1978 Israeli jet fighters swoop over mostly Moslem West Beirut
1978 Se concede la independencia a las Islas Salomón.
1976 Women inducted into U.S.
Naval Academy
^top^
In Annapolis, Maryland, the United
States Naval Academy admits women for the first time in its
history with the induction of eighty-one female midshipmen.
In May of 1980, Elizabeth Anne Rowe became the first female
member of the class to graduate, and four years later, Kristine
Holderied became the first female midshipman to graduate at
the top of her class. On October 10, 1845, the U.S. Naval Academy
opened in Annapolis, Maryland, with fifty midshipmen students
and seven professors. Known as the Naval School until 1850,
the curriculum included mathematics and navigation, gunnery
and steam, chemistry, English, natural philosophy, and French.
The Naval School officially became the U.S. Naval Academy in
1850, and a new curriculum went into effect requiring midshipmen
to study at the Academy for four years and to train aboard ships
each summer--the basic format that remains at the academy to
this day. |
1975 Comoros declare independence from France (most of them)
1972 El presidente del Partido Liberal Demócrata, Kakuei
Tanaka, es nombrado primer ministro del Japón y comienza un acercamiento
a China.
1971 White House Plumbers unit formed to plug news leaks
1971 Hastings
Kamuzu Banda se autoproclama presidente vitalicio de la República
y del Partido del Congreso de Malawi.
1967 Newborn
Biafra fights for its life
^top^
Five weeks after the breakaway
state of Biafra declared its independence from Nigeria, civil
war breaks out between Biafran and Nigerian government forces.
In 1966, six years after Nigeria won its independence, the Muslim
Hausas in northern Nigeria began massacring the Christian Igbos
in the region, prompting tens of thousands of Igbos to flee
to the east, where their people were the dominant ethnic group.
The Igbos doubted that Nigeria's
oppressive military government would allow them to develop,
or even survive, and so on May 30, 1967, Lieutenant Colonel
Chukwuemeka Ojukwu and other Igbo and non-Igbo representatives
of the area established the Republic of Biafra, comprising the
East-Central, South-Eastern, and Rivers states of Nigeria. After
diplomatic efforts by Nigeria failed to reunite the country,
war between Nigeria and Biafra breaks out. Ojukwu's forces make
some initial advances, but Nigeria's superior military would
gradually reduce the territory under Biafran control.
The breakaway state lost its
oil fields--its main source of revenue--and without the funds
to import food, at least a million of its civilians died as
a result of severe malnutrition. With the exception of a few
African states, the international community largely ignored
the plight of the Biafran people. On January 11, 1970, Nigerian
forces captured the provincial capital of Owerri, one of the
last Biafran strongholds, and Biafran leader Ojukwu was forced
to flee to the Ivory Coast. Four days later, on January 15,
1970, Biafra surrendered to Nigeria. |
1966 Malawi becomes a republic
1964 Malawi (then Nyasaland) gains independence from Britain
(Natl Day)
1964 Viet Cong attack US Special
Forces at Nam Dong
^top^
At Nam Dong in the northern highlands
of South Vietnam, an estimated 500-man Viet Cong battalion attacks
a US Special Forces outpost. During a bitter battle, Capt. Roger
C. Donlon, commander of the Special Forces A-Team, rallied his
troops, treated the wounded, and directed defenses although
he himself was wounded several times. After five hours of fighting,
the Viet Cong withdrew. The battle resulted in an estimated
40 Viet Cong killed; two Americans, 1 Australian military adviser,
and 57 South Vietnamese defenders also lost their lives. At
a White House ceremony in December 1964, President Lyndon B.
Johnson presented Captain Donlon with the first Medal of Honor
of the Vietnam War |
1963 Hopes for peaceful coexistence
with USSR, in US government.
^top^
In the light of a deepening ideological
rift between the Soviet Union and China, U.S. officials express
their belief that Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev will seek
closer relations with the United States. Unfortunately, the
optimism was somewhat misplaced. Although China and the Soviet
Union announced a serious split in mid-July 1963, Khrushchev's
days in office were numbered. Officials in the U.S. government
watched with tremendous interest the developing rift between
the Soviet Union and China in the early 1960s. The ideological
split centered around the Chinese perception that the Russians
were becoming too "soft" in their revolutionary zeal and too
accommodating to Western capitalist powers. In mid-1963, Chinese
and Soviet representatives met in Moscow to try to mend the
damage. U.S. diplomats were convinced that the rift was irreversible.
As a consequence, they believed Khrushchev would become much
more receptive to better relations with the United States in
order to isolate further the communist Chinese.
Thus, on 06 July 1963, the
New York Times carried several related stories, based on
statements from "responsible" figures in the administration
of President John F. Kennedy, about the hopes for a meaningful
"peaceful coexistence" between the Soviet Union and United States.
Khrushchev himself had coined the term "peaceful coexistence"
in the late 1950s, indicating that the hope for better U.S.-Soviet
relations was not entirely one-sided. Kennedy obviously hoped
to build on these feelings to prepare the way for the success
of arms control talks with the Soviets scheduled for later in
the month. This hope was realized when the Soviet Union and
United States signed a treaty banning the aboveground testing
of nuclear weapons in August 1963. Just a few days after the
newspaper stories concerning improved U.S.-Soviet relations,
the Russians and Chinese officially announced their ideological
split. Any benefits the United States hoped would accrue from
this development in terms of a closer working relationship with
Khrushchev, however, were swept away in 1964 when the Russian
leader was removed from power by more hard-line elements of
the Soviet government. Almost overnight, talk of "peaceful coexistence"
disappeared and the Cold War divisions once again hardened.
|
1960 Se inaugura una exposición de Pablo
Ruiz Picasso en la Tate Gallery de Londres.
1959 Saar becomes
part of German Federal Republic
1958 Alaska becomes the 49th US state
1955 Diem says South Vietnam
not bound by Geneva Agreements
^top^
South Vietnamese President Ngo
Dinh Diem declares in a broadcast that since South Vietnam had
not signed the Geneva Agreements, South Vietnam was not bound
by them. Although Diem did not reject the "principle of elections,"
he said that any proposals from the communist Viet Minh were
out of the question "if proof is not given us that they put
the higher interest of the national community above those of
communism." The Geneva Conference had begun on 26 April 1954,
to negotiate an end to the First Indochina War between the French
and the Viet Minh forces of Ho Chi Minh. The negotiations resulted
in the signing of a truce on 20 July.
The agreement fixed a provisional
demarcation line roughly along the 17th parallel (which would
eventually be most improperly called the Demilitarized Zone,
DMZ), pending countrywide elections to be held in July 1956.
It also allowed the evacuation of French forces north of that
line, and Viet Minh forces south of it. Freedom of movement
from either zone was allowed for 300 days, and restrictions
were imposed on future military alliances. An International
Control Commission was formed with representatives from India,
Canada, and Poland to supervise implementation of the agreement,
including the scheduled elections. The whole package of agreements
became known as the Geneva Accords.
The agreement was reached over
the objections of South Vietnam, which refused to sign it. Likewise,
the United States did not concur with the accords, but pledged
that it would refrain from use of force or the threat of force
to disturb their provisions. However, United States representatives
declared that the U.S. would look upon renewed aggression in
violation of the agreement "with grave concern." The Geneva
Accords ended the war between the French and Viet Minh, but
set the stage for renewed conflict. When Diem, realizing the
strength of Ho Chi Minh's support in South Vietnam, blocked
the elections that were called for in the accords, the United
States, citing alleged North Vietnamese truce violation, supported
him. No longer able to use the elections as a means to reunify
Vietnam, the communists turned to force of arms to defeat South
Vietnam. This war lasted until 1975, when the North Vietnamese
launched their final offensive. South Vietnam, no longer supported
by the United States, which had departed in 1973, fell to the
communists in 55 days. |
1955 Smog
control ^top^
The Federal Air Pollution Control
Act was implemented on this day in 1955, providing federally
allocated funds for research into causal analysis and control
of car-emission pollution. Concern over the effects of air-pollution
had mounted steadily in the U.S. as urban sprawl increased.
The disastrous fog and attendant
high levels of sulfur dioxide and particulate pollution (and
probably also sulfuric acid) that occurred in London in the
second week of December 1952 led to the deaths of more than
4000 people during that week and the subsequent three weeks.
Many, but not all, of the victims already had chronic heart
or lung disease. Prize cattle at an agricultural show also died
in the same period as a result of the air pollution. Though
both the cause and the precise effects of the fog were unclear,
the phenomenon sparked an international concern about the effects
of emissions pollution.
The following year, Dr. Arie
Haagen-Smit discovered the nature of photochemical smog, determining
that nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons combined with ultraviolet
radiation from the sun created smog. He also discovered that
ozone played a key role in the bonding process that created
smog. It was at this time that the U.S. began a rapid shift
from coal as an energy source, replacing it with natural gas.
It would not be until 1960 that
the government specifically addressed car-emissions pollution
as a legal issue, with the Federal Motor Vehicle Act of 1960,
calling for further research and development into the control
of car emissions. The next year, the first automotive emissions
control technology--positive crankcase ventilation (PCV)--was
mandated by the California Motor Vehicle Board. PCV technology
limited hydrocarbon emission by returning blow-by gases from
the crankcase back to a car's cylinders, where they were burned
with fuel and air. In 1963, the first Federal Clean-Air Act
was passed, allocating research money for local and federal
institutions to combat air-pollution. |
1953 El coronel Adib Al-Sisa-Kli es elegido presidente de la República
Siria.
1952 Adolfo
Ruiz Cortines, candidato del PRI,
vence en las elecciones presidenciales en una jornada marcada por los
desórdenes.
1947 La ley de Sucesión en la Jefatura del Estado Español en favor
de Franco
es refrendada por un 92% de los votos.
1946 Argentina reivindica la soberanía sobre las islas
Malvinas. El Parlamento solicita al Gobierno que se someta el pleito
con Gran Bretaña al consejo de seguridad de la ONU.
1945 Nicaragua becomes first nation to formally accept UN Charter
— Nicaragua es el primer estado en aceptar la carta
de las Naciones Unidas.
 1942
Frank family hides from Nazis
^top^
In Nazi-occupied
Holland, thirteen-year-old Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her
family were forced to take refuge in a secret sealed-off area
of an Amsterdam warehouse. The day before, Anne's older sister,
Margot, had received a call-up notice to be deported to a Nazi
"work camp."
Born in Germany on June 12, 1929,
Anne Frank fled to Amsterdam with her family in 1933 to escape
Nazi persecution. In the summer of 1942, with the German occupation
of Holland underway, twelve-year-old Anne began a diary relating
her everyday experiences, her relationship with her family and
friends, and observations about the increasingly dangerous world
around her.
Just a few months later, under
threat of deportation to Nazi concentration camps, the Frank
family was forced into hiding in a secret sealed-off area of
an Amsterdam warehouse. Over the next two years, under the threat
of murder by the Nazi officers patrolling just outside the warehouse,
Anne kept a diary that is marked by poignancy, humor, and insight.
On 4 August 1944, just two months
after the successful Allied landing at Normandy, the Nazi Gestapo
discovered the Frank’s "Secret Annex." Along with another Jewish
family with whom they had shared the hiding place, and two of
the Christians who had helped shelter them, the Franks were
sent to the Nazi death camps. Anne and most of the others had
ended up at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, although
her diary was left behind, undiscovered by the Nazis.
In early 1945, with the Soviet
liberation of Poland underway, Anne was moved with her sister,
Margot, to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany.
Suffering under the deplorable conditions of the camp, the two
sisters caught typhus and died in early March, probably on March
12 in the case of Anne..
After the war, Anne’s diary was
discovered undisturbed in the Amsterdam hiding place, and in
1947, was translated into English and published. An instant
bestseller which was eventually translated into over thirty
languages, The Diary of Anne Frank has served as a literary
testament to the six million Jews, including Anne herself, who
were silenced in the Holocaust. |
1940 Japan demands that the Burma road be closed
by the British. It is a key supply route of arms for China, Japan's prey.
Britain initially balks at the request but, fearing a declaration of
war by a third enemy, caves in and closes the road, though only for a
limited period.
1936 En la revista Time
aparece la crítica literaria de la novela Gone
With the Wind, de Margaret
Mitchell.
1936 46ºC, Moorhead, Minnesota (state record)
1936 49ºC, Steele, North Dakota (state record)
1932 first class postage back up to 3 cents from 2 cents
1931 Entra en vigor en Estados Unidos la moratoria sobre las deudas
de guerra, decretada por Herbert
Hoover para reactivar las exportaciones.
1928 first all-talking motion picture shown, in NY (Lights of
NY)
1928 Worlds largest hailstone 1« lbs (17') falls in Potter Nebraska
1925 Se constituye en España el Partido de la Unión Patriótica,
presidido por el general Miguel
Primo de Rivera.
1924 first photo sent experimentally across Atlantic by radio,
US-England
1922 Jacinto
Benavente pierde en Nueva York el pleito sobre La malquerida
interpuesto contra John Underhill, traductor al inglés de sus obras.
1917 Lawrence
de Arabia triunfa en su empeño de unificar a los árabes contra el
Imperio otomano. — During World War I, Arab forces led by T.E. Lawrence
captured the port of Aqaba from the Turks
| 1914 Monday : in the aftermath of the June
28 assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Francis Ferdinand of
Austria-Hungary and of his wife, Sophia:
Having completed his meeting with Hoyos and Szogyeny, the
Kaiser departs for his annual North Sea cruise. The twenty
day cruise had been planned for months and the Kaiser saw
nothing in events that would cause him to cancel it. Besides
it might appear that something was wrong should the cruise
be cancelled.
|
1908 Robert Peary's expedition sails from NYC for the North
Pole
1906 Se encarga al general López
Domínguez la formación de un nuevo gobierno en España.
1894 Cleveland sends 2000 troops to Chicago to suppress Pullman
strike
Pasteur successfully tests
an anti-rabies vaccine on a boy who had been bitten by an infected
dog. ^top^
1885 Pasteur sauve un enfant
de la rage
Joseph Meister va mourir, il
a été mordu par un chien enragé. Si Pasteur le laisse repartir
pour l'Alsace, le jeune garçon va mourir dans les atroces souffrances
que provoque la rage.
Il faut essayer. Même si ce vaccin réalisé avec de la moelle
desséchée prélevée sur des lapins rabiques ne peut être considéré
comme sûr. L'académie condamne la tentative de Pasteur. Certains
laissent entendre que si Louis
Pasteur a pu mettre au point un procédé qui permet la conservation
des liquides fermentescibles, cela ne l'autorise pas pour autant
à pratiquer la médecine. Pasteur, en ce jour, inocule pourtant
le vaccin au petit Joseph. La mort de l'enfant, quelques jours
plus tard, n'empêche pas qu'une page de l'histoire de la médecine
ait été tournée. En réalité, ce n’est pas Pasteur qui injecta
le vaccin. Selon la Loi Française, il n’en avait pas le droit.
C’est un de ses assistants qui le fit ! Pasteur n’était pas
médecin. |
1864 España se convierte en país pionero en el reconocimiento
de la Cruz
Roja como sociedad de utilidad pública.
1864
Early capture of Hagerstown, Maryland
^top^
Confederate General Jubal Early's
troops cross the Potomac River and occupy Hagerstown, Maryland.
Early had sought to threaten Washington, D.C., and thereby relieve
pressure on General Robert E. Lee, who was fighting to keep
Ulysses S. Grant out of Richmond. During the brutal six-week
campaign against Grant in June 1864, Lee was under tremendous
pressure. On 12 June he dispatched Jubal Early to Lynchburg,
in western Virginia, to hold off a Union attack by General David
Hunter. After defeating Hunter, Early was ordered to head down
the Shenandoah Valley to the Potomac. Lee hoped that this threat
to Washington would force Grant to return part of his army to
the capital and protect it from an embarrassing capture by the
Confederates. Lee was inspired by a similar Shenandoah campaign
by Stonewall Jackson in 1862, in which Jackson occupied three
Federal armies in a brilliant military show. However, the circumstances
were different in 1864. Grant now had plenty of men, and Lee
was stretched thin around the Richmond-Petersburg perimeter.
Still, the first part of Early's raid was successful. His force
crossed the Potomac on 06 July and a cavalry brigade under John
McCausland rode into Hagarstown. Early instructed McCausland
to demand $200,000 from the city officials of Hagarstown for
damages caused by Hunter in the Shenandoah Valley, but McCausland
felt the amount was too large, so he asked for $20,000. After
receiving the money, Early's army turned southeast toward Washington.
The Confederates reached the outskirts of the city before being
turned away by troops from Grant's army. |
1863 Northern Territory passes from New South Wales to South Australia
1862 Mark Twain begins reporting
in Virginia City
^top^
Writing under the name of Mark
Twain, Samuel Clemens begins publishing news stories in the
Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. Born in Missouri in 1835,
Clemens followed a circuitous route to becoming an observer
and writer of the American West. As a young man he apprenticed
as a printer and worked in St. Louis, New York, and Philadelphia.
In 1856, he briefly considered a trip to South America where
he thought he could make money collecting coca leaves. A year
later, he became a riverboat pilot apprentice on the Mississippi
River, and worked on the water for the next four years. In 1861,
Clemens' brother Orion was appointed secretary to the territorial
governor of Nevada. Clemens jumped at the offer to accompany
Orion on his western adventure. He spent his first year in Nevada
prospecting for a gold or silver mine but was no more successful
than the vast majority of would-be miners.
In need of money, he accepted
a job as reporter for a Virginia City, Nevada, newspaper called
The Territorial Enterprise. His articles covering the
bustling frontier-mining town began to appear on this day in
1862. Like many newspapermen of the day, Clemens adopted a pen
name, signing his articles with the name Mark Twain, a term
from his old river boating days. Clemens' stint as a Nevada
newspaperman revealed an exceptional talent for writing. In
1864, he traveled farther West to cover the booming state of
California. Fascinated by the frontier life, Clemens drew on
his western experiences to write one of his first published
works of fiction, the 1865 short story The Celebrated Jumping
Frog of Calaveras County. The success of this classic western
tall tale catapulted Clemens out of the West, and he became
a world-hopping journalist for a California newspaper.
In 1869, Clemens settled in Buffalo,
New York, and later in Hartford, Connecticut. All told, Clemens
spent only a little more than five years in the West, and the
majority of his subsequent work focused on the Mississippi River
country and the Northeast. As a result, Clemens can hardly be
defined as a western writer. Still, his 1872 account of his
western adventures, Roughing It, remains one of the most original
and evocative eyewitness accounts of the frontier ever written.
More importantly, even his non-western masterpieces like Tom
Sawyer (1876) and Huckleberry Finn (1884) reflected a frontier
mentality in their rejection of eastern pretentiousness and
genteel literary conventions. |
1809 Victoire à Wagram
^top^
Napoléon est encore face aux
armées autrichiennes. Le Danube sépare les deux armées. Le 4,
Napoléon fait occuper l'île Lobau. pendant un violent orage,
vers 9 heures du soir, l'empereur fait jeter sur le bras nord
du fleuve trois ponts, par lesquels ils fait passer ses troupes.
Le 5, l'armée française affronte en vain les Autrichiens. Leur
position en équerre surprend l'empereur. Mais le 6, son plan
de bataille prend en compte ce qu'il a découvert.
La bataille commence par une
intense préparation d'artillerie. Et l'attaque est lancée à
la charnière de l'équerre autrichienne. L'armée autrichienne,
coupée en deux, se replie. Epuisée, la cavalerie française ne
parvient pas à poursuivre les fuyards. Qu'importe à l'empereur
qui écrit à Joséphine : "L'armée ennemie fuit en désordre et
tout marche selon mes voeux. Mes pertes sont assez fortes ;
mais la victoire est décisive et complète." Les conditions imposées
par Napoléon furent très dures : cession de la Carinthie, de
l’Istrie, de la Carniole ainsi que de Trieste, plaque tournante
d’un important trafic de contrebande. Cet ensemble fut rattaché
aux provinces de l’Illyrie et placé sous la souveraineté d’un
gouverneur Français. |
1798 US law makes aliens "liable to be apprehended, restrained,...
and removed as alien enemies"
1789 Le peuple de Paris réclame
du pain ^top^
Introuvable, le délicieux pain
de Gonesse... Le pain-ballet, quoique de qualité inférieur,
manque lui aussi. Quant au pain d'alise pétri avec les reste
de pâte manque tout autant. Les compagnons boulangers et les
artisans les autorités municipales d'être responsables de cette
situation. Les blés de printemps ont gelé, l'approvisionnement
est irrégulier. La foule gronde devant les boulangeries de Paris
qui doivent nourrir 600'000 bouches. Le peuple de Paris, pour
lequel le pain est le fondement de la nourriture quotidienne,
crie : " Vivre, c'est mordre dans son pain ". |
1785 Congress decides on US currency named "dollar" and adopts
decimal coinage
1777 British General Burgoyne captures Fort
Ticonderoga from Americans
1713 Juan
Manuel Fernández Pacheco, marqués de Villena, resulta elegido primer
director de la Real
Academia Española de la Lengua.
1699 Captain William
Kidd arrested in Boston
1685 Bataille de Sedgemoor en Angleterre. Jacques II écrase les
paysans des ducs de Monmouth et d'Argyll. Malgré cette victoire, il ne
restera que quelques mois sur le trône et viendra se réfugier en France
où il finira ses jours.
1483 England's King Richard III crowned.
|
On
a July 06: 
Deaths
Sir
Thomas More, executed for “treason”
