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Events, deaths, births, of FEB 15
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Robin being made Reliant Robin On a February 15:

2001 The last Reliant Robin 3-wheeled car is produced [< photos >]. It sold for from £8137 to £9654. It has a fiberglass body mounted to a galvanized chassis is powered by a 850cc aluminum engine. The tiny car, remodeled now and then, had been produced by hand for 65 years. In the 1990s it had reached a production of 300 a week, but this had slumped to 10 a week. 44'000 Robin Reliants are still in use, almost all of them in the UK.
2000 El partido de Helmut Kohl, la Unión Cristiana Democrática, fue obligado a pagar 18 millones de marcos por sus irregularidades contables.
^ 1999 Clinton impeachment aftermath: Tripp defends her secret taping.
(1) An unapologetic Linda Tripp defends her decision to tape conversations with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Tripp's appearance on "Larry King Live" is her second broadcast appearance in four days. She gave her first in-depth interview on NBC's 990212 "Today Show". (TRANSCRIPT)
  • Tripp, who made the tapes at the suggestion of New York book agent Lucianne Goldberg, says she had "no choice" but to "document" the conversations in order to avoid "being set up for perjury." "How would I prove I was telling the truth?" says Tripp. "All I can say is Monica made choices, the president made choices and I was forced to make choices."
  • With regard to President Clinton, Tripp says she is "not an anti-Clinton zealot," but she was concerned about "a pattern of behavior" on his part, and she believed his relationship with Lewinsky was wrong. "The notion that I would bastardize my values, my sense of integrity for a young woman who I had worked with for a year and a half and commit a crime was not ever an option," Tripp says.
  • Asked whether she were betraying her friend, Tripp replies that she and Lewinsky "weren't social friends or lifelong friends." They were work colleagues. Nonetheless, she said she has "shed many tears" over the relationship.
  • Tripp describes Lewinsky as "clever," "bright," and "warm" but says she was mentally unstable and had a "different moral compass than mine." "I thought she was troubled," she says of her former friend.
    • She says she recommended a therapist for Lewinsky, but the former intern did not follow up on it.
    • Lewinsky had become suicidal out of fear that the president would learn that the former White House intern had confided their relationship to friends, Tripp says. Lewinsky was so upset about being treated badly by the president that she tracked down Tripp and bombarded her with phone calls while Tripp was trying to deal with the death of family members. "I had to explain to my (then teen-age) children" about Lewinsky's relationship with the president "because of the incessant phone calls" from Lewinsky during the Christmas holiday in 1996, Tripp says. She says Lewinsky was more upset at the thought Clinton would find out she had shared her story with someone else than at the thought that he was "dumping her."
  • Tripp says she feels she acted properly in secretly taping Lewinsky. "If it had only been about Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp, I believe it was the right thing to do." She says she watched Clinton forcefully deny his relationship with Lewinsky on television, and found that moment "chilling." Tripp adds "I knew that was precisely what Monica would become — 'that woman'" — portrayed by the president as a stalker, and unstable.
  • Tripp criticizes Lewinsky's mother, Marcia Lewis, for taking the view that her daughter's relationship with the president "was OK; more than OK." Depicting herself as an older authority figure for Lewinsky, Tripp says she made clear to the ex-White House intern that "I did not think this was cool" to be having a relationship with Clinton. Tripp says she refrained from criticizing Lewis to Lewinsky because of the close mother-daughter relationship.
  • Tripp's legal bills have totaled more than $500,000, and she faces potential criminal charges for illegally taping phone conversations in her home state of Maryland. She is "seriously considering" writing a book about her experiences, a project she said she abandoned in 1996 because she was afraid of losing her job. That book, contemplated before the Lewinsky scandal, would have dealt with her tenure as a White House aide in the early years of the Clinton administration. "From what I'm seeing, the truth is just never going to get out there, so to the extent that I may decide to let the truth come out I may show what really happened," says Tripp when asked about her plans for a book now. Asked whether Goldberg would represent her, Tripp laughs and says, "I don't know. She may not want me."
  • Tripp, who says she voted for George Bush for president, says she is not part of any right-wing group or conspiracy against the president. "I can't say that I stopped anything he may or may not be doing right now, but I think he'll think twice about it," she says. And she says Clinton's behavior has harmed the country. "I believe he tarnished the presidency," she says.
    • 1998 El conservador Glavkos John Clerides es reelegido jefe del Estado de Chipre tras vencer por un ajustado margen en la segunda vuelta de los comicios presidenciales.
    1997 Sesenta y siete países firman un acuerdo histórico en Ginebra para liberalizar el mercado de las telecomunicaciones en el marco de la Organización Mundial del Comercio.
    1995 Population of People's Republic of China reaches 1.2 billion.
    1995 Dow-Jones closes at record 3986.17
    1995 Burundi premier Anatole Kanyenkiko, resigns
    ^ 1995 Apple licenses cloner.
          Apple Computer agrees to permit Pioneer Electronic Corporation to create Macintosh clones. This marked Apple's first licensing agreement with a large vendor. Many industry analysts, however, thought Apple waited too long to move. Stiff competition among IBM clones had lowered prices, making them attractive to consumers and businesses. Apple's global market share had dwindled from 9.6 percent in 1993 to 8.5 percent in 1994 and the trend would continue: by 1997, the company's share was only 4.6 percent.
    1994 US asks Aristide to adopt a peace plan from Haiti.
    1993 Michal Kowac es elegido primer presidente de Eslovaquia.
    1993 La policía desarticula en Madrid una banda de trata de blancas que había introducido ilegalmente en España a más de 2000 ciudadanas dominicanas para dedicarlas a la prostitución.
    1990 Argentina y Reino Unido llegan a un acuerdo en Madrid para restablecer las relaciones diplomáticas entre ambas naciones.
    ^ 1989 Soviets complete mass withdrawal from Afghanistan
          The last of more than 100'000 exhausted Soviet troops leave Afghanistan under a United Nations-brokered accord to end over a decade of bloody fighting. In 1978, a Soviet-backed coup in Afghanistan installed a new Communist government under Nur Mohammad Taraki. However, in 1979, a second coup toppled Taraki’s government in favor of Hafizullah Amin, a Muslim leader less favorable to the Soviets. In December of the same year, Soviet tanks and troops invaded Afghanistan, but were met with unanticipated resistance from the conservative Muslim opposition. Afghan tribesmen, calling themselves "holy warriors," fought a fierce and bloody guerrilla war against the Soviets.
          Within the USS.R., the Red Army’s failure to suppress to the guerillas, and the high cost of the war in Russian lives and resources, caused significant discord in the Communist Party and Soviet society, much as the Algerian crisis had in France or the Vietnam War in the United States. By 1988, Afghanistan’s anti-Soviet factions, bolstered by military arms aid from the US and other sources, had broken the Russian resolve, and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev accepted a U.N.-brokered agreement calling for total Soviet military withdrawal. On February 15, 1989, the last Soviet soldiers left Afghanistan, and, in 1991, the US and the USS.R. signed an agreement calling for an end to all outside military assistance to the warring factions in Afghanistan.
    1989 Creación en Bagdad del Consejo de Solidaridad Arabe.
    1988 Mauno Henrik Koivisto es elegido presidente de Finlandia.
    1986 Ferdinand Marcos wins rigged Philippines presidential election.
    1985 Descubierta en Sicilia una ciudad subterránea usada por la mafia como refugio.
    1984: 500'000 Iranian soldiers move into Iraq.
    ^ 1980 “Bad” playwright sues novelist for libel
          Playwright Lillian Hellman filed a lawsuit claming $2.2 million in damages against novelist Mary McCarthy for libel. McCarthy, a sarcastic and critical novelist whose most popular novel was The Group (1963), about eight Vassar graduates, had called Hellman "a bad writer, overrated, a dishonest writer" while appearing on a national talk show. The two writers evidently had a long history of hostility, dating back some 30 years, when the pair had clashed publicly at a poetry seminar at Sarah Lawrence college. Many writers and supporters of free speech rushed to McCarthy's defense, including an heiress who picked up McCarthy's $25'000 legal defense fees and saved her from certain financial ruin. Hellman died before the lawsuit came to trial, and the suit was dropped.
    1978 Zaire revises constitution.
    1972 President Velasco Ibarra of Ecuador deposed for 4th time.— Guillermo Rodríguez Lara encabeza un golpe militar en Ecuador que pone de nuevo en vigor la Constitución de 1945.
    1971 After 1200 years Britain abandons 12-shilling system for decimal.
    ^ 1970 Chicago Eight defense attorneys sentenced
          As the jury continues to deliberate in the trial of the Chicago Eight, defense attorneys William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass and three of the defendants are sentenced to prison for contempt of court. The trial for eight antiwar activists charged with the responsibility for the violent demonstrations at the August 1968 Democratic National Convention took place in Chicago. The defendants included David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee (NMC); Rennie Davis and Thomas Hayden of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, founders of the Youth International Party ("Yippies"); Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers; and two lesser known activists, Lee Weiner and John Froines. They were charged with conspiracy to cross state lines with intent to incite a riot. Attorneys William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass represented all but Seale. The trial, presided over by Judge Julius Hoffman, turned into a circus as the defendants and their attorneys used the court as a platform to attack Nixon, the war, racism, and oppression. Their tactics were so disruptive that at one point, Judge Hoffman ordered Seale gagged and strapped to his chair — Seale's disruptive behavior eventually caused the judge to try him separately. By the time the trial ended in February 1970, Judge Hoffman had found all the defendants and their attorneys guilty of 175 counts of contempt of court and sentenced them to terms between two to four years. Although declaring the defendants not guilty of conspiracy, the jury found all but Froines and Weiner guilty of intent to riot. The others were each sentenced to five years and fined $5,000. None served time because a 1972 Court of Appeals decision overturned the criminal convictions; eventually, most of the contempt charges were also dropped.
    1967 Entra en vigor una nueva Constitución de Uruguay.
    ^ 1966 DeGaulle agrees to help North Vietnam end war with US.
          In response to a letter from Ho Chi Minh asking that French President Charles De Gaulle use his influence to "prevent perfidious new maneuvers" by the United States in Southeast Asia, De Gaulle states that France is willing to do all that it could to end the war. As outlined by De Gaulle, the French believed that the Geneva agreements should be enforced, that Vietnam's independence should be "guaranteed by the nonintervention of any outside powers," and that the Vietnamese government should pursue a "policy of strict neutrality." President Lyndon Johnson saw De Gaulle's proposal as part of a continuing effort by the French leader to challenge US leadership in Southeast Asia as well as in Europe. Seeing the American commitment in Vietnam as part of a larger global issue of American credibility, Johnson believed that the United States could not afford to abandon its South Vietnamese ally and rejected De Gaulle's proposal without consideration.
    Canadian flag ^ 1965 Canada adopts maple leaf flag

          In accordance with a formal proclamation by Queen Elizabeth II of England, a new Canadian national flag is raised above Parliament Hill in Ottawa, the capital of Canada. Beginning in 1610, Lower Canada, a new British colony, flew the Great Britain’s Union Jack, or Royal Union Flag. In 1763, as a result of the French and Indian Wars, France lost its sizeable colonial possessions in Canada and the Union Jack flew all across the wide territory of Canada.

          In 1867, the Dominion of Canada was established as a self-governing federation within the British Empire, and three years later a new flag, the Canadian Red Ensign, was adopted. It became official on 2 February 1892 [top >]
         On 26 April 1922 the shield was changed [middle >]. On 8 October 1957 the three maple leaves at the bottom of the shield were changed from green to red [bottom >]. Besides these official flags there have been a number of unofficial ones.

          The search for a new national flag, that would better represent an independent Canada, began in earnest in 1925 when a committee of the Privy Council began to investigate possible designs for a new flag. Later, in 1946, a select parliamentary committee was appointed with a similar mandate and examined more than 2600 submissions. Agreement on a new design was not reached, and it was not until the 1960s, with the centennial of Canadian self-rule approaching, that the Canadian Parliament intensified its efforts to choose a new flag. In December of 1964, Parliament voted to adopt a new design. Canada’s national flag was to be red and white, the official colors of Canada as decided by King George V of Britain in 1921, with a stylized eleven-point red maple leaf in its center. Queen Elizabeth II proclaimed February 15, 1965, as the day in which the new flag would be raised over Parliament Hill and adopted by all Canadians. Today, Canada’s red maple leaf flag is one of the most recognizable national flags in the world.

    Canadian flag 2 Feb 1892

    Canadian flag 26 Apr 1922

    Canadian flag 8 Oct 1957

    1959 Antonio Segni forms Italian government.
    1957 Andrei A Gromyko succeeds Dmitri Shepilov as Soviet foreign minister.
    1956 Urho Kekkonen appointed President of Finland. — Urho Kaleva Kekkonen, jefe del Partido Campesino, es elegido presidente de la República de Finlandia.
    1955 first pilot plant to produce man-made diamonds announced
    1954 first bevatron in operation-Berkeley CA
    1954 El laboratorio farmacéutico "Behring" anuncia haber dado un paso decisivo en la consecución de la vacuna antipoliomelítica.
    ^ 1950 USSR and Communist China sign mutual defense treaty
          The Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, the two largest communist nations in the world, announce the signing of a mutual defense and assistance treaty. The negotiations for the treaty were conducted in Moscow between PRC leaders Mao Zedong and Zhou En-lai, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky. The treaty's terms called for the Soviets to provide a $300 million credit to the PRC. It also mandated that the Soviet Union return to the Chinese the control of a major railroad and the cities of Port Arthur and Dairen in Manchuria, all of which had been seized by Russian forces near the end of World War II. The mutual defense section of the agreement primarily concerned any future aggression by Japan and "any other state directly or indirectly associated" with Japan. Zhou En-lai proudly declared that the linking of the two communist nations created a force that was "impossible to defeat." US commentators viewed the treaty as proof positive that communism was a monolithic movement, being directed primarily from the Kremlin in Moscow. An article in the New York Times referred to the PRC as a Soviet "satellite." As events made clear, however, the treaty was not exactly a concrete bond between communist countries. By the late-1950s, fissures were already beginning to appear in the Soviet-PRC alliance. Publicly, the Chinese charged that the Soviets were compromising the principles of Marxism-Leninism by adopting an attitude of "peaceful coexistence" with the capitalist nations of the West. By the early-1960s, Mao Zedong was openly declaring that the Soviet Union was actually allying itself with the United States against the Chinese revolution.
    1948 Mao Zedong's army occupies Yenan
    1946 Bank of England nationalized.
    1945 El Ejército ruso llega a 80 kilómetros de Berlín.
    1944 Bombing and shooting at Monte Cassino convent Italy, begins
    1944 891 British bombers attack Berlin.
    1944 EE.UU. recupera el control de las islas Salomón (Pacífico) tras duros combates con Japón.
    ^ 1942 Singapore surrenders to the Japanese
          Britain's supposedly impregnable Singapore fortress surrenders to Japanese forces after a weeklong siege. More than 60'000 British, Australian, and Indian soldiers were taken prisoner, joining 70'000 other Allied soldiers captured during Britain's disastrous defense of the Malay Peninsula. On 08 December 1941 — the day after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor — the Japanese moved against British-controlled Malay, steamrollering across Thailand and landing in northern Malay. The Japanese made rapid advances against British positions, capturing British airfields and gaining air superiority. British General A.E. Percival was reluctant to leave Malay's roads and thus was outflanked again and again by the Japanese, who demonstrated an innovative grasp of the logistics of jungle warfare. The Allies could do little more than delay the Japanese and continued to retreat south. By January, the Allied force was outnumbered and held just the lower half of the peninsula. General Tomoyuki Yamashita's 25th Army continued to push forward, and on 31 January the Allies were forced to retreat across the causeway over the Johor Strait to the great British naval base on the island of Singapore, located on the southern tip of the peninsula. The British dynamited the causeway behind them but failed to entirely destroy the bridge. Singapore, with its big defensive guns, was considered invulnerable to attack. However, the guns, which used armor-piercing shells and the flat trajectories necessary to decimate an enemy fleet, were not designed to defend against a land attack on the unfortified northern end of the island.
          On 05 February Yamashita brought up heavy siege guns to the tip of the peninsula and began bombarding Singapore. On 08 February, thousands of Japanese troops began streaming across the narrow waterway and established several bridgeheads. Japanese engineers quickly repaired the causeway, and troops, tanks, and artillery began pouring on to Singapore. The Japanese pushed forward to Singapore city, capturing key British positions and splitting the Allied defenders into isolated groups.
          On 15 February Percival — lacking a water supply and nearly out of food and ammunition — agreed to surrender. With the loss of Singapore, the British lost control of a highly strategic waterway and opened the Indian Ocean to Japanese invasion. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called it the "worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history." Many thousands of the 130'000 Allied troops captured died in Japanese captivity. Later in the war, Lord Louis Mountbatten, the supreme Allied commander in Southeast Asia, made plans for the liberation of the Malay Peninsula, but Japan surrendered before they could be carried out.
          Singapore, the "Gibraltar of the East" and a strategic British stronghold, falls to Japanese forces. An island city and the capital of the Straits Settlement of the Malay Peninsula, Singapore had been a British colony since the 19th century. In July 1941, when Japanese troops occupied French Indochina, the Japanese telegraphed their intentions to transfer Singapore from the British to its own burgeoning empire. Sure enough, on the eve of the Pearl Harbor attack, 24'000 Japanese soldiers were transported from Indochina to the Malay Peninsula, and Japanese fighter pilots attacked Singapore, killing 61 civilians from the air. The battle between Japanese and British forces on the Malay Peninsula continued throughout December and January, killing hundreds more civilians in the process. The British were forced to abandon and evacuate many of their positions, including Port Swettenham and Kuala Lumpur. On 08 February 8, 5000 Japanese soldiers landed on Singapore Island. The British were both outmanned and outgunned. Pro-Japanese propaganda leaflets were dropped on the islands, encouraging surrender. On 13 February Singapore's 15-inch coastal guns — the island's main defensive weapons — were destroyed. Tactical miscalculations on the part of British Gen. Arthur Percival and poor communication between military and civilian authorities exacerbated the deteriorating British defense. Represented by General Percival and senior Allied officers, Singapore surrendered to Japanese Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita in front of Japanese newsreel cameras. Sixty-two thousand Allied soldiers were taken prisoner; more than half eventually died as prisoners of war. With the surrender of Singapore, Britain lost its foothold in the East. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill attempted to prop up morale by urging Brits "to display the calm and poise, combined with grim determination, which not so long ago brought us out of the very jaws of death."
    1942 Japanese troops march into Palembang, South Sumatra
    1942 Le Procès de Riom, voulu par le gouvernement de Vichy, se propose de juger les hommes politiques et les militaires qui passent pour être responsables de la défaite de 1940, Blum, Daladier et Gamelin.
    1941 Alfonso XIII abdica sus derechos al trono de España en su hijo Juan, conde de Barcelona.
    1940: II Guerra Mundial: El Gobierno alemán anuncia que los buques mercantes británicos serán considerados navíos de guerra en lo sucesivo.
    1936 Hitler announces building of Volkswagens
    ^ 1934 Civil Works Emergency Relief Act
         To fight the Depression, US President Franklin Roosevelt calls on Congress to establish a Federal institution for helping the needy. The result was the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), which funneled money to states and oversaw the subsequent distribution and relief efforts. FERA was a massive and costly project: the administration spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 billion a year, or nearly 2 percent of America's income. FERA needed a steady supply of capital and Congress was willing to oblige; on this day in 1934 legislators passed the Civil Works Emergency Relief Act, which provided an infusion of funds for the administration.
    ^ 1933 Bullet intended for US President-elect mortally wounds Chicago mayor.
          Giuseppe Zangara tries to assassinate President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Miami, Florida. However, Zangara's shots missed the soon-to-be president (inaugurations did not take place until March at the time) and hit Anton Cernak, the mayor of Chicago. Cernak was seriously wounded and died on 06 March. Immediately after Mayor Cernak died from the gunshot wounds, Zangara was indicted and arraigned for murder. He pleaded guilty and died in the electric chair on 20 March, only two weeks after Cernak died.
          Today such a swift outcome would be practically unheard of, particularly where the death penalty is concerned. Changes began in the 1950s. In the most notable case, Caryl Chessman spent almost 12 years on California's death row before going to the gas chamber in 1960 for kidnapping. His appeals kept him alive while he wrote three published books and caught the attention of Hollywood and the international community, who lobbied publicly on his behalf. The Chessman battle did more than any other case to politicize the death penalty; some credit it with bringing Ronald Reagan (who fiercely opposed commuting Chessman's sentence) to office as California's governor. Chessman was one of the last persons to be executed in the US for committing a crime other than murder.
    1930 En España el Gobierno del general Damaso Berenguer y Fuste disuelve la Asamblea Nacional establecida por el general Miguel Primo de Rivera.
    1921 Estalla la guerra en Irlanda contra el Ejército británico.
    1918 Latvia and Lithuania adopt the Gregorian calendar
    1918 first WWI US army troop ship torpedoed and sunk by Germany, off Ireland.
    1914 Las sufragistas británicas rompen los cristales de la ventana del Ministerio del Interior y prenden fuego al aristocrático pabellón del Lawn Tennis Club.
    1912 Fram reaches latitude 78º 41' S, farthest south ever by ship.
    1902 Se inaugura en Berlín el metro aéreo y subterráneo.
    1900 General French relieves Kimberley/Cecil Rhodes
    1882 first cargo of frozen meat leaves New Zealand for Britain, on SS Dunedin
    1869 Charges of Treason against Jefferson Davis are dropped
    1863 Skirmishes at Arkadelphia, Arkansas
    1862 Grant's major assault on Ft Donelson TN
    1862 All-out Confederate attack at Fort Donelson, Tennessee
    1851 Black abolitionists invade Boston courtroom rescuing a fugitive slave
    1848 Sarah Roberts barred from white school in Boston.
    ^ 1812 Furrier Wilson Hunt arrives at Astoria, Oregon.
          Having departed St. Louis more than two years earlier, Wilson Hunt and his party stumble into the fur-trading post of Astoria, Oregon. Later romanticized as the archetypal frontier hero in Washington Irving's novel Astoria, which chronicled the early Far West fur trade, Wilson Hunt was actually a reluctant mountain man. Born in Asbury, New Jersey, in 1783, Hunt was interested in making money, not exploring vast reaches of unknown wilderness. Hunt recognized that the West offered untapped potential wealth for the crafty merchant, and in 1804 he moved to St. Louis where he opened a mercantile establishment. There he caught the eye of the German immigrant John Jacob Astor, who was looking for ambitious young merchants to help launch an American fur-trading operation on the Pacific Coast. Like Astor, Hunt realized there was big money to be made in the western fur trade. When Astor asked him to lead an overland expedition to the mouth of the Columbia River to establish a fur-trading post, he agreed despite his lack of experience in wilderness travel. With a small party of other Astor employees, Hunt departed St. Louis on October 21, 1810, and headed up the Missouri along the route blazed by Lewis and Clark five years earlier.
          Historians have often criticized Hunt's leadership of the overland voyage. The inexperienced Hunt certainly made a number of blunders, such as losing the party's horses while attempting to cross the treacherous Snake River. Yet, Washington Irving and others have suggested that Hunt made the best of difficult circumstances, and he was a cool and competent leader. At the very least, Hunt deserves credit for blazing a route between the Snake River and Columbia River that eventually became a part of the Oregon Trail. On this day in 1812, Hunt and his party finally reached the newly founded town of Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River, about 100 km northwest of modern-day Portland. An ocean-going party of Astor employees had arrived there nearly a year before and constructed the fur-trading post. Hunt remained at the post until 1814, when it was sold to the British, who had occupied the territory since the War of 1812. Giving up the fur trade, Hunt returned to St. Louis, where he prospered in business and real estate and eventually won the job of city postmaster. The remainder of Hunt's life was marked by none of the excitement he endured during his epic transcontinental journey, and the reluctant mountain man apparently preferred it that way.
    1806 Joseph Bonaparte a refusé la couronne d'Italie l'année précédente mais accepte avec plaisir celle de Naples. Il devra la quitter, l'année suivante, sur ordre de son frère Napoléon qui vient de faire de lui un roi d'Espagne.
    1804 New Jersey becomes last northern state to abolish slavery
    1797 Battle of Cape St Vincent.
    French flag ^ 1794 Le drapeau français tricolore est décrèté.
          En France, la Convention nationale «décrète qu’à compter du 1er prairial an II (20 mai 1794), le pavillon sera formé des trois couleurs nationales disposées en trois bandes égales posées verticalement,...» C'est la naissance du drapeau tricolore. Celui-ci est confirmé comme étendard national en 1812, quand Napoléon 1er décide que tous les régiments auront un drapeau bleu-blanc-rouge.
         Les trois couleurs remontent aux origines de l'Histoire. Le fameux roi Dagobert, descendant de Clovis, avait pris l'habitude d'arborer la bannière de Saint Denis, rouge du sang du martyr, dans les heures de grand péril. Cette tradition fut reprise mille ans plus tard par les révolutionnaires parisiens de sorte que le drapeau rouge devint le symbole mondial des luttes ouvrières.
          Le blanc était la couleur d'une écharpe que les chefs des armées sous la monarchie pour signaler leur grade. C'est seulement en 1815, sous la Restauration, qu'il devint le symbole de la monarchie. On repère le bleu dans les couleurs des bourgeois de Paris, au Moyen Âge, en association avec le rouge. Les couleurs bleu, blanc et rouge commencent d'émerger sous le règne d'Henri IV. Le «Vert-Galant» recommande ces trois couleurs aux ambassadeurs hollandais qui en font l'emblème de leur Marine puis de leur nation, jusqu'à nos jours. Le tsar Pierre 1er le Grand, de passage à Amsterdam, adopte les mêmes couleurs pour ses navires. C'est ainsi que le bleu, le blanc et le rouge se retrouvent sur le drapeau de la Russie impériale... et de la Russie actuelle. Émules des Russes, les Serbes les adoptent à leur tour. Elles figurent aujourd'hui sur le drapeau de la Yougoslavie.
          En France même, le régiment des Gardes françaises avait adopté les trois couleurs et les conserva en passant du côté de la Révolution sous le nom de Garde nationale. Le 17 juillet 1789, Louis XVI est accueilli à l'Hôtel de Ville par une foule arborant une cocarde aux couleurs de Paris, le bleu et le rouge. La Fayette remet alors au roi en personne une cocarde semblable où il insère le blanc. Devenu chef de la Garde nationale le 31 juillet 1789, il officialise la cocarde tricolore en la remettant solennellement à la municipalité de Paris. «Je vous apporte une cocarde qui fera le tour du monde,...» dit-il. Il ne croyait pas si bien dire.
    The Oriflamme
          The oriflamme was a sacred banner used by the kings of France in the middle ages in times of great danger. It was distinct from the heraldic banner of the French kings (semis of fleur-de-lys on azure, as expected). Its history is fairly continuous from 1124 onward, when it is first mentioned. It is first described in 1225. It consists of two parts: a gilded lance, to which is attached a silk banner, red with green fringes. The floating end of the banner splits into two or more trailing strips. The name, aurea flamma, conflates the banner (flamma) and the color of the lance. The banner is sometimes represented as attached vertically to the lance, and sometimes (especially in the 19th century) as attached to a horizontal bar, itself suspended from the lance. It was deposited in the abbey of Saint-Denis, north of Paris, where kings of France were buried, next to the relics of Denis who evangelized the area. When going to war, the French king would come to Saint-Denis to 'raise the banner'. The last time it was raised was in the late 15th century. It was destroyed during the Revolution. What was its origin? The 1124 text mentions an old tradition of the counts of Vexin, who were protectors of the abbey; the kings of France had become counts of Vexin in 1077. But the text also alludes to a tradition specific to the kings of France. Also, a late 11th-century text, the Gesta of Roland, calls Charlemagne's emblem or banner orie flambe, but does not describe it. A description of the siege of Paris by the Normans in 885 mentions a large saffron-colored banner with large indentations carried by a double lance. One author tries to link the oriflamme to Charlemagne's lance and through it all the way back to Constantine's labarum, which was taken from a pagan sanctuary located near modern Saint-Denis. (Constantine's lance was part of the regalia of the German emperors, and is now in Vienna). The idea is that the sacred object was the lance itself, decorated with a silk fanion, but later the meaning of the lance was lost and the silk fanion itself came to be seen as the important object.
    The Fleur-de-lysée banner (France Ancient) [below, left]
          The Azur, Semé de lis Or made its first royal appearance on Louis VIII's seal, but we know that Philip II (1180-1223) already used it on his banners; his cloak was blue, embroidered with golden lilies (to recall the stars of heaven: it was actually called the "cosmic cloak"). Besides, the stylized lis pattern could be found on coins of the times of Louis VI (1081-1137) and Louis VII (1120-1180).
    The banner with three fleur de lys (France Modern) [second flag below]
          Charles V modified the arms of France in 1365 to honor the Holy Trinity. The modification was adopted progressively: Charles VI (1368-1422) used the old disposition, called France Ancient, on his counter seal, but also used France Modern on every other occasion. Nevertheless, it is considered that Charles V made the first official use of France Modern (Only three Fleur de lys).
    The Flag over the Bastille
         The third flag below (with the yellow diagonal) that it is the flag flown over the Bastille on 14 July 1789 by the defenders of the royal fortress.
    The Flag of the Restauration 1814-1830.
          When the Bourbons returned in 1814 they brought back the White Flag with the semy de lys as national flag [last flag below]. The revolution of 1830 overthrew them, and the new, relatively liberal regime of Louis-Philippe hastened to adopt the Tricolore again. It never ceased to be the French flag since that date, through all the regime changes.
       

                French Bourbon flag 1814
    1775 Giovanni Angelico Braschi elected Pope Pius VI
    ^ Austria, Prussia and Saxony sign Peace of Hubertsburg
    1763 La guerre de Sept Ans prend fin
          La Prusse et l'Autriche font la paix à Hubertsbourg, en Saxe. Leur traité suit de quelques jours le traité de Paris entre la France et l'Angleterre. Il clôture la guerre de Sept Ans. Cette première guerre européenne, voire mondiale, fut provoquée par le désir de Marie-Thérèse d'Autriche de récupérer la Silésie, que lui avait enlevée le roi de Prusse Frédéric II en 1740, ainsi que par la rivalité coloniale entre la France et l'Angleterre. Les Anglais ouvrent les hostilités en saisissant 300 navires de commerce français et en se rapprochant de la Prusse. A Paris et Versailles, les «philosophes» et la favorite du roi, Madame de Pompadour, ne cachent pas leur déception devant la trahison de leur généreux ami, Frédéric II. Comme le roi Louis XV et le ministre Choiseul, ils se résignent, contraints et forcés, à un renversement des alliances au profit de l'Autriche. Face à la coalition de la Russie, de l'Autriche et de la France, la Prusse est un moment sur le point de disparaître et les troupes russes ont même le loisir de défiler à Berlin. Mais la Russie se retire inopinément du conflit à la mort de la tsarine Elisabeth. La France de Louis XV et l'Autriche de Marie-Thérèse négligent d'exploiter leurs victoires et permettent à Frédéric II de se ressaisir. Outre-mer, les Anglais l'emportent sur les Français avec la mort de Montcalm au Canada et la capitulation de Lally-Tollendal, en Inde. Le traité de Hubertsbourg reconnaît à la Prusse la possession définitive de la Silésie. La guerre de Sept Ans s'avère désastreuse pour l'Autriche comme pour la France, qui perd le Québec et son premier empire colonial. En faisant de la Prusse le principal Etat allemand et de l'Angleterre la première puissance coloniale, les traités de 1763 dessinent pour un siècle et demi le paysage de l'Europe.
    1714 Louis XIV contraint le Parlement à enregistrer une bulle qui condamne les jansénistes et en particulier les 101 propositions de Quesnel et plus encore qui divise le clergé français en "appelants" et en "acceptants". Les premiers sont ceux qui, autour du cardinal de Noailles, font appel au pape pour qu'il retire un texte jugé trop vague et les seconds sont ceux qui l'acceptent.
    1689 German Parliament declares war on France.
    1677 King Charles II reports anti-French covenant with Netherlands
    1637 Ferdinand III succeeds Ferdinand II as Holy Roman Emperor.
    1563 Russian troops occupy Polotsk Lithuania.
    1412 Se firma la Concordia de Alcañiz, pacto entre Cataluña y Aragón para designar al nuevo rey de Aragón.
    1386 King Jagiello of Lithuania was baptized into the Christian faith. Lithuania being the last heathen nation in Europe, Jagiello's conversion finalized the Macedonian Vision in Acts 16:9, leading St. Paul to begin taking the Gospel to Europe.
    1313 Peace of Angleur.
    1145 Bernardo Pignatelli elected Pope Eugene III
    ^ — 44 BC César couronné et découronné.
          A Rome c'est la traditionnelle fête des Lupercales, qui rappelle la louve nourricière des deux fondateurs légendaires de la Ville, Romus et Rémulus. Marc Antoine saisit l'occasion de la fête pour poser en public le diadème des rois grecs sur le front auguste de César. Mais la foule proteste contre cette velléité de rétablir la royauté et demande à Lépide, le maître de la cavalerie, d'ôter la couronne. Celui-ci n'en fait rien et César, de dépit, doit ôter lui-même la couronne. Un mois plus tard, il sera assassiné.
    0399 BC Philosopher Socrates sentenced to death
    TO THE TOP
    Israeli soldiers killed^ Deaths which occurred on a February 15:

    2003 Israelis Pvt. 1st Class Noam Bahagon, 20, from Elkana; Sgt. Alexei Bilitzky, 21, from Rishon Letzion; Staff Sgt. Doron Cohen, 21, from Rishon Letzion; and Sgt. Itai Mirzahi, 20, from Be'er Sheva [photos >]; killed 1 km SE of the Dugit enclave settlement in the Gaza Strip at 08:31 (06:31 UT). when their patrolling Magach 7-Kfir (US-built M~60?) tank drives over a 100-kg improvised mine which the Iz al-Kassam organization of Hamas planted to avenge the deaths of two Hamas activists killed near Beit Lahia in fight with Israeli troops a few days earlier. The explosion causes the tank's ammunition to explode and fire to engulf it. The tank was preceded by an armored bulldozer which failed to detonate the device. The Reuters body count of the al-Aqsa intifada is now “at least” 1829 Palestinians and 705 Israelis.

    Lee Akonis2002 Israeli Staff Sgt. Lee Nahman Akonis, 20, [< photo] shot at close range by a group of Palestinians while he was guarding, with two others, the Surda checkpoint just north of Ramallah, West Bank.
    2002 Israeli Lieutenant Colonel Eyal Weiss, 34, by the collapse of a Palestinian home which his troops were destroying in the early morning in the village Saida, near Tul Karm, West Bank. Weiss commanded the Duvdevan “elite” undercover unit, whose members often enter Palestinian territories in disguise to arrest suspected militants. According to the Israelis Weiss led troops on a manhunt for terrorists in the village. The head of Islamic Jihad in the region, Jasser Ghdad, barricaded himself in his home and exchanged fire with the troops. An Israeli bulldozer began to demolish the house, causing Ghdad to hand over his weapons and give himself up. Weiss interrogated Ghdad on the other side of the road, behind a concrete wall. The bulldozer continued to tear down the house [no explanation as to why, after Ghdad has surrendered], some 20 meters from where Weiss was standing, when a part of the house was fell to the other side of the road, hit the concrete wall and caused parts of the wall to collapse on Weiss.
    2002 Anwar Abd al Rani, 28, Islamic Jihad militant, by the troops of Israeli Lt. Col. Weiss [see above] in incursion into Saida, near Tul Karm, West Bank..
    2001 Nasser Hassanat, 23, Palestinian, was killed in a firefight with Israeli soldiers, as he was trying to enter Jewish settlement Kfar Darom. Hassanat, from the Deir El Balah refugee camp, was not in uniform, but carried documents identifying him as a member of the Palestinian Preventive Security Service.
    1999 Carole Sund, 42, and Silvina Pelosso, 16, murdered in the evening by Cary Stayner, 38. Silvina Pelosso, of Argentina, and Carole Sund and her daughter Juli Sund, 15, of Eureka, were staying in Room 509 of the Cedar Lodge rustic motel, outside Yosemite National Park. Stayner worked as a handyman at the motel. Stayner had fantasized for months about sexually assaulting girls and then killing them. This night he sees what he calls “easy prey” through the open blinds of Room 509. He goes to his room and gets his “killing kit”: duct tape, rope, a knife and a gun. He get into Room 509 by pretending to check for a gas leak. He binds and gags the two girls in the bathroom, then strangles Carole Sund and puts her body in their rental car trunk. Then he strangles Silvina and puts her body in the trunk. Early the next day ...[continued on 16 February]
    1999 Cinco civiles en un ataque aéreo de Estados Unidos contra Irak.
    ^ 1996 Ernst Weber, microwave communication pioneer
          Ernst Weber conducted important experiments in the field of microwave communications for the Office of Scientific Research and Development during World War II. He developed devices for the precise control of microwaves, which proved useful in early radar testing. Later, he became president of the Polytechnic Institute in New York City, which he helped transform into a leading scientific and engineering center.
    1988 Richard Feynman, mathematician. —premio Nobel de Física 1965
    1988 José Luis Cano, poeta español.
    1982: 84 personas al hundirse una plataforma petrolífera frente a las costas de Terranova.
    1975 Pelham G Wodehouse writer.
    1967 J. Frank Duryea, 97, in Old Saybrook, Conneticut, founder of the Duryea Motor Wagon Company with his brother Charles. 74 years earlier in the month of February, the Duryea brothers manufactured the first of thirteen Duryea Motor Wagons, unofficially giving birth to the auto production line and the American automobile industry.
    ^ 1966 Jorge Camilo Torres Restrepo, prêtre révolutionnaire, en combattant contre l'armée colombienne.
          Né en 1929 à Bogotá, dans une famille de la grande bourgeoisie citadine, Camilo Torres fait des études de droit et collabore au journal La Razón. Ordonné prêtre en 1952, il étudie la sociologie à Louvain (Leuven en Belgique), où il est nommé vice-recteur pour l’Amérique latine. À Paris, il travaille un temps avec l’abbé Pierre, puis obtient sa licence de sociologie en 1958. Aumônier des étudiants à son retour à Bogotá, il crée la faculté de sociologie et entreprend diverses études sur les problèmes sociaux en Colombie; il lance alors un mouvement d’universitaires et de membres des professions libérales pour le développement communal, ce qui lui vaut de participer à l’élaboration d’un projet de loi relatif à l’action communale. Exclu de l’université pour avoir défendu deux étudiants communistes, Torres devient vicaire à Veracruz et crée plusieurs coopératives dans un quartier ouvrier de Bogotá. Tissant des liens avec les représentants de différents courants politiques, tous acquis à des réformes, il est amené à s’opposer de plus en plus au gouvernement et à la hiérarchie catholique. Il décide alors de se lancer ouvertement dans l’action politique et cherche à constituer un front regroupant l’ensemble des forces progressistes. Il crée un rassemblement du Front uni du peuple colombien que soutiennent tous les partis démocratiques. Ce rassemblement prône une ouverture commerciale avec tous les pays, l’établissement de nouvelles relations avec Cuba, le développement du mouvement coopératif, le rétablissement des libertés individuelles et publiques. Le "Frente unido" répond à l’attente des Colombiens qui attendaient un renouveau politique, mais se heurte à l’insuffisance de cadres politiques formés et à la répression gouvernementale; des divergences se font jour au sein du Front. L’appel de Camilo Torres, lors des élections de mars 1964, en faveur d’une "abstention active, belligérante et révolutionnaire", entraîne la défection du Parti social-démocrate chrétien et du Mouvement révolutionnaire libéral; le parti de Rojas Pinilla et le Parti communiste prennent également leurs distances. En difficulté avec la hiérarchie catholique, Torres demande, en juin 1964, sa réduction à l’état laïc. Mais jusqu’au bout il se considérera comme chrétien et comme prêtre. Il estime désormais nulles les chances de transformer la vie politique par la voie légale; il prend contact avec les groupes armés formés par le P.C.; mais ce dernier, pour lequel la guérilla n’est qu’un appui à l’action légale, ne tient guère à compter dans ses rangs une personnalité aussi prestigieuse. Torres rejoint alors l’Armée de libération nationale, d’orientation castriste, en octobre 1965. Dans sa dernière allocution, en janvier 1966, il déclare "la lutte armée, la seule voie qui reste encore libre... pas un pas en arrière; pour la liberté ou la mort;" Celle-ci le prend le 15 février, au cours d’un accrochage avec l’armée. Dès lors, son nom devient, en Amérique latine, un symbole pour les jeunes prêtres et chrétiens contestataires.
    Jorge Camilo Torres Restrepo, sacerdote y guerrillero colombiano.
    Sacerdote, sociólogo y revolucionario nacido en Bogotá, el 03 febrero de 1929, muerto en Patio Cemento, Santander, el 15 de febrero de 1966. La vida de Jorge Camilo Torres Restrepo estuvo marcada por las premoniciones, el mito y la ficción. Efectivamente, días antes de su nacimiento una pitonisa le predijo a su madre, Isabel Restrepo de Torres, que el niño por nacer sería, con el tiempo, figura grande en la religión o en la política. Años después, en Lima, en julio de 1965, cuando ya había dejado la sotana e iniciado una activa vida política desde el Frente Unido, y había decidido vincularse al Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), en una reunión el sacerdote peruano Gustavo Gutiérrez, a quien Camilo le comentó su deseo e interés de integrarse a la guerrilla, le expresó francamente que, en caso de alistarse en la lucha revolucionaria, lo mejor que podía pasarle era que lo mataran con la primera bala, en el primer combate. Meses después, cuando se dirigía al fortín del ELN en las montañas del departamento de Santander y casi es sorprendido por una patrulla del ejército, Torres Restrepo le comentó a su guía, con el humor que siempre lo caracterizó: «Casi no llego siquiera al campamento». Muerto en combate, el lugar donde se encuentra su tumba es un misterio pues, a excepción del entonces coronel Alvaro Valencia Tovar, nadie sabe dónde está sepultado. De todas maneras, es un hecho que Camilo 'I'orres Restrepo constituye un símbolo de rebeldía latinoamericana, y se ha convertido en un mito.
          Nacido en el tradicional barrio de La Candelaria, en el seno de una familia burguesa y liberal encabezada por el prestigioso médico pediatra Calixto Torres Umaña, los primeros meses de su vida los pasó Camilo en un apartamento anexo al lujoso Hotel Ritz, propiedad de sus padres. Luego, en 1931, se trasladaron a vivir a Ginebra (Suiza), pues el doctor Torres fue nombrado representante por Colombia en la Liga de las Naciones. Debido a una separación matrimonial temporal, doña Isabel sus hijos Gerda y Edgar Westendorp, fruto de su primer matrimonio, y los Torres Restrepo, Fernando y Camilo, vivieron en Barcelona. En 1934 retornaron todos juntos a Bogotá, y en 1937 el matrimonio se disolvió quedando los dos hermanos Torres Restrepo bajo la tutela de su madre, pero con la supervisión y responsabilidad económica del padre. Luego del divorcio, Camilo, su hermano y su madre se fueron a vivir a las afueras de Bogotá, en un finca lechera llamada La Granja. Camilo Torres Restrepo se graduó d~ bachiller en el año 1946, en el Liceo Cervantes. En el primer semestre de 1947 entró a estudiar Derecho en la Universidad Nacional. Luego de un contacto con dos promotores vocacionales dominicos y de un período de incertidumbre, decidió hacerse fraile de la comunidad de SantoTomás. Sus padres se opusieron a su decisión, pero fue tal la presión que al fin aceptaron que Camilo entrara, en septiembre de 1947, al Seminario Conciliar de Bogotá. En realidad, nadie pensó que el alocado hijo del doctor Calixto fuera a tomar la sotana, pues si bien asistía los domingos a misa, su forma de actuar y la vida de comodidades a la que estaba acostumbrado, decían otra cosa. Sin embargo, al entrar al seminario lo hizo plenamente convencido y desde ese momento, y durante casi dieciocho años, asumió la vida sacerdotal con gran responsabilidad. En el seminario, ubicado en las Sierras del Chicó, permaneció durante siete años. Allí comenzó a interesarse por la realidad social y creó un círculo de estudios sociales con su compañero Gustavo Pérez. Las obras leídas por los seminaristas no eran revolucionarias, hacían énfasis en encíclicas y obras cristianas sobre justicia social, que prohibían y censuraban el comunismo, la lucha de clases y la propiedad colectiva. La lectura adelantada de fase crítica, pero despertó en el joven seminarista un interés por la acción social y por los problemas de los marginados, al punto que inició una labor con los picapedreros habitantes de las lomas aledañas al seminario. Bien pronto comprendió que la solución al problema de la pobreza no debía buscarla en las liberalidades de los ricos.
          Camilo Torres Restrepo se ordenó como sacerdote el 29 de agosto de 1954, y al día siguiente ofició su primera misa en la capilla del. Liceo Cervantes. El 25 de septiembre del mismo año viajó a Lovaina, vía Nueva York, con el fin de adelantar estudios de Sociología. En Bélgica recibió gran cantidad de influencias, en especial de la Democracia Cristiana y, del sindicalismo cristiano, que le sirvieron para abrazar una causa que nunca abandonó: la de los oprimidos, en el ideal, nunca alcanzado, de llevar con ellos una vida comunitaria y compartir sus tareas y esfuerzos. Además fundó, en 1955, el Equipo Colombiano de Investigación SocioEconómica (ECTSA), que tuvo comités en la mayoría de los países de Europa occidental y ocupó la vicerrectoría del Colegio Latinoamericano. Así mismo, se vinculó a la actividad estudiantil latinoamericana, vio muy de cerca los tugurios existentes en París y, en 1957, además de conocer a Marguerite Marie Guitemie Olivieri; quien llegaría a ser su amiga, confidente y secretaria, tuvo un acercamiento con los grupos de la resistencia argelina ~n París, y alcanzó a vislumbrar lo que era un proceso de liberación nacional y el papel que un intelectual podía cumplir en tal lucha. En 1958 obtuvo su título de sociólogo, con la tesis "Una aproximación estadística a la realidad socioeconómíca de Bogotá", publicada en 1987 como La proletnrización de Bogotá, que fue dirigida por el profesor Yves Urbain. Este trabajo le sirvió, al igual que otras investigaciones posteriores, para familiarizarse con las estructuras sociales de los medios urbanos v rurales; aprendió a conocer las personas y a sacar conclusiones. Este trabajo tiene las lógicas limitaciones de una monografía de pregrado: ritualismo académico, presentación mecánica de conceptos, bibliografías v marcos teóricos que después no encuentran ubicación alguna en el cuerpo del escrito; sin embargo, inauguró los estudios :modernos sobre la ciudad en Colombia. De regreso al país, el padre Camilo permaneció tres meses en Estados Unidos, tomando un curso de sociología en la Universidad de Minneápolis (Minnesota), en la que conoció a Teodore Caplow. Llegó a Colombia en enero de 1959 y fue nombrado capellán auxiliar de la Universidad Nacional y profesor del recién fundado Departamento de Sociología que serviría de base a la facultad. Comenzó entonces una intensa actividad como docente, dictando sociología urbana y de trabajo social. Durante e1 año 1959-1960, el padre Camilo cumplió una importante labor investigativa y de acción social en el barrio obrero de Tunjuelito. Al principio, comenzó a ir con sus estudiantes de sociología motivado por el interés de observar la realidad cotidiana, el nivel de vida de la clase obrera y los problemas creados por la migración de campesinos a la ciudad. Pero en la medida que el trabajo fue conocido por estudiantes de otras facultades, poco a poco se fueron integrando a él con el fin de mejorar el nivel de vida de los habitantes del barrio. Fue tan importante la labor cumplida por Camilo Torres y su grupo en Tunjuelito, que en el mismo año de 1959 el emprendedor sacerdote y profesor obtuvo el Premio Nacional de Beneficencia "Alejandro Angel Escobar", con un plan piloto para ese sector capitalino. Así mismo, el Ministerio de Educación lo invitó a integrar un comité para el desarrollo de la comunidad, que a partir de julio de 1959 pasó a llamarse Acción Comunal. Aunque escéptico, Torres Restrepo colaboró con la nueva entidad e involucró a la Universidad; allí fundó, en 1960, el MUNIPROC (Movimiento Universitario para Promoción Comunal), que gracias a sus buenas influencias logró financiarse y pudo mantenerse como un ente independiente de la Acción Comunal y demás instituciones oficiales. Además, en 1961 se creó el Consejo Interfacultades para el desarrollo de la comunidad. Como capellán auxiliar de la Universidad Nacional, el padre Camilo introdujo en Colombia muchas de las reformas del Concilio Vaticano n: no daba la misa de espaldas al público, sino de frente, y decía la misa en castellano, no en latín como hasta el momento era ley. Pregonó que el problema no era rezar más, sino amar más; aprobó el noviazgo para curas y seminaristas, y abogó por el ecumenismo.
          A finales de 1961, Camilo Torres comenzó a tener problemas con el cardenal Luis Concha Córdoba, quien no veía con buenos ojos la vinculación del sociólogo y sacerdote a la Universidad. El asunto fue tornándose cada vez más espinoso y tuvo su punto culminante cuando, en julio de 1962, luego de un período de agitación estudiantil, la Universidad fue cerrada y el joven subcapellán y profesor incitó al cuerpo docente universitario a seguir dictando las clases y, después de una larga asamblea especial, los estudiantes lo declararon rector. El prelado no aguantó más y lo destituyó de su cargo como capellán ~ de los trabajos académicos y funciones administrativas que desempeñaba en la Universidad. Luego de alguna presión por parte del centro docente, el cardenal aceptó que terminara sus clases del segundo semestre académico, pero que siguiera al frente de la parroquia de La Veracruz, a donde había sido enviado.
          Por este tiempo, Camilo Torrez fue nombrado miembro de la junta directiva del recién creado Instituto de la Reforma Agraria (INCORA). Allí tuvo infinidad de enfrentamientos con diferentes autoridades, pues permanentemente cuestionó las políticas del Ministerio de Agricultura; pero desde ese privilegiado lugar, no sólo pudo conocer gran parte de los problemas del campesino colombiano, sino hacerse una idea muy fiel de la burocracia y del proselitismo del Estado. Así mismo, por esa época Camilo Torres fue nombrado decano del Instituto de Administración Social de la Escuela Superior de Administración Pública (ESAP), institución en la que permaneció hasta fines de abril de 1965, cuando, por presiones de la curia, decidió viajar a Lovaina, el 22 de mayo de 1965, para adelantar estudios de doctorado en sociología. Su proyecto de tesis, diseñado en 1962, buscaba estudiar, siguiendo el ejemplo de Oscar Léwis, la asimilación de migrantes a los medios urbanos y examinar en detalle la experiencia de diez familias de origen campesino residentes en Bogotá. No obstante, Torres nunca emprendió este viaje, pues decidió, más bien, tomar los rumbos de la lucha armada que los del intelecto. De todas formas, en la ESAP Camilo Torres pudo trabajar en el desarrollo de la comunidad, y organizar cursos para campesinos en todo el país. Es particularmente importante la escuela que fundó en Yopal (Casanare), y que se llamó la Unidad de Acción Rural (UAR).
          En realidad, los problemas suscitados entre Camilo Torres y el cardenal Concha tuvieron diferentes causas que no sólo radicaron en la labor proselitista de Camilo dentro del estudiantado y en sus actividades académicas, sino en lo que representaban uno y otro. El cardenal enfrentaba un momento difícil, suerte de renegociación en las relaciones entre el Estado y la Iglesia; por eso había que borrar la idea dejada por la reciente violencia de que los curas participaban abiertamente en la política del país, y que el púlpito era una tribuna desde donde se decidían los destinos de la nación. Por su parte, Torres Restrepo quería que la Iglesia se reformara, que cumpliera un papel más social, en beneficio de los más necesitados, y en aras de tal ideal muchas de sus actuaciones públicas parecían turbulentas y llegaron a entorpecer las armónicas relaciones entre el poder civil y el eclesiástico. Así pues, uno y otro personaje representaba un punto de vista distinto sobre el papel de la Iglesia. Tales concepciones frecuentemente chocaron, directa o indirectamente.
          En 1960, Torres Restrepo hizo una evaluación de las escuelas radiofónicas, Radio Sutatenza, de monseñor José Joaquín Salcedo, que sin ser analítica, demostraba que ese programa era demagógico y perjudicial para el campesino, a quien estaba principalmente orientado. Salcedo se molestó con Camilo y comenzó una controversia entre los dos sacerdotes que llegó a su punto culminante cuando el joven sociólogo y subcapellán le expresó al prelado que su anticomunismo [el de Salcedo], lo hacía ciego y ridículo ante cualquier movimiento reformista. La campaña anticomunista emprendida desde los programas emitidos en Radio Sutatenza, incitaba al odio y ocasionaba violencia. Fueron muchos los hechos que, como éste, ampliaron la distancia entre el cardenal y Camilo Torres. Sin lugar a dudas, la salida de la Facultad de Sociología de la Universidad Nacional se precipitó debido a la activa participación que tuvo Camilo en la búsqueda de la financiación y redacción de la investigación emprendida años atrás por monseñor Germán Guzmán Campos, que terminó con la edición de los tomos del libro La Violencia en Colombia (1962 y 1964). Este trabajo, por lo menos el primer volumen, levantó muchas ampollas dentro de la clase política, la Iglesia, la comunidad académica y el ejército, pues tocó aspectos que habían ocurrido recientemente y que involucraban muy directamente a la clase dirigente y dominante del país. Camilo no aparecía como autor, pero su papel fue importante. Precisamente fue en torno a la violencia que escribió su último ensayo sociológico de fondo: La violencia y los campos socioculturales en las áreas rurales(1963), presentado en el primer Congreso Nacional de Sociología, en el que planteó que la violencia era factor importante del cambio social.
          El permanente trabajo de Camilo Torres con la docencia y su acercamiento a los problemas más álgidos del país fueron radicalizándolo: en agosto de 1962, en Buenos Aires, en una reunión previa a la fundación del CELATIN (Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano), planteó que los marxistas luchaban por la nueva sociedad y, por lo tanto, los cristianos debían estar luchando a su lado. En mayo de 1964, antes del bombardeo a la llamada República independiente de Marquetalia, Torres quiso entrar antes de que empezaran las acciones militares, junto con Gustavo Pérez, Orlando Fals Borda, Eduardo Umaña Luna, Germán Guzmán y un político de apellido Muñoz, para emprender una misión de paz independiente; sin embargo no pudo hacerlo, pues el cardenal Concha no dio su permiso a Camilo, ni a Guzmán Campos, ni a Gustavo Pérez por ser sacerdotes de su feligresía. De todas formas, el episodio de Marquetalia lo impulsó de una manera mucho más abierta a la acción. Así, en septiembre de 1964 asistió en Lovaina a un congreso de Teología Pastoral en el que planteó que la caridad cristiana, si quería ser eficaz y no un asunto meramente verbal, tenía que ocuparse de la planificación económica, la cual, en los países subdesarrollados, suponía un cambio total en las estructuras del poder. Los católicos debían colaborar con los marxistas, pues éstos estaban en la vanguardia de la lucha por el cambio. A partir de enero de 1965, Camilo Torres trató de ponerse en comunicación con el recién creado (julio de 1964) Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), y en febrero planteó una plataforma para un movimiento de unidad popular: el Frente Unido de Movimientos Populares. Contactado por el ELN, el 27 de junio de 1965 Camilo Torres abandonó el sacerdocio. Días después de esta trascendental decisión, el 3 de julio, viajó a las montañas de Santander a entrevistarse, por primera definitiva vez, con el entonces comandante del ELN, Fabio Vásquez Castaño. En esta conferencia plantearon la estrategia a seguir: Camilo seguiría su programa de agitación política con el Frente Unido en las ciudades y pueblos del país, pero, en un momento dado, cuando la dirigencia guerrillera lo creyera necesario, debería integrarse a la lucha armada revolucionaria en los montes. Así mismo, se acordó que el movimiento liderado por Torres Restrepo debía tener un periódico y atraer a políticos de todos los sectores. Es decir, Camilo entró a formar parte del ELN, pero debía considerarse como «un militante en comisión en la ciudad».
          A partir de la conferencia de principios de julio y hasta el 18 de octubre, cuando Camilo Torres partió para la guerrilla, el ex cura y ex profesor universitario se dedicó, junto con Jaime Arenas, su contacto directo con el ELN, y Marguerite Guitemié Olivieri, a trabajar con el Frente Unido y en la publicación del semanario del movimiento, cuyo primer número apareció el 26 de agosto y tuvo un éxito arrollador: 45000 ejemplares se vendieron en cuestión de horas. La carismática figura de Camilo aglutinó a gentes de diferentes tendencias de la izquierda y de la política tradicional, y sobre todo captó la atención de grandes multitudes. A semejanza del asesinado líder Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, Camilo Torres llenó las plazas públicas y tuvo un vertiginoso ascenso político. Pero su éxito pronto generó problemas: los políticos de todos los lados, especialmente los de la disidencia, quisieron captarlo para que atrayera a las masas hacia las urnas, cosa a la que Camilo se negó sistemáticamente pues estaba convencido del abstencionismo como posición revolucionaria. Se generaron entonces grandes contradicciones, inconsistencias que llevaron a un camino sin salida al movimiento y al caudillo. Efectivamente, a consecuencia de su radicalismo, poco a poco Camilo fue rompiendo con sus amigos y con los de su clase, y en torno a él se fue estrechando un círculo. El periódico, a consecuencia de los rompimientos con los "electores" y de su falta de maquinaria organizativa y de recursos económicos suficientes, se convirtió pronto en un fracaso. Además, había indicios muy serios de que la derecha quería asesinarlo. Entonces, Fabio Vásquez ordenó que dejara su comisión en la ciudad y partiera para la guerrilla, disposición a la que Camilo se acogió y cumplió al pie de Ja letra. Noventa días después de su ajustamiento y cumpliendo la predicción hecha por el cura Gutiérrez, Camilo Torres murió en el primer combate en el que participó, cuando quiso apoderarse del fusil de un soldado dado de baja en la emboscada.
    ^ 1940 Day 72 of Winter War: USSR aggression against Finland.
    More deaths due to Stalin's desire to grab Finnish territory.
    Enemy bombers pound Lappeenranta
           Central Isthmus: by evening the Russian 123rd Division has opened up a 2-3 kilometre wide and 6 kilometre deep gap in the Lähde sector in Summa.
          Commander-in-Chief Mannerheim decides to abandon the Mannerheim Line and pull the Finnish troops back to the intermediary defensive positions on the Isthmus. At 8 p.m., II Army Corps receives the order to withdraw. The troops begin to pull back to the Samolanlahti-Näykkijärvi-Muolaanjärvi-Äyräpäänjärvi line.
          Lappeenranta is hit by heavy enemy bombing: 17 die and 53 are injured in the raid.
          Northern Finland: the fighting in Kuhmo is concentrated on Kesseli, although part of the enemy's crack Dolin ski brigade has already dispersed over a wide area to the rear of the 9th Division. The Dolin brigade has been reduced to around 800 men, and is completely surrounded.
          Lake Ladoga: a battalion of Russian reconnaissance parachutists attacks the island of Petäjäsaari and manages to hold on there for almost 24 hours.
          Ladoga Karelia: fierce fighting is currently going on for control of Pukitsanmäki.
          The Lavajärvi 'motti' breaks down. The enemy has so far been successful in supplying the troops inside the 'motti' from the air. In taking Lavajärvi village the Finnish troops capture several pieces of artillery, three armored cars, eight trucks, four field kitchens and a large number of guns and ammunition.
          The Finnish Social Democratic Party has resolved its differences with the Civil Guard, ending over 20 years of conflict between the two organizations. SDP members are now free to join the Civil Guard.
          The Isänmaa ('fatherland') postage stamp goes on sale today.
          The Ministry of Supply has confirmed the price controls on firewood. The maximum permissible price per cubic metre for good-quality, fresh birch logs is 103 markkaa in Tampere and 93 markkaa in Viipuri.
          Olympic champion Lauri Lehtinen is to donate his gold medal from the 5,000 metres at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1932 to be awarded to an as-yet-unnamed soldier who has served with distinction on the Karelian Isthmus. Lehtinen's gesture is also to be seen as a mark of respect for fellow athlete Gunnar Höckert, who was killed in action four days ago on the Isthmus. Höckert took the gold medal over the same distance in the Berlin Olympics in 1936.
    ^ Vihollinen pommittaa voimallisesti Lappeenrantaa Talvisodan 78. päivä, 15.helmikuuta.1940
           Venäläinen 123. Divisioona tekee iltaan mennessä 2-3 kilometriä leveän ja 6 kilometriä syvän aukon Summan Lähteen lohkolla.
          Ylipäällikkö Mannerheim tekee päätöksen Kannaksen joukkojensiirtämiseksi väliasemaan. II Armeijakunnan käsky annetaan klo 20. Joukot aloittavat vetäytymisen linjalle Samolanlahti-Näykkijärvi-Muolaanjärvi-Äyräpäänjärvi.
          Vihollinen pommittaa voimallisesti Lappeenrantaa: 17 henkilöä saa surmansa ja 53 loukkaantuu.
          Kuhmossa taistelut keskittyvät Kesseliin, vaikka osa vihollisen maineikkaasta Dolinin hiihtoprikaatista onkin hajaantunut laajalle alueelle 9. Divisioonan selustaan. Dolinin hiihtoprikaati on jo pienentynyt noin 800 miehen vahvuiseksi ja se on täydellisesti saarroksissa.
          Venäläinen desanttipataljoona hyökkää Laatokan Petäjäsaareen ja pureutuu sinne lähes vuorokaudeksi.
          Laatokan Karjalassa käydään ankaraa taistelua Pukitsanmäen omistuksesta.
          Lavajärven motti purkautuu. Vihollinen on pystynyt tähän asti huoltamaan motissa olevia joukkojaan lentokuljetuksilla. Lavajärven kylän valtauksessa saadaan sotasaaliiksi useita tykkejä, kolme panssariautoa, kahdeksan kuorma-autoa, neljä kenttäkeittiötä sekä runsaasti aseita ja ammuksia.
          Suojeluskuntajärjestö ja Suomen Sosialidemokraattinen Puolue tekevätsovinnon yli 20 vuotta kestäneen vihanpidon jälkeen. Sosialidemokraattiset työläiset voivat tästedes liittyä suojeluskuntiin.
          Tänään lasketaan liikenteeseen Isänmaa-postimerkki.
          Kansanhuoltoministeriö vahvistaa halkojen enimmäishinnat. Tuoreet hyvät koivuhalot saavat maksaa esimerkiksi Tampereella 103 mk kuutiolta ja Viipurissa 93 mk kuutiolta.
          Olympiavoittaja Lauri Lehtinen ilmoittaa lahjoittavansa Los Angelesin vuoden 1932 olympiakisojen 5000 metrin kultamitalinsa annettavaksi jollekin Kannaksella kunnostautuneelle sotilaalle. Samalla Lehtinen haluaa tehdä kunniaa neljä päivää sitten kaatuneelle juoksijatoverilleen Gunnar Höckertille, joka juoksi samalla matkalla kultamitalin Berliinin olympialaisissa 1936.
    ^ Fienden bombar häftigt Villmanstrand Vinterkrigets 78 dag, den 15 februari 1940.
          >Den ryska 123. Divisionen har innan kvällen gjort en 2-3 kilometer bred och 6 kilometer djup inbrytning på Lähdeavsnittet vid Summa.
          Överbefälhavare Mannerheim fattar beslut om att förflytta trupperna på Näset till mellanställningen. Ordern ges till den II Armékåren kl. 20. Trupperna börjar återtåget till linjen Samolanlahti-Näykkijärvi-Muolaanjärvi-Äyräpäänjärvi.
          Fienden bombar häftigt Villmanstrand: 17 personer dödas och 53 skadas.
          I Kuhmo koncentreras striderna till Kesseli även om en del av den ökända Dolinska skidlöparbrigaden har spridit sig på ett brett område bakom den 9. Divisionen. Dolinska skidlöparbrigaden har krympt till ungefär 800 man och är fullständigt omringad.
          En rysk desantbataljon anfaller Petäjäsaari i Ladoga och biter sig fast nästan ett dygn framåt.
          I Ladoga-Karelen pågår häftiga strider om besittningen av Pukitsanmäki.
          Mottin i Lavajärvi upplöses. Hittills har fienden kunnat underhålla trupperna i mottin med hjälp av flygtransporter. Vid invaderingen av Lavajärvi by får Finland flera artilleripjäser, tre pansarbilar, åtta lastbilar, fyra fältkök och rikliga mängder vapen och ammunition som krigsbyte.
          Skyddskårsorganisationen och Finlands Socialdemokratiska Parti försonas efter 20 år av fientligheter. De socialdemokratiska arbetarna kan härefter ansluta sig till skyddskårerna.
          Idag ges Fosterlandsfrimärket ut.
          Folkförsörjningsministeriet fastställer maximipriserna för ved. Färsk bra björkved får kosta till exempel i Tammerfors 103 mk/kubikmeter och i Viborg 93 mk/kubikmeter.
          Olympiasegraren Lauri Lehtinen meddelar att han donerar guldmedaljen som han vann på 5000 meter i de olympiska spelen i Los Angeles år 1932 åt någon soldat som utmärkt sig på Näset. På samma gång vill Lehtinen ära sin löparkamrat Gunnar Höckert, som sprang guld på samma sträcka vid de olympiska spelen i Berlin år 1936 och som stupade för fyra dagar sedan.
    1940 Toeplitz, mathematician.
    1939 Henri Jaspar, 68, premier of Belgium (1926-31)
    1935 Pierre-Paulin Andrieu, French, born on 08 December 1849; ordained a Catholic priest on 29 May 1874; appointed Bishop of Marseille on 18 April 1901, consecrated a bishop on 25 July 1901; wahe a cardinal on 16 December 1907; appointed Archbishop of Bordeaux on 02 January 1909.
    1934 Jules Alexandre Grün, French painter, illustrator, and poster artist, born on 26 May 1868. — MORE ON GRÜN AT ART “4” FEBRUARY — Fin de Souper — 17 prints at Wet Canvas
    1928 Jacob Smits, Dutch Belgian painter born on 09 July 1856. — Evening Landscape
    1907 Giosué Carducci, poeta italiano.
    1900 John Walker, mathematician
    ^ 1898: 266 sailors aboard USS Maine as it explodes in Havana.
         An explosion sinks the battleship USS. Maine (built at a cost of more than two million dollars)[< photo] in the Havana, Cuba harbor, killing 266 of the 354 crew members. The sinking of the Maine incited United States passions against Spain, eventually leading to a naval blockade of Cuba and to the start of the Spanish-American War by the end of April.
         Le Maine saute mystérieusement en rade de la Havane. La capitale cubaine est espagnole depuis l'arrivée de Christophe Colomb en 1492. L'explosion du Maine est le signal de la guerre hispano-américaine, qui se terminera par le départ des espagnols. c'est pour Cuba une libération, car les occupants se sont toujours conduits en maître impitoyables, infligeant aux cubains des traitements contre lesquels s'étaient élevés les États Unis.  
          A massive explosion of unknown origin sinks the battleship USS Maine in Cuba’s Havana harbor, killing 266 of the 354 American crewmembers. One of the first American battleships, the Maine weighed over 6000 tons and was built at a cost of more than two million dollars. Ostensibly on a friendly visit, the Maine had been sent to Cuba to protect the interests of Americans there after a rebellion against Spanish rule broke out in Havana in January.
          An official US naval court of inquiry reports on 28 March that the ship had been blown up by a mine without laying blame on any person or nation in particular. However, an outraged American public overwhelmingly blames Cuba’s Spanish occupation force. Subsequent diplomatic failures to resolve the Maine matter, coupled with US indignation over Spain’s brutal suppression of the Cuban rebellion and continued losses to American investment, lead to the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in April of 1898. Within three months, the United States has decisively defeated Spanish forces on land and at sea, and on 12 August an armistice is signed. On 12 December 1898, the Treaty of Paris is signed between the US and Spain, officially ending the Spanish-American war and granting the United States its first overseas empire with the ceding of former Spanish possessions such as Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.
    Conséquences dramatiques de l'explosion du Maine
          Le cuirassé américain Maine est victime d'une explosion (accidentelle?) dans la rade de La Havane, à Cuba. Les Américains saisissent ce prétexte pour déclarer la guerre aux Espagnols qui gouvernent l'île avec une grande brutalité. Depuis plusieurs années, les colonisateurs font face à une insurrection des Cubains. Celle-ci a le soutien intéressé des hommes d'affaires américains qui ont beaucoup investi à Cuba et rêvent d'en évincer la vieille puissance coloniale. De son côté, le magnat de la presse Randolph Hearst désire relancer ses ventes de journaux. Il monte une violente campagne. Le président William McKinley se laisse sans trop de mal entraîner à la guerre. L'Espagne est défaite en quelques semaines et les Etats-Unis la remplacent comme puissance tutélaire à Cuba et dans quelques autres colonies. Avec un peu de retard sur les Européens, les Etats-Unis s'engagent dans une politique de conquêtes qui mènera les uns et les autres à la tragédie de 1914-1918.
    1887 Alexander Borodin composer.
    1880 Johannes Hendrik Weissenbruch, German artist born on 18 March 1824. — LINKS — Forest View near Barbizon — The Shipping Canal at Rijswijk (The View at Geestbrug)
    1857 Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka, 53, Russian composer
    1849 Verhulst, mathematician.
    1847 Dandelin, mathematician.
    1847 José Robolledo Palafox, militar español.
    1818 Charles XIII, 69, King of Sweden (1809-18)/Norway (1814-18)
    1637 Ferdinand II, 58, King of Bohemia/Hungary/German Emperor (1619-37)
    1624 Juan de Mariana, historiador español.
    1549 Giovanni Antonio Bazzi “il Sodoma”, Italian painter born in 1477. — MORE ON SODOMA AT ART “4” FEBRUARY — LINKS — The Death of Lucretia — Flagellation of Christ — The Road to Calvary — Saint Sebastian — St. George and the Dragon _ St. George and the Dragon — St. Benedict & his Monks Eating in the Refectory
    1525 Guatimozín, último emperador azteca de México, ejecutado por orden de Hernán Cortés.
    1400 Richard II British King (1377-99), murdered at Pontefract Castle
    1152 Konrad III, 58, Roman-German King (1138-1152)
    1145 Lucius II [Gherardo Caccianemici dal Orso], Bolognese Pope (1144-45)
    0120 Saints Faustinus and Jovita, martyred (probable date)
    Births which occurred on a February 15:
    1954 Matt Groening, cartoonist.
    1939 Isaías Duarte Cancino, in San Gil, Colombia. He would study for the priesthood at the Gregorian University in Rome, while living at the Seminario Pio Latino Americano, and be ordained a priest in Rome on 01 December 1963. He would be appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Bucaramanga on 10 April 1985 and be consecrated a bishop on 17 June 1985. He would be appointed Bishop of Apartadó on 18 June 1988 and Archbishop of Cali on 19 August 1995. He was murdered on 16 March 2002.
    1935 Roger Chaffee, US astronaut who died in the 27 January 1967 Apollo fire.
    1935 Susan Brownmiller, author
    1929 James Schlesinger US Secretary of Defense (1973-75)
    1927 Carlo Maria Martini SJ, who would be ordained a Jesuit priest on 13 July 1952, appointed on 29 December 1979 archbishop of Milan, Italy, consecrated bishop on 06 January 1980, made cardinal on 02 February 1982, retire as archbishop on 11 July 2002..
    ^ 1917 John Burgess Wilson “Anthony Burgess”, auteur de A Clockwork Orange
          S’il fut un film culte dans les "seventies", ce fut bien Orange Mécanique de Stanley Kubrick. C’est en 1971, grâce à Kubrick, qu’Anthony Burgess connut pour la première fois la grande notoriété lorsque fut porté à l’écran le roman A Clockwork Orange qu’il avait publié en 1962 et qui reste sans doute son plus brillant exploit. C’est une fable anti-utopique dans la tradition anglaise qui va de Swift à Huxley: des gangs de jeunes terrorisent la population d’une ville qui n’est plus qu’une immense zone urbaine déshumanisée; l’histoire est racontée, à la première personne et dans une langue, un idiolecte, qui amalgame de façon saisissante argot américain et lexique russe, par leur chef, Alex, voyou au charme pervers, archange passionné de musique classique et de langues anciennes pour qui cogner, violer, brûler, torturer, faire régner le mal dans sa pureté, est un acte de liberté spirituelle dans un monde programmé pour le progrès social et le bonheur.
          Anthony Burgess est né dans le Lancashire, d’une famille de musiciens: son père était pianiste, sa mère, morte alors qu’il avait un an, cantatrice d’opérette (il relate ces circonstances dans son autobiographie, Little Wilson and Big God, 1987). A 14 ans il décide de devenir écrivain. A Manchester, John Burgess Wilson (son vrai nom), étudia la littérature et la philologie avant de devenir lui-même professeur à l'université de Birmingham. En 1950, chargé des affaires scolaires dans le cadre du service colonial, il partit pour Borneo en Malaisie occidentale (1954-1959). C'est pendant ce séjour qu'il commença à écrire ; il y produisit ses trois premiers romans, publiés ensemble sous le titre La Trilogie malaise en 1972. C'est son roman Orange mécanique (1962) qui le fit connaître, et cette popularité devint un véritable culte en 1971, à la sortie du film réalisé par Stanley Kubrick. Le film était tellement saisissant dans sa représentation de la violence qu'il fut retiré de l'affiche en Grande-Bretagne, où il avait été accusé de provoquer de violents incidents.
          L'abondante production littéraire de Burgess dans les années 1960 et 1970 se caractérise par une extraordinaire invention verbale, une virtuosité ludique et par une satire sociale acerbe, d'un humour grinçant. Ses romans les plus récents traitent de la condition humaine au sein de la société moderne et sont hantés par la question du mal et de la culpabilité: ces thèmes sont abordés par exemple dans "les Puissances des ténèbres" (1980), "Dernières Nouvelles du monde" (1982) ou encore "le Royaume des mécréants" (1985). Burgess est également à l'origine d'une importante œuvre journalistique, ainsi que d'une œuvre critique qui comprend notamment des études consacrées à Joyce et des biographies de D.H.Lawrence et d'Hemingway. Il est aussi l'auteur d'ouvrages autobiographiques tels que Little Wilson and Big God ("le Petit Wilson et le grand Dieu").
    1916 Ian Ballantine publisher (Ballantine Books)
    1913 William Scott, British Abstract Expressionist painter who died in 1989. — LINKS
    1911 U. Maung Maung, jurista y político, presidente de Birmania.
    1908 Pedro Laín Entralgo, médico y ensayista español.
    ^ 1899 Georges Auric, à Lodève, dans l'Hérault, grand musicien français.
         Il reçut un enseignement musical au Conservatoire de Paris et à la Schola cantorum. Auric était le plus jeune du "Groupe des Six", groupe formé en réaction contre la suprématie de compositeurs comme Claude Debussy et Vincent d'Indy. La musique d'Auric pour la comédie-ballet "les Fâcheux" de Molière, a été sa première œuvre saluée par la critique. Il composa de la musique pour plusieurs films réalisés par le poète, peintre et metteur en scène Jean Cocteau, dont "le Sang d'un poète" (1930), "la Belle et la Bête" (1935) et "Orphée" (1949). Auric a également écrit des musiques pour des films américains, par exemple "Moulin-Rouge" (1953) et "Roman Holiday" (1953). De 1962 à 1968, Auric fut administrateur général de la Réunion des théâtres lyriques nationaux. <> Il est mort en 1983.
    1898 Conrado Nalé Roxlo, poeta, humorista y escritor argentino.
    1894 Oswaldo Aranha Brazil, lawyer/statesman (first President of UN)
    1892 James Forrestal, US banker, Secretary of Defense, who died on 22 May 1949.
    1882 Koebe, mathematician.
    1863 Pietro Scoppetta, Italian artist who died on 09 February 1920.
    1861 Alfred North Whitehead, English mathematician and philosopher who died on 30 December 1947 (Adventures of Ideas) — WHITEHEAD ONLINE: A treatise on universal algebra
    1853 Eduard Schleich II, German artist who died on 28 October 1893.
    1845 Elihu Root (R)/US Secretary of State (1905-09)/Nobel Peace Prize (1912)
    1839 Zeuthen, mathematician.
    1839 Adolph Mayer, mathematician.
    ^ 1836 Second Bank of US is chartered.
          Nicholas Biddle obtained a Pennsylvania charter for the ever-controversial second Bank of the United States. The move was a sad admission of defeat for Biddle, the embattled chief of the bank who had waged war against President Andrew Jackson throughout the early 1830s to preserve the institution's Federal status. Indeed, Biddle had legitimized the bank, transforming what, in the years immediately following its initial charter in 1816, was a seeming failure, into a viable, and even prosperous institution. But, Biddle could not fend off President Andrew Jackson, who bitterly opposed the concept of a Federal banking system. The president marshaled fierce attacks against Biddle's bank, cutting off the government's flow of deposits, as well as transferring Federal funds to various state banks. Biddle's supporters in the House, including members of the Whig party and other anti-Jacksonian forces, howled in protest and successfully pushed for the passage of a censure of the president (the resolution was later stripped from the Senate records). However, Jackson was simply too powerful an opponent and, when the bank's national charter expired in 1836, he successfully blocked Biddle's renewal efforts. The bank struggled on in Pennsylvania for a few years, before bad investments and mismanagement forced it to shut down in 1841.
    ^ 1835 Alexander Stewart Webb, future Union General.
         Webb is born in New York City. Webb's grandfather had fought at Bunker Hill during the US War of Independence, and his father, James Watson Webb, was a prominent newspaper editor and diplomat who served as minister to Brazil during the Civil War. The younger Webb, known as Andy to his family, attended West Point and graduated in 1855, 13th in a class of 34. He taught mathematics at West Point and in Florida before the Civil War. When the war broke out, Webb was assigned to defend Ft. Pickens, Florida, but was soon called to Washington and placed in the artillery in the army guarding the capital. He fought at the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861 as assistant to the chief of artillery, Major William Barry.
          A year later, Webb was in charge of the artillery at the Battle of Malvern Hill at the end of the Seven Days battles. In that engagement, Union cannon devastated attacking Confederate infantry, and Webb was commended for leading the artillery line. General Daniel Butterfield later said that Webb's leadership saved the Union army from destruction. Despite his numerous achievements, Webb was constantly passed over for promotion due to politics within the Army of the Potomac. He was closely associated with General George McClellan, and McClellan's removal in late 1862 left Webb stalled at colonel. Even some of his West Point students became generals before Webb, but the promotion finally came in June 1863.
          The new brigadier general played a key role at the Battle of Gettysburg just a few weeks later. On 03 July, Webb commanded troops defending the center of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge. He rallied his troops as they received the brunt of Pickett's Charge, and his actions earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor. Webb fought with the Army of the Potomac during the great campaign in the spring of 1864, and he was wounded in the head at the Bloody Angle, the most vicious fighting in the Battle of Spotsylvania. He was out of action for nearly eight months. When he returned, he became chief of staff for army commander General George Meade. After the war, Webb taught at West Point, served as president of the College of the City of New York, and wrote extensively about the war. He died in Riverdale, New York, in 1911. A statue of Webb adorns the Gettysburg battlefield near the spot where he earned the Medal of Honor.
    1834 Paul Camille Guigou, French artist who died on 21 December 1871.— The Washerwoman
    ^ 1834 William Henry Preece, telephone innovator
          A Welsh electrical engineer, Preece played an important role in the introduction of the wireless telegraph and telephone in Great Britain. As an engineer for the Post Office, he introduced numerous inventions, including a railroad signal and his own wireless telephone. Preece also introduced Alexander Graham Bell's telephone to Great Britain. Perhaps most importantly, Preece helped radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi attain the Post Office's assistance for his work on the wireless telegraph-later known as radio
    1823 Li Hung-Tshang Chinese rebel leader/viceroy of Tsheli Canton
    1820 Susan Brownell Anthony, Adams MA, co-founder of the National Woman Suffrage Association. She died on 13 March 1906.
    ^ 1812 Charles Lewis Tiffany, in Killingly, Connecticut.
          Tiffany headed to New York in 1837, where he and partner John B. Young opened a stationery and fancy goods shop. However, political upheaval in Europe in 1848 caused the prices of precious stones to plummet, giving Tiffany a perfect, and profitable, opening into the jewelry business. He snapped up a passel of suddenly cheap diamonds, including a few of the French Crown Jewels, which he later sold for a tidy sum, prompting the press to dub Tiffany "The King of Diamonds." Around the same time, Tiffany set about manufacturing gold jewelry. He moved rapidly to expand his business, acquiring John C. Moore’s leading silver operations in 1851. Two years later, Tiffany assumed complete control of the company and re-christened it "Tiffany & Co." During the ensuing years, he opened Tiffany branches around the world and produced special items for luminaries like First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. By the time Tiffany died in 1902, his company and its products were firmly entrenched as enduring vestiges of high culture.
    1811 Domingo F Sarmiento President of Argentina (1868-74) — Domingo Sarmiento, escritor y pedagogo, presidente argentino de 1868 a 1874.
    1809 Cyrus Hall McCormick inventor (Mechanical reaper)
    1808 Karl Friedrich Lessing, German artist who died on 05 June 1880.
    1797 Henry Engelhard Steinway, German-born US piano maker (Steinway). He died on 07 February 1871.
    1764 The city of Saint Louis is founded as a French fur-trading post by Pierre Laclède Liguest
    1751 Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, German painter specialized in Portraits who died on 26 June 1829. — MORE ON TISCHBEIN AT ART “4” FEBRUARY — LINKS — Goethe in The Roman Campagna
    1748 Jeremy Bentham, English philosopher, economist and exponent of Utilitarianism. He died on 06 June 1832. — BENTHAM ONLINE: Defence of Usury — The Elements of the Art of Packing As Applied to Special Juries: Particularly in Cases of Libel Law (1821) — A Fragment on Government — An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation — An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (PDF) — On the Liberty of the Press, and Public Discussion — The Rationale of Punishment — The Rationale of Reward — Selected Works and Commentary
    1710 Louis XV “le Bien-Aimé” [hum!], Versailles, King of France (1715-74)
    1705 Charles André van Loo, French artist who died on 15 July 1765. — Relative? of Louis-Michel van Loo [1707-1771], Charles Amédée Philippe van Loo [1719-1795] ?
    1622 Adam (Adrian) Pynaker, Dutch artist who died on 28 March 1673.
    1611 Cornelis Simonsz van der Schalcke, Dutch artist who died on 05 March 1671.
    1588 Bramer, mathematician.
    Galileo GalileiNaissance de Galileo Galilei, dit Galilée. «Eppure, si muove», aurait-il dit de la Terre après avoir été obligé par les juges ecclésiastiques de renier ses découvertes astronomiques.
    ^ 1564 Galileo Galilei nacque a Pisa, da Giulia Ammannati e Vincenzio Galilei, entrambi appartenenti alla media borghesia. Vincenzio, nato a Firenze nel 1520, ex liutista ed ex insegnante di musica, in passato era entrato in conflitto con la tradizione classica che attribuiva la consonanza tra tutti i suoni al controllo delle proporzioni numeriche ed aveva proposto idee proprie al riguardo.
          Era quindi ferrato in matematica, ma, intuendo le difficoltà pratiche che la professione di matematico presentava, spinse il figlio a studiare medicina proprio come un loro avo, quel Galileo Bonaiuti che nel XV secolo si era distinto nell'esercizio dell'arte medica ed in onore del quale un ramo della famiglia aveva preso il nome di Galilei. Galileo compì i primi studi di retorica, grammatica e logica nel monastero camaldolese di Vallombrosa ed entrò a far parte dell'ordine come novizio.
          La decisione non poté che contrariare Vincenzio, il quale, nutrendo appunto ben altri progetti per il figlio, lo fece tornare a Pisa e lo fece iscrivere a Medicina. I corsi della facoltà vertevano su Galeno e sui libri di scienza naturale di Aristotele, che costituirono i principali oggetti di critica da parte del giovane Galileo, sempre più attratto dalla matematica e dalla filosofia e sempre meno produttivo in veste di studente di medicina. Nel 1583 vi fu il suo incontro con Ostilio Ricci, un matematico probabile allievo di Tartaglia. Ricci era aggregato alla corte di Toscana e teneva le sue lezioni in volgare, come in volgare era scritto il testo di Euclide su cui basava i suoi corsi.
          Si trattava infatti della traduzione che ne aveva fatta lo stesso Niccolò Tartaglia, il quale, a differenza delle versioni latine, aveva chiarito la discrepanza esistente tra la teoria delle proporzioni di Eudosso e quella dell'aritmetica medievale, un chiarimento che si rivelò fondamentale per la formazione di Galileo. Le sue prime indagini nel campo della fisica lo portarono, tra l'83 e l'86, a determinare il peso specifico dei corpi tramite un congegno chiamato ‘bilancetta', simile ad un utensile già in uso presso i mercanti orafi. Nell'88 diede anche una prova della propria erudizione letteraria con delle lezioni su Dante tenute presso l'Accademia fiorentina.
          Nell'89, nonostante non si fosse laureato, grazie alla stima ed alla fama che si era guadagnato presso certe frange del mondo accademico ottenne la cattedra di Matematica all'Università di Pisa, un lavoro che gli assicurò l'indipendenza economica dal padre. A Pisa Galileo rimase 3 anni, durante i quali scoprì la legge di caduta dei gravi. Ma il periodo più sereno e fruttuoso della sua vita lo passò come insegnante di matematica presso l'Università di Padova, dove si trasferì nel 1592 e dove rimase per 18 anni. Qui continuò i suoi studi di meccanica e di astronomia, nell'ambito della quale abbracciò la teoria copernicana.
          Dal 1609 cominciò a perfezionare ed usare il cannocchiale come strumento per le osservazioni astronomiche. Il cannocchiale non era un'invenzione di Galileo (artigiani olandesi e italiani ne avevano già approntati diversi tipi) ma i miglioramenti che lo scienziato vi apportò inaugurarono l'epoca delle grandi scoperte astronomiche, di cui lo stesso Galilei diede annuncio nel Sidereus Nuncius (Ragguaglio astronomico) del 1610. I 4 maggiori satelliti di Giove, le montagne ed i crateri della Luna, le macchie solari, furono fenomeni fino ad allora sconosciuti che destarono meraviglia ed ammirazione tanto nel mondo accademico (Keplero riconobbe e confermò l'importanza delle scoperte di Galilei), quanto in certo ambiente politico (Cosimo dé Medici lo nominò matematico dello studio di Pisa), ma anche ostruzionismo ed astio da parte delle gerarchie ecclesiastiche (in particolare del cardinale Bellarmino) e degli aristotelici.
          Nel 1616 il Sant'Uffizio mise all'indice sia la cosmologia copernicana, sia le opere di Galileo, il quale venne convocato a Roma per giustificare le sue opinioni. Qui il suo tentativo di difendere le concezioni astronomiche copernicane (e le proprie) in quanto inoffensive nei confronti della Bibbia, venne respinto e lo scienziato fu intimato a non professarle più. Galileo continuò tuttavia ad approfondire ed ampliare i suoi studi e, nel 1623, compose in volgare Il Saggiatore, nel quale polemizzava con il padre gesuita Orazio Grassi riguardo alla natura delle comete e a problemi di ordine metodologico. Sempre nel '23 salì al soglio pontificio Urbano VIII, un Barberini che si era dimostrato disponibile nei suoi confronti, tanto che proprio all'ex cardinale, spirito illuminato ed aperto ai discorsi scientifici, Galileo aveva dedicato il Saggiatore.
          Nel 1632 pubblicò il Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo, un testo fondamentale per la scienza moderna in cui Galileo, sotto un'apparente neutralità, dava risalto all'astronomia copernicana a discapito di quella tolemaica. A causa dell'influenza di alcuni padri gesuiti, Urbano VIII ebbe allora un'involuzione e, nel 1633, Galileo venne processato a condannato al carcere a vita dal Sant'Uffizio, una pena da cui poté salvarsi solo abiurando le sue teorie. Il carcere a vita fu così commutato in isolamento, che Galileo scontò prima nel palazzo dell'Arcivescovado di Siena e poi nella sua villa di Arcetri.
          Morì a Firenze l'08 Jan 1642, circondato da pochi allievi e nella quasi totale cecità. Galileo Galilei è stato formalmente assolto dall'accusa di eresia solo nel 1992, trecentocinquanta anni dopo la sua morte.
    — Galileo Galilei, matemático y astrónomo italiano.
    GALILEO ONLINE:
  • Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo
          Concepita nel 1610, l’opera ebbe un tempo di composizione molto lungo, dovuto principalmente a periodi di infermità dello scienziato ed in seguito, a causa della condanna da parte del Sant’Uffizio nel 1616, al timore di dichiarare troppo apertamente la sua adesione al sistema copernicano. Dedicato a Ferdinando II dé Medici, granduca di Toscana, il Dialogo, articolato in 4 giornate, si svolge tra il fiorentino Filippo Salviati, portavoce di Galileo, il veneziano Giovan Francesco Sagredo, uomo di ingegno e di idee progressiste, ed il peripatetico Simplicio, dalla rigida impostazione scolastica. Nella prima giornata si discute del moto, nella seconda si entra nel vivo del sistema copernicano, nella terza si affronta la teoria delle stelle fisse e nell’ultima si apre il dibattito sul flusso e riflusso del mare, secondo Salviati-Galileo uno degli argomenti più forti a favore del sistema eliocentrico. Il Dialogo fu completato all’inizio del 1630 ma dovette superare molti problemi per avere l’approvazione ecclesiastica, per assecondare la quale fu mutato il titolo originale (Dialoghi attorno al flusso e reflusso del mare) e vennero cambiati alcuni passaggi. Pubblicata il 21 febbraio 1632 a Firenze, l’opera venne aspramente perseguita da papa Urbano VIII, che ne vietò la diffusione ed intimò a Galileo di presentarsi a Roma, dove venne sottoposto al famoso processo che lo costrinse all’abiura.
  • Sidereus Nuncius
          L'opera per mezzo della quale Galileo dà notizia della scoperta dei satelliti medicei e del loro moto di rivoluzione intorno a Giove, scoperta resa possibile dall'invenzione del cannocchiale. L'opera è disponibile in latino ed in italiano ed è corredata da numerose immagini. Si ringrazia la Casa Editrice Ricciardi per aver consentito l'uso della traduzione italiana di Luisa Lanzillotta.
  • La bilancetta
  • Capitolo contro il portar la toga (zipped)
  • Due lezioni all'Accademia fiorentina circa la figura, sito e grandezza dell'Inferno di Dante (zipped)
  • Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze
  • Discorso intorno alle cose che stanno in su l'acqua o che in quella si muovono
  • Lettere
  • Le mecaniche
  • Le operazioni del compasso geometrico e militare
  • Le opere Volume X — Volume XI — Volume XII — Volume XIII — Volume XIV — Volume XV (zipped)
  • Il Saggiatore
  • Trattato di fortificazione
    • 1524 Charles de Guise archbishop/cardinal of Reims
    1519 Pedro Menéndez de Aviles, Spanish sailor who explored Florida and founded St Augustine FL. He died on 17 September 1574.
    1497 Philipp Melanchthon Germany, Protestant reformer
    1483 Babur founder of Mughal dynasty in India (1526-30
    1368 Sigismund Nürnberg Germany, Holy Roman emperor (1410-37)
    0037 Claudius Drusus Germanicus Caesar Nero emperor of Rome (54-68)
    Saints of the day: Santos Cratón, Faustino, Jovita, Severo y Quinidio. / Saint Claude de la Colombière est un jésuite né en 1642 à Saint Symphorien d'Ozon, près de Lyon. Humaniste réputé, il participe à l'essor du culte du Sacré-Cœur. En mission à Londres, il est persécuté et revient mourir à Paray-le-Monial.
    MAKE-OVER
    An Amish boy and his father were visiting a near-by mall. They were amazed by almost everything they saw, but especially by two shiny, silver wall panels moved apart and back together again by themselves. The lad asked his Father, “What is this, father?” The father (never having seen an elevator) responded, “I have never seen anything like this in my life. I don't know what it is.” While the boy and his father were watching wide-eyed, an old lady in a wheel chair rolled up to the moving panels and pressed a button. The panels opened and the lady rolled between them into a small room. The panels closed and the boy and his father watched small circles of lights with numbers above the panels light up. The panels opened up again and a beautiful twenty-four-year-old woman stepped out. The Father looked at his son and said, “Go get your mother.”
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