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Events, deaths, births, of MAR 05
[For Mar 05 Julian go to Gregorian date: 1583~1699: Mar 15 — 1700s: Mar 16 — 1800s: Mar 17 — 1900~2099: Mar 18]
ALTERNATE SITES    ALL FOR 030305      ANY DAY  OF THE YEAR IN HISTORY     ART “4” MAR 05
• Horse substitute wanted... • Singapore censors the Net… • Charlotte Brontë declines marriage... • Ulloa tries to govern Louisiana... • Stampede at the Hajj... • Netscape slashes server prices... • “Ask the President” radio show... • Blackhorse regiment leaves Vietnam... • USAF advisory team sent to Laos... • Bank holiday of 1933... • Churchill's “Iron Curtain” speech... • Boston Massacre... • Stalin is dead... • Mesmer dies... • First prohibition of alcohol in the US... • Heavy bombing by Soviet aggressors in Finland... • Illustrator Pyle is born... • Tell~all diarist is born...
On a March 05:
2001 Cleared of murders for which he spent 17 years in prison.
     The London's Court of Appeal clears Peter Fell of the 10 May 1982 murders of Ann Lee, 44, and Margaret 'Peggy' Johnson, 65, attacked and stabbed to death while walking their dogs on Aldershot Common in southern England. Fell, originally from Accrington, Lancashire, who had worked as a porter in a Bournemouth Hospital, was given a life sentence at Winchester Crown Court in August 1984, on the basis of a forced confession which he retracted after only three hours.
2001 Ken Edwards, a former British rat-catcher and part-time entertainer, eats 36 medium~sized cockroaches in one minute. This would get mentioned in Guinness World Records 2002 (their 48th edition), published on 28 September 2001. Edward's favorite roach is the Periplaneta Americana, for its “slight almond taste” But he likes crickets even better. —/ http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/
2000 Israel's Cabinet voted unanimously to withdraw its troops from south Lebanon by the following July. — El secretario del Gobierno israelí, Isaac Herzog, anuncia la retirada del ejército israelí de la banda sur del Líbano.
2000 Yoshiro Mori es nombrado como nuevo primer ministro de Japón en sustitución de Keizo Obuchi, en coma tras una hemorragia cerebral.
2000 A Virginia subsidiary of PPL Therapeutics of Edinburgh, Scotland, the company that cloned Dolly the sheep, produced the first cloned pigs.
1999 El alto representante de la comunidad internacional en Bosnia, el español Carlos Westendorp y Cabeza, destituye al presidente de la República Serbia de Bosnia, Nikola Poplasen, por sus intentos de desestabilizar el proceso de paz.
1998 La Cámara de Representantes de Estados Unidos aprueba, por un voto de diferencia, la celebración este año de una consulta de autodeterminación en Puerto Rico, con lo que comienza así el proceso de descolonización de la zona por parte de Estados Unidos.
1998 La NASA anuncia el descubrimiento por parte de la nave Lunar Prospector de agua en forma de hielo almacenada en cráteres de los dos polos de la Luna.
1997 Microsoft announced it had fixed a security flaw in its Internet Explorer browser . The bug would allow a Web site operator to run programs secretly or ruin files in other personal computers.
1997 Representatives of North Korea and South Korea met for first time in 25 years, for peace talks in New York.
1996 Singapore censors Internet    ^top^
      Singapore announces plans to filter the Internet, prohibiting the country's 100,000 users from seeing or sending pornographic material or politically objectionable content. The government revealed that the country's three local providers were already blocking access to "morally offensive" sites, including Playboy and Penthouse.
1996 Netscape slashes server prices    ^top^
      Netscape announces that it will slash prices for its Internet server software. The move came in reaction to competition from Microsoft, which started giving its browser away for free. Microsoft's fierce efforts to compete against Netscape would come under the scrutiny of the Justice Department in antitrust litigation in 1998; however, the investigation came too late for Netscape. The once high-flying company was purchased by America Online in late 1998.
1993 Detención del supuesto terrorista que colocó una bomba en las Torres Gemelas de Nueva York, al intentar recuperar $400 de la fianza del alquiler de la camioneta empleada en el atentado.
1992 Ethic committee votes to reveal US congressmen who bounced checks.
1991 Iraq repealed its annexation of Kuwait. The Iraqis turned over 35 prisoners of war, including 15 Americans, to the Red Cross. An anti-Saddam Hussein uprising was reported sweeping city after city in Iraq.
1991 Se declara al español como la única lengua oficial de Puerto Rico, derogando la cooficialidad con el inglés.
1989 El Vaticano califica de blasfema la novela Versículos Satánicos, de Salman Rushdie.
1984 Supreme Court (5-4): city may use public money for Nativity scene.
1977 First radio broadcast where citizens call president    ^top^
      Jimmy Carter's "Ask President Carter" radio show debuted on this day in 1977. He replied to forty-two listeners-from twenty-six states-who phoned with questions on a nationwide radio broadcast. The use of technology to give ordinary citizens access to the president, Congress, or other government officials would later expand with the introduction of e-mail and Web sites.
1976 The exchange rate for British pound falls below $2 for the first time.
1971 "Blackhorse" regiment leaves Vietnam    ^top^
      The US 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, less its 2nd Squadron, withdraws from Vietnam. The "Blackhorse Regiment" (named for the black horse on the regimental shoulder patch) first arrived in Vietnam in September 1966 and consisted of three squadrons, each with three armored cavalry troops, a tank troop and a howitzer battery, making it a formidable fighting force. Upon arriving in Vietnam, the regiment had 51 tanks, 296 armored personnel carriers, 18 self-propelled 155-mm howitzers, nine flamethrower vehicles, and 18 helicopters. While in Vietnam, Blackhorse conducted combat operations in the 11 provinces surrounding Saigon and participated in the Cambodian incursion in 1970. During its combat service in Vietnam, Blackhorse suffered 635 troopers killed in action and 5,521 wounded in action. Three of its troopers won the Medal of Honor for bravery on the battlefield. Upon its departure from Vietnam, the group was sent to Europe where it was assigned to guard the frontier in West Germany. The regiment's 2nd Squadron remained in Vietnam until March 1972, when it departed to join the rest of the regiment in Germany. Also on this day: Premier Chou En-lai of the People's Republic of China visits Hanoi. After lengthy consultations, Chou and North Vietnamese Premier Pham Van Dong issued a joint communique on March 10, which vowed continued Chinese support for the North Vietnamese struggle against the United States. This support was instrumental in providing the North Vietnamese with weapons and equipment needed for the major offensive they launched in the spring of 1972.
1970 Nuclear non-proliferation treaty goes into effect after 43 nations ratified it.
1969 Gold reaches then record high ($47 per ounce) in Paris.
1968 Separación en Checoslovaquia de los cargos de secretario general del PC y de presidente de la República. En el primer puesto, Alexander Dubcek sustituye a Antonin Novotny, que conserva el cargo de presidente.
1964 USAF advisory team sent to Laos.    ^top^
      The Joint Chiefs of Staff order a US Air Force air commando training advisory team to Thailand to train Lao pilots in counterinsurgency tactics. Laos had won its independence from French control in July 1949 but the country quickly became a battleground as various factions vied for control of the government. One of the factions was the Neo Lao Hak Sat (Lao Liberation Front), communist insurgents more popularly known as the Pathet Lao. President Dwight Eisenhower believed that Laos was "the key to the entire area of Southeast Asia" and was concerned that the government would fall to the communists. The situation was defused somewhat when a conference in Geneva in July 1952 set up a coalition government for Laos and officially proclaimed the neutrality of the country. This eventually proved to be a farce when the North Vietnamese Army moved 80'000 soldiers into Laos to assist the Pathet Lao. The United States then increased its support to the Royal Lao government. The mission of the American air commandos was to train the Laotian pilots in the conduct of close air support for the Royal Lao ground forces. Since Laos was officially neutral, the training efforts were conducted in Thailand with that government's permission. The training did not result in sufficient numbers of trained Laotian pilots, so in December 1964, US pilots in American planes began flying support missions for the Laotian ground troops as part of Operation Barrel Roll. The mission continued until February 1973.
click for complete photo1946 Winston Churchill's “Iron Curtain” speech    ^top^
      In one of the most famous orations of the Cold War period, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill condemns the Soviet Union's policies in Europe and declares, "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent." Churchill's speech is considered one of the opening volleys announcing the beginning of the Cold War.
      Churchill, who had been defeated for re-election as prime minister in 1945, was invited to Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri where he gave this speech. President Harry S. Truman joined Churchill on the platform and listened intently to his speech. Churchill began by praising the United States, which he declared stood "at the pinnacle of world power." It soon became clear that a primary purpose of his talk was to argue for an even closer "special relationship" between the United States and Great Britain-the great powers of the "English-speaking world"-in organizing and policing the postwar world. In particular, he warned against the expansionistic policies of the Soviet Union. In addition to the "iron curtain" that had descended across Eastern Europe, Churchill spoke of "communist fifth columns" that were operating throughout western and southern Europe. Drawing parallels with the disastrous appeasement of Hitler prior to World War II, Churchill advised that in dealing with the Soviets there was "nothing which they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for military weakness."
      Truman and many other US officials warmly received the speech. Already they had decided that the Soviet Union was bent on expansion and only a tough stance would deter the Russians. Churchill's "iron curtain" phrase immediately entered the official vocabulary of the Cold War. US officials were less enthusiastic about Churchill's call for a "special relationship" between the United States and Great Britain. While they viewed the English as valuable allies in the Cold War, they were also well aware that Britain's power was on the wane and had no intention of being used as pawns to help support the crumbling British empire. In the Soviet Union, Russian leader Joseph Stalin denounced the speech as "war mongering," and referred to Churchill's comments about the "English-speaking world" as imperialist "racism." The British, Americans, and Russians-allies against Hitler less than a year before the speech-were drawing the battle lines of the Cold War.

Introduced by Missourian, US President Harry Truman, Churchill gave this speech at Westminster College, in Fulton, Missouri, after receiving an honorary degree.
     
The United States stands at this time at the pinnacle of world power. It is a solemn moment for the American democracy. For with this primacy in power is also joined an awe-inspiring accountability to the future. As you look around you, you must feel not only the sense of duty done, but also you must feel anxiety lest you fall below the level of achievement. Opportunity is here now, clear and shining, for both our countries. To reject it or ignore it or fritter it away will bring upon us all the long reproaches of the aftertime.
      It is necessary that constancy of mind, persistency of purpose, and the grand simplicity of decision shall rule and guide the conduct of the English-speaking peoples in peace as they did in war. We must, and I believe we shall, prove ourselves equal to this severe requirement.
      I have a strong admiration and regard for the valiant Russian people and for my wartime comrade, Marshal Stalin. There is deep sympathy and goodwill in Britain — and I doubt not here also — toward the peoples of all the Russias and a resolve to persevere through many differences and rebuffs in establishing lasting friendships.
      It is my duty, however, to place before you certain facts about the present position in Europe.
      From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.
      The safety of the world, ladies and gentlemen, requires a unity in Europe, from which no nation should be permanently outcast. It is from the quarrels of the strong parent races in Europe that the world wars we have witnessed, or which occurred in former times, have sprung.
      Twice the United States has had to send several millions of its young men across the Atlantic to fight the wars. But now we all can find any nation, wherever it may dwell, between dusk and dawn. Surely we should work with conscious purpose for a grand pacification of Europe within the structure of the United Nations and in accordance with our Charter.
      In a great number of countries, far from the Russian frontiers and throughout the world, Communist fifth columns are established and work in complete unity and absolute obedience to the directions they receive from the Communist center. Except in the British Commonwealth and in the United States where Communism is in its infancy, the Communist parties or fifth columns constitute a growing challenge and peril to Christian civilization.
      The outlook is also anxious in the Far East and especially in Manchuria. The agreement which was made at Yalta, to which I was a party, was extremely favorable to Soviet Russia, but it was made at a time when no one could say that the German war might not extend all through the summer and autumn of 1945 and when the Japanese war was expected by the best judges to last for a further eighteen months from the end of the German war.
      I repulse the idea that a new war is inevitable — still more that it is imminent. It is because I am sure that our fortunes are still in our own hands and that we hold the power to save the future, that I feel the duty to speak out now that I have the occasion and the opportunity to do so.
      I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war. What they desire is the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines.
      But what we have to consider here today while time remains, is the permanent prevention of war and the establishment of conditions of freedom and democracy as rapidly as possible in all countries. Our difficulties and dangers will not be removed by closing our eyes to them. They will not be removed by mere waiting to see what happens; nor will they be removed by a policy of appeasement.
      What is needed is a settlement, and the longer this is delayed, the more difficult it will be and the greater our dangers will become.
      From what I have seen of our Russian friends and allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness.
      For that reason the old doctrine of a balance of power is unsound. We cannot afford, if we can help it, to work on narrow margins, offering temptations to a trial of strength.
      Last time I saw it all coming and I cried aloud to my own fellow countrymen and to the world, but no one paid any attention. Up till the year 1933 or even 1935, Germany might have been saved from the awful fate which has overtaken her and we might all have been spared the miseries Hitler let loose upon mankind.
      There never was a war in history easier to prevent by timely action than the one which has just desolated such great areas of the globe. It could have been prevented, in my belief, without the firing of a single shot, and Germany might be powerful, prosperous and honored today; but no one would listen and one by one we were all sucked into the awful whirlpool.
      We must not let it happen again. This can only be achieved by reaching now, in 1946, a good understanding on all points with Russia under the general authority of the United Nations Organization and by the maintenance of that good understanding through many peaceful years, by the whole strength of the English-speaking world and all its connections.
      If the population of the English-speaking Commonwealth be added to that of the United States, with all that such cooperation implies in the air, on the sea, all over the globe, and in science and in industry, and in moral force, there will be no quivering, precarious balance of power to offer its temptation to ambition or adventure. On the contrary there will be an overwhelming assurance of security.
      If we adhere faithfully to the Charter of the United Nations and walk forward in sedate and sober strength, seeking no one's land or treasure, seeking to lay no arbitrary control upon the thoughts of men, if all British moral and material forces and convictions are joined with your own in fraternal association, the high roads of the future will be clear, not only for us but for all, not only for our time but for a century to come.
— Complete Speeches of Winston Churchill  Contents:
  • First Political Speech — Habitation of the Primrose League, Claverton Down, Bath, 26 July 1897
  • Amritsar, India — House of Commons, 08 July 1920
  • The Abdication Crisis — House of Commons,  07 December 1936
  • The Annexation of Austria — House of Commons, 14 March 1938
  • A House of Many Mansions — Broadcast London, 20 January 1940
  • Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat — First Speech to the House of Commons as Prime Minister, 13 May 1940
  • Be Ye Men of Valour — First Broadcast on BBC as Prime Minister; 19 May 1940
  • We Shall Fight on the Beaches — House of Commons, 04 June 1940
  • Their Finest Hour — House of Commons, 18 June 1940
  • War of the Unknown Warriors — BBC Broadcast, London, 14 July 1940
  • "The Few" — House of Commons, 20 August 1940
  • Neville Chamberlain — House of Commons, 12 November 1940
  • Never Give In, Never, Never, Never — Harrow School, 29 October 1941
  • The Price of Greatness is Responsibility — Harvard, 1943
  • The Invasion of France — House of Commons, 06 June 1944
  • The End of the War in Europe — Broadcast, London, and House of Commons, 08 May 1945
  • This is Your Victory — Ministry of Health, London, 08 May 1945
  • To V-E Day Crowds — London, 08 May 1945
  • Sinews of Peace (Iron Curtain) — Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, 05 March 1946
  • The English-Speaking Peoples — General Assembly of Virginia, 08 March 1946 —
  • The Anglo-American Alliance — The Pentagon, Washington DC, 09 March 1946
  • The Darkening International Scene — Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York, 15 March 1946
  • A Broader and Fairer World — Columbia University, New York, 18 March 1946
  • The United States of Europe — The Hague, 09 May 1946
  • The Tragedy of Europe — Zurich University, 19 September 1946
  • The Congress of Europe — The Hague, 07 May 1948
  • United Europe — Amsterdam, 09 May 1948
  • Nobel Prize for Literature — Stockholm, Sweden, 1957 —
  • Honorary Citizen of the United States of America — 09 April 1963
    • 1941 Derrotados los italianos por los ingleses, el emperador de Etiopía, Haile Selasie, entra en Addis Abeba en su caballo blanco.
    1940 El Politburó del PCUS (Partido Comunista de la Unión Soviética) ordena la ejecución de 14'700 oficiales polacos en el bosque de Katyn.
    1939 Guerra Civil española. Se constituye en Madrid el Consejo Nacional de Defensa para propiciar la rendición republicana ante los "nacionales".
    1933 Ten-day Bank Holiday in the US.    ^top^
          When Franklin Roosevelt started his first term in the White House in 1933, he inherited a nation in the depths of the Depression. A record 13 million Americans were unemployed and businesses were drowning in red ink. Perhaps even more pressing was the head-spinning string of bank failures which had triggered a frantic run on the nation’s savings vaults. The wave of withdrawals by panic-stricken depositors further dried up banks' already-depleted supply of liquid assets and pushed the nation's banking system to the brink of disaster. On March 5--the day after being sworn into office--Roosevelt stepped into the breach and declared a "bank holiday," which, for four days forced the closure of the nation's banks and halted all financial transactions. The "holiday" not only helped stem the frantic run on banks, but gave Roosevelt time to push the Emergency Banking Act through the legislative chain. Passed by Congress on 09 March, the act handed the president a far-reaching grip over bank dealings and "foreign transactions." The legislation also paved the path for solvent banks to resume business as early as 10 March 10. Three days later nearly 1000 banks were up and running again.
    1933 In German parliamentary elections, the Nazi Party wins 44% of the vote, enabling it to join with the Nationalists to gain a slender majority in the Reichstag.
    1929 Fire destroys the Los Angeles Automobile Show with over 320 new cars, including the Auburn Motor Company’s only Auburn Cabin Speedster.
    1927 1000 US marines land in China “to protect American property”. [imagine the reaction if Chinese Marines had landed in the US to protect Chinese property!]
    1923 Montana and Nevada adopted legislation that paved the path for state funded pensions for elderly citizens. Under the guise of the new pension law, Montana and Nevada handed "qualifying" people over the age of 70 as much as $25.
    1918 Rumanía firma la paz con las potencias centrales europeas.
    1908 first ascent of Mt Erebus, Antarctica.
    1904 El tribunal de casación francés decide la revisión de la sentencia de Alfred Dreyfus y ordena una investigación complementaria.
    1901 Formación en España de un nuevo Gobierno presidido por Práxedes Mateo Sagasta.
    1877 Inaugural Address of US President Rutherford B. Hayes
    1875 Reward offered to whom will invent a horseless carriage.    ^top^
          The Wisconsin state legislature offers a $10'000 reward to any person who could supply "a cheap and practical substitute for use of horse and other animals on highway and farm," documenting that the search for a motorized wagon was officially under way by 1875. By 1879 George Selden had already sought a patent for his self-propelled gas-burning vehicle. Ransom Eli Olds, founder of Oldsmobile, created his first steam-propelled automobile in 1887. Frank and Charles Duryea drove their first motorized wagon in 1893. The Duryea brothers would eventually be credited with operating the first auto production line when they produced and sold thirteen cars in 1896. Elwood Haynes of Kokomo, Indiana, claimed to have produced the first "real" car in 1894. Haynes contended that the Duryeas had only managed to attach an engine to a wagon. In short, the historical bounty for the creation of the automobile was a cup to be shared by all. Legally, however, and later financially, George Selden won the first prize. In 1895 Selden received US Patent No. 549,160 for his "road engine." With the granting of the patent, Selden, whose designs were generally inferior to those of his contemporary automotive pioneers, won a monopoly on the concept of combining an internal combustion engine with a carriage. Although Selden never became an auto manufacturer, every auto maker would have to pay him a percentage of their profits for the right to construct a motor car. In 1903, Henry Ford refused to pay Selden the percentage, arguing that his design had nothing to do with Selden’s. After a long drawn-out legal case that ended in 1911, the New York Court of Appeals upheld Selden’s patent for all cars of the particular out-dated construction he originally described, and in doing so ended Selden’s profitable reign as the father of the automobile. Ironically, it wasn’t until Ford’s Model T that the car became a significant substitute for "the horse and other animals" as stipulated in the aforementioned challenge issued by the Wisconsin legislature. By that time, Henry Ford didn’t need the $10'000.
    1868 The US Senate becomes a Court of Impeachment to judge President Andrew Johnson.
    1867 An abortive Fenian uprising against English rule took place in Ireland.
    1865 Confederate government orders every vessel to give half its freight capacity to government shipments.
    1862 Siege of New Madrid, Missouri continues.
    1849 Inaugural Address of US President Zachary Taylor.
    1839 Charlotte Brontë declines marriage    ^top^
          Charlotte Brontë, 23, writes to the Reverend Henry Nussey, declining marriage. She tells him that he would find her "romantic and eccentric" and not practical enough to be a clergyman's wife. Rather than marry, Brontë would struggle as a teacher and governess to help support her brother Branwell's literary aspirations. In the end, Branwell's excesses destroyed him; his sisters, though, all became literary figures.
          Charlotte was born on 21 April 1816, one of six siblings born to an Anglican clergyman. When she was five, the family moved to the remote village of Hawthorne on the moors of Yorkshire. The gloomy parsonage produced some of the best-known novels in English literature. Brontë's mother died in 1821, and Charlotte and her older sisters were sent to the Cown Bridge School, a cheap boarding school for daughters of the clergy. However, her two sisters fell ill and died, and Charlotte was brought home, where she and her remaining siblings, Branwell, Emily, and Anne (born on 17 January 1820), invented and wrote about elaborate fantasy worlds to amuse themselves.
          Shortly after declining the proposal of Reverend Nussey, Charlotte went to Brussels with her sister Emily to study languages and school administration. Returning to the parsonage at Hawthorne, the sisters attempted to set up their own school, but no pupils registered. Meanwhile, their adored brother Branwell was becoming a heavy drinker and opium user. When Emily got him a job teaching with her at a wealthy manor, he lost both their positions after a tryst with the mother of the house. He eventually died after accidentally setting his bed on fire.
          In 1846, Charlotte ran across some poems that Emily had written, which led to the revelation that all three sisters were closet poets. The sisters published their own book, Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Only two copies sold, but publishers became interested in the sisters' work. Charlotte, under the nom de plum Currer Bell, published Jane Eyre in 1847. Emily's Wuthering Heights and Anne's Agnes Grey were published later that year. Sadly, all three of Charlotte's siblings died within the next two years. Left alone, Charlotte cared for her ill father and married his curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls, just a year after she published Villette, a novel inspired by a failed romance she had in Brussels years before. Charlotte died during a pregnancy shortly after the marriage.
    BRONTE ONLINE:   Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell,     Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell   (by all three)
    Emily online: (five different sites):
  • Wuthering Heights
  • Wuthering Heights
  • Wuthering Heights
  • Wuthering Heights
  • Wuthering Heights (zipped PDF)
    		• Charlotte Brontë online:: (different sites)
  • Jane Eyre   Jane Eyre   Jane Eyre
  • Jane Eyre (zipped PDF)
  • The Professor     The Professor
  • The Professor (zipped PDF)
  • Shirley     Shirley
  • Villette
    		• Anne Brontë online: (different sites)
  • Agnes Grey
  • Agnes Grey
  • Selected Works and Commentary.
  • The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
  • The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
    • 1845 Congress appropriates $30'000 to ship camels to western US.
    1821 James Monroe is first US President inaugurated (for his second term) on March 5th, because 4th was Sunday (his Inaugural Address).
    1795 Treaty of Basel-Prussia ends war with France
    1783 Un terremoto destruye parte de la ciudad de Messina y ocasiona graves daños en Calabria.
    1774 John Hancock's Boston Massacre Oration.
    1766 Ulloa takes possession of Louisiana Territory from French.    ^top^
          A brilliant Spanish scientist and explorer, Antonio de Ulloa's political talents prove far less impressive when he tries to take control of the formerly French territory of Louisiana. Ulloa faced a difficult situation in Louisiana. Encompassing most of the western half of the Mississippi Valley as far north as the present-day state of Montana, Louisiana Territory was originally claimed and settled by the French. In 1763, the French transferred the territory to Spain under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, as a reward for having been an ally in the French war with England. The French colonists of Louisiana, however, had not agreed to the treaty. Many were determined to frustrate any attempt by the Spanish to assert control over their home.
          This impulse to resist only strengthened when the Spanish failed to immediately dispatch a new governor for the territory, leaving the administration in the hands of the acting French Governor Philippe Aubry. After a three-year lag, the Spanish crown finally sent one of its most distinguished scientists and explorers, Antonio de Ulloa, to govern the territory.
          Arriving in New Orleans on this day in 1766, Ulloa faced widespread antagonism to his rule. Before coming to Louisiana, Ulloa had led a brilliantly successfully exploration of Peru, which he publicized in the widely read book A Voyage to South America. Ulloa had also gained fame among European scientists by founding an astronomical observatory and a mineralogical laboratory. However, Ulloa's scientific accomplishments did not impress the French inhabitants of Louisiana.
          For all his scientific brilliance, Ulloa proved a timid and ineffective governor. When the French troops of Louisiana refused to recognize his authority, Ulloa did not even attempt to stage a public ceremony marking the formal transfer of power to the Spanish crown. Instead, he decided to execute his orders through Aubry, the acting French governor, preserving the appearance of continued French rule. Possessed of a personality that dangerously combined shyness with arrogance, Ulloa was completely unsuited for the delicate diplomatic task of bringing the people of Louisiana under Spanish control.
          Ulloa's attempts to force the French colonists to use the handful of Spanish-dominated ports in the territory further alienated his subjects, as did his refusal to honor old French promissory notes held by many of the colonists. In 1768, the French political leaders revolted, forcing Ulloa to flee to Havana, Cuba. Although subsequent Spanish officials were better able to control the French residents, Spanish control over Louisiana continued to remain tenuous. In 1800, Spain finally abandoned its claim to the territory and handed it back to the French. Three years later, Napoleon Bonaparte sold it to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase. Unlike their Spanish predecessors, the Americans eventually succeeded in winning the loyalty of the Louisianians.
    1669 (23 February Julian) Pepys, on 36th birthday, kisses a Queen.    ^top^
          [from his Diary] 1669 February 23rd.
    Up: and to the Office, where all the morning, and then home, and put a mouthfull of victuals in my mouth; and by a hackney-coach followed my wife and the girls, who are gone by eleven o'clock, thinking to have seen a new play at the Duke of York's house. But I do find them staying at my tailor's, the play not being to-day, and therefore I now took them to Westminster Abbey, and there did show them all the tombs very finely, having one with us alone, there being other company this day to see the tombs, it being Shrove Tuesday; and here we did see, by particular favour, the body of Queen Katherine of Valois; and I had the upper part of her body in my hands, and I did kiss her mouth, reflecting upon it that I did kiss a Queen, and that this was my birth-day, thirty-six years old, that I did first kiss a Queen. But here this man, who seems to understand well, tells me that the saying is not true that says she was never buried, for she was buried; only, when Henry the Seventh built his chapel, it was taken up and laid in this wooden coffin; but I did there see that, in it, the body was buried in a leaden one, which remains under the body to this day. Thence to the Duke of York's playhouse, and there, finding the play begun, we homeward to the Glass-House, and there shewed my cozens the making of glass, and had several things made with great content; and, among others, I had one or two singing- glasses made, which make an echo to the voice, the first that ever I saw; but so thin, that the very breath broke one or two of them. So home, and thence to Mr. Batelier's, where we supped, and had a good supper, and here was Mr. Gumbleton; and after supper some fiddles, and so to dance; but my eyes were so out of order, that I had little pleasure this night at all, though I was glad to see the rest merry, and so about midnight home and to bed.
    1668 (23 February Julian) Pepys does not note his 35th birthday.    ^top^
          [from his Diary] 1668 February 23rd (Lord's day).
    Up, and, being desired by a messenger from Sir G. Carteret, I by water over to Southwarke, and so walked to the Falkon, on the Bank-side, and there got another boat, and so to Westminster, where I would have gone into the Swan; but the door was locked; and the girl could not let me in, and so to Wilkinson's in King Street, and there wiped my shoes, and so to Court, where sermon not yet done I met with Brisband; and he tells me, first, that our business of tickets did come to debate yesterday, it seems, after I was gone away, and was voted a miscarriage in general. He tells me in general that there is great looking after places, upon a presumption of a great many vacancies; and he did shew me a fellow at Court, a brother of my Lord Fanshaw's, a witty but rascally fellow, without a penny in his purse, that was asking him what places there were in the Navy fit for him, and Brisband tells me, in mirth, he told him the Clerke of the Acts, and I wish he had it, so I were well and quietly rid of it; for I am weary of this kind of trouble, having, I think, enough whereon to support myself. By and by, chapel done, I met with Sir W. Coventry, and he and I walked awhile together in the Matted Gallery; and there he told me all the proceedings yesterday: that the matter is found, in general, a miscarriage, but no persons named; and so there is no great matter to our prejudice yet, till, if ever, they come to particular persons. He told me Birch was very industrious to do what he could, and did, like a friend; but they were resolved to find the thing, in general, a miscarriage; and says, that when we shall think fit to desire its being heard, as to our own defence, it will be granted. He tells me how he hath, with advantage, cleared himself in what concerns himself therein, by his servant Robson, which I am glad of. He tells me that there is a letter sent by conspiracy to some of the House, which he hath seen, about the matter of selling of places, which he do believe he shall be called upon to-morrow for: and thinks himself well prepared to defend himself in it; and then neither he, nor his friends for him, are afeard of anything to his prejudice. Thence by coach, with Brisband, to Sir G. Carteret's, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and there dined: a good dinner and good company; and after dinner he and I alone, discoursing of my Lord Sandwich's matters; who hath, in the first business before the House, been very kindly used beyond expectation, the matter being laid by, till his coming home and old Mr. Vaughan did speak for my Lord, which I am mighty glad of. The business of the prizes is the worst that can be said, and therein I do fear something may lie hard upon him; but, against this, we must prepare the best we can for his defence. Thence with G. Carteret to White Hall, where I, finding a meeting of the Committee of the Council for the Navy, his Royal Highness there, and Sir W. Pen, and, some of the Brethren of the Trinity House to attend, I did go in with them; and it was to be informed of the practice heretofore, for all foreign nations, at enmity one with another, to forbear any acts of hostility to one another, in the presence of any of the King of England's ships, of which several instances were given: and it is referred to their further enquiry, in order to the giving instructions accordingly to our ships now, during the war between Spain and France. Would to God we were in the same condition as heretofore, to challenge and maintain this our dominion! Thence with W. Pen homeward, and quite through to Mile End, for a little ayre; the days being now pretty long, but the ways mighty dirty, and here we drank at the Rose, the old house, and so back again, talking of the Parliament and our trouble with them and what passed yesterday. Going back again, Sir R. Brookes overtook us coming to town; who hath played the jacke with us all, and is a fellow that I must trust no more, he quoting me for all he hath said in this business of tickets; though I have told him nothing that either is not true, or I afeard to own. But here talking, he did discourse in this stile: "We,"--and "We" all along,--" will not give any money, be the pretence never so great, nay, though the enemy was in the River of Thames again, till we know what is become of the last money given;" and I do believe he do speak the mind of his fellows, and so let them, if the King will suffer it. He gone, we home, and there I to read, and my belly being full of my dinner to-day, I anon to bed, and there, as I have for many days, slept not an hour quietly, but full of dreams of our defence to the Parliament and giving an account of our doings. This evening, my wife did with great pleasure shew me her stock of jewells, encreased by the ring she hath made lately as my Valentine's gift this year, a Turky stone' set with diamonds: and, with this and what she had, she reckons that she hath above £150 worth of jewells, of one kind or other; and I am glad of it, for it is fit the wretch should have something to content herself with.
    1667 (23 February Julian) Pepys, on 34th birthday, works at the office till midnight.    ^top^
          [from his Diary] 1667 February 23rd.
    This day I am, by the blessing of God, 34 years old, in very good health and mind's content, and in condition of estate much beyond whatever my friends could expect of a child of theirs, this day 34 years. The Lord's name be praised! and may I be ever thankful for it. Up betimes to the office, in order to my letter to the Duke of York to-morrow, and then the office met and spent the greatest part about this letter. At noon home to dinner, and then to the office again very close at it all the day till midnight, making an end and writing fair this great letter and other things to my full content, it abundantly providing for the vindication of this office, whatever the success be of our wants of money. This evening Sir W. Batten come to me to the office on purpose, out of spleen (of which he is full to Carcasse !), to tell me that he is now informed of many double tickets now found of Carcasses making which quite overthrows him. It is strange to see how, though I do believe this fellow to be a rogue, and could be contented to have him removed, yet to see him persecuted by Sir W. Batten, who is as bad himself, and that with so much rancour, I am almost the fellow's friend. But this good I shall have from it, that the differences between Sir W. Batten and my Lord Bruncker will do me no hurt.
    1666 (23 February Julian) Pepys spends most of his 33rd birthday at the office.    ^top^
          [from his Diary] 1666 February 23rd.
    Up betimes, and out of doors by 6 of the clock, and walked (W. Howe with me) to my Lord Sandwich's, who did lie the last night at his house in Lincoln's Inne Fields. It being fine walking in the morning, and the streets full of people again. There I staid, and the house full of people come to take leave of my Lord, who this day goes out of towne upon his embassy towards Spayne. And I was glad to find Sir W. Coventry to come, though I know it is only a piece of courtshipp. I had much discourse with my Lord, he telling me how fully he leaves the King his friend and the large discourse he had with him the other day, and how he desired to have the business of the prizes examined before he went, and that he yielded to it, and it is done as far as it concerns himself to the full, and the Lords Commissioners for prizes did reprehend all the informers in what related to his Lordship, which I am glad of in many respects. But we could not make an end of discourse, so I promised to waite upon [him] on Sunday at Cranborne, and took leave and away hence to Mr. Hales's with Mr. Hill and two of the Houblons, who come thither to speak with me, and saw my wife's picture, which pleases me well, but Mr. Hill's picture never a whit so well as it did before it was finished, which troubled me, and I begin to doubt the picture of my Lady Peters my wife takes her posture from, and which is an excellent picture, is not of his making, it is so master-like. I set them down at the 'Change and I home to the office, and at noon dined at home and to the office again. Anon comes Mrs. Knipp to see my wife, who is gone out, so I fain to entertain her, and took her out by coach to look my wife at Mrs. Pierce's and Unthanke's, but find her not. So back again, and then my wife comes home, having been buying of things, and at home I spent all the night talking with this baggage, and teaching her my song of "Beauty retire," which she sings and makes go most rarely, and a very fine song it seems to be. She also entertained me with repeating many of her own and others' parts of the play-house, which she do most excellently; and tells me the whole practices of the play-house and players, and is in every respect most excellent company. So I supped, and was merry at home all the evening, and the rather it being my birthday, 33 years, for which God be praised that I am in so good a condition of healthe and estate, and every thing else as I am, beyond expectation, in all. So she to Mrs. Turner's to lie, and we to bed. Mightily pleased to find myself in condition to have these people come about me and to be able to entertain them, and have the pleasure of their qualities, than which no man can have more in the world.
    1665 (23 February Julian) Pepys, on 32nd birthday, learns of a terrible English defeat.    ^top^
          [from his Diary] 1665 February 23rd.
    This day, by the blessing of Almighty God, I have lived thirty-two years in the world, and am in the best degree of health at this minute that I have been almost in my life time, and at this time in the best condition of estate that ever I was in-the Lord make me thankfull. Up, and to the office, where busy all the morning. At noon to the 'Change, where I hear the most horrid and astonishing newes that ever was yet told in my memory, that De Ruyter with his fleete in Guinny hath proceeded to the taking of whatever we have, forts, goods, ships, and men, and tied our men back to back, and thrown them all into the sea, even women and children also. This a Swede or Hamburgher is come into the River and tells that he saw the thing done. But, Lord! to see the consternation all our merchants are in is observable, and with what fury and revenge they discourse of it. But I fear it will like other things in a few days cool among us. But that which I fear most is the reason why he that was so kind to our men at first should afterward, having let them go, be so cruel when he went further. What I fear is that there he was informed (which he was not before) of some of Holmes's dealings with his countrymen, and so was moved to this fury. God grant it be not so! But a more dishonourable thing was never suffered by Englishmen, nor a more barbarous done by man, as this by them to us. Home to dinner, and then to the office, where we sat all the afternoon, and then at night to take my finall leave of Mrs. Bland, who sets out to-morrow for Tangier, and then I back to my office till past 12, and so home to supper and to bed.
    — Note: England would declare war on Holland only later in 1665, though the two nations fleet had been fighting a series of bitter battles since 1664, in their competition for trade in the East and West Indies, the Mediterranean, the African coasts, and the eastern seaboard of North America. (On 27 August 1664, the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam surrendered to the English, who renamed it New York).
          Admiral Michiel Adriaanzoon de Ruyter (24 March 1607 – 29 April 1679) is regarded as one of the greatest seamen of his age. His brilliant naval victories in the Second and Third Anglo-Dutch Wars enabled the United Provinces to maintain a balance of power with England. He first went to sea at age 9, and by 1635 he was a merchant captain. After a distinguished career in both merchant and naval service he was promoted to lieutenant admiral two years before the battle of the Medway. In the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665-1667) his greatest victories were the Four Days Battle (07 Jun – 10 Jun 1666) and the Medway Raid (14 June 1667) which accelerated the negotiations that led to the Peace of Breda (31 July 1667).. Even greater overall were his achievements in the Third Anglo-Dutch War (1672-1674). By his victories over Anglo-French fleets off Solebay (1672), Ostend (1673), and Kijkduin (1673), he prevented an invasion of the Dutch Republic. After having been mortally wounded off Sicily, during hostilities against the French in the Mediterranean, he died in Syracuse. [photo of de Ruyter's head sculpted by Verhulst] [De Zeven Provinciën, his flagship for the last half of the Second and for the entire Third Anglo-Dutch Wars, painted by James C. Bender, after Willem Van de Velde Sr.(next)].[engraving after Willem vd. Velde: Krijgsraad voor den 4daagschen zeeslag aan boord y/h Admiraalschip van M.A.de Ruyter “de Zeven Provinciën” 10 Juni 1666]
    1664 (23 February Julian) Pepys, on 31st birthday, congratulates himself.    ^top^
          [from his Diary] 1669 February 23rd.
    Up, it being Shrove Tuesday, and at the office sat all the morning, at noon to the 'Change and there met with Sir W. Rider, and of a sudden knowing what I had at home, brought him and Mr. Cutler and Mr. Cooke, clerk to Mr. Secretary Morrice, a sober and pleasant man, and one that I knew heretofore, when he was my Lord 's secretary at Dunkirke. I made much of them and had a pretty dinner for a sudden. We talked very pleasantly, and they many good discourses of their travels abroad. After dinner they gone, I to my office, where doing many businesses very late, but to my good content to see how I grow in estimation every day more and more, and have things given more oftener than I used to have formerly, as to have a case of very pretty knives with agate shafts by Mrs. Russell. So home and to bed. This day, by the blessing of God, I have lived thirty-one years in the world; and, by the grace of God, I find myself not only in good health in every thing, and particularly as to the stone, but only pain upon taking cold, and also in a fair way of coming to a better esteem and estate in the world, than ever I expected. But I pray God give me a heart to fear a fall, and to prepare for it!
    1663 (23 February Julian) Pepys, on 30th birthday, fears arrest.    ^top^
          [from his Diary] 1663 February 23rd.
    Up by times; and not daring to go by land, did (Griffin going along with me for fear), slip to White Hall by water; where to Mr. Coventry, and, as we used to do, to the Duke; the other of my fellows being come. But we said nothing of our business, the Duke being sent for to the King, that he could not stay to speak with us. This morning came my Lord Windsor to kiss the Duke's hand, being returned from Jamaica. He tells the Duke, that from such a degree of latitude going thither he begun to be sick, and was never well till his coming so far back again, and then presently begun to be well. He told the Duke of their taking the fort of St. Jago, upon Cuba, by his men; but, upon the whole, I believe that he did matters like a young lord, and was weary of being upon service out of his own country, where he might have pleasure. For methought it was a shame to see him this very afternoon, being the first day of his coming to town, to be at a playhouse. Thence to my Lord Sandwich, who though he has been abroad again two or three days is falling ill again, and is let blood this morning, though I hope it is only a great cold that he has got. It was a great trouble to me (and I had great apprehensions of it) that my Lord desired me to go to Westminster Hall, to the Parliament- house door, about business; and to Sir Wm. Wheeler, which I told him I would do, but durst not go for fear of being taken by these rogues; but was forced to go to White Hall and take boat, and so land below the Tower at the Iron-gate; and so the back way over Little Tower Hill; and with my cloak over my face, took one of the watermen along with me, and staid behind a wall in the New-buildings behind our garden, while he went to see whether any body stood within the Merchants' Gate, under which we pass to go into our garden, and there standing but a little dirty boy before the gate, did make me quake and sweat to think he might be a Trepan. But there was nobody, and so I got safe into the garden, and coming to open my office door, something behind it fell in the opening, which made me start. So that God knows in what a sad condition I should be in if I were truly in the condition that many a poor man is for debt: and therefore ought to bless God that I have no such reall reason, and to endeavour to keep myself, by my good deportment and good husbandry, out of any such condition. At home I found Mr. Creed with my wife, and so he dined with us, I finding by a note that Mr. Clerke in my absence hath left here, that I am free; and that he hath stopped all matters in Court; I was very glad of it, and immediately had a light thought of taking pleasure to rejoice my heart, and so resolved to take my wife to a play at Court to-night, and the rather because it is my birthday, being this day thirty years old, for which let me praise God. While my wife dressed herself, Creed and I walked out to see what play was acted to-day, and we find it "The Slighted Mayde." But, Lord! to see that though I did know myself to be out of danger, yet I durst not go through the street, but round by the garden into Tower Street. By and by took coach, and to the Duke's house, where we saw it well acted, though the play hath little good in it, being most pleased to see the little girl dance in boy's apparel, she having very fine legs, only bends in the hams, as I perceive all women do. The play being done, we took coach and to Court, and there got good places, and saw "The Wilde Gallant," (*2) performed by the King's house, but it was ill acted, and the play so poor a thing as I never saw in my life almost, and so little answering the name, that from beginning to end, I could not, nor can at this time, tell certainly which was the Wild Gallant. The King did not seem pleased at all, all the whole play, nor any body else, though Mr. Clerke whom we met here did commend it to us. My Lady Castlemaine was all worth seeing tonight, and little Steward.--[Mrs. Stuart]-- Mrs. Wells do appear at Court again, and looks well; so that, it may be, the late report of laying the dropped child to her was not true. It being done, we got a coach and got well home about 12 at night. Now as my mind was but very ill satisfied with these two plays themselves, so was I in the midst of them sad to think of the spending so much money and venturing upon the breach of my vow, which I found myself sorry for, I bless God, though my nature would well be contented to follow the pleasure still. But I did make payment of my forfeiture presently, though I hope to save it back again by forbearing two plays at Court for this one at the Theatre, or else to forbear that to the Theatre which I am to have at Easter. But it being my birthday and my day of liberty regained to me, and lastly, the last play that is likely to be acted at Court before Easter, because of the Lent coming in, I was the easier content to fling away so much money. So to bed. This day I was told that my Lady Castlemaine hath all the King's Christmas presents, made him by the peers, given to her, which is a most abominable thing; and that at the great ball she was much richer in jewells than the Queen and Duchess put both together.
    — * Note 1: fairly good comedy by Robert Stapylton, first acted in 1663.
    — * Note 2: deservedly unsuccessful 1662 prose comedy by John Dryden, possibly its first showing (which was in 1663).
    1662 (23 February Julian) Pepys, on 29th birthday, stays home with a cold.    ^top^
          [from his Diary] 1662 February 23rd. (Lord's day).
    My cold being increased, I staid at home all day, pleasing myself with my dining-room, now graced with pictures, and reading of Dr. Fuller's "Worthys." So I spent the day, and at night comes Sir W. Pen and supped and talked with me. This day by God's mercy I am 29 years of age, and in very good health, and like to live and get an estate; and if I have a heart to be contented, I think I may reckon myself as happy a man as any is in the world, for which God be praised. So to prayers and to bed..
    1661 (23 February Julian) Pepys, on 28th birthday, hears gossip.    ^top^
          [from hisDiary ] 1661 February 23rd.
    This my birthday, 28 years. This morning Sir W. Batten, Pen, and I did some business, and then I by water to Whitehall, having met Mr. Hartlibb by the way at Alderman Backwell's. So he did give me a glass of Rhenish wine at the Steeleyard, and so to Whitehall by water. He continues of the same bold impertinent humour that he was always of and will ever be. He told me how my Lord Chancellor had lately got the Duke of York and Duchess, and her woman, my Lord Ossory's and a Doctor, to make oath before most of the judges of the kingdom, concerning all the circumstances of their marriage. And in fine, it is confessed that they were not fully married till about a month or two before she was brought to bed; but that they were contracted long before, and time enough for the child to be legitimate (*1). But I do not hear that it was put to the judges to determine whether it was so or no. To my Lord and there spoke to him about his opinion of the Light, the sea-mark that Captain Murford is about, and do offer me an eighth part to concern myself with it, and my Lord do give me some encouragement in it, and I shall go on. I dined herewith Mr. Shepley and Howe. After dinner to Whitehall Chappell with Mr. Child, and there did hear Captain Cooke and his boy make a trial of an Anthem against tomorrow, which was brave musique. Then by water to Whitefriars to the Play-house, and there saw “The Changeling,” (*2) the first time it hath been acted these twenty years, and it takes exceedingly. Besides, I see the gallants do begin to be tyred with the vanity and pride of the theatre actors who are indeed grown very proud and rich. Then by link home, and there to my book awhile and to bed. I met to-day with Mr. Townsend, who tells me that the old man is yet alive in whose place in the Wardrobe he hopes to get my father, which I do resolve to put for. I also met with the Comptroller, who told me how it was easy for us all, the principal officers, and proper for us, to labour to get into the next Parliament; and would have me to ask the Duke's letter, but I shall not endeavour it because it will spend much money, though I am sure I could well obtain it. This is now 28 years that I am born. And blessed be God, in a state of full content, and great hopes to be a happy man in all respects, both to myself and friends.
    — * Note 1: The Duke of York's marriage took place on 03 September 1660. Anne Hyde was contracted to the Duke at Breda on 24 November 1659. (Julian dates).
    — * Note 2: 1622 tragedy by Thomas Middleton [April 1570 – 04 July 1627] with William Rowley [1585-1642] who wrote the subplot and helped with the plan of the whole.
    1660 (23 February Julian) Pepys's 27th birthday, no celebration.    ^top^
          [from his Diary] 1660 February 23rd.
    Thursday, my birthday, now twenty-seven years. A pretty fair morning, I rose and after writing a while in my study I went forth. To my office, where I told Mr. Hawly of my thoughts to go out of town to-morrow. Hither Mr. Fuller comes to me and my Uncle Thomas too, thence I took them to drink, and so put off my uncle. So with Mr. Fuller home to my house, where he dined with me, and he told my wife and me a great many stories of his adversities, since these troubles, in being forced to travel in the Catholic countries, &c. He shewed me his bills, but I had not money to pay him. We parted, and I to Whitehall, where I was to see my horse which Mr. Garthwayt lends me to-morrow. So home, where Mr. Pierce comes to me about appointing time and place where and when to meet tomorrow. So to Westminster Hall, where, after the House rose, I met with Mr. Crew, who told me that my Lord was chosen by 73 voices, to be one of the Council of State. Mr. Pierpoint had the most, 101, and himself the next, too. He brought me in the coach home. He and Mr. Anslow being in it. I back to the Hall, and at Mrs. Michell's shop staid talking a great while with her and my Chaplain, Mr. Mumford, and drank a pot or two of ale on a wager that Mr. Prin is not of the Council. Home and wrote to my Lord the news of the choice of the Council by the post, and so to bed.
    1621 First alcohol temperance law in America    ^top^
          In a proclamation signed by Governor Sir Francis Wyatt and thirty-two members of the Virginia colonial legislature, Virginia prohibits public intoxication under penalty of fine. Virginia, the first American colony to pass a temperance law, is later joined by other colonies in taking measures to prohibit the use of alcohol. The movement for prohibition gained ground in the early nineteenth century, when Americans concerned about the adverse effects of drinking began forming temperance societies. By the late nineteenth century, several states and dozens of cities had enacted prohibition laws, and temperance groups had become a powerful political force, campaigning on the state level and calling for total national abstinence. On 18 December 1917, the Eighteenth Amendment, also known as the Prohibition Amendment, was passed by Congress and took effect on 16 January 1919, following state ratification. During the 1920s, despite an often-vigorous effort by law-enforcement agencies, the federal government failed to prevent the large-scale distribution of alcoholic beverages, and organized crime flourished in America. In 1933, the Twenty-first Amendment to the Constitution was passed and ratified, repealing prohibition.
    1616 Nicolaus Copernicus' De Revolutionibus placed on Catholic Index of Forbidden Books. Mikolaj Kopernick was born in 1473 in Torún, Poland. He became a mathematician and astronomer who authored the Copernican theory: the sun is the center of our universe -- Le moine astronome Nicolas Copernic, né à Thorn (Pologne), après avoir étudié à Cracovie (Pologne), puis à Bologne et à Padoue (Italie), rentre en Pologne et rédige en 1530 , son fameux "traité sur les révolutions des orbes célestes".
    1329 Juana II y su marido Felipe de Evreux son coronados reyes de Navarra.
    1179 The Third Lateran Council (11th ecumenical council) opens in Rome under Alexander III. It is attended by 302 bishops who enact measures against the Waldenses and Albigensians. Lateran III also mandates that popes are to be elected by two-thirds vote from the assembled cardinals.
    TO THE TOP
    Lt. CohenDeaths which occurred on a March 05:
    2002 First Lieutenant Pinchas Cohen    , 23 [photo >], of Jerusalem, during an Israeli incursion near the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis.
    2002 Muhammad Hussein Abdulqader Rojob, 24, Palestinian from Dora near Hebron, by Israeli gunfire.
    2002 Abdulraziq Stetey, 23, Palestinian from the Jenin Refugee Camp, by shrapnel from a missile shrapnel launched by an Israeli helicopter.
    2002 Maher Fouad Hamada, 20, Nour Ahmad Daher, 21, from Rafah, Muhammad Alqama, 22, and marine policeman Jameel Sabbagh, Palestinians, in an Israeli incursion into Sudania, Gaza Strip
    2002 Mohanad Abu Halawa, 23, Muhammad Fawzi Mara, 27, and Omar Isa Miqdad, Palestinians, in Ramallah, by missiles launched from Israeli Apache helicopters.
    2002 Muhand Dirya Abu Haliwa, Omar Ka'adan, and Fawzi Murar, in the evening, when an Israeli Apache helicopter fired missiles at their car in the West Bank town of Bituniya. A fourth passenger was seriously injured. Haliwa was an aide to Tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti. Ka'adan was the body guard of the head of the Force 17 in Ramallah, Mahmoud Damara (Abu Awad). Murar was a member of Force 17. All three were members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
    2002 One Israeli and Abdul-Karim Isa Tahayna, 21, from Jenin, an Islamic Jihad suicide bomber, on bus 823 from Upper Nazareth to Tel Aviv with 10 aboard, in the bus station at Afula, Israel. Three persons are injured
    2002 Devora Friedman, 46    , Israeli from the Efrat enclave settlement, West Bank, after her car is fired upon on Tunnel Road near Al Khader, west of Bethleem.The gunmen escape.
    2002 Three Israelis: Yosef Haybi, 52, from Netanya; Eli Dahan, 53, from Lod, and Salim Barakat, from Yarka (Galilee); and Ibrahim Hassouni, 20, their attacker, of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a naval policeman from the Balata refugee camp. The killings takes place within 5 minutes outside the adjoining “Seafood Market” and “Mifgash Hasteak” restaurants on Menachem Begin Road in Tel Aviv. At about 02:15 Hassouni fires his M-16 rifle from the Ma'ariv bridge at the restaurants running towards them.. Out of ammunition he stabs passers-by with a knife, Policeman Barakat, in civilian clothes, tackles Hassouni but is beaten by Israelis who mistake him for the terrorist. Barakat shoots Hassouni and, as he leans over him to check his condition, is stabbed by him . A restaurant customer shoots Hassouni in the head. 15 persons are injured. Two unexploded hand grenades are found in the area.
    2001 Al menos treinta y cinco peregrinos musulmanes, aplastados por una avalancha humana cuando celebraban la "lapidación del diablo", la penúltima de las ceremonias que marcan el viaje de peregrinación a La Meca.
    2001 Bryan Zuckor, 14, and Randy Gordon, 17, students at Santana High School, Santee CA, in shooting rampage at 09:30 by Charles Andrew "Andy" Williams, 15. 13 other persons are injured. Williams then surrenders to a sheriff's deputy, who was at the school to address a class, and an off-duty police officer, there to register his child. Williams will be tried as an adult, as is mandatory in California.
    2001 At least 23 high school girls in fire of their locked and barred dormitory, started by an overturned kerosene lamp, in the village of Gindiri, 190 km north of Abuja, Nigeria.
    2001 Rodney McAllister, 10, torn apart by a pack of dogs as he was going to play basketball at 17:00, in a St.Louis MO park. Authorities had done nothing about complaints by residents about stray dogs.
    2001: 23 women and 12 men in a stampede at the hajj, during the “stoning of the devil.”    ^top^
         A stampede breaks out at the annual hajj pilgrimage, killing 35 Muslims during the symbolic stoning of the devil ritual. 23 women and 12 men are killed and an unknown number of people are injured.
          The hajj must be performed once in a lifetime by every Muslim who is able to do so. The "stoning the devil" has been a source of tragedy in the past. A 1998 stampede killed 180 people. A 1997 fire in Mina, the city where the stoning takes place, tore through the sprawling, overcrowded tent city, trapping and killing more than 340 pilgrims and injuring 1500. In 1994, a stampede killed 270 pilgrims. The most deadly hajj-related tragedy was a 1990 stampede in which 1426 pilgrims were killed.
          Pilgrims come to Mina from Mecca to cast pebbles the size of chickpeas at three columns of stone that symbolize the devil as they chant, "In the name of God, God is great." The pillars symbolizing the devil are at the center of giant ramps built to accommodate the huge crowds of pilgrims who must complete the ritual by dusk. Muslim tradition says it was here that the devil tried to tempt the Prophet Abraham to disobey God by refusing to sacrifice his son, a legend common to Islam, Christianity and Judaism.
          According to tradition, God instructed Abraham to sacrifice a sheep instead, and Muslims around the world now follow suit, sacrificing camels and cattle to mark Eid al-Adha, or feast of sacrifice. Once they complete the stoning ritual, pilgrims shave or clip their hair and then slaughter more than a half million camels, cows and sheep near Mina, a tent city that only comes to life during the hajj.
    2001 Jurgen Seewald, 47, Canadian Mountie, murdered.
         At remote Cape Dorset, Nunavut, on Baffin Island,. Seewald, a 26-year veteran of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is shot and killed while responding to a domestic dispute call. Mounties then surround the home of the shooter, who barricaded himself alone inside. The shooting happened in the Northwest Company housing unit and then the shooter moved to another area in the hamlet.
    1986 Michel Seurat, is announced "executed" in Lebanon, by Islamic Jihad, which had taken him hostage almost a year earlier.
    1983 Sady Zañartu, escritor chileno.
    1979 Ocho generales adictos al Sha Mohamed Reza Pahlevi, ejecutados en Irán.
    1978 Geer van Velde, Dutch artist born on 05 April 1898.
    1954 Julian Lowell Coolidge, author of books on geometry, probability, and the history of mathematics.
    Stalin poster1953 Joseph Stalin    ^top^
          In Moscow, Joseph Stalin, 73, who became the leader of the Soviet Union after Vladimir Lenin’s death in 1924, dies of a cerebral hemorrhage. Stalin, the son of a poor cobbler, was born in Georgia in 1879 as Yusip Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili.
          As a young man, he attended seminary school before joining a Georgian Marxist political party in 1898, and then Vladimir Lenin’s revolutionary Bolshevik Party upon its founding in 1903. In 1913, he took the alias Stalin, meaning "Man of Steel" and became a leading Bolshevik.
          After the October Revolution of 1917, Stalin held several important posts in the Soviet Communist Party, and in 1922, became secretary to the party central committee, an office he held until his death. Although Lenin had criticized Stalin’s arbitrary leadership as secretary general, Stalin seized power upon Lenin’s death in 1924, defeating such rivals as Leon Trotsky.
          As Soviet leader, Stalin abandoned the Communist ideal of a rapidly diminishing state and launched the first Five-Year Plan, a brutal program of forced industrialization and collectivization of agriculture. In the early 1930s, he executed, worked to death, or starved up to ten million peasants who stood in the way of his ruthless economic plans. Beginning in 1934, he began a massive purge of the Communist Party, the Soviet government, the military, and the intelligentsia, and tens of thousands of suspected political opponents to his rule were imprisoned, exiled, or executed.
          Failing to achieve satisfactory alliances with the Western democracies, Stalin agreed to a Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in 1939. The treaty, which divided much of Eastern Europe between Nazi Germany and the USS.R., was only honored by Hitler for two years.
    [1949 poster by B. N. Karpov and others >]
          On 22 June 22 1941, the Nazis launched Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the USS.R. Stalin was caught by surprise, and the German Wehrmacht penetrated deep into the Soviet Union, reaching the outskirts of Moscow before the Red Army was able to begin a successful counter-offensive. Despite the difficulties of Soviet life under Stalin’s tyrannical regime, Russians bitterly resisted the German invasion. By the time the triumphant Red Army entered Berlin, the German capital, some twenty-two million Soviet citizens had died in the "Great Patriotic War."
          At Allied conferences during and after the war, Stalin proved an astute diplomat, succeeding in dividing the world into spheres of influence and setting the stage for the Cold War. After the war, Stalin isolated the USS.R. and Eastern Europe from the rest of the world, and grew critical of independent Communist movements, such as in China or Yugoslavia. In the last years of his life, his increasing paranoia led to new purges in the Soviet Union.
          After his death in 1953, his body was embalmed and displayed next to Lenin’s inside a mausoleum on Moscow’s Red Square. However, just three years later, Nikita Khrushchev, the new Soviet leader, denounced Stalin and his tyrannical politics at the Twentieth Party Congress, and in 1961, Stalin’s body was disinterred from Lenin’s tomb.
         Like his right-wing rival for the title of worst dictator in history, Hitler, who was born in Austria, Joseph Stalin was not a native of the country he ruled with an iron fist. Ioseb Dzhugashvili was born in 1889 in Georgia, then part of the old Russian empire. The son of a drunk who beat him mercilessly and a pious washerwoman mother, Stalin learned Russian, which he spoke with a heavy accent all his life, in an Orthodox Church-run school. While studying to be a priest at Tiflis Theological Seminary, he began secretly reading Karl Marx and other left-wing revolutionary thinkers. The "official" communist story is that he was expelled from the seminary for this intellectual rebellion; in reality, it may have been because of poor health. In 1900, Stalin became active in revolutionary political activism, taking part in labor demonstrations and strikes. Stalin joined the more militant wing of the Marxist Social Democratic movement, the Bolsheviks, and became a student of its leader, Vladimir Ilich Lenin. Stalin was arrested seven times between 1902 and 1913, and subjected to prison and exile. Stalin's first big break came in 1912, when Lenin, in exile in Switzerland, named him to serve on the first Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party-now a separate entity from the Social Democrats. The following year, Stalin (finally dropping Dzugashvili and taking the new name Stalin, from the Russian word for "steel") published a signal article on the role of Marxism in the destiny of Russia. In 1917, escaping from an exile in Siberia, he linked up with Lenin and his coup against the middle-class democratic government that had supplanted the czar's rule. Stalin continued to move up the party ladder, from commissar for nationalities to secretary general of the Central Committee-a role that would provide the center of his dictatorial takeover and control of the party and the new USSR. In fact, upon Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin began the consolidation of his power base, conducting show trials to purge enemies and rivals, even having Leon Trotsky assassinated during his exile in Mexico. Stalin also abandoned Lenin's New Economic Policy, which would have meant some decentralization of industry. Stalin demanded-and got-absolute state control of the economy, as well as greater swaths of Soviet life, until his totalitarian grip on the new Russian empire was absolute. The outbreak of World War II saw Stalin attempt an alliance with Adolf Hitler for purely self-interested reasons, and despite the political fallout of a communist signing an alliance with a fascist, they signed a nonaggression pact that allowed each dictator free reign in their respective spheres of influence. Stalin then proceeded to annex parts of Poland, Romania, and Finland, and occupy Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. In May 1941, he made himself chairman of the Council of People's Commissars; he was now the official head of the government and no longer merely head of the party. One month later, Germany invaded the USSR, making significant early inroads. As German troops approached, Stalin remained in the capital, directing a scorched-earth defensive policy and exercising personal control over the strategies of the Red Army. As the war progressed, Stalin sat in on the major Allied conferences, including those in Tehran (1943) and Yalta (1945). His iron will and deft political skills enabled him to play the loyal ally while never abandoning his vision of an expanded postwar Soviet Empire. In fact, after Germany's surrender in April 1945, Stalin oversaw the continued occupation and domination of much of Eastern Europe, despite "promises" of free elections in those countries. Stalin did not mellow with age; he prosecuted a reign of terror, purges, executions, exiles to the Gulag Archipelago (a system of forced-labor camps in the frozen north), and persecution in the postwar USSR, suppressing all dissent and anything that smacked of foreign, especially Western European, influence. To the great relief of many, he died of a massive heart attack on March 5, 1953. He is remembered to this day as the man who helped save his nation from Nazi domination-and as the mass murderer of the century, having overseen the deaths of between 8 million and 10 million of his own people.
    1940 Day 97 of Winter War: USSR aggression against Finland.     ^top^
    More deaths due to Stalin's desire to grab Finnish territory.
    Heavy bombing in Mikkeli
           There is fierce fighting on the islands of Ravansaari, Turkinsaari and Neulasaari in Viipurinlahti bay.
          On the western shore of the bay the enemy is advancing in Vilaniemi and Häränpäänniemi.
          The counterattack to retake the church hill at Äyräpää is delayed by the late arrival of the Finnish detachment at the starting position. The launch of the operation is put back until daylight. The Finnish attack founders with heavy losses in the face of intense enemy fire. During the half-hour attack up the church hill, the attacking Finnish soldiers from the Ostrobothnia municipality of Nurmo lose 40 dead and 30 wounded, some fatally. The hill remains in enemy hands.
          During the course of the morning the Russians occupy Vasikkasaari.
          General Headquarters sets up an office to coordinate recruitment of foreign volunteers.
          The town of Mikkeli, the home of General Headquarters, is heavily bombed and 33 civilians killed.
          The Red Army has already reached Viipurinlahti bay, and the deadline for Finland to formally appeal for help from the Western Allies runs out today.
          After a heated debate, the Finnish Government decides to accept the Soviet Union's preconditions for opening peace talks. Moscow announces its intention to stick to its demands: Finland will have to cede Viipuri and Sortavala.
          The first train of Finnish child evacuees arrives in Copenhagen with 93 children on board.
          A French ambulance arrives in Finland.
          The Soviet Government formally apologises to Sweden over the bombing of Pajala.
    Vihollinen pommittaa rajusti Mikkeliä Talvisodan 97. päivä, 05.maaliskuuta.1940    ^top^
           Viipurinlahdella käydään kovia taisteluja Ravansaaressa, Turkinsaaressa ja Neulasaaressa.
          Länsirannalla vihollinen etenee Vilaniemessä ja Häränpään-niemessä.
          Vastahyökkäys Äyräpään kirkonmäen takaisinsaamiseksi viivästyy tehtävään määrätyn osaston myöhästyttyä lähtöasemasta.
          Hyökkäyksen alkamishetki siirtyy valoisaan aikaan. Hyökkäus kilpistyy vihollisen voimakkaaseen tuleen. Suomalaiset kärsivät raskaita tappioita.
          Puoli tuntia kestävässä rynnäkössä ylös kirkonmäkeä Nurmon kunnasta olevia suomalaissotilaita kaatuu 40 ja haavoittuu 30 miestä, osa kuolettavasti. Kirkonmäki jää viholliselle.
          Aamulla menetetään Vasikkasaari, jonka venäläissotilaat miehittävät.
          Päämajaan perustetaan vapaaehtoistoimisto johtamaan ulkomaisten vapaaehtoisten värväystä.
          Vihollinen pommittaa rajusti Päämajakaupunki Mikkeliä: 33 siviilihenkilöä saa surmansa.
          Vihollinen on edennyt jo Viipurinlahdelle, avunpyyntö länsiliittoutuneille on esitettävä tänään.
          Suomen hallitus taipuu kiivaiden keskustelujen jälkeen Neuvostoliiton kanssa rauhanneuvotteluihin ennakkoehtojen mukaisesti.
          Moskova ilmoittaa pysyvänsä vaatimuksissaan rauhanehdoissa: Suomen on luovutettava Viipuri ja Sortavala.
          Ensimmäinen suomalaislapsia turvaan vievä juna saapuu Kööpenhaminaan. Junassa on 93 suomalaislasta.
          Ranskalainen ambulanssi saapuu Suomeen.
          Neuvostoliiton hallitus esittää Ruotsin hallitukselle anteeksipyynnön pommituksen johdosta.
    Fienden bombar häftigt S:t Michel Vinterkrigets 97 dag, den 05 mars 1940    ^top^
          I Viborgska viken pågår häftiga strider på öarna Ravansaari, Turkinsaari och Neulasaari.
          På den västra stranden framskrider fienden i Vilaniemi och Häränpäänniemi.
          Motoffensiven för att återerövra Äyräpää kyrkbacke fördröjs när den avdelning som utsetts för uppgiften försenas i starten.
          Tidpunkten för anfallet skjuts upp tills det blir ljust.
          Anfallet stoppas upp av fiendens ursinniga eldgivning. Finnarna tillfogas svåra nederlag.
          Under den halv timmes långa anstormningen uppför kyrkbacken stupar 40 och såras 30 soldater hemma från Nurmo kommun, en del av de sårade avlider senare. Kyrkbacken förblir i fiendens besittning.
          På morgonen går ön Vasikkasaari förlorad. Ryska soldater ockuperar ön.
          En frivilligbyrå grundas vid huvudkvarteret för att leda värvningen av utländska frivilliga soldater.
          Fienden bombar häftigt huvudkvartersstaden S:t Michel: 33 civila dödas.
          Fienden har redan ryckt fram till Viborgska viken, anhållan om bistånd av de västallierade måste framföras idag.
          Efter intensiva diskussioner ger regeringen vika och man beslutar att inleda fredsförhandlingar med Sovjetunionen i enlighet med förhandsvillkoren. Moskva meddelar att Sovjetunionen håller fast vid de ursprungliga fredsvillkoren: Finland måste överlåta Viborg och Sordavala.
          Det första tåget som ska föra barn i skydd anländer till Köpenhamn. I tåget finns 93 finska barn.
          En fransk ambulans anländer till Finland.
          Sovjetunionens regering framför en ursäkt till Sveriges regering för bombningarna.
    1927 Franz Mertens, 86, number theorist who is best remembered for his elementary proof of the Dirichlet theorem.
    1925 Johan Ludwig William Valdemar Jensen, 65, telephone company employee, self taught mathematician, contributed to the Riemann Hypothesis.
    1908 Curry Robertson (or Robertson Curry), and John Henry, lynched in Pulaski County, Georgia, accused of the murder of a White.
    1895 Charles Édouard Edmond Delort, French painter born on 04 February 1841. — The Cardinal's Leisure
    1894 Sylvester Rhodes, Black, lynched in Tattnall County, Georgia, accused of the murder of a White.
    1893 Hippolyte Adolphe Taine, filósofo e historiador francés.
    1880 Edouard Henri Girardet, French artist born on 31 July 1819.
    1875 Claude-Louis Mathieu, 91, engineer, mathematician, astronomer, published L'Histoire de l'astronomie au XVIII siècle in 1827.
    1864 Francisco Blasco, pintor español.
    1860 Alfred de Dreux (or Dedreux), French artist born on 23 May 1810.
    1847 Innocent-Louis Goubaud, French artist born in 1780.
    1827 Pierre-Simon de Laplace, 77, mathematician, astronomer. [said about Napier's logarithms:]" ...by shortening the labors doubled the life of the astronomer." — sabio francés y autor de la teoría astronómica que lleva su nombre y de varias leyes electromagnéticas.
    1827 Alessandro Giuseppe Volta, físico italiano, inventor de la pila eléctrica que lleva su nombre, precursor de la electroquímica.
    1815 Friedrich Anton Mesmer, innovator of hypnotism   ^top^
          Mesmer, an Austrian physician who pioneered the medical field of hypnotic therapy, dies in obscurity in Austria. Born in 1734, Mesmer studied religion, philosophy, law, and medicine in Vienna, Austria, but initially failed to excel at any of these fields. In the 1770s, he became fascinated with the so-called Father Glassner, a Swiss Roman Catholic priest who was well known as a documented faith healer. After observing Glassner’s seemingly miraculous healings, Mesmer concluded that the cures were achieved by what he called "animal magnetism." Mesmer believed that invisible magnetic fields existed around living beings, and that if this invisible magnetic flow was upset, sickness could occur. He decided that Glassner was correcting obstructed magnetic flows by achieving a rapport, French for "harmony" or "connection," with his patients. In 1772, Mesmer first began to develop and refine his own technique for curing what he perceived to be animal magnetism obstructions, which included the use of ethereal music as a hypnotic device, and intimate group healing sessions. Despite obvious errors in Mesmer’s scientific theories, his process of mesmerism, as it became to be known, produced hypnotic states in his patients that had an extraordinary influence on their physical illnesses. His popularity grew, but the Viennese Medical Council declared him a fraud, and in 1778, he left Vienna for the more liberal environment of Paris. In Paris, Mesmer treated peasants along with wealthy aristocrats and won several disciples in the scientific community. However, in 1785, the French government appointed a committee of physicians and scientists to investigate his work, and, despite his successes, he was again called a fraud. In 1778, he was expelled from Paris and retired to obscurity in his native Austria. Despite the eccentricities of his techniques, Mesmer is seen as a major innovator of hypnotic therapy and also one of the first Western physicians to safely treat psychosomatic illness.
    1804 Francis Sartorius, British artist born in 1734.
    1794 Ramón de la Cruz Cano y Olmedilla, escritor y comediógrafo español.
    1770 Crispus Attucks, Patrick Carr, Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick, and Christopher Monk in the Boston Massacre    ^top^
          In Boston, Massachusetts, a mob of Patriots gathers at the Royal Exchange building, also known as the Customs House, and begins taunting the British soldiers guarding the building. The Bostonians were protesting the British parliament’s recent increase in colonial taxation and also resented the British military occupation of their city. British Captain Thomas Preston, the commanding officer, ordered his men to fix their bayonets and join the guard outside the building.
          The colonists responded by throwing snowballs and sticks at the British regulars, and Private Hugh Montgomery was hit, leading him to discharge his rifle at the crowd. The other soldiers began firing a moment later, and when the smoke cleared, five colonists were dead--Crispus Attucks (first black to die for American freedom), Patrick Carr, Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick, and Christopher Monk--and three more were injured.
          Although it is unclear whether Crispus Attucks, an African American, was the first to fall as it is commonly believed, the deaths of the five men are regarded as the first fatalities in the US War for Independence. After the incident, Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson and other Boston leaders succeeded in convincing the mob to disperse. The British soldiers were put on trial and Patriots John Adams and Josiah Quincy agreed to defend the colonists in a show of support of the colonial justice system. When the trial ended on December of 1770, two British soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter and had their thumbs branded as punishment.
          The Sons of Liberty advertised the "Boston Massacre" as a battle for American liberty and just cause for the removal of British troops from Boston. Patriot Paul Revere made a provocative engraving of the incident, depicting the British soldiers as lining up like an organized army to suppress an idealized colonist uprising. Copies of the engraving were distributed throughout the colonies and helped reinforce negative American sentiments about British rule.
    The Boston Massacre
          On the cold, snowy night of 05 March 1770, a mob of American colonists gathers at the Customs House in Boston and begins taunting the British soldiers guarding the building. The protesters, who called themselves Patriots, were protesting the occupation of their city by British troops, who were sent to Boston in 1768 to enforce unpopular taxation measures passed by a British parliament that lacked American representation.
          British Captain Thomas Preston, the commanding officer at the Customs House, ordered his men to fix their bayonets and join the guard outside the building. The colonists responded by throwing snowballs and other objects at the British regulars, and Private Hugh Montgomery was hit, leading him to discharge his rifle at the crowd. The other soldiers began firing a moment later, and when the smoke cleared, five colonists were dead or dying--Crispus Attucks, Patrick Carr, Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick, and Christopher Monk--and three more were injured. Although it is unclear whether Crispus Attucks, an African American, was the first to fall as is commonly believed, the deaths of the five men are regarded by some historians as the first fatalities in the American Revolutionary War.
          The British soldiers were put on trial, and patriots John Adams and Josiah Quincy agreed to defend the colonists in a show of support of the colonial justice system. When the trial ended in December 1770, two British soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter and had their thumbs branded as punishment.
          The Sons of Liberty, a Patriot group formed in 1765 to oppose the Stamp Act, advertised the "Boston Massacre" as a battle for American liberty and just cause for the removal of British troops from Boston. Patriot Paul Revere made a provocative engraving of the incident, depicting the British soldiers lining up like an organized army to suppress an idealized representation of the colonist uprising. Copies of the engraving were distributed throughout the colonies and helped reinforce negative American sentiments about British rule.
          In April 1775, the American Revolution began when British troops from Boston skirmished with American militiamen at the battles of Lexington and Concord. The British troops were under orders to capture Patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock in Lexington and to confiscate the Patriot arsenal at Concord. Neither missions were accomplished because of Paul Revere and William Dawes, who rode ahead of the British, warning Adams and Hancock and rousing the Patriot minutemen. Eleven months later, in March 1776, British forces had to evacuate Boston following American General George Washington's successful placement of fortifications and cannons on Dorchester Heights. This bloodless liberation of Boston brought an end to the hated eight-year British occupation of the city. For the victory, General Washington, commander of the Continental Army, was presented with the first medal ever awarded by the Continental Congress. It would be more than five years before the Revolutionary War came to an end with British General Charles Cornwallis' surrender to Washington at Yorktown, Virginia.
    1755 Pier-Leone Ghezzi, Italian painter born on 28 June 1674. — LINKS
    1671 Cornelis Simonsz van der Schalcke, Dutch artist born on 15 February 1611.
    1658 Francisco López de Zárate, poeta español.
    before 1638 Jacques de Rousseau (or des Rousseaux), French artist born perhaps in 1600.
    1576 Luis de Zúñiga y Requesens, marino español, sucesor del duque de Alba en el gobierno de Flandes.
    1534 Antonio Allegri “Correggio”, Italian Mannerist painter born in some year between 1489 and 1494. —MORE ON CORREGGIO AT ART “4” MARCH — LINKS — Deposition from the Cross — Noli me Tangere — The Mystic Marriage of St Catherine — Ecce Homo
    1291 Sa'ad al'Da'ulah Jewish grand vizier of Persia, assassinated
    0254 Pope Saint Lucius I
    Births which occurred on a March 05:
    1942 Felipe González Márquez, presidente del Gobierno español.
    1937 Olusegun Obasanjo, militar y político nigeriano.
    1918 James Tobin, profesor estadounidense, Premio Nobel de Economía en 1981
    1918 Joan Josep Tharrats, pintor, escultor y escritor catalán.
    1915 Laurent Schwartz, mathematician (theory of distributions), retired in 1983.
    1905 Joaquín Calvo Sotelo, dramaturgo y académico español.
    1887 Heitor Villa-Lobos, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, composer (Salon Waltz) He died on 17 November 1959.
    1880 Sergi Natavovich Bernstein, university professor of mathematics, some of his best work was on function approximation and on probabilities; died in 1968.
    1879 William Henry Beveridge, sociólogo y economista británico.
    1874 Arthur Schendel, Dutch novelist and short-story writer who died on 11 September 1946.
    1872 Triple air brake for trains is patented by George Westinghouse Jr.
    1871 Rosa Luxemburg, Polish-born German revolutionary and agitator, theoretician of a humane and democratic Marxism, who was assassinated by reactionary troops during the Spartacus Revolt, on 15 January 1919.
    1869 Michael von Faulhaber, German cardinal, archbishop of Munich who died on 12 June 1952.
    1856 Mikaïl Alexandrovitch Wroubel (or Wrubel), Russian artist who died on 01 April 1910.
    1853 Howard Pyle    , US painter, author, and Golden Age illustrator who died on 09 November 1911. — MORE ON PYLE AT ART “4” MARCH — PYLE ART LINKS — Joan of Arc in prison — The Poet and the King — The Pirate was a Picturesque Fellow — The Mermaid — Lancelot — 3 illustrations for Tennyson's The Lady of Shalott: Lancelot (a different one) _ The Lady of Shalott Weaving _ The Lady of Shalott dead // WRITINGS BY PYLE ONLINE: Men of Iron — Men of Iron — Twilight Land — The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood — The Story of King Arthur and his Knights — Book of Pirates — Otto of the Silver Hand — co-author of The Wonder Clock
    1852 Lady Augusta Gregory, Irish writer and playwright who died on 22 May 1852.
    1829 Jean-Jacques Henher, French artist who died on 23 July 1905.
    1824 James Merritt Ives, lithographer who, went into partnership with Nathaniel Currier (1813-1888) and handled all their business affairs. Their firm Currier and Ives, which existed from 1857 to 1907, employed numerous other artists.. — 71 pictures at FAMSF (mostly lithographs with hand coloring)
    1820 August Friedrich Siegert, German artist who died on 13 August 1883.
    1817 Angelo Genocchi, lawyer, political activist, university professor of mathematics, his main research was in number theory, series, and the integral calculus; died in 1889.
    1779 Samuel Gompertz, barred from universities for being a Jew, self educated mathematician best remembered for Gompertz's Law of Mortality; died in 1865.
    1743 Jean-Simon Berthélémy, French artist who died on 01 March 1811.
    1696 Giovanni-Battista Tiepolo, Italian painter who died on 27 March 1770. — LINKS — Venetian Promenade — 43 etchings at FAMSF
    Pepys^ 1633 (23 February Julian) Samuel Pepys, English diarist and naval administrator who died on 26 May 1703. [1666 portrait by John Hayls >]
          Pepys had two great accomplishments. He was the creator, in effect, of the modern British Navy, revered by naval historians. He was also a compulsive diarist. Starting on New Year's Day in 1660, he faithfully wrote down, in a shorthand code, a day-by-day account of everything he saw, felt or heard until 31 May 1669. The completed diary fills six 282-page notebooks; it's the longest, most personal account we have of life in the 17th century, and also an invaluable eyewitness account of some of the most seismic events in English history: the Restoration (Pepys was in the boat that went to fetch Charles II from the Netherlands), the plague of 1665, the Great Fire the following year and the Dutch raids the year after that. Bracketing the diary are the years of the Civil War and the Protectorate (Pepys as a schoolboy watched the king's execution) and, later, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, during which Pepys, who remained a staunch Jacobite, was briefly imprisoned on suspicion of treason.
          Most earlier diaries were written for a specific purpose -- usually religious (as an aid to spiritual bookkeeping) or to record travel and sightseeing. But Pepys kept track of everything: his assignations, his finances, his business deals, his conversations with the king (and erotic dreams about the queen), his hangovers, his bowel movements and ejaculations, his fears and hopes and imaginings, his frequent tiffs with his wife. While Pepys held nothing back, he's also the least reflective diarist imaginable. There's none of the soul-searching of Boswell's journals, just a generation or two later.
          Nor is Pepys a particularly great prose stylist. The diary contains numerous set pieces -- such as the descriptions of the coronation of Charles II (where Pepys got so drunk he passed out and woke up in his own ''spew''), of the fire and the plague -- which he clearly took some time and trouble over. But there are great stretches that are written in diaryese: up early and to work . . . away to My Lord So-and-So's . . . dine with Sir Such-and-Such . . . conversation with Mr. Somebody or other . . . was mighty merry . . . and, at the end of a long day ''and so to bed.''
          For a long time, the sexy bits were expurgated. Most of them were written in a code-within-the-code, a mishmash of French, Latin and Spanish. (Pepys was raised as a Puritan). On 16 Nov 1667, about riding with a servant girl in a coach, and how he succeeded in making her “tener mi cosa in her mano while mi mano was sobra su pectus, and so did hazer with great delight.” Elsewhere he is always trying to ''toca'' someone's “jupes”, or else attempting to “poner” his “main” someplace it doesn't belong.
          The seeming artlessness, and even occasional crudeness, of the diaries is their greatest strength. Pepys was not a brilliant thinker, or even an especially good shaper of experience, but he noticed what others overlooked — the king's dog, for example, relieving himself in the bottom of the Royal Barge; or the pigeons, during the Great Fire, who were “loath to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconies till they were some of them burned their wings, and fell down.” He was a great reporter, before modern reporting had been invented. Reading Pepys we get a feeling for what life really was like back then.
          Long after finishing his diary, now an aging bureaucrat, Pepys got into many political scrapes out of which he would shrewdly maneuver. He had made a lifelong enemy of the Earl of Shaftesbury, for example, who never tired of trying to smear him. Pepys, after the death of his wife, carried on a 33-year affair with a younger woman named Mary Skinner; though semi-secret, the relationship proved in many ways more satisfying than his marriage. Despite his promiscuity, Pepys never fathered any children, possibly because of an excruciating kidney-stone operation he underwent as a young man.
          Pepys was a poor but talented and ambitious young man who, by luck, connections, and hard work, rose to a position where he had all he wanted in the way of money, apartment, clothes, meals, girlfriends, rich and important connections.
          Pepys's father was a barely literate tailor, his mother a laundress. But a wealthy cousin, Edward Montagu (later the Earl of Sandwich), saw to it that he got an education and eventually a job as clerk in Cromwell's government. Montagu was an ardent Puritan and republican, one of Cromwell's right-hand advisers, but as the Rump Parliament fell apart after Cromwell's death, he secretly and expeditiously began negotiations with the exiled Prince Charles. When the moment was right, he became a royalist. Most of England eagerly did the same, including Montagu's 26-year-old protégé.
          Montagu was given a peerage and appointed Master of the King's Wardrobe; he got Pepys an appointment with the Navy Board. This was the single luckiest stroke of Pepys's life, and it was the making of him. The navy at that time was the biggest industry and the biggest employer in all of England, and Pepys proved to be brilliant at his job, the first naval administrator to keep accurate and useful records and to codify standards and procedures. He was a workaholic; by 17th-century standards he was a marvel of energy and efficiency. Most of his peers worked to live; Pepys lived to work, and the diary is full of accounts of early rising and long hours, of getting up in the middle of the night to rush back to the office. The job came with a house, a good salary and, just as important, an opportunity not for bribes, exactly (though he accepted those too), but for “considerations.” Pepys was soon became well off.
          Some of his money he spent on himself, on clothes and wigs. (He was one of the first Englishmen to adopt the French custom of wearing a perruque, which explains why in his surviving portraits he always has on an enormous hairpiece.) He poured even more money into home improvements; his house, on Seething Lane, was usually filled with joiners, plasterers, painters, upholsterers and floor-layers, all of whose comings and goings are faithfully noted in the diary. As he got on in the world, Pepys took up dancing, and even hired a private teacher (who flirted so shamelessly with Mrs. Pepys that it drove him mad with jealously). He gave lavish dinner parties and was a regular at court, where the king joked with him and called him by name. In his spare time he called on his reliable old flames Betty Lane and Mrs. Bagwell, the wife of a ship's carpenter, and also tried his luck with any serving girl or housemaid who came within range.
          And all the while he was writing it down. Pepys had the nerve to cast himself as the central player in an epic -- the story not only of his life but of his times -- and it's a story that fascinated him. He abandoned the diary when he was 36 because he was worried about his eyesight. He twice made a stab at starting up again, but these later diaries have none of the energy of the original. It may be that by then he had arrived, and there was nothing left to prove. Being one of the most important men in London wasn't just a thrilling part to play — it was who he had become. .
    — PEPYS ONLINE: The Concise Pepys — The Diary (abridged) — The Diary (slightly expurgated)
    1658 Antoine de la Mothe sieur de Cadillac, in Gascogne, France, explorer who mapped the Great Lakes region of North America for the French crown. He is credited as the founder of Detroit. French colonial governor of America.
    1637 Jan van der Heyden, Dutch painter of cityscapes who died on 28 March 1712.
    1625 John Collins, apprentice bookseller, law clerk, seaman, teacher, accountant, mathematician member of the Royal Society, died in 1683.
    1574 William Oughtred, Anglican priest, mathematician, invented an early slide-rule, died in 1660.
    1512 Gerardus Mercator, Rupelmonde (Flanders), mathematician, geographer/mapmaker who died on 02 December 1594.
    1326 Louis I (the Great) king of Hungary (1342-82), Poland (1370-82)
    Santoral: Santos Adrián, Teófilo, Juan, José de la Cruz y Eusebio.
    Ash Wednesday in 2003.
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