly retorted, “Well, I'm not glad to see you by a damned sight!”
          Archer was held at prisons in Ohio and Delaware for more than a year before he was exchanged in August 1864. After his release, Archer received orders to return to his old brigade, which was now serving as part of Hood's Army of Tennessee in Atlanta. Prison life, however, had compromised his health and his orders were changed. He was sent instead to the trenches around Petersburg, Virginia. His health continued to deteriorate and he died there on 24 October 1864.
    1816 Franz Rheinhold, Austrian artist who died on 19 May 1893.
    1808 Horatius Bonar, Scottish clergyman and poet. He wrote several missionary biographies and over 600 hymns. Author of The Everlasting Righteousness, Follow the Lamb, God's Way of Holiness, God's Way of Peace: A Book for the Anxious, The Rent Veil
    1790 Sir William Edward Parry, British arctic explorer and rear admiral. In 1818 he accompanied Sir John Ross on an expedition to find the Nortwest Passage, and later he led other attempts (1819-20, 1821-23, 1824-25). The Parry Islands bear his name. Parry died in 1855.
    1793 Lorenzo Quaglio, German artist who died on 15 March 1869.
    1783 Brianchon, mathematician.
    some year between 1774 and 1777 Pierre Antoine Augustin Vafflard, French artist who died at age 63.
    1683 Felipe V, first Bourbon king of Spain (1700-46)
    1036 Su Tung-p'o, China, poet/essayist/painter/official
    Holidays Hawaii : Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop's Birthday / World : Underdog Day - - - - - ( Friday )
    Religious Observances / Orth : St Nicholas the Wonderworker (12/6 OS) / Santos Anastasio, Darío, Gregorio, Marcelo, Nemesio, Timoteo y Urbano. / Saint Urbain, natif de Mende, en Gévaudan (département de la Lozère), fut élu pape sous le nom d'Urbain V en 1362. La papauté était alors retenue à Avignon, sous la surveillance du roi de France. Urbain V tenta de revenir à Rome mais ne put y rester que trois ans.
    DICTIONNAIRE TICRANIEN: souvenir: ivrogne arriver.
    Thoughts for the day: “To save one life is better than to build a seven story pagoda.”
    “To build a seven story pagoda is worse than to save one life.”
    “To kill one enemy is better than to destroy his seven story pagoda.”
    “To dismantle one A-bomb is better than to dig a seven level nuclear shelter.”
    “To save seven lives is better than to build a one story pagoda.”
    “To build a seven story pagoda may endanger more than one life.”
    “To write seven aphorisms is better than to build a seven story pagoda.”
    “To spend one's life building a seven story pagoda is better than to build one A-bomb.”
    “To spend one's life in a seven story pagoda is better than building it.”
    “To save one's life is better than to build a seven story pagoda.”
    “To save one's life is better than to jump off the seventh story of a pagoda.”
    “For seven to live in a one story pagoda is better than for one to live in a seven story pagoda.”
    “To build a seven story pagoda is easier said than done.”
    “To build a seven story pagoda may be easier than selling it.”
    “To save one's lice is worse than to build a seven story pagoda.”
    “Kings and bears often worry the keepers of seven story pagodas.”
    “Fools build seven story pagodas, wise people pray in them.”
    “He that lies down with dogs in a seven story pagoda, shall be evicted.”
    “An egg today at home is better than a hen tomorrow in a seven story pagoda.”
    “Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead and the third is locked up in a seven story pagoda.”
    “Where carcasses are, eagles will gather, and where seven story pagodas are, many tourists flock thither.”
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