On this day in 3102 BCE,-the Epoch (origin) of the Kali Yuga. In 1129 on this day, Jerusalem was taken by Emperor Frederik II. On this day in 1268, the Livonian Brothers of the Sword were defeated by Dovmont of Pskov in the Battle of Rakovor. Amda Seyon I, the Emperor of Ethiopia, began his campaigns in the southern Muslim provinces on this day in 1332. George, Duke of Clarence, was convicted of treason against his older brother Edward IV of England, and was privately executed in the Tower of London on this day in 1478..On this day in 1503, Henry Tudor created Prince of Wales (later Henry VIII). In 1536 on this day, France & Turkey signed military trade agreement against King Karel.
Feb 18, 1861: Davis becomes provisional president of the Confederacy On this day in 1861, Jefferson Davis, a veteran of the Black Hawk and Mexican-American Wars, begins his term as provisional president of the Confederate States of America. As it turned out, Davis was both the first and last president of the ill-fated Confederacy, as both his term and the Confederacy ended with the Union's 1865 victory in the Civil War. Born in Kentucky and raised in Mississippi, Davis graduated from West Point in 1828. In 1824, at the age of 26, he married his first wife, Sarah, the 16-year-old daughter of then-Colonel Zachary Taylor, against Taylor's wishes. The marriage ended after only three months when Sarah died of malaria. Davis remarried at age 37 in 1845, this time to a prominent 17-year-old Southern socialite and budding author named Varnia Howell. Upon his election to the House of Representatives in 1844, Davis immediately put his pro-slavery vote into action, opposing the Compromise of 1850 and other policies that would have limited the expansion of slavery into new American territories. He interrupted his political service in 1851 to fight in the Mexican-American War, during which his bravery and success prompted then-General Taylor to declare My daughter, sir, was a better judge of men than I was. Following the war, Davis accepted an appointment to fill a suddenly vacant Mississippi seat in the U.S. Senate, but resigned after only a year to launch an unsuccessful bid for the governorship of Mississippi. Davis then campaigned for Franklin Pierce's presidential campaign; upon winning, Pierce rewarded him with the post of secretary of war in 1853. In this capacity, Davis proved instrumental in advocating for the development of a transcontinental railroad. When Pierce lost his presidential reelection bid, Davis ran for a Senate seat and won. Although a staunch supporter of slavery, Davis vigorously opposed the secessionist movement until 1860 when Abraham Lincoln came to power. Davis' attempts to solidify states' rights failed repeatedly and, disillusioned, he decided to resign from the Senate. On January 10, 1861, Davis led Mississippi in following South Carolina's example and seceding from the Union. The following month, he was sworn in as provisional president of the Confederate States of America. (Davis was referred to as the provisional president because he had been appointed by the Confederate Congress rather than elected by the populace.) He moved his family to the southern White House in Richmond, Virginia, and prepared for a six-year presidential term. Davis' refusal to appoint a general commander of southern forces and his attempt to manage the Southern army and government at the same time is thought to have contributed to the South's defeat. After the fall of Atlanta in 1865, he was captured in Georgia, clapped in irons and indicted for treason. After two years, he was finally released on bail; charges against him were not dropped until 1869. While in prison he staved off financial ruin by selling his Mississippi estate to a former slave. A rebel to the end, Davis refused to swear an oath of allegiance that would have reinstated his U.S. citizenship even after his release from prison. The time spent incarcerated impacted his health, and on December 6, 1889, Davis died in New Orleans.
Feb 18, 1885: Twain publishes The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn On this day in 1885, Mark Twain publishes his famous--and famously controversial--novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain (the pen name of Samuel Clemens) first introduced Huck Finn as the best friend of Tom Sawyer, hero of his tremendously successful novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). Though Twain saw Huck's story as a kind of sequel to his earlier book, the new novel was far more serious, focusing on the institution of slavery and other aspects of life in the antebellum South. At the book's heart is the journey of Huck and his friend Jim, a runaway slave, down the Mississippi River on a raft. Jim runs away because he is about to be sold and separated from his wife and children, and Huck goes with him to help him get to Ohio and freedom. Huck narrates the story in his distinctive voice, offering colorful descriptions of the people and places they encounter along the way. The most striking part of the book is its satirical look at racism, religion and other social attitudes of the time. While Jim is strong, brave, generous and wise, many of the white characters are portrayed as violent, stupid or simply selfish, and the naive Huck ends up questioning the hypocritical, unjust nature of society in general. Even in 1885, two decades after the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn landed with a splash. A month after its publication, a Concord, Massachusetts, library banned the book, calling its subject matter "tawdry" and its narrative voice "coarse" and "ignorant." Other libraries followed suit, beginning a controversy that continued long after Twain's death in 1910. In the 1950s, the book came under fire from African-American groups for being racist in its portrayal of black characters, despite the fact that it was seen by many as a strong criticism of racism and slavery. As recently as 1998, an Arizona parent sued her school district, claiming that making Twain's novel required high school reading made already existing racial tensions even worse. Aside from its controversial nature and its continuing popularity with young readers, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been hailed by many serious literary critics as a masterpiece. No less a judge than Ernest Hemingway famously declared that the book marked the beginning of American literature: "There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."
Feb 18, 1913: Raymond Poincare becomes president of France Raymond Poincare, a conservative politician who had been elected president of the French Republic over the objections of Georges Clemenceau and the French Left a month earlier, takes office on this day in 1913. Known for his right-wing nationalist beliefs and his strong Catholic faith, Poincare served as France's prime minister and foreign secretary before being elected to the presidency. A native of France's Lorraine region, lost to Germany in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, he bitterly hated and feared Germany. As prime minister in the years before World War I, Poincare worked to strengthen France's alliances with both Britain and Russia. While Poincare was convinced that the system of alliances in Europe would preserve the balance of power and avert a war, in reality the solidification of the Triple Entente (an alliance among France, Britain and Russia) in the years before 1914 made Germany increasingly nervous and only intensified the atmosphere of tension that would soon explode into world war. During the war, Poincare fought to keep a spirit of strong national unity alive and urged France's military and civilian population alike to stand firm against the onslaught of the German enemy. In the spirit of this unity, Poincare appointed his liberal nemesis, Georges Clemenceau, as prime minister in 1917. Though the two men despised each other, they shared a hard-line attitude towards Germany and fought together for strong penalties for the losing nations at the Versailles peace conference, held in Paris in 1919. Angered by what he saw as excessive leniency towards Germany in the final Versailles treaty, Poincare declined to stand for reelection and returned to the Senate in 1920. He was again appointed prime minister in 1922. In this post, he enforced the payment of German reparations; when the struggling country defaulted, he sent French troops to seize the industrial zones of the Ruhr Valley in January 1923. Poincare stepped down with the victory of a left-wing coalition in 1924, but returned to the post of prime minister in 1926. He would head two more ministries until 1929, when he retired from government service for health reasons. Poincare died in 1934.
Feb 18, 1930: Pluto discovered Pluto, once believed to be the ninth planet, is discovered at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, by astronomer Clyde W. Tombaugh. The existence of an unknown ninth planet was first proposed by Percival Lowell, who theorized that wobbles in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune were caused by the gravitational pull of an unknown planetary body. Lowell calculated the approximate location of the hypothesized ninth planet and searched for more than a decade without success. However, in 1929, using the calculations of Powell and W.H. Pickering as a guide, the search for Pluto was resumed at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona. On February 18, 1930, Tombaugh discovered the tiny, distant planet by use of a new astronomic technique of photographic plates combined with a blink microscope. His finding was confirmed by several other astronomers, and on March 13, 1930--the anniversary of Lowell's birth and of William Hershel's discovery of Uranus--the discovery of Pluto was publicly announced. With a surface temperature estimated at approximately -360 Fahrenheit, Pluto was appropriately given the Roman name for the god of the underworld in Greek mythology. Pluto's average distance from the sun is nearly four billion miles, and it takes approximately 248 years to complete one orbit. It also has the most elliptical and tilted orbit of any planet, and at its closest point to the sun it passes inside the orbit of Neptune, the eighth planet. After its discovery, some astronomers questioned whether Pluto had sufficient mass to affect the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. In 1978, James Christy and Robert Harrington discovered Pluto's only known moon, Charon, which was determined to have a diameter of 737 miles to Pluto's 1,428 miles. Together, it was thought that Pluto and Charon formed a double-planet system, which was of ample enough mass to cause wobbles in Uranus' and Neptune's orbits. In August 2006, however, the International Astronomical Union announced that Pluto would no longer be considered a planet, due to new rules that said planets must "clear the neighborhood around its orbit." Since Pluto's oblong orbit overlaps that of Neptune, it was disqualified.
Feb 18, 1943: Nazis arrest White Rose resistance leaders Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie, the leaders of the German youth group Weisse Rose (White Rose), are arrested by the Gestapo for opposing the Nazi regime. The White Rose was composed of university (mostly medical) students who spoke out against Adolf Hitler and his regime. The founder, Hans Scholl, was a former member of Hitler Youth who grew disenchanted with Nazi ideology once its real aims became evident. As a student at the University of Munich in 1940-41, he met two Roman Catholic men of letters who redirected his life. Turning from medicine to religion, philosophy, and the arts, Scholl gathered around him like-minded friends who also despised the Nazis, and the White Rose was born. During the summer of 1942, Scholl and a friend composed four leaflets, which exposed and denounced Nazi and SS atrocities, including the extermination of Jews and Polish nobility, and called for resistance to the regime. The literature was peppered with quotations from great writers and thinkers, from Aristotle to Goethe, and called for the rebirth of the German university. It was aimed at an educated elite within Germany. The risks involved in such an enterprise were enormous. The lives of average civilians were monitored for any deviation from absolute loyalty to the state. Even a casual remark critical of Hitler or the Nazis could result in arrest by the Gestapo, the regime's secret police. Yet the students of the White Rose (the origin of the group's name is uncertain; possibly, it came from the picture of the flower on their leaflets) risked all, motivated purely by idealism, the highest moral and ethical principles, and sympathy for their Jewish neighbors and friends. (Despite the risks, Hans' sister, Sophie, a biology student at her brother's university, begged to participate in the activities of the White Rose when she discovered her brother's covert operation.) On February 18, 1943, Hans and Sophie left a suitcase filled with copies of yet another leaflet in the main university building. The leaflet stated, in part: "The day of reckoning has come, the reckoning of our German youth with the most abominable tyranny our people has ever endured. In the name of the entire German people we demand of Adolf Hitler's state the return of personal freedom, the most precious treasure of the Germans which he cunningly has cheated us out of." The pair were spotted by a janitor and reported to the Gestapo and arrested. Turned over to Hitler's "People's Court," basically a kangaroo court for dispatching dissidents quickly, the Scholls, along with another White Rose member who was caught, were sentenced to death. They were beheaded--a punishment reserved for "political traitors"--on February 23, but not before Hans Scholl proclaimed "Long live freedom!"
Feb 18, 2011: Green River serial killer pleads guilty to 49th murder On this day in 2011, in a Kent, Washington, courtroom, Gary Leon Ridgway pleads guilty to the 1982 aggravated, first-degree murder of his 49th victim, 20-year-old Rebecca Marrero. Marrero’s remains were found in December 2010, decades after her murder, in a ravine near Auburn, Washington. After entering his guilty plea, the 62-year-old Ridgway received his 49th life sentence without the possibility of parole and returned to the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, where he was already serving 48 consecutive life sentences, one for each of the other women he killed. In the 1980s, residents of Washington State were terrorized by the so-called Green River Killer, whose first five victims’ bodies were discovered in or near the Green River in King County (whose largest city is Seattle) in the summer of 1982. The strangled bodies of more victims soon appeared around King County; all were women, most of them young and many of them prostitutes, runaways and drug users. Ridgway, a thrice-married truck painter from Auburn, became a suspect after one of the victims was spotted getting into his truck. However, when questioned by police, he denied any knowledge of the slayings and passed a 1984 polygraph test. In 2001, he was finally arrested after DNA evidence (a technology not available when he began committing his crimes) connected him to some of the killings. In a controversial 2003 plea deal, Ridgway admitted to the murders of 48 women between 1982 and 1998, and prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty against him if he cooperated with police in locating the remains of dozens of his victims. Ridgway reportedly claimed to have murdered more than 60 women in King County, although authorities at the time could only find sufficient evidence to link him to the 48 slayings. (Ridgway’s plea deal was limited to murders in King County; if, in the future, he is linked to unsolved killings in other counties or states, he could be eligible for the death penalty.) Ridgway told authorities he began to think of murdering prostitutes as his career, and did it “because he hated them, didn't want to pay them for sex, and because he knew he could kill as many as he wanted without getting caught,” according to The Seattle Times. The serial killer said he picked up women off the street, strangled them in his home or truck, and meticulously hid their bodies near natural landmarks (such as trees or fallen logs) in an attempt to keep track of them. At the time of his 49th conviction, Ridgway had been linked to more murders than any other convicted serial killer in U.S. history.
Here's a more detailed look at events that transpired on this date throughout history:
1564 - The artist Michelanglelo died in Rome. 1685 - Robert Cavelier, Sieur de LaSalle established Fort St. Louis at Matagorda Bay, and thus formed the basis for France's claim to Texas. 1735 - The first opera performed in America. The work was "Flora" (or "Hob in the Well") was presented in Charleston, SC. 1841 - The first continuous filibuster in the U.S. Senate began. It lasted until March 11th. 1861 - In Montgomery, AL, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as the President of the Confederate States. 1885 - Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" was published in the U.S. for the first time. 1913 - The famous French painting "Nude Descending a Staircase", by the French artist, Marcel Duchamp, was displayed at an "Armory Show" in New York City. 1930 - Elm Farm Ollie became the first cow to fly in an airplane. 1930 - The planet Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh. The discovery was made as a result of photographs taken in January 1930. 1932 - Sonja Henie won her 6th world women’s figure skating title in Montreal, Canada. 1938 - "The Big Broadcast of 1938" was released. 1949 - "Yours Truly Johnny Dollar" debuted on CBS radio. 1952 - Greece and Turkey became members of NATO. 1953 - "Bwana Devil" opened. It was the first three-dimensional feature. 1953 - Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz signed a contract worth $8,000,000 to continue the "I Love Lucy" TV show through 1955. 1964 - "Any Wednesday" opened at the Music Box Theatre in New York City. The play established Gene Hackman as an actor. 1970 - The Chicago Seven defendants were found innocent of conspiring to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic national convention. 1972 - The California Supreme Court struck down the state's death penalty. 1977 - The space shuttle Enterprise went on its maiden "flight" sitting on top of a Boeing 747. 1984 - Reed Larson (Detroit Red Wings) got two assists to become the highest scoring, American-born player in the history of the National Hockey League. Larson broke the record by scoring his 432nd point. 1987 - The executives of the Girl Scout movement decided to change the color of the scout uniform from the traditional Girl Scout green to the newer Girl Scout blue. 1998 - In Russia, money shortages resulted in the shutting down of three plants that produced nuclear weapons. 1998 - In Nevada, two white separatists were arrested and accused of plotting a bacterial attack on subways in New York City. 2000 - The U.S. Commerce Department reported a deficit in trade goods and services of $271.3 billion for 1999. It was the largest calender-year trade gap in U.S. history. 2001 - NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt, Sr., was killed in a crash during the Daytona 500 race. 2001 - FBI agent Robert Philip Hanssen was arrested and accused of spying for Russia for more than 15 years. He later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. 2003 - In South Korea, at least 120 people were killed when a man lit a fire on a subway train. 2006 - American Shani Davis won the men's 1,000-meter speedskating in Turin. He was the first black athlete to win an individual gold medal in Winter Olympic history.
1546 Martin Luther, German leader of the Protestant Reformation, died. 1564 Michelangelo Buonarotti, Italian painter, sculptor, and architect, died. 1885 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain was published. 1930 Pluto, the ninth planet in the solar system, was discovered by American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh. 1953 The first 3-D movie, Bwana Devil, opened in New York. 2001 FBI agent Robert Philip Hanssen was arrested and charged with spying for Russia. 2001 Dale Earnhardt, Sr., died from injuries sustained at the Daytona 500.
The following links are to web sites that were used to complete this blog entry:
http://www.historyorb.com/today/events.php
http://on-this-day.com/onthisday/thedays/alldays/feb18.htm
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history
http://www.infoplease.com/dayinhistory
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