29 Jul History: This Date

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• 101st Airborne arrives in Vietnam... • Army chases vets out of DC... • GM buys Cadillac... • Reb woman spy caught... • Potato Famine revolt crushed... • Franciscan expedition to Colorado... • Invincible Armada vanquished... • Indianapolis crew starts dying... • King Umberto I murdered... • Van Gogh's suicide... • NASA is born...

On a 29 July:
2001 Elections in Japan for 121 of the 247 seats of the upper house of Parliament, seen as a referendum endorsing Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's plans for painful economic changes. The Liberal Democratic Party-led 3-party coalition wins well above the 63 seats it needs to keep control.
2000 In his boat off Acapulco, José Rojas Mayarita, 39, is reeling in a 3-meter marlin when it leaps at him and stabs him through the abdomen. The swordfish's spear comes out the other side. Unable to get up, Rojas would drift for two days in his boat, until another vessel rescues him

1996 Communications Decency Act ruled out by First Amendment ^top^
A special federal court panel in New York found the Communications Decency Act of 1996 too broad in its restriction of indecent speech on the Internet. The law made it a crime to transmit indecent material to minors. The New York panel found that users transmitting offensive content had no way to be certain the material would not reach children and could not easily defend against it. The court found that any benefits the law might provide were outweighed by its infringement on First Amendment rights. The act was later struck down by the Supreme Court.

1996 China detonates a nuclear test explosion that it promises will be its last, just hours before international negotiators in Geneva began discussing a global ban on such testing.

1995 Software reports it's being pirated      ^top^
      A computer program alerted its parent company that its source code is being examined by a rival company, launching a complex industrial espionage lawsuit. Newspapers report that Performix, which produced a widely used program measuring server performance, sued competitor Mercury Interactive, a large public company, for illegally obtaining a copy of its software. Performix, which had recently spurned a merger offer from Mercury, had provided a copy of the program in June 1995 to a small company called Styx Systems that claimed to represent a top-secret government agency. The program contained a "phone home" code, instructing the computer to send e-mail to Performix whenever it was improperly installed.
      On 20 July 1995, a computer at Mercury sends a message to Performix saying that the sample copy provided to Styx is running on Mercury computers. Performix and Mercury would negotiate a settlement, but the case raised important questions not only about the sharing of software code, but also about the propriety of so-called "phone home" programs.

1991 US President Bush arrives in Moscow for a superpower summit meeting with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev which will include the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.
1988 FDIC bails out 1st Republic Bank, Dallas, with $4 billion
1988 General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, 57, in furtherance of his policies of glasnost and perestroika, pushes plan electing president & parliament of USSR in March, 1989
1988 Judge orders NASA to release unedited tape from Challenger cockpit
1988 South African government bans anti-apartheid film Cry Freedom.
1981 Diana Frances Spencer, 20, becomes Princess Diana of Wales as she marries Prince Charles of Wales in a globally televised ceremony. Years later she would divorce, and die on 31 August 1997 in an automobile accident while fleeing from paparazzi.

1978 Penny Dean swims English Channel in record 7h40m
1978 Pioneer 11 transmits images of Saturn and its rings.
1975 The Nigerian military government of Gen. Yakubu Gowan is overthrown in a bloodless coup led by Brig. Murtala Ramat Muhammad, with Colonel Joleph Garba (17 July 1943 – 01 June 2002) and other middle-ranking army officers, in order to restore democracy within 4 years. In 1978 a National Constituent Assembly approves a new democratic constitution. In 1979 elections Alhaji Shehu Shagari is elected federal president and Dr. Alex Ekwueme vice president. But in 1983 a group of senior military officers under Gen. Muhammadu Buhari seize power.
1974 Watergate: The House Judiciary Committee approves Article II of impeachment by a vote of 28 to 10. The charge is systematic abuse of power and violations of citizens' constitutional rights. Included in this is mention(?) of the 1969-1971 wiretapping program.
1974 The first eleven women priests in the Episcopal Church are ordained in Philadelphia's Church of the Advocate.
1973 Greek plebiscite chooses republic over monarchy

1972 Dovish Clark visits North Vietnam ^top^
Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark visits North Vietnam as a member of the International Commission of Inquiry into US War Crimes in Indochina. This commission was formed to investigate alleged US bombing of non-military targets in North Vietnam. Clark reported over Hanoi radio that he had seen damage to hospitals, dikes, schools, and civilian areas. His visit stirred intense controversy at home. Nothing ever came of Clark's claims, but he was lauded by antiwar activists for pointing out the damage done by the US bombing attacks. Others condemned Clark as a traitor to the United States.

1970 6 days of race rioting in Hartford Ct
1968 Senior leaders of Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union met at Cierna to try and resolve their differences over Czech reforms.

1965 US 101st Airborne Division arrives in Vietnam      ^top^
      The first 4000 paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division arrive in Vietnam, landing at Cam Ranh Bay. They made a demonstration jump immediately after arriving, observed by Gen. William Westmoreland and outgoing Ambassador (formerly General) Maxwell Taylor. Taylor and Westmoreland were both former commanders of the division, which was known as the "Screaming Eagles." The 101st Airborne Division has a long and storied history, including combat jumps during the invasion of Normandy on 06 June 1944, and the subsequent Market-Garden airborne operation in the Netherlands. Later, the division distinguished itself by its defense of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. The 1st Brigade fought as a separate brigade until 1967, when the remainder of the division arrived in Vietnam.
      The combat elements of the division consisted of 10 battalions of airmobile infantry, six battalions of artillery, an aerial rocket artillery unit armed with rocket-firing helicopters, and an air reconnaissance unit. Another unique feature of the division was its aviation group, which consisted of three aviation battalions of assault helicopters and gunships. The majority of the 101st Airborne Division's tactical operations were in the Central Highlands and in the A Shau Valley farther north. Among its major operations was the brutal fight for Ap Bia Mountain, known as the "Hamburger Hill" battle. The last Army division to leave Vietnam, the remaining elements of the 101st Airborne Division returned to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where today it is the Army's only airmobile division. During the war, troopers from the 101st won 17 Medals of Honor for bravery in combat. The division suffered almost 20,000 soldiers killed or wounded in action in Vietnam, over twice as many as the 9,328 casualties it suffered in World War II.

1961 Wallis & Futuna Islands become a French overseas territory
1958 Pres Eisenhower signs NASA & Space Act of 1958
1957 International Atomic Energy Agency established by UN
1956 Calypso of Yves-Jacques Cousteau, 46, anchors in 7500 m of water (record)
1952 1st nonstop transpacific flight by a jet

1947 ENIAC back on, now with memory ^top^
ENIAC, one of the world's first digital computers, is turned back on after receiving a memory implant. The machine, built by a team of engineers headed by John Mauchly and Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania, had been accepted by the Army in June 1946, then moved to army facilities in Aberdeen, Maryland. Meanwhile, John Von Neumann had come up with a proposal to give the machine rudimentary storage capacity, which the machine lacked. The machine was shut off November 9, 1946, for refurbishment. After being rebooted on 29 July 1947, the machine would remained on and in service until October 2, 1955.

1945 After delivering parts of the first atomic bomb to the island of Tinian, the USS. Indianapolis is sunk by a Japanese submarine. The survivors are adrift for two days before help arrives.
1936 RCA shows the 1st real TV program (dancing, film on locomotives, Bonwit Teller fashion show & monologue from Tobacco Road & comedy)

1932 US Army chases veterans out of Washington      ^top^
      The Great Depression sent poverty-stricken people in the US scrambling for any available source of income. Veterans of World War I certainly felt pinched, and cast about for ways to haul in cash, but, unlike those who hadn't fought in the war, the veterans seemingly had a solution: in the wake of the war, the government had promised to hand out handsome cash bonuses to all servicemen. The catch was the bonuses were to be paid out in 1945. In dire need of money, veterans called on legislators during the spring and summer of 1932 to speed up payment of the bonuses. In May, a group of veterans from Portland, Oregon, staged the "Bonus March" and headed to Washington, D.C., to plead their case. The March fast became a mini-movement, and by June a "Bonus Army" of 20'000 vets had set up shop in Washington.
      At first all seemed to go well for the veterans, as the House of Representatives passed the Patman Bonus Bill, which called for the early payment of bonuses. The Senate, however, killed the Patman legislation. Though part of the Bonus Army left Washington after the bill's defeat, some veterans stayed on through late July. President Herbert Hoover ordered the ousting of the vets who had camped on government grounds. When the eviction proceedings turned ugly, and two veterans were killed, Hoover called on the army to disperse the remaining Bonus protesters.
      General Douglas MacArthur, and his young assistant Dwight Eisenhower, marshaled troops, tanks and tear gas in their war to send the stragglers home. Duly persuaded by this gross show of force, the remaining members of the Bonus Army head home on 29 July 1932.

1930 46ºC, Holly Springs, Mississippi (state record)
1921 Adolf Hitler becomes the president of the Nationalist Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazis).
1920 1st transcontinental airmail flight from NY to SF
1915 US Marines land at Port-au-Prince to protect US interests in Haiti., stay until 1924
1914 First US transcontinental telephone conversation (between New York and San Francisco).

1909 GM buys Cadillac, lock, stock, and management      ^top^
      The Buick Motor Company acquires the Cadillac Motor Company on behalf of General Motors for $4.5 million.
      Cadillac was born from the ashes of the Henry Ford Company, a business organized by William Murphy to produce a car by Henry Ford. Murphy had been one of the original backers of the Detroit Automobile Company, which had dissolved in 1901after Ford had failed to build a car he was willing to put to market. Such faith did Murphy have in Ford that he gave him another chance in the Henry Ford Company, opting to use Ford’s name due to the recognition he had received from his recent racing ventures.
      Ford was so wrapped up in racing that he again failed to produce and Murphy fired him. He then asked Henry Leland, a partner in Detroit’s successful Leland and Faulconer Machine shop, to appraise the business before he sold it. Leland persuaded Murphy and his partners to stay in business, promising them that he could design a car successful enough to make it profitable. In August 1902, they formed the Cadillac Car Company. Leland gradually took control of Cadillac’s daily operations and, by the end of 1903, 2500 Cadillacs had been produced.
      The founding of Cadillac helped solidify Detroit’s position as the center of the automobile industry, and in 1904 Leland became president and general manager of Cadillac and agreed to merge Cadillac with Faulconer and Leland. Sales continued to rise and Cadillac established a reputation for exacting quality under Leland’s detail-oriented supervision. In a triumphant demonstration of the interchangeability of Cadillac’s parts, in 1908 three Cadillacs were disassembled by the Royal Automobile Club in England, reassembled at random, and driven away by the mechanics.
      In November 1908, Benjamin Briscoe made a bid for Cadillac, but he was unable to generate enough backing to carry the deal. William Durant seized the opportunity to add the valuable brand to his newly formed General Motors Corporation, and arranged a deal of stock transfer with the Lelands, but the Lelands ultimately refused it — they wanted cash. Finally, Durant got the cash together and purchased Cadillac, through Buick, on behalf of General Motors. Durant kept the Lelands on as management, saying, “I want you to continue to run Cadillac exactly as though it were still your own. You will receive no directions from anyone.”

1875 Peasants in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Balkans rebel against the Ottoman army.
1863 Queen Victoria reconfirms British policy of neutrality in US Civil War.
1863 Siege of Fort Wagner, Charleston Harbor, South Carolina continues
1862 At Moore’s Mill in Missouri, the Confederates are routed by Union guerrillas.

1862 Confederate woman spy captured      ^top^
      Confederate spy Marie Isabella "Belle" Boyd is arrested by Union troops and detained at the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C. It was the first of three arrests for this skilled spy who provided crucial information to the Confederates during the war. The Virginian-born Boyd was just 17 when the war began. She was from a prominent slaveholding family in Martinsburg, Virginia (now West Virginia), in the Shenandoah Valley. In 1861, she shot and killed a Union solider for insulting her mother and threatening to search their house. Union officers investigated and decided the shooting was justified. Soon after the shooting incident, Boyd began spying for the Confederacy. She used her charms to engage Union soldiers and officers in conversations and acquire information about Federal military affairs. Suspecting her of spying, Union officers banished Boyd further south in the Shenandoah, to Front Royal Virginia, in March 1862.
      Just two months later, Boyd personally delivered crucial information to General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson during his campaign in the Valley that allowed the Confederates to defeat General Nathaniel Banks's forces at the Battle of Winchester. In another incident, Boyd turned two chivalrous Union cavalrymen who had escorted her back home across Union lines over to Confederate pickets as prisoners of war. Boyd was detained on several occasions, and on 29 July she was placed in the Old Capitol Prison in Washington. But her incarceration was evidently of limited hardship. She was given many special considerations, and she became engaged to a fellow prisoner. Upon her release one month later, she was given a trousseau by the prison's superintendent and shipped under a flag of truce to Richmond.
      Boyd was arrested again in 1863 and held for three months. After this second imprisonment, she became a courier of secret messages to Great Britain. In 1864, her ship was captured off the coast of North Carolina, and the ship and crew were taken to New York. Captain Samuel Hardinge commanded the Union ship that captured Boyd's vessel, and the two were seen shopping together in New York. He followed her to London, and they were married soon after. Boyd was widowed soon after the end of the war, but the union produced one child. Still just 21, Boyd parlayed her spying experiences into a book and an acting career. She died in Wisconsin in 1900.

1858 Japan signs a treaty of commerce and friendship with the United States. US citizens allowed to live anywhere in Japan

1848 Tipperary revolt ends in failure      ^top^
      At the height of the Potato Famine in Ireland, an abortive nationalist revolt against English rule is promptly crushed by a government police detachment in Tipperary. In a brief skirmish in a cabbage patch, Irish nationalists under William Smith O'Brien are overcome and arrested. The nationalists, members of the Young Ireland movement, had planned to declare an independent Irish republic, but they lacked support from the Irish peasantry, who were occupied entirely with surviving the famine.
      By the mid-nineteenth century, the Irish population, which suffered under the system of absentee landlords, had been reduced to a subsistence diet based largely on potatoes. When a potato blight struck the country in the 1840s, disaster ensued. Between 1846 and 1851, more than one million people starved to death, and some two million people left the country, most to the US.
      With the desperate times of the potato famine came an increased radicalism in the Irish nationalist movement. In 1846, O'Brien formed the Irish Confederation with John Mitchel, a branch of the Young Ireland movement dedicated to freeing Ireland by direct action. By 1848, the group was calling for open rebellion against the English, but Mitchel was arrested, convicted for sedition, and transported to a prison colony in Australia before the revolt could begin.
      Aggravated by the worsening potato famine and Mitchel's arrest, O'Brien launches an unsuccessful uprising on 29 July 1848. He is arrested and sentenced to death for treason, but his sentence would be commuted to transportation to the penal colony at Tasmania.
      After the failure of the Young Ireland revolt, many embittered Irish nationalists emigrated to the United States, Australia, and Canada, where they redoubled their agitation against England.

1835 First sugar plantation in Hawaii begins.
1830 Liberals led by the Marquis of Lafayette seize Paris in opposition to the king's restrictions on citizens' rights.
1792 Robespierre demande la déchéance du Roi.

1776 Escalante and Dominguez begin expedition      ^top^
      Silvestre de Escalante and Francisco Dominguez, two Spanish Franciscan priests, leave Santa Fe for an epic journey through the Southwest. Escalante and Dominguez hoped to blaze a trail from New Mexico to Monterey, California, but their main goal was to visit with the native inhabitants and convert as many as possible to the Catholic faith. On this day the two priests and seven men leave the Spanish frontier town of Santa Fe and head northwest into what is today the state of Colorado. They continued north, exploring the rugged Great Basin and canyon land country of Utah. Initially, the priests made good time, and by mid-September, they had reached Utah Lake, just to the south of the Great Salt Lake in northern Utah. There, they found Amerindians whom Domínguez described as "the most docile and affable nation of all that have been known in these regions." They quickly set about preaching the Gospel, reportedly with "such happy results that they are awaiting Spaniards so that they might become Christians."
      By early October, winter was approaching. Traveling through high mountain passes, Escalante and Dominguez began to encounter fierce snowstorms. Accustomed to desert living, the priests were unequipped to deal with snow and bitter cold, and they soon ran short of provisions. They abandoned the goal of reaching California and headed back for Santa Fe. During the long journey home, they very nearly starved to death. The men ate their horses first. When the horseflesh was gone, they ate only prickly pear cactus. On 02 January 1777, the exhausted men staggered into Santa Fe. They had traveled nearly 2700 km in just 159 days through some of the roughest country in the southwest, yet all nine members of the party made it home safely. Escalante and Domínguez had failed in their goal of finding a route to Monterey, and to their keen disappointment, the New Mexican missionaries showed little interest in following up their initial proselytizing with the Utah Indians. Nonetheless, the two intrepid priests were the first to explore extensively the Great Basin country of the Southwest. Escalante's written account of the expedition became an essential guide to future explorers.

1775 The US Army Chaplaincy is founded, making it the second oldest branch of that service, after the Infantry.
1715 10 Spanish treasure galleons sunk off Florida coast by hurricane

1588 Spanish Armada defeated      ^top^
      Off the coast of Gravelines, France, Spain's so-called "Invincible Armada" is defeated by an English naval force under the command of Lord Charles Howard and Sir Francis Drake. After eight hours of furious fighting, a change in wind direction prompts the Spanish to break off from the battle and retreat toward the North Sea. Its hopes of invasion crushed, the remnants of the Spanish Armada began a long and difficult journey back to Spain.
      In the late 1580s, English raids against Spanish commerce and Queen Elizabeth I's support of the Dutch rebels in the Spanish Netherlands led King Philip II of Spain to plan the conquest of England. Pope Sixtus V gave his blessing to what was called "The Enterprise of England," which he hoped would bring the Protestant isle back into the fold of Rome. A giant Spanish invasion fleet was completed by 1587, but Sir Francis Drake's daring raid on the Armada's supplies in the port of Cádiz delayed the Armada's departure until May 1588.
      On 19 May 1588, the Invincible Armada set sail from Lisbon on a mission to secure control of the English Channel and transport a Spanish army to the British isle from Flanders. The fleet was under the command of the Duke of Medina-Sidonia and consisted of 130 ships carrying 2500 guns, 8000 seamen, and almost 20'000 soldiers. The Spanish ships were slower and less well armed than their English counterparts, but they planned to force boarding actions if the English offered battle, and the superior Spanish infantry would undoubtedly prevail.
      Delayed by storms that temporarily forced it back to Spain, the Armada did not reach the southern coast of England until 19 July, and by that time, Elizabeth had prepared an adequate defense. On 21 July the outnumbered English navy began bombarding the eleven-kilometer-long line of Spanish ships from a safe distance, taking full advantage of their superior long-range guns. Over the next week, the Spanish Armada continued to advance, but its ranks were thinned considerably by the English assault.
     On 27 July, the retreating Armada anchored in exposed position off Calais, France, and the Spanish army prepared to embark from Flanders. Without control of the Channel, however, their passage to England would be impossible.
      Just after midnight on 29 July, the English sent eight burning ships into the crowded harbor at Calais. The panicked Spanish ships were forced to cut their anchors and sail out to sea to avoid catching fire. Their attempt to reach the Netherlands is thwarted by a small Dutch fleet. The disorganized Spanish, completely out of formation, is attacked by the English off Gravelines at dawn. In a decisive battle, the superior English guns won the day, and the devastated Armada was forced to retreat north to Scotland. The English navy pursued the Spanish as far as Scotland and then turned back for want of supplies.
      Battered by storms and suffering from a dire lack of supplies, the Armada sailed on a hard journey back to Spain around Scotland and Ireland. Some of the damaged ships foundered in the sea while others were driven onto the coast of Ireland and wrecked. By the time the last of the surviving fleet reached Spain in October, half of the original Armada was lost and some 15'000 men had perished.
      Queen Elizabeth's decisive defeat of the Invincible Armada made England a world-class power and introduced effective long-range weapons into naval warfare for the first time, ending the era of boarding and close-quarter fighting.

TO THE TOP

Deaths which occurred on a 29 July:
2002:: 9 of 55 pilot whales beached on Chapin Beach, Dennis, Cape Cod. Discovered at about 06:00, they were then covered with wet towels and water was poured on them, and at last the survivors, after being tagged, are pushed out to sea when the tide rose enough by noon. They may have been following krill and become stranded in shallow water as the tide went out. An adult pilot whale (Globicephala melaena) is about 5 meters long and weighs some 800 kg. The next morning the same 44 (2 having been found dead in the meantime) surviving pilot whales would again be found stranded in shallow water about 40 km to the east, at a beach in Eastham; 14 of them die on their owen or are killed because blood tests show they are sick, and the remainder is helped to leave at high tide.
— MORE ON PILOT WHALES — and more — and more — and more — and more

beached pilot whales
beached pilot whales

two dead pilot whales floating

1996 Mrs. Elsie Barker, 84, in Hyde, England, by lethal dose of opiates administered by Dr. Harold Shipman (murderer of 215+) during a home visit.
1967: 134 crewmen as explosion and fire ravages US carrier off Vietnam. 62 others are injured. Fire sweeps the US aircraft carrier Forrestal off the coast of North Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin. It is the worst US naval disaster in a combat zone since World War II. Of the carrier's 80 planes, 21 are destroyed and 42 damaged. Material damages are estimated at $100 million.
1962 Ronald Fisher , mathematician whose contributions include the development of methods suitable for small samples, the discovery of the precise distributions of many sample statistics and the invention of analysis of variance.
1960 Richard Simon cofounder of Simon & Shuster

1945 Some 400 sailors of US cruiser sunk by Japanese.     ^top^
      Other would die during the following days while in the water hoping for rescue. In all, 878 of the 1196 sailors of the USS Indianapolis would die in the worst loss in the history of the US navy.
      As a prelude to the projected invasion of the Japanese mainland, scheduled for November 1, US forces were bombing Japan from sea and air, as well as blowing Japanese warships out of the water. The end was near for Imperial Japan, but it was determined to go down fighting.
      Just before midnight of the 29th, the Indianapolis, a US cruiser that was the flagship of the Fifth Fleet, was on its way, unescorted, to Guam, then Okinawa. But it is torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. The sub was commanded by a lieutenant who had also participated in the Pearl Harbor attack.
      There were 1196 crewmen onboard the Indianapolis; over 350 died upon impact of the torpedo or went down with the ship. More than 800 fell into the Pacific. Of those, approximately 50 died that first night in the water from injuries suffered in the torpedo explosion; the remaining seamen were left to flounder in the Pacific, fend off sharks, drink sea water (which drove some insane), and wait to be rescued.
      Because there was no time for a distress signal before the Indianapolis went down, it was 84 hours before help arrived. This was despite the fact that US naval headquarters had intercepted a message on 30 July from the Japanese sub commander responsible for sinking the Indianapolis, describing the type of ship sunk and its location. (US so-called “intelligence” assumed that it was an exaggerated boast and didn't bother to follow up.) Only 318 survived; the rest were eaten by sharks or drowned.
      The Indianapolis's commander, Captain Charles McVay, was the only officer ever to be court-martialed for the loss of a ship during wartime in the history of the US Navy. Had the attack happened only three days earlier, the Indianapolis would have been sunk carrying special cargo — the atom bomb, which it delivered to Tinian Island, northeast of Guam, for scientists to assemble.

1914 Caroline Friedrich, German artist born on 20 October 1828.

1900 King Umberto I of Italy, shot to death, in Monza, by Gaetano Bresci.      ^top^
     Bresci was an Italian-born anarchist who had resided in the US before returning to his homeland to murder the king.
      Crowned in 1878, King Umberto had become increasingly authoritarian in the late nineteenth century. He enacted a program of suppression against the radical elements in Italian society, particularly members of the popular anarchist movements.
      Gaetano Bresci, who was born into poverty in Tuscany, immigrated to the US in the 1890s seeking a better life. Bresci settled with his family in Paterson, New Jersey, and was employed in a weaving mill. The city was a hotbed of Italian-American radicalism at the time, and Bresci became a co-founder of an anarchist newspaper, La Questione Sociale. Sacrificing his free time and scarce extra money to the paper, Bresci was regarded by his political allies as a devoted anarchist. He never forgot his countrymen back in Italy, and he read with horror of the events that unfolded in 1898. The crops were poor that year, and much of the peasantry was starving. Seeking a respite from their government, peasants and workers marched to Milan to petition the king for relief. King Umberto ordered the demonstrators to disperse, and when they did not, he ordered the Italian army under General Bava Beccaris to force them out of Milan. Beccaris's soldiers fired cannons and numerous rounds into the crowd, and hundreds were killed.
      When Umberto then decorated Beccaris for the military action, Bresci resolved that the king should die. Taking money from the newspaper without explaining to his compatriots why, Bresci traveled to Italy and in July of 1900 finally got close to the king during a royal visit to Milan. Umberto had already survived two attempts on his life, but on 29 July 1900, Bresci hit his mark, felling the king with three bullets. Bresci was arrested, found guilty, and sentenced to a life of hard labor at Santo Stefano Prison on Ventotene Island. On 22 May 1901, he was found dead in his cell, allegedly a suicide.

(or 30 July) 1899 Adolf Schreyer, German artist born on 09 July 1828.
1898 Arturo Michelana, Venezuelan artist born on 16 June 1863.

^ 1890 Vincent van Gogh, from shooting himself in the chest two days earlier.
He was the great Dutch Post-Impressionist painter whose life and death show that there is PAIN in PAINting. He was born on 30 March 1853. Van Gogh’s career as a painter lasted only nine years. His early works were dark but later became intensely luminous after he moved to Paris and the south of France. A great collector of Japanese prints, he created an expressive style that combined direct observation with a Japanese use of outline and flattened areas of color.Van Gogh worked as an art dealer, a teacher and a lay preacher before becoming a painter. Van Gogh was not ‘mad’ but probably suffered from a form of epilepsy easily treatable with today’s drugs.
It was only after Vincent van Gogh's death that he gained fame. In his lifetime, he had sold only one painting. In a letter he wrote: “I can’t change the fact that my paintings don't sell. But the time will come when people will recognize that they are worth more than the value of the paints used in the picture.”. It is only posthumously that his prediction was fulfilled... and then some. One of his paintings — the Sunflowers (almost identical to two others) now at the Yasuda museum — sold for just under $40 million at a Christie's auction in 1987. Later another one sold for $82 million (bear in mind that past dollars are worth more than present dollars).
— Portraits: Van Gogh by Toulouse-Lautrec — Van Gogh (1886) by John Russell
— MORE ON VAN GOGH AT ART “4” JULY
— LINKS
— Self Portrait — Self-Portrait as an Artist — Self-Portrait with Straw Hat and Pipe — Self-portrait with a Straw Hat
— Abris à Montmartre (1886) — Wheatfield with Crows — Premiers Pas — The Potato Eaters — Portrait of Père Tanguy — The Night Café — Starry Night — 15 Sunflowers in a Vase
_ Gauguin's Van Gogh Painting Sunflowers — Links to all 11 van Gogh sunflowers paintings
— Landscape with the Cloister at Montmajour of Arles — Still Life — Path between Garden Walls (Auvers Landscape) — Women Picking Olives — Beach with Figures and Sea with a Ship — View of Paris from Montmartre — Paris Seen from Vincent's Room in the Rue Lepic — Terrace of the Cafè "La Guinguuette" — The Seine with the Pont de la Grande Jatte — The Vase with Daisies and Anemones — Peach Tree in Bloom. — Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear — Branches of an Almond Tree in Blossom — Pietà — Good Samaritan — The Church in Auvers — Peasant Woman Seated before an Open Door, Peeling Potatoes

The most complete Van Gogh web site

A few Self-Portraits of van Gogh [click on an image to enlarge]

Links to all 39-1/2 van Gogh self-portraits

1870 James Baker Pyne, British artist born on 05 December 1800.
1854 Pierre Duval-Lecamus, French artist born on 14 February 1790.
1839 de Prony, mathematician.
1833 William Wilberforce. Ce membre du Parlement anglais en 1780 parvint à faire voter une loi abolissant l'esclavage des Noirs. Jusque-là les négriers pouvaient acheter, à leur guise, des esclaves en Afrique pour les vendre ensuite aux plantations américaines.
1693 The Army of the Grand Alliance, destroyed by the French at the Battle of Neerwinden in the Netherlands.
1649 David Teniers I, Flemish artist born in 1582.
1603 Bartholomew Gilbert, killed in the colony of Virginia by Indians, during a search for the missing Roanoke colonists.
1602 The Duke of Biron, executed in Paris for conspiring with Spain and Savoy against King Henry IV of France.
1164 King Olaf of Norway

1030 King Saint Olav II Haraldsson, 35, of Norway, in battle of Stiklestad.      ^top^
      He was the first effective king of all Norway and the country's patron saint, who achieved a 12-year respite from Danish domination and extensively increased the acceptance of Christianity. His religious code of 1024 is considered to represent Norway's first national legislation.
     Canute, king of England and Denmark, had won the support of leading Norwegian chieftains and forced Olaf to flee to Kiev in 1028. Olaf attempted to reconquer Norway in 1030 but is defeated by a superior Norwegian peasant and Danish army in the Battle of Stiklestad, one of the most celebrated battles in ancient Norse history.
      Olaf's popularity, his church work, and the aura of legend that surrounded his death, which was supposedly accompanied by miracles, led to his canonization in 1031. His popularity spread rapidly; churches and shrines were constructed in his honor in England, Sweden, and Rome. He was the last Western saint accepted by the Eastern Orthodox church. [see the 1225 Chronicle of the Kings of Norway]

Births which occurred on a 29 July:

1965 Chang-Rae Lee, in Seoul, South Korea, award-winning writer.      ^top^
      Lee's father, a doctor, moved to the United States to finish his training and brought his family over when Chang-Rae was three. The family lived first in Pittsburgh, then in suburban New York. Lee's parents tried not to speak English in front of the children, to keep Lee and his sister from learning to speak with an accent. Lee attended prep school and Yale. After graduating, he worked on Wall Street as an equities analyst for a year, then went to the University of Oregon to study creative writing, where he later joined the faculty.
      Lee's first book, Native Speaker (1995), was one of the earliest examinations of the relatively recent Korean immigrant experience. It was widely acclaimed and won the prestigious PEN award. In 1998, Lee abandoned work on his nearly finished second novel, deciding he couldn't do justice to the characters. He moved to New York and took a job as director of Hunter College's creative writing program. His second book, A Gesture Life, came out in 1999. As of 2000, Lee lives with his wife and daughter in New Jersey.

1958 NASA is 1799 Karl Blechen, German Romantic painter who died on 23 July 1840. — LINKS — The Ruins of the Septizonium on the Palatine in Rome — Woodland with Brook — The Building of the Devil's Bridge — Monastery in the Wood — Sunset at Sea
1792 Peter Heinrich Lambert von Hess, German artist who died on 04 April/ 1871.
1629 Peeter van Bredael (or Breda), Flemish artist who died on 09 March 1719.established      ^top^
      The United States Congress passes legislation formally inaugurating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The establishment of NASA was a sign that the United States was committed to winning the "space race" against the Soviets. In October 1957, the Soviet Union shocked the world, and particularly the US public, by launching the first satellite into orbit around the earth. Called Sputnik, the small spacecraft was an embarrassment to the United States, which prided itself on its leadership in the field of technology. Sputnik also provided the Soviets with an important propaganda advantage in terms of reaching out to underdeveloped Third World nations that were looking for scientific and technological assistance.
      The initial US response to this challenge was not altogether successful. The Eisenhower administration passed the National Defense Education Act that provided federal funds for improving the teaching of science and mathematics in the US's public schools. In December 1957, the United States attempted to launch its own satellite. Named Vanguard, the "spaceship" got a few feet off the ground and then blew up. The US had better luck with Explorer I a month later — the satellite completed its orbit of the earth. It was obvious to many US officials, though, that a more organized and focused effort was needed. In July 1958, Congress passed legislation establishing NASA as the coordinating body of the US space program. During the next decade, NASA became synonymous with the space race. In May 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced that the United States should set a goal of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Eight years and billions of dollars later, Neil Armstrong stepped out of the lunar module Eagle and onto the moon's surface on 20 July 1969. The great space race was over.

1932 Nancy Kassebaum (Sen-R-Ks)
1907 Melvin Belli Sonora Calif, lawyer, SF's "King of Torts"
1905 Dag Hammarskjöld, Swedish diplomat, 2nd Secretary-General of the U.N.(1953-61). Nobel Peace Prize (1961). His spiritual journal Markings was published in 1964, three years after his untimely death in a plane crash.
1900 Eyvind Johnson Sweden, novelist (Return to Ithaca-Nobel 1974)
1898 Isidor Isaac Rabi Poland, physicist (explored atom-Nobel-1944)
1883 Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini, “il Duce”, dictator (prime minister) of Fascist Italy, 1922-1943. He was killed by partisani on 28 April 1945.
1883 Armando Spadini, Italian painter who died on 31 March 1925. — LINKS
1877 Charles William Beebe, naturalist who explored the ocean depths in a bathysphere
1871 [Gregory Efimovich] Rasputin the mad Russian monk
1869 Booth Tarkington US, novelist (17, Magnificent Ambersons)
1862 Robert Reid, US Impressionist painter who died on 02 December 1929. — LINKS
1849 Edward Theodore Compton, British artist who died in 1921.
1838 Etienne Prospère Berne-Bellecour, French artist who died on 29 November 1910.
1824 Jonathan Eastman Johnson, US painter who died on 05 April 1906. — LINKS — General Henry Sewall — The Eavesdropper — The Brown Family — The Pension Claim Agent — What the Shell Says — A Day Dream — Woman in White Dress — Old Kate's Bridge, Ulster County — A Different Sugaring Off — The Mother — The Old Stagecoach — The Cranberry Harvest on the Island of Nantucket

1805 Alexis de Tocqueville, French historian who wrote Democracy in America ^top^
ONLINE (English translation):
American Institutions and Their Influence (528 pages)
American Institutions and Their Influence (474 pages)
Democracy in America volume 1, volume 2
Democracy in America (another site)

1799 Karl Blechen, German Romantic painter who died on 23 July 1840. — LINKS — The Ruins of the Septizonium on the Palatine in Rome — Woodland with Brook — The Building of the Devil's Bridge — Monastery in the Wood — Sunset at Sea
1792 Peter Heinrich Lambert von Hess, German artist who died on 04 April/ 1871.
1629 Peeter van Bredael (or Breda), Flemish artist who died on 09 March 1719.

Holidays Norway : Olsok Eve Festival (1030)

Religious Observances Ang, Luth : Comm of Mary & Martha (Lazarus' sister) of Bethany / Luth : Commemoration of Olaf, King of Norway, martyr

Thoughts for the day:
“Never despair of your parents. Never enter the sphere of this fear of despair of this pair.” — [even if you are a teenager]
“Never give in to spite. If you do, work on despite the spite.”
“Don't look back: it would slow you down.”
“Don't look back: use a rear-view mirror.”
“History is the rear-view mirror of life. It does not help you go backwards, but ahead, and with greater knowledge.”
“When I rest, I rust.” — Fritz Thyssen, German industrialist (1873-1951). [not a man with a stainless reputation...]
“When you rest, I roust.”
“In Iran, I ran.”
“When I raced, I rest.”
“When irate, I rate.”
“I dare idea after idea.”

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