23 Dec History: This Date

<< Dec 22| HISTORY “4” “2”DAY |Dec 24 >>
Events, deaths, births, of 23 DEC
[For Dec 23 Julian go to Gregorian date: 1582~1699: Jan 02 — 1700s: Jan 03 — 1800s: Jan 04 — 1900~2099: Jan 05]

ALTERNATE SITES ALL FOR 021223 ANY DAY OF THE YEAR IN HISTORY ART “4” DEC 23

On a December 23:

2000 Serbian Democratic Opposition wins election against war criminal ex~president.
Winning a landslide victory in Serbia, Yugoslavia’s main republic, President Vojislav Kostunica’s followers promise sweeping reforms and a showdown with leaders of Slobodan Milosevic’s discredited Yugoslav government. Milosevic’s Socialist Party concedes defeat.
      Kostunica’s Democratic Opposition of Serbia wins about 64% of the vote in the elections for the parliament of Serbia, enough to form its first non-Communist government since World War II. Serbia is the larger of the two republics that make up Yugoslavia.
      Milosevic’s once-dominant Socialists gets about 13% and the ultranationalist Radical Party trails in third with about 8%.
      Serbia’s elections will enable the democratic movement to complete the revolution set in motion when Kostunica defeated Milosevic for the Yugoslav presidency on 24 September. 2000. Milosevic refused to accept the result and called for a runoff, triggering riots on 05 Octebor that forced him to concede defeat.
      Despite the change in Yugoslav leadership, Milosevic’s allies still had controlled the government of Serbia, which accounts for more than 90% of Yugoslavia’s population of 10 million. The Serbian government controls the key levers of power such as the judiciary and the 60'000-strong Serbian police. Zoran Djindjic is expected to become Serbia’s prime minister.
      Without a strong party to back him, Milosevic is now vulnerable to prosecution for ruining the country during his 13 years in power. Kostunica has refused to extradite Milosevic to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, but wants to try him and others in Yugoslavia.
      Gradimir Nalic, expected to become Serbia’s new police minister, said “There will be arrests, but only according to the law.”
      The Socialists took some comfort in the fact that they will be the largest single party in the new parliament, since the Kostunica coalition includes 18 parties and is expected to breakup in 2001.
      The biggest loser was the neo-communist Yugoslav Left Party of Milosevic’s wife, Mirjana Markovic, which won less than 1% of the vote. Another loser was the Serbian Renewal Movement led by Vuk Draskovic, for years the undisputed leader of the anti-Milosevic movement. Draskovic’s party, which refused to join the Kostunica coalition, got only 4% — too few votes to make it into parliament.
      The Kostunica’s coalition is expected to get 177 of the 250 parliamentary seats, Milosevic’s Socialists 35 seats, the Radicals 23.
      In the biggest election surprise, 15 seats will probably go to the Serbian Unity Party of indicted war crimes suspect Zeljko Raznatovic, or Arkan, who was assassinated in Belgrade in January 2000. The party appears to have profitted from Serbia’s protracted struggle against ethnic Albanian militants over a piece of territory in southern Serbia that borders Kosovo. The Serbs lost control of Kosovo in 1999 after NATO’s 78-day bombing campaign to stop Milosevic’s crackdown against ethnic Albanians. “We will do everything to protect Serbia” the party’s leader, Borislav Pelevic, said.
      Turnout was about 60%, some 10% less than in the September 2000 Yugoslav federal elections. Ethnic Albanians in both Kosovo and in areas of southern Serbia bordering the province boycotted the vote. A great majority of them want independence. They consider the elections invalid. In Kosovo’s capital, Pristina, hundreds of ethnic Albanians demonstrate on this election day in front of U.N. headquarters to protest a decision by international officials to allow Kosovo Serbs to vote. Kosovo was the only region in Serbia where the Socialist Party defeated pro-democrats. Iin Kosovska Mitrovica, where the vast majority of Serbs remaining in Kosovo live, the Socialists won 52% of the vote. Kostunica’s coalition won 29%. Kosovo Serbs traditionally have been supporters of Milosevic.

1998 Standard & Poor's announces that America Online will be part of the Standard & Poors 500 Index, replacing retailer Venator Group. The replacement of a retailer with an online service company in the widely regarded stock market index underscored the growing economic importance of Internet stocks.
1991 Germany recognizes Croatia and Slovenia as independent countries.
1990 Slovenians vote to secede from Yugoslavia

1987 Québec a 16 nouvelles régions administratives
      Le gouvernement du Québec décide le partage du territoire provincial en seize nouvelles régions administratives, afin de permettre un rééquilibrage. Mais cela ne peut empêcher que les trois régions de Montérégie, Montréal et Québec rassemblent 52,5% des habitants et affirment un poids économique qu’il est vain d’espérer contrebalancer. Un rapide survol de ces seize régions permet de mieux cerner forces et faiblesses.
– La région Abitibi-Témiscamingue, mitoyen de l’Ontario, est le pays de l’or, du cuivre et du bois, au nord-ouest de l’Outaouais. Alors que l’Abitibi est une vaste plaine argileuse (clay belt ) légèrement inclinée vers la baie d’Hudson, le Témiscamingue forme une longue dépression bordant le lac homonyme. Val-d’Or et Rouyn-Noranda sont nés de l’exploitation des gisements miniers.
– Le Bas-Saint-Laurent est formé en son centre par les Appalaches, mais les altitudes demeurent modestes. Forêts, tourbières et vastes battures sont la trilogie du paysage naturel. Il s’agit d’une région en difficulté, à l’économie peu performante.
– La région Chaudière-Appalaches (encore appelée Québec-Sud) est connue pour être le pays des érablières. Appalaches et plaine de Beauce se partagent l’espace. L’extraction de l’amiante, autour de Thetford Mines, est – de loin – la principale source de revenus.
– La Côte-Nord, s’identifiant au Nord-Est québécois, est le pays de la forêt, du fer et de l’énergie hydroélectrique. Baie-Comeau et Sept-Îles y concentrent l’essentiel de l’activité économique. Mais la région est victime de son éloignement.
– L’Estrie correspond à la région la plus appalachienne du Québec. Vaste plateau, elle a été fortement marquée par les loyalistes. Aujourd’hui, Sherbrooke commande un arrière-pays riche autant par son agriculture que par les ressources de son sous-sol.
– La Gaspésie, tout à l’est, est une vaste péninsule, fière de porter le point culminant de la province, le mont Jacques-Cartier (1 248 m). Éloignée, c’est aussi une région en difficulté, en dépit des ressources minières et d’un tourisme prometteur.
– La région de Lanaudière s’étend des rives du Saint-Laurent au cœur de la Mauricie, mais la vie économique se concentre sur les basses terres en bordure du fleuve. On y note le plus fort taux de croissance de la population entre 1981 et 1991, par suite du débordement de Montréal.
– Les Laurentides sont par excellence le domaine des lacs, des rivières et de la forêt omniprésente. Le relief est peu accidenté et les altitudes faibles, mais la nature se prête à la pratique des sports de plein air, le ski surtout. Ici également, la proximité de Montréal se fait de plus en plus sentir.
– Laval, la plus petite région administrative québécoise, n’a que 245 kilomètres carrés. Après Montréal, elle se classe pourtant à la deuxième place pour la population. C’est surtout un espace résidentiel et dévolu aux activités commerciales.
– La région Mauricie - Bois-Francs est souvent appelée le " cœur " du Québec car elle s’étend de part et d’autre du Saint-Laurent. C’est le domaine de riches terres agricoles mais aussi d’industries prospères autour de Trois-Rivières et Bécancour.
– La Montérégie est partagée entre les premières pentes des Appalaches et la plaine de Montréal. C’est avant tout la banlieue sud-est de Montréal. L’économie y est diversifiée et la ville principale, Longueil, est en pleine expansion.
– L’île de Montréal est un territoire très densément peuplé et occupé en son entier. Tout autour du mont Royal, sur 1% de la superficie de la province vit plus du quart de sa population. S’y trouve la deuxième métropole canadienne après Toronto.
– Le nord du Québec est le pays du froid et de la toundra, en même temps que celui de la prometteuse baie de James. Sur une superficie supérieure à la moitié de la province vit à peine 1% de la population.
– L’Outaouais, en plein Bouclier, doit une grande partie de sa richesse à l’exploitation des forêts. Mais le voisinage de la capitale fédérale, Ottawa, influence de plus en plus le développement.
– La région de Québec, autour de la capitale provinciale, est particulièrement variée. Outre la fonction administrative et la présence de l’industrie, le tourisme y connaît un essor, entre autres dans le comté de Charlevoix.
– Enfin, la région Saguenay-lac Saint-Jean voit la majeure partie des habitants se regrouper entre La Baie et Jonquière. L’hydroélectricité et la fabrication d’alumine sont les deux piliers de l’économie.
      La palette offerte par ces seize régions administratives est loin de traduire la réalité géographique du découpage régional contemporain du Québec. Le vrai partage de l’espace s’effectue entre un heartland et un hinterland . La centralité s’identifie à la linéarité du corridor laurentien bien homogène, alors que la périphérie est très étendue en direction du nord. Ce qui doit être avant tout souligné, c’est l’extraordinaire complémentarité des composantes de ce binôme heartland-hinterland. Exprimé autrement, c’est tout ce que peut représenter le Bouclier pour le Québec : gigantesque réserve de ressources du sol et du sous-sol, renouvelables ou non, il est la pièce essentielle du développement contemporain et futur, une sorte de coffre-fort géant recelant la matière première à utiliser durant plusieurs millénaires.
      L’ouverture économique que procure au Québec l’A.L.E.N.A. ne peut que conforter la province dans ses aspirations, alors que les mutations profondes de sa géopolitique la placent à la croisée des chemins.

1986 First non-refueled around the world flight.
      After nine days and four minutes in the sky, the experimental aircraft Voyager lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California, completing the first nonstop flight around the globe on one load of fuel. Piloted by Americans Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, Voyager was made mostly of plastic and stiffened paper and carried more than three times its weight in fuel when it took off from Edwards Air Force Base on 14 December. By the time it returned, after flying 40'253 km around the planet, it had just 20 liters of fuel left in its remaining operational fuel tank.
      Voyager was built by Burt Rutan of the Rutan Aircraft Company without government support and with minimal corporate sponsorship. Dick Rutan, Burt's brother and a decorated Vietnam War pilot, joined the project early on, as did Dick's friend Jeanna Yeager (no relation to aviator Chuck Yeager). Voyager's extremely light yet strong body was made of layers of carbon-fiber tape and paper impregnated with epoxy resin. Its wingspan was 34 meters, and it had its horizontal stabilizer wing on the plane's nose rather than its rear--a trademark of many of Rutin's aircraft designs. Essentially a flying fuel tank, every possible area was used for fuel storage and much modern aircraft technology was foregone in the effort to reduce weight.
      When Voyager took off from Edwards Air Force at 08:02 PST on 14 December, its wings were so heavy with fuel that their tips scraped along the ground and caused minor damage. The plane made it into the air, however, and headed west. On the second day, Voyager ran into severe turbulence caused by two tropical storms in the Pacific. Dick Rutin had been concerned about flying the aircraft at more than a 15-degree angle, but he soon found the plane could fly on its side at 90 degrees, which occurred when the wind tossed it back and forth. Rutin and Yeager shared the controls, but Rutin, a more experienced pilot, did most of the flying owing to the long periods of turbulence encountered at various points in the journey. With weak stomachs, they ate only a fraction of the food brought along, and each lost about 5 kg.
      On 23 December 23, when Voyager was flying north along the Baja California coast and just 760 km short of its goal, the engine it was using went out, and the aircraft plunged from 2600 to 1500 feet before an alternate engine was started up. Almost nine days to the minute after it lifted off, Voyager appeared over Edwards Air Force Base and circled as Yeager turned a primitive crank that lowered the landing gear. Then, to the cheers of 23'000 spectators, the plane landed safely with a few liters of fuel to spare, completing the first nonstop circumnavigation of the earth by an aircraft that was not refueled in the air. Voyager is on permanent display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

1983 Journal Science publishes 1st report on nuclear winter

1982 US gasoline tax bill is approved
After struggling through a protracted patch of debates that degenerated into a political stalemate, the Senate finally gave the go-ahead to President Ronald Reagan's gas tax bill. The legislation called for a five-cent hike in the federal tax on gasoline, which, on paper, was expected to haul in $5.5 billion a year to fund highway and bridge repairs. And though Reagan was an avowed opponent of using public funds to spark job growth, the tax increase nonetheless promised to create 320'000 jobs. The president signed the bill into law on January 6, 1983.

1975 US Congress passes Metric Conversion Act
1973 6 Persian Gulf nations double their oil prices
1972 Earthquake destroys central Managua, Nicaragua

1972 Christmas Bombing of North Vietnam: 8th day.
The East German Embassy and the Hungarian commercial mission in Hanoi are hit in the eighth day of Operation Linebacker II. Although there were reports that a prisoner of war camp holding American soldiers was hit, the rumor was untrue.
President Nixon initiated the full-scale bombing campaign against North Vietnam on December 18, when the North Vietnamese--who walked out of the peace talks in Paris--refused an ultimatum from Nixon to return to the negotiating table. During the 11 days of the operation, 700 B-52 sorties and more than 1000 fighter-bomber sorties dropped an estimated 20,000 tons of bombs, mostly over the densely populated area between Hanoi and Haiphong. President Nixon was vilified at home and abroad for ordering the "Christmas bombing," but on December 28, the North Vietnamese did agree to return to the talks in Paris. When the negotiators met again in early January, they quickly arrived at a settlement. The Paris Peace Accords were signed on January 23 and a cease-fire went into effect five days later.

1968 Crew of US spy ship released by North Korea
      The crew and captain of the US intelligence gathering ship Pueblo are released after 11 months imprisonment by the government of North Korea. The ship, and its 83-man crew, was seized by North Korean warships on January 23 and charged with intruding into North Korean waters.
      The seizure infuriated US President Lyndon Johnson. Later, he claimed that he strongly suspected (although it could not be proven) that the incident with the Pueblo, coming just a few days before the communist Tet Offensive in South Vietnam, was a coordinated diversion. At the time, however, Johnson did little. The Tet Offensive, which began just a week after the ship was taken by North Korea, exploded on the front pages and televisions of America and seemed to paralyze the Johnson administration. To deal with the Pueblo incident, the United States urged the U.N.'s Security Council to condemn the action and pressured the Soviet Union to negotiate with the North Koreans for the ship's release.
      Both captain and crew were horribly treated and later recounted their torture at the hands of the North Koreans. With no help in sight, Captain Lloyd Bucher reluctantly signed a document confessing that the ship was spying on North Korea. With this propaganda victory in hand, the North Koreans released the prisoners and also returned the body of one crewman who died in captivity. Some Americans criticized Johnson for not taking decisive retaliatory action against North Korea; others argued that he should have used every diplomatic means at his disposal to secure a quick release for the crew. In any case, the event was another blow to Johnson and America's Cold War foreign policy.

1967 US Navy SEALs are ambushed during an operation southeast of Saigon.

1966 US Cardinal extols Vietnam War, contrary to Pope.
Francis Cardinal Spellman, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York and military vicar of the US armed forces for Roman Catholics, visits US servicemen in South Vietnam. In an address at mass in Saigon, Spellman says that the Vietnamese conflict was "a war for civilization--certainly it is not a war of our seeking. It is a war thrust upon us--we cannot yield to tyranny. “ Anything "less than victory is inconceivable. “ On December 26, Spellman told US soldiers that they were in Vietnam for the "defense, protection, and salvation not only of our country, but …of civilization itself. “ The next day, Vatican sources expressed displeasure with Spellman's statements in Vietnam. One source said, "The Cardinal did not speak for the Pope or the Church. “ The Pope had previously called for negotiations and an end to the war in Vietnam.

1962 Cuba starts returning US prisoners from the Bay of Pigs invasion
1953 Après 13 tours de scrutin du Congrès, qui est la réunion de la Chambre et du Sénat, René Coty, 71 ans, est élu président de la République française, par 477 voix contre 329 au socialiste Marcel Naegelen. Il prend la succession de Vincent Auriol.
1950 Pope Pius XII declared that the tomb of St. Peter had been discovered beneath St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.
1947 Transistor invented by Bardeen, Brattain & Shockley in Bell Labs
1947 President Harry S Truman grants a pardon to 1523 who had evaded the World War II draft.
1945 General Dwight D. Eisenhower confirms the death sentence of Private Eddie Slovik, the only American shot for desertion since the Civil War.

1944 Skies clear over Battle of the Bulge
On the seventh day of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's offensive against the Allied front at Belgium's Ardennes Forest, the weather clears over the area, allowing the mass deployment of Allied air support for its embattled troops. On December 16, 1944, with the Anglo-Americans closing in on Nazi Germany from the west and the Russians from the east, Hitler ordered a surprise attack against the western Allied front by three German armies. The German counterattack out of the densely wooded Ardennes region took the Allies entirely by surprise, and the experienced German troops wrought havoc on the American line, creating a triangular "bulge" 100 km deep and 80 km wide on the Allied front. Conditions of fog and mist prevented the unleashing of Allied air superiority, and for several days, Hitler's desperate gamble seemed to be paying off.
However, unlike the French in 1940, the Americans kept up a fierce resistance even after their lines of communication had been broken, buying time for a three-point counter-offensive led by British Field Marshall Sir Bernard Montgomery and US generals Omar Bradley and George S. Patton. On December 23, the skies finally cleared over the Battle of the Bulge and the Allied air force inflicted heavy damage on German tanks and transport, which were jammed solidly along the main roads, and destroyed railroad stations behind the German line. By January 21, the Germans had been pushed back to their original line, but the offensive had cost them 120'000 men, 1600 planes, and 700 tanks. The Allies suffered 81'000 killed, wounded, or missing in action with all but 4000 of these casualties being American. It was the heaviest single battle toll in US history.

1944 Execution of Private Slovik approved by Eisenhower.
      Gen. Dwight Eisenhower endorses the finding of a court-martial in the case of Eddie Slovik, who was tried for desertion, and authorizes his execution, the first such sentence against a US Army soldier since the Civil War, and the only man so punished during World War II.
      Private Eddie Slovik was a draftee. Originally classified 4-F because of a prison record (grand theft auto), he was bumped up to a 1-A classification when draft standards were lowered to meet growing personnel needs. In January 1944, he was trained to be a rifleman, which was not to his liking, as he hated guns.
      In August of the same year, Slovik was shipped to France to fight with the 28th Infantry Division, which had already suffered massive casualties in the fighting there and in Germany. Slovik was a replacement, a class of soldier not particular respected by officers. As he and a companion were on the way to the front lines, they became lost in the chaos of battle, only to stumble upon a Canadian unit that took them in.
      Slovik stayed on with the Canadians until October 5, when they turned him and his buddy over to the American military police, who reunited them with the 28th Division, now in Elsenborn, Belgium. No charges were brought; replacements getting lost early on in their tours of duty were not unusual. But exactly one day after Slovik returned to his unit, he claimed he was "too scared and too nervous" to be a rifleman and threatened to run away if forced into combat. His admission was ignored--and Slovik took off. One day after that he returned, and Slovik signed a confession of desertion, claiming he would run away again if forced to fight, and submitted it to an officer of the 28th. The officer advised Slovik to take the confession back, as the consequences would be serious. Slovik refused, and he was confined to the stockade.
      The 28th Division had seen many cases of soldiers wounding themselves or deserting in the hopes of a prison sentence that would at least protect them from the perils of combat. So a legal officer of the 28th offered Slovik a deal: Dive into combat immediately and avoid the court-martial. Slovik refused. He was tried on November 11 for desertion and was convicted in less than two hours. The nine-officer court-martial panel passed a unanimous sentence: execution-"to be shot to death with musketry. “
      Slovik's appeal failed. It was held that he "directly challenged the authority" of the United States and that "future discipline depends upon a resolute reply to this challenge. “ Slovik was to pay for his recalcitrant attitude-and he was to be made an example. One last appeal was made-to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander. The timing was bad for mercy. The Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes forest was issuing in literally thousands of American casualties, not to mention the second largest surrender of an American Army unit during the war. Eisenhower upheld the sentence. Slovik would be shot to death by a 12-man firing squad in eastern France in January of 1945. None of the rifleman so much as flinched, believing Slovik had gotten what he deserved.

1941 US forces on Wake Island surrender to Japanese 1941. Despite throwing back an earlier Japanese amphibious assault, the US Marines and Navy defenders on Wake Island capitulate to a second Japanese invasion.
1941 While the Military Strikes, Workers Won't A conference of industry and labor officials agrees that there would be no strikes or lockouts in war industries while World War II continued.
1940 Chiang Kai-shek dissolves all Communist associations in China.
1939 The first Canadian troops for WW II arrive in Britain.
1937 London warns Rome to stop anti-British propaganda in Palestine.
1933 Pope Pius XI condemns the Nazi sterilization program.

1929 Teletype machine used by police department
Law enforcement officials found they could use rapidly developing communications technology to speed their work. On this day in 1929, the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, police department initiated the first teletypewriter system to be used by police. The machine connected ninety-five cities via 3,400 miles of telephone wire and allowed police departments to share information more quickly.

1921 President Warren G. Harding frees Socialist Eugene Debs and 23 other political prisoners.
1920 Ireland divided into 2 parts, each with its own parliament
1919 Great Britain gives a new constitution to India.

1913 US Federal Reserve Act approved
President Woodrow Wilson's first few years in office were marked by the passage of an array of fiscal reforms and initiatives. December 23, 1913, saw Congress give the nod to one of Wilson's economic initiatives: the Federal Reserve Act, which promised to change the nation's banking system. The act paved the way for the Federal Banking System, a network of twelve regional banks. To help forward this plan, the act also called for all national banks to join the federal system via hefty one-time deposits into a pooled account. In turn, the Federal Reserve banks were charged with serving as resources to aid and stabilize the nation's other banks. The resulting network of banks was tied together by the Federal Reserve Board, as well as the newly minted Federal Reserve note.

1912 Magazine rejects Proust's À la Recherche du Temps Perdu
      The Parisian literary review, La Nouvelle Revue Francaise, rejects an excerpt from Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust, 41.When complete, the seven-volume novel will profoundly influence the development of the modern novel.
      Marcel Proust was the first of two sons born to a well-to-do Parisian family in 1871. His father was a prominent doctor and professor of medicine from a Catholic family, and his mother was a highly educated, sensitive woman whose family was Jewish.
      Proust developed asthma as a child and spent holidays at the seaside for his health. He became a great student. After graduating with honors from high school, he attended the Ecole des Science Politiques. Despite his asthma, he was able to perform his required year of military service in Orleans.
      Back in Paris, Proust associated with many young writers and artists, and his social connections landed him invitations to most of Paris' most exclusive literary and artistic salons. He published a collection of stories called Les Plaisirs et les jours in 1898. He became an active supporter of unjustly imprisoned Jewish soldier Alfred Dreyfus during the Dreyfus Affair (1897-1899).
      Proust's asthma became more severe in the early 1900s, about the same time that both his parents died. He moved into a pollen-proof, cork-lined room at 102 Boulevard de Haussman in Paris, where he lived for the next 13 years, rarely emerging except for late-night dinner parties with friends. There, he began writing his masterpiece, À La Recherche du Temps Perdu, in 1909. The first volume, Du Côté de Chez Swann, was finished in 1912, but was rejected not only by magazines for excerpt, but also by publishers. Proust published it at his own expense in 1913. The book was a success, but World War I postponed the publication of the novel's further volumes. In 1919, À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs was published, followed by Le Côté de Guermantes in 1921 and Sodome et Gomorrhe in 1922. The remaining three volumes, La Prisonnière (1923), Albertine disparue (1925), and Le Temps retrouvé (1927)(PROUST ONLINE:), were published after Proust's death in Paris in 1922. Together, the books present an elaborate psychological study of time and identity, and deeply influenced the works of later European novelists.
     À la recherche du temps perdu is the story of Proust's own life, told as an allegorical search for truth. At first, the only childhood memory available to the middle-aged narrator is the evening of a visit from the family friend, Swann, when the child forced his mother to give him the goodnight kiss that she had refused. But, through the accidental tasting of tea and a madeleine cake, the narrator retrieves from his unconscious memory the landscape and people of his boyhood holidays in the village of Combray. In an ominous digression on love and jealousy, the reader learns of the unhappy passion of Swann (a Jewish dilettante received in high society) for the courtesan Odette, whom he had met in the bourgeois salon of the Verdurins during the years before the narrator's birth. As an adolescent the narrator falls in love with Gilberte (the daughter of Swann and Odette) in the Champs-Élysées. During a seaside holiday at Balbec, he meets the handsome young nobleman Saint-Loup, Saint-Loup's strange uncle the Baron de Charlus, and a band of young girls led by Albertine. He falls in love with the Duchesse de Guermantes but, after an autumnal visit to Saint-Loup's garrison-town Doncières, is cured when he meets her in society. As he travels through the Guermantes's world, its apparent poetry and intelligence is dispersed and its real vanity and sterility revealed. Charlus is discovered to be homosexual, pursuing the elderly tailor Jupien and the young violinist Morel, and the vices of Sodom and Gomorrah henceforth proliferate through the novel. On a second visit to Balbec the narrator suspects Albertine of loving women, carries her back to Paris, and keeps her captive. He witnesses the tragic betrayal of Charlus by the Verdurins and Morel; his own jealous passion is only intensified by the flight and death of Albertine. When he attains oblivion of his love, time is lost; beauty and meaning have faded from all he ever pursued and won; and he renounces the book he has always hoped to write. A long absence in a sanatorium is interrupted by a wartime visit to Paris, bombarded like Pompeii or Sodom from the skies. Charlus, disintegrated by his vice, is seen in Jupien's infernal brothel, and Saint-Loup, married to Gilberte and turned homosexual, dies heroically in battle. After the war, at the Princesse de Guermantes's afternoon reception, the narrator becomes aware, through a series of incidents of unconscious memory, that all the beauty he has experienced in the past is eternally alive. Time is regained, and he sets to work, racing against death, to write the very novel the reader has just experienced.
      Proust's novel has a circular construction and must be considered in the light of the revelation with which it ends. The author reinstates the extratemporal values of time regained, his subject being salvation. Other patterns of redemption are shown in counterpoint to the main theme: the narrator's parents are saved by their natural goodness, great artists (the novelist Bergotte, the painter Elstir, the composer Vinteuil) through the vision of their art, Swann through suffering in love, and even Charlus through the Lear-like grandeur of his fall. Proust's novel is, ultimately, both optimistic and set in the context of human religious experience. “I realized that the materials of my work consisted of my own past," says the narrator at the moment of time regained. An important quality in the understanding of À La Recherche du Temps Perdu lies in its meaning for Proust himself as the allegorical story of his own life, from which its events, places, and characters are taken. In his quest for time lost, he invented nothing but altered everything, selecting, fusing, and transmuting the facts so that their underlying unity and universal significance should be revealed, working inward to himself and outward to every aspect of the human condition.
      Proust projected his own homosexuality upon his characters, treating this, as well as snobbism, vanity, and cruelty, as a major symbol of original sin. His insight into women and the love of men for women (which he himself experienced for the many female originals of his heroines) remained unimpaired, and he is among the greatest novelists in the fields of both heterosexual and homosexual love.
      Taking as raw material the author's past life,   À la recherche du temps perdu is ostensibly about the irrecoverability of time lost, about the forfeiture of innocence through experience, the emptiness of love and friendship, the vanity of human endeavour, and the triumph of sin and despair; but Proust's conclusion is that the life of every day is supremely important, full of moral joy and beauty, which, though man may lose them through faults inherent in human nature, are indestructible and recoverable. Proust's style is one of the most original in all literature and is unique in its union of speed and protraction, precision and iridescence, force and enchantment, classicism and symbolism.
     Citations de À la recherche du temps perdu http://perso.wanadoo.fr/proust/proust/tout.htm

Albert becomes king of Belgium
1909 Albert devient roi des belges.
      Né en 1875, fils de Philippe, comte de Flandre, et de Marie de Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, Albert épouse en 1900 Élisabeth de Bavière dont il a trois enfants : Léopold, Charles et Marie-Josée, qui deviendra reine d’Italie. Le 23 décembre 1909, il succède à son oncle Léopold II, mort sans laisser de fils. Calme, modeste et très cultivé, il sera aimé du peuple belge. La tension intérieure rend les premières années de son règne très difficiles : problèmes sociaux, question flamande. Le roi se montre respectueux de la Constitution. La situation internationale incite le gouvernement à renforcer la défense nationale, et le service militaire obligatoire pour tous les hommes âgés de vingt ans est décrété en 1913, ce qui permet à l’armée belge de jouer un rôle important pendant les premiers mois de la guerre de 1914-1918.
      En 1914, Albert exige sa prérogative constitutionnelle, le commandement personnel de l’armée. Il prend des initiatives stratégiques, notamment la décision de faire évacuer Anvers pour éviter l’encerclement de l’armée belge. Il crée la ligne de l’Yser pour contenir l’avance allemande vers la mer. Établi avec sa famille à La Panne, il surveille de près les opérations militaires pendant toute la guerre. Ses initiatives en vue de faire cesser les hostilités restent sans résultats. Son attitude courageuse au front de l’Yser le fera surnomme le Roi-Chevalier.
      Après la victoire des Alliés, il rentre à Bruxelles le 22 novembre 1918. Son prestige est tel après la guerre que les partis acceptent son arbitrage chaque fois qu’une question grave les oppose. Il encourage vivement la reconstruction rapide de la Belgique : villes rebâties, usines remises en marche, voies ferrées réparées.
      Le pays connaît ensuite une économie prospère qui ne sera compromise que par la crise économique mondiale de 1929. Des traités de commerce sont signés avec le Luxembourg en 1921, avec la France, les Pays-Bas et les pays scandinaves en 1928.
      En 1930, le roi inaugure le creusement du canal Albert qui relie le bassin de la Meuse, à Liège, et le port d’Anvers qui est agrandi. Son règne voit également d’importantes réalisations sociales : l’obtention du suffrage universel en 1918, la loi des huit heures en 1921, la semaine de quarante-huit heures. Des réformes linguistiques entrent en vigueur : la flamandisation de l’université de Gand en 1930, l’unilinguisme des deux parties du pays en 1932. Sur le plan culturel, les Belges doivent à l’initiative personnelle du roi la fondation du Fonds national de la recherche scientifique. La reine Élisabeth et le roi patronnent le développement des arts et des lettres.
      Passionné d’alpinisme, le roi meurt accidentellement, le 17 février 1934, au cours d’une escalade à Marche-les-Dames, des rochers à pic qui surplombent la Meuse près de Namur.
      Singulièrement non conformiste de caractère, la reine Élisabeth survivra à son époux jusqu’en 1965. Violoniste dilettante (elle avait été l’élève du célèbre violoniste belge Eugène Ysaye), elle fondera à Bruxelles, après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, le concours international qui porte son nom (le Concours Reine Elisabeth) et dont les prix récompensent tour à tour des violonistes, des pianistes et des compositeurs.

1900 The Federal Party, which recognizes American sovereignty, is formed in the Philippines.
1863 Fight at Culpeper Court House, Virginia

1862 Union General declared a felon by Reb President.
      Confederate President Jefferson Davis declares Union General Benjamin “Beast” Butler a “felon, outlaw and common enemy of mankind” and insists that he be hanged if captured. Butler had earned few friends in New Orleans — indeed, his treatment of the city's residents outraged most Southerners.
      The Union captured New Orleans in early 1862 and Butler became the military commander of the city. His actions there soon made him the most hated Yankee in the Confederacy. Butler worked to root out all signs of the Confederacy from the city. He hung a gambler who tore down an American flag and he ordered civil officers, attorneys, and clergy to take an oath of allegiance to the United States. Most notoriously, he offended southern women with General Order No. 28, which stated that any woman who insulted Union troops would "be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation."
      Butler confiscated the property of rebels and was accused of stealing silver spoons from the locals, earning him the nickname “Spoons”. Butler's brother, Andrew, gained permits to trade in the area and made a fortune from the sale of contraband items. Southerners began to view Butler's mistreatment of New Orleans residents as a symbol of Yankee rudeness. Perhaps only William T. Sherman, who led the famously destructive march across Georgia, earned greater opprobrium in the South.

1861 Skirmish at Dayton, Missouri

1861 UK complains about US seizure of Confederate diplomats on British ship
     Lord Lyons, The British minister to America presents a formal complaint to secretary of state, William Seward, regarding the Trent affair.
     In Old Bahama Channel (off Cuba), on 08 November 1861, US Navy Captain Charles Wilkes commanded the crew of the USS. San Jacinto to stop the British steamer Trent and arrest Confederate diplomats James M. Mason and John Slidell. En route to Europe to rally support for the Confederate cause, the men were brought ashore and imprisoned at Fort Warren in Boston Harbor.
      The seizure of Mason and Slidell sparked an international controversy that brought the United States to the brink of war with Great Britain. Claiming violation of international law, Britain demanded release of the diplomats and ordered troops to Canada to prepare for a potential Anglo-American conflict. To avoid a clash, Secretary of State William H. Seward apologized for the incident. The diplomats were released in early January 1862, bringing the Trent Affair to a peaceful close.

1847 L'Algérie est conquise pour la France
Malgré les dispositions du traité de paix de Lalla-Marnia, l'une des clauses assurait que les frontières du Maroc seraient fermées à Abd el-Kader, celui-ci a malgré tout continué sa lutte contre les Français depuis le territoire du royaume chérifien. C'est au duc d'Aumale qu'a été confiée la conduite des forces françaises en Algérie. Ce 23 décembre, les colonnes mobiles françaises menées par Lamoricière et celui-ci l'emportent sur la cavalerie d'Abd el-Kader. En se soumettant au duc, il dit : "Je vous offre comme prix de ma soumission ce cheval, le dernier que j'ai monté. C'est un témoignage de ma gratitude. “La conquête de l'Algérie est faite.

1834 Parliament asked for more funding for Difference Engine.
Charles Babbage doomed his own quest to build a mechanical calculator on this day in 1834. A prominent mathematician who helped found England's Analytic, Royal Astronomical, and Statistical Societies, Babbage had proposed the idea of a mechanical calculator in 1812. By 1823, Parliament had granted Babbage funding to build his machine, which he called the "Difference Engine. “ Babbage's protege, Ada, countess of Lovelace, helped devise a method to program the machine using punched cards. Babbage devoted the next ten years of his life to building the Difference Engine, spending £17'000 of government funding.
To secure additional funding, he submitted a written statement describing his progress. Unfortunately, Babbage had developed an idea for a new, more powerful machine, the Analytic Engine, which he mentioned in his description, convincing Parliament that further investment in the Difference Engine would be a waste. He received no more government grants, so he funded the machine's development from his own pocket until he ran out of money and abandoned the project in 1848. In 1854, a Swedish engineer finally succeeded in constructing a Difference Engine based on Babbage's theories. The machine was largely forgotten until Babbage's drawings were rediscovered in 1937.

1788 Maryland votes to cede a 10 mile square area for District of Columbia
1783 George Washington returns home to Mount Vernon, after the disbanding of his army and his resignation as US Army's commander-in-chief, following the US War of Independence.

1779 Benedict Arnold's court-martial, which would lead to his treason
      The court-martial of Benedict Arnold reconvenes in Morristown, New Jersey. It had first convened in Philadelphia on June 1. But is was abruptly interrupted at its outset by a British attack north of New York City.
      After a relatively clean record in the early days of the American Revolution, Arnold was charged with malfeasance, misusing government wagons, illegally buying and selling goods, and favoritism to the British Loyalists. Although his notorious betrayal was still many months away, Arnold's resentment over this order and the perceived mistreatment by the American Army would fuel his traitorous decision. Although Arnold was cleared of most charges, General George Washington issued a reprimand against him, and Arnold became increasingly angered.
      While on a trip to the important West Point base to ensure that it could withstand a British attack, Arnold stewed over his slight by Washington and the Americans. He thought that he had never been properly rewarded or acknowledged for his military success on their behalf. He began corresponding with British spies about the possibility of changing sides. Arnold negotiated his defection to the British and the subversion of West Point over the next several months. The British already held control of New York City and believed that by taking West Point they could effectively cut off the Americans' New England forces from the rest of the fledgling nation.
      In August 1780, Sir Henry Clinton offered Arnold £20,000 for delivering West Point and 3000 troops. Arnold told General Washington that West Point was adequately prepared for an attack, even though he was busy making sure that it really wasn't. He even tried to set up General Washington's capture as a bonus. His plan might have been successful, but his message was delivered too late and Washington escaped. The West Point surrender was also foiled when an American colonel ignored Arnold's order not to fire on an approaching British ship.
      Arnold's defection was revealed to the Americans when British officer John André, acting as a messenger, was robbed by AWOL Americans working as pirates in the woods north of New York City. The notes revealing Arnold's traitorous agreement were stashed in his boots. Arnold and his wife Peggy, who fooled American officers into believing she had no involvement in the betrayal, escaped to New York City. At the British surrender at Yorktown, Benedict Arnold was burned in effigy, and his name has since become synonymous with traitor. The British didn't treat him very well after the war either. After prevailing in a libel action, he was awarded only a nominal amount because his reputation was already so tarnished. He died in 1801 and was buried in England without military honor.

1777 Plot against George Washington discovered
During the American War for Independence, the Conway Cabal, a plot to remove George Washington from his post as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, ends as details of the conspiracy are leaked to the public. After Washington's defeats at the battles of Brandywine and Germantown, Thomas Conway and other plotters hoped to replace him with General Horatio Gates, who had won an impressive victory at the Battle of Saratoga. However, in late December, General Washington received word of the plot while stationed with his army at their winter encampment at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and by December 23, the details of the conspiracy had spread from his troops to the general population. Public opinion proved to be overwhelmingly in support of General Washington, and Conway is subsequently forced to resign from the army.

1776 Thomas Paine writes "These are the times that try men's souls".
1776 Continental Congress negotiates a war loan of $181'500 from France.
1690 John Flamsteed observes Uranus without realizing it's undiscovered.

1620 Construction of Plymouth settlement begins
One week after the Mayflower arrived at Plymouth harbor in present-day Massachusetts, construction on the first permanent European settlement in New England begins. On November 11, the Mayflower arrived to the New World carrying approximately one hundred English settlers, commonly known as the pilgrims. The majority of the pilgrims were Puritan Separatists, who traveled to America to escape the jurisdiction of the Church of England, which they believed violated the biblical precepts for true Christians. After coming to anchor in what is today Provincetown harbor in the Cape Cod region of Massachusetts, a party of armed men under the command of Captain Myles Standish was sent out to explore the immediate area and find a location suitable for settlement. On December 11, the explorers went ashore in Plymouth where they found cleared fields and plentiful running water. The expedition returned to the Mayflower and on December 16 the ship came to anchor in Plymouth harbor. One week later, the pilgrims began work on dwellings that would shelter them through their difficult first winter in America.

1482 Par le traité d'Arras conclu entre l'empereur Maximilien d'Autriche et Louis XI, La France reçoit le duché de Bourgogne et la Picardie.

1144 Chute d'Edesse
      Elle fut fondée en mars 1098 par Baudouin de Boulogne, frère de Godefroi de Bouillon, qui, venu à l’aide du prince arménien Thoros, sut éliminer celui-ci par la ruse.
      Le comté d’Édesse (ou Orfa), au-delà de l’Euphrate, était le plus oriental des États latins et la principale marche contre les Turcs, constituant même une menace directe pour Alep. Étranger au royaume latin de Jérusalem, qui avait d’ailleurs été fondé plus tard (1100), le comté reconnut rapidement l’hégémonie politique de rois, dont les deux premiers (Baudouin Ier et Baudouin II) furent les anciens comtes d’Édesse. Baudouin II exerça même la régence du comté.
      L’établissement franc d’Édesse était fragile, faute d’une véritable colonisation de peuplement analogue à celle du royaume ou de la principauté d’Antioche. Le comté était donc, en réalité, réduit à des garnisons franques et à la soumission très imparfaite du seul territoire habité par les Arméniens. Hors de celui-ci, la domination des comtes était à peine reconnue.
      L’importance stratégique de la position explique la place que tient Édesse dans l’histoire de l’Orient latin. Énergiquement défendu par le comte Jocelin Ier (1118-1131), le comté avait cependant perdu, dès les premières attaques menées par les Turcs, à partir de 1110, la plupart de ses territoires orientaux. Le règne du lâche et intrigant Jocelin II (1131-1144) précipita la fin d’Édesse, qu’une armée surtout formée d’Arméniens et de Syriens défendait sans conviction et qu’anémiait l’exode des éléments les plus actifs de la population, ruinés par la quasi-fermeture de la route commerciale qui reliait la Syrie à la Mésopotamie.
      Les assauts successifs menés par l’énergique et habile atabeg d’Alep, Zengi, permirent à ce dernier de prendre Édesse (23 décembre 1144) après un mois d’un siège que soutint, à la tête d’une maigre garnison, l’archevêque Hugues. Jocelin II était absent et les autres barons de Terre sainte se soucièrent peu de le secourir.
      L’échec d’un retour clandestin de Jocelin II (1146) conduisit les Turcs à massacrer, comme complices, les Arméniens que Zengi avait ménagés en 1144. Mais, dès 1145, la chute d’Édesse avait en Occident un retentissement tel qu’il provoquait l’organisation de la Deuxième Croisade. Les querelles internes du royaume de Jérusalem et la duplicité de la reine Mélisende détournèrent malheureusement les croisés de la reconquête d’Édesse, qui eût été la meilleure sauvegarde du royaume.

1119 Calixtus II confirms the Cistercian Carta Caritatis
0619 Boniface V is consecrated Pope. He would establish the see of Canterbury in England and be known for his love of the clergy and mild disposition.

TO THE TOP

Deaths which occurred on a December 23:
2000 Kazuhiro Sugiyama, 57, at about 11:45 in Shimizu, Shizuoka Prefecture, stabbed in the chest with a kitchen knife by a 14-year-old second-year middle school emotionally disturbed boy, apartment building neighbor, whose father often drunkely quarreled with Sugiyama, who lived alone.
1989 Richard Rado, mathematician.
1953 Lavrenti P. Beria soviet minister of internal security, and six of his associates, shot for treason following a secret trial.
1950 General Walton H. Walker, the commander of the Eighth Army in Korea, is killed in a jeep accident. Lieutenant General Matthew B. Ridgeway is named his successor.
1948 Hideki Tojo Japan PM & 6 other Japanese hanged by US for war crimes by US.

1948 Hideki Tojo, Iwane Matsui, Heitaro Kimura, and 4 other Japanese war criminals, hanged.
In Tokyo, Japan, Hideki Tojo, former Japanese prime minister and chief of the Kwantung Army, is executed along with six other top Japanese leaders for their war crimes during World War II. On November 3, an international war crimes tribunal in Tokyo found all twenty-five Japanese defendants guilty of breaching the laws and customs of war. Seven of the defendants were also found guilty of committing crimes against humanity, especially in regard to their systematic genocide of the Chinese people. On November 12, death sentences were imposed on Tojo and the six other principals, such as Iwane Matsui, who organized one of the greatest atrocities of the war, the Rape of Nanking, and Heitaro Kimura, who brutalized Allied prisoners of war. Sixteen others are sentenced to life imprisonment and the remaining two of the original twenty-five defendants were sentenced to lesser terms in prison.
Unlike the Nuremberg trial of German war criminals, where there were four chief prosecutors representing Great Britain, France, the US, and the USS.R., the Tokyo trial featured only one chief prosecutor--American Joseph B. Keenan, a former assistant to the US attorney general. However, other nations, especially China, contributed to the thirty-month trial, and Australian judge William Flood Webb presided. In addition to the central Tokyo trial, various tribunals sitting outside of Japan judged some 5000 Japanese guilty of war crimes, of whom more than 900 were executed

1947 Helen Marion Canu (née Young), 44, of breast cancer, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.

1939 Day 24 of Winter War: USSR aggression against Finland. [Talvisodan 24. päivä]
More deaths due to Stalin's desire to grab Finnish territory.

Karelian Isthmus: the Finnish II Army Corps launches a fragmented counteroffensive at 6.30. The commander of II Army Corps suspends the offensive at 14.30. Overall losses in the unsuccessful offensive total 1,328 men: 361 dead, 777 wounded and 190 lost in action.

Ladoga Karelia: Finnish troops counterattack at Kollaanjoki, but the attack is broken off during the course of the evening.

In the Tolvajärvi sector, battalions from Detachment Pennanen win control of the Aittojoki parallel. The fighting at Tolvajärvi-Ägläjärvi comes to an end.

Northern Finland: the vanguard of the Soviet 44th Division comes into contact with the Finnish troops on the Raate road.

Karelian Isthmus: the Soviet long-range 'ghost gun' in the Perkjärvi sector wreaks havoc and confusion in Viipuri, damaging numerous buildings in the city.

Turku archipelago: the armored coastal vessels Ilmarinen and Väinämöinen move out of the archipelago into the open sea at Kihti to protect vital shipping routes threatened by Soviet aircraft operating out of Estonia.

Unemployment statistics show that Finnish unemployment has fallen well below the level of one thousand.

Abroad: Argentina's positive response to the League of Nations' appeal for aid to be sent to Finland has been joined by a similar response from Ecuador, Haiti, Peru, the Union of South American States, Bolivia, Venezuela and Mexico.

United States: Gunnar Bärlund, the Finnish heavyweight boxer resident in the USA, beats Italo Golonello, with the referee stopping the bout in the seventh round. Bärlund donates part of his proceeds from the fight to the Finnish Relief Fund.

1932 Giuseppe Signorini, Italian artist born in 1857.
1912 Jean Baptiste Edouard Detaille, French artist born on 05 October 1848. — LINKS
1909 King Leopold II of Belgium
1890 Edward Sang, mathematician.
1840 Jean-Pierre-Henri Elouis, French artist born on 20 January 1755.
1722 Varignon, mathematician.1615 Bartolomeo Schedoni (or Schidone), Italian artist born on 23 January 1578. — LINKS

1588 François, dit le Balafré, deuxième duc de Guise
      Le "balafré" âgé de trentre huit ans, est certain que le roi Henri III n'attentera pas à sa vie. Mais depuis plusieurs jours, les partisans du duc de Guise redoutent que l'on attente à sa vie. “ Il n'oserait " leur répond-y-il ! Mais à 7 heures du matin ce 23 décembre, le duc se rend au Conseil du roi. Il entre dans la chambre du roi en picorant des raisins de Damas. Des mignons du roi, dont M. de Montsériac le saluent, cet homme mesure un peu plus de deux mètres, puis le suivent à distance comme par respect. Tout à coup, Montsériac se jette sur lui et lui enfonce son poignard dans la poitrine. Le duc crie : "Mon Dieu, mes péchés sont en cause, ayez pitié de moi. “ Puis le sang sort de sa bouche. Il murmure encore : "Miserere mei , deus. “ Il s'écroule sur le sol. Henri III s'avance alors. Il contemple le corps du duc et murmure "Dieu qu'il est grand ! Plus grand encore mort que vivant. “
      Issus de la branche cadette de la maison ducale de Lorraine, dont ils se sont détachés avec Claude Ier, fils du duc René II, au début du XVIème siècle, les Guise dominent la vie politique française du milieu et de la seconde partie du XVIème siècle avec les deux frères : François Ier de Guise (1519-1563) et son frère le cardinal Charles de Lorraine (1525-1574), puis avec le fils du premier, Henri de Guise (1550-1588) et son frère le cardinal Louis (1555-1588). Princes étrangers, très catholiques, leur ascension politique a été confirmée sous le règne de Henri II et de Diane de Poitiers. François Ier , dit le Balafré, deuxième duc de Guise, fils de Claude de Guise et d’Antoinette de Bourbon, se fait d’abord remarquer comme général, guerroie à Boulogne en 1545, puis en Écosse en 1548.
      Il acquiert une renommée européenne, lors de la prise, puis de la défense de Metz en 1552, où il inflige une défaite écrasante à Charles Quint. Envoyé en 1556 au secours du pape Paul III, il est rappelé en France au lendemain de la défaite de Saint-Quentin en 1557. Après avoir protégé Paris, il prend Calais aux Anglais en 1558, puis s’empare de Thionville. Grâce à l’influence de la reine Marie Stuart, sa nièce, il domine entièrement l’esprit du jeune roi François II (1559-1560). Les deux Guise apparaissent alors, dotés du double "prestige de l’homme de guerre et de l’homme d’Église", comme l’âme du parti catholique, mais aussi comme "l’instrument de l’ingérence espagnole en France". Sous Charles IX (1560-1574), Catherine de Médicis, souhaitant une politique de réconciliation, sur les conseils de Michel de L’Hospital, les écarte pour un temps.
      Mais le massacre de Wassy en 1562, probablement pas prémédité, mais, en revanche, allègrement accepté par le duc, rend la guerre civile inévitable. Le Balafré remporte les victoires de Rouen et de Dreux, qui font de lui l’arbitre de la situation. Il est assassiné en 1563 au siège d’Orléans par Poltrot de Méré, un gentilhomme protestant poussé peut-être par les Coligny. L’influence des Guise se prolonge cependant grâce au cardinal Charles, qui paraît destiné à devenir le conseiller le plus écouté de Henri III. Mais il meurt au début de 1574. Des sept enfants issus du mariage de François de Guise avec Anne d’Este, la fille du duc Ercole II de Ferrare, se distingue l’aîné, Henri Ier , marquis de Mayenne et prince de Joinville, troisième duc de Guise, qui a commencé la carrière des armes contre les Turcs en 1566 et s’est distingué à Jarnac en 1569. Il se rapproche de Catherine de Médicis, inquiète de l’ascendant prise sur son fils Charles IX par l’amiral de Coligny.
      L’échec de la tentative d’assassinat de l’amiral par un affidé des Guise, Maurevert, le 22 août 1572, risquant de faire apparaître la double complicité des Guise et de la reine mère, est l’une des causes du massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy, où Henri joua un rôle important. Blessé à la bataille de Dormans en 1575, ce qui lui vaut le sobriquet de Balafré, il devient en 1576, le chef de la Sainte Ligue. Pensionné par Philippe II, soutenu par Catherine de Médicis, qui a "constamment misé sur les Lorrains", il se détache de plus en plus de Henri III. La grande crise éclate en 1587. Avec la victoire d’Auneau, il devient le véritable rival de la personne royale. Henri III lui ayant interdit l’entrée de la capitale — où il jouit d’une immense popularité —, il brave les ordres du souverain, qu’il songe d’ailleurs à déposer. Henri III est obligé de s’enfuir de Paris à la suite de la journée des Barricades, le 12 mai 1588. Le Balafré n’ose cependant pas rompre ouvertement. Henri III, l’ayant attiré aux états généraux de Blois, le fait assassiner le 23 décembre 1588 par les "quarante-cinq" de sa garde personnelle. Le lendemain, le cardinal Louis II de Lorraine, frère de la victime, subit le même sort. C’est Charles de Lorraine, duc de Mayenne, frère des précédents, qui prend la relève à la tête de la Ligue. Ni lui, ni aucun des quatorze enfants nés du mariage de Henri II le Balafré avec Catherine de Clèves n’auront l’éclat et le prestige des deux grands chefs du parti catholique.

1569 Fyodor Kolychev, Saint Philip of Moscow, 59, martyred by Ivan the Terrible
     Czar Ivan IV of Russia was so noted for his cruelty he is known in history as "Ivan the Terrible" (Ivan Groznyi). Among his many atrocities was the murder of Philip of Moscow on this day
      Philip was born of a good Russian family in 1510 and named Fyodor Kolychev. The Kolychevs were active in government service, and Fyodor spent his youth at the court of the czar. One day while at church, Fyodor was convicted by Christ's warning that a man cannot serve two masters. Fearing that the court was keeping him from Christ, Fyodor fled the Russian capital and went north to the Solovetsky Monastery, just within the Arctic Circle on an island in the White Sea. It was a primitive place compared to the glitter of the capital.
      Fyodor was accepted into the monastery and given the name Philip. He became known for his piety, his intelligence, and his sense of duty in following monastic rules. In 1547, the same year Ivan the Terrible was crowned czar, Philip became the abbot of the monastery. His great administrative abilities transformed the monastery into one of the great industrial complexes of the empire.
      Under Philip's administration, the monks cleared more fields for cultivation; established a dairy farm, a mill, and a workshop for leather and fur clothes; built storage bins for the monastery's grain; developed a system of dams, reservoirs and canals to drain the swampland and bring water to the monastery; built a hospital for pilgrims and new dormitories for the monks and erected a new cathedral. All of the agricultural and industrial labor was consecrated to God.
      The czar was very impressed with all of these works and appointed Philip metropolitan head of the Russian church. Philip. however, opposed many of Ivan's policies and his mass executions. Ivan tried to intimidate Philip by beheading his cousin and sending the head to Philip sewn up in a leather bag.
      Philip asked himself, "Where is my faith if I am silent?", and he continued to speak against the czar. He warned the czar, "Your earthly rank has no control over death, which sinks its invincible teeth into everything. And remember that each person must answer for his own life. “ Ivan ignored the warning and continued his great massacres. He had Philip smothered in his prison cell on this day, December 23, 1569.

Births which occurred on a December 23:
1974 The B-1 bomber makes its first successful test flight.
1933 Akihito (Emperor of Japan)
1926 Robert Bly US, poet/editor/translator (Loving a Woman in 2 Worlds)

1925 Pierre Berégovoy, à Déville-lès-Rouen.
      Son père, un "Russe blanc", capitaine du tsar et menchevik, tient un café-épicerie. À cinq ans, l’enfant est confié à sa grand-mère, qui l’éduquera. Bon élève, il obtient le brevet élémentaire à douze ans, puis un C.A.P. d’ajusteur au lycée technique d’Elbeuf.
      Après six mois passés dans une entreprise normande comme fraiseur, l’adolescent entre à la S.N.C.F. Débuts modestes comme commis, élève de bureau, où l’on s’occupe des billets, des colis et où l’on passe le balai à l’occasion. Un de ses camarades se souvient de l’avenir tel qu’ils l’imaginaient alors : " On rêvait de devenir sous-chef de gare. “ Très vite, c’est la guerre. À sa place, Pierre Bérégovoy est de la bataille du rail. Le voici agent de liaison dans la Résistance avant de participer, les armes à la main, à la libération d’Elbeuf.
      Il pense un moment faire une carrière militaire mais, finalement, n’est pas admis dans une école d’officiers. Retour à la S.N.C.F., mais avec une conscience syndicale et politique. Même s’il connaît, depuis la Résistance, un autre cheminot qui fera carrière, Roland Leroy, le jeune homme s’oriente plutôt vers la gauche que l’extrême gauche. Est-ce l’héritage d’un père qui a souffert de son engagement social-démocrate ?
      En 1950, Pierre Bérégovoy rejoint Gaz de France comme agent technico-commercial. Par promotion interne, il devient attaché de direction, chef de subdivision, adjoint au directeur de la Société pour le développement de l’industrie du gaz en France. C’est la réussite.
      Mais Pierre Bérégovoy a déjà placé son ambition sur un autre terrain, celui de la politique, où il peut continuer à "grimper" dans la société tout en gardant un lien avec ses origines : la gauche, qu’il sert et qu’il incarne. En 1958, il quitte la S.F.I.O. pour fonder avec Pierre Mendès France le P.S.A. (Parti socialiste autonome), qui ne tardera pas à devenir le P.S.U. “Il m’a donné sa confiance", aime-t-il à rappeler. Au-delà de cet adoubement, "Béré" apprend de "P.M.F. “ tout ce qui fera ensuite sa marque politique : "Mendès, c’est l’histoire d’une génération dont il trace le chemin spirituel. Mendès, c’est la rigueur économique au service de l’ambition sociale. “
      Pierre Bérégovoy sera l’un des rares hommes à passer de Mendès à Mitterrand. Bien lui en a pris. Car, si Mendès est l’honneur de la gauche, Mitterrand est la gauche au pouvoir. Il participe à son côté à l’élan du nouveau Parti socialiste issu du congrès d’Épinay en 1971. Le voici secrétaire national aux affaires sociales puis aux relations extérieures. Maire de Nevers en 1983, député de la Nièvre en 1986, Bérégovoy aura attendu la consécration du suffrage universel. Mais, sous la Ve République, point n’est besoin d’avoir un mandat pour faire une carrière. Depuis 1982, il est ministre : de la Solidarité et des Affaires sociales, puis de l’Économie et des Finances.
      Le symbole, le vrai, cependant, il faut le chercher dès l’élection de François Mitterrand. Pierre Bérégovoy est alors chargé de diriger l’"antenne présidentielle", c’est-à-dire d’assurer la liaison et le passage de témoin avec l’équipe sortante. Et, quand François Mitterrand entre enfin à l’Élysée, l’ouvrier fraiseur devient secrétaire général de la présidence de la République. Le premier signe du changement, c’est lui. “Le Président a nommé Fabius, parce que c’était le plus jeune. Rocard, parce que c’était le plus brillant d’entre nous. Cresson, parce que c’était une femme. Finalement, il m’a nommé, et c’était déjà trop tard. “ Étonnante confession que fera là Pierre Bérégovoy devenu Premier ministre. Ce moment, il l’attend depuis ces jours de mars 1983 où le tout-État s’interroge sur la sortie ou non hors du système monétaire européen. Bérégovoy plaide pour la sortie, comme Laurent Fabius. Quand, un an plus tard, celui-ci remplace Pierre Mauroy, Pierre Bérégovoy devient un presque inamovible ministre de l’Économie et des Finances. De 1984 à 1986 et de 1988 à 1992, il y obtient une reconnaissance que Matignon ne lui a pas apportée, et le surnom de "Père la rigueur". Ce "Pinay de gauche" — l’expression ne le blesse pas — devient le chantre du "franc fort", de l’inflation maîtrisée, de la gauche gestionnaire.
      L’échec d’Édith Cresson lui donne une chance qu’il n’espérait plus. Il forme le gouvernement qui doit éviter la défaite à la gauche, minée par les "affaires". C’est trop tard : ses directeurs de cabinet, quand il était ministre de l’Économie, sont inculpés dans les affaires Pechiney et Société générale.
      Il n’en décide pas moins, dès son discours de politique générale, de faire de la lutte contre la corruption son cheval de bataille. Mais, après une brève accalmie, les affaires repartent. Deux histoires mineures lui seront fatales. Un de ses ministres, un de ceux dont il se sent le plus proche, peut-être parce qu’il est comme lui un "fils du peuple", Bernard Tapie, doit quitter son gouvernement.
      Mais, surtout, voilà le Premier ministre à son tour directement visé: on l’accuse d’avoir bénéficié, pour l’achat de son appartement, d’un prêt sans intérêts de la part de Roger-Patrice Pelat, un ami du président, impliqué dans le scandale Pechiney.
      Très affecté, il mène la campagne des élections législatives comme un calvaire. Réélu de justesse à Nevers, il voit nombre de ses camarades être battus, et les autres le fuir comme on fuit les perdants. Certains s’inquiètent de la dépression de "Pierre". Le 1er mai 1993, il s’éloigne sur les bords d’un canal de sa ville de Nevers et se tue avec l’arme de service de son garde du corps. En russe, Bérégovoy veut dire l’"homme de la berge".
      Suicide réel d’un homme écœuré ou "suicide provoqué". Probablement des deux: la politique ne pardonne pas à ceux qui veulent combattre la corruption politique.

1919 USS Relief, hospital ship, with 515 beds, is launched.
1918 Helmut Schmidt Chancellor of Germany (1974- )
1908 Yousuf Karsh portrait photographer (Life Magazine)
1896 Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa Sicilian writer (Der Leopard)
1891 Alexander Rodchenko, Russian artist who died on 04 December 1956.
1880 The Edison Electric Light Company of Europe is incorporated by Thomas Edison.
1872 Pfeiffer, mathematician.
1870 John Marin, US artist who died on 02 October 1953.— MORE ON MARIN AT ART “4” DECEMBER — LINKS — 26 etchings at FAMSF — Landscape, Mountains
1867 Boris Schatz, Russian Israeli artist who died on 23 March 1932.

1867 Sarah Breedlove (Madam C. J. Walker), on a Delta, Louisiana, plantation
     This daughter of former slaves transformed herself from an uneducated farm laborer and laundress into of the twentieth century's most successful, self-made women entrepreneur.
      Orphaned at age seven, she often said, "I got my start by giving myself a start. “ She and her older sister, Louvenia, survived by working in the cotton fields of Delta and nearby Vicksburg, Mississippi. At 14, she married Moses McWilliams to escape abuse from her cruel brother-in-law, Jesse Powell.
      Her only daughter, Lelia (later known as A'Lelia Walker) was born on 06 June 1885. When her husband died two years later, she moved to St. Louis to join her four brothers who had established themselves as barbers. Working for as little as $1.50 a day, she managed to save enough money to educate her daughter. Friendships with other black women who were members of St. Paul A.M.E. Church and the National Association of Colored Women exposed her to a new way of viewing the world.
      During the 1890s, Sarah began to suffer from a scalp ailment that caused her to lose most of her hair. She experimented with many homemade remedies and store-bought products, including those made by Annie Malone, another black woman entrepreneur. In 1905 Sarah moved to Denver as a sales agent for Malone, then married her third husband, Charles Joseph Walker, a St. Louis newspaperman.
Madam Walker shampoo

      After changing her name to “Madam” C. J. Walker, she founded her own business and began selling Madam Walker's Wonderful Hair Grower, a scalp conditioning and healing formula, which she claimed had been revealed to her in a dream. Madam Walker, by the way, did NOT invent the straightening comb, though many people incorrectly believe that to be true. To promote her products, the new “Madam C.J. Walker” traveled for a year and a half on a dizzying crusade throughout the heavily black South and Southeast, selling her products door to door, demonstrating her scalp treatments in churches and lodges, and devising sales and marketing strategies. In 1908, she temporarily moved her base to Pittsburgh where she opened Lelia College to train Walker “hair culturists.”
      By early 1910, she had settled in Indianapolis, then the nation's largest inland manufacturing center, where she built a factory, hair and manicure salon and another training school. Less than a year after her arrival, Walker grabbed national headlines in the black press when she contributed $1000 to the building fund of the "colored" YMCA in Indianapolis.
      In 1913, while Walker traveled to Central America and the Caribbean to expand her business, her daughter A'Lelia, moved into a fabulous new Harlem townhouse and Walker Salon, designed by black architect, Vertner Tandy. “There is nothing to equal it," she wrote to her attorney, F.B. Ransom. “Not even on Fifth Avenue. “ Courtesy: Museum of the City of New York
      Walker herself moved to New York in 1916, leaving the day-to-day operations of the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company in Indianapolis to Ransom and Alice Kelly, her factory forelady and a former school teacher. She continued to oversee the business and to run the New York office. Once in Harlem, she quickly became involved in Harlem's social and political life, taking special interest in the NAACP's anti-lynching movement to which she contributed $5000.
      In July 1917, when a white mob murdered more than three dozen blacks in East St. Louis, Illinois, Walker joined a group of Harlem leaders who visited the White House to present a petition favoring federal anti-lynching legislation.
Madam Walker stamp

      As her business continued to grow, Walker organized her agents into local and state clubs. Her Madam C. J. Walker Hair Culturists Union of America convention in Philadelphia in 1917 must have been one of the first national meetings of businesswomen in the country. Walker used the gathering not only to reward her agents for their business success, but to encourage their political activism as well. “This is the greatest country under the sun," she told them. “But we must not let our love of country, our patriotic loyalty cause us to abate one whit in our protest against wrong and injustice. We should protest until the American sense of justice is so aroused that such affairs as the East St. Louis riot be forever impossible. “
      By the time Madam Walker died at her estate, Villa Lewaro, in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, she had helped create the role of the 20th Century, self-made American businesswoman; established herself as a pioneer of the modern black hair-care and cosmetics industry; and set standards in the African-American community for corporate and community giving.
      Tenacity and perseverance, faith in herself and in God, quality products and "honest business dealings" were the elements and strategies she prescribed for aspiring entrepreneurs who requested the secret to her rags-to-riches ascent. “There is no royal flower-strewn path to success," she once commented. “And if there is, I have not found it for if I have accomplished anything in life it is because I have been willing to work hard. “
      On January 28, 1998 the United States Postal Service issued the Madam C. J. Walker Commemorative stamp [<], the 21st in the Black Heritage Series, at a first-day-of-issue ceremony at the Madame Walker Theatre Center in Indianapolis. --// http://www.madamcjwalker.com/

1860 Harriet Monroe Chicago, poet/editor of Poetry magazine (You & I). MONROE ONLINE: The Passing Show: Five Modern Plays in Verse
1858 Andrea Tavernier, Italian artist who died on 15 November 1932.
1841 Handley C.G. Moule, Anglican theologian. He succeeded B.F. Westcott in 1901 as Bishop of Durham. A profound scholar, he could nevertheless speak and write for ordinary people, and published commentaries on nearly all of Paul's letters in the New Testament.
1834 The Hansom Cab is patented by Joseph Hansom. -- Dépôt du brevet d'un nouveau type de cabriolet, le "Hansom Cab". Cette invention de l'architecte nommé Joseph Hansom, fut l'un des plus grands succès du monde. En effet, cette voiture à cheval et à deux roues sera construite à des millions d'exemplaires au XIX ème siècle.
1823 A Visit from St. Nicholas, poem now attributed to Clement C. Moore (" 'Twas the night before Christmas...") is published in The Troy Sentinel (Troy NY). [research on early editions putting in doubt the Moore authorship of the 1823 version]
1812 Samuel Smiles Scotland, a writer who was all Smiles. SMILES ONLINE: Character -- Industrial Biography: Iron-Workers and Tool-Makers -- Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist -- The Life of Thomas Telford, Civil Engineer, with an Introductory History of Roads and Travelling in Great Britain -- Men of Invention and Industry -- Self-Help: With Illustrations of Conduct and Perseverance
1805 Joseph Smith Jr Sharon Vt, would found Mormon church
1804 Charles-Augustin de Sainte-Beuve France, SAINTE-BEUVE ONLINE: Port-Royal. tome 1 tome 2 tome 3 tome 4 tome 5 -- Les cahiers -- Tableau de la poésie française au XVIe siècle. Tome premier Tome second -- La chaumière indienne
1790 Jean-François Champollion. In 1822 he successfully decoded the hieroglyphics of the Rosetta Stone (uncovered in 1799), and is recognized today as the founder of modern Egyptology.
1777 Alexander I Tsar of Russia (1801-25)
1732 Sir Richard Arkwright inventor (spinning frame).
1727 Pieter Jan van Liender, Dutch artist who died on 26 November 1779.
1648 Robert Barclay, Scottish Quaker theologian. He published his most famous work, An Apology for the True Christian Divinity, in 1676, making him the most prominent theologian in the early Quaker Church.
1597 Martin Opitz Germany, poet "Father of Modern German Poetry"

Holidays Egypt : Victory Day / Montego Bay Jamaica : John Canoe Day (John Canu would have been better)

Religious Observances RC : St Thorlac, bishop, patron of Iceland / RC : St John of Kanty, Polish priest, theologian (opt)

DICTIONNAIRE TICRANIEN: talion: ce qu'on peut dire à celui qui possède un fauve.

Thoughts for the day :
“There is always someone worse off than yourself.” [However that person is on the greener grass on the other side of the fence.]
“There are always many more who are better off than yourself.”
“There'll always be a time when you are worse off than you are now.”
“Today will be the good old days, a few years from now.”
“Ce n'est pas à un autre homme intelligent qu'un homme intelligent aura peur de paraître bête.”*
“Toute action de l'esprit est aisée si elle n'est pas soumise au réel.”*
“Cela fait souvent de la peine de penser.”*
“Il y a une chose plus difficile encore que de s'astreindre à un régime, c'est de ne pas l'imposer aux autres.”*
“Que de bonheurs possibles dont on sacrifie la réalisation à l'impatience d'un plaisir immédiat.” * [* de Proust]

TO THE TOP

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO WRITE TO “HISTORY 4 2DAY”
http://www.jcanu.hpg.ig.com.br/history/h4dec/h4dec23.html
http://members.xoom.virgilio.it/all42day/history/h4dec/h4dec23.html
Saturday 21-Dec-2002 17:09

site safe for children