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Sep 08|  HISTORY
“4” “2”DAY
|Sep 10
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Events, deaths, births, of SEP 09 [For Sep 09 Julian go to Gregorian date: 1583~1699: Sep 19 1700s: Sep 20 1800s: Sep 21 1900~2099: Sep 22] |
On
a 09 September: 2002 The largest generator of electricity (nuclear in its case) in the UK, British Energy is near bankrupcy, having earlier in 2002 reported an annual loss of $780 million. On the New York Stock Exchange, its American Depositary Receipts (BGY) drop from their previous close of $4.87 to an intraday low of $1.67 and close at $2.15. They started trading at $24.25 on 13 December 1999, reached an all-time high of $25.88 on 10 January 2000, sank to $7.25 on 22 May 2000, managed to reach as high as $20.02 on 10 September 2001, and declined from there. [3~year price chart <] In the following days, BGY would fall further, all the way to an intraday low of $0.32 on 18 September 2002. 2001 Fraudulent elections in Belarus. Dictatorial President Alexander Lukashenko, 47, is re-elected over trade union leader Vladimir Goncharik whose supporters have predicted widespread vote fraud. 2000 The Antarctic ozone hole has grown to 30 million square kilometers and, this day and the next, extends over Punta Arenas, Chile, exposing its 120'000 inhabitants to harmful ultraviolet radiation. 1996 Keeping her word not to cooperate with Whitewater prosecutors, Susan McDougal is led away to jail for contempt of court, denying that she is trying to protect Clinton with her silence. 1993 PLO leaders and Israel agreed to recognize each other, clearing the way for a peace accord. 1990 Bush and Gorbachev meet in Helsinki and urge Iraq to leave Kuwait.
1986 NYC jury indicts Gennadly Zakharov (Soviet UN employee) of spying 1983 Radio Shack announces its color computer 2 (the Coco2) |
1977 1st TRS-80 computer sold.
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1957 US President Eisenhower signed into law the first civil rights bill to pass Congress since Reconstruction. 1955 Second day of arrest of Catholic Christians in Shanghai 1948 People's Democratic Republic of Korea proclaimed in North Korea. 1948 Government of Hungary announces arrest of top Lutherans on charges of illegal manipulation of funds 1945 Japanese in S Korea, Taiwan, China, Indochina surrender to Allies 1944 Allied forces liberate Luxembourg 1944 Bulgaria liberated from Nazi control (often referred to as the invasion of Bulgaria by Russia) (National Day)
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1912 J Verdrines becomes 1st to fly over 100 mph (107 mph/172 kph) 1911 1st airmail service (British Post Office)
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1908 Orville Wright makes 1st 1-hr airplane flight, Fort Myer,
Virginia. 1899 French Jew, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, is again falsely found guilty (with extenuating circumstances this time) of passing secrets to the Germans, by a court-martial which repeats the travesty of justice of the first court-martial (22 December 1894) which sent Dreyfus to notorious Devil's Island. On 19 September 1899, French President Émile Loubet [31 Dec 1838 20 December 1929] would pardon Dreyfus. In July 1906 the civilian Cour d'Appel would exonerate Dreyfus, on 22 July 1906 he would be reinstated in the army and awarded the Légion d'Honneur. Major Hubert Joseph Henry, forger of the military cover-up, had alread confessed and, at the end of August 1898, committed suicide, which provoked Major Marie-Charles-Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy [1847 21 May 1923], the real spy (who had forged evidence against Dreyfus) whom a court-martial had falsely exonerated, to flee the country. MORE and a Harper's cartoon. 1892 Almalthea, 5th moon of Jupiter, discovered by EE Barnard at Lick 1886 The Berne International Copyright Convention takes place. 1867 Luxembourg gains independence 1863 The Union Army of the Cumberland passes through Chattanooga as they chase after the retreating Confederates. 1862 Skirmish at Barnesville, Maryland 1862 Lee splits his army & sends Jackson to capture Harpers Ferry
1839 John Herschel takes the 1st glass plate photograph 1834 Parliament passes the Municipal Corporations Act, reforming city and town governments in England. 1833 The first tracts of the Oxford Movement (which sought to purify the English Church) were released. The series was forced to close in 1841, however, when Tract 90 was published, because it interpreted Anglicanism's "Thirty-Nine Articles" in too strong of a Roman Catholic direction. 1830 Charles Durant, 1st US aeronaut, flies a balloon from Castle Garden, NYC to Perth Amboy, NJ 1817 Alexander Lucius Twilight, probably 1st black to graduate from US college, receives BA degree at Middlebury College 1793 La Convention crée une armée révolutionnaire, dont elle confie le commandement à Charles Ronsin. Il lui revient de combattre la contre-révolution, de faire respecter les lois et de protéger le transfert des vivres vers la capitale. 1791 French Royalists take control of Arles and barricade themselves inside the town. 1786 George Washington calls for the abolition of slavery (but does not free his own slaves). 1776 The 2nd Continental Congress renames the United Colonies, "United States".
1585 Pope Sixtus V deprives Henry of Navarre of his rights to the French crown. 1543 Mary, Queen of Scots is is crowned Queen of England. 1411 Pope Gregory XII issues a bull of indulgences which John Hus of Bohemia denounces. 0337 Constantine's three sons, already Caesars, each take the title of Augustus. Constantine II and Constans share the west while Constantius II takes control of the east. |
2001 Ahmed Shah Masood, 48, young Asim, and two suicide
bombers posing as journalists. Masood, a Tajik, was the military leader of the Northern Alliance (anti~Taliban) in Afghanistan. A personality cult would develop around him, fostered by the Tajik, who predominate in the Northern Alliance, but are a minority in the country and in the post-Taliban government, where the Pashtun majority of the country predominates. [< photo: in Kabul, on 08 September 2002, in preparation for the next day's first anniversary commemoration of Masood's death, Afghan soldiers raise a giant portrait of him.] Masood Khalili, one of Masood's closest friends, was sitting next to the commander when two Arabs posing as journalists triggered a bomb inside a camera in the northern Afghan town of Khwaja Bahawuddin near the Tajik border. Miraculously Khalili survived, although he lost sight in one eye and hundreds of pieces of shrapnel that make walking difficult could not be removed from his legs. Masood, 48, died shortly afterwards from his wounds, as did Masood's young translator, Asim. Nearly one year later, Khalili, having become Afghanistan's ambassador to India, would blame the assassination on the al Qaeda network sheltered in Afghanistan during the rule of the Taliban. He says that al Qaeda leader bin Laden, also accused of masterminding the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, wanted to weaken resistance to the Taliban within Afghanistan before striking the United States: “Osama bin Laden rightly thought that if he does something in New York, the Americans will rush to Afghanistan... and will help someone against him on the ground." Masood, the "Lion of the Panjsher," had led a small, poorly equipped force against the Taliban and prevented the hard-line Islamic regime from taking the whole of Afghanistan. He was also a key mujahideen fighter who helped repel the Soviet Army after 10 years of occupation in 1989, using guerrilla tactics and the commanding height of mountains lining the Panjsher Valley. But despite the death of its leader, the Northern Alliance held together and provided Washington with ground troops to follow up the intense air bombardment of Taliban strongholds by US fighters and bombers. Khalili would recall: "That night [08 to 09 September 2001] we talked about politics, Osama, the Pakistani militants, about terrorists being in Afghanistan, about their attacks very soon on our frontlines. "At about 03:30 ... he told me: 'Let us now read."' Following an Afghan tradition, Khalili opened his poetry book at a random page and read a few verses from an ancient Persian poet: "You two should value tonight, you two should remember this night and value it because many days come, many nights go, many weeks disappear, many months and years pass, and you two will not be able to see each other on a night like this again." Masood's dark, almond-shaped eyes widened at the words, Khalili said, and he asked him to repeat them before the two finally left each other to sleep. At 10:00 on 09 September 2001, the friends met again for an interview which had been promised to two Arabs carrying Belgian passports, who had been waiting for nine days. Both the interviewer and television cameraman appeared calm during the preamble to the interview as they outlined the questions they wanted to ask. Masood's mood darkened as they listed as many as eight questions about bin Laden. The cameraman then moved the table, which was in front of Khalili and Masood, but did so with unusual clumsiness. "I said, 'Have you brought a wrestler or a photographer?' Masood laughed and we also laughed." But the interview proceeded with the question: "What is going on in Afghanistan?". Immediately after it, the bomb, which was in the camera, detonated. Khalili's last glance of Masood's face was a few minutes later in a helicopter. "I saw his face. His eyes were closed and some blood was on his face and in his hair." Shortly after, Khalili lost consciousness. |
1990 Samuel K Doe Liberian president, killed by rebels after being
captured.
1963 Over 3000 persons, by landslide into Vaiont Dam, Italy.
1897 David H. Lewis, author. DAVID LEWIS ONLINE: Roller Skating for Gold 1897 Richard Holt Hutton, author. HUTTON ONLINE: Sir Walter Scott 1885 Claude Bouquet, mathematician 1883 Victor Puiseux, mathematician 1874 Alonzo Delano, author. DELANO ONLINE: Alonzo Delano's California Correspondence, Life on the Plains and Among the Diggings 1870 Nathan Lord, author. LORD ONLINE: A Northern Presbyter's Second Letter to Ministers of the Gospel of All Denominations on Slavery 1869 (1867?) Walter Elmer Schfield, US artist who died in 1944. 1817 Paul Cuffe, 58, entrepreneur/ civil rights activist
1513 King James IV of Scotland, defeated and killed by English at Flodden Fields. 1087 William I The Conqueror, King of England, and Duke of Normandy, in Rouen while conducting a war which began when the French king made fun of him for being fat. Débarqué en Angleterre avec ses normands, il avait vaincu le roi Harold à la bataille d'Hastings le 10 octobre 1066. Devenu roi, il impose sa loi à l'Angleterre. Mais c'est en France qu'il meurt, cinq semaines après une chute de cheval lors de sa prise de Mantes.. 0701 St Sergius I, Pope |
Births which occurred on
a 09 September: 1998 World's smallest hard-disk drive. IBM announces that it has created the world's smallest hard-disk drive, the microdrive. About the size of a matchbook, the microdrive weighs less than 30 grams and can hold about 340 megabytes of data. The drive is designed as storage for digital cameras and hand-held computers. 1934 Sonia Sanchez, poet. 1926 National Broadcasting Company (NBC) created by the Radio Corporation of America 1919 Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder gambler/sportscaster (lay you 5 to 1)
1887 Alfred Landon (R-Ks) pres candidate (1932, 1936), Republican governor of Kansas who carried only two states in his overwhelming defeat for the presidency by Franklin Roosevelt in 1936. 1878 Adelaide Crapsey, poet. CRAPSEY ONLINE: Verse 1871 Ralph Hodgson, poet. HODGSON ONLINE: Poems 1868 Mary Hunter Austin, author. AUSTIN ONLINE: The Land of Little Rain, The Land of Little Rain 1860 Frank Morley, mathematician 1857 Pompeo Mariani, Italian painter who died on 25 January 1927. Camillo Mariani Carlo Maria Mariani 1850 Jane Ellen Harrison, author. HARRISON ONLINE: Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion 1850 Harishchandra India, poet/dramatist/father of modern Hindi. 1844 James Maurice Thompson, poet. THOMPSON ONLINE: Poems |
1828
(28 August Julian) Lev Nikolayevich graf Tolstoy,
Russian author, a master of realistic fiction and one of the
world's greatest novelists. He died on 20 November 1910. Issu d'une riche et noble famille russe, il se préoccupe du sort des paysans pauvres. Après avoir participé à la Guerre de Crimée (1854 - 1856), il abandonne famille et richesse pour vivre avec les paysans. Son roman le plus célèbre est Guerre de Paix. [brief Tolstoy bio in Russian] CLICK FOR TOLSTOY PORTRAIT GALLERY AT ART 4 SEPTEMBER > War and Peace (1865-69) contains three kinds of material a historical account of the Napoleonic wars, the biographies of fictional characters, and a set of essays about the philosophy of history. The work's historical portions narrate the campaign of 1805 leading to Napoleon's victory at the Battle of Austerlitz, a period of peace, and Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. Tolstoy portrays Napoleon as an ineffective, egomaniacal buffoon, Tsar Alexander I as a phrasemaker obsessed with how historians will describe him, and the Russian general Mikhail Kutuzov as a patient old man who understands the limitations of human will and planning. Particularly noteworthy are the novel's battle scenes, which show combat as sheer chaos. Among the book's fictional characters, the reader's attention is first focused on Prince Andrey Bolkonsky, a proud man who has come to despise everything fake, shallow, or merely conventional. He joins the army to achieve glory. Badly wounded at Austerlitz, he comes to see glory and Napoleon as no less petty than the salons of St. Petersburg. Prince Andrey repeatedly discovers the emptiness of the activities to which he has devoted himself. Tolstoy's description of his death in 1812 is usually regarded as one of the most effective scenes in Russian literature. The novel's other hero, the bumbling and sincere Pierre Bezukhov, oscillates between belief in some philosophical system promising to resolve all questions and a relativism so total as to leave him in apathetic despair. He at last discovers the Tolstoyan truth that wisdom is to be found not in systems but in the ordinary processes of daily life, especially in his marriage to the novel's most memorable heroine, Natasha. When the book stops Pierre seems to be forgetting this lesson in his enthusiasm for a new utopian plan. The book's truly wise characters are not its intellectuals but a simple, decent soldier, Natasha's brother Nikolay, and a generous pious woman, Andrey's sister Marya. Their marriage symbolizes the novel's central prosaic values. The essays in War and Peace, which begin in the second half of the book, satirize all attempts to formulate general laws of history and reject the ill-considered assumptions supporting all historical narratives. In Tolstoy's view, history, like battle, is essentially the product of contingency, has no direction, and fits no pattern. The causes of historical events are infinitely varied and forever unknowable, and so historical writing, which claims to explain the past, necessarily falsifies it. According to Tolstoy's essays, history is made by the sum total of an infinite number of small decisions taken by ordinary people, whose actions are too unremarkable to be documented. Therefore Tolstoy's novel gives its readers countless examples of small incidents that each exert a tiny influence which is one reason that War and Peace is so long. In Anna Karenina (1875-77) Tolstoy applied these ideas to family life. The novel's first sentence, which indicates its concern with the domestic, is perhaps Tolstoy's most famous: "All happy families resemble each other; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Anna Karenina interweaves the stories of three families, the Oblonskys, the Karenins, and the Levins. The novel begins at the Oblonskys, where the long-suffering wife Dolly has discovered the infidelity of her genial and sybaritic husband Stiva. In her kindness, care for her family, and concern for everyday life, Dolly stands as the novel's moral compass. By contrast, Stiva, though never wishing ill, wastes resources, neglects his family, and regards pleasure as the purpose of life. The figure of Stiva is perhaps designed to suggest that evil, no less than good, ultimately derives from the small moral choices human beings make moment by moment. Stiva's sister Anna begins the novel as the faithful wife of the stiff, unromantic, but otherwise decent government minister Aleksey Karenin and the mother of a young boy, Seryozha. But Anna, who imagines herself the heroine of a romantic novel, allows herself to fall in love with an officer, Aleksey Vronsky. Schooling herself to see only the worst in her husband, she eventually leaves him and her son to live with Vronsky. Throughout the novel, Tolstoy indicates that the romantic idea of love, which most people identify with love itself, is entirely incompatible with the superior kind of love, the intimate love of good families. As the novel progresses, Anna, who suffers pangs of conscience for abandoning her husband and child, develops a habit of lying to herself until she reaches a state of near madness and total separation from reality. She at last commits suicide by throwing herself under a train. The realization that she may have been thinking about life incorrectly comes to her only when she is lying on the track, and it is too late to save herself. The third story concerns Dolly's sister Kitty, who first imagines she loves Vronsky but then recognizes that real love is the intimate feeling she has for her family's old friend, Konstantin Levin. Their story focuses on courtship, marriage, and the ordinary incidents of family life, which, in spite of many difficulties, shape real happiness and a meaningful existence. Throughout the novel, Levin is tormented by philosophical questions about the meaning of life in the face of death. Although these questions are never answered, they vanish when Levin begins to live correctly by devoting himself to his family and to daily work. Like his creator Tolstoy, Levin regards the systems of intellectuals as spurious and as incapable of embracing life's complexity. Upon completing Anna Karenina, Tolstoy fell into a profound state of existential despair, which he describes in his Ispoved (1884; A Confession). The Kreutzer Sonata (1891) is a dark novella about a man who murders his wife. Smert Ivana Ilicha (written 1886; The Death of Ivan Ilych) is a novella describing a man's gradual realization that he is dying and that his life has been wasted on trivialities. Otets Sergy (written 1898; Father Sergius), which may be taken as Tolstoy's self-critique, tells the story of a proud man who wants to become a saint but discovers that sainthood cannot be consciously sought. Regarded as a great holy man, Sergius comes to realize that his reputation is groundless; warned by a dream, he escapes incognito to seek out a simple and decent woman whom he had known as a child. At last he learns that not he but she is the saint, that sainthood cannot be achieved by imitating a model, and that true saints are ordinary people unaware of their own prosaic goodness. This story therefore seems to criticize the ideas Tolstoy espoused after his conversion from the perspective of his earlier great novels. In 1899 Tolstoy published his third long novel, Voskreseniye (Resurrection). The novel's hero, the idle aristocrat Dmitry Nekhlyudov, finds himself on a jury where he recognizes the defendant, the prostitute Katyusha Maslova, as a woman whom he once had seduced, thus precipitating her life of crime. After she is condemned to imprisonment in Siberia, he decides to follow her and, if she will agree, to marry her. In the novel's most remarkable exchange, she reproaches him for his hypocrisy: once you got your pleasure from me, and now you want to get your salvation from me, she tells him. She refuses to marry him, but, as the novel ends, Nekhlyudov achieves spiritual awakening when he at last understands Tolstoyan truths, especially the futility of judging others. The novel's most celebrated sections satirize the church and the justice system, but the work is generally regarded as markedly inferior to War and Peace and Anna Karenina. The novella Hadji Murad (1904) is a brilliant narrative about the Caucasus. TOLSTOY ONLINE: Works Works Works Voyna i Mir — Anna Karenina — Khadzhi-Murat — Detstvo — Otrochestvo — Voskresenie — Isloved' RASSKAZY Dva Gusara — Nabeg, Rasskaz volontera — Rubka lesa. Rasskaz iunkera. — Iz kavkazkikh vospominaniy, razzhalovannyj — Zapiski markera — Skazki — Metel' Azbuka Kreytserova Sonata PUBLITSISTIKA Put' zhizni — Sueverie gosudarstva — Sbornik publitsistiki — O Shakspire i o drame — Ob anafeme Tolstogo — Zakon nasilija i zakon ljubii (in English translations): |
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BOOKS ABOUT TOLSTOY ONLINE: Leo Tolstoy by G. K. Chesterton, G. H. Perris, and Edward Garnett Leo Tolstoy: His Life and Work by Pavel Biriukov Reminiscences of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy by Maxim Gorky Reminiscences of Tolstoy Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Ilya Tolstoy Tolstoy and His Message by Ernest Howard Crosby |
1822 Norman Allison Calkins, author. CALKINS ONLINE: Primary
Object Lessons for a Graduated Course of Development 1813 Henry Reeve, translator of Tocqueville's. Democracy in America volume 1, volume 2 1758 Alexander Nasmyth, British artist who died on 10 April 1840. 1754 William Bligh, nasty ship's captain (HMS Bounty) 1735 Charles Lepeintre, aptly surnamed French artist who died in 1803. 1585 duc Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, he would become a cardinal and Louis XIII's chief minister who helped build France into a world power. |