Today in history

[dlbpharmd]

August 22

1350 John II, also known as John the Good, succeeds Philip VI as king of France.

1485 Henry Tudor defeats Richard III at Bosworth. This victory establishes the Tudor dynasty in England and ends the War of the Roses.

1642 Civil war in England begins as Charles I declares war on Parliament at Nottingham.

1717 The Austrian army forces the Turkish army out of Belgrade, ending the Turkish revival in the Balkans.

1777 With the approach of General Benedict Arnold's army, British Colonel Barry St. Ledger abandons Fort Stanwix and returns to Canada.

1849 The Portuguese governor of Macao, China, is assassinated because of his anti-Chinese policies.

1911 The Mona Lisa, the famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci, is stolen from the Louvre in Paris, where it had hung for more than 100 years. It is recovered in 1913.

1922 Michael Collins, Irish politician, is killed in an ambush.

1942 Brazil declares war on the Axis powers. She is the only South American country to send combat troops into Europe.

1945 Soviet troops land at Port Arthur and Dairen on the Kwantung Peninsula in China.

1945 Conflict in Vietnam begins when a group of Free French parachute into southern Indochina, in repsonse to a successful coup by communist guerilla Ho Chi Minh.

1983 Benigno Aquino, the only real opposition on Ferdinand Marcos’ reign as president of the Philippines, is gunned down at Manila Airport.

[Damelon]

Aug. 22, 565: 'What's That Loglike Thingie Out in Loch Ness?'

565: The Irish monk St. Columba is said to have made the first sighting of the Loch Ness "monster" on this day while helping establish Christianity in the wilds of Scotland.
The legends, folk tales, accurate observations or complete hoaxes -- your choice -- that have come down to us as "Nessie" have bedeviled zoologists and everyone else who has tried to establish the existence of this cryptid over the centuries.
Descriptions of Nessie have depended almost solely on visual sightings and film and photographic evidence, which is of dubious quality at best. She (if that's what the monster is) has been variously identified as a plesiosaur, an exceptionally large eel, a long-necked seal and even a swimming elephant.
While most photos, eyewitness sketches and some physical evidence seem to suggest the plesiosaur, paleontologists believe that the aquatic dinosaur was a cold-blooded reptile requiring much warmer water than is found in Loch Ness, where the average temperature is around 42 degrees Fahrenheit.
Serious searching for Nessie began in the mid-20th century, and a number of technologies -- cameras, submersibles, sonar -- have been employed since, all in vain. The Loch Ness monster remains as elusive, and as integral to the Scottish tourist industry, as ever.

[dlbpharmd]

August 23

1244 Turks expel the crusaders under Frederick II from Jerusalem.

1305 Scottish patriot William Wallace is hanged, drawn, beheaded, and quartered in London.

1541 Jacques Cartier lands near Quebec on his third voyage to North America.

1711 A British attempt to invade Canada by sea fails.

1775 King George III of England refuses the American colonies' offer of peace and declares them in open rebellion.

1821 After 11 years of war, Spain grants Mexican independence as a constitutional monarchy.

1863 Union batteries cease their first bombardment of Fort Sumter, leaving it a mass of rubble but still unconquered by the Northern besiegers.

1900 Booker T. Washington forms the National Negro Business League in Boston, Massachusetts.

1902 Fanny Farmer, among the first to emphasize the relationship of diet to health, opens her School of Cookery in Boston.

1914 The Emperor of Japan declares war on Germany.

1926 American film star Rudolph Valentino dies, causing world-wide hysteria and a number of suicides.

1927 Immigrant laborers Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are executed for a robbery they did not commit. Fifty years later, in 1977, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis establishes a memorial in the victims' honor.

1939 Joseph Stalin and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop sign a non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Germany, freeing Hitler to invade Poland and Stalin to invade Finland.

1942 German forces begin an assault on the major Soviet industrial city of Stalingrad.

1944 German SS engineers begin placing explosive charges around the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

1950 Up to 77,000 members of the U.S. Army Organized Reserve Corps are called involuntarily to active duty to fight the Korean War.

[Damelon]

Aug. 23, 1899: First Ship-to-Shore Signal to a U.S. Station

1899: The first ship-to-shore wireless message in U.S. history is sent by Lightship No. 70 to a coastal receiving station at the Cliff House in San Francisco.
"Sherman is sighted," the message said, referring to the troopship Sherman, which was returning a San Francisco regiment from the battlefields of the Spanish-American War. It marked the first use outside England of this technology, still in its infancy.
The name most closely associated with the invention of wireless telegraphy -- what we now know simply as radio -- is Guglielmo Marconi, but as it is with so many technologies, there were a number of hands stirring the pot, chief among them Heinrich Hertz, Alexander Popov and Nicola Tesla. Marconi's claim to primacy was no doubt helped by the fact that he obtained the British patent for wireless in 1896, when Britannia still ruled the waves.
Radio communication at sea quickly evolved into an indispensable safety aid for mariners. By the early 20th century ships were able to communicate with each other as well as with shore-based stations. The Japanese navy used radio communication to scout the Russian fleet during the Battle of Tsushima in 1905, a crushing Japanese victory and a turning point in the Russo-Japanese War.
The failure of radio communication played a major role in the Titanic disaster in 1912. The lone radio operator aboard the Californian had switched off his set for the night (as was common aboard vessels carrying a single operator) and never received the Titanic's distress signals. Had someone been at his post, the Californian -- by far the closest ship to the stricken liner -- could have arrived soon enough to save many of the lives that were lost.

[dlbpharmd]

August 24

79 Mount Vesuvius erupts destroying Pompeii, Stabiae, Herculaneum and other smaller settlements.

410 German barbarians sack Rome.

1542 In South America, Gonzalo Pizarro returns to the mouth of the Amazon River after having sailed the length of the great river as far as the Andes Mountains.

1572 Some 50,000 people are put to death in the ‘Massacre of St. Bartholomew’ as Charles IX of France attempts to rid the country of Huguenots.

1780 King Louis XVI abolishes torture as a means to get suspects to confess.

1814 British troops under General Robert Ross capture Washington, D.C., which they set on fire in retaliation for the American burning of the parliament building in York (Toronto), the capital of Upper Canada.

1847 Charlotte Bronte, using the pseudonym Currer Bell, sends a manuscript of Jane Eyre to her publisher in London.

1869 Cornelius Swarthout of Troy, New York, patents the waffle iron.

1891 Thomas Edison files a patent for the motion picture camera.

1894 Congress passes the first graduated income tax law, which is declared unconstitutional the next year.

1896 Thomas Brooks is shot and killed by an unknown assailant begining a six year feud with the McFarland family.

1912 By an act of Congress, Alaska is given a territorial legislature of two houses.

1942 In the battle of the Eastern Solomons, the third carrier-versus-carrier battle of the war, U.S. naval forces defeat a Japanese force attempting to screen reinforcements for the Guadalcanal fighting.

1948 Edith Mae Irby becomes the first African-American student to attend the University of Arkansas.

1954 Congress outlaws the Communist Party in the United States.

1989 Pete Rose banned permanently from baseball for gambling.

[Cail]

Wow.

Rose was banned that long ago?

Sheesh......

[Damelon]

Aug. 24, 1995: Say Hello to Windows 95

1995: Windows 95 is released.
While it wasn't Microsoft's first operating system based on a graphical user interface, Windows 95 represented the biggest step away from the far less user-friendly MS-DOS system. What Windows 95 managed to do was consolidate DOS and Windows software behind a clean desktop that, to borrow from the unfortunate language of marketing, enhanced the user experience.
Windows 95's technical specs may seem puny to the 21st-century eye, but the OS served as the platform for the introduction of the Internet Explorer web browser. IE soon surpassed, then buried, Netscape Navigator to become the most popular browser out there -- thanks, in part, to some pretty slick maneuvering by Microsoft.
Like everything else in the software world, where planned obsolescence is even more bald-faced than in the automobile industry, Windows 95 was a mere way station on the road to bigger and better things. Windows 98 came along three years later, and then Windows 2000, XP and Vista.
Microsoft formally ended its support for Windows 95 at the end of 2001.

[dlbpharmd]

August 25

357 Julian Caesar defeats the Alamanni at Strousbourg in Gaul.

1346 Edward III of England defeats Philip VI's army at the Battle of Crecy in France.

1758 The Prussian army defeats the invading Russians at the Battle of Zorndorf.

1765 In protest over the stamp tax, American colonists sack and burn the home of Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson.

1830 The "Tom Thumb" steam locomotive runs its famous race with a horse-drawn car. The horse wins because the engine, which had been ahead, breaks down.

1862 Union and Confederate troops skirmish at Waterloo Bridge, Virginia, during the Second Bull Run Campaign.

1864 Confederate General A.P. Hill pushes back Union General Winfield Scott Hancock from Reams Station where his army has spent several days destroying railroad tracks.

1875 "Captain" Matthew Webb becomes the first man to swim across the English Channel.

1916 The National Park Service is established as part of the Department of the Interior.

1921 The United States, which never ratified the Versailles Treaty ending World War I, finally signs a peace treaty with Germany.

1925 A. Phillip Randolph organizes the Sleeping Car Porters' Union.

1940 The first parachute wedding ceremony is performed by Rev. Homer Tomlinson at the New York City World's Fair for Arno Rudolphi and Ann Hayward. The minister, bride and groom, best man, maid of honor and four musicians were all suspended from parachutes.

1941 British and Soviet forces enter Iran, opening up a route to supply the Soviet Union.

1943 The Allies complete the occupation of New Georgia.

1944 Paris is liberated from German occupation by Free French Forces under General Jacques LeClerc.

1989 NASA scientists receive stuning photographs of Neptune and its moons from Voyager 2.

[dlbpharmd]

August 26

1017 Turks defeat the Byzantine army under Emperor Romanus IV at Manikert, Eastern Turkey.

1429 Joan of Arc makes a triumphant entry into Paris.

1789 The Constituent Assembly in Versailles, France, approves the final version of the Declaration of Human Rights.

1862 Confederate General Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson encircles the Union Army under General John Pope at the Second Battle of Bull Run.

1883 The Indonesian island of Krakatoa erupts in the largest explosion recorded in history, heard 2,200 miles away in Madagascar. The resulting destruction sends volcanic ash up 50 miles into the atmosphere and kills almost 36,000 people--both on the island itself and from the resulting 131-foot tidal waves that obliterate 163 villages on the shores of nearby Java and Sumatra.

1920 The 19th Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, giving women the right to vote.

1943 The United States recognizes the French Committee of National Liberation.

1957 Ford Motor Company reveals the Edsel, its latest luxury car.

[dlbpharmd]

August 27

1626 The Danes are crushed by the Catholic League in Germany, marking the end of Danish intervention in European wars.

1776 The Americans are defeated by the British at the Battle of Long Island, New York.

1793 Maximilien Robespierre is elected to the Committee of Public Safety in Paris, France.

1813 The Allies defeat Napoleon at the Battle of Dresden.

1861 Union troops make an amphibious landing at Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

1862 As the Second Battle of Bull Run rages, Confederate soldiers attack Loudoun County, Virginia.

1881 New York state's Pure Food Law goes into effect to prevent "the adulteration of food or drugs."

1894 The United States congress passes an income tax law as part of a general tariff act, but it is found unconstitutional.

1910 Thomas Edison demonstrates the first "talking" pictures--using a phonograph--in his New Jersey laboratory.

1912 Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan of the Apes first appears in a magazine.

1916 Italy declares war on Germany.

1928 Fifteen nations sign the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact, outlawing war and calling for the settlement of disputes through arbitration. Forty-seven other countries eventually sign the pact.

1941 The Prime Minister of Japan, Fumimaro Konoye, issues an invitation for a meeting with President Roosevelt.

1945 B-29 Superfortress bombers begin to drop supplies into Allied prisoner of war camps in China.

1963 Cambodia severs ties with South Vietnam.

1979 Lord Mountbatten is killed by an Irish terrorist bomb in his sail boat in Sligo, Ireland.

1989 Chuck Berry performs his tune Johnny B. Goode for NASA staff in celebration of Voyager II's encounter with the planet Neptune.

[Damelon]

Aug. 27, 1859: America Enters the Oil Bidness

1859: Drillers strike oil near Titusville, Pennsylvania. It becomes the first commercially viable oil well in the United States, the prototype for future oil well construction, and marks the birth of the U.S. petroleum industry.
That the land around Crawford County held plenty of oil was already well-known. What was lacking was an effective method for extracting the crude and getting it to market. Enter Edwin Drake, who had spent the previous decade locating oil deposits in the area for the Seneca Oil Company.
Frustrated by the limitations of existing methods of extraction, as well as problems with water seepage, Drake decided on a departure from the usual trench-digging technology. He turned to the methods used by salt-well drillers, which involved sinking a shaft straight to the source while providing more structural integrity. He also devised the drive pipe, made of segmented cast iron, as a boring tool.
Drake's crew struck bedrock at 32 feet, and the drilling stalled, earning sarcastic catcalls from interested observers. Even after specialized drilling tools were employed, progress remained slow -- so slow in fact that the locals started calling the well "Drake's Folly." Drake, however, persevered and, finally, at a depth of 69.5 feet, he struck oil.
In the beginning, Drake's well pumped only around 25 barrels of crude a day, and production actually fell off for a time. But the methods he had employed to get his well operational proved so successful that other drillers immediately began copying Drake's model.
Drake, unfortunately, didn't profit from his ingenuity. A resourceful oil driller he may have been, but he was no businessman. He failed to patent his drilling invention, which passed into other hands, and the money that he did make from the early extraction and marketing of oil was lost in bad speculation during the Civil War. He died in 1880, impoverished and living off an annuity provided by Pennsylvania's state government: certainly well known, but hardly well rewarded.

[dlbpharmd]

August 28

1676 Indian chief King Philip, also known as Metacom, is killed by English soldiers, ending the war between Indians and colonists.

1862 Mistakenly believing the Confederate Army to be in retreat, Union General John Pope attacks, beginning the Battle of Groveten. Both sides sustain heavy casualties.

1914 Three German cruisers are sunk by ships of the Royal Navy in the Battle of Heligoland Bight, the first major naval battle of World War I.

1938 The first degree given to a ventriloquist's dummy is awarded to Charlie McCarthy--Edgar Bergen's wooden partner. The honorary degree, "Master of Innuendo and Snappy Comeback," is presented on radio by Ralph Dennis, the dean of the School of Speech at Northwestern University.

1941 The German U-boat U-570 is captured by the British and renamed Graph

1944 German forces in Toulon and Marseilles, France, surrender to the Allies.

1945 Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-Tung arrives in Chunking to confer with Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek in a futile effort to avert civil war.

1963 One of the largest demonstrations in the history of the United States, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, takes place and reaches its climax at the base of the Lincoln Memorial when Dr. Martin Luther King delivers his "I have a dream" speech.

1965 The Viet Cong are routed in the Mekong Delta by U.S. forces, with more than 50 killed.

[Damelon]

Aug. 28, 1845: Scientific American, the Magazine for the Rest of Us

1845: Scientific American, the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States, makes its debut.
Founded by Rufus Porter, a prolific inventor as well as a pretty fair painter and the scion of a wealthy New England family, Scientific American was originally printed as a single-page newsletter with a demonstrated liking for news coming out of the U.S. Patent Office.
The first edition focused on the improving the quality of the American railroad passenger car . It included this passage to whet the appetite of potential travelers:
Let any person contrast the awkward and uncouth cars of '35 with the superbly splendid long cars now running on several of the eastern roads, and he will find it difficult to convey to a third party, a correct idea of the vast extent of the improvement. Some of the most elegant cars of this class, and which are of a capacity to accommodate from sixty to eighty passengers, and run with a steadiness hardly equaled by a steamboat in still water, are manufactured by Davenport & Bridges, at their establishment in Cambridgeport, Mass.
Today, Scientific American enjoys a solid reputation despite its broad target audience. While peer-reviewed journals like Science and Nature circulate widely in the professional scientific community, Scientific American's typical reader is a card-carrying (if educated) member of the general public.
Now owned by German-based publisher Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, Scientific American publishes 15 foreign language editions, with a worldwide circulation of more than one million. The magazine's website has been online since 1996.

[dlbpharmd]

August 29

70 The Temple of Jerusalem burns after a nine-month Roman siege.

1526 Ottoman Suleiman the Magnificent crushes a Hungarian army under Lewis II at the Battle of Mohacs.

1533 In Peru, the Inca chief Atahualpa is executed by orders of Francisco Pizarro, although the chief had already paid his ransom.

1776 General George Washington retreats during the night from Long Island to New York City.

1793 Slavery is abolished in Santo Domingo.

1862 Union General John Pope's army is defeated by a smaller Confederate force at the Second Battle of Bull Run.

1882 Australia defeats England in cricket for the first time. The following day a obituary appears in the Sporting Times addressed to the British team.

1942 The American Red Cross announces that Japan has refused to allow safe conduct for the passage of ships with supplies for American prisoners of war.

1945 U.S. airborne troops are landed in transport planes at Atsugi airfield, southwest of Tokyo, beginning the occupation of Japan.

1952 In the largest bombing raid of the Korean War, 1,403 planes of the Far East Air Force bomb Pyongyang, North Korea.

1992 Thousands of Germans demonstrate against a wave of racist attacks aimed at immigrants.

[dlbpharmd]

August 30

30 BC Cleopatra VII, Queen of Egypt, commits suicide.

1617 Rosa de Lima of Peru becomes the first American saint to be canonized.

1721 The Peace of Nystad ends the Second Northern War between Sweden and Russia, giving Russia considerably more power in the Baltic region.

1781 The French fleet arrives in the Chesapeake Bay to aid the American Revolution.

1813 Creek Indians massacre over 500 whites at Fort Mims Alabama.

1860 The first British tramway is inaugurated at Birkenhead by an American, George Francis Train.

1861 Union General John Fremont declares martial law throughout Missouri and makes his own emancipation proclamation to free slaves in the state. President Lincoln overrules the general.

1892 The Moravia, a passenger ship arriving from Germany, brings cholera to the United States.

1932 Nazi leader Hermann Goering is elected president of the Reichstag.

1944 Ploesti, the center of the Rumanian oil industry, falls to Soviet troops.

1957 In an effort to stall the Civil Rights Act of 1957 from passing, Senator Strom Thurmond (D-S.C.) filibusters for over 24 hours. The bill passed, but Thurmond's filibuster becomes the longest in Senate history.

1961 President John F. Kennedy appoints General Lucius D. Clay as his personal representative in Berlin.

1983 Lieutenant Colonel Guion S. Bluford, Jr., becomes the first African-American astronaut to travel in space.

[dlbpharmd]

August 31

1303 The War of Vespers in Sicily ends with an agreement between Charles of Valois, who invaded the country, and Frederick, the ruler of Sicily.

1521 Cortes captures the city of Tenochtitlan, Mexico, and sets it on fire.

1756 The British at Fort William Henry, New York, surrender to Louis Montcalm of France.

1802 Captain Merriwether Lewis leaves Pittsburgh to meet up with Captain William Clark and begin their trek to the Pacific Ocean.

1864 At the Democratic convention in Chicago, General George B. McClellan is nominated for president.

1919 The Communist Labor Party is founded in Chicago, with the motto, "Workers of the world unite!"

1928 Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera opens in Berlin.

1940 Joseph Avenol steps down as Secretary-General of the League of Nations.

1942 The British army under General Bernard Law Montgomery defeats Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps in the Battle of Alam Halfa in Egypt.

1944 The British Eighth Army penetrates the German Gothic Line in Italy.

1949 Six of the 16 surviving Union veterans of the Civil War attend the last-ever encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic, held in Indianapolis, Indiana.

1951 The 1st Marine Division begins its attack on Bloody Ridge in Korea. The four-day battle results in 2,700 Marine casualties.

1961 A concrete wall replaces the barbed wire fence that separates East and West Germany, it will be called the Berlin wall.

1969 Dlbpharmd born.

1994 The Irish Republican Army (IRA) announces a "complete cessation of military operations," opening the way to a political settlement in Ireland for the first time in a quarter of a century.

1997 Diana, Princess of Wales, killed in early morning car accident in Paris, France.

[dlbpharmd]

September 1

1676 Nathaniel Bacon leads an uprising against English Governor William Berkeley at Jamestown, Virginia, resulting in the settlement being burned to the ground. Bacon's Rebellion came in response to the governor's repeated refusal to defend the colonists against the Indians.

1773 Phillis Wheatley, a slave from Boston, publishes a collection of poetry, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, in London.

1807 Aaron Burr is arrested in Mississippi for complicity in a plot to establish a Southern empire in Louisiana and Mexico.

1821 William Becknell leads a group of traders from Independence, Mo., toward Santa Fe on what would become the Santa Fe Trail.

1836 Protestant missionary Dr. Marcus Whitman leads a party to Oregon. His wife, Narcissa, is one of the first white women to travel the Oregon Trail. The Oregon Trail emigrants who chose to follow Stephen Meek thought his shortcut would save weeks of hard travel. Instead, it brought them even greater misery.

1864 Confederate forces under General John Bell Hood evacuate Atlanta in anticipation of the arrival of Union General William T. Sherman's troops.

1870 The Prussian army crushes the French at Sedan, the last battle of the Franco-Prussian War.

1876 The Ottomans inflict a decisive defeat on the Serbs at Aleksinac.

1882 The first Labor Day is observed in New York City by the Carpenters and Joiners Union.

1894 By an act of Congress, Labor Day is declared a national holiday.

1902 The Austro-Hungarian army is called into the city of Agram to restore the peace as Serbs and Croats clash.

1904 Helen Keller graduates with honors from Radcliffe College.

1905 Alberta and Saskatchewan become Canadian provinces.

1916 Bulgaria declares war on Rumania as the First World War expands.

1923 An earthquake levels the Japanese cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, killing 300,000.

1939 Germany invades Poland, beginning World War II in Europe.

1969 Military officers led by Muammar al-Gaddafi stage a bloodless coup in Libya.

1970 Dr. Hugh Scott of Washington, D.C. becomes the first African-American superintendent of schools in a major U.S. city.

[dlbpharmd]

September 3

1189 After the death of Henry II, Richard Lionheart is crowned king of England.

1260 Mamelukes under Sultan Qutuz defeat Mongols and Crusaders at Ain Jalut.

1346 Edward III of England begins the siege of Calais, along the coast of France.

1650 The English under Cromwell defeat a superior Scottish army under David Leslie at the Battle of Dunbar.

1777 The American flag (stars & stripes), approved by Congress on June 14th, is carried into battle for the first time by a force under General William Maxwell.

1783 The Treaty of Paris is signed by Great Britain and the new United States, formally bringing the American Revolution to an end.

1838 Frederick Douglass escapes slavery disguised as a sailor. He would later write The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass, his memoirs about slave life.

1855 General William Harney defeats Little Thunder's Brule Sioux at the Battle of Blue Water in Nebraska.

1895 The first professional American football game is played in Latrobe, Pennsylvania between the Latrobe Young Men's Christian Association and the Jeannette Athletic Club. Latrobe wins 12-0.

1914 The French capital is moved from Paris to Bordeaux as the Battle of the Marne begins.

1916 The German Somme front is broken by an Allied offensive.

1918 The United States recognizes the nation of Czechoslovakia.

1939 After Germany ignores Great Britain's ultimatum to stop the invasion of Poland, Great Britain declares war on Germany, marking the beginning of World War II in Europe.

1939 The British passenger ship Athenia is sunk by a German submarine in the Atlantic, with 30 Americans among those killed. American Secretary of State Cordell Hull warns Americans to avoid travel to Europe unless absolutely necessary.

1943 British troops invade Italy, landing at Calabria.

1944 The U.S. Seventh Army captures Lyons, France.

1945 General Tomoyuki Yamashita, the Japanese commander of the Philippines, surrenders to Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright at Baguio.

1967 Lieutenant General Ngyuen Van Thieu is elected president of South Vietnam.

1969 Ho Chi Minh, the leader of North Vietnam, dies.

[emotional leper]

August 31

...

1944 The British Eighth Army penetrates the German Gothic Line in Italy.

...

1985 Emotional Leper, the Infernal Spawn of Evil, is spawned in a series of Dark Rituals involving a Swamp.

I wish I'd done some penetrating of the Gothic Line on my birthday, but, sigh.

Oh well.

[dlbpharmd]

September 4

1260 At the Battle of Montaperto in Italy, the Tuscan Ghibellines, who support the emperor, defeat the Florentine Guelfs, who support papal power.

1479 After four years of war, Spain agrees to allow a Portuguese monopoly of trade along Africa's west coast and Portugal acknowledges Spain's rights in the Canary Islands.

1781 Los Angeles, first an Indian village Yangma, is founded by Spanish decree.

1787 Louis XVI of France recalls parliament.

1790 Jacques Necker is forced to resign as finance minister in France.

1820 Czar Alexander declares that Russian influence in North America extends as far south as Oregon and closes Alaskan waters to foreigners.

1862 Robert E. Lee's Confederate army invades Maryland, starting the Antietam Campaign.

1870 A republic is proclaimed in Paris and a government of national defense is formed.

1881 The Edison electric lighting system goes into operation as a generator serving 85 paying customers is switched on.

1886 Elusive Apache leader Geronimo surrenders to General Nelson A. Miles at Skeleton Canyon, Ariz.

1893 Beatrix Potter sends a note to her governess' son with the first drawing of Peter Rabbit, Cottontail and others. The Tale of Petter Rabbit is published eight years later.

1915 The U.S. military places Haiti under martial law to quell a rebellion in its capital Port-au-Prince.

1941 German submarine U-652 fires at the U.S. destroyer Greer off Iceland, beginning an undeclared shooting war.

1942 Soviet planes bomb Budapest in the war's first air raid on the Hungarian capital.

1943 Allied troops capture Lae-Salamaua, in New Guinea.

1944 British troops liberate Antwerp, Belgium.

1945 The American flag is raised on Wake Island after surrender ceremonies there.

1951 The first transcontinental television broadcast in America is carried by 94 stations.

1957 Arkansas governor Orval Faubus calls out the National Guard to bar African-American students from entering a Little Rock high school.