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Events, deaths, births, of 26 NOV
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On a November 26:
2001 In Nepal, King Gyanendra declares a state of emergency after attacks by Maoists rebels kill at least 76 soldiers and policemen since 23 November 2001, including, the previous night, five soldiers, 28 police officers and the chief district officer in Solukhumbu, 200 km north of Katmandu. The rebels also suffered heavy casualties. On 23 November, rebels broke off a four-month cease-fire and launched assaults across the kingdom. The rebel hide-outs are concentrated mostly in the remote hills of midwest Nepal. The Maoist guerrillas fashion themselves after Peru's Shining Path guerrillas. They are seeking an end to the constitutional monarchy and the creation of a socialist republic. Their insurgency, launched in 1996, has claimed more than 1800 lives.
2000 By a huge margin Haiti's presidential election returns former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power.
2000 In the Romanian presidential election, to succeed Emil Constantinescu, Ion Iliescu, 70, finishes first with 36% of the vote. In second place comes ultranationalist racist Corneliu Vadim Tudor, 51, with 28%. The 10 December runoff election would be won by Iliescu. He is a Soviet-educated engineer who was president from 1990 to 1996. He had been close to Ceausescu until the early 1970s, but later led the revolt to topple the Communist dictator.
2000 Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a Republican, certifies Republican George W. Bush the winner over Democrat Al Gore in the state's presidential balloting by a 537-vote margin.
Elian released from hospital. Elian anti-Castro poster boy1999 Elian González is released from hospital
     Shipwreck survivor, Elian González, 5, found atop an inner tube off Fort Lauderdale by a pair of men who had gone fishing, is released from Joe Dimaggio Children's Hospital in Hollywood, Florida, after treatment for sunburn and dehydration.
      The youngster, wearing new clothes and a baseball cap, appears shaken and weak as he stands between two cousins before a throng of photographers and reporters. Doctors say that they are amazed that the child, who they believe went without water for as long as two days, survived. "God wanted him here for freedom,'' says Marisleysis González, 21, Elian's second cousin, who will mother him during the months that he will stay in Miami.. "And he's here and he will get it [freedom].'' Well, in the end, it would not quite turn out that way.
     Elian, who says that dolphins helped him stay afloat, does not yet realize that his mother, Elizabeth Broton Rodriguez, 28, is among the 11 passengers who drowned when the overloaded boat capsized.
     "She wanted everything a mother could want for her son,'' says Georgina Cid, Elian's great-aunt, in a phone interview. "She dedicated herself to him.'' Although the boy's parents were separated, Cid says, his mother remained in contact with her husband and his family. Cid says that the boy's father, Juan Miguel González, works at a hotel in Varadero, the famed resort town about an hour and a half east of Havana.
      Family members say that they are willing to help the boy's father seek legal entry to the United States to reunite him with his son. The family says that Elian is still frightened by his new surroundings and is slowly meeting relatives, some of whom knew him through visits to Cuba and through pictures and videotapes.
      Relatives say that the boy is able to say little about his experience "He just said the boat turned over,'' says his cousin Marisleysis González.
     Meanwhile militant anti-Castro Cuban exiles have made Elian into a poster boy for their cause, a move that will eventually backfire.
1997 CompUSA announces it would no longer sell a violent computer game called "Postal," which featured a berserk gunman who shot innocent bystanders. A number of retailers had declined to carry the ultra-violent game. Despite its name, the game did not feature any postal workers.
1997 Swedish telecommunications company L.M. Ericsson announces that it has developed technology to provide simultaneous telephone service and Internet access over the same phone line. Ericsson said the new technology would increase the average speed for home Internet users by at least four times.
1991 The US abandons Clark Air Base in the Philippines, one of its oldest and largest overseas bases, which was damaged by an eruption of volcano Pinatubo..
1991 Condoms are handed out to thousands of NY High School students
1990 El primer ministro de Polonia Tadeusz Mazowiecki dimite tras su fracaso en las primeras elecciones democráticas a la presidencia.
1990 Japanese business giant Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. agreed to acquire MCA Inc. for $6.6 billion.
1990 Mikhail Gorbachev tells Iraq to get out of Kuwait.
1989 Descubren el quásar más alejado de la Tierra, a 14'000 millones de años luz.
1989 El político indio Rajiv Gandhi pierde la mayoría absoluta en las elecciones.
1988 PLO leader refused entry into the US
      Yasser Arafat, founder of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), is denied a request for a visa so that he could travel to New York City and address a United Nations session. American authorities cite his support of terrorism against Israel and the United States as the motive for the refusal. However, during the next few years, to the surprise of American and Israeli authorities, Arafat, who began his career as an uncompromising Palestinian resistance leader, begins to seek diplomatic solutions to his quest for a Palestinian homeland. Arafat persuades the PLO to formally acknowledge the right of Israel to co-exist with the independent state of Palestine, and in 1993 signs the historic Israel-Palestinian Declaration of Principles along with Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. In 1994, Arafat and Rabin sign a major peace agreement granting Palestine limited self-government in former territories occupied by Israel. In 1995, Arafat shares the Nobel Peace Prize along with Rabin and Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres for their work toward peace in Israel and the occupied territories.
1985 Movie-star-turned-conservative-hero Ronald Reagan adds the title of record-setting author to his resume, as Random House handed the president an unprecedented $3 million for the rights to publish his autobiography.
1983 Heathrow Airport, robbed of 6800 gold bars worth $38.7 million
1982 Yasuhiro Nakasone is elected the 71st Japanese prime minister, succeeding Zenko Suzuki.
1982 VisiCorp announces VisiOn, a graphical user interface that allowed personal computers to multitask and share information between applications. At the time, VisiCorp was one of the market's largest software publishers, due to the runaway success of VisiCalc, the world's first spreadsheet program. In the early 1980s, several companies were racing to develop a mouse-driven graphical user interface that would allow users to multitask. VisiOn was one of only a few entries in the field, including Microsoft Windows. VisiOn was released in 1983 but failed to catch on. Windows 1.0 hit the market in 1985.
1979 Oil deposits equaling OPEC reserves are found in Venezuela.
1976 Willy Brandt, presidente del Partido Socialista alemán, es elegido presidente de la Internacional Socialista.
1975 Fromme guilty of attempted assassination of President Ford
      A federal jury in Sacramento, California, finds Lynette Alice Fromme, also known as "Squeaky" Fromme, guilty of attempting to assassinate President Gerald R. Ford. On September 5, a Secret Service agent wrested a pistol from Fromme, who brandished the weapon during a public appearance of President Ford in Sacramento. In the ensuing trial, Fromme, a follower of incarcerated cult leader Charles Manson, pleaded not guilty to the attempted assassination charge, arguing that although her gun contained bullets, it had not been cocked, and therefore she had not intended to shoot the president. In December of 1987, Fromme, who remains a dedicated disciple of Charles Manson, escapes from prison but is captured less than two days later.
1975 NYC gets federal bailout
      With New York City spiraling toward fiscal disaster, President Gerald Ford proposes a $2.3 billion aid package designed to address the city's "seasonal cash needs." The president's plan, passed a little less than a month later, made federal money available to New York in any of the ensuing three years. While Mayor Abraham D. Beame praised Ford's announcement, a few New Yorkers greeted the news with a Bronx cheer, grousing about the attendant tax hikes which threatened to further erode the city's private sector and drive away wealthy residents to tax havens in New Jersey. Whatever the merits of these complaints, the city, saddled with a multi-million-dollar deficit that threatened to balloon to $1.3 billion by March 1976, seemingly had little choice but to accept federal help.
1973 Nixon's personal sec, Rose Mary Woods, tells a federal court she accidentally caused part of 18-minute gap in a key Watergate tape
1970 During a 10-day visit to the Philippines, Pope Paul VI is attacked by a knife-wielding man in Manilla. The pontiff is unhurt.
1966 1st major tidal power plant opens at Rance estuary, France.
1965 France becomes the world's 3rd space power
     From Hammaguira, the launch facility in the Sahara Desert of southern Algeria, France successfully launches the Diamant-A rocket into space, becoming the world's third space power after the Soviet Union and the United States. The Diamant-A and its technological payload, Asterix-1 , were constructed by the National Center for the Study of Space (CNES), a French equivalent of NASA established by French President Charles de Gaulle in December of 1961.
     Asterix-1 weighed 42 kilograms and orbited Earth with an apogee of 1697 kilometers and a perigee of 527 kilometers.
      Ten days after the successful launch of the Diamant rocket, French scientists, working in cooperation with NASA engineers in California, successfully launch the first French satellite, FR-1, into orbit around the earth aboard a US Scout rocket.
1957 US President Eisenhower suffers a minor stroke.
1950 In Korea, Chinese turn back UN "End the War" offensive.
      In some of the fiercest fighting of the Korean War, thousands of communist Chinese troops launch massive counterattacks against US and Republic of Korea (ROK) troops, driving the Allied forces before them and putting an end to any thoughts for a quick or conclusive US victory. When the counterattacks had been stemmed, US and ROK forces had been driven from North Korea and the war settled into a grinding and frustrating stalemate for the next two-and-a-half years.
      In the weeks prior to the Chinese attacks, ROK and US forces, under the command of General Douglas MacArthur, had succeeded in driving deeper into North Korea and were nearing the border with the People's Republic of China (PRC). The PRC issued warnings that the Allied forces should keep their distance, and beginning in October 1950 troops from the Chinese People's Liberation Army began to cross the border to assist their North Korean ally. Their numbers grew to around 300'000 by early November. Some bloody encounters occurred between the Chinese and ROK and US forces, but the Chinese troops suddenly broke off offensive operations on 06 November. This spurred MacArthur, who had always discounted the military effectiveness of the Chinese troops, to propose a massive new offensive by US and ROK forces. Alternately referred to as the "End the War" or "Home by Christmas" offensive, the attack began on 24 November. The offensive almost immediately encountered heavy resistance, and by 26 November the Chinese were launching destructive counterattacks along a 40-km front. By December, US and ROK forces had been pushed out of North Korea. Eventually, US and ROK forces stopped the Chinese troops and the war settled into a military stalemate.
      The massive Chinese attack brought an end to any thoughts that US boys would be "home by Christmas." It also raised the specter of the war expanding beyond the borders of the Korean peninsula, something US policymakers-leery of becoming entangled in a land war in Asia that might escalate into a nuclear confrontation with the Soviets-were anxious to avoid.
1949 India adopts a constitution as a British Commonwealth Republic
1948 El Parlamento irlandés aprueba la total independencia y la separación del Reino Unido.
1948 El general Charles André de Gaulle inaugura la central maremotriz del Rance (Bretaña).
1947 France expels 19 Soviet citizens, charging them with intervention in internal affairs.
1946 El Partido Laborista gana las elecciones parlamentarias en Nueva Zelanda.
1942 US President Franklin Roosevelt ordered nationwide gasoline rationing, to begin on 01 December 1942.
1941 Lebanon gains independence from France.
1941 Japanese fleet sails for Pearl Harbor
     A Japanese fleet of six aircraft carriers, commanded by Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, leaves Hitokapu Bay under strict radio silence. The surprise attack was Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's idea. The Commander in Chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet had been stewing over the idea since November 1940, two months after Japan signed the Tripartite Pact that aligned them with Germany and Italy.
      Yamamoto's Pearl Harbor idea was inspired by two things: a prophetic book and a historic attack. The book was The Great Pacific War, written in 1925 by Hector Bywater, a British naval authority. It was a realistic account of a clash between the United States and Japan that begins with the Japanese destruction of the US fleet and proceeds to the Japanese attacks on Guam and the Philippines. To Yamamoto, the book's plot almost seemed like a blueprint for war. And when the Royal Air Force attacked and successfully debilitated the Italian fleet at Taranto on November 11, 1940, Yamamoto was convinced that Bywater's fiction could become reality. He started making plans at once.
      Yamamoto, who studied English at Harvard University, did not underestimate the Americans. He said that if "hostilities break out between Japan and the United States, it would not be enough that we take Guam and the Philippines . . . we would have to march into Washington and dictate the terms of peace in the White House." He understood this would be virtually impossible but also believed that waiting for the Americans to strike first would be playing into US strengths. Planning the Pearl Harbor attack and organizing the First Air Fleet took up much of 1941. When the fleet finally sailed on November 26, the mood was tense. The director of the First Fleet, Vice Admiral Nagumo, not only lacked experience with naval aviation but openly opposed the attack. Yamamoto sat in his flagship headquarters in Japanese waters, anxiously awaiting the results of his Pearl Harbor brainchild.
1941 FDR restores Thanksgiving to last Thursday in November.
      For the first time in American history, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a bill establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day. The tradition of celebrating the holiday on Thursday dates back to the early history of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies, when post-harvest holidays were celebrated on the weekday regularly set aside as "Lecture Day," a mid-week church meeting where topical sermons were presented. Thanksgiving became an annual custom throughout New England by the mid-seventeenth-century, and in 1777, the Continental Congress declared the first national American thanksgiving following the Patriot victory at Saratoga — to be celebrated in December. In 1789, President George Washington became the first president to proclaim the Thanksgiving holiday, when, at the request of Congress, he proclaimed 26 November, a Tuesday, as a day of national thanksgiving for the US Constitution.
      However, it was not until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving to fall on the last Thursday of November, that the traditional holiday day was celebrated nationally. With a few deviations, Lincoln's precedent was followed annually by every subsequent president — until 1939. In 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt departed from tradition by declaring 23 November, the next to last Thursday that year, as Thanksgiving Day. Considerable controversy surrounded this deviation from tradition, and some Americans refused to honor Roosevelt's declaration. For the next two years, Roosevelt repeated the unpopular proclamation, but on 26 November 1941, he admits his mistake and signs a bill into law making the last Thursday in November the national holiday of Thanksgiving Day forever. The next day, the last Thursday in November, Thanksgiving is celebrated across America.
1940 Nazis force 500'000 Warsaw Jews to live in walled ghetto
1939 To justify its planned aggression, he Soviet Union falsely charges Finland with artillery attack on border.
1938 Poland renews nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union to protect against a German invasion (in vain).
1932 La Guardia Civil a caballo comienza a vigilar las carreteras españolas.
1928 Se recrudece el antisemitismo en Moscú.
1927 Ford Model A announced
      The Ford Motor Company announces the introduction of the Model A, the first new Ford to enter the market since the Model T was first introduced in 1908. The hugely successful Model T revolutionized the automobile industry, and over fifteen million copies of the "Thin Lizzy" were sold in its nineteen years of production. By 1927, the popularity of the outdated Model T was rapidly waning. Improved, but basically unchanged for its two-decade reign, it was losing ground to the more stylish and powerful motor cars offered by Ford's competitors. In May of 1927, Ford plants across the country closed, as the company began an intensive development of the more refined and modern Model A. The vastly improved Model A had elegant Lincoln-like styling on a smaller scale, and used a capable 200.5-cubic-inch 4-cylinder engine that produced 40 horsepower. With prices starting at $460, nearly five million Model As, in several body styles and a variety of colors, rolled onto America's highways until production ended in early 1932.
1922 King Tut's tomb opened after 3000 years.
     In Egypt's Valley of the Kings, British archaeologists Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first to enter King Tutankhamen's tomb in more than 3000 years. Tutankhamen's sealed burial chambers were miraculously intact, and inside was a collection of several thousand priceless objects, including a gold coffin containing the mummy of the teenage king.
      When Carter first arrived in Egypt, in 1891, most of the ancient Egyptian tombs had been discovered, and the majority of these had been hopelessly plundered by tomb raiders over the millennia. However, Carter was a brilliant excavator, and in the first years of the 20th century he discovered the tombs of Queen Hatshepsut and King Thutmose IV. Around 1907, he became associated with the Earl of Carnarvon, a collector of antiquities who commissioned Carter to supervise excavations in the Valley of the Kings. By 1913, most experts felt there was nothing in the Valley left to be uncovered. Carter, however, persisted in his efforts, convinced that the tomb of the little-known King Tutankhamen might still be found.
      King Tutankhamen was enthroned in 1333 B.C. when he was still a child. He died a decade later at the age of 18 and thus made only a faint impression on the history of ancient Egypt. In the 13th century B.C., Tutankhamen and the other "Amarna" kings were publicly condemned, and most records of them were destroyed — including the location of Tutankhamen's tomb. A century later, in the 12th century B.C., workers building a tomb for Ramses VI inadvertently covered Tutankhamen's tomb with a deep layer of chips, further protecting it from future discovery.
     After World War I, Carter began an intensive search for Tutankhamen's tomb and on 04 November 1922, discovered a step leading to its entrance. Lord Carnarvon rushed to Egypt, and on 23 November they broke through a mud-brick door, revealing the passageway that led to Tutankhamen's tomb. There was evidence that robbers had entered the structure at some point, and the archaeologists feared they had discovered yet another pillaged tomb. However, on 26 November they break through another door, and Carter leans in with a candle to take a look. Behind him, Lord Carnarvon asks, "Can you see anything?" Carter replies, "Yes, wonderful things."
      It was the antechamber of Tutankhamen's tomb, and it was gloriously untouched. The dusty floor still showed the footprints of the tomb builders who left the room more than 3000 years before. Apparently, the robbers who had broken into Tutankhamen's tomb had done so soon after it was completed and were caught before moving into the interior chambers and causing serious damage.
      Thus began a monumental excavation process in which Carter carefully explored the four-room tomb over several years, uncovering an incredible collection of several thousand objects. In addition to numerous pieces of jewelry and gold, there was statuary, furniture, clothes, a chariot, weapons, and numerous other objects that shed a brilliant light on the culture and history of ancient Egypt. The most splendid find was a stone sarcophagus containing three coffins nested within each other. Inside the final coffin, made out of solid gold, was the mummified body of the boy-king Tutankhamen, preserved for 3,200 years. Most of these treasures are now housed in the Cairo Museum.
1917 The Bolsheviks offer an armistice between Russia and the Central Powers.
1916 El Gobierno revolucionario griego de Eleutherios Venizelos declara la guerra a Alemania.
1907 The Duma lends support to Czar in St. Petersburg, who claims he has renounced autocracy.
1901 The Hope diamond is brought to New York.
1897 Las colonias españolas de Cuba y de Puerto Rico consiguen la autonomía.
1872 Surveyor King exposes Great Diamond Hoax
      The Great Diamond Hoax, one of the most notorious mining swindles of the time, is exposed with an article in the San Francisco Evening Bulletin.
      Fraudulent gold and silver mines were common in the years following the California Gold Rush of 1849. Swindlers fooled many eager greenhorns by "salting" worthless mines with particles of gold dust to make them appear mineral-rich. However, few con men were as daring as Kentucky cousins Philip Arnold and John Slack, who convinced San Francisco capitalists to invest in a worthless mine in the northwestern corner of Colorado.
      Arnold and Slack played their con perfectly. They arrived in San Francisco in 1872 and tried to deposit a bag of uncut diamonds at a bank. When questioned, the two men quickly disappeared, acting as if they were reluctant to talk about their discovery. Intrigued, a bank director named William Ralston tracked down the men. Assuming he was dealing with unsophisticated country bumpkins, he set out to take control of the diamond mine. The two cousins agreed to take a blindfolded mining expert to the site; the expert returned to report that the mine was indeed rich with diamonds and rubies.
      Joining forces with a number of other prominent San Francisco financiers, Ralston formed the New York Mining and Commercial Company, capitalized at $10 million, and began selling stock to eager investors. As a show of good faith, Arnold and Slack received about $600'000 — small change in comparison to the supposed value of the diamond mine. Convinced that the American West must have many other major deposits of diamonds, at least 25 other diamond exploration companies formed in the subsequent months.
      Clarence King, the then-little-known young leader of a geographical survey of the 40th parallel, finally exposed the cousins' diamond mine as a hoax. A brilliant geologist and mining engineer, King was suspicious of the mine from the start. He correctly deduced the location of the supposed mine, raced off to investigate, and soon realized that the swindlers had salted the mine — some of the gems he found even showed jewelers-cut marks.
      Back in San Francisco, King exposed the fraud in the newspapers and the Great Diamond Hoax collapsed. Ralston returned $80'000 to each of his investors, but he was never able to recover the $600'000 given to the two cousins. Arnold lived out the few remaining years of his life in luxury in Kentucky before dying of pneumonia in 1878. Slack apparently squandered his share of the money, for he was last reported working as a coffin maker in New Mexico. King's role in exposing the fraud brought him national recognition — he became the first director of the United States Geological Survey.
1863 Mine Run campaign begins
      Union General George Meade moves against General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia after months of inaction following the Battle of Gettysburg. Meade's troops found no weaknesses in Lee's lines, and the offensive was abandoned after only five days. Meade was under pressure from the Lincoln administration to act before the end of 1863. For months after Gettysburg, the two battered armies nursed their wounds and gazed warily at one another across the Rappahannock River. In October 1863, Lee attempted to move his army between the Union force and Washington, D.C., but his offensive failed at Bristoe Station. Now, Meade hoped to attack part of Lee's army.
      On 26 November Meade sends three corps against Lee's right flank around a small valley called Mine Run. Unfortunately for the Union, William French's Third Corps took the wrong road and did not cross the Rapidan River (just south of the Rappahannock) on time. Lee moved part of his army east to meet the threat. While French's corps wandered in the Virginia wilderness, Confederate General Edward Johnson moved to block their advance. French's men fought Johnson's at Payne's Farm; French suffered 950 men killed and wounded to Johnson's 545. The blunder cost the Union heavily. Lee's men took up strong positions along Mine Run, and Meade realized that to attack head on would be foolish. By 01 December, Meade began pulling his men back across the Rappahannock River and into winter quarters. There would be no further activity between the two great armies until spring.
1863 Siege of Knoxville, Tennessee continues.
1862 (or 1864?) Uncle Tom's Cabin's author meets President Lincoln.
      President Abraham Lincoln receives at the White House Harriet Beecher Stowe, the abolitionist author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Legend has it that Lincoln said upon meeting her, "So, you're the little woman that wrote the book that made this great war!"
      Harriet Elizabeth Beecher was born on 14 June 1811 in Litchfield, Connecticut, the seventh child of Congregationalist minister Lyman Beecher. Stowe studied at private schools in Connecticut and worked as a teacher in Hartford for five years until her father moved to Cincinnati in 1832. She accompanied him and continued to teach while writing stories and essays. In 1836, she married Calvin Ellis Stowe, with whom she had seven children. In 1843 she published her first book, The Mayflower; or, Sketches of Scenes and Characters Among the Descendants of the Pilgrims. While living in Cincinnati, Stowe encountered fugitive slaves and the Underground Railroad.
     In reaction to recently tightened fugitive laws, she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly which, on 5 June 1851, began to appear in serial form in the Washington National Era, an abolitionist weekly. Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery story would be published in forty installments over the next ten months. For her story Mrs. Stowe was paid $300.
      Although the weekly had a limited circulation, its audience increased as reader after reader passed their copy along to another. In March 1852, a Boston publisher decided to issue Uncle Tom's Cabin as a book and it became an instant best-seller. Three hundred thousand copies were sold the first year, and about two million copies were sold worldwide by 1857. For one three-month period Stowe reportedly received $10'000 in royalties. Across the nation people discussed the novel and hotly debated the most pressing socio-political issue dramatized in its narrative, slavery.
     Stowe traveled to England in 1853, where she was welcomed as a literary hero. Along with Ralph Waldo Emerson, she became one of the original contributors to The Atlantic, which launched in November 1857.
     In 1863, when Lincoln announced the end of slavery (though in the rebel states only), she danced in the streets. Stowe continued to write throughout her life. In 1853, she published The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, a compilation of documents and testimonies in support of disputed details of her indictment of slavery. In 1856 she published Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, in which she depicted the deterioration of a society resting on a slave basis. Later she wrote novels, of which The Minister's Wooing (1859) is the best known.
      Stowe died on 1 July 1896.

  • Read Documentary History of Slavery in the United States from the collection African American Perspectives, 1818-1907 for a concise review of slavery in the US between 1774 and 1850, when the Fugitive Slave Act was passed.
  • Search American Memory on the term Uncle Tom's Cabin to find a wide variety of material concerning the book, subsequent theatrical adaptations, and related music. See, for example, the musical pieces "Eliza's Flight," published in 1852 and "Eva to Her Papa."
  • Search on the term Harriet Beecher Stowe in The 19th Century in Print: Books to find material written by and concerning Mrs. Stowe. Among these items is a review of Uncle Tom's Cabin, entitled "Uncle Tom in England" from the London Times of Friday, September 3, 1852.
  • A search on the term slavery in Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 will reveal many non-fiction accounts of slavery. Tupelo, by John Hill Aughey, describes the plight of abolitionists living in the South at the time of secession while quoting a Southern perspective on slavery.
  • From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1824-1909 presents 397 pamphlets published from 1824 through 1909 by African-American authors and others who wrote about slavery, African colonization, Emancipation, Reconstruction, and related topics. Search the Subject Index to find a wide variety of materials including personal accounts, orations, reports, and speeches.
    • STOWE ONLINE:
  • Uncle Tom's Cabin
  • Uncle Tom's Cabin
  • Uncle Tom's Cabin
  • Uncle Tom's Cabin
  • The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin
  • The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin
  • Queer Little Folks (1897)
  • House and Home Papers
  • Poganuc People: Their Loves and Lives
  • Woman in Sacred History: A Series of Sketches Drawn from Scriptural, Historical and Legendary Sources
  • The Christian Slave: A Drama Founded Upon a Portion of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1855)
  • The Christian Slave: A Drama Founded Upon a Portion of Uncle Tom's Cabin
    Stage versions co-authored by others:
  • Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly: A Domestic Drama in Six Acts (1858)
  • Uncle Tom's Cabin (New Version): A Melodrama in Five Acts (1889)
    Her husband, Calvin Stowe, is co-author of
  • Discourses by Rev. Samuel T. Seclye, and Rev. Calvin E. Stowe, Delivered ... Before the Society for the Promotion of Collegiate and Theological Education at the West
    • 1862 Manuscript sent as a Christmas present to Alice.
          Oxford mathematician Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 30, sends a handwritten manuscript called Alice's Adventures Under Ground to Alice Liddell, 10. Dodgson, better known by his nom de plume Lewis Carroll, made up the story one day on a picnic with young Alice and her two sisters, the children of one of Dodgson's colleagues.
          Dodgson, born 28 January 1832 the son of a country parson, had been brilliant at both mathematics and wordplay since childhood, when he enjoyed making up games. However, he suffered from a severe stammer, except when he spoke with children. He had many young friends who enjoyed his fantastic stories: The Liddell children thought his tale of a girl who falls down a rabbit hole was one of his best efforts, and Alice insisted he write it down.
          During a visit to the Liddells, English novelist Henry Kingsley happened to notice the manuscript. After reading it, he suggested to Mrs. Liddell that it be published. Dodgson revised the book as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and published it at his own expense, under the name Lewis Carroll, in 1865. The story is one of the earliest children's books written simply to amuse children, not to teach them. The book's sequel, Through the Looking Glass, was published in 1871. Dodgson's other works, including a poetry collection called Phantasmagoria and Other Poems, and another children's book, Sylvie and Bruno, did not gain the same enduring popularity as the Alice books. Dodgson died on 14 January 1898.
    LEWIS CARROLL ONLINE:
  • Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
  • Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
  • Alice's Adventures Under Ground
  • Complete on-line works and commentary
  • Complete Stories
  • Euclid and His Modern Rivals (1879)
  • The Hunting of the Snark
  • The Nursery "Alice"
  • Sylvie and Bruno
  • Sylvie and Bruno Concluded
  • Through the Looking Glass
  • Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There
  • Eight or Nine Wise Words About Letter-Writing
  • Phantasmagoria and Other Poems
    • 1861 At Wheeling, a convention adopts a constitution for new state West Virginia, which refused to secede with the rest of Virginia.
    1855 The Wakarusa War in Kansas
          During the Wakarusa War, a force of some 1500 Border Ruffians camped on the Wakarusa River advance on Lawrence, Kansas, but retreat after they find the town to be heavily defended by Free State forces. Lawrence, Kansas, a station on the Underground Railroad, was a center of pre-Civil War violence over the issue of slavery. Trouble in territorial Kansas began with the signing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act by President Franklin Pierce in 1854. The act stipulated that settlers in the newly created territories of Nebraska and Kansas would decide by popular vote whether their territory would be free or slave. In early 1855, Kansas's first election proved a violent affair as over 5,000 Border Ruffians invaded the territory from western Missouri and forced the election of a pro-slavery legislature. To prevent further bloodshed, Andrew H. Reeder, appointed territorial governor by President Pierce, reluctantly approved the election. A few months later, the Kansas Free State forces were formed, armed by supporters in the North and featuring the leadership of militant abolitionist John Brown. In May of 1856, Border Ruffians and other pro-slavery supporters return to the Wakarusa River area, and succeed in sacking the town of Lawrence. In retaliation, a small Free State force under John Brown massacres five pro-slavery Kansans along the Pottawatomie Creek. Over the next four years, raids, skirmishes, and massacres continue in "Bleeding Kansas," as it is popularly known, but in 1861 the irrepressible differences in the territory are swallowed up by the full-scale outbreak of the American Civil War.
    1844 El general Ramón María Narváez y Campos es designado por primera vez presidente del Consejo de Ministros español.
    1841 First date in James Clavell's novel Tai-Pan
    1832 For 12½ cents, passengers began riding the first streetcar railway in America. The New York City service ran from City Hall to 14th Street.
    Napoléon Bonaparte's decimated, retreating army begins crossing the Beresina River over two hastily constructed bridges.
    1812 Le passage de la Bérézina
          La Grande Armée de Napoléon 1er arrive au bord de la Bérézina, un affluent du Dniepr. Survient l'épisode le plus dramatique de la retraite de Russie. Tandis que les Cosaques harcèlent les troupes démunies de tout, les pontonniers du général Eblé aménagent un passage sur la rivière gelée. La plupart y laissent leur vie. Pendant 3 jours, ce qui reste de la Grande Armée va franchir les ponts improvisés. Désastre La Grande Armée comptait 700'000 soldats à son entrée en Russie, en juin, dont 300'000 Français. Napoléon 1er se montre très vite désemparé par la tactique de l'armée russe du maréchal Koutouzov qui refuse le combat et dévaste les villages devant l'envahisseur pour le priver de tout ravitaillement. C'est seulement le 07 septembre, sur les bords de la Moskova, près du village de Borodino, que les deux armées s'affrontent enfin. La victoire revient aux Français mais au prix de lourdes pertes: 30'000 contre 50'000 côté russe.
          La Grande Armée entre enfin à Moscou, l'ancienne capitale de l'empire tsariste. C'est pour s'apercevoir que la ville a été désertée par tous ses habitants. Les soldats du maréchal Koutouzov n'ont pas hésité à chasser les Moscovites vers les forêts des alentours. Le lendemain de leur entrée dans la ville, le 15 septembre 1812, les soldats de Napoléon doivent faire face à des incendies multiples, allumés ça et là par des repris de justice russes. Les incendies ont été manifestement préparés de longue date, à l'instigation du gouverneur de la ville, le comte Rostopchine (père de la future comtesse de Ségur, auteur de Les Malheurs de Sophie). Très vite, la ville, construite en bois, est en flammes. Napoléon 1er s'entête néanmoins à attendre sur place, pendant un mois entier, une réponse du tsar Alexandre 1er à ses offres de négociations. Celles-ci ne venant pas, il doit se résigner à battre en retraite en dépit de l'hiver précoce.
          L'empereur choisit de revenir par le même chemin, bien que celui-ci eût été déjà dévasté par les troupes russes et que le terrible hiver russe fasse déjà sentir ses morsures. Les soldats de la Grande Armée ne sont plus que 70'000 en arrivant à la Bérézina. 40'000 seulement traversent la rivière et une vingtaine de milliers retrouveront la France... On évalue à 50'000 le nombre de prisonniers et de déserteurs français qui ont fait souche en Russie. La débâcle est totale. L'Empereur rédige un Bulletin dramatique pour en informer l'opinion française. Lui-même abandonne ses soldats et rejoint en toute hâte Paris, où un général a tenté de renverser l'Empire.
    —     Le 26 novembre 1812, les pontonniers du général Eblé construisent deux ponts sur la Bérézina. Leur héroïsme va sauver les restes de la Grande Armée de Napoléon 1er. Cette armée de 600'000 hommes (dont 150'000 Français) a envahi la Russie cinq mois plus tôt. Saignée à blanc par le harcèlement des Cosaques, elle doit bientôt battre en retraite. En arrivant au bord de la Bérézina, Napoléon 1er ne dispose plus que 49.000 combattants, non compris 40'000 retardataires. La glace qui recouvre habituellement la rivière en cette saison, a fondu par l’effet d’un dégel inattendu et les eaux charrient d’énormes blocs de glace. Le général du génie Jean-Baptiste Eblé a heureusement conservé ses outils malgré les ordres de l'empereur. En quelques heures, ses 400 pontonniers édifient deux ponts de 90 mètres de long et 5 mètres de large. En trois jours, les troupes franchissent la rivière pendant que le général Oudinot livre bataille aux Russes afin de faire diversion. Un pont se brise le 27 novembre, entraînant dans les flots un grand nombre de grognards. Il est réparé dans la soirée par les pontonniers qui se jettent dans les eaux glacées. Au matin du 29 novembre, Eblé, qui voit les Russes approcher, met le feu à ses ouvrages. Des milliers de traînards se noient en tentant d’échapper à l’ennemi. Parmi eux des femmes et des enfants. Napoléon a encore 25'000 combattants et 30'000 non-combattants. 20'000 retrouveront leurs foyers... On évalue à 50'000 le nombre de prisonniers et de déserteurs qui feront souche en Russie. Une grande partie des pontonniers ont péri de froid dans l’eau glaciale de la Bérézina. Aucun ne survivra à la retraite et Eblé lui-même mourra d’épuisement à Königsberg.
    1793 Republican calendar replaces Gregorian calendar in France under penalty of death.
    1789 In accord with Congressional resolution, President George Washington proclaims this day (a Thursday) to be a Thanksgiving Day (the first). National Thanksgiving days would be periodically proclaimed by presidents, until in 1863 Abraham Lincoln inaugurated the practice of annually setting the fourth Thursday in November aside for Thanksgiving Day.
    1778 Capt Cook discovers Maui (Sandwich Islands)
    1775 The American Navy began using chaplains within its regular service.
    1774 A congress of colonial leaders criticizes British influence in the colonies and affirms their right to "Life, liberty and property."
    1716 The first lion exhibited in America is seen in Boston.
    1703 Bristol England damaged by hurricane, Royal Navy loses 15 warships
    1688 Louis XIV declares war on the Netherlands
    1620 Le Mayflower aborde à Plymouth
          Le Mayflower aborde en un lieu baptisé Plymouth, près de Cape Cod, sur la côte sauvage du Massachusetts. Ce voilier amène d'Angleterre une centaine de colons. Parmi eux, 35 protestants anglais très pieux, chassés de leur pays par les persécutions du roi Jacques 1er. Ils ont d'abord tenté leur chance aux Pays-Bas, à Leyde. Mais l'état de l'Europe les a déçus.
          Les troubles religieux en Angleterre laissent entrevoir la chute de la monarchie et la dictature de Cromwell, l'Allemagne souffre de la guerre de Trente Ans tandis que la France supporte la régence troublée de Marie de Médicis, qui fait suite à l'assassinat d'Henri IV. Le petit groupe d'Anglais décide de créer une "Nouvelle Jérusalem" dans le Nouveau Monde. C'est le moment où la "Virginia Company" organise le peuplement de la nouvelle colonie anglaise de Virginie (du nom de la reine Elizabeth 1ère). Leur navire, le "Mayflower", arrive en vue de Cape Cod, sur la côte vierge du futur Massachusetts, le 21 novembre (11 novembre selon le calendrier julien encore en vigueur en Angleterre). Les passagers comprennent alors qu'ils ont fait fausse route et vont débarquer dans un lieu qui échappe encore à l'administration royale.
          En prévision de l'avenir, les "Pilgrim Fathers" (Pères Pèlerins) et leurs compagnons de destinée signent sur le navire un pacte de bonne entente. Ce pacte connu comme le "Mayflower Compact" édicte les principes qui doivent régir le futur établissement. Il met sur pied une démocratie locale efficace et respectueuse des croyances de chacun. Sitôt débarquée, la communauté va conclure un traité de paix avec les Indiens. Les incidents de voisinage n'en seront pas moins nombreux. Après une rude année qui se soldera par la mort de nombreux colons, les survivants devront leur survie aux dindes sauvages et au maïs fourni par les Indiens. C'est ainsi que leur chef, William Bradford, organisera une journée d'action de grâce en novembre 1621. C'est le premier "Thanksgiving Day".
    Thanksgiving Day
          Ce "Thanksgiving Day" se renouvellera chaque année en Nouvelle Angleterre avant que le président Abraham Lincoln ne l'érige en fête nationale en 1863. De nos jours encore, chaque 4e jeudi de novembre, les familles des Etats-Unis savourent de la dinde aux airelles avec des patates douces et de la tarte au potiron au dessert. La démocratie locale et l'esprit de tolérance des Pères Pélerins sont devenus le trait caractéristique des institutions nord-américaines. C'est pourquoi le souvenir du "Mayflower" restent encore si vifs aux Etats-Unis et au Canada. Plusieurs navires porteront encore ce nom mythique. Dans les annes 1840, l'un d'eux amènera d'Irlande à Boston de nombreux émigrants - catholiques ceux-là -, chassés par la famine.
    1585 Llegan a la ciudad de Santiago del Estero (Paraguay) los dos primeros miembros de la Defendants Derek King, 14, right, and his brother Alex King, 13, left, stand as the jury leaves the courtroom to begin deliberation in their murder trial, Friday, Sept. 6, 2002, in Pensacola, Fla. The King brothers are charged with murdering their father Terry King. Compañía de Jesús.
    1539 In England, the monastery at the Fountains Abbey was surrendered to the crown. It was the richest of the Cistercian houses, prior to the time of the Dissolution of all monasteries in England, under the reign of Henry VIII.
    0579 Pelagius II begins his reign as Pope.
    TO THE TOP
    King brothers 06 Sep 2002Deaths which occurred on a November 26:
    2001 Terry Lee King, 40, murdered by [his boys, 12 and 13?] or [an abuser of his willing youngest boy?]
    2 Opposing Theories in a Murder, and Both Are the Prosecution's
    PENSACOLA, Fla., Aug. 30, 2002 — In a courtroom here on Tuesday 03 September 2002, Judge Frank Bell will preside over a sensational murder trial: 14-year-old Derek King and his 13-year-old brother, Alex, will face first-degree murder charges in the grisly killing of their father late last year.
          It is a murder that Judge Bell, of Escambia Circuit Court, has already learned a lot about. He just finished presiding over another first-degree murder trial involving the same victim but a different defendant. The testimony of the two boys was the key evidence in that trial.
          While the jury rendered its verdict on Friday in the trial of Rick Chavis, a 40-year-old local handyman and former friend of the King family, it was sealed.
          "Is it possible for two different juries to find both of them guilty?" Judge Bell said of the two sets of defendants. "Yes. Is it possible for two different juries to find both of them not guilty? Yes. Unusual, very unusual."
          The case is one that has riveted people here since the two boys, then ages 13 and 12, were arrested on charges of bashing the head of their sleeping father, Terry Lee King, and then setting their house on fire to cover up the killing. Relatives and neighbors said that Mr. King, who was raising the boys alone, was a strict disciplinarian but that they had seen no signs of physical abuse.
          Still, it appeared to many to be an open-and-shut case, because Derek admitted to investigators in a taped confession that he wielded the bat that killed his father and Alex confessed to coming up with the idea.
          Matters became murkier in the spring when a grand jury indicted Mr. Chavis in the same killing. The boys had changed their story and said Mr. Chavis killed their father and got them to take the blame. Prosecutors now say Mr. Chavis was romantically obsessed with Alex. They have also charged him with sexual misconduct against a child.
          The brothers, who are being tried as adults, and Mr. Chavis are each charged with first-degree murder. If convicted, they will receive mandatory sentences of life in prison without parole. The brothers, who are being held in a county jail area separate from adult inmates, are also charged with arson, a felony punishable by 30 years in prison.
          Legal experts say it is rare that prosecutors would conduct simultaneous, separate trials for a crime that only one defendant or set of defendants could have committed.
          Trying Mr. Chavis and the boys requires the prosecution to present two theories in two trials. In the Chavis case, they said Mr. Chavis swung the aluminum bat that killed Mr. King. In the other case, they say the boys killed their 40-year-old father, who worked for a Pensacola print shop. Prosecutors in the King case will focus on the boys' confession and not the details of Mr. Chavis' trial.
          Even David Rimmer, the assistant state's attorney prosecuting both cases, conceded in a courtroom conference out of the jury's presence that the Chavis case "is not my strongest case."
          The judge in both cases has ordered the prosecutor and lawyers not to speak to the news media, and the lawyers on both sides declined to comment outside the courtroom.
          The jury heard closing arguments in Mr. Chavis's trial on Thursday and reached a verdict on Friday after about seven hours of deliberations. But Mr. Chavis will not know his fate for some time because the verdict will remain sealed until the King brothers' trial concludes.
          The fates of the boys and Mr. Chavis have been linked since Nov. 26, when firefighters were called by a neighbor to an early morning blaze at the King house and found the father's body in a recliner in the living room. What happened just before the fire depends on which of the boys' versions of events is to be believed.
          Days after the killing, Derek and Alex provided taped confessions to police investigators. Four months later, in an appearance before a grand jury, they recanted their stories.
          In testimony in the Chavis trial, the boys said on Wednesday that their confessions were intended to cover for Mr. Chavis.
          Mr. Chavis goes on trial in October on charges of lewd and lascivious acts upon a child under 16 years of age, a second-degree felony punishable by 15 years in prison. Mr. Chavis, who pleaded no contest in the mid-1980's to having sex with two teenage boys, has pleaded not guilty to the pending charge.
          In trying to establish what he said was Mr. Chavis's obsession with Alex as a possible motive for the killing, Mr. Rimmer read in court from Alex's notebook. "Before I met Rick I was straight. But now I'm gay," one passage said.
          Alex, dressed in a green prison jumpsuit with his hands cuffed in front of him, testified in a voice often just above a whisper: "I was in love with Rick, and he let me play video games and stuff. It was funner over at his house, I guess."
          The brothers, who said their father was controlling and abusive, testified that Mr. Chavis told them to take the blame for the crime because they could claim self-defense and, if convicted, would receive lighter sentences as juveniles. The boys said that on the night of the killing, they let Mr. Chavis in the house after midnight and that, following his orders, waited in the trunk of his car while he bludgeoned their father.
          Mr. Chavis's lawyer, Michael Rollo, told the jury that the boys' intricate knowledge of the crime contradicted their "new and improved" story. Mr. Rollo pointed out that paint thinner — a blaze accelerator that may have been the substance used to set the house afire — was found on the boys' tennis shoes. Derek testified that the paint thinner was on their shoes because they had helped their father paint part of the house earlier in the fall.
          Mr. Rollo told the jury not to be influenced by Derek King's "baby face" appearance, describing him as a motherless psychopath with a history of antisocial behavior and preoccupation with fire. He said that Alex was afraid of his father and suggested the killing but that Derek carried it out.
          Mr. King had custody of the boys, whose mother had not lived with them for seven years. Derek lived with foster parents for seven years until his behavior problems became too much for them and they returned him to his father two months before the killing, according to testimony.
          On 16 November, the boys ran away from home and called Mr. Chavis, who kept them at his house, according to police reports. Police officers picked up Derek on 24 November while he was visiting a girlfriend and returned him to his father. The next day Mr. Chavis turned Alex over to the police. The boys were reunited with their father two days before the killing.
          In his confession, Derek said he and Alex talked about what to do if their father tried to punish them for running away. "We sat down on a swing and I told Alex `If stuff gets serious, I will defend you,' " Derek said. "Alex didn't have the strength."
          Derek said that on the night of the killing his father pushed Alex down and Alex started crying. He said the boys waited until their father fell asleep and, "I went in there and hit him once and heard a moan. I was afraid he'd wake up and see us, so I kept on hitting him. I killed him."
          The boys said they then threw the bat on their bed, doused a blanket with charcoal lighter fluid and lighted a fire. Derek said they went out the back door and ran.
          Alex described his father's bloody head and bloated face and recalled his father's last breaths as "sort of like a sound like the person has a slightly stopped-up nose."
          Under a ruling by Judge Bell in Chavis trial, the prosecution was barred from arguing that Mr. Chavis persuaded the boys to commit the crime, since there was no evidence of that. The judge allowed the prosecution to argue, based on the boys' revised story, that Mr. Chavis was the actual killer and that the boys were covering for him. "Did he assist, plan and encourage them before the fact? There's zero evidence," Judge Bell ruled.
          If the jury's sealed verdict is to acquit Mr. Chavis of the killing, he still faces the possibility of spending years in prison. In addition to the trial in October on charges related to his relationship with Alex, Mr. Chavis is also set to stand trial in November on charges of accessory after the fact, a third-degree felony punishable by 30 years in prison, and tampering with or fabricating evidence, a third-degree felony punishable by 5 years in prison.
          The prosecution contends that Mr. Chavis hid the boys after the killing and destroyed evidence related to it. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges.
          In a statement that is likely to be a theme throughout both trials, Mr. Rollo, the defense lawyer, told the jury in closing arguments on Thursday, "We're here because the King boys lied. They either lied to the police or they lied to you."
    — — — — — — — — —
    Brothers Guilty of Killing Father
    2002 Sep 6, 20:02 UT
    PENSACOLA, Fla. - A jury convicted 13- and 14-year-old brothers Friday 06 Sep 2002 of murdering their sleeping father with a baseball bat in an unusual case in which a man was tried for the same crime under a completely different prosecution theory. Alex and Derek King had been charged with first-degree murder for last fall's slaying of Terry King, but the jury returned convictions of second-degree murder. Both boys were also convicted of arson. The elder boy, Derek King, bowed his head as they listened to the verdict. Alex stood stock still.
          Convicted child molester Ricky Chavis, 40, was tried earlier for the murder, with prosecutors arguing that he, not the boys, wielded the bat that killed King. The verdict in his trial was sealed pending the outcome of the brothers' trial, but was not immediately announced. Firefighters found the body of King, 40, on a recliner inside his burning home Nov. 26, 2001. The boys confessed to police a day after the slaying, but later recanted and said Chavis was the killer. Prosecutor David Rimmer argued the boys were telling the truth the first time, and that their confessions are filled with the kind of detail only someone who was there would have known. Defense lawyers contended the boys confessed to protect Chavis and parroted what he had coached them to say. That included such gory details as being able to see the victim's brain through a hole in his head and the raspy sound of his last gasps. "Everyone in this courtroom can repeat those details," said James Stokes, Alex's lawyer. "The boys' stories line up because the boys' stories are rehearsed." [Photo: defendants Derek King, 14, right, and his brother Alex King, 13, left, stand as the jury leaves the courtroom to begin deliberation in their murder trial, Friday, Sept. 6, 2002, in Pensacola, Fla. The King brothers are charged with murdering their father Terry King. >
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    update
         Pensacola, Florida — A judge Thursday 17 October 2002 threw out the convictions of two boys, ages 13 and 14, in the slaying of their father, who was bludgeoned with a baseball bat as he slept. Circuit Judge Frank Bell said the boys' rights were violated by the ``unusual and bizarre'' way prosecutors simultaneously presented two contradictory theories of the crime.
          Prosecutors won the conviction of Alex and Derek King last month by arguing that Derek swung the bat. But in a trial that ended a week earlier, they presented evidence that an adult friend of the boys committed the crime. The judge said he will order a new trial for the boys, and in the meantime will encourage the prosecution and defense to work out a deal. The brothers were facing prison terms of 20 years to life because they were tried as adults. They were convicted of second-degree murder without a weapon, as well as arson, for setting the house on fire to cover the crime. ``We're all ecstatic,'' said Linda Walker, the boys' maternal grandmother. ``I saw Derek smile. I think they're happy about it. Now they know they've got hope.'' The brothers' lawyers argued that prosecutor David Rimmer committed prosecutorial misconduct for pursuing the contradictory theories. The boys' adult friend, convicted child molester Ricky Chavis, was acquitted, but the verdict was sealed until the boys' trial was over. Jurors in the boys' trial said that they believed Chavis was the real killer and that the brothers had only helped him commit the crime. Rimmer defended his handling of the two trials. He said he never actually argued Chavis was the killer, and instead left it to jurors to decide. Christopher Slobogin, a law professor at the University of Florida, said the judge made the right decision. He said the judge recognized a need to rectify an appearance of injustice, if not actual injustice, in the way prosecutors pursued conflicting cases. ``To many people, that smacked of risking inconsistent verdicts and allowing convictions when in fact there really wasn't proof beyond a reasonable doubt of guilt,'' the professor said. Alex was 12 and Derek 13 last November when their father was killed in nearby Cantonment. Terry King, 40, was clubbed in the head with an aluminum baseball bat as he dozed in a recliner. Prosecutors said the boys did it because their father was too controlling and they wanted to live with Chavis, who let them smoke marijuana and stay up late watching television. Before Thursday's hearing, jury forewoman Lynne Schwarz said at a courthouse rally that she never thought the verdict would result in prison time for the boys. ``We always thought that there was going to be some kind of rehabilitation, that the boys were going to be taken somewhere where they could have a new life and learn to be productive citizens,'' said Schwarz, 52. ``We never thought that these boys committed the crime. Never.'' Jurors were shocked when they found out a separate jury had acquitted Chavis a week before the boys were tried.
    -----------------
    further update:
    Miami, Nov. 14, 2002 — Alex and Derek King, the teenage brothers whose second-degree murder convictions for the bludgeoning death of their father were thrown out by a judge on 17 October 2002, plead guilty to third-degree murder. As a result, they will be spared the much lengthier sentences they faced if the jury verdict had stood.
         Under an agreement reached after a week of mediation between prosecutors and defense lawyers, Alex, 13, will serve seven years in prison and Derek, 14, will serve eight years for the 26 November 2001 killing of Terry King, who was beaten to death with a baseball bat as he slept in a recliner in the living room of their home in Pensacola, Fla. As part of the deal, the brothers were required to provide statements admitting to their roles in the killing. They also pleaded guilty to burning the family home to cover up their actions, and the agreement allows concurrent sentences of the same lengths for the arson. They are not eligible for parole but will receive credit for time served, reducing their sentences by about a year. The prosecutor and defense lawyers said the agreement held the boys accountable for their actions but combined punishment with the possibility for rehabilitation. "What I wanted out of this case, I got," David Rimmer, the prosecutor, said. "I got the truth. I also wanted them to take responsibility. This is the first step toward rehabilitation."
          The brothers, who were tried as adults, had faced sentences of 22 years to life for the second-degree murder convictions and 30-year sentences for the arson conviction. In court today, the boys, dressed in oversize green prison jumpsuits, stood and answered, "Yes, your honor," when asked repeatedly if they understood the agreement. The boys told the judge, Frank Bell of Escambia County Circuit Court, that they had been well represented by their lawyers and were satisfied with the sentences they faced. Judge Bell, who presided over the trials, threw out the brothers' convictions, saying the prosecution's "unusual and bizarre" decision to try an adult family friend for the same killing before the boys were tried violated their rights to due process. Judge Bell instead ordered the mediation and approved the agreement in a hearing today. The boys will be sent to a state prison that houses juveniles separately from adults. They will receive counseling and take part in activities including academic and vocational training and sports programs in a heavily guarded, campuslike setting. The court-appointed mediator said the plea deal was intended to provide structure for the boys, whose mother left them when they were young. "They have had instability in their life," said Bill Eddins, the mediator. "It became very important to give them structure and stability."
          Within hours of their arrest in November 2001, the brothers confessed to smashing their father's head with a baseball bat as he slept. They later blamed the family friend, Ricky Chavis, who prosecutors have charged with sexually abusing Alex. Based on the boys' accusations, prosecutors first tried Mr. Chavis, who has also been charged with lewd and lascivious acts upon a child but denies abusing Alex. After Mr. Chavis was acquitted of Mr. King's murder, prosecutors tried the boys, based on their confessions. Mr. Chavis's acquittal was not disclosed until the boys' verdict was read. The boys, who were 12 and 13 at the time of the murder, said in their signed statements to the court today that they alone had killed their father but that Mr. Chavis had influenced their decision by providing them with marijuana and suggesting they could live carefree with him if their father were gone. Judge Bell, who presided over both murder trials, ruled last month on a defense motion for a retrial that the boys' rights were violated because the prosecution presented two theories about the crime, with no clear indication of who prosecutors believed committed the killing. The case gained national attention because of the boys' ages and the prosecution strategy. Lawyers for the brothers said the plea deal was the best they could reach and would spare the boys a new trial. "He could face life in prison again or take the offer," Alex King's lawyer, James Stokes, said. "Alex's decision was to take the offer. This is the only way he has got any possibility at rehabilitation." A lawyer for Derek said the plea was negotiated with the best interest of both boys in mind. "Obviously, there's better alternatives out there, if the boys could walk out of jail," said the lawyer, Sharon Potter. The boys' mother, Kelly Marino, has recently tried to replace their court-appointed lawyers with lawyers hired by the entertainer Rosie O'Donnell. Ms. Marino said the boys were not competent to agree to the plea deal, and the new lawyers tried to introduce a motion today to have the boys' competency evaluated. Judge Bell said they had no involvement in the case and did not consider the motion. Ms. Marino, who lives in Kentucky, said she had been shut out of the negotiations and was angry about the outcome. "They're not old enough to make a judgment for the rest of their lives," she said. The defense lawyers and the prosecutor said Ms. Marino was not motivated by the boys' best interest. "They wouldn't be in the state pen if she had been there when they were in the playpen," Mr. Rimmer, the prosecutor, said. Ms. Marino's lawyer, Ron Johnson, said justice was not served with the plea agreement. Linda Walker, the boys' maternal grandmother, said she had mixed emotions about the conclusion of the case. "I still believe in their innocence," Ms. Walker said. Ms. Walker, who exchanged smiles with Derek in the courtroom, said: "They seem to be kind of happy about it. They are getting away from adults, and that's what I wanted."
    2001 Teissir al-Ajarmi, 22, suicide bomber, Hamas militant from the Jebaliya refugee camp near Gaza City, who succeeds only in lightly injuring two Israeli border policemen near the Erez crossing between Gaza and Israel, the Israeli military said. The Islamic.
    2000 Khalil Taher, Bedouin tracker sergeant major with the Israeli army, shortly before 07:00, as Hezbollah guerillas detonate by remote control a bomb he was examining at about 1 km inside the "Chebaa Farms" area which Israel considers part of the formerly Syrian Golan Heights which it annexed in 1981, but which Lebanon and Syria consider Lebanese.
    1985 Pablo Serrano, escultor español.
    1977 Ruth Moufang, mathematician.
    1973 Albert DeSalvo, “Boston Strangler”, “Green Man”, “Measuring Man”, stabbed by a fellow prisoner.
          On 4 January 1964 occured the Boston Strangler's last murder. Mary Sullivan was raped and strangled to death in her Boston apartment. The killer left a card reading "Happy New Year" between the victim's toes. Sullivan would turn out to be the last woman killed by the notorious Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, who had terrorized the city between 1962 and 1964, raping and killing 13 women.
          DeSalvo's serial-killing career was shaped at an early age. His father would bring home prostitutes and have sex with them in front of the family, before brutally beating his wife and children. On one occasion, DeSalvo's father knocked out his mother's teeth and then broke her fingers one by one while she lay unconscious on the floor. DeSalvo himself was sold by his father to work as a farm laborer, along with two of his sisters. Unfortunately, DeSalvo learned the sadistic lessons well because he was soon torturing the neighborhood pets.
          In the late 1950s, as a young man, DeSalvo acquired the first of his criminal nicknames. He knocked on the doors of young women, claiming to represent a modeling agency. He told the women that he needed to take their measurements and proceeded to crudely fondle the women as he used his tape measure. His stint as the “Measuring Man” came to an end with his arrest on 17 March 1960, and he spent nearly a year in prison.
          When DeSalvo was released, his next series of crimes were far worse. For nearly two years, he broke into hundreds of apartments in New England, tied up the women and sexually assaulted them. He always wore green handyman clothes during his assaults and became known as the “Green Man.”
          In 1962, DeSalvo started killing his victims. He strangled Anna Slesers with her own housecoat and tied the ends in a bow, which would become his trademark. Throughout the summer of 1962, DeSalvo raped and killed elderly women in Boston. However, by winter he began attacking younger women, always leaving the rope or cord used to strangle the victim in a bow. Police, who were stymied in their attempts to stop the newly dubbed “Boston Strangler,” even brought in a psychic to inspect the clothes of the victims.
          However, it was DeSalvo himself who enabled the police to close the case. On 27 October 1964, after raping another young woman, he suddenly stopped before killing her. The victim called the police and gave a description of her attacker, which enabled the police to arrest DeSalvo. However, they tied him only to the Green Man sexual attacks until he confessed the murders to his attorney, F. Lee Bailey. Under a deal with prosecutors, DeSalvo never was charged or convicted with the Boston Strangler murders, getting a life sentence instead for the Green Man rapes. Still, DeSalvo's life term was short. He was stabbed to death by an unidentified fellow inmate at Walpole State Prison on 26 November 1973.
    1970 B O Davis Sr., 93, first black US general, in Chicago
    1968 Polozii, mathematician.
    1960 Gilberto Alzate Avendaño, abogado, periodista y político colombiano.
    1949 Mateo Hernández Sánchez, escultor español.
    1943: 1015 US servicemen and 123 others as, during World War II, the HMT Rohna, a British transport ship carrying US soldiers, is hit by a German missile off Algeria.
    1943 Joseph van Sluijters “Georges de Feure”, Dutch painter born on 06 September 1868. — MORE ON DE FEURE AT ART “4” NOVEMBER — LINKS — Swan Lake — Les Fleurs du Mal — The Voice of Evil — In Search of the Infinite — The Pheasant
    1939 James Naismith Basketball inventor
    1936 Victor Léon Jean Pierre Charreton, French artist born on 02 March 1864.
    1933 Thomas Thurmond and John Holmes, murderers, in lynching acclaimed by governor and public.
          A mob of fifteen thousand in San Jose, California, storms the jail where Thurmond and Holmes are being held as suspects in the kidnapping and murder of Brooke Hart, the 22-year-old son of a local storeowner. The mob of angry citizens proceeded to lynch the accused men and then pose them for pictures.
          On 09 November, Brooke Hart was abducted by men in a Studebaker. His family received a $40,000 ransom demand and, soon after, Hart's wallet was found on a tanker ship in a nearby bay. The investigative trail led to Holmes and Thurmond, who implicated each other in separate confessions. Both acknowledged, though, that Hart had been pistol-whipped and then thrown off the San Mateo Bridge. After Hart's body washed ashore on 25 November, a vigilante mob began to form. Newspapers reported the possibility of a lynching and local radio stations broadcast the plan. Not only did Governor James Rolph reject the National Guard's offer to send assistance, he reportedly said he would pardon those involved in the lynching. On 26 November, the angry mob converged at the jail and beat the guards, using a battering ram to break into the cells. Thurmond and Holmes were dragged out and hanged from large trees in a nearby park.
          The public seemed to welcome the gruesome act of vigilante violence. After the incident, pieces of the lynching ropes were sold to the public. Though the San Jose News declined to publish pictures of the lynching, it condoned the act in an editorial. Eighteen-year-old Anthony Cataldi bragged that he had been the leader of the mob but he was not held accountable for his participation. At Stanford University, a professor asked his students to stand and applaud the lynching. Perhaps most disturbing, Governor Rolph publicly praised the mob. "The best lesson ever given the country," said Governor Rolph. "I would like to parole all kidnappers in San Quentin to the fine, patriotic citizens of San Jose."
    1926 John Moses Browning, inventor estadounidense.
    1921 Joseph Bail, French artist bon on 22 January 1863.
    1901 Joseph Henry Thayer, US scholar best remembered for his Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament.
    1892 Charles-Martial-Allemand Lavigerie, 67, cardinal and archbishop of Algiers and Carthage (now Tunis, Tunisia) whose dream to convert Africa to Christianity prompted him to found the society of Missionaries of Our Lady of Africa of Algeria, or White Fathers..Among his writings are a doctorate thesis: Essai sur l'école chrétienne d'Edesse (1850); Exposé des erreurs doctrinales du Jansénisme (1858), Decreta concilii provincialis Algeriensis in Africa (1873); Œuvres choises (Paris, 1884); Documents pour la fondation de l'œuvre antiesclavagiste (1889).
    1885 El general Francisco Serrano y Domínguez fallece en Madrid.
    1883 Isabella Van Wagener "Sojourner Truth", born a slave, she experienced visions and voices, which she attributed to God, and was one of the most charismatic abolitionists and suffragists of her day. She was the co-author of Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1850), Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1850), Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1878)
    1882 Thomas LeClear, US painter born on 11 March 1818. — MORE ON LECLEAR AT ART “4” NOVEMBER — LINKS — Interior with Portraits
    1861 Wilhelm Hensel, German artist born on 06 July 1794.
    1855 Adam Mickiewicz, poeta y patriota polaco.
    1851 Louis-Philippe Crépin, French artist born in 1772.
    1788 George Robertson, British artist born in some year from 1742 to 1748.
    1779 Pieter Jan van Liender, Dutch artist born on 23 December 1727.
    1757 Jan Jakob Spoede, Flemish artist born in 1680.
    1504 Isabel I, llamada La católica, primera reina de Castilla y de Aragón, fallece en Medina del Campo.
    0399 St Siricius, Pope
    0311 Bishop Peter of Alexandria, summarily martyred over the Arian controversy.
    Births which occurred on a November 26:
    1954 Les mandarins, novela de Simone de Beauvoir, se publica.
    1940 Bombieri, mathematician.
    1931 Adolfo Perez Esquivel Buenos Argentina, (1980 Nobel Peace Prize)
    1924 George Segal NY, sculptor lifelike mixed-media figures (Bus Driver)
    1924 Mongolian People's Republic proclaimed
    1922 Charles M Schulz, American cartoonist who created Peanuts starring Charlie Brown, and died during the night when his farewell Peanuts strip was being printed.
    1922 José María López de Letona y Núñez del Pino, político e ingeniero español.
    1918 Patricio Aylwin Azócar, político y jurista chileno.
    1912 Eugène Ionesco, Romania, French dramatist, father of theater of the absurd
          While working as a proofreader, Ionesco decided to learn English. The stilted commonplaces of his textbook inspired the masterly catalog of senseless platitudes that constitutes La Cantatrice Chauve. In its most famous scene, two strangers — who are exchanging banalities about how the weather is faring, where they live, and how many children they have — stumble upon the astonishing discovery that they are indeed man and wife; it is a brilliant example of Ionesco's recurrent themes of self-estrangement and the difficulty of communication.
          In rapid succession Ionesco wrote a number of plays, all developing the "antilogical" ideas of La Cantatrice Chauve; these included brief and violently irrational sketches and also a series of more elaborate one-act plays in which many of his later themes — especially the fear and horror of death — begin to make their appearance. Among these, La Leçon (1951), Les Chaises (1952), and Le Nouveau Locataire (1955) are notable successes.
          In La Leçon, a timid professor uses the meaning he assigns to words to establish tyrannical dominance over an eager female pupil.
          In Les Chaises, an elderly couple await the arrival of an audience to hear the old man's last message to posterity, but only empty chairs accumulate on stage. Feeling confident that his message will be conveyed by an orator he has hired, the old man and his wife commit a double suicide. The orator turns out to be afflicted with aphasia, however, and can speak only gibberish.
          In contrast to these shorter works, it was only with difficulty that Ionesco mastered the techniques of the full-length play: Amédée (1954), Tueur sans gages (1959), and Le Rhinocéros (1959) lack the dramatic unity that he finally achieved with Le Roi se meurt (1962). This success was followed by Le Piéton de l'air (1963). With La Soif et la faim (1966) he returned to a more fragmented type of construction.
          In the next decade he wrote Jeux de massacre (1970); Macbett (1972, a retelling of Shakespeare's Macbeth); and Ce formidable bordel (1973).
          Le Rhinocéros, whose protagonist retains his humanity in a world where humans are mutating into beasts, remains Ionesco's most popular play. He died on 28 March 1994.
    1907 El pelícano de August Strindberg se estrena en Estocolmo.
    1905 Emlyn Williams Wales, actor/playwright (David Copperfield)
    1904 Alejo Carpentier, escritor cubano.
    1894 Norbert Wiener US, mathematician. He would contribute to many areas of mathematics including cybernetics (a term he coined), stochastic processes, quantum theory and during World War II he worked on gunfire control. Wiener died on 18 March 1964.
    1876 Willis Haviland Carrier, inventor of the first air conditioning system to control both temperature and humidity.
    1876 Bart Anthony van der Leck, Dutch painter who died in 1958. — LINKS — Composition 1 (1920)
    1871 Luigi Sturzo, sacerdote y político italiano.
    1867 The refrigerated railroad car is patented by J.B. Sutherland of Detroit, Michigan.
    1860 Simoni Stefan Simony, Austrian artist who died in 1950.
    1857 Ferdinand de Saussure Switzerland, linguist (Cours de Linguistique Générale)
    1832 Mary Edwards Walker US, doctor/women's rights leader
    1827 Ellen Gould White, founder of the Seventh Day Adventists.
    WHITE ONLINE:
  • An Appeal to Mothers
  • Christ's Object Lessons
  • The Desire of Ages
  • The Desire of Ages
  • Early Writings
  • Education
  • The Great Controversy
  • The Great Controversy (1.4 MB)
  • Steps to Christ
  • Steps to Christ
  • The Acts of the Apostles in the Proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ
  • 1888 Sermons and Morning Talks
  • The Ministry of Healing
  • Patriarchs and Prophets
  • Patriarchs and Prophets
  • Prophets and Kings
  • The Sanctified Life
  • Selected Writings
  • The Spirit of Prophecy: The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan (3 volumes, 1870-1878)
  • Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing (1955)
    • 1825 Kappa Alpha Society fraternity is formed at Union College in Schenectady, New York, from group “The Philosophers”, Rev. John Hart Hunter, John McGeoch, Prof. Isaac Wilbur Jackson, Dr. Thomas Hun, Orlando Meads, James Proudfit and Hon. Joseph Anthony Constant of the class of 1826, and Rev. Arthur Burtis and Joseph Law of the Class of 1827. In the words
    1792 Sarah Moore Grimk‚ US antislavery, women's rights advocate
    1731 William Cowper, England, preromantic poet, author of The Diverting History of John Gilpin, translator of Poems of Madame de La Mothe Guyon.
         Cowper's life was full of personal anguish. At five, his mother died, and Cowper was sent to a boarding school where the older boys were cruel and rough. At eighteen William began to study law, and fell in love with his cousin Theodora Cowper, but her father did not approve of the match. Neither one of them ever married.
          After completing law studies, William began to suffer from depression. At one point, he became so despondent that he attempted suicide. After time in a private asylum, he recovered his reason. Cowper moved to the country town of Olney, where John Newton was pastor. Soon they were close friends. In 1771, Newton, became concerned with Cowper's increasing melancholy. Hoping to lift his spirits by keeping him busy, Newton suggested that he and Cowper co-author a book of hymns. Newton himself often wrote hymns to illustrate his Sunday sermons. "Amazing Grace" is one of the 280 hymns he wrote for the Olney Hymns. Cowper wrote 68 of the hymns, including "Oh for a closer walk with God," "There is a fountain filled with blood," and "God moves in a mysterious way":
    God moves in a mysterious way
    His wonders to perform;
    He plants His footsteps in the sea
    And rides upon the storm.
          The Olney Hymns first introduced Cowper to the world. Cowper kept writing poetry and became famous. His The Diverting History of John Gilpin is a children's favorite. In his best work, The Task Cowper continues to praise his Creator. He once said that of all the gifts God gives to us, God, Himself is the greatest gift. (COWPER ONLINE:)
    1607 John Harvard England, clergyman/scholar, major benefactor to Harvard University (library & half his estate)
    1395 (before 27 November) Antonio Pisanello (or Pisano) di Puccio, Italian painter, draftsman, and medallist, who was the last and most brilliant artist of the ornate, courtly International Gothic style. He died on 08 October or 14 July 1455. — MORE ON PISANELLO AT ART “4” NOVEMBER — LINKS — Ginevra d'Este — Princess of the House of Este — Madonna col Bambino e i santi Antonio abate e Giorgio — Visione di sant'Eustachio — Cicogna — Madonna della quaglia — San Giorgio, la principessa e il drago — Saint George and the Princess of Trebizond — Saint George and the Princess — Emperor Sigismund — La lussuria — Studio per la Decollazione del Battista — Madonna col Bambino e i santi Antonio abate e Giorgio — Ginevra d’Este — Visione di sant’Eustachio — Torneo cavalleresco — Ritratto di Leonello d’Este — Medaglia di Leonello d’Este — Medaglia di Alfonso V d’Aragona
    Holidays Lebanon : Independence Day (1941) / Mass : John F Kennedy Day (1963) ( Sunday )
    Religious Observances Baha'i : Day of the Covenant / Christian : St Berchmans / RC : St Sylvester, abbot / RC : St Leonard of Port Maurice / Santos Mártires de Córdoba, Alipio, Amador, Justo, Leandro de Puerto Mauricio, Máximo y Silvestre. / Sainte Delphine - Née en Provence au XIIIe siècle, elle vit pieusement avec son mari Elzéar de Sabran. Devenue veuve, elle meurt dans la mendicité. Le couple est enterré dans la cathédrale d'Apt.
    Thought for the day: “A minister says matrimony should be enduring. It is.”
    “La plus perdue de toutes les journées est celle où l'on n'a pas ri." —     Chamfort
    “La plus perdue de toutes les journées est celle où l'on n'a pas ri, par pari, à Paris.”
    “En Chine, la plus perdue de toutes les journées est celle où l'on n'a pas de riz.”     [c'est long comme un jour sans pain]
    “Les chinoises rient des chinoiseries.”
    “Qui dort, dine air, d'ordinaire.”
    “Il ne faut pas couper les cheveux en quatre dans le sens de la longueur.”
    “Il ne faut pas couper les chevaux en quatre.”     [sauf dans la boucherie chevaline]
    “Mieux vaut tiré par les chevaux que tiré par les cheveux.” [sauf pour un écartelé]
    “Mieux valent des cheveux que des chevaux dans la soupe.” [et des chevreaux?]
    “Mon travail au cirque, c'était à faire dresser les chevaux sur la tête!”
    “Il n'y a pas plus bête que ce riche qui rejetait les banquiers avisés et par niais épargnait.”
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