30 Dec History: This Date
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Events, deaths, births, of 30 DEC v.4.60
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^  On a 30 December:
2001 (Sunday) For the second time in 10 days, an Argentine president has abruptly resigned, falling victim to rising social tensions and plunging the country further into political and economic turmoil. Adolfo Rodríguez Saa quit after complaining that his Peronist party had abandoned him, leaving him unable to confront the mounting crises plaguing Argentina saddled with a $132 billion public debt. He said: "They've asked me to do in seven days what hasn't been done in the last 30 years."
      Rodríguez Saa became interim president on 23 December 2001, two days after President Fernando De la Rua was forced out amid protests and looting over the government's inability to contain an economic crisis and unemployment now topping 18%. The violence left 28 people dead. Argentina's third president in less than two weeks, his swift departure left the presidency in the hands of House majority leader Eduardo Camano. Ramon Puerta, the Senate leader who served briefly as president following de la Rua's resignation, quit his post today to avoid inheriting the presidency again. Camano said he would call a special legislative assembly to appoint a new president.
      Rodríguez Saa was chosen by Congress to lead Argentina until a new presidential election slated for 03 March 2002. His resignation left Argentina without a clear consensus on how to resolve a devastating economic crisis that has prompted rising social tensions and street protests.
      Rodríguez Saa's presidency began to unravel late in the night of 28 December 2001 as thousands of people flooded downtown Buenos Aires to demand that he lift a month-old banking freeze limiting cash withdrawals to $250 a week and remove politicians accused of corruption from his Cabinet. The protests left 12 police officers injured.
      De la Rua imposed the capital controls on 01 December 2001 to stem a run on the country's banks that threatened the currency, the peso, now tied one-to-one with the dollar. Seeking to shore up political support, Rodríguez Saa called Peronist party provincial governors to a meeting today on key issues including the March election to complete the two years of De la Rua's term. But it broke down as only a handful of the governors offered their support. Some Peronist leaders were reportedly worried Rodríguez Saa was moving to extend his time in office, set at 60 days by a congressional body that appointed him a week ago. Rodríguez Saa said he had little choice but to step down after failing to cobble together support for his caretaker administration, and blamed several members of his party for putting their presidential ambitions ahead of solving the country's pressing problems. Announcing his resignation, he said several powerful Peronist provincial governments had withdrawn support for his presidency, singling out José Manuel de la Sota, who has made it known his ambitions to run for the presidency. But de la Sota complained some in the Peronist party were not consulted by Rodríguez Saa during his brief time in office on his plans to print a parralel new currency (the “argentino”) and launch an ambitious jobs program to inject needed money into the nation's bruised economy.
      Argentines have taken to the streets twice in the last two weeks, banging pots and pans in spontaneous protests and unleashing their anger at what they view as a political leadership incapable of leading the country out of crisis. Camano, the temporary leader, urged people not to mount large-scale protests. "I am begging people not to demonstrate so we can have a chance to solve this crisis," he said. "If they want to bang pots, I ask that they do it at home."
      The political bickering in Argentina's largest party had left little room for any successor to build consensus on how to pull the country out of the political and economic crisis.
^ 1996 Encryption export restrictions in US.
      The US Commerce Department announces a White House policy setting rules on the export of encryption devices. The new policy indicated that export licenses for 56-bit encryption keys would be issued on a case-by-case basis, which infuriated the software industry. Software lobbyists said the new rules represented a reversal in policy by President Clinton, who had signed an executive order in October allowing companies to sell more powerful encryption. Computer-industry executives felt the restrictive export laws were seriously cramping their ability to compete abroad.
1993 Israel and the Vatican agree to recognize each other.
1990 Iraq's information minister, Latif Nussayif Jassim, says that US President Bush "must have been drunk" when he suggested that Iraq might withdraw from Kuwait, and Jassim adds: "We will show the world that America is a paper tiger. “
1988 Canadian Senate OK's free trade pact; with US
1988 Former Soviet President Brezhnev's son-in-law sentenced to 12-yr (bribery)
1988 Mercedes-Benz pays $20.2-M fine failed to meet '86 government fuel standard.
1988 Yugoslav government resigns
1988 North subpoenas Reagan & Bush as defense witnesses for upcoming trial.
1986 US begins Military exercises in Honduras.
1985 President Zia of Pakistan ends martial law.
1977 Carter holds 1st news conference by US President in Eastern Europe (Warsaw).
1976 Governor Carey of New York pardons seven inmates, closing the book on the Attica uprising.
1975 Constitution of Democratic Republic of Madagascar comes into force
^ 1972 “Christmas bombing” stops, Vietnam peace talks to resume.
      Officials in Washington, D.C., announce that the peace talks in Paris between National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho will resume on January 2. On December 28, Hanoi agreed to return to the negotiations, and President Nixon ordered a halt to Linebacker II, the intensive bombing campaign of North Vietnam. Nixon initiated the campaign on December 18 when the North Vietnamese, who walked out of the peace negotiations in Paris, refused his ultimatum to return to the talks. During the course of the bombing, 700 B-52 sorties and more than 1000 fighter-bombers dropped an estimated 20'000 tons of bombs, mostly over the densely populated area between Hanoi and Haiphong. When the communist negotiators returned to Paris, the peace talks moved along quickly. On 23 January 1973, the United States, North Vietnam, the Republic of Vietnam, and the Viet Cong signed a cease-fire agreement that took effect five days later.
1971 The Anglican--Roman Catholic International Commission announces it has reached an agreement on the essential teachings about the Eucharist.
^ 1970 Vietnamization of navy river activity.
      The South Vietnamese Navy receives 125 US vessels in a ceremony marking the end of the US Navy's four-year role in inland waterway combat. This brings the total number of vessels turned over to the South Vietnamese Navy to 650. About 17,000 Americans remained with the South Vietnamese Navy in shore positions and as advisers aboard South Vietnamese vessels. The transfer of inland waterway combat responsibility was part of President Nixon's Vietnamization program, in which the war effort was transferred to the South Vietnam so US troops could be withdrawn.
1969 US President Richard Nixon signs a tax bill which exempts nine million low-income citizens and reduces tax rates for individuals by 5%.
^ 1965 Marcos sworn in as the Philippines' 6th President.
      Former Philippines Senate president Ferdinand E. Marcos is inaugurated President of the nation. Marcos' regime would span 20 years and become increasingly authoritarian and corrupt. Ferdinand Marcos was a law student in the late 1930s, when he was tried for the assassination of a political opponent of his politician father. Convicted in 1939, he personally appealed the case before the Philippine Supreme Court and won an acquittal.
      During the Japanese occupation in World War II, Marcos allegedly served as leader of the Filipino resistance movement, but US government records indicate that he played little role in anti-Japanese activities. In 1949, he was elected to the Philippines House of Representative, thanks in large part to his fabricated wartime record. In 1959, he moved up to the Senate and from 1963 to 1965 served as Senate president. In 1965, he broke with the Liberal Party after failing to win his party's presidential nomination and ran as the candidate of the Nationalist Party. After a bitter and decisive campaign, he was elected president. In 1969, he was reelected.
      Marcos' second term was marked by increasing civil strife and violence by leftist insurgents. In 1972, following a series of bombings in Manila, he warned of an imminent communist takeover and declared martial law. In 1973, he assumed dictatorship powers under a new constitution. Marcos used the military to suppress subversive elements but also arrested and jailed his mainstream political opponents. His anti-Communist activities won him enthusiastic support from the US government, but his regime was marked by misuse of foreign aid, repression, and political murders. His beauty-queen wife, Imelda Marcos, was appointed to important political posts and lived a famously extravagant lifestyle that included a massive wardrobe featuring thousands of pairs of shoes.
      In 1981, Marcos was dubiously reelected president. In rural areas, insurgency by communists and Muslim separatists grew. In 1983, Marcos' old political opponent Benigno Aquino, Jr., returned from exile and was assassinated by military agents of Marcos as soon as he stepped off the plane. The political murder touched off widespread anti-Marcos protests, and in 1986 he agreed to hold a new presidential election.
      Aquino's widow, Corazon Aquino, ran against Marcos and, on 07 February 1986, the election was held. Marcos was declared victorious, but independent observers charged the regime with widespread electoral fraud. Aquino's followers proclaimed her president, and much of the military defected to her side as massive anti-Marcos demonstrations were held. On February 25, Marcos, his wife, and their entourage were airlifted from the presidential palace in Manila by US helicopters and fled to Hawaii.
      After substantial evidence of Marcos' corruption emerged, including the looting of billions of dollars from the Philippine economy, Marcos and his wife were indicted by the US government on embezzlement charges. After Ferdinand Marcos' death in 1989, Imelda was cleared of the charges, and she was allowed to return to the Philippines in 1991, where she unsuccessfully ran for the presidency the following year. In 1993, Imelda Marcos was convicted of corruption by a Philippine court, but she avoided serving her 12-year prison sentence. In 1995, she was elected to the House of Representatives. In 1998, she unsuccessfully ran for president again and subsequently retired from political life.
1953 The first color TV sets go on sale in the US for about $1175.
1952 Tuskegee Institute reports 1952 as 1st yr in 71 with no lynchings in US
^ 1950 Acheson calls for renewed effort to meet Communist threat
      In a fiery statement, Secretary of State Dean Acheson declares that the United States will increase its efforts to contain communist aggression and calls upon the American people for support and sacrifice.
      The statement was issued just weeks after hundreds of thousands of communist Chinese troops entered the Korean War, threatening to expand the conflict into a third world war. Acheson noted that 1950 had been a "dark year," but also argued that the United States had made great advances in thwarting communist machinations around the world. Nevertheless, he continued, the United States faced a situation of "extreme gravity. “ "Our freedom, our way of life, is menaced," Acheson declared. In some of the harshest language in the statement, the secretary argued, "The present difficulties arise from the lawless and cynical conduct of the communists who would destroy peace and freedom. “ Despite talk of peace from the Soviet Union, said Acheson, its recent actions revealed its talk to be "nothing but camouflage to cloak the naked imperialism of its aims. “ The United States and the American people needed to support all efforts to defeat the communist threat. “No sacrifices are too great when the future of this nation is at stake. “
      Acheson's heated rhetoric might have been an attempt to make up for his handling of foreign policy during the previous two years, when the secretary fell under near-constant criticism for not taking a tough stand against communism. Attacks by Senator Joseph McCarthy had been particularly loud and damaging. As 1950 drew to a close Acheson took a hard-line, declaring that the United States was willing and able to meet any challenge posed by the communists and that American commitment to Korea would not falter.
1947 Romania's King Michael is forced to abdicate by Soviet-backed Communists. Communists now control all of Eastern Europe.
1944 King George II of Greece, renounces his throne
^ 1936 First US sit-down strike (by UAW at GM Fisher Body Plant)
      The passage of the National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) in 1935 promised to ease the plight of beleaguered auto workers by permitting the formation of the United Automobile Workers. Needless to say, the nascent union hardly pleased the industry's business chiefs, who attempted to crush the UAW by challenging the constitutionality of the Wagner Act. However, under the charge of Walter Reuther, the UAW refused to wilt; instead, the union employed sit-down strikes, a tactic developed by French workers. Rather than picket outside a factory only to be ignored or forcibly cleared away, the sit-down strike enabled workers to halt production and seize the plant "from the inside. “ On this day in 1936, workers at the General Motors plant stopped work en masse, marking the first instance in the US of the sit-down strike. The gambit proved effective: a series of successful sit-down strikes, coupled with the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the Wagner Act forced GM's hand. On February 11, 1937, GM acknowledged the UAW as its employees official "bargaining agent," sending ripples throughout the industry, as other auto makers gradually accepted the legitimacy of the union.
     Strikes closed seven General Motors factories in Flint, Michigan. The giant auto maker employed upwards of 200,000 men, and more than one in six of them stopped working during the strike. The United Automobile Workers of America, a labor union, was quarrelling with G.M. over the right to bargain collectively with manufacturers. The work stoppage was so large that it threatened to force layoffs in the steel, glass, and battery-manufacturing industries, due to reduced demand.
1935 Italian bombers destroy Swedish Red Cross unit in Ethiopia
1932 The Soviet Union bars food handouts for housewives under 36 years of age. They must now work to eat.
1927 Japan dedicates 1st subway in the Orient (route under 2 miles long)
1924 Edwin Hubble announces existence of other galactic systems.
1922 Vladimir Lenin proclaimed the establishment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
1911 Sun Yat-sen is elected the first President of the Republic of China.
1907 Abraham Mills' commission declares Abner Doubleday invented baseball
1906 Iran becomes a constitutional monarchy
1905 French driver Victor Hemery, driving a gasoline-powered Darracq automobile, set a new land-speed record in Arles-Salon, France. He reached a speed of 109.589 miles per hour. Hemery's record stood until 1906, when American Fred Marriot set a record of 121.573 in a steam-powered Stanley.
1903 American Political Science Association founded at New Orleans
1897 Province of Zululand annexed to Natal colony.
1887 A petition to Queen Victoria with over one million names of women appealing for British public houses to be closed on Sundays is handed to the Home Secretary.
1875 Andrassy Note calls for Christian-Muslim religious freedoms
1862 The draft of the Emancipation Proclamation is finished and circulated among President Abraham Lincoln's cabinet for comment.
1861 US government suspends the use of gold and silver for redeeming paper money. However the practice would be resumed after the Civil War and continue until 1879.
1854 Pennsylvania Rock Oil Co, 1st in US, incorporated in NYC
^ 1853 Gadsden Purchase, along Gila River.
     James Gadsden, the US minister to Mexico, and General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the president of Mexico, sign the Gadsden Purchase in Mexico City. The treaty settles the dispute over the exact location of the Mexican border west of El Paso, Texas, and establishes the final boundaries of the southern United States. For the price of fifteen million dollars, later reduced to ten million, the US acquires nearly 80'000-square kilometers of land in what is now southern New Mexico and Arizona.
      Jefferson Davis, the secretary of war under President Franklin Pierce, had sent Gadsden to negotiate with Santa Anna for the land, believed by a group of political and industrial leaders to be a strategic location for the construction of the southern transcontinental railroad. In 1861, the "big four" of western railroad construction--Collis P. Huntington, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker--establishes the Southern Pacific branch of the Central Pacific Railroad.
1835 After gold discovery in GA, Cherokees forced to move across Miss R
1817 1st coffee planted in Hawaii
1816 Poet Shelley marries consort after suicide of wife he abandoned.
      Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, 24, marries Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, 19, two years after eloping with her and abandoning his wife, who now has drowned herself. .
      Born 4 August 1792, Shelley, the heir to his wealthy grandfather's estate, was expelled from Oxford in March 1811 when he refused to acknowledge authorship of The Necessity of Atheism. He eloped with his first wife, Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of a tavern owner, in late August 1811. However, just a few years later, Shelley fell in love with the Mary Godwin, daughter of a prominent reformer and early feminist writer. Shelley and Godwin fled to Europe, arriving in France on 28 July 1814.
       Shelley's inheritance did not pay all the bills, and the couple spent much of their married life abroad, fleeing Shelley's creditors. While living in Geneva, the Shelleys and their dear friend Lord Byron challenged each other to write a compelling ghost story. Only Mary Shelley finished hers, later publishing the story as Frankenstein (1818). The Shelleys had five children but only one lived to adulthood. After Shelley drowned (poetic justice!) in a sailing accident on 18 July 1822, when Mary Shelley was only 24, she edited his Posthumous Poems (1824), Poetical Works (1839), and his prose works. She lived on a small stipend from her father-in-law, Lord Shelley, until her surviving son inherited his fortune and title in 1844. She died on 1 February 1851 at the age of 53. Although she was a respected writer for many years, only Frankenstein and her journals are still widely read.
PERCY SHELLEY ONLINE:
  • Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats : while we "decay Like corpses in a charnel," the creative spirit of Adonais, despite his physical death, "has outsoared the shadow of our night. “
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    ms/shelley1b.html" target="_blank">Alastor: or, The Spirit of Solitude     (1816), blank-verse poem, warns idealists not to abandon "sweet human love" and social improvement for the vain pursuit of dreams.
  • The Cenci (1819), tragedy of incestuous rape and patricide in 16th-century Rome
  • The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1901)
  • A Defence of Poetry (1840) essay: the poet creates humane values and imagines the forms that shape the social order.
  • The Necessity of Atheism (1811)
  • Prometheus Unbound + short poems such as Ode to Liberty, Ode to the West Wind, The Cloud, To a Sky-Lark.
    		• MARY SHELLEY ONLINE:
  • Frankenstein (1818): scientist creates artificial human monster.
  • Frankenstein (another site)
  • The Last Man (1826), her best novel: future destruction of the human race by a plague.
  • The Mortal Immortal
  • Valperga (1823)
    • Prometheus Unbound: a lyrical drama (1819) was the keystone of Shelley's poetic achievement, a masterpiece that combines supple blank verse with a variety of complex lyric measures.
          In Act I, Prometheus, tortured on Jupiter's orders for having given mankind the gift of moral freedom, recalls his earlier curse of Jupiter and forgives him ("I wish no living thing to suffer pain"). By eschewing revenge, Prometheus, who embodies the moral will, can be reunited with his beloved Asia, a spiritual ideal transcending humanity; her love prevents him from becoming another tyrant when Jupiter is overthrown by the mysterious power known as Demogorgon.
          Act II traces Asia's awakening and journey toward Prometheus, beginning with her descent into the depths of nature to confront and question Demogorgon.
          Act III depicts the overthrow of Jupiter and the union of Asia and Prometheus, who--leaving Jupiter's throne vacant--retreat to a cave from which they influence the world through ideals embodied in the creative arts. The end of the act describes the renovation of both human society and the natural world.
          Act IV opens with joyful lyrics by spirits who describe the benevolent transformation of the human consciousness that has occurred. Next, other spirits hymn the beatitude of humanity and nature in this new millennial age; and finally, Demogorgon returns to tell all creatures that, should the fragile state of grace be lost, they can restore their moral freedom through these "spells":
          To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than Death or Night; To defy Power which seems Omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope, till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates. . .
    1809 Wearing masks at balls forbidden in Boston
    1805 La victoire d'Austerlitz détermine le Tribunat à proposer à l'empereur que son nom soit désormais Napoléon le Grand. Celui-ci accepte.
    1803 The United States takes possession of the Louisiana area from France at New Orleans with a simple ceremony, the simultaneous lowering and raising of the national flags.
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    ^  Deaths which occurred on a 30 December:
    2002 William E. Koehn, 60, of Arlington, Texas, purchasing agent Kathleen A. Gariety, 53, of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin; and Dr. Martha C. Myers, 57, of Montgomery, Alaxama; respectively director, purchasing agent, and a physician of Baptist Hospital in Jibla, Yemen, shot in the head, while holding a meeting, by intruder Abed Abdul Razak Kamel, 30, who then goes to the pharmacy and critically wounds, by shots to the abdomen, pharmacist Donald W. Caswell, 49, of Levelland, Texas. Myers had worked at the hospital for 25 years and Koehn for 28 years. Kamel would say that he did it to get closer to Allah and to take revenge on Christians and Americans. On 10 May 2003 a Yemeni court in Ebb province would sentence him to death.
    2002 “Mary Wesley” (Mary Aline Siepmann), British author of sensual and often bitingly witty novels. She was born Mary Aline Mynors Farmar, in 1912. Her first two books were fiction for children, Speaking Terms (1968) and The Sixth Seal (1968), her first novel for adults was Jumping the Queue (1983, about a middle-aged widow contemplating suicide and reflecting on her life, following the example of a fugitive). Her last book was Part of the Scenery (2002).
    2000 Hilal Ahmed Haj, 21, Lebanese, hit in the head by two bullets fired from a passing Israeli patrol at the Fatima Gate border fence. He was throwing stones at an Israeli outpost 10 m from the border fence.
    2000:: 22 persons in a series of bombings in Manila. More than 100 are injured. — On 18 April 2002, in General Santos, Philippines, an Indonesian man believed to be a key leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah (a Southeast Asian-based terrorist group), Fathur Rohman Al-Ghozi would be sentenced to 12 years in prison for explosives possession. He told police he had planned the 30 Dec 2000 series of bombings in Manila, and in January 2002 he led police to a buried cache of more than a ton of TNT, detonating cords and M-16 rifles in General Santos, a largely Christian city of 800'000 in the predominantly Muslim south of the Philippines. On 21 April 2002 three terrorist bombs would explode in General Santos, one of them killing at least 14 persons.
    2000 Yu Lianchun's death is notified to her family in Jinan (Shandong province, China) by the staff of the labor camp to which she had been sentenced for being a Falun Gong member. Yu, 45, was a worker at a factory in Shandong. Bruises on her body showed that she had been beaten to death.
    1999 Sarah "Sadie" Clark Knauss, 119, at 15:00, sleeping in her chair in an Allentown, Pa., nursing home. She was born on 24 September 1880. The Guinness Book of Records: 1999 declared Knauss the oldest person in the world, on the 16 April 1998 death of 117-year-old Marie-Louise Febronie Chassé-Meilleur of Québec, born 29 August 1880. Mrs. Knauss ate chocolate every day and rarely got angry.(the longevity record-holder is still Jeanne Louise Calment of Arles, France, born 21 February 1875, who died on 04 August 1997, who also was partial to chocolate, and drank wine).
    1997: 412 men, women and children massacred by armed gangs, in four mountain villages in Algeria.
    ^ 1994 Two abortion clinic receptionists, murdered
          John Salvi III walks into two separate abortion clinics in Brookline, Massachusetts, and shoots workers with a rifle, killing two receptionists and wounding five other employees. He was captured the next day after firing 23 shots at a Norfolk, Virginia, medical clinic.
          Salvi, who worked in a beauty salon in New Hampshire before his murderous rampage, was described by acquaintances as a "very odd" man. Despite his increasingly erratic behavior, Salvi's parents resisted getting professional treatment for him. As his mental state deteriorated, he became a zealous anti-abortion activist.
          In March 1996, Salvi's trial jury rejected his insanity defense and convicted him of murder. After receiving two life sentences, he killed himself in prison in November 1996.
          However, the fallout from Salvi's attack did not end there. Richard Seron, one of the shooting victims, filed a lawsuit against the clinic's landlord for failing to provide security measures Seron claimed would have prevented the attack. After losing that suit, Seron enraged abortion providers by lobbying against a law that would establish a buffer zone outside clinics. He further antagonized pro-choice activists by filing a lawsuit against Planned Parenthood, claiming that he was entitled to a $100'000 reward for assisting in the capture of John Salvi.
          But even Richard Seron did not inspire as much public ire as Deborah Gaines, who was scheduled to have an abortion at one of the clinics on the day of the shooting. After the incident, she couldn't go through with the abortion and decided to have the child. She later sued the clinic for wrongful life, arguing that the clinic should pay the costs of raising the child since their alleged negligence prevented her abortion. The case, however, was dismissed before trial.
    1982 Philip Hall, mathematician.
    1978 Naimark, mathematician.
    1947 Alfred North Whitehead, English mathematician and philosopher born on 15 February 1861. He collaborated with Bertrand Russell [18 May 1872 – 02 Feb 1970] on Principia Mathematica (1910-1913). In Process and Reality (1929) his metaphysics postulated that there is a succession of universes, each one consisting entirely of a process acting on the infinite reality of the preceding unniverse within the possibilities provided by God. — WHITEHEAD ONLINE: The Concept of Nature — Religion in the Making — A Treatise on Universal Algebra, With Applications (page images)
    1941 Lazar Markovich Lisitskii “El Lissitzky”, Russian painter born on 23 November 1890. — MORE ON LISSITZKY AT ART “4” DECEMBER with links to images.
    1940 Walter Kurt Wiemken, Swiss artist born on 14 September 1907.
    ^ 1939 Day 31 of Winter War: USSR aggression against Finland.
    More deaths due to Stalin's desire to grab Finnish territory.
  • Northern Finland: Colonel Siilasvuo is ordered to destroy the Russian 44th Division grouped along the Raate road. Finnish troops continue to pursue the retreating enemy across the frozen Lake Kianta.
  • The enemy's 163rd Division loses around 6500 men, approximately 35% of its strength.
  • The Finnish force at Hulkonniemi captures large amounts of enemy materiel, including 25 artillery pieces, 11 tanks, 150 trucks and 250 horses. Finnish losses are 350 dead and 600 wounded.
  • Lake Ladoga: Finnish troops repel an exploratory offensive by the enemy across the newly-frozen Lake Ladoga.
    • ^ 1933 Ion Duca, Romanian premier, assassinated
          Ion Duca, the liberal premier of Romania, is assassinated by a member of the Iron Guard, an extreme rightist movement in the country. The Iron Guard was founded by Corneliu Codreanu during the 1920s, and during the 1930s, imitated Germany's Nazi Party in both ideology and methods. After Duca's assassination, the Iron Guard was outlawed in Romania, however, its members carried on as the "All for the Fatherland" political party. In 1938, King Carol II managed to establish a stronger dictatorship in Romania, and took steps to suppress the activities of the Iron Guard, as well as its leftist antithesis, the Romanian Communist Party. However, after the Munich Pact of 1938 was signed--considered an abandonment of Romania by its Western allies from World War I--followed by the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, which ceded portions of Romania to the USS.R., the country fell into violent turmoil. In 1940, General Ion Antonescu seized power in Romania and forced King Carol II to abdicate, and on November 27, Astonescu's Iron Guard massacred over sixty aides of the exiled king, including Nicolae Iorga, a former minister and acclaimed historian. General Ion Antonescu emerged from the chaos victorious and established a dictatorship with Hitler's approval, killing, exiling, or imprisoning most of his former political opposition. However, Romanian resistance against the Iron Guard and Nazi occupation persisted during the war, and in August of 1944, a massive revolt toppled Antonescu's government in the Romanian capital of Bucharest, allowing the Soviet liberators to capture the city without firing a shot.
    1932 Eliakim Moore, mathematician.
    1917 Federigo Zandomeneghi, Italian artist born on 02 June 1841. — MORE ON ZANDOMENEGHI AT ART “4” DECEMBER with links to images.
    ^ 1916 (17 December Julian) Grigory Yefimovich Novykh "Rasputin" , 44, poisoned, shot, and finally drowned.
        He was a debauched (meaning of "rasputin") illiterate Siberian peasant and mystic whose ability to improve the condition of hemophiliac tsarevich Aleksey Nikolayevich made him an influential favorite at the court of tsar Nicholas II and tsarina Alexandra, starting in 1908.. He was having such a harmful effect on the government, run by the tsarina in the absence of the tsar at the front, that a group of extreme conservatives, including Prince Feliks Yusupov (husband of the tsar's niece), Vladimir Mitrofanovich Purishkevich (a member of the Duma), and Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich (the tsar's cousin), formed a conspiracy to eliminate Rasputin and save the monarchy from further scandal. On the night of December 29-30 (December 16-17 Julian), Rasputin was invited to visit Yusupov's home and, once there, was given poisoned wine and tea cakes. When he did not die, the frantic Yusupov shot him. Rasputin collapsed but was able to run out into the courtyard, where Purishkevich shot him again. The conspirators then bound him and threw him through a hole in the ice into the Neva River, where he finally died by drowning. The murder merely strengthened Alexandra's resolve to uphold the principle of autocracy, but a few weeks later the whole imperial regime was swept away by revolution.
          Rasputin dictated this prophecy the day before he died. He predicted that if Nicholas' relatives were responsible for his death, then the Tsar and his children would all die "within two years. “ Prince Yussoupov, a Romanov relative, murdered Rasputin; a year and a half later Bolsheviks killed the Tsar's family.
    The Spirit of Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin
    of the village of Pokrovskoe
    I write and leave behind me this letter at St. Petersburg. I feel that I shall leave life before January 1...If I am killed by common assassins, and especially by my brothers the Russian peasants, you Tsar of Russia, have nothing to fear, remain on your throne and govern, and you, Russian Tsar, will have nothing to fear for your children, they will reign for hundreds of years in Russia...if it was your relations who have wrought my death, then no one in the family, that is to say, none of your children or relations, will remain alive for more than two years. They will be killed by the Russian people...You must reflect and act prudently. Think of your safety and tell your relations that I have paid for them with my blood. I shall be killed. I am no longer among the living.
    Pray, pray, be strong,
    think of your blessed family.
    Grigory
         Grigori Rasputin, a Russian holy man and favorite of Czar Nicholas II and Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna, is murdered at Yusupovsky Palace by a group of nobles critical of his influence in the Russian court. Born in Siberia as a peasant, Rasputin was an important member of the Flagellants religious sect. After coming to St. Petersburg, Rasputin was introduced into the royal household of Czar Nicholas II, and soon gained immense favor with the czarina because of his ability to control through hypnosis the bleeding of the hemophiliac heir to the throne, Tsarevich Alexey. Rasputin also became a notorious courtier, famous for his lechery and drunkenness.
          By 1911, his political influence over the czar and his wife was great, and his unscrupulous appointees began to fill high posts in the Russian government. In 1915, Czar Nicholas traveled to the front of World War I to take command of the Russian army, and Czarina Alexandra and thus Rasputin were left in control of the government. Amid suspicions that Rasputin and the czarina were plotting to make peace with Germany, a group of nobles led by Prince Felix Yusupov plotted Rasputin's death.
          On December 30, 1916, the nobles lure him to the Yusupovsky Palace, and Rasputin was murdered. The legendary details of Rasputin's death are that after being unaffected by poisoned food and wine he was shot at close range and collapsed on the floor, apparently dead. Minutes later, he regained consciousness, beat one of his assailants, and attempted to escape from the palace grounds, where he was shot again and beaten. Rasputin was reportedly still living at this point, so he was bound and tossed into a freezing river. When his body was later found it was finally without life, although the binds were broken, indicating that Rasputin may have attempted one last escape before drowning. In the next year, the czarist government was overthrown in the Russian Revolution, and in 1918, Czar Nicholas, his family, a few faithful servants, and the tsarevich's dog were shot to death at Yekaterinburg Palace by Lenin's Bolshevik revolutionaries.
         Rasputin represented himself as spiritually devout but was pereceived by others as dangerously evil (his nickname means "debauched") and for his story we go to Russia in the time just before the 1917 Revolution. The Romanov dynasty in Russia in the early years of this century was threatened by internal and external pressures. On the eve of its collapse, every possible tool was used to sap the confidence of the country in their ruler and his family. One was the fact that the Tsaritsa Alexandra was a German, so the story was spread that she was a spy for Germany. But the most damaging stories, used on broadsides, in newspapers and spread by word of mouth was the royal family's confidence in Rasputin.
          When he was 18, Rasputin had a vision of the Virgin of Kazan and became convinced that he was chosen for some special purpose. He became one of thousands of "wanderers" who roamed Russia travelling from shrine to shrine. He was a peasant raised in a village where memories of the pagan past survived. He soon accepted the belief of a strange sect which taught that communion with God comes only after committing sin. He spent his life on a pendulum swinging from days of orgy to days of abject penance.
          When he arrived in St. Petersburg, he was on his best behavior, and was received as a "holy wanderer. “ He soon became known to the best society, which enjoyed oddities. He was brought to the Tsaritsa when her son, was in agony from his hemophila--pain and swelling brought on by the least blow or fall. The peasant's hypnotic ability, controlled the sufferer's pain and gained the gratitude and loyalty of the Tsaritsa. When stories were told of his misdeeds she refused to believe them. The Tsar did believe them, however, and banished Rasputin for a time.
          Fearing the evil tongues the tsar's enemies, and wishing to be rid of Rasputin, a few men decided to murder him. He was brought to the palace of Prince Yusupov in St. Petersburg, where he was poisoned. The poison had little effect, so both the Prince and another assassin shot him. His body was dumped into the Neva River and was not found until 02 January. An autopsy indicated that he was still alive when he was put in the water. The Romanov dynasty came to an end in 1917 when Tsar Nicholas II abdicated in favor of his brother, Grand Duke Michael.
    1915 Hugo Wilhelm Kauffmann, German artist born on 07 August 1844.
    ^ 1905 Frank Steunenberg, Idaho governor, by an assassin's bomb.
          Targeted for his role in the abusive represssion of a miners' strike in 1899, former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg is wounded by a powerful bomb that is triggered when he opens the gate to his home in Caldwell, Idaho. He dies shortly afterwards in his own bed.
          A former newspaper editor, Steunenberg entered Idaho politics in 1890, when he was elected to the House of Representatives. In 1896, he won the Idaho Governor's seat as the head of a coalition of Democrats, Populists, and Republicans who supported the use of silver to back currency. Generally perceived as a friend to labor and the "little man," Steunenberg won a second term as governor in 1896. During this term, he was confronted with one of the most divisive and violent western battles between labor and management of the 19th century.
          Miners in the rich silver districts near Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, had been struggling to unionize and gain better pay and working conditions since 1892. Radicalized by their initial defeats, an increasing numbers of miners began supporting the violence-prone Western Federation of Miners (WFM), which advocated aggressive tactics and worker control of industry. Alarmed by the growing influence of the WFM, Coeur d'Alene mine owners attempted to bust the union in 1899, and the WFM responded by blowing up one mining company's huge and costly concentrators with dynamite.
          Disturbed by the miners' violent tactics, the hitherto pro-labor Steunenberg heeded the demands of the powerful mine owners and turned against the WFM, requesting that the federal government send in troops. The soldiers placed the region under martial law and herded hundreds of miners into makeshift prisons, ignoring their constitutional rights to know the charges and evidence against them.
          Steunenberg's actions restored order in the Idaho silver mines, but also earned him the lasting enmity of many radical WFM members. Six years later, the radicals took their revenge by sending a professional assassin named Harry Orchard to Caldwell. The professional hitman was responsible for planting the bomb that killed the former governor. Orchard was captured, tried, and sentenced to life in prison, and his guilt has never been seriously disputed. However, many were convinced that the plot to kill Steunenberg was supported not just by a radical minority within the WFM, but also by its top leadership. WFM secretary-treasurer William "Big Bill" Haywood was brought up on charges of criminal conspiracy but was found not guilty largely as a result of famous Chicago lawyer Clarence Darrow's brilliant defense. Haywood went on to found the even more radical Industrial Workers of the World.
    1903: 602 in fire at Iroquois Theater in Chicago.
    1896 Jose Mercado Rizal, anti-Spanish rule of Philippines proponent.
    1894 Amelia Jenks Bloomer suffragist dies (Bloomers named for her).
    1886 William Wing Loring, born on 04 Dec 1818, attorney, legislator, financier, traveler, writer, and veteran of the US (colonel), Confederate (general) and Egyptian (ferik pasha) armies. Author o
    f A Confederate Soldier in Egypt (1884).
    1885 Martha Darley (or Durley) Mutrie, British artist born on 26 August 1824.
    1870 El general Juan Prim y Prats, presidente del Gobierno español, a causa de las heridas de bala recibidas al sufrir un atentado en Madrid tres días antes.
    ^ 1862 USS. Monitor sinks in storm with 16 of its sailors.
          The USS. Monitor sinks in a storm off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Just nine months earlier, the ship had been part of a revolution in naval warfare when the ironclad dueled to a standstill with the C.S.S. Virginia (Merrimack) off Hampton Roads, Virginia, in one of the most famous naval battles in history--the first time two ironclads faced each other in a naval engagement.
          After the famous duel, the Monitor provided gun support on the James River for George B. McClellan's Peninsular Campaign. By December 1862, it was clear the Monitor was no longer needed in Virginia, so she was sent to Beaufort, North Carolina, to join a fleet being assembled for an attack on Charleston. The Monitor served well in the sheltered waters of Chesapeake Bay, but the heavy, low-slung ship was a poor craft for the open sea. The USS. Rhode Island towed the ironclad around the rough waters of Cape Hatteras. Since December is a treacherous time for any ship off North Carolina, the decision to move the Monitor seems highly questionable. As the Monitor pitched and swayed in the rough seas, the caulking around the gun turret loosened and water began to leak into the hull. More leaks developed as the journey continued. High seas tossed the craft, causing the ship's flat armor bottom to slap the water. Each roll opened more seams, and by nightfall on 30 December, the Monitor was in dire straits.
          At 20:00, the Monitor's commander, J.P. Bankhead, signaled the Rhode Island that he wished to abandon ship. The wooden side-wheeler pulled as close as safety allowed to the stricken ironclad, and two lifeboats were lowered to retrieve the crew. Many of the sailors were rescued, but some men were terrified to venture onto the deck in such rough seas. The ironclad's pumps stopped working and the ship sank before 16 crew members could be rescued.
          Although the Monitor's service was brief, it signaled a new era in naval combat. The Virginia's arrival off Hampton Road terrified the US Navy, but the Monitor leveled the playing field. Both sides had ironclads, and the advantage would go to the side that could build more of them. Northern industry would win that battle for the Union.
    1839 William Hilton the Younger, English painter born on 03 June 1786. — more with links to images.
    1788 Francesco Zuccarelli, Florentine landscape painter born on 15 August 1702. — MORE ON ZUCCARELLI AT ART “4” DECEMBER with links to images.
    1691 Robert Boyle, Anglo-Irish mathematician, chemist, and natural philosopher, born on 25 January 1627. He made pioneering experiments on the properties of gases and adhered to a corpuscular theory of matter that was a precursor of the modern theory of chemical elements. Author of Occasional Reflections Upon Several Subjects (1655, moral essays), New Experiments Physio-Mechanical, Touching the Spring of the Air and its Effets (1660), The Skeptical Chymist (1661). In 1662 he stated that the pressure of a given quantity of gas varies inversely with its volume at constant temperature (pv = k, Boyle's Law).
    1672 Hendrick Bloemaert, Dutch artist born in 1601.
    1460 Richard, 3rd duke of York , born on 21 September 1411. is defeated and killed by Lancastrians at the Battle of Wakefield. His claim to the English throne helped precipitate the Wars of the Roses (1455–1485) between the houses of Lancaster and York; he controlled the government for brief periods during the first five years of this struggle. He was the father of two English kings, Edward IV [28 Apr 1442 – 09 Apr 1483], who after seizing power was crowned on 28 June 1461, and Richard III [02 Oct 1452 – 22 Aug 1485] who on 26 June 1483 usurped the power of his brother's heir, Edward V [04 Nov 1470 – Aug 1483], whom he had imprisoned in the Tower of London together with Edward's V's brother Richard duke of York [17 Aug 1473 – Aug 1483]; both boys were presumably murdered in August 1483, probably on orders from their uncle. — Painting The Princes in the Tower (1830), by Delaroche
    0274 St Felix I, Pope.
    ^  Births which occurred on a 30 December:
    1985 IBM-PC DOS Version 3.2 released.
    1938 Electronic television system patented, VK Zworykin.
    ^ 1922 The USSR is established
          In post-revolutionary Russia, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USS.R.) is established, comprising a confederation of Russia, Byelorussia, the Ukraine, and the Transcaucasian Federation. Also known as the Soviet Union, the new republic was the successor to the Russian Empire and the first state in the world to claim to be based on Marxist Socialism.
          During the Russian Revolution of 1917 and subsequent three-year Russian Civil War, the Bolshevik Party under Vladimir Lenin dominated the Soviet forces, a coalition of workers' and soldiers' committees calling for the establishment of a socialist state in the former Russian Empire. In the USS.R., all levels of government were controlled by the Communist Party, and the Party's politburo, with its increasingly powerful general secretary, effectively ruled the country. Soviet industry was owned and managed by the state, and agricultural land was divided into state-run collective farms.
          In the decades after its establishment, the Russian-dominated Soviet Union grew into one of the world's most powerful and influential states, and eventually encompassed fifteen republics--Russia, the Ukraine, Georgia, Byelorussia, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzsatn, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. In 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved following the collapse of its communist government.
    —     L'Union des Républiques Socialistes Soviètiques se forme par l'union de la R.S.S. Fédérées de Russie, la R.S.S. d'Ukraine, la R.S.S. de Biélo-russie et la R.S.S. transcaucasienne.
    1921 Rashid Karami Lebanon, 10 times PM of Lebanon
    1904 Dmitri Kabalevsky St Petersburg Russia, composer (In the Fire)
    1897 Saks, mathematician
    ^ 1884 Tojo Hideki, dictatorial Japanese Prime Minister during World War II, war criminal
         Born in Tokyo, Tojo graduated from the Imperial Military Academy and the Military Staff College, then was sent to Berlin as Japan's military attaché after World War I. Having already earned a reputation for sternness and discipline, Tojo was given command of the 1st Infantry Regiment upon return to Japan. In 1937, he was made chief of staff of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria, China. Returning again to his homeland, Tojo assumed the office of vice-minister of war and quickly took the lead in the military's increasing control of Japanese foreign policy, advocating the signing of the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy in 1940 that made Japan an "Axis" power. In July of 1940, he was made minister of war and soon clashed with the Prime Minister, Prince Fumimaro Konoye, who had been fighting to reform his government by demilitarizing its politics. In October, Konoye resigned because of increasing tension with Tojo, who succeeded as prime minister while holding on to his offices of army minister and war minister, and assuming the offices of minister of commerce and of industry as well.
          Tojo, now a virtual dictator, quickly promised a "New Order in Asia," and toward this end supported the bombing of Pearl Harbor despite the misgivings of several of his generals. Tojo's aggressive policies paid big dividends early on, with major territorial gains in Indochina and the South Pacific. But despite Tojo's increasing control over his own country, even assuming the position of the chief of the general staff, he could not control the determination of the United States, which began beating back the Japanese in the South Pacific. When Saipan fell to the US Marines and Army, Tojo's government collapsed. Upon Japan's surrender, Tojo tried to commit suicide by shooting himself with an American .38 pistol but was saved by an American physician who gave him a transfusion of American blood. He lived only to be convicted of war crimes by an international tribunal--and was hanged on 22 December 1948.
    1880 Republic of the Transvaal established
     Al Smith     In British South Africa, the Transvaal province is declared an independent Boer republic, setting off an armed conflict with Britain that serves as a precursor for the South African Boer War two decades later. Boers, also known as Afrikaners, were the descendants of the original Dutch settlers of southern Africa. At the end of the Napoleonic wars, Britain took possession of the Dutch Cape colony, sparking resistance from the independence-minded Boers, who resented the Anglicization of South Africa and Britain's anti-slavery policies. In 1833, the Boers began an exodus into African tribal territory, where they founded the republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State.
    click for full portrait       The two new republics lived peaceably with their British neighbors until 1867, when the discovery of diamonds and gold in the region made conflict between the Boer states and Britain inevitable. Following declarations of independence from the Boer states during the 1880s, minor fighting with Britain ensued before the outbreak of full-scale war in 1899. In 1902, after three years of fighting, Britain is victorious in the South African Boer War, and in 1910, the Union of South Africa is created within the British Empire, comprising the two Boer republics and the old Cape and Natal colonies.
    1880 Alfred Einstein, German-born US musicologist and critic who died on 13 February 1952. (not to be confused with THE Albert Einstein).
    1879 Ramana Maharshi, Hindu philosopher and yogi, who died on 14 April 1950.
    1879 The Pirates of Penzance, by Gilbert and Sullivan, is first performed, at Paignton, Devon, England.
    1873 Alfred “Al” Smith [photo >], Catholic, 4 times governor of New York, 1928 Democratic Party presidential nominee (he lost all but 8 of the 48 state to Republican Herbert Hoover). He died on 04 October 1944.
    1870 Pollux, killed for his meat, elephant of the zoo in famished Paris besieged by the Prussians since 19 September 1870. The other elephant, Castor, was killed the previous day. The elephant of the Jardin des Plantes would be killed on 02 January 1871.
    1869 Stephen Leacock Canada, economist/humorist/professor
    1867 Simon Guggenheim, [< portrait] 5th of the 7 sons of mining tycoon Meyer Guggenheim (01 Feb 1828 – 15 Mar 1905), brother of Daniel Guggenheim (09 July 1856 – 28 Sep 1930) and of Solomon Guggenheim (1861-1949), US senator for Colorado (1907-1913), president of the American Smelting and Refining Company (1919-1941). He died on 02 November 1941. Philanthropist founder in 1925 (in memory of his son John Simon, who died on 26 April 1922) of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to award fellowships to aid artists and scholars studying abroad (not to be confused with the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Foundation, the Daniel Guggenheim Foundation for the Promotion of Aeronautics, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, or the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation for the advancement of art). [The 6th son of Meyer, Ben Guggenheim died in the sinking of the Titanic, on 15 April 1912]
    1865 Joseph Rudyard Kipling, in Bombay (now Mumbay), English short-story writer, poet, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, his tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907.
          Kipling's father, John Lockwood Kipling, was curator of the Lahore museum, and is described as such in the first chapter of Kim, Rudyard's most famous novel. Much of his childhood was unhappy. Kipling was taken to England by his parents at the age of six and was left for five years at a foster home at Southsea, the horrors of which he described in the story Baa Baa, Black Sheep (1888). He then went on to an inferior boarding school. It haunted Kipling for the rest of his life—but always as the glorious place celebrated in Stalky & Co. (1899) and related stories: an unruly paradise in which the highest goals of English education are met amid a tumult of teasing, bullying, and beating. The Stalky saga is one of Kipling's great imaginative achievements.
          Rudyard Kipling returned to India in 1882 and worked for seven years as a journalist.. He was quickly filling the journals he worked for with prose sketches and light verse. He published the verse collection Departmental Ditties in 1886, the short-story collection Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888, and between 1887 and 1889 he brought out six paper-covered volumes of short stories. Among the latter were Soldiers Three, The Phantom 'Rickshaw and Other Ghost Stories (containing the story The Man Who Would Be King), and Wee Willie Winkie (containing Baa, Baa, Black Sheep).
          When Kipling returned to England in 1889, his reputation had preceded him. His fame was redoubled upon the publication in 1892 of the verse collection Barrack-Room Ballads, which contained such popular poems as Mandalay, Gunga Din, and Danny Deever. In 1892 Kipling married Caroline Balestier, the sister of Wolcott Balestier, an American publisher and writer with whom he had collaborated in The Naulahka (1892), a facile and unsuccessful romance. That year the young couple moved to the United States. The Kiplings returned to England in 1896.
          Besides numerous short-story collections and poetry collections such as The Seven Seas (1896), Kipling published his best-known novels in the 1890s and immediately thereafter. His novel The Light That Failed (1890) is the story of a painter going blind and spurned by the woman he loves. Captains Courageous (1897), in spite of its sense of adventure, is often considered a poor novel because of the excessive descriptive writing. Kim (1901), although essentially a children's book, must be considered a classic. The The Jungle Book (1894) and The Second Jungle Book (1895) is a stylistically superb collection of stories linked by poems for children.
          In 1902 Kipling bought a house at Burwash, Sussex, which remained his home until his death. Sussex was the background of much of his later writing—especially in Puck of Pook's Hill (1906) and Rewards and Fairies (1910), two volumes that, although devoted to simple dramatic presentations of English history, embodied some of his deepest intuitions.
          In 1907 Kipling received the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first Englishman to be so honored. In South Africa, where he spent much time, he was given a house by Cecil Rhodes, the diamond magnate and South African statesman. This association fostered Kipling's imperialist persuasions, which were to grow stronger with the years.
         In the whole sweep of his adult storytelling, Kipling displays a steadily developing art, from the early volumes of short stories set in India through the collections Life's Handicap (1891), Many Inventions (1893), The Day's Work (1898), Traffics and Discoveries (1904), Actions and Reactions (1909), Debits and Credits (1926), and Limits and Renewals (1932). While his later stories cannot exactly be called better than the earlier ones, they are as good—and they bring a subtler if less dazzling technical proficiency to the exploration of deeper though sometimes more perplexing themes. It is a far cry from the broadly effective eruption of the supernatural in The Phantom Rickshaw (1888) to its subtle exploitation in The Wish House or A Madonna of the Trenches (1924), or from the innocent chauvinism of the bravura The Man Who Was (1890) to the depth of implication beneath the seemingly insensate xenophobia of Mary Postgate (1915).
          Kipling wrote much and successfully for children; for the very young in Just So Stories (1902), and for others in The Jungle Book and in Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies. Of his miscellaneous works, the more notable are a number of early travel sketches collected in two volumes in From Sea to Sea (1899) and the unfinished Something of Myself, posthumously published in 1941, a reticent essay in autobiography. Kipling died in London, on 18 January 1936.
    KIPLING WORKS NOT MENTIONED ABOVE NOR BELOW:
    1881 Schoolboy Lyrics. 1887 Soldier Tales, Indian Tales, and Tales of the Opposite Sex. 1888 The Story of the Gadsbys, In Black and White. 1890 The Courting of Dinah Shadd and Other Stories, and The City of Dreadful Night. 1891 Letters of Marque 1892 Rhymed Chapter Headings 1896 Soldier Tales. 1898 An Almanac of Twelve Sports, and A Fleet in Being. 1900 The Kipling Reader. 1901 War's Brighter Side. 1903 The Five Nations. 1907 Collected Verse. 1911 A History of England. 1912 Songs from Books. 1915 The New Army in Training and France in War. 1916 Sea Warfare. 1917 A Diversity of Creatures. 1919 The Graves of the Fallen and The Years Between. 1920 Horace Odes, Book V and Letters of Travel. 1923 The Irish Guards in the Great War and Land and Sea. 1924 Songs for Youth. 1926 Sea and Sussex. 1927 Songs of the Sea. 1928 A Book of Words. 1929 Poems 1886-1929. 1930 Thy Servant A Dog. 1934 Collected Dog Stories.
    KIPLING ONLINE:
  • Kim
  • Kim
  • Just So Stories
  • Just So Stories
  • Stalky & Co.
  • Stalky & Co.
  • American Notes
  • American Notes
  • Captains Courageous
  • The Day's Work
  • The Jungle Book
  • The Jungle Book
  • The Jungle Book
  • The Second Jungle Book
  • The Light That Failed
  • The Light That Failed
  • A Pilgrim's Way
  • Plain Tales From the Hills
  • Puck of Pook's Hill
  • Puck of Pook's Hill
  • Actions and Reactions
  • Rewards and Fairies
  • Under the Deodars
  • Verses, 1889-1896
  • The Ballad of East and West
  • How the Leopard Got His Spots
  • The Man Who Would Be King
  • The Phantom 'Rickshaw and O
    ther Ghost Stories
  • With the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 A.D.
  • The Works of Rudyard Kipling
    • 1851 Asa Griggs Candler, US, developed Coca-Cola, died on 12 March 1913. [Eggs get candled, not Coca-Cola]
    1850 John Milne, English seismologist and geologist; inventor of the seismograph. He died on 30 July 1913. [not to be confused with A. A. Milne, the father of Christopher Robin and the author of Pooh]
    ^ 1847 John Peter Altgeld, in Germany, reformist Democratic governor of Illinois (1893-1897)
         Despite his humble origins as the son of immigrants, Altgeld was resourceful and passionate, successfully amassing a small fortune in real estate in Chicago in the second half of the nineteenth century. He was sympathetic to the plight of the poor and other victims of the second industrial revolution. Committing himself to politics, Altgeld was elected to the superior court of Cook county (1886-91), won his party's nomination for governor (1892), and was elected by the farm and labor vote.
          As governor, Altgeld achieved much, including improvements to the penal system and passage of early child labor legislation. However, he is most famous for his 26 June 1893 pardon of the German-American anarchists involved in the Haymarket Riot, an 1886 labor protest for the eight-hour day. The protest escalated into a violent confrontation in which seven policemen were killed. Altgeld, petitioned by Clarence Darrow, labor leaders, and others, argued that the trial had been unfair because the judge was prejudiced and the jury stacked.
          A year later, Altgeld refused to use federal troops to suppress the Pullman Strike when the American Railway Union protested a reduction in salary without an accompanying reduction in the cost of company-owned housing and other expenses. Ultimately, President Grover Cleveland ordered 2500 federal troops to Chicago to suppress the strike, exercising his authority to protect mail and interstate commerce. Altgeld's progressive era legislation and commitment to the laboring classes made him a hero to activists, workers, and farmers, and an enemy of big business.
    1788 Edouard Henri Théophile Pingret, French artist who died in 1875.
    1746 François André Vincent, French Neoclassical painter, specialized in historical subjects, who died on 03 August 1816. — MORE ON VINCENT AT ART “4” DECEMBER with links to images.
    1677 Felice Rubbiani, Italian artist who died on 18 October 1752.
    0039 Titus Flavius Vespasianus, would become Titus Vespasianus Augustus, 10th Roman emperor (79-81), conqueror of Jerusalem in 70. He would die on 13 September 81, Domitian his successor having something to do with it.
    Holidays Bolivia, Chile : Bank Holiday / Iran : Birthday of Iman Reza / Italy : New Year's Eve / Philippiines : Rizal Day (anniversary of his death) (1896) / El Salvador : Bank Holiday
    DICTIONNAIRE TICRANIEN: séparé: ce que dit le chef d'orchestre au musicien qui joue un do, un ton au-dessous de ce qu'il devrait.
    Thoughts for the day:
    “The light of a hundred stars doesn't equal the light of the moon.” {a geocentric view}
    “The light of the new moon doesn't equal the light of a hundred stars.”
    “The light of the moon doesn't equal one-hundredth of the light of one star, the sun.”
    “Keep busy, work hard, and don't worry about how old you are.”     — Sarah Knauss
    “Keep doing busy work and don't worry: you're old whatever your age.”
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