15 Sep History: This Date

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Events, deaths, births, of 15 SEP
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On a 15 September:
2002 Parliamentary elections in Sweden to the 349-seat Riksdag. With a gain of 13 seats for a total of 144, the Social Democrats can contitue their minority government of Prime Minister Goeran Persson (who campaigned on a promise to maintain the welfare system), with the continued support of the Left and Green parties, which together have another 47 seats.
2002 Parliamentary elections in Macedonia. Former Communist Branko Crvenkovski's “Together for Macedonia” coalition wins over the coalition led by Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski's ruling VMRO party, while most of the 3300 candidates, from 30 parties, never had a real chance to win one of the 120 seats in the Parliament. Within the ethnic Albanian minority, the Democratic Union for Integration, headed Ali Ahmeti, does better than Arben Xhaferi's Democratic Party of Albanians, which shared power with Georgievski's government. Ahmeti was a leader of the ethnic Albanian February-to-August 2001 insurgency. Ethnic Albanians manage to hold on to the 24 seats they had in the outgoing parliament.

1993 Campaign against carjackings ^top^
In response to a wave of carjackings, FBI Director William S. Sessions promised a new national campaign to stem carjacking and other car-related crimes. The relatively new crime of carjacking, classified as everything from armed robbery to vandalism, had been on the rise since the late 1980s. Approximately 35'000 carjackings occurred in 1992, a year prior to the FBI announcement, and although those carjackings accounted for only two percent of the total vehicle thefts, their possibility remained ever present in the public consciousness. Perhaps one reason that Americans found this new crime so alarming was that seventy-seven percent of carjackers carried a weapon, usually a handgun.

1990 Florida lottery goes over $100'000'000
1990 France announce it will send 4000 soldiers to the Persian Gulf
1982 Israeli forces began pouring into west Beirut
1981 US Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approves Sandra Day O'Connor for Supreme Court
1966 The American Bible Society publishes the New Testament of its "Today's English Version" (TEV), otherwise known as "Good News for Modern Man." It marked the end of a two-year effort led by chief translator, Robert G. Bratcher. (The complete Good News Bible would be published in 1976.) 1966 Many fundamentalist readers are unhappy because of its substitution of words, such as “happy” for “blessed.” But people who want to understand the word of God are thankful.

1964 Vietnam: Viet Cong urged to attack ^top^
The National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, or as it was more popularly known, the National Liberation Front (NLF), calls for a general military offensive to take advantage of the ‘disarray’ among the South Vietnamese, particularly after the abortive coup attempt against General Khanh’s government in Saigon on 13 September and 14 September. The NLF was the formal political organization behind the Viet Cong and sought to unite all aspects of the South Vietnamese people who were disaffected with the Saigon government. From the beginning, the NLF was completely dominated by the communist Lao Dong Party Central Committee in Hanoi and served as North Vietnam’s shadow government in the South..

1959 Khrushchev arrives in Washington.         ^top^
      Nikita Khrushchev becomes the first Soviet head of state to visit the United States. Khrushchev's 13-day visit dominated the news and provided some dramatic and humorous moments in the history of the Cold War. Khrushchev came to power in the Soviet Union following the death of long-time dictator Joseph Stalin in 1954. Many observers believed that Khrushchev, a devoted follower of Stalin during the 1930s and 1940s, would not provide much difference in leadership. He surprised them, however, by announcing that he sought "peaceful coexistence" with the United States and denouncing the "excesses" of Stalinism.
      During the late 1950s, Khrushchev continued to court a closer relationship with the United States and often praised President Dwight D. Eisenhower as a man who also sought peace. In 1959, the US and Soviet governments shocked the world by announcing that Khrushchev would visit the US in September and meet with Eisenhower face to face. Khrushchev's first day in America was mostly taken up with formal receptions and a motorcade from the airport to downtown Washington. At the airport, Khrushchev announced that he had arrived in America "with open heart and good intentions. The Soviet people want to live in friendship with the American people." Groups of spectators and several military bands lined the way of the motorcade procession from the airport, and Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and Mme. Khrushchev sat together in the back of a convertible to wave at the crowds.
      Once in town, Khrushchev almost immediately sat for a nearly two-hour talk with Eisenhower and his advisers. Longer and more involved talks were scheduled for later in the Soviet leader's visit. "Because of our importance in the world, it is vital that we understand each other better," Eisenhower declared at a state dinner that night. Khrushchev agreed, adding that friendship was necessary "because our two countries are much too strong and we cannot quarrel with each other." During the next few days, Khrushchev took the opportunity to tour the United States before his summit meeting with Eisenhower. Although Khrushchev's trip was more of a goodwill visit than an opportunity for significant negotiations, the tour provided some moments of high drama and low comedy, particularly during the Soviet leader's trip through California.

1957 The first air-to-ground public telephone service allows callers in the Chicago-Detroit area to call passengers on any of about twenty planes equipped with two-way telephones. The calls cost between $1.50 and $4.25 for three minutes.
1952 UN turns over Eritrea to Ethiopia.

1950 MacArthur victorious in bold Inchon landing ^top^
      During the Korean War, the first US Marines landed at Inchon on the west coast of Korea, south of the 38th parallel and just twenty-five miles from Seoul. Although the location had been criticized as too dangerous, UN Supreme Commander Douglas MacArthur insisted on carrying out the landing. By the early evening, the Marines had overcome moderate resistance and secured Inchon.
      The US-led UN large force then pushes inland in an attempt to relieve South Korean forces hemmed in at Pusan by the North Koreans, and recapture Seoul, the South Korean capital that had fallen to the Communists two months earlier. On September 28, the Allies captured Seoul.
      In the aftermath of World War II, foreign ministers from the former Allied nations of the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain had agreed to divide Korea into two separate occupation zones and govern the nation for five years. The country was split along the thirty-eighth parallel, with Soviet forces occupying the northern zone, and Americans stationed in the south.
      Although the border was defended on both sides, the South Koreans were unprepared for the hordes of North Korean troops and Soviet-made tanks that rolled across the thirty-eighth parallel on 25 June 1950. At dawn that day, nearly 100'000 Communist troops of the North Korean People's Army swept across the thirty-eighth parallel, catching the Republic of Korea forces completely off guard and throwing them into a hasty southern retreat.
      When word of the attack reached Washington, US President Harry S. Truman ordered additional US forces to Korea, and, on 27 June, he announced to the nation and the world that America would intervene in order to stem the spread of communism. The next day, the United Nations (UN) Security Council met, and in the absence of the Soviet Union, which was boycotting the council, a resolution was passed approving the use of force against North Korea.
      On 30 June, Truman authorized the use of US ground forces in Korea, and on 07 July, the Security Council recommended that all UN forces sent to Korea be put under US command. The next day, General MacArthur was named commander of all UN forces in Korea. In the opening months of the war, the US-led UN forces rapidly advanced against the North Koreans, but in October, Chinese Communist troops entered the fray, throwing the Allies into a general retreat.
      On 27 July 1953, a peace agreement was signed, ending the war and reestablishing the 1945 division of Korea that still exists today. American casualties in the Korean War included 170'000 killed, wounded, or missing in action.

1948 F-86 Sabre sets world aircraft speed record of 1080 kph.

1940: 185 German planes lost in one day of Battle of Britain ^top^
The tide turns in the Battle of Britain as the German air force sustains heavy losses inflicted by Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF). London had endured intensive bombing from the Luftwaffe until a new radar system provided the outnumbered RAF with an edge. On this day, a reported 185 German planes are shot down by the heroic RAF pilots, forcing Nazi leader Adolf Hitler to abandon his plans for invasion. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said of the RAF, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

1939 The Polish submarine Orzel arrives in Tallinn, Estonia, after escaping the German invasion of Poland against long odds. It went on to fight the Germans.
1938 British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain goes to visits Hitler at Berchtesgarden to discuss his demands that Czechoslovakia surrender the Sudetenland. This would lead to Hitler escalating his demands, Chamberlain proclaiming "peace in our times", in the infamous 30 September 1938 Munich agreement by which Britain and France abandoned Czechoslovakia, which encouraged Hitler to further aggressions, resulting in WW II a year later.

1935 Nazi laws to persecute Jews ^top^
      Nazi Germany enacted the Nuremberg Laws, which stripped all German Jews of their civil rights, and established gradations of "Jewishness." "Full Jews," people with four "non-Aryan" grandparents, were deprived of German citizenship and forbidden to marry members of the "Aryan race." German Jews, already barred from government, medical, and legal professions, experienced total economic exclusion by 1938, shut out from every area of German public life.
     Also by the Nuremberg Laws, Hitler's Reich adopts the swastika as the national flag.
     German Jews are stripped of their citizenship, reducing them to mere "subjects" of the state. After Hitler's accession to the offices of president and chancellor of Germany, he set about the task of remaking his adopted country (Hitler had to pull some strings even to be eligible for office, as he was Austrian by birth) into the dream state he imagined. But his dream was soon to become a nightmare for many. Early on in his reign, the lives of non-Jewish German citizens were barely disrupted. But not so for Hitler's "enemies." Hitler's racist ideology, which elevated those of "pure-blooded" German stock to the level of "masters" of the earth, began working itself out in vicious ways.
      Within the first year of Hitler's rule, German Jews were excluded from a host of high-profile vocations, from public office to journalism, radio, theater, film, and teaching—even farming. The professions of law and medicine were also withdrawn slowly as opportunities. "Jews Not Welcome" signs could be seen on shop and hotel windows, beer gardens, and other public arenas. With the Nuremberg Laws, these discriminatory acts became embedded in the culture by fiat, making them even more far-reaching. Jews were forbidden to marry "Aryans" or engage in extramarital relations with them. Jews could not employ female Aryan servants if they were less than 35 years of age. Jews found it difficult even to buy food, as groceries, bakeries, and dairies would not admit Jewish customers. Even pharmacies refused to sell them medicines or drugs.
      What was the outside world's reaction? Because unemployment had dropped precipitously under Hitler's early commandeering of the economy, and the average German felt renewed hope and pride, the face of Germany seemed brighter, more at peace with itself. While some foreign visitors, even some political opponents within Germany itself, decried these racist laws and practices, most were beguiled into thinking it was merely a phase, and that Hitler, in the words of former British Prime Minister Lloyd George, was "a great man."

1931 British naval force mutinies at Invergordon over pay

1928 Penicillin discovered. ^top^
Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming discovers, by accident, the antibiotic effects of the mold Penicillium Notatum. The antibiotic penicillin revolutionized medicine, saving countless people from fatal infections. For his discovery Fleming was knighted by King George VI of England in 1944, and shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1945.

1923 Martial law in Oklahoma to combat the Klan ^top^
      In response to terrorist activity by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), Oklahoma is placed under martial law by Governor John Calloway Walton. Founded in 1865 by a group of Confederate veterans, the KKK rapidly grew from a secret social fraternity to a paramilitary force bent on reversing the federal government's progressive Reconstruction Era-activities in the South, especially in regard to the region's African-American population.
      The name of the Ku Klux Klan was derived from the Greek word kuklos, meaning circle, and clann, a Scottish Gaelic word for the traditional tribal units of Scotland that reflected the Scottish ancestry of many of the KKK's founding members. Under a platform of philosophized white racial superiority, the group employed violence as a means of pushing back the radical reforms underway in the post-Civil War South.
      Thriving in counties where the two political parties or races were relatively balanced, the KKK engaged in terrorist raids against Blacks and White Southern Republicans at night, employing intimidation, destruction of property, assault, and murder to achieve its aims and influence upcoming elections. In a few southern states, Republicans organized militia units to break up the Klan, while passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 by Congress authorized President Grant to use federal troops against the KKK, and the organization was thoroughly suppressed.
      However, 1915 saw the organization of a new Klan by William J. Simmons, and by the 1920s the Klan had become a powerful political force. Following Governor Walton's declaration of martial law, national newspapers began exposing the Klan and its criminal activities.
      In response to the African-American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, America saw a second revival of the KKK.

1920 Pope Benedict XV publishes the encyclical Spiritus paraclitus, which restated the Catholic position on Scripture: '...the Bible, composed by men inspired of the Holy Ghost, has God himself as its principal author, the individual authors constituted as his live instruments. Their activity, however, ought not be described as automatic writing.'
1917 Russia is proclaimed a republic by Alexander Kerensky, the head of a provisional government.

1916 First use of tanks in warfare ^top^
      During the Battle of the Somme, the British launch a major offensive against the Germans, employing, for the first time in history, tanks, the "Little Willies". At Flers Courcelette, several of the fifty or so primitive tanks advance some 2 km into enemy lines, but are too slow to hold their positions during the German counterattack.
      However, General Douglas Haig, commander of Allied forces at the Somme, sees the promise of this new instrument of war, and orderes the war department to produce over one thousand more.
      On 01 July, the British had launched a massive offensive against German forces in the Somme River region of France. The assault began with an intense bombardment of 250'000 shells along the Western Front, followed by the explosion of mines planted under the German trenches. Before the smoke and dust cleared, 100'000 British soldiers poured out of their trenches and across no-man's-land. Unfortunately, they were met with a lethal barrage of machine-gun fire from the enforced German trenches, which had survived the artillery onslaught. By nightfall, 20'000 British were dead, including 1000 officers, and 40'000 were injured.
      The next day, both sides settled down to a war of attrition, characterized by ineffectual but costly offensives and the horrendous conditions of trench life.
      Even Britain's September introduction of tanks into warfare for the first time in history fails to break the deadlock along the Western Front. On 18 November 1916, Douglas Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, would call off the Battle of the Somme after nearly five months of mass slaughter. The offensive amounted to a total gain of just 325 square kilometers, at a cost of over 600'000 British and French soldiers killed, wounded, or missing in action. German casualties were over 650'000.
      Although Haig was severely criticized for the costly battle, his willingness to commit massive amounts of men and resources to the stalemate along the Western Front eventually contributed to the collapse of an exhausted Germany in 1918.
     C'est le premier engagements des chars d'assaut. Ils sont tout de suite à l'oeuvre à Flers dans la bataille de la Somme et sont anglais. Ce char, qui ne roule qu'à une vitesse de 6 kilomètres à l'heure, pèse 31 tonnes. Il est armé d'un canon de 54 et de quatre mitrailleuses. Ce n'est que le 16 Apr 1917 que des chars français entreront sur un champ de bataille, à Berry-au-Bac.

1914 President Woodrow Wilson orders the Punitive Expedition out of Mexico. The Expedition, headed by General John Pershing, had been searching in vain for Pancho Villa.

1909 Court rules Ford has infringed engine patent (later reversed) ^top^
George Selden is rarely mentioned in accounts of automobile history, often lost among names like Ford, Daimler, and Cugnot. However, Selden reigned as the “Father of the Automobile” for almost twenty years, his name engraved on every car from 1895 until 1911. He held the patent on the “Road Engine,” which was effectively a patent on the automobile – a claim that went unchallenged for years, despite the many other inventors who had contributed to the development of the automobile and the internal combustion engine.
Almost all of the early car manufacturers, unwilling to face the threat of a lawsuit, were forced to buy licenses from Selden, so almost every car on the road sported a small brass plaque reading “Manufactured under Selden Patent.” Henry Ford was the only manufacturer willing to challenge Selden in court, and on this day a New York judged ruled that Ford had indeed infringed on Selden’s patent. This decision was later overturned when it became plain that Selden had never intended to actually manufacture his “road engine.” Selden’s own “road engine” prototype, built in the hope of strengthening his case, only managed to stagger along for a few hours before breaking down.

1909 Kettering ignition patent ^top^
Charles F. Kettering of Detroit, Michigan, applies for a patent on his ignition system on this day. But the ignition system was only the first of Kettering’s many automobile improvements, a distinguished list that includes lighting systems, lacquer finishes, antilock fuels, leaded gasoline, and the electric starter. His company Delco (Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company) was a leader in automotive technology and later became a subsidiary of General Motors. Kettering himself served as vice president and director of research for GM from 1920 to 1947.

1904 Wilbur Wright makes his 1st airplane flight
1894 Japan defeats China in Battle of Ping Yang [NOT Ping Pong]
1863 Lincoln suspends writ of habeas corpus.
1862 Confederate Stonewall Jackson takes Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), securing the rear of Robert E. Lee's forces in Maryland.
1861 Siege of Lexington, Missouri continues.

1858 The first transcontinental mail service to San Francisco begins ^top^
      The new Overland Mail Company sends out its first two stages, inaugurating government mail service between St. Louis and San Francisco. The company's motto is: "Remember, boys, nothing on God's earth must stop the United States mail!" .
      With California booming, thanks to the 1849 Gold Rush, Americans east and west had been clamoring for faster and surer transcontinental mail service for years. Finally, in March 1857, the US Congress passed an act authorizing an overland mail delivery service and a $600'000 yearly subsidy for whatever company could succeed in reliably transporting the mail twice a week from St. Louis to San Francisco in less than 25 days. The postmaster general awarded the first government contract and subsidy to the Overland Mail Company. Under the guidance of a board of directors that included John Butterfield and William Fargo, the Overland Mail Company spent $1 million improving its winding 4500-km route and building way stations at 15-25 km intervals. Teams of thundering horses soon raced across the wide open spaces of the West, pulling custom-built Concord coaches with seats for nine passengers and a rear boot for the mail.
      For passengers, the overland route was anything but a pleasure trip. Packed into the narrow confines of the coaches, they alternately baked or froze as they bumped across the countryside, and dust was an inescapable companion. Since the coaches traveled night and day, travelers were reluctant to stop and sleep at one of the "home stations" along the route because they risked being stranded if later stages were full. Many opted to try and make it through the three-week trip by sleeping on the stage, but the constant bumping and noise made real sleep almost impossible. Travelers also found that toilets and baths were few and far between, the food was poor and pricey, and the stage drivers were often drunk, rude, profane, or all three. Robberies and Indian attacks were a genuine threat, though they occurred far less commonly than popularly believed. The company posted guards at stations in dangerous areas, and armed men occasionally rode with the coach driver to protect passengers.
      Though other faster mail delivery services soon came to compete with the Overland Mail Company—most famously the Pony Express—the nation's first regular trans-western mail service continued to operate as a part of the larger Wells, Fargo and Company operation until 10 May 1869, the day the first transcontinental railroad was completed. On that day the US government cancelled its last overland mail contract.

1853 First woman pastor in US ^top^
In her home state of New York, Antoinette L. Brown Blackwell, 28, becomes pastor of the Congregational church in South Butler — making her the first woman to be formally ordained to the pastorate in the United States. She resign her pastorate in July 1854, and shortly thereafter she became a Unitarian minister. She wrote : Studies in General Science (1869), The Sexes Throughout Nature (1875), The Physical Basis of Immortality (1876), The Philosophy of Individuality (1893), The Making of the Universe (1914), The Social Side of Mind and Action (1915), also a novel and a volume of verse. She died on 5 November 1921.

1821 Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua gain independence
1810 In Dolores, Mexico, Father Miguel Hidalgo cries out for independence.
1788 An alliance between Britain, Prussia and the Netherlands is ratified at the Hague
1776 British forces capture Kip's Bay, Manhattan during the Revolution
1648 The Larger and the Shorter Catechisms — both prepared by the Westminster Assembly the previous year — are approved by the British Parliament. These two documents have been in regular use among various Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Baptists ever since.
1620 Mayflower departs from Plymouth, England with 102 pilgrims.
1588 The Spanish Armada, which attempted to invade England, is destroyed by a British fleet.
0608 St Boniface IV begins his reign as Pope.

TO THE TOP

Deaths which occurred on a 15 September: ^top^
2002 Some 35 of the undocumented Liberian migrants aboard a 10-meter-long boat which capsizes 200 meters from the shore of Sicily. 92 are rescued. On 27 September 2002, Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi would shock public opinion, when asked why police had used pedalos (pedal-operated boats) to recover some of the bodies, by making unwise wisecracks such as “None of the corpses complained.” and “Perhaps you would have preferred it if the bodies had been picked up in a big boat.”
2001 Meir Weisshaus, 23, Israeli shot by Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestinian gunmen in a car which overtakes his, late in the evening, in a part of Jerusalem built on land taken from the Palestinians..

1989 Robert Penn Warren, 84, vriter, critic, teacher, first Poet Laureate of the United States.(1986) ^top^
      In Understanding Poetry (1938) and Understanding Fiction (1943), co-authored with Cleanth Brooks, Warren championed the "New Criticism" — a school of literary interpretation that approaches each work as an individual artistic production rather than a reflection of the author's experience.
      Warren's novels include Night Rider (1939), At Heaven's Gate (1943), World Enough and Time (1950), Band of Angels (1956), and The Cave (1959). All the King's Men (1946) used the career of Louisiana demagogue Huey Long to examine the corrupting nature of power. It received the 1947 Pulitzer Prize and the film adaptation won the 1949 Academy Award for best motion picture.
      Warren twice received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry — in 1958 for Promises: Poems, 1954-1956 and in 1979 for Now and Then; Poems 1976-1978. His other poetry volumes include The Circus in the Attic (1948), You, Emperors, and Others (1960), Audubon: A Vision (1969), Rumor Verified (1981), Chief Joseph (1983), and New and Selected Poems, 1923-1985 (1985). His long narrative poem Brother to Dragons (1953) deals with the brutal murder of a slave by two nephews of Thomas Jefferson. The poetry of his later years touched on a variety of issues including aging, immortality, and nature.

1982 Sadegh Ghotbzadeh Iran's former foreign minister, executed by Iran
1977 Helen “Holly” Maddux, 29, murdered and placed in a trunk that is discovered on 28 March 1979 in the home of her boyfriend Ira Einhorn. Indicted, Einhorn jumps $40'000 bail on 07 January 1981, a few weeks before his trial is due to start, fleeing to Ireland, knowing that it does not have an extradition treaty with the US. In 1986 Ireland signs an extradition treaty with the US. Einhorn's friend Eugene Mallon lends him identification. Maddox flees to Spain, Britain, and Denmark. Along the way, he meets his future wife, Annika Flodin. In 1993 Einhorn and Annika settle in Champagne-Mouton, in the French countryside, and begin living as British writer Eugene Mallon and his wife. On 29 September 1993 Einhorn, the first and only murder suspect in Pennsylvania to be tried in absentia, is convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. On 13 June 1997 French police arrest Einhorn. On 07 December 1997 France refuses to extradite Einhorn because French law guarantees a new trial to anyone convicted in absentia, while, under Pennsylvania law, Einhorn cannot not be tried again. He is returned to the United States in July 2001 after prosecutors agree not to seek the death penalty and the Pennsylvania Legislature passes a law allowing the in absentia conviction to be vacated. His trial starts on 30 September 2002. Einhorn has said that he was framed for Maddux's murder by the CIA because of his knowledge of secret mind-control weapon experiments by the CIA.

1972 Vietnam: Thousands killed in South Viet retaking of Quang Tri ^top^
      ARVN forces recapture Quang Tri City after four days of heavy fighting, with the claim that over 8135 NVA have been killed in the battle.
      The North Vietnamese forces had launched a massive offensive, called the Nguyen Hue or “Easter Offensive,” on March 31, with three main attacks aimed at Quang Tri south of the Demilitarized Zone, Kontum in the Central Highlands, and An Loc just 60 miles north of Saigon. This invasion included 14 divisions and 26 separate regiments, a total force numbering over 120'000 soldiers, and was designed to knock South Vietnam out of the war and inflict a defeat on the remaining US forces (which numbered less than 70'000 by this date due to President Nixon’s Vietnamization policy and the American troop withdrawal schedule). The North Vietnamese attack was characterized by conventional combined arms attacks by tank and infantry forces supported by massive artillery barrages, resulting in some of the heaviest fighting of the war.
      The South Vietnamese forces and their American advisors supported by US tactical airpower and B-52 bombers were able to hold at An Loc and Kontum despite being vastly outnumbered, but the South Vietnamese forces at Quang Tri faltered under the communist assault and were quickly overwhelmed. It was only after President Thieu fired the I Corps commander and replaced him with Major General Ngo Quang Truong, arguably one of the best officers in the South Vietnamese army, that the ARVN were able to stop the North Vietnamese. Truong took measures to stabilize the situation and the South Vietnamese began to fight back. After a tremendously bloody four-and-a-half-month battle in which 977 South Vietnamese soldiers perished, Truong and his troops retook Quang Tri from the North Vietnamese, winning a major victory. President Nixon used this as proof positive that his Vietnamization policy had worked and that the South Vietnamese were prepared to take over responsibility for the war. .

1963 Denise McNair, 11, Carole Robertson, 14, Cynthia Wesley, 14, Addie Mae Collins, 14, by terrorist explosion in Birmingham church. ^top^
     At the 16th Street Baptist Church, a site of past civil rights rallies, in an affluent African-American neighborhood of Birmingham, Alabama, a dynamite explosion kills the four girls.. Although Robert Chambliss, the prime suspect in the bombing, was not brought to justice until 1977, the tragedy helped to mobilize support for the African-American civil rights movement. Two men were arraigned for the crime in the year 2000.
     It was Sunday, 15 September 1963. The place was 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The lesson for the day was, "The Love that Forgives." It was based on Matthew 5:43, 44. "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." A prayer was to accompany the lesson: "Dear God, we are sorry for the times we were unkind. The lesson was to be grimly appropriate. But it was never finished.
      At 09:22, before it could be completed, the church exploded. Ten or fifteen sticks of dynamite planted under back steps of the building erupted with terrific force. The explosion hurled yellow bricks through cars, shattered nearby businesses and smashed a fist of terror through the church. The rest rooms at the rear of the church absorbed the brunt of the blast, but inside the church rafters collapsed, pews were shredded and windows shattered. Members of this black congregation — wounded, bleeding, and blinded, — staggered into the street as rescue crews rushed to the scene. In place of hymns screams and sobs and cries of protest filled the air.
      An angry mob of blacks gathered. Black ministers called on them to pray for the men who had perpetrated this outrage. "We must have love in our hearts for these men." But the anguish and bitterness of the moment spoke louder. The mob began to pelt rescue workers and police with stones as they dug into the rubble. Police fired over the head of the crowd to disperse them. Hatred once again prevailed.
      Birmingham was no stranger to bombings. Fifty directed against blacks, had taken place since World War II. But none of the previous bombers had struck against churches. Or targeted children. Today, children were missing. Fears turned to stark reality as the wreckage was peeled aside from what had been the rest room. One man uncovered the remains of his own granddaughter. Bodies torn and mangled came to light: little bodies, the bodies of four girls. Seventeen other people were wounded. The death toll could have been much higher. Four hundred people were in the church at the time.
      One reporter noted that Christ's head in a stained glass window was blown off.
     Long overdue investigations would conclude that the bomb had been planted under a stairwell by four Ku Klux Klansmen: Robert "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss, Herman Cash, Thomas Blanton Jr., 24, and Bobby Frank Cherry, 33.
     Chambliss would be convicted in 1977 and die in prison. Cash would die in 1994 without ever being charged. Cherry and Blanton would be scheduled for a trial starting on 16 April 2001, but Cherry's case would be postponed for a review of his mental competency. Blanton, now 62, would be sentenced to life in prison on 1 May 2001. Cherry too, found competent, would be sentenced to life in prison, on 22 May 2002.

1945 Anton Friedrich Ernst von Webern, near Salzburg, Austria, shot by a US occupation soldier, when Webern went out during curfew to smoke a cigarette (the pack did not have the warning “Smoking can be hazardous to your health”]. Webern, born on 03 December 1883, was an Austrian composer of the 12-tone Viennese school. He is know especially for his passacaglia for orchestra, his chamber music, and various Lieder. The Nazis said his kind of music was degenerate, his was reduced to near poverty, was depressed under the WW II bombings, and his only son, Peter, was killed in February 1945 in a train that was strafed.
1941 Nazis kill 800 Jewish women at Shkudvil. Lithuania.
1911 Joel Benton, author. BENTON ONLINE: Life of Hon. Phineas T. Barnum, Life of Hon. Phineas T. Barnum

1898 William Burroughs, father of the calculator ^top^
William Burroughs, when he wals a young inventor with little formal education, invented the first commercially successful adding machine and founded the American Arithmometer Co. of St. Louis. The company later became Burroughs Adding Machine Co. His earliest version of the machine, like other adding machines of the time, was accurate but impractical. However, in 1892, he patented a practical adding machine that would become a commercial success. Burroughs did not live to see the profits of his invention or the thriving success of his company.

1883 Plateau, mathematician
1858 Hendrik van der Burgh, Dutch artist born in 1769.
1842 John Berney Crome, British artist born on 08 December 1794.
1830 William Huskisson, England, 1st to be run-over by a railroad train
1771 Louis de Moni, Dutch artist born in 1698.
1668 Jan Miense Molenaer, Dutch genre painter, born in 1610. — MORE ON MOLENAER AT ART “4” SEPTEMBER — LINKS — Two Boys and a Girl Making Music — Family Making Music — Painter in His Studio, Painting a Musical Company — The Denial by Peter _ detail — The Music-Makers
1622 Father Camillo Constanzo, burned alive in Hirado, Japan, in a heroic martyrdom witnessed by thousands.
1510 Catherine of Genoa (probable date), who developed hospitals and helped the poor.

Births which occurred on a 15 September:

1986 The Apple IIg computer ^top^
Apple introduces a new version of the Apple II personal computer called the Apple IIg, aimed at schools and home users. The Apple II series, once the top-selling line of computers that had launched the personal computer revolution, had languished with the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984.

1984 Henry, prince of Wales. (NOT whales).
1982 USA Today, first issue, published by Gannett Co Inc.
1971 Greenpeace, the not-so-peaceful environmental group, is founded.

1946 Oliver Stone. ^top^
Though usually associated with film flash and controversy, Oliver Stone, is also deeply tied to Wall Street — his father was a stockbroker, as well as a publisher of a noted investment newsletter.
Following a brief stint at Yale University, Stone began to wander; he moved abroad, served time in Vietnam, and wrote a novel that would sit unpublished until the mid-1990's. By the beginning of the '70's, he had returned to the US and embarked on his career as a writer-director-provocateur. After cleaning up at the Oscars in 1986 for Platoon, Stone turned his camera and pen towards his father's realm — the stock market. Wall Street was a loud morality play set against the ooze of the '80's investment world. Though the film revolved around the temptation of a young stockbroker played by Charlie Sheen, co-star Michael Douglas easily stole the show with his sleazy portrayal of a corrupt, Boesky-esque financier.

1937 Fernando de la Rúa Bruno, en Córdoba, Argentina. ^top^
Aquí está la "autobiografía" que el escribió siendo candidato a la presidencia en 1999. Ganó la elección el 24 de octubre de 1999 con el 48% de los votos. y sucedió a Carlos Menem el 10 Dec del 1999.

     Soy hijo de Eleonora Bruno de de la Rúa y del Dr. Antonio de la Rúa. Estoy casado con Inés Pertiné, tengo tres hijos, Agustina, Antonio y Fernando y una nieta, Sol Petrachi. Entre mis pasatiempos se encuentran las plantas y las aves, la naturaleza y lo relacionado con ella, el cielo y el tiempo. Me gusta leer, conocer y saber sobre estos temas. Soy adepto a la lectura y a conversaciones de temas ajenos a la política, disfruto del diálogo espontáneo con la gente y con amigos de toda mi vida.
      Cursé mis estudios secundarios en el Liceo General Paz de Córdoba, a los 21 años me recibí de abogado con medalla de oro en la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba y me doctoré en la misma casa con la tesis "Recurso de Casación en el Derecho Positivo Argentino".
      Soy afiliado a la Unión Cívica Radical desde temprana edad, a los 26 años integré el gabinete del Ministerio del Interior en el Gobierno Constitucional del Dr. Arturo Illia entre 1963 y 1966.
      En 1973, cuando me impuse al Frejuli por 953'000 votos, fui elegido Senador por la Capital Federal. El 23 de setiembre de ese año fui candidato a la vicepresidencia de la Nación como compañero de fórmula de Ricardo Balbín enfrentando al binomio Juan Perón — Isabel Perón.
      Ejercí mi representación legislativa hasta el 24 de marzo de 1976 en que un golpe militar abolió las instituciones democráticas.
      Realicé estudios y dicté conferencias en universidades de Estados Unidos, México y Venezuela. Fui nombrado miembro del Instituto Iberoamericano de Derecho Procesal, del Centro de Estudios Procesales de Buenos Aires y del Instituto Colombiano de Derecho Procesal.
      En 1980 integré el Congreso Nacional de Educación y Cultura de la Unión Cívica Radical. En 1982 creé el Centro de Estudios Para la República que actualmente funciona como Fundación de estudios sobre temas políticos vinculados a la Ciudad de Buenos Aires.
      En 1983 fui precandidato a Presidente por un sector de la UCR y en octubre de ese año fui elegido nuevamente Senador por la Capital Federal con el 62% de los sufragios.
      Luego de vencer (por el 76,4%) en los comicios internos de la UCR, en 1989 fui candidato a la reelección como Senador por la UCR en la Capital Federal. El 14 de Mayo de 1989 gané la elección pero un acuerdo en el Colegio Electoral entre la UCD y el PJ impuso a un candidato de la minoría.
      En 1991 fui elegido en elecciones internas "Presidente del Comité de la Capital Federal de la UCR" y primer candidato a Diputado Nacional. El 10 de octubre de ese año, triunfé en las elecciones legislativas y luego fui designado Presidente del Bloque de Diputados Nacionales de la UCR.
      En 1992 fui elegido nuevamente como Senador, con el 52% de los sufragios.
      El 30 de junio de 1996, fui elegido Jefe de Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, cargo que ejerzo desde el 6 de agosto de 1996.
      En la actualidad (1999) soy Profesor Tiltular de Derecho Procesal en la Universidad de Buenos Aires, Miembro fundador del CARI (Consejo Argentino para las Relaciones Internacionales), Jefe de Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Presidente del Comité Nacional de la Unión Cívica Radical y Candidato a Presidente de la Nación por la ALIANZA.

1929 Murray Gell-Mann physicist who predicted quarks
1926 Serre, mathematician
1923 Kreisel, mathematician
1913 John Mitchell Nixon's attorney general who went to jail for his role in the Watergate affair.
1904 Umberto II king of Italy (1946)
1901 Sir Howard Bailey, British engineer who gave his name to a prefabricated bridge used extensively during World War II.
1897 Kliment Nikolaevich Redko, Russian artist who died in 1956.
1894 Jean Renoir, director of films (including one based on Flaubert's Madame Bovary), author of Renoir, about his father Pierre-Auguste Renoir and of a play Orvet, a novel Les cahiers du capitaine Georges; and an autobiography My Life and My Films. Jean Renoir died on 12 February 1979.

1890 Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa (Miller) Christie (Lady Mallowan), in Torquay, Devon, England. ^top^
      Raised and educated at Ashfield, her parents’ comfortable home, Christie began making up stories as a child. Her mother and her older sister Madge also made up stories: Madge told especially thrilling tales about a fictional, mentally deranged older sister. Agatha married Colonel Archibald Christie in 1914, before World War I, and had one daughter. While her husband was off fighting in World War I, Christie worked as an assistant in a pharmacy, where she learned about poisons.
      She began to write on a dare from her sister and produced her first mystery novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), featuring Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, who would appear in 25 more novels during the next quarter century. The novel found modest success, and she continued writing. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) became a bestseller, and she enjoyed phenomenal success for the rest of her life with such books as Murder on the Orient Express..
      However, about this time Christie entered a period of emotional turmoil after the death of her mother and a divorce from her first husband. She disappeared for 11 days, eventually turning up at a health spa. Her disappearance was highly publicized, and an expensive government search ensued. She was later criticized for not coming forward with her whereabouts earlier.
      In 1930, she married archeologist Sir Max Mallowan and accompanied him on expeditions to the Middle East, which became the setting for many of her novels. She created Miss Marple, one of her most beloved detectives, in 1930. All told, Christie wrote some 80 novels, 30 short story collections, and 15 plays, plus six romances under the pen name Mary Westmacott. She was knighted in 1971 and died in 1976, just a year after she killed off Poirot in the novel Curtain: Hercule Poirot’s Last Case. Poirot received a front-page obituary in the New York Times on August 6, 1975. By the time Christie died, more than 400 million copies of her books had been sold in more than 100 languages.
CHRISTIE ONLINE: The Mysterious Affair at Styles, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, The Secret Adversary

1890 Claude McKay, poet and novelist, part of the Harlem Renaissance.
1889 Robert Benchley, humorist author (My 10 Years in a Quandary)
1886 Paul Lévy, mathematician
1881 Ettore Arco Isidoro Bugatti Milan, race car builder (Amaz Bugattis)
1876 Frank E Gannett Rochester, newspaper publisher (Gannett)
1869 Fritz Overbeck, German artist who died on 07 June 1909.
1857 William Howard Taft Cin, (R) 27th president of the United States (1909-13) and tenth chief justice of the United States (1921-30).
1855 Jose Julio de Souza Pinto, Portuguese artist who died in 1939.
1830 Porfirio Díaz soldier, authoritarian president of Mexico (1877-1911)
1827 Georges Washington, German (?!!!) artist who died in 1910.
1822 Henry Morley, contributor to A Defence of Poesie and Poems, An Essay on Man, Moral Essays and Satires; editor of A Bundle of Ballads, Lobo's A Voyage to Abyssinia
1820 Ludwig Mecklenburg, German artist who died on 11 June 1882.
1795 James Gates Percival, poet. PERCIVAL ONLINE: Poems, Poem Delivered Before the Connecticut Alpha of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, 13 September 1825

1789 James Fenimore Cooper. Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey and moved the following year to the frontier in upstate New York, where his father founded a frontier-town sater named Coopersville. Cooper attended Yale but joined the Navy after he was expelled for a prank. When Cooper was about 20, his father died, and he became financially independent. Having drifted for a decade, Cooper began writing a novel after his wife challenged him to write something better than he was reading at the moment. His first novel, Precaution, modeled on Jane Austen, was not successful, but his second, The Spy, influenced by the popular writings of Sir Walter Scott, became a bestseller, making Cooper the first major American novelist. The story was set during the American Revolution and featured George Washington as a character. He continued to write about the American frontier in his third book, The Pioneer, which featured backcountry scout Natty Bumppo, known in this book as "Leather-stocking." The character, representing goodness, purity, and simplicity, became tremendously popular, and reappeared, by popular demand, in five more novels, known collectively as the "Leather-stocking Tales." The second book in the series, The Last of the Mohicans, published on 04 February 1826, is still widely read today. The five books span Bumppo's life, from coming of age through approaching death. Ce fils d'un riche membre du Congrès américain, est renvoyé de l'Université de Yale pour avoir provoqué une explosion dans un cours de chimie. Après avoir servit dans la marine, il devient fermier. C'est ce moment qu'il choisit pour écrire. Il accède rapidement à la célébrité en publiant des nouvelles et son chef d'œuvre Le Dernier des Mohicans. James Fenimore Cooper was the first major US novelist, author of the novels of frontier adventure known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring the wilderness scout called Natty Bumppo, or Hawkeye. They include The Pioneers (1823), The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder (1840), and The Deerslayer (1841). Cooper's first fiction, Precaution (1820), was a plodding imitation of Jane Austen's novels of English gentry manners, investigating the ironic discrepancy between illusion and reality. His second novel, The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground (1821), was based on another British model, Sir Walter Scott's "Waverley" novels, stories of adventure and romance, which Cooper transfered to a US War of Independence setting, introducing several distinctively US character types. Like Scott's novels, The Spy is a drama of conflicting loyalties and interests in which the action mirrors and expresses more subtle internal psychological tensions. The Spy soon brought him international fame. The first of the renowned "Leatherstocking" tales, The Pioneers; or, The Sources of the Susquehanna (1823), followed and adhered to the successful formula of The Spy, reproducing its basic thematic conflicts and utilizing family traditions once again. In The Pioneers, however, the traditions were those of William Cooper of Cooperstown, who appears as Judge Temple of Templeton, along with many other lightly disguised inhabitants of James's boyhood village. No known prototype exists, however, for the novel's principal character — the former wilderness scout Natty Bumppo, alias Leatherstocking. The Leatherstocking of The Pioneers is an aged man, of rough but sterling character, who ineffectually opposes "the march of progress," namely, the agricultural frontier and its chief spokesman, Judge Temple. Fundamentally, the conflict is between rival versions of the US Eden: the "God's Wilderness" of Leatherstocking and the cultivated garden of Judge Temple. Since Cooper himself was deeply attracted to both ideals, he was able to create a powerful and moving story of frontier life. Indeed, The Pioneers is both the first and finest detailed portrait of frontier life in US literature; it is also the first truly original US novel. Cooper wrote a series of sequels (not written in their narrative order) in which the entire life of the frontier scout was gradually unfolded. The Last of the Mohicans (1826) takes the reader back to the French and Indian wars of Natty's middle age, when he is at the height of his powers. That work was succeeded by The Prairie (1827) in which, now very old and philosophical, Leatherstocking dies, facing the westering sun he has so long followed. Identified from the start with the vanishing wilderness and its natives, Leatherstocking was an unalterably elegiac figure, wifeless and childless, hauntingly loyal to a lost cause. This conception of the character was not fully realized in The Pioneers, however, because Cooper's main concern with depicting frontier life led him to endow Leatherstocking with some comic traits and make his laments, at times, little more than whines or grumbles. But in these sequels Cooper retreated stylistically from a realistic picture of the frontier in order to portray a more idyllic and romantic wilderness; by doing so he could exploit the parallels between the American Indians and the forlorn Celtic heroes of James Macpherson's pseudo-epic The Works of Ossian, leaving Leatherstocking intact but slightly idealized and making extensive use of Macpherson's imagery and rhetoric. [Poesie di Ossian, tradotto da Melchiorre Cesarotti, zip] Cooper intended to bury Leatherstocking in The Prairie, but many years later he resuscitated the character and portrayed his early maturity in The Pathfinder; or, The Inland Sea (1840) and his youth in The Deerslayer; or, The First Warpath (1841). These novels, in which Natty becomes the centre of romantic interest for the first time, carry the idealization process further. In The Pathfinder he is explicitly described as an American Adam, while in The Deerslayer he demonstrates his fitness as a warrior-saint by passing a series of moral trials and revealing a keen, though untutored, aesthetic sensibility. Cooper continued to write many other volumes of fiction and nonfiction. His fourth novel, The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea (1823), inaugurated a series of sea novels, which were at once as popular and influential as the "Leatherstocking" tales. And they were more authentic. Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad rightly admired and learned from them, in particular The Red Rover (1827) and The Sea Lions (1849). Never before in prose fiction had the sea become not merely a theatre for, but the principal actor in, moral drama that celebrated man's courage and skill at the same time that it revealed him humbled by the forces of God's nature. As developed by Cooper, and later by Melville, the sea novel became a powerful vehicle for spiritual as well as moral exploration. Not satisfied with mere fictional treatment of life at sea, Cooper also wrote a meticulously researched, highly readable History of the Navy of the United States of America (1839). Through his novels, most notably The Bravo (1831), and other more openly polemical writings, Cooper attacked the corruption and tyranny of oligarchical regimes in Europe. The public was not interested in Cooper's acute political treatise, The American Democrat (1838), or in such political satires as The Monikins (1835) or Home As Found (1838). And though he wrote some of his best romances — particularly the later "Leatherstocking" tales and Satanstoe; or, The Littlepage Manuscripts (1845) — during the last decade of his life, profits from publishing so diminished that he gained little benefit from improved popularity. Though his circumstances were never straitened, he had to go on writing; and some of the later novels, such as Mercedes of Castile (1840) or Jack Tier; or, The Florida Reef (1846-48), were mere hack work. Cooper died on 14 September 1851. COOPER ONLINE:
The Last of the Mohicans The Last of the Mohicans The Last of the Mohicans The Deerslayer The Lake Gun The Lake Gun	The Prairie New York New York The Pathfinder The Pathfinder The Pioneers The Pioneers	Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief Tales for Fifteen, or, Imagination and Heart Tales for Fifteen editor of Susan Fenimore Cooper's Elinor Wyllys volume 1 Elinor Wyllys volume 2

1779 John 1st baron Campbell, author. CAMPBELL ONLINE: Shakespeare's Legal Acquirements
1751 Heinrich Rieter, Swiss artist who died on 10 June 1818.
1737 Jacob-Philippe Hackert d'Italie, German (d'Italie?!) artist specialized in landscapes who died on 28 April 1807. — LINKS — The Excavations of Pompeii
1613 Francois duc de la Rochefoucald, Paris, writer (Mémoires)
0973 Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, mathematician who said: Once a sage asked why scholars always flock to the doors of the rich, whilst the rich are not inclined to call at the doors of scholars. "The scholars," he answered , "are well aware of the use of money, but the rich are ignorant of the nobility of science". He died in 1048.
0053 Trajan, 13th Roman emperor (98-117), conqueror of Ctesiphon.

Holidays Costa Rica, El Salv, Guatemala, Honduras & Nicaragua : Ind Day (1821) / Iran : Imama Ja'afar Sadeq's Death / Japan : Respect for the Aged Day / UK : Battle of Britain Day (1940) / Mexico : Independence Day "El Grito"

Religious Observances RC: Memorial of 7 Sorrows of Mary / Moslem : Id Al-Fitr

Thoughts for the day: “Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.”
"Pharmaceutical company loves misery."
"Miserly loves company that pays increasing dividends."
"Misery loves compensatory damages, and punitive damages even more.”
“The death penalty ought to be applied to successful suicide bombers.”
"Somewhere the Sky touches the Earth, and the name of that place is the End." - African saying.
“There is place where Heaven touches the Earth, and where the Earth touches Hell, and the name of that place is The-End-And-The-Beginning, Mount Calvary.”

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