Arts Culture
This Week In History - Aug 9 - Aug 15
Sunday, Aug. 9 — Today is the 221st day of 2009. There are 144 days left in the year.
On this date:
• In 480 B.C., Greek troops led by Spartan King Leonidas are overcome by the Persians at Thermopylae after a heroic stand.
• In 378 B.C., Visigoths annihilate a Roman army and kill the emperor at Adrianople (present-day Edirne, Turkey), marking the beginning of serious barbarian inroads on Roman territory.
• In 1790, the ship Columbia returns to Boston Harbor after a three-year circumnavigation, becoming the first ship to carry the American flag around the world.
• In 1830, French parliament declares Louis-Philippe king after Charles X is forced to abdicate by the July Revolution, inaugurating the constitutional "July Monarchy."
• In 1898, Spain formally accepts peace terms ending Spanish-American War.
• In 1902, Edward VII is crowned king of England following the death of his mother, Queen Victoria.
• In 1936, black U.S. athlete Jesse Owens becomes the first Olympian to win four Olympic gold medals, delivering a blow to Hitler's plan to have the Berlin Olympics prove Aryan superiority.
• In 1945, a U.S. plane drops a second atomic bomb, destroying more than half of Nagasaki, Japan, and killing an estimated 74,000. Despite nuclear proliferation, it marks the last time any country has used such a device for mass destruction in combat.
• In 1974, Richard Nixon becomes the first U.S. president to resign from office. Gerald R. Ford succeeds him.
• In 1985, fighting in Beirut breaks out between Christian and Muslim militiamen. Thousands of rocket, mortar and artillery rounds crash into residential areas on both sides, killing at least 43 people.
• In 1990, the U.N. Security Council unanimously declares Iraq’s annexation of Kuwait invalid. Iraq seals its borders, raising concern about thousands of foreigners in Iraq and Kuwait.
• In 1994, hijackers kill a Cuban navy lieutenant and force four sailors overboard before setting sail in the commandeered vessel for the United States.
• In 1996, Chechen rebels in the center of Grozny repel Russian attacks, supported by artillery and aircraft fire.
• In 1999, Russian President Boris Yeltsin fires his Cabinet, naming Vladimir Putin as his new prime minister.
• In 2006, Riot police in a divided corner of Northern Ireland block supporters of Irish Republican Army dissidents from parading in a hard-line Protestant town, as IRA dissidents are accused of firebombings.
• In 2008, Russia and small, U.S.-allied Georgia head toward a wider war as Russian tanks rumble into the contested province of South Ossetia and Russian aircraft bomb a Georgian town, escalating a conflict that already had left hundreds dead.
Monday, Aug. 10
In 1566, iconoclastic riots by fanatical Calvinists break out in the Netherlands.
• In 1627, French forces under Cardinal Richelieu begin siege of La Rochelle, held by Huguenots. Three-quarters of its inhabitants die of starvation during the 15-month siege.
• In 1792, French monarchy is overthrown when mobs in Paris attack palace of King Louis XVI.
• In 1885, Leo Daft opens America’s first commercially operated electric streetcar, in Baltimore.
• In 1897, Felix Hoffman, a young researcher at German chemical firm Bayer, for the first time synthesizes acetylsalicylic acid, aspirin’s active ingredient.
• In 1914, France declares war on Austria-Hungary at the start of World War I.
• In 1945, Japan offers to surrender in World War II if Emperor Hirohito is permitted to keep his throne.
• In 1962, the Soviet Union rejects proposed U.S. inspection plan as part of any disarmament agreement.
• In 1975, Nationalist China resumes air flights to Japan. Taiwan had severed plane service in April 1974, in retaliation for an aviation agreement Japan had signed with China.
• In 1988, U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs a measure providing $20,000 payments to Japanese-Americans interned by the U.S. government during World War II.
• In 1992, the British government designates Northern Ireland’s largest Protestant paramilitary group, the Ulster Defense Association, as an illegal organization. The action makes it a crime to belong to the group, raise money for it, or participate in activities.
• In 1995, two of Saddam Hussein’s daughters, their husbands and a group of army officers flee to Jordan. King Hussein grants them political asylum.
• In 1996, Chechen rebels drive back Russian troops from the center of Grozny and withstand barrages of Russian aircraft and artillery fire.
• In 1999, rebel-allied soldiers free some 200 remaining captives in Sierra Leone, who were kidnapped during a scheduled handover of civilians abducted during Sierra Leone’s eight-year civil war.
• In 2000, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez holds talks with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, defying the United States by being the first head of state to go to Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War.
• In 2004, a previously unknown Kurdish group claims responsibility for pre-dawn bomb attacks against two hotels in Istanbul tourist districts killing two people and injuring 11 others.
• In 2005, police in Brazil examine fingerprints and other evidence left behind by thieves who stole $67.8 million from the Central Bank in one of the world’s biggest heists.
• In 2006, British authorities thwart an alleged terrorist plot to simultaneously blow up 10 aircraft heading to the U.S. using explosives smuggled in hand luggage.
• In 2007, clashes between troops and suspected al-Qaida-linked militants have killed at least 52 people on volatile southern Jolo Island in the Philippines.
• In 2008, Russia and Georgia clash on land and at sea despite a Georgian cease-fire offer and claim of withdrawal from the separatist province of South Ossetia.
Tuesday, Aug. 11
In 1909, the first recorded use of the S.O.S. distress signal in North America was by the steamship SS Arapahoe, which had broken down off North Carolina’s Cape Hatteras.
• In 1919, Germany’s Weimar Constitution was signed by President Friedrich Ebert.
• In 1934, the first federal prisoners arrived at the island prison Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay.
• In 1949, President Harry S. Truman nominated General Omar N. Bradley to become the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
• In 1956, abstract painter Jackson Pollock, 44, died in an automobile accident on Long Island, N.Y.
• In 1962, the Soviet Union launched cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev on a 94-hour flight.
• In 1984, President Ronald Reagan joked during a voice test for a paid political radio address that he had "signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."
• In 1992, the Mall of America opened in Bloomington, Minn.
Wednesday, Aug. 12
In 1859, poet and English professor Katharine Lee Bates, who wrote the words to "America the Beautiful," was born in Falmouth, Mass.
• In 1867, President Andrew Johnson sparked a move to impeach him as he defied Congress by suspending Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.
• In 1953, the Soviet Union conducted a secret test of its first hydrogen bomb.
• In 1960, the first balloon satellite — the Echo 1 — was launched by the United States from Cape Canaveral.
• In 1962, one day after launching Andrian Nikolayev into orbit, the Soviet Union also sent up cosmonaut Pavel Popovich; both men landed safely Aug. 15.
• In 1978, Pope Paul VI, who had died Aug. 6 at age 80, was buried in St. Peter’s Basilica.
• In 1981, IBM introduced its first personal computer, the model 5150.
Thursday, Aug. 13
In 1521, Spanish conqueror Hernando Cortez captured Tenochtitlan, present-day Mexico City, from the Aztecs.
• In 1624, King Louis XIII of France appointed Cardinal Richelieu his first minister.
• In 1846, the American flag was raised for the first time in Los Angeles.
• In 1910, Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, died in London at age 90.
• In 1932, Adolf Hitler rejected the post of vice chancellor of Germany, saying he was prepared to hold out "for all or nothing."
• In 1934, the satirical comic strip "Li’l Abner," created by Al Capp, made its debut.
• In 1961, Berlin was divided as East Germany sealed off the border between the city’s eastern and western sectors and began building a wall in order to halt the flight of refugees.
• In 1981, in a ceremony at his California ranch, President Ronald Reagan signed a historic package of tax and budget reductions.
Friday, Aug. 14
In 1848, the Oregon Territory was created.
• In 1900, international forces, including U.S. Marines, entered Beijing to put down the Boxer Rebellion, which was aimed at purging China of foreign influence.
• In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law.
• In 1945, President Harry S. Truman announced that Japan had surrendered unconditionally, ending World War II.
• In 1947, Pakistan became independent of British rule.
• In 1969, British troops went to Northern Ireland to intervene in sectarian violence between Protestants and Roman Catholics.
• In 1973, the U.S. bombing of Cambodia came to a halt effective at midnight.
• In 1980, workers went on strike at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, Poland, in a job action that resulted in the creation of the Solidarity labor movement.
• In 2003, a huge blackout hit the northeastern United States and part of Canada; 50 million people lost power.
• In 2008, President George W. Bush signed consumer-safety legislation that banned lead from children’s toys, imposing the toughest standard in the world.
Saturday, Aug. 15
In 1057, Macbeth, King of Scots, was killed in battle by Malcolm, the eldest son of King Duncan, whom Macbeth had slain.
• In 1859, Chicago White Sox founder Charles Comiskey was born in Chicago.
• In 1914, the Panama Canal opened to traffic.
• In 1935, humorist Will Rogers and aviator Wiley Post were killed when their airplane crashed near Point Barrow in the Alaska Territory.
• In 1944, during World War II, Allied forces landed in southern France in Operation Dragoon.
• In 1947, India became independent after some 200 years of British rule.
• In 1969, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair opened in upstate New York.
• In 1971, President Richard Nixon announced a 90-day freeze on wages, prices and rents.
• In 1979, Andrew Young resigned as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations after coming under fire for an unauthorized meeting with the U.N. observer for the Palestine Liberation Organization.
This Week’s Birthdays
Isaak Walton, English biographer (1593-1683). John Dryden, English poet-dramatist (1631-1700). Jean Piaget, Swiss psychologist (1896-1980). Tove Jansson, Finnish author (1914-2001).
Leonid Kuchma, former president of Ukraine, is 71. Actress Melanie Griffith is 52. Singer Whitney Houston is 46. Actress Gillian Anderson is 41. Australian actor Eric Bana is 41.
On this date:
• In 480 B.C., Greek troops led by Spartan King Leonidas are overcome by the Persians at Thermopylae after a heroic stand.
• In 378 B.C., Visigoths annihilate a Roman army and kill the emperor at Adrianople (present-day Edirne, Turkey), marking the beginning of serious barbarian inroads on Roman territory.
• In 1790, the ship Columbia returns to Boston Harbor after a three-year circumnavigation, becoming the first ship to carry the American flag around the world.
• In 1830, French parliament declares Louis-Philippe king after Charles X is forced to abdicate by the July Revolution, inaugurating the constitutional "July Monarchy."
• In 1898, Spain formally accepts peace terms ending Spanish-American War.
• In 1902, Edward VII is crowned king of England following the death of his mother, Queen Victoria.
• In 1936, black U.S. athlete Jesse Owens becomes the first Olympian to win four Olympic gold medals, delivering a blow to Hitler's plan to have the Berlin Olympics prove Aryan superiority.
• In 1945, a U.S. plane drops a second atomic bomb, destroying more than half of Nagasaki, Japan, and killing an estimated 74,000. Despite nuclear proliferation, it marks the last time any country has used such a device for mass destruction in combat.
• In 1974, Richard Nixon becomes the first U.S. president to resign from office. Gerald R. Ford succeeds him.
• In 1985, fighting in Beirut breaks out between Christian and Muslim militiamen. Thousands of rocket, mortar and artillery rounds crash into residential areas on both sides, killing at least 43 people.
• In 1990, the U.N. Security Council unanimously declares Iraq’s annexation of Kuwait invalid. Iraq seals its borders, raising concern about thousands of foreigners in Iraq and Kuwait.
• In 1994, hijackers kill a Cuban navy lieutenant and force four sailors overboard before setting sail in the commandeered vessel for the United States.
• In 1996, Chechen rebels in the center of Grozny repel Russian attacks, supported by artillery and aircraft fire.
• In 1999, Russian President Boris Yeltsin fires his Cabinet, naming Vladimir Putin as his new prime minister.
• In 2006, Riot police in a divided corner of Northern Ireland block supporters of Irish Republican Army dissidents from parading in a hard-line Protestant town, as IRA dissidents are accused of firebombings.
• In 2008, Russia and small, U.S.-allied Georgia head toward a wider war as Russian tanks rumble into the contested province of South Ossetia and Russian aircraft bomb a Georgian town, escalating a conflict that already had left hundreds dead.
Monday, Aug. 10
In 1566, iconoclastic riots by fanatical Calvinists break out in the Netherlands.
• In 1627, French forces under Cardinal Richelieu begin siege of La Rochelle, held by Huguenots. Three-quarters of its inhabitants die of starvation during the 15-month siege.
• In 1792, French monarchy is overthrown when mobs in Paris attack palace of King Louis XVI.
• In 1885, Leo Daft opens America’s first commercially operated electric streetcar, in Baltimore.
• In 1897, Felix Hoffman, a young researcher at German chemical firm Bayer, for the first time synthesizes acetylsalicylic acid, aspirin’s active ingredient.
• In 1914, France declares war on Austria-Hungary at the start of World War I.
• In 1945, Japan offers to surrender in World War II if Emperor Hirohito is permitted to keep his throne.
• In 1962, the Soviet Union rejects proposed U.S. inspection plan as part of any disarmament agreement.
• In 1975, Nationalist China resumes air flights to Japan. Taiwan had severed plane service in April 1974, in retaliation for an aviation agreement Japan had signed with China.
• In 1988, U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs a measure providing $20,000 payments to Japanese-Americans interned by the U.S. government during World War II.
• In 1992, the British government designates Northern Ireland’s largest Protestant paramilitary group, the Ulster Defense Association, as an illegal organization. The action makes it a crime to belong to the group, raise money for it, or participate in activities.
• In 1995, two of Saddam Hussein’s daughters, their husbands and a group of army officers flee to Jordan. King Hussein grants them political asylum.
• In 1996, Chechen rebels drive back Russian troops from the center of Grozny and withstand barrages of Russian aircraft and artillery fire.
• In 1999, rebel-allied soldiers free some 200 remaining captives in Sierra Leone, who were kidnapped during a scheduled handover of civilians abducted during Sierra Leone’s eight-year civil war.
• In 2000, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez holds talks with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, defying the United States by being the first head of state to go to Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War.
• In 2004, a previously unknown Kurdish group claims responsibility for pre-dawn bomb attacks against two hotels in Istanbul tourist districts killing two people and injuring 11 others.
• In 2005, police in Brazil examine fingerprints and other evidence left behind by thieves who stole $67.8 million from the Central Bank in one of the world’s biggest heists.
• In 2006, British authorities thwart an alleged terrorist plot to simultaneously blow up 10 aircraft heading to the U.S. using explosives smuggled in hand luggage.
• In 2007, clashes between troops and suspected al-Qaida-linked militants have killed at least 52 people on volatile southern Jolo Island in the Philippines.
• In 2008, Russia and Georgia clash on land and at sea despite a Georgian cease-fire offer and claim of withdrawal from the separatist province of South Ossetia.
Tuesday, Aug. 11
In 1909, the first recorded use of the S.O.S. distress signal in North America was by the steamship SS Arapahoe, which had broken down off North Carolina’s Cape Hatteras.
• In 1919, Germany’s Weimar Constitution was signed by President Friedrich Ebert.
• In 1934, the first federal prisoners arrived at the island prison Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay.
• In 1949, President Harry S. Truman nominated General Omar N. Bradley to become the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
• In 1956, abstract painter Jackson Pollock, 44, died in an automobile accident on Long Island, N.Y.
• In 1962, the Soviet Union launched cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev on a 94-hour flight.
• In 1984, President Ronald Reagan joked during a voice test for a paid political radio address that he had "signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."
• In 1992, the Mall of America opened in Bloomington, Minn.
Wednesday, Aug. 12
In 1859, poet and English professor Katharine Lee Bates, who wrote the words to "America the Beautiful," was born in Falmouth, Mass.
• In 1867, President Andrew Johnson sparked a move to impeach him as he defied Congress by suspending Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.
• In 1953, the Soviet Union conducted a secret test of its first hydrogen bomb.
• In 1960, the first balloon satellite — the Echo 1 — was launched by the United States from Cape Canaveral.
• In 1962, one day after launching Andrian Nikolayev into orbit, the Soviet Union also sent up cosmonaut Pavel Popovich; both men landed safely Aug. 15.
• In 1978, Pope Paul VI, who had died Aug. 6 at age 80, was buried in St. Peter’s Basilica.
• In 1981, IBM introduced its first personal computer, the model 5150.
Thursday, Aug. 13
In 1521, Spanish conqueror Hernando Cortez captured Tenochtitlan, present-day Mexico City, from the Aztecs.
• In 1624, King Louis XIII of France appointed Cardinal Richelieu his first minister.
• In 1846, the American flag was raised for the first time in Los Angeles.
• In 1910, Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, died in London at age 90.
• In 1932, Adolf Hitler rejected the post of vice chancellor of Germany, saying he was prepared to hold out "for all or nothing."
• In 1934, the satirical comic strip "Li’l Abner," created by Al Capp, made its debut.
• In 1961, Berlin was divided as East Germany sealed off the border between the city’s eastern and western sectors and began building a wall in order to halt the flight of refugees.
• In 1981, in a ceremony at his California ranch, President Ronald Reagan signed a historic package of tax and budget reductions.
Friday, Aug. 14
In 1848, the Oregon Territory was created.
• In 1900, international forces, including U.S. Marines, entered Beijing to put down the Boxer Rebellion, which was aimed at purging China of foreign influence.
• In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law.
• In 1945, President Harry S. Truman announced that Japan had surrendered unconditionally, ending World War II.
• In 1947, Pakistan became independent of British rule.
• In 1969, British troops went to Northern Ireland to intervene in sectarian violence between Protestants and Roman Catholics.
• In 1973, the U.S. bombing of Cambodia came to a halt effective at midnight.
• In 1980, workers went on strike at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, Poland, in a job action that resulted in the creation of the Solidarity labor movement.
• In 2003, a huge blackout hit the northeastern United States and part of Canada; 50 million people lost power.
• In 2008, President George W. Bush signed consumer-safety legislation that banned lead from children’s toys, imposing the toughest standard in the world.
Saturday, Aug. 15
In 1057, Macbeth, King of Scots, was killed in battle by Malcolm, the eldest son of King Duncan, whom Macbeth had slain.
• In 1859, Chicago White Sox founder Charles Comiskey was born in Chicago.
• In 1914, the Panama Canal opened to traffic.
• In 1935, humorist Will Rogers and aviator Wiley Post were killed when their airplane crashed near Point Barrow in the Alaska Territory.
• In 1944, during World War II, Allied forces landed in southern France in Operation Dragoon.
• In 1947, India became independent after some 200 years of British rule.
• In 1969, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair opened in upstate New York.
• In 1971, President Richard Nixon announced a 90-day freeze on wages, prices and rents.
• In 1979, Andrew Young resigned as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations after coming under fire for an unauthorized meeting with the U.N. observer for the Palestine Liberation Organization.
This Week’s Birthdays
Isaak Walton, English biographer (1593-1683). John Dryden, English poet-dramatist (1631-1700). Jean Piaget, Swiss psychologist (1896-1980). Tove Jansson, Finnish author (1914-2001).
Leonid Kuchma, former president of Ukraine, is 71. Actress Melanie Griffith is 52. Singer Whitney Houston is 46. Actress Gillian Anderson is 41. Australian actor Eric Bana is 41.
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