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Events, deaths, births, of 28 DEC
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2001 The US Census Bureau updates its 2000 census with estimates of the changes between 01 April 2000 and 01 July 2001. The Us's population increased from 281.4 million to 284.8. It also constantly keeps its “population clock” running, showing the US population as 285'807'708 and the World's 6'195'444'441 on 28 December 2001 at 16:34 UT.
2000 Runoff presidential elections in Ghana are won by the opposition candidate, John Agyekum Kuffuor, to take office on 07 January 2001, succeeding Jerry Rawlings, military dictator turned democratic.
Map of House seat changes2000 First results of US 2000 census are released
      The US Census Bureau gives the first results from this year’s census that will be used to reassign the 435 House of Representatives seats among the states. The US population was 281'421'906 on 01 April 2000, the Census Bureau said today. That was up more than 33 million or 13.2% from the 1990 count.
      The numbers show continued growth in the South and West. The numbers will now be used by state legislatures to reshape political boundaries for House districts. The US Constitution says that seats in the House must be redistributed every 10 years following the census, in proportion to the population of each state. Thus each House member will represent about 630'000 persons.
      In March 2001, the Census Bureau is scheduled to begin releasing more data detailing county and local-level populations that will be used to redraw congressional and state legislative districts.
Results by state:
Alabama: 4'447'100 / change: +406'513
Alaska: 626'932 / change: +76'889
Arizona: 5'130'632 / change: +1'465'404 / reps: +2
Arkansas: 2'673'400 / change: +322'675
California: 33'871'648 / change: +4'111'627 / reps: +1
Colorado: 4'301'261 / change: +1'006'867 / reps: +1
Connecticut: 3'405'565 / change: +118'449 / reps: -1
District of Columbia: 572'059 / change: –34'841
Delaware: 783'600 / change: +117'432
Florida: 1'5982'378 / change: +3'044'452 / reps: +2
Georgia: 8'186'453 / change: +1'708'237 / reps: +2
Hawaii: 1'211'537 / change: +103'308
Idaho: 1'293'953 / change: +287'204
Ilinois: 12'419'293 / change: +988'691 / reps: -1
Indiana: 6'080'485 / change: +536'326 / reps: -1
Iowa: 2'926'324 / change: +149'569
Kansas: 2'688'418 / change: +210'844
Kentucky: 4'041'769 / change: +356'473
Louisiana: 4'468'976 / change: +249'003
Maine: 1'274'923 / change: +46'995
Maryland: 5'296'486 / change: +515'018
Massachusetts: 6'349'097 / change: +332'672
Michigan: 9'938'444 / change: +643'147 / reps: -1
Minnesota: 4'919'479 / change: +544'380
Mississippi: 2'844'658 / change: +271'442 / reps: -1 		Missouri: 5'595'211 / change: +478'138
Montana: 902'195 / change: +103'130
Nebraska: 1'711'263 / change: +132'878
Nevada: 1'998'257 / change: +796'424 / reps: +1
New Hampshire: 1'235'786 / change: +126'534
New Jersey: 8'414'350 / change: +684'162
New Mexico: 1'819'046 / change: +303'977
New York: 18'976'457 / change: +986'002 / reps: -2
North Carolina: 8'049'313 / change: +1'420'676 / reps: +1
North Dakota: 642'200 / change: +3'400
Ohio: 11'353'140 / change: +506'025 / reps: -1
Oklahoma: 3'450'654 / change: +305'069 / reps: -1
Oregon: 3'421'399 / change: +579'078
Pennsylvania: 12'281'054 / change: +399'411 / reps: -2
Rhode Island: 1'048'319 / change: +44'855
South Carolina: 4'012'012 / change: +525'309
South Dakota: 754'844 / change: +58'840
Tennessee: 5'689'283 / change: +812'098
Texas: 20'851'820 / change: +3'865'310 / reps: +2
Utah: 2'233'169 / change: +510'319
Vermont: 608'827 / change: +46'069
Virginia: 7'078'515 / change: +891'157
Washington: 5'894'121 / change: +1'027'429
West Virginia: 1'808'344 / change: +14'867
Wisconsin: 5'363'675 / change: +471'906 / reps: -1
Wyoming: 493'782 / change: +40'194
2000 Kidnapped koalas found, safe but hungry.
Leanne, 7, and her elderly mother, Pat, 15, who were kidnapped in the night of 26-27 December, are found unharmed, but starved, shortly after midnight, one day after being kidnapped from the koala quarters at the San Francisco Zoo. They are reunited with the other five koalas there, including Leanne's young son Brandt, and hungrily eat the tender eucalyptus leaves which are their only food.
koala     Two rare koalas described as “the cutest things you have ever seen” and stolen from the San Francisco Zoo, are found unharmed. Shortly after midnight, police get an anonymous tip that the koalas are in a private home. Officers go to the house and rescue the koalas. Zoo personnel then come to collect the koalas and return them to the zoo.
      Zoo officials believe that sometime Tuesday night or Wednesday morning Leanne, 7, and her mother, Pat, 15, were taken from their indoor home. The koalas weigh 5 to 8 kg.
High-maintenance animals
     Officials had feared for the survival of the koalas, who are very high-maintenance animals. Pat has several medical problems, including a potentially cancerous mass and an infected eye. Even feeding them is difficult. They eat a very specialized diet of only the most tender eucalyptus leaves, the buds of which provide the koalas with their main source of water. They require 1 kg per day — an amount tracked carefully by zookeepers. And this time of year, those leaves can be hard to come by, even for a zoo. For the koala-nappers, the amount needed to feed Leanne and Pat would have been nearly impossible to find. People in the horticulture department at the zoo have to go out daily to get them food. That’s why you don’t see them much in zoos in the US. The zoo’s seven koalas live in a building with a temperature kept constantly between 18 and 21ºC degrees. They have no body fat, which makes them highly vulnerable to any changes in their environment. Zookeepers say even stress could kill the small, bear-like animals.
No Known Market for Koalas
     There is no known market for koalas, leaving officials mystified as to the motive for the apparent theft. They are the cutest things you have ever seen. But why anyone would want to have them as pets can only be due to ignorance, because they are so difficult to take care of. Other, more grisly scenarios, including the possibility that someone might have taken the koalas intending to eat them, were not out of the question.
koala mom and son      Once hunted nearly to extinction for its thick fur, the koala now lives in eucalyptus forests in eastern Australia, where it is protected by strict law. Two well-dressed men acting suspiciously were asking unusual questions about the animals on 25 December. They asked, for example, how to buy one. Later in the day, a man was spotted on the roof of the building. It is believed that whoever stole the koalas broke into the locked building through a skylight. In the morning, an empty cardboard box was sitting in front of the building. And the two koalas were gone.

<<< Brandt, a male koala joey, clings to his mother Leanne, a 7-year-old koala, 01 March 2000, at the San Francisco Zoo in San Francisco. Leanne and her mother Pat were stolen from the zoo on 27 December 2000. It appears someone climbed onto the exhibit's roof, broke through the skylight and entered the building through a furnace door.

2 stolen koalas recovered in California
      Acting on an anonymous tip, police early today recovered two female koalas that had been taken from the San Francisco Zoo. The bear-like creatures were discovered missing from their indoor quarters on Christmas morning by an animal keeper.Zoo officials were summoned and returned the missing animals to the climate-controlled enclosure they share with five other koalas. They are OK. They apparently were really hungry, so they went right into their night quarters and they were fed right away. One of the two koalas — a 15-year-old named Pat — has several medical problems, including a potentially cancerous mass and an infected eye. Fifteen is elderly for a koala. Pat, who came to the zoo from Australia, is the mother of the other koala that was taken, 7-year-old Leanne.
      Zoo officials were worried because koalas are highly vulnerable to changes in temperature and have a specialized diet, eating only the freshest tips of eucalyptus buds. The plants are also their main source of water. Any time you put them under any stress — moving them — you obviously tax the energy resources and they begin burning muscle. The people who took these animals probably did'nt know what it takes to take care of them.
      Only about a dozen zoos in the United States have koala exhibits. Koalas, native to Australia, are considered threatened. The animals were potentially worth tens of thousands of dollars to a private collector.
2000 Sahib, 14 months, 150 kg, goes hiking along the side of highway A66 in Wiesbaden, Germany. So the police close the highway for 2 hours, causing a 20-km traffic jam during the afternoon rush hour. That's how long it takes for Sahib to be located in the dark, shot with six anaesthetic darts, and netted by a helicopter with heat-seaking devices, 50 police officers, firefighters, animal experts, and the manager of the circus from which the male tiger has escaped. The next day Singapore would announce that, starting in 2002, it would ban tigers and all wild animals from circuses, because of the hazards to trainers and the public, and to the welfare of the animals. Similar bans have been made by countries such as Finland, Sweden and Israel.
1999 The Chinese Communist government not living up to its promises of free travel and access to Buddhist teachers, the 17th Karmapa Lama, Ugyen Trinley Dorje, age 14 (born on 26 June 1985), (with his senior attendant, his 24-year-old sister and 3 other followers), flees from his Tsurphu monastery near Llahsa in Tibet under cover of darkness, and starts an arduous 1400-kilometer journey through the snow-bound Himalayas to take refuge in Dharamsala, India (arriving there on 5 January 2000), where the Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959, heads a Tibetan government in exile. The boy lama is the head of the Karma Kagyu sect of Buddhism, headquartered at Rumtek Monastery in the eastern Himalayan state of Sikkim on the China border, but the Indian government, under pressure from Beijing, does not allow him to go there. However Dorji's claim is disputed by those who say that he is at least 10 years older than stated and that the 17th Karmapa Lama is Trinlay Thaye Dorje, born in 1983.
map of lama's escape     (1) Lhasa: After two months of planning, the Karmapa and companions sneaked out of their monastery and started their arduous journey. They spent 2 1/2 days bumping across a 13,000-foot-high plateau in a Land Cruiser, heading toward terrain so cold.
     (2) Mustang: At a Chinese military checkpoint, the Karmapa and companions left the vehicle and hiked for hours across a steep, trail-less terrain. The car, meanwhile, slipped through the checkpoint with its lights off. On the other side, there was a brief panic when the driver and hikers thought they had missed each other. They were heading for Mustang, the onetime "forbidden kingdom" of northern Nepal.
     (3) Jomosom: Across the border, after passing another, unmanned, checkpoint, they procured horses near the town of Lo Manthang, then picked their way through wind-whipped terrain so inhospitable that even the locals leave during winter. They avoided the bureaucratic hub of Jomosom, and the unwanted attention they might get there.
     (4) Lucknow: After a helicopter ride to near Katmandu, they went by taxi to the Indian border — where thousands of other Tibetan refugees have found their way — then took a train to the Indian city of Lucknow. The 17th incarnation of the Karmapa, one of Tibetan Buddhism's highest-ranking lamas, began the final leg of his journey.
     (5) Dharmsala: Heading for their final destination, Dharmsala, the party's car flipped in a fog on a narrow, winding road, but none were hurt. The spent youth with blistered feet extended his torn hands to Tibet's most revered figure, the Dalai Lama.
1997 La Corte Suprema Administrativa (CSA) de Egipto decide prohibir la ablación femenina en los hospitales públicos y privados, por considerar que en el "libro sagrado de los musulmanes" no existe ningún versículo sobre la necesidad de efectuarla".
1992 Tras una marcha por la paz en Mogadiscio (Somalia), se reconcilian en público los dos caudillos, Mohammed Farah Aidid y Mohamed Alí Mahdi.
1991 La mayoría de los consultados en el referéndum se muestran a favor de la independencia de Azerbaiyán.
1990 The US government reports that the Index of Leading Indicators is down for the 5th month in a row, to 1.2%. The ensuing 1991 recession would help cost President George Bush Sr. his job.
1989 Dubcek returns to Czech leadership
      Alexander Dubcek, former Czechoslovakian Communist leader and coordinator of the "Prague Spring," is elected chairman of the new multiparty Czechoslovak parliament. It is the first time Dubcek has held public office since he was deprived of Communist Party membership in 1970.
      A trend toward liberalization began in Czechoslovakia in 1963 and reached its apex in 1968 when Dubcek replaced Antonin Novotny as first secretary of the party. He introduced a series of far-reaching political and economic reforms, including increased freedom of speech and an end to state censorship. Dubcek's effort to establish "Communism with a human face" was celebrated across the country, and the brief period of freedom became known as the "Prague Spring." On 20 August 1968, the Soviet Union answered Dubcek's reforms with the invasion of Czechoslovakia by 600'000 Warsaw Pact troops. Prague was not eager to give way, but scattered student resistance was no match for Soviet tanks. Dubcek's reforms were repealed, and the leader was replaced with the staunchly pro-Soviet Gustav Husak, who reestablished an authoritarian communist regime in the Soviet satellite state.
     In 1970, Dubcek was stripped of his Communist Party membership and was pushed entirely out of Czechoslovakian politics. However, with the liberalization of Soviet society in the late 1980s, Prague again became the scene of demonstrations against the government and for democratic reforms. In December of 1989, a coalition of dissident groups, known as the Civic Forum, forced the Communist government to allow a multiparty parliament. Husak resigned, Dubcek was named chairman, and the parliament subsequently elected the playwright Vaclav Havel, chief spokesman of the Civic Forum, as the president of a newly democratic Czechoslovakia. Havel had come to fame during the Prague Spring, and after the Soviet crackdown his plays were banned and his passport confiscated. In 1990, free elections won the Civic Forum a parliamentary majority, and in 1992 the government agreed to the peaceful break-up of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
1988 El Ayuntamiento de Barcelona otorga a Salvador Dalí la medalla de oro, en unas fechas en que la salud del pintor está especialmente debilitada.
1985 Warring Lebanese Moslem & Christian leaders sign peace agreement.
1984 Entra en vigor la Ley de Objeción de Conciencia en España.
1983 El Gobierno argentino deroga la Ley de Autoamnistía dictada por la Junta Militar, que afecta a todos los militares implicados en la Guerra de Las Malvinas.
1982 Joaquín Ruiz-Giménez es nombrado defensor del pueblo por el Congreso de los Diputados español.
1979 El general Videla destituye al general Roberto E. Viola como jefe superior del Ejército argentino y nombra al general Fortunato Galtieri.
1978 Aparece publicada en el Boletín Oficial del Estado la nueva Constitución Española.
1972 Hanoi announces return to peace talks
      After 11 days of round-the-clock bombing (with the exception of a 36-hour break for Christmas), North Vietnamese officials agree to return to the peace negotiations in Paris. The Linebacker II "Christmas Bombing" was initiated on December 18 by President Richard Nixon when the North Vietnamese, who walked out of the peace negotiations in Paris, refused his ultimatum to return to the talks. During the course of the bombing, 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.
      During the ensuing battle, the North Vietnamese launched their entire stock of more than 1200 surface-to-air missiles against the US planes. Fifteen B-52s and 11 other US aircraft were lost, along with 93 flyers downed, killed, missing or captured. Hanoi claimed heavy damage and destruction of densely populated civilian areas in Hanoi, Haiphong, and their suburbs. The bombing resulted in the deaths of 1318 in Hanoi. While some news reporters alleged that the US was guilty of "carpet bombing" the area (deliberately targetting civilian areas with intensive bombing to "carpet" a city with bombs), the bombing was intended to focus on specific military targets.
      The Linebacker II bombing was effective in bringing the North Vietnamese back to the negotiating table. When they returned to Paris, the peace talks moved along quickly. On January 23, 1973, the United States, North Vietnam, the Republic of Vietnam, and the Viet Cong signed a cease-fire agreement that took effect five days later.
1972 Un esqueleto descubierto en Berlín durante unas excavaciones es identificado como el de Martín Bormann, lugarteniente de Adolf Hitler.
1971 The US Justice Department sues Mississippi officials for ignoring the voting ballots of Blacks in that state.
1968 Israel attacks an airport in Beirut, destroying 13 planes.
1965 The United States bars oil sales to Rhodesia.
1964 El socialdemócrata Giuseppe Saragat es elegido presidente de la República de Italia.
1961 Proposal at IBM for standardized software
     A group of IBM engineers makes a proposal that would reinvent the entire company. The proposal, called the SPREAD (Systems Programming Review, Engineering and Development) report, recommended that IBM scrap all of its existing mainframe computers and launch an entirely new line. The measure, while radical, would remedy a potentially fatal problem facing IBM: Each machine the company made required its own custom software and programming. The new line of computers, to be called System/360, would allow programs from one machine to run on another. The company spent a reported $5 billion developing the System/360 line, and in the end, the gamble paid off. In the three years following the System/360 launch, IBM's staff grew by fifty percent to nearly 250'000 employees. The System/360 line would drive IBM's growth over the next three decades.
1957 Two Million Volkswagens The two-millionth Volkswagen was finished on this day in 1957. Begun thirty years earlier by the Nazi regime, the German auto maker and its economical Beetle overcame their unpleasant pasts and began selling in the United States.
1951 The United States pays $120'000 to free four fliers convicted of espionage in Hungary.
1950 Chinese troops cross 38th Parallel, into South Korea
1948 The Israeli Defense Force crosses the Egyptian border
1946 The French declare martial law in Vietnam as a full-scale war appears inevitable.
1945 US Congress officially recognizes "Pledge of Allegiance"
1945 US Congress recognizes the Pledge of Allegiance
      The US Congress officially recognizes the "Pledge of Allegiance," and urges its frequent recitation in all of America's schools. The original pledge was composed in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister who was influenced by the ideas of his first cousin, Edward Bellamy, an author who had written the American socialist utopian novel,
      Bellamy's Pledge of Allegiance read as follows:
"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
      At the time, Bellamy was chairman of a committee of state superintendents of education, and several public schools adopted his Pledge of Allegiance as part of the Columbus Day quadricentennial celebration that year. Over the next few decades, recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance rapidly increased in practice, and in 1924, against Bellamy's objections, the National Flag Conference changed the words, "my Flag," to "the Flag of the United States of America.” In 1955, a decade after its official adoption by Congress in 1945, Bellamy's original pledge is altered again after the Knights of Columbus religious organization successfully persuades Congress to add the words, "under God," to the official Pledge of Allegiance. Thus it becomes:
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
1941 CB's "Sea Bees" creation requested by a US admiral.
      Rear Admiral Ben Moreell requests authority from the Bureau of Navigation to create a contingent of construction units able to build everything from airfields to roads under battlefield conditions. These units would be known as the "Seabees" — for the first letters of Construction Battalion.
      The men chosen for the battalions were not ordinary inductees or volunteers-they all had construction-work backgrounds. The first batch of recruits who made the cut had helped build the Boulder Dam, national highways, and urban skyscrapers; had dug subway tunnels; and had worked in mines and quarries. Some had experience building ocean liners and aircraft carriers. Approximately 325'000 men, from 60 different trades, ages 18 to 60, would go on to serve with the Seabees by the end of the war. The officers given the authority to command these men were also an elite crew, derived from the Civil Engineer Corps. Of the more than 11'000 officers in the Corps all together, almost 8000 would serve with the construction units.
      Although the Seabees were technically supposed to be support units, they were also trained as infantrymen, and they often found themselves in combat with the enemy in the course of their construction projects. They were sent to war theaters as far flung as the Azores, North Africa, the Mediterranean, the Pacific, and the beaches of Normandy.
      Some of the Seabees' feats became legendary. They constructed huge airfields and support facilities for the B29 Superfortress bombers on Guam, Saipan, and Tinian, as well as the ports needed to bring in the supplies for the bombing of Japan. The Seabees also suffered significant casualties in the process of providing innovative new pontoons to help the Allies land on the beaches of Sicily. During D-Day, the Seabees' demolition unit was among the first ashore. Their mission: to destroy the steel and concrete barriers the Germans had constructed as obstacles to invasion. The Seabees' motto was "We Build, We Fight.”
1941 José María de Areilza y Martívez Rodas, y Fernando María Castiella y Maiz obtienen el premio Nacional español de Literatura Francisco Franco.
1938 France orders the doubling of forces in Somaliland; two warships are sent.
1937 The Irish Free State became the Republic of Ireland when a new constitution established the country as a sovereign state under the name of Eire.
1936 Benito Mussolini sends planes to Spain to support Francisco Franco's forces.
1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt states, "The definite policy of the United States, from now on, is one opposed to armed intervention.”
1931 El papa Pío XI publica una encíclica sobre la autoridad de la iglesia.
1920 The United States resumes the deportation of communists and suspected communists.
1909 Robert Hutchings Goddard, físico de la universidad de Clark en Massachussets, publica los primeros trabajos teóricos acerca de la propulsión mediante cohetes.
1906 Ecuador adopts its constitution
1904 Farmers in Georgia burn two million bales of cotton to prop up falling prices.
1903 Cuba reconoce la nueva república de Panamá.
1902 Trans-Pacific cable links Hawaii to US
Carrie Nation1900 Carry Nation attacks a Kansas saloon
      Convinced that her righteous campaign against alcohol justified her aggressive tactics, Carry Amelia (Moore) Nation (born on 25 November 1846) attacks a saloon in Wichita, Kansas, shattering a large mirror behind the bar and throwing rocks at a titillating painting of Cleopatra bathing.
      Carry Nation's lifelong battle against alcohol reflected a larger reformist spirit that swept through the nation in the early 20th century and led to laws against everything from child labor to impure food and drugs. But Nation's hatred of alcohol was also a deeply personal struggle — in 1867, she married an Ohio physician who had a serious alcohol problem. Despite Nation's efforts to reform him, her husband's drinking problem eventually destroyed their marriage and he died shortly after they split.
      Nation remarried, this time to a Texas minister. She and her new husband moved in 1889 to Medicine Lodge, Kansas, at a time when much of the state was emerging from its wild frontier days. Convinced that drinking was the root cause of all social evil, Nation decided to close down the saloons in Medicine Lodge and other Kansas cities by traveling throughout the state and preaching her temperance message. Nation soon found that her inspiring speeches against "demon rum" had little effect on the wilder citizens of Kansas, though, so she decided to take more aggressive action. Claiming she was inspired by powerful "visions," on 27 December 1899 she began a series of well-publicized attacks on Kansas saloons using rocks and, from 21 January 1901, her distinctive weapon of moral righteousness — her trusty hatchet.
      At 1m83 tall and 80 kg, the hatchet-wielding Carry Nation was an intimidating sight. She relished chopping up barrels of whiskey, destroying expensive bar fixtures, and berating the stunned bar owners and patrons for their evil habits. The sale of alcohol was already illegal in Kansas but the law was largely ignored, so Nation reasoned that it was the responsibility of law-abiding citizens to destroy not only the alcohol but also the saloons that sold it. Local law enforcement, however, did not usually agree, and Nation was frequently jailed for her disturbances.
      Although Nation's campaign of saloon vandalism won her national fame, the immediate results were disappointing. She managed to pressure Kansas into enforcing its prohibition laws more aggressively, but when she died on 09 June 1911, most of the country still sanctioned the sale of alcohol. Ironically, by the time the US adopted prohibition in 1920, Nation was largely forgotten — but the hatchet-wielding Kansas reformer unquestionably helped lay the foundation for the US's misguided "noble experiment.”
    CARRY NATION ONLINE: her 1904 autobiography: The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation, The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation
1895 Rontgen presenta en Wurtzburgo su primera comunicación sobre los Rayos X.
1895 Première séance de cinéma des frères Lumière.
      Devant quelques dizaines de spectateurs payants est projeté au Grand Café, sur les grands boulevards à Paris, un singulier spectacle: les images animées des frères Lumière. Au programme, L'Arroseur arrosé. Les fameuses projections de l’année 1895 qu’ils organisèrent avec leur père, Antoine — le chef de l’entreprise familiale spécialisée dans la photographie —, ont marqué la naissance du cinéma comme spectacle collectif et comme industrie destinée à un grand développement social et économique. Pourtant, les frères Lumière n’étaient pas les seuls inventeurs des procédés qui seront connus sous le nom de cinéma. S’inspirant du kinétoscope de Thomas Alva Edison et de William Dickson, Louis et Auguste Lumière imaginèrent plusieurs procédés complémentaires : ils mirent ainsi au point dès l’été 1894 une caméra "réversible", permettant la prise de vues et la projection sur un écran. La Sortie des usines Lumière, projeté en public pour la 1ère fois le 28 decembre 1895, au "Grand Café" (bard des Capucines) à Paris, est considéré comme le 1er film jamais réalisé. Les frères Lumière tournèrent la même année d’autres courts-métrages, notamment Arrivée du train en gare de La Ciotat, l’Arroseur arrosé (ou le Jardinier) et le Repas de bébé.
—    French film pioneers Auguste and Louis Lumière publicly unveil their Cinématographe at the Grand Café on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris. About 30 persons pay to see short films showing scenes from ordinary French life, including the feeding of a baby, a game of cards, street activity, a working blacksmith, and soldiers marching. One of the films, which showed the head-on arrival of a train, caused many patrons to flee in terror. As early as 1885, hazy motion pictures had been produced, but not until the developments of the Lumière brothers did the first real cinema get made. Their La Sortie des usines Lumière is considered the first motion picture of importance, and their screening at the Grand Café marked the birth of the film industry.
1885 Jules Grévy est élu une seconde fois à la présidence de la République Française.
1878 Pope Leo XIII encyclical on socialism.
1874 Arsenio Martínez Campos proclama a Alfonso XII en Sagunto
1869 First US Labor Day
      The Knights of Labor, a labor union of tailors in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, hold the first Labor Day ceremonies in American history. The Knights of Labor was established as a secret society of Pennsylvanian tailors earlier in the year, and after expanding into a national body in 1878 became an important organization in the labor movement of the late nineteenth-century. The first annual observance of Labor Day was organized by the American Federation of Labor in 1884, which resolved in a convention in Chicago, Illinois, that "the first Monday in September be set aside as a laborer's national holiday.” In 1887, Oregon became the first state to designate Labor Day a holiday, and in 1894, Congress designated the first Monday in September a legal holiday for all federal employees and the residents of the District of Columbia.
1864 Engagement at Egypt, Mississippi
1850 Rangoon, Burma, destroyed by fire
1849 M Jolly-Bellin discovers dry-cleaning, he accidentally upset lamp containing turpentine & oil on his clothing & sees cleaning effect
1846 Iowa is admitted as the 29th State of the Union.
1832 US Vice President resigns
      John C. Calhoun, citing political differences with President Andrew Jackson and a desire to fill a vacant senate seat in South Carolina, becomes the first vice president in US history to resign from his office. Calhoun, born near Abbeville, South Carolina, was an advocate of states' rights and a great defender of the agrarian South against the industrial North. In 1824, Calhoun, who served as secretary of war under President James Monroe, was a candidate for the presidency. However, bitter partisan attacks from other contenders forced him out of the race, and he was elected vice president under President John Quincy Adams. In 1828, he was again elected vice president, but he soon found himself politically isolated from national affairs under President Jackson. On 12 December 1832, Calhoun was elected to fill the South Carolina senate seat vacant after the resignation of Senator Robert Y. Hayne, and fourteen days later he resigned as vice president.
      For the rest of his political life, Calhoun defended the slave-plantation system against a growing antislavery stance in the free states, and while secretary of state under President John Tyler secured the admission of Texas into the Union as a slave state. Along with Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster, and Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun dominated American political life in the first half of the nineteenth century.
1816 American Colonization Society organizes
1793 Thomas Paine is arrested by the French Terror.
      Thomas Paine, 56, is arrested in France for treason. Though the charges against him were never detailed, he had been tried in absentia on 26 December and convicted. Before moving to France, Paine was an instrumental figure in the American Revolution as the author of Common Sense, writings used by George Washington to inspire the American troops. Paine moved to Paris to become involved with the French Revolution, but the chaotic political climate turned against him, and he was arrested and jailed for crimes against the country.
      When he first arrived in Paris, Paine was heartily welcomed and granted honorary citizenship by leaders of the revolution who enjoyed his antiroyalty book The Rights of Man. However, before long, he ran afoul of his new hosts. Paine was strictly opposed to the death penalty under all circumstances and he vocally opposed the French revolutionaries who were sending hundreds to the guillotine. He also began writing a provocative new book,The Age of Reason, which promoted the controversial notion that God did not influence the actions of people and that science and rationality would prevail over religion and superstition. Although Paine realized that sentiment was turning against him in the autumn of 1793, he remained in France because he believed he was helping the people.
      After he was arrested, Paine was taken to Luxembourg Prison. The jail was formerly a palace and was unlike any other detainment center in the world. He was treated to a large room with two windows and was locked inside only at night. His meals were catered from outside, and servants were permitted, though Paine did not take advantage of that particular luxury. However, he did carry a small sword that was permitted by jail authorities. While in prison, he continued to work on The Age of Reason and began an affair with actress Muriel Alette, who had been sentenced to death for being the mistress of a nobleman.
      Paine's imprisonment in France caused a general uproar in America and future President James Monroe used all of his diplomatic connections to get Paine released on 04 November 1794 after the fall of Robespierre and the end of the Terror.
     Paine remained in France until 1 September 1802, when he sailed for the United States, where he had come to be despised too. After The Age of Reason was published, he was called an anti-Christ, and his reputation was ruined. Thomas Paine died a poor man on 08 June 1809 in New York.
PAINE ONLINE:
The Age of Reason, Agrarian Justice, The American Crisis, Common Sense, Dissertation on First Principles of Government, Examination of the Prophecies, The Rights of Man
1694 George I of England gets divorced.
1688 William of Orange makes a triumphant march into London as James II flees.
1536 Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, tras explorar el río Magdalena, llega a la llanura de Bogo y la bautiza con el nombre de Nueva Granada (hoy Colombia).
1503 Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba y Aguilar, "el Gran Capitán" consigue una de sus más brillantes victorias en la batalla de Garellano.
1288 Alfonso III, rey de Aragón, establece un compromiso de alianza con el aspirante al trono Alfonso de la Cerda.
0418 St Boniface I begins his reign as Pope
TO THE TOP
Deaths which occurred on a December 28:
1982 Nevell Johnson Jr., a Black man, is mortally wounded by a police officer in a Miami video arcade, setting off three days of race-related disturbances that would leave another man dead.
1964 Edwin Bidwell Wilson, US mathematician born on 25 April 1879. Wilson was a famous mathematician with an amateur's interest in economics. A student of Gibbs, he was instrumental in the popularization of vector analysis and calculus. While at M.I.T., he developed his research in mathematical physics and aeronautics. He moved to Harvard in 1922, where his interest shifted towards statistics. His early interest in economics, mostly in Pareto and the Lausanne School and his recurrent methodological forays in favor of mathematical economics, led him to be elected to the first council of the Econometric Society. He has been credited amply by Paul Samuelson as one of his most important influences at Harvard. — Author of: Vector Analysis (1901), Advanced Calculus (1912) [page images].
1963 Paul Hindemith, compositor alemán.
1963 Edward Kunz and Augustus Manser, while climbing Mount Cook, New Zealand's highest peak (3754 m), some 200 km (125 miles) west of Christchurch in South Island. Their bones, clothing and climbing equipment are discovered by a climber at the end of the Hooker Glacier, near Mount Cook, shortly before 04 October 2001 when news media report it..
1964 Hundreds of soldiers as South Vietnamese win Binh Gia battle.
      South Vietnamese troops retake Binh Gia in a costly battle. The Viet Cong launched a major offensive on December 4 and took the village of Binh Gia, 60 km southeast of Saigon. The South Vietnamese forces recaptured the village, but only after an eight-hour battle and three battalions of reinforcements were brought in on helicopters. The operation continued into the first week of January. Losses included an estimated 200 South Vietnamese and five US advisors killed, plus 300 more South Vietnamese wounded or missing. Battles such this, in which the South Vietnamese suffered such heavy losses at the hands of the Viet Cong, convinced President Lyndon B. Johnson that the South Vietnamese could not defeat the communist without the commitment of US ground troops to the war.
1948 Nokrashy Pasha, Premier of Egypt, assassinated by a member of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood because of his failure to achieve victory in the war against Israel.
1947 Victor Emmanuel III, 78, king of Italy / Ethiopia
1939 Day 29 of Winter War: USSR aggression against Finland. [Talvisodan 29. päivä]
More deaths due to Stalin's desire to grab Finnish territory.
  • Northern Finland: Finnish troops take the parish village of Suomussalmi. In the early hours of the morning, the Russian divisions which had overrun the village begin to withdraw across Lake Kianta towards the border at Juntusranta.
  • In Kuhmo, after three days of fighting, Detachment Kekkonen forces a Soviet detachment of around company strength back across the border at Kiekinkoski.
  • Central Isthmus: enemy tanks penetrate Finnish positions at the northern end of Lake Hatjalahti. The tanks have no infantry support and two are destroyed and two captured.
  • Sweden: Fritjof Lager, editor of the Stockholm-published Communist paper Ny Dag, is sentenced to two months in prison for abuse of press freedom. The article concerned bore the headline 'A free, independent People's Republic of Finland'.
  • London: the London dailies, The Times and the Daily Telegraph praise the stalwart Finnish resistance against overwhelming odds.
    • 1937 Maurice Ravel composer, in Paris.
    1934 Pablo Gargallo, escultor español. — The Prophet (St. John the Baptist) angle view _ front view (1933, bronze, 234x76x47cm)
    1933 Robert William Vonnoh, US artist born on 17 September 1858.
    1930 Antonio Mancini, Italian artist born on 14 November 1852.
    1924 Léon Nicolaevitch Bakst (Lev Samoylovich Rosenberg), Byelorussian Jewish theater costume and scenery designer born in 1886 (on 10 May, or on 08 Feb = 27 Jan Julian, depending on source). — MORE ON BAKST AT ART “4” DECEMBER — LINKS — Bacchante — Minister of State — Nymph — another Nymph — The Faun [Nijinsky] — 17 theatrical designs at FAMSF
    1923 Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, ingeniero francés.
    1919 Johannes Robert “Janne” Rydberg, Swedish mathematician and physicist born in Halmstad on 08 November 1854. — His father was Sven Rydberg and his mother Maria Anderson. Johannes attended school in Halmstad in southwestern Sweden, on the eastern shore of the Kattegat, at the mouth of the Nissan River. He completed his secondary school education at the Gymnasium in Halmstad in 1873 and in the same year he entered the University of Lund, in southern Sweden northeast of Malmo, the second oldest university in Sweden having been founded in 1666.
         Rydberg received his bachelor's degree in 1875 from the University of Lund. He continued his study of mathemtics and wrote a dissertation on conic sections for his doctorate in mathematics which was awarded in 1879. The following year he was appointed to the post of lecturer in mathematics at Lund but his interests were now turning towards mathematical physics rather than to pure mathematics. During his two years as a lecturer in mathematics he worked on problems relating to electricity.
          In 1882 Rydberg moved from a lectureship in mathematics to become a lecturer in physics at Lund. Ten years later he was promoted to assistant at the Physics Institute. In 1879 he was promoted to a professorship in physics but the was only a temporary position until it was confirmed as a permanent appointment in March 1901. From this time until his retirement in 1919 he held the chair of physics at Lund. However, his health deteriotated during the time that he held the chair and he became seriously ill in 1914. Although he continued to hold the chair he took sick leave in 1914 and was absent from the university from that time on. His final retirement came five years after he had ceased to be able to work and came only a few weeks before his death.
          Manne Siegbahn, who had been a student of Rydberg from 1906 to 1911, then Rydberg's assistant from 1911 to 1914, took over his teaching duties in 1914. He carried these out until Rydberg formally retired in 1919, then early in 1920 he was appointed to Rydberg's chair of physics. Siegbahn wrote the biography of Rydberg.
          Rydberg's most important work is on spectroscopy where he found a relatively simple expression relating the various lines in the spectra of the elements (1890). He hoped to determine the structure of the atom but, although his work did provide the basis for the structure theory, he himself did not reach his goal.
    1916 Eduard Strauss, 81 ans..
         Le cadet des frères Strauss, Eduard, naît à Vienne le 15 mars 1835. Il fait de solides études et désire se consacrer à la carrière diplomatique, mais, au contact de ses deux frères et de leur musique de divertissement, il devient également compositeur. Johann lui confie la direction de son orchestre, et il débute le 8 avril 1862. Son charme et son imperturbable élégance sur le podium le font très vite surnommer par les Viennois " le bel Edi ". Il est le prototype du véritable enfant de Vienne, chaleureux et aimable. Il présente ses propres œuvres parmi celles de ses frères, mais il est moins talentueux que Johann et Josef. Lorsqu’il dissout l’orchestre Strauss, en 1901, il a écrit environ trois cents œuvres, dont les plus nombreuses sont des polkas. En 1907, dans un gigantesque autodafé, il brûle toutes les œuvres de Johann non éditées et restées à l’état de manuscrits. Les souvenirs qu’il écrivit durant sa retraite constituent une source importante d’informations, à la fois sur lui-même et sur les autres membres de la famille. Comme son père et son frère Johann, il fut nommé directeur des Bals de la cour. Il fit plusieurs tournées à travers l’Allemagne et l’Amérique. Il se retira de la vie publique dès 1901 et mourut le 28 décembre 1916.
    1908 Over 77'000 in worst European earthquake ever.
         At dawn, the most destructive earthquake in recorded European history strikes the Straits of Messina in southern Italy, leveling the cities of Messina in Sicily and Reggio di Calabria and dozens of nearby towns on the Italian mainland. The earthquake and tsunami it caused killed an estimated 100'000 persons. Sicily and Calabria are known as la terra ballerina for the periodic seismic activity that strikes the region. In 1693, 60'000 people were killed in southern Sicily by an earthquake, and in 1783 most of the Tyrrenian coast of Calabria was razed by a massive earthquake that killed 50'000. The quake of 1908 was particularly costly in terms of human life because it struck at 05:20 without warning, catching most people at home in bed rather than in the relative safety of the streets or fields.
          The main shock, registering an estimated 7.5 magnitude on the Richter scale, was preceeded several minutes earlier by an ominous trembling felt across northeastern Sicily. It caused fires and a devastating tsunami with 12-meter waves that washed over coastal towns and cities. The two major cities on either side of the Messina Straits — Messina and Reggio di Calabria — had some 90% of their buildings destroyed. In the most severely affected parts of Messina and neighboring towns, roughly half the population perished, with most victims either entombed in the rubble of their homes or struck down in the streets by collapsing buildings. Telegraph lines were cut and railway lines were damaged, hampering relief efforts. To make matters worse, the major quake on 28 December was followed by hundreds of smaller tremors over subsequent days, bringing down many of the remaining buildings and injuring or killing rescuers. On 30 December, King Victor Emmanuel III arrived aboard the battleship Napoli to inspect the devastation.
          Meanwhile, a steady rain fell on the ruined cities, forcing the dazed and injured survivors, clad only in their nightclothes, to take shelter in caves, grottoes, and impromptu shacks built out of materials salvaged from the collapsed buildings. Veteran sailors could barely recognize the shoreline because long stretches of the coast had sunk a meter ar more into the Messina Strait.
    —     Destruction de la ville de Messine, en Italie, par un terrible tremblement de terre. On dénombre plus de 77'000 morts et 95'000 blessés. D'après les scientifiques, il y aura plus de 8000 tremblements de terre par an, heureusement la plus part passent totalement inaperçus.
    Pratt
    1872: 57 Apaches and one of the US soldiers who attacked them at Salt River Canyon, Arizona Territory.

    1871 John Henry Pratt     [image >], English mathematician born in 1809. A clergyman, he spent many years in India as archdeacon of Calcutta. Based on the results of the Survey of India, Pratt devised a theory of crustal balance, later designated as isostasy.

    1870 Petrus van Schendel, Belgian artist born on 21 April 1806.
    1827 Woodhouse    , mathematician.
    1825 John Thomas Serres, British artist born in December 1759. — Dutch Coast Scene (1795, 24x36cm) — Whitby — A Rock by the Sea —The Courtyard of an Inn at Tivoli
    1702 Richard Brakenburg, Dutch artist born on 22 May 1650.
    1696 Miguel de Molinos, teólogo condenado por hereje, fallece en Roma.
    1694 Queen Mary II of England dies after five years of joint rule with her husband, King William III.

    1656 Laurent de la Hire (or Hyre), French artist born on 27 February 1606. — MORE ON DE LA HIRE AT ART “4” DECEMBER — LINKS — Abraham Sacrificing Isaac — Allegorical Figure of Grammar — The Children of Bethel Mourned by their Mothers — Cornelia Refusses the Crown of the Ptolomai — Laban Searching Jacob's Bagagge for the Stolen Idols — Landscape with Peace and Justice Embracing — Theseus and Aethra _ detail

    1598 Gillis (Aegidius Sinapius) Mostaert, Flemish artist born in 1534.
    Births which occurred on a December 28:
    1981 Elizabeth Jordan Carr, first US “test-tube baby”, in Norfolk, Virginia
    1973 The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, is published
          Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "literary investigation" of the police-state system in the Soviet Union, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956, is published in the original Russian in Paris. The book was the first of the three-volume work. The brutal and uncompromising description of political repression and terror was quickly translated into many languages and was published in the United States just a few months later.
          Solzhenitsyn's massive work detailed the machinations of the Soviet police state from the time of the Bolshevik Revolution to 1956. In the preface to the book, however, he warned that reading the work would be "very dangerous" for Russians in 1973. The book was important in that it maintained that police terror had always been essential to the existence of the Soviet state. This deviated from the standard Soviet line that such terror had only come about during the time of Stalin and evaporated upon his death in 1956. Solzhenitsyn admitted that political repression eased during the ensuing Khruschev years — the author himself was freed from political prison during that time. However, he believed that since Khruschev's ouster in 1964, the Soviet state again resorted to intimidation and terror. His disappointment at the reversion of his country to these scare tactics influenced his decision to allow the publication of his book.
          The book was an instant success in the West, but Soviet officials were livid. TASS, the official Soviet news agency, declared that the work was an "unfounded slander" against the Russian people. On February 12, 1974, Solzhenitsyn was arrested, stripped of his citizenship, and deported. He eventually settled in the United States. In the 1980s, he refused Mikhail Gorbachev's offer to reinstate his Soviet citizenship.
    1957 Francisco Javier Arenas Bocanegra, político español.
    1932 Manuel Puig, Argentine novelist.
          Puig grew up entranced by American movies and pop culture, spending many hours watching films or fantasizing about glamorous movie stars. In 1946, he went to boarding school in Buenos Aires, then attended the University of Buenos Aires. He left school planning to become a screenwriter but found more success as a novelist. One failed screenplay became his first novel, La Traición de Rita Hayworth, in which a boy escapes his tedious small-town life through fantasies and movies. The book, which frankly explored erotic themes, shocked the establishment. Burned in Puig's hometown, it nevertheless became a popular success. His next book, Heartbreak Tango (1969), parodied popular Argentine serial novels.
          Puig's life was made difficult by Argentina's oppressive military regime. A gay man, he was sent to prison for soliciting an undercover police officer. After his release, he went into self-imposed exile and lived in France, England, New York, Brazil, and Mexico. He continued to write, exploring themes of fantasy and escapism in the face of cruelty in books like Kiss of the Spider Woman (1976) and Eternal Curse on the Reader of These Pages (1980). Kiss of the Spider Woman was made into a movie starring William Hurt and Raul Julia in 1985. Puig died near Mexico City in July 1990 after suffering a heart attack.
    1929 Owen Bieber United Auto Workers President.
    1924 Rod Serling Syracuse NY, writer/host (Twilight Zone, Night Gallery)
    "There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears, and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call... THE TWILIGHT ZONE.”
         Rod Serling wrote most of the episodes of The Twilight Zone, those listed here (*'s are a rating of their quality)[length of episodes: 1/2 hour in seasons 1-3, 1 hour in season 4-5]:
    FIRST SEASON 1959-1960
    WHERE IS EVERYBODY? ***
    The pilot show for the series concerns a man who finds himself in a completely deserted city. In the end, we learn that it was all a test to observe how human beings will respond to extreme loneliness during space flights.
    ONE FOR THE ANGELS ****
    A sidewalk salesman makes the greatest pitch of his life to save a little girl from "Mr. Death".
    MR. DENTON ON DOOMSDAY **
    A has-been gunslinger finds his fast draw abilities have been restored after he drinks a magic potion.
    THE SIXTEEN-MILLIMETER SHRINE **
    A former movie queen tries to recreate the spirit of her heyday by screening her old movies...and living them.
    WALKING DISTANCE ****
    Harried advertising agent Martin Sloane visits his home town and slips thirty years into his childhood. Our hero actually meets himself as a child, and turns out to be the cause of an old leg injury that bothered him the rest of his life...
    ESCAPE CLAUSE ***
    A hypochondriac makes a pact with the Devil for immortality. He then kills someone for kicks, but instead of getting the electric chair, he is sentenced to life imprisonment.
    THE LONELY *****
    James Corry is convicted of murder and sentenced to spend forty years on a distant asteroid. He has only one companion — a robot made in the form of a woman.
    TIME ENOUGH AT LAST ****
    A nearsighted bank teller who becomes the only survivor of an H-bomb attack. He is now able to pursue his only real interest in life: reading. At least, he THINKS he will be able to pursue it...
    JUDGEMENT NIGHT *
    Murky tale about a passenger aboard a wartime freighter who is certain the ship will be sunk at 01:15
    AND WHEN THE SKY WAS OPENED ***
    After three astronauts return from man's first space flight, each of them mysteriously disappears. Based on a short story by Richard Matheson and concerned with the subject of "what IS reality?"
    WHAT YOU NEED ****
    Swindler Fred Renard tries to profit from an amiable fellow's talent for seeing into the future. Based on a short story by Lewis Padgett.
    THE FOUR OF US ARE DYING **
    Arch Hammer can alter his face to make it look like anyone else's. Based on a short story by George Johnson.
    I SHOT AN ARROW INTO THE AIR ***
    After supposedly landing on another planet, an astronaut kills his comrades to prolong his own life. Based on a short story by Madeline Champion.
    THE HITCH-HIKER ****
    Driving cross-country, a woman becomes panicky when she continually sees the same ominous hitch-hiker on the road ahead. Based on a story by Lucille Fletcher.
    THE FEVER ****
    A gambling-hating man named Franklin Gibbs battles a Las Vegas slot machine with a malevolent mind of its own. Well, let's be careful now, he THINKS it has a mind of its own, but we don't REALLY know that. Still, it might have at that...
    THE PURPLE TESTAMENT ***
    Powerful tale about a lieutenant with the ability to predict which men in his outfit will be killed in battle.
    MIRROR IMAGE ****
    In a nearly deserted bus depot, a woman finds herself haunted by her double.
    THE MONSTERS ARE DUE ON MAPLE STREET ***
    Hysteria grips a small community as residents suspect a power failure has been caused by invaders from outer space disguised as Earthmen.
    PEOPLE ARE ALIKE ALL OVER ****
    An astronaut is pleased to find that people on Mars act just like people at home. Based on a short story by Paul W. Fairman.
    EXECUTION ***
    A western outlaw is snatched from the hangman's noose by a modern day scientist and his time machine.
    THE BIG TALL WISH *
    A child's faith in miracles helps a down-and-out boxer win an important match.
    A NICE PLACE TO VISIT ****
    While committing a crime, a cheap hood gets killed and finds an afterlife in which all wishes are granted by a, well, "helper", called "Pip".
    NIGHTMARE AS A CHILD **
    Schoolteacher Helen Foley is haunted by the recurring image of herself as a child. Time paradoxes play a minor role in this episode.
    A STOP AT WILLOUGHBY ***
    Harried by his high-pressure job, an executive falls asleep on a train and wakes at a mysterious stop called Willoughby.
    PASSAGE FOR TRUMPET ****
    An unsuccessful trumpet player is given a second crack at life — after he is struck and killed by a truck, but first he has to learn what it's like to be "dead" in a world full of life...
    MR. BEVIS **
    A kindly fellow's life is turned topsy-turvy when he receives "help" from his guardian angel.
    THE AFTER HOURS ****
    A woman discovers that the floor of a department store on which she bought an item doesn't exist, and that the salesgirl was, in reality, a mannequin. Finally she finds out who she is.
    THE MIGHTY CASEY ***
    The manager of a baseball team adds a new man to the fold — a robot named Casey. This episode is told as a fable, and is presented in a rather "tongue-in-cheek" manner. Fun if not taken too seriously.

    SECOND SEASON 1960-1961
    KING NINE WILL NOT RETURN **
    After crashing in the desert, a bomber pilot is haunted by the images of his dead crew.
    THE MAN IN THE BOTTLE ****
    A pawnbroker is granted four wishes by a sinister genie. The genie is a truly sinister character, who simply exudes terror, even as he offers the poor pawnbroker and his wife the almost limitless dreams of four wishes. They learn the hard way that every silver lining has a cloud attached.
    NERVOUS MAN IN A FOUR DOLLAR ROOM ***
    A petty hood literally confronts his "conscience" in a mirror.
    A THING ABOUT MACHINES ****
    A machine-hating writer is suddenly hunted by a small army of mechanical devices. Includes a cut of an electric razor slowly loping down the stairs in an attempt to get this guy.
    THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER *****
    Physicians in some unknown society make their 11th and last attempt to improve a young woman's face so that she can live among "normal people.” It fails.
    NICK OF TIME ***
    A newlywed husband is fascinated by a fortune-telling machine that makes uncanny predictions about his life.
    THE LATENESS OF THE HOUR ***
    The faultless precision of robot servants invented by her father begins to annoy a young woman
    A MOST UNUSUAL CAMERA ****
    Examining their latest haul, two-bit thieves discover a camera that takes pictures of the future.
    NIGHT OF THE MEEK ***
    A department store Santa Claus ends up being the real thing.
    DUST ***
    On the day of his execution, a man's father is conned by a vicious traveling salesman who sells him "magic dust" capable of eliminating hate.
    BACK THERE ***
    A man is catapulted backward into time to the moments preceding the assassination of President Lincoln. A serious question concerning the structure of time is brought forth in this episode.
    THE WHOLE TRUTH ***
    An unsrupulous car salesman meets his match in a haunted auto with a mind of its own. He is FORCED to tell the truth.
    TWENTY TWO ****
    A woman is haunted by a recurring nightmare that always ends with her being escorted to hospital room 22 — the morgue. In fact, she is having this dream while IN the hospital!
    This episode made the line "Room for one more, honey.” a TZ classic.
    THE ODYSSEY OF FLIGHT 33 ***
    A commercial airliner becomes unstuck in time, with a prehistoric sequence, unused footage from the movie
    DINOSAURS. MR. DINGLE, THE STRONG ****
    Several weird-looking extraterrestrials appear in this episode about a timid little man who is given superpowers by a double-headed Martian experimenter.
    A HUNDRED YEARS OVER THE RIM ***
    A western settler mysteriously enters the 20th century when he goes off in search of medication for his dying son.
    THE RIP VAN WINKLE CAPER ***
    Four thieves steal gold bullion and place themselves in suspended animation for a hundred years.
    THE SILENCE ****
    A man, sick of the incessant chatter of a fellow club member, offers him a half million dollars if he can keep silent for a full year. The man manages to win the bet, but pays a dear price in the process.
    THE MIND AND THE MATTER ***
    A book on the power of thought enables a meek clerk to create a world exactly as he would want it.
    WILL THE REAL MARTIAN PLEASE STAND UP *****
    A pair of state troopers must determine which member of a bus trip is, in reality, a Martian invader. The bus passengers spend most of the episode off the bus, in a diner.
    THE OBSOLETE MAN ****
    Symbolic tale about a librarian judged "obsolete" by a totalitarian society of the future.

    THIRD SEASON 1961-1962
    THE ARRIVAL ***
    The aviation administration is completely baffled by the appearance of a mysterious empty airliner — until an examiner poses the unlikely but apparently sound theory that the craft is imaginary.
    THE SHELTER ****
    When a possible nuclear attack is announced, several suburban friends and neighbors are reduced to selfish, vicious animals in a struggle over one family's bomb shelter. Dramatic story of emotions and fears running wild during a yellow alert.
    THE PASSERBY **
    A company of Civil War soldiers who believe they are marching home from battle soon come to realize that they are actually dead.
    THE MIRROR **
    In the state offices of an overthrown government, a revolutionary leader uses a mirror reported to possess strange powers — it can show the viewer the face of the person who will kill him. The country is obviously a thinly obscured representation of Castro's Cuba.
    ITS A GOOD LIFE ***
    A rural community is held terrorized by the unearthly powers of a young boy. Based on a short story of the same name by Jerome Bixby.
    DEATHS-HEAD REVISITED **
    A visit to a concentration camp at Dachau forces a former Nazi to confront the horrifying ghosts of his ghastly wartime crimes.
    THE MIDNIGHT SUN ****
    The Earth seems to be slowly drawn into the sun, causing drought, devastating heat waves — and panic.
    STILL VALLEY ***
    A strange book presents the Confederate Army with a difficult choice: they can win the Civil War — but they must make a pact with the Devil. Based on a short story by Manley Wade Wellman.
    FIVE CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN EXIT ****
    Five people trying to escape from some sort of large cylindrical container have no memory of who they are or how they came to be there. One is a soldier, one a clown, one a dancer, and one a bagpiper, and one more. Based on a short story by Marvin Petal.
    A QUALITY OF MERCY **
    A soldier gets a fresh, frightening perspective on his militaristic ways when he suddenly experiences a war situation from the enemy's point of view.
    SHOWDOWN WITH RANCE McGREW ***
    An obnoxious cowboy star gets his comeuppance whan he suddenly finds himself confronting one of the outlaws who has been poorly presented in his television show. Tongue-in-cheek. Fairly humorous.
    TO SERVE MAN *****
    When alien "Canamits" come to Earth bearing promises of a utopian existence, the military's suspicions and skepticism eventually prove justified. But too late. Based on a short story by Damon Knight. This is probably the most popular TZ episode of all time.
    EXCELLENT. THE GIFT **
    A group of Mexican villagers are convinced that a downed flyer is, in fact, an extraterrestrial.
    THE LITTLE PEOPLE ***
    Everything is relative, as a space traveler soon learns when he proceeds to lord his size over the tiny folk who inhabit a planetoid.
    FOUR O'CLOCK **
    Based on a short story by Price Day. A demented Oliver Crangle, a man dedicated to the expulsion of evil... at all costs. His plan: reduce all the evil people in the world to 2 feet tall, at 4 o'clock.
    THE TRADE-INS ***
    Youth isn't all it's cracked up to be, as an old man learns when a mind and personality transplant gives him a lonely new life in a young new body. Actually, he doesn't get the body until near the end of the show. The primary focus of the episode is that he and his wife only have enough money for ONE of them to be transplanted.
    HOCUS POCUS AND FRISBY ****
    The town windbag so impresses a visiting group of aliens (who are masquerading as humans) with his tall tale stories that they attempt to take him back to their planet for study as a prime Earth specimen. Based on a short story by Frederic Louis Fox.
    THE DUMMY ***
    A cut-rate ventriloquist starts believing that his dummy actually has a mind — and a will — of its own. Based on a story by Leon Polk.
    THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD *
    A popular teacher faces the prospect of a life without purpose when he is asked to retire from his post.
    CAVENDER IS COMING ***
    A klutzy guardian angel's attempts to make a bumbling woman happy don't work out quite as expected.

    FOURTH SEASON Jan-May 1963
    THE THIRTY-FATHOM GRAVE ***
    The crew of a Navy destroyer hear strange tapping noises coming from a submarine that sank 20 years before.
    HE'S ALIVE **
    The "he" of this title refers to Adolf Hitler. A young reactionary is guided by a shadowy figure on methods to control and mesmerize the populace.
    NO TIME LIKE THE PAST **
    A moody scientist travels into the past to prevent the major catastrophes of history.
    THE PARALLEL
    Following a routine seven-day space flight, an astronaut is catapulted into a strange parallel universe.
    OF LATE I THINK OF CLIFFORDVILLE ****
    A heartless, very rich man desires to return to the small town where he was born and start life again. He figures he will end up even RICHER this time, since he already knows where all the big oil fields will be, which stocks will go up, etc. A demon (Newmar) obliges him. Adaptation of the classic story "Blind Alley", by Malcolm Jameson.
    ON THURSDAY WE LEAVE FOR HOME ***
    Space settlers on a barren world finally get the chance to return to Earth, but the group's leader protests.
    THE BARD ****
    On-target satire. Hack writer Julius Moomer conjures up William Shakespeare to help him write a television script, but network and sponsor representatives suggest a few changes.
    FIFTH AND FINAL SEASON 1963-1964
    IN PRAISE OF PIP **
    A soul-searching bookie tries to make up for the way he raised his son when he learns that the boy has been seriously wounded in Vietnam.
    A KIND OF STOP WATCH ****
    A talkative and rather unpopular fellow stumbles upon a watch that can stop all action in the world, except for him holding the watch..
    THE LAST NIGHT OF A JOCKEY *
    Predictable yarn about a jockey who thinks that being tall will solve all of his personal problems.
    THE OLD MAN IN THE CAVE ***
    A group of survivors from a nuclear holocaust continue to survive through the help of a mysterious "old man in the cave". From a short story by Henry Slesar.
    UNCLE SIMON ***
    Robby the Robot is featured in this episode. The spirit of an old inventor avenges himself on his greedy niece when he dies at her hands.
    PROBE 7 — OVER AND OUT **
    The lone survivors of two annihilated planets must begin new lives together on a new world.
    THE 7TH IS MADE UP OF PHANTOMS **
    Modern-day soldiers on the site of Custer's Last Stand encounter the warring spirits of the 7th Cavalry and the Sioux nation.
    THE LONG MORROW **
    A scientist hopes that by refusing to use a suspended animation apparatus on a thirty year space probe he will remain in the same age ratio as the woman he loves.
    THE MASKS ****
    A grisly horror tale. A dying millionaire forces his evil, greedy family into wearing grotesque masks that match their inner selves.
    I AM THE NIGHT—COLOR ME BLACK *
    Symbolic, talky message piece. On the day an idealistic young man is to be executed for the willful murder of a bigot, the sun fails to shine on a small western town.
    THE JEOPARDY ROOM ***
    A defector is captured by a hired assassin and given three hours to earn his freedom.
    MR. GARRITY AND THE GRAVES **
    A traveling salesman tells the backward members of a small community that he can raise the dead. Later remade (sort of) as an episode of "Night Gallery" called "Dr. Stringfellow's Rejuvenator.”
    THE BRAIN CENTER AT WHIPPLE'S ***
    Robby the Robot makes another appearance in this story about a callous executive who hopes to improve his corporation by replacing all the employees with machines. (A slightly different model of Robbie appears in each episode)
    THE FEAR ***
    Everything is relative in this story about an unhinged woman and a state trooper who sights a giant alien in a California park.

    NON-SYNDICATED EPISODES
    SOUNDS AND SILENCE
    A SHORT DRINK FROM A CERTAIN FOUNTAIN **
    A man wants to become young again, and obtains a rejuvenating potion in the hopes of accomplishing this.
    THE ENCOUNTER
    OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE *****
    Based on a classic tale by Ambrose Bierce, it is set during the Civil War and concerns a man about to be hung.

          By the end of the series, Serling had already lost substantial control over the production of the show, and was rapidly becoming disgusted by the start of the fifth season. He began having as little as possible to do with the series since he did not have the control he wanted. He began filming several show intros at once in front of a neutral gray backround, instead of placing himself in the action as in earlier shows. These intros could then be simply edited into the series as production continued. He had hoped that "Night Gallery" would provide the situation he needed for his creativity, but such was not to be the case. He ended up with even less control over this series, and the show was quickly degenerated by management into a series of dull episodes on ESP. Serling NEVER liked this show.
    1912 José Luis Cano, poeta español.
    1911 Sam Levinson     (humorist: Today I Am a Fountain Pen)
    1907 Alberto Moravia, novelista italiano.
    1903 John von Neumann    , Hungarian-born mathematician / astronomer (Bocher Award 1938)
    1902 Mortimer J. Adler New York NY, American philosopher, educator and writer (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
    1899 Edgar Neville, escritor y diplomático español.
    1897 Cyrano de Bergerac, d’Edmond Rostand, la première
          Une première théâtrale dont on ne cesse d’admirer l’auteur et son œuvre: Cyrano de Bergerac, d’Edmond Rostand. Car, après le naturalisme, Edmond Rostand a réussi avec éclat à ressusciter le drame romantique qu’on croyait mort à jamais depuis l’échec des Burgraves de Victor Hugo en 1843. Il est né en 1868, étudiant en droit, il écrit des vers et, en 1888, publie un vaudeville, Le Gant rouge, représenté sans succès au théâtre Cluny. Le recueil de poésies, Les Musardises (1890), marque son entrée définitive dans le monde des lettres. La même année, il épouse une jeune poétesse, Rosemonde Gérard. L’année suivante, sa pièce Les Deux Pierrots est également mal accueillie, alors que Les Romanesques , comédie en vers parue en 1894, malgré sa mièvrerie et sa préciosité, séduit néanmoins par sa grâce et son brillant. Cette pièce donne déjà un aperçu du style fantaisiste et poétique qui va s’épanouir dans ses prochaines œuvres. Rostand écrit ensuite, toujours en vers, deux pièces pour Sarah Bernhardt : La Princesse lointaine (1895) et La Samaritaine (1897).
    Ferrer as Cyrano in movie      Il remporte enfin un triomphe au théâtre de la porte Saint-Martin, le 28 decembre 1897, lors de la représentation de Cyrano de Bergerac , comédie héroïque en cinq actes. Sans s’aveugler sur les faiblesses de la pièce, il faut s’incliner devant l’habileté de la construction, l’imagination et la fantaisie de l’intrigue, le pittoresque des tableaux, la verve d’un esprit pétillant, l’ambiance faite à la fois de panache et d’émotion, le lyrisme des tirades. Cette œuvre n’a pas pris une ride depuis sa création. Le héros, Cyrano, spadassin au cœur tendre et enlaidi par un nez protubérant, devient un mythe du théâtre et un personnage qui tente les plus grands acteurs.
          En 1900, Rostand publie un second drame néo-romantique, L’Aiglon, qui transforme la vie du duc de Reichstadt en épopée sentimentale. L’interprétation de Sarah Bernhardt contribue au succès de la pièce, que le public applaudit à tout rompre.
          Edmond Rostand avait-il réussi par ces deux coups de maître à moderniser le drame en vers? Ses contemporains le crurent qui lui offrirent les plus grands honneurs, dont l’élection à l’Académie française en 1901. C’est alors, pourtant, que Rostand décide de se retirer, pour raison de santé, à Cambo, dans le Pays basque. Il entreprend un vaste projet qui l’occupe plusieurs années : en 1910, paraît Chantecler , sorte de féerie symbolique mettant en scène des animaux. Rostand, en voulant trop en dire, est tombé dans le didactisme. Aussi sa fable fut-elle totalement incomprise. À titre posthume furent publiés un recueil de poésies inspirées par la Première Guerre mondiale, Le Vol de la Marseillaise (1919) et La Dernière Nuit de don Juan (1921), un drame inachevé. Dernier fleuron du romantisme, Edmond Rostand a su plaire au public de son temps en le touchant dans ce qu’il a de moins changeant. Pour cette raison, il mérite de ne pas être confondu avec les auteurs du Boulevard.

    — The real Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac was born on 06 March 1619 and died on 28 July 1655. He started with a military career and then became a satirist and dramatist whose works combining political satire and science-fantasy inspired a number of later writers. He has been the basis of many romantic but unhistorical legends, of which the best known is Edmond Rostand's play Cyrano de Bergerac (1897), in which he is portrayed as a gallant and brilliant but shy and ugly lover, possessed (as in fact he was) of a remarkably large nose.
    1883 Abel (or Abraham?) George Warshawsky, US artist who died in 1962. — MORE ON WARSHAWSKY AT ART “4” DECEMBER — Girl in Green.
    1882 Arthur Eddington England, astrophysicist / cosmologist / mathematician, who confirmed Einstein's theory of relativity
    1872 Pio Baroja y Nessa, San Sebastion Spain, novelist (Camino de Perfección).
    1869 Chewing gum, patented by William Finley Semple of Mount Vernon, Ohio.
    1865 Félix Edouard Valloton, Swiss artist who died on 29 December 1925.
    1860 Philip Wilson Steer, British artist who died on 21 March 1942 — MORE ON STEER AT ART “4” DECEMBER — LINKS — Knucklebones, Walberswick — Girl and St. Bernard Dog.
    1856 Woodrow Wilson, 67, 28th president of the United States, in Staunton, Virginia.       ^top^
         Wilson became Governor of New Jersey and in 1912 was elected President of the US in a landslide Democratic victory over Republican incumbent William Howard Taft and Progressive Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt. The focal point of President Wilson's first term in office was the outbreak of World War I and his efforts to find a peaceful end to the conflict while maintaining US neutrality. In 1916, he was narrowly reelected President at the end of a close race against Charles Evans Hughes, his Republican challenger.
          In 1917, the renewal of German submarine warfare against neutral US ships, and the "Zimmerman Note," which revealed a secret alliance proposal by Germany to Mexico, led Wilson to ask Congress to declare war on Germany [02 April 1917]. At the war's end, President Wilson traveled to France, where he headed the US delegation to the Versailles peace conference seeking an official end to the conflict. At Versailles, Wilson was the only Allied leader who foresaw the future difficulty that might arise from forcing punitive peace terms on an economically ruined Germany. He also successfully advocated the creation of the League of Nations as a means of maintaining peace in the postwar world. In November 1920, President Wilson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts at Versailles. During his second term the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, giving women the right to vote, was passed and ratified.
          In October 1919, while campaigning in the United States to win approval for the Treaty of Versailles and League of Nations, Wilson suffered a severe stroke that paralyzed his left side and caused significant brain damage. This illness likely contributed to Wilson's uncharacteristic failure to reach a compromise with the US opponents to the European agreements, and in November the US Senate refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles or the League of Nations.
          During his last year in office, there is evidence that Wilson's second wife, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, may have served as acting president for the debilitated and bed-ridden president who often communicated through her. In March 1921, Wilson's term expired, and he retired with his wife to Washington DC, where he lived until his death there on 03 February 1924. Two days later, he was buried in Washington's National Cathedral, the first president to be laid to rest in the nation's capital.
    1852 Leonardo Torres Quevedo, científico e inventor español.
    1847 Cesare Augusto Detti, Italian artist who died on 19 May 1914.
    1822 William Booth Taliaferro, future Confederate General.
          William Taliaferro is born in Gloucester County, Virginia. Taliaferro would serve under General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson for the first part of the US Civil War, then spent the second half preparing coastal defenses in the lower South. Taliaferro attended William and Mary College and Harvard Law School. He practiced law in Virginia before volunteering during the Mexican War, where he rose to the rank of major. Before the Civil War, he served in the Virginia legislature and the state militia. He was at Harper's Ferry in 1859 when John Brown made his raid on the arsenal in an attempt to stir up a slave insurrection.
          Taliaferro became a colonel in the Confederate Army when the war began. He fought in western Virginia in 1861, then served under Jackson in 1862. His relationship with Jackson was rocky at first, as he became involved in a dispute between Jackson and General William Loring. Taliaferro signed a petition circulated by Loring that protested Jackson's placement of troops at Romney, Virginia. Taliaferro fought alongside Jackson during the 1862 Shenandoah Valley campaign, and he impressed his commander later in the summer at the Battle of Cedar Mountain. Jackson gave him permanent command of Jackson's old division for the Second Battle of Bull Run in late August, but a wound kept Taliaferro from seeing action.
          Shortly after the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862, Taliaferro was transferred to Charleston. He helped General Pierre G. T. Beauregard fortify the city, for which Beauregard gave him an enthusiastic commendation. Taliaferro's work made Charleston impenetrable for the Union; it did not fall until the end of the war. He helped evacuate Savannah, Georgia, before William T. Sherman's army captured the city in 1864. Taliaferro ended the war fighting with General Joseph Johnston's army at Bentonville, North Carolina. He spent the years after the war practicing law and serving in the Virginia legislature and as a county judge before his death in 1898.
    1808 Dupré, mathematician
    Holidays Iowa : Admission Day (1846) / Nepal : King Birendra's Birthday
    Religious Observances RC, Luth, Ang : St John, apostle, evangelist / Santos Inocentes, Cástor, Cesáreo, Victor y Teófila.
    Les Saints Innocents
          En Wallonie, le premier qui se levait, ce 28 decembre, avait le droit de réveiller les autres en leur souhaitant " Bonne Fête " ! Et lorsque les yeux encore mi-clos, il demandait en tentant de dissiper les brumes du réveil, quelle fête ? L’on répondait : " Saint Innocent ! ". parfois en français, parfois en wallon : " E’nocînt " " Innocent " ! Ce terme prenait une signification savoureuse en wallon (comme "ravi" en provençal?). Au Mexique c'est le jour, un peu comme le 1er avril ailleurs, pour raconter des choses invraisemblables, et crier à ceux qui les croient: “¡Inocente!”. Mais ceci nous éloigne de cela.
          D’où vient donc ce terme ? Après la naissance de Jésus à Bethléem, le roi Hérode (roi de Judée, de Galilée et de Palestine, instrument fidèle aux mains des Romains), qui avait été mis au courant de la naissance d’un enfant-roi par les mages qu’il avait reçus en grande pompe dans son palais avant la naissance, Hérode donc décida de se tuer tous les enfants " mâles " de moins de 6 mois. Ceci afin de ne pas avoir de rival qui put ravir son trône à sa famille. Ses hommes d’armes parcoururent les campagnes à la recherche des nouveau-nés, des innocents, p.c.q. non encore marqués par le péché, et les massacrèrent sans pitié. L’Histoire nous a malheureusement appris que la pitié ne marque guère les soldats quand ils obéissent aux ordres. Marie et Joseph, avertis par l’archange Gabriel, le porte-parole des messages divins, purent s’enfuir à temps, en Egypte, pour échapper au massacre. C’est l’épisode de la fuite en Egypte qui suit dans la Bible celui du massacre des Saints Innocents. Les deux événements ont été illustrés par tous les auteurs classiques, tant en peinture qu’en littérature ou en musique.
    DICTIONNAIRE TICRANIEN: sémite: les insectes dont les larves rongent ses lainages.
    Thoughts for the day: “The only rose without thorns is friendship.”
    “The only friendship without horns wears rose-colored glasses.”
    “The only rose without thorns gets eaten by the goat on the Little Prince's asteroid.”
    “Only the thorns without roses are denied friendship.”
    “Only the thorns without roses are honest.”
    “The only rose without thorns needs protection.”     [The Little Prince would be concerned about that, he who was worried about his flower which “n'a que quatre épines pour se défendre contre le monde!”]
    “The only rose without thorns is an endangered species.”
    “The thorns without roses have only one problem: getting pollinated.”
    “The roses with thorns have an iron hand in a velvet glove.”
    “Friends don't stab friends in the back, they stab them in the heart.”
    “A country without a defense force is like a rose without thorns.”
    “Only the bull without horns has to take a lot of bull.”
    “Only the bull without horns is spared the bullfight arena.”
    “Only the rhinoceros without a horn is safe from poachers.”
    “Friendship gives only roses without thorns.”
    “If you're too busy to smell the roses, you don't have to worry about the thorns.”
    “If you spend your time worrying about the thorns, you'll be too busy to smell the roses.”
    “If you rose without horns, you're not a goat, but, at most, a kid or a scapegoat.
    “An orchestra without horns is like a rose without thorns.”
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