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The feudal barons of the Middle Ages, the economic predecessors of the capitalists of our day, declared all wars. And their miserable serfs fought all the battles. The poor, ignorant serfs had been taught to revere their masters; to believe that when their masters declared war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another and to cut one another's throats for the profit and glory of the lords and barons who held them in contempt.
Eugene V Debs, American anti-war campaigner and presidential candidate; from the pro-peace speech at a Socialist Party convention in Canton, Ohio, USA on June 16, 1918, that resulted in his being sentenced to ten years in prison on September 12, 1918  

Democracy is the theory that holds that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
HL Mencken, American political commentator, born on September 12, 1880

Great Wall of China

Highly recommended:
Folklore of World Holidays
by Margaret Read MacDonald

The Great Wall of China : From History to Myth

The Great Wall of China

The Great Wall of Confinement: The Chinese Prison Camp Through Contemporary Fiction and Reportage

The Great Wall of China

The Encyclopedia of Eastern Mythology

 

Asian Mythology

In Search of Zarathustra

The Zoroastrian Faith

 

The Edible Asian Garden

The Da Vinci Hoax

Breaking The Da Vinci Code

Reading Lolita in Tehran

Internet Sacred Text Archive CD-ROM

The New Book of Goddesses & Heroines

The Spiral Dance
By Starhawk
20th Anniversary Edition

Encyclopedia of Ancient Asian Civilizations

Life in a Medieval Village

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For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire
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Goddess Day of Meng Jiangnu (Pumpkin Girl), China

"It was said that 2,000 years ago when Qin Shihuang (the First Emperor of the Qin) was building the Great Wall, a young [man] called Fan Xiliang was forced to work on the construction of the Great Wall even on his wedding day. Before Fan Xiliang went away, his bride, a girl named Meng Jiangnu, took her white jade hairpin and broke it into two halves and gave her husband one half as a token of love. Meng Jiangnu waited for her husband at home for five years but did not hear a word from him. One night, Meng Jiangnu had a bad dream. She dreamed that her husband was constantly yelling: 'Cold, cold!' She recalled that her husband was wearing very thin clothes. Very soon, she made some padded clothes and set off alone to look for Xiliang. After walking all the way on foot, crossing mountains and rivers, Meng Jiangnu finally got to the construction site of the Great Wall where she was told that her husband had died and was buried under the Great Wall. Hearing this sad news of the death of her beloved, she sat down at the foot of the Great Wall and started crying. She cried day and night, and her wailing made the wall fall. She finally saw her husband's bones under the wall . This made Qin Shihuang very angry, and he ordered Meng Jiangnu to be punished. When he saw the young lady, however, he was immediately attracted by her beauty. He asked her to marry him. Meng Jiangnu had to agree but asked for a grand funeral for her husband. After the funeral, she and Qin Shihuang went for a trip on the Bohai Sea. How could she marry the tyrant who had killed her husband? She could not, so she jumped into the sea unseen by the guards. Now on the shore of the Bohai Sea, beyond Shanhaiguan Pass there are two black rocky reefs. According to legend, the round one is Meng Jiangnu's tomb and the square one is her tomb tablet. Not far from her tomb, a temple was built on a small hill to commemorate the lady of chastity. Visitors to Shanhaiguan Pass should not miss the chance to see her 'tomb' and temple."   Source

"Meng Jiangnu was a pumpkin girl born from two different vines and united two families. Pumpkin soup is on the menu today. Eating of this soup reaffirms community spirit and ensures a good pumpkin harvest the next year. Pumpkin bread makes a good breakfast, especially when shared with family and friends on this day. Buttered squash is also good to enjoy on this day and how about some pie for dessert after dinner to bring sweetness to your relationships. Pumpkin magic can be done by carving a symbol of your needs into a pumpkin and lighting a candle inside the pumpkin so "pumpkin girl" can lend her energy to the situation and begin the healing process.
Just for the fun of it, here are some recipes to try out!

Curried Pumpkin-Apple Soup
1/4 cup butter
1 clove garlic1 onion
1 leek
1 large apple, peeled and chopped
1 tbsp curry powder
2 cups chopped fresh pumpkin
4 cups stock (1 use chicken or vegetable stock)
1 cup whipping cream
salt and pepper
apple wedges
 
Melt butter in saucepan. Saute garlic, onion, leek and apple. Stir in curry powder and cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Add pumpkin and stock. Bring to boil, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat and simmer until veggies are tender. Puree all in blender or food processor. Return to saucepan and stir in all of cream but 2 tablespoons. Season with salt and pepper. When serving garnish with fresh apple wedges, and pour a bit of cream over top. Looks pretty! Serves 6-8."

Source: The HearthStone ~ Ravenhold Calendar (also source of commemoration date)  

 

Day of Bel and Beltis, Babylonia
Sun God and Love Goddess.
Source: The Phoenix and Arabeth 1992 Calendar  

Feast day of Astraea (Star-maiden), ancient Greece

In Greek mythology, Astraea, or 'Star-maiden' was a daughter of Zeus and Themis and had the power to bestow wealth, victory, wisdom, and good luck. She and her mother were both personifications of justice. 

Astraea was the last of the immortals to live with humans during the Golden Age. As mankind became wicked, she was the last to stay on earth, ascending to heaven to take her final place among the stars in the constellation Virgo; the scales of justice she carried became the nearby constellation Libra. Astraea is also the symbol for the tarot card, Justice.
Source of date  

Deities of many cultures in the Book of Days

Greater Eleusinian Mysteries, ancient Greece (Sep 10 - 19)
Third day: the initiates walked to the sea at Phaleron and purified themselves in the water.

On the third day offerings are made, "also barley from a field of Eleusis".
John Lempriere (c. 1765 - February 1, 1824), Bibliotheca Classica or Classical Dictionary (1788), Hippocrene Books, 1986

Circensian games, ancient Rome  (Apr 12 - 19; Sep 4 - 19)

Ganesh Chaturthi (Hinduism; date varies annually, approx. Aug 20 to Sep 15)

Feast day of St Albeus, bishop and confessor

Feast day of St Ailbe (Albeus; Ailbhe) of Emly

Feast day of St Apollinaris
"A Franciscan missionary to Japan during the 17^th century, when Christianity was a capital offense. Soon after his arrival, he was jailed and spent over five years on death row, converting his jailers, ministering to other prisoners, and spreading word of Christianity. He was burned alive with other Franciscan prisoners 1622."
Source: Earth, Moon and Sky

Feast day of St Autonomus of Bithynia

Feast day of St Anonymus of Alcoholia

Feast day of St Curonotus

Feast day of St Feast day of St Eanswida of Folkestone
(Eanswide), virgin and abbess (Semilunar passion flower, Passiflora peltate, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)
Patronage includes animals with horns.

Feast day of St Francis of Saint Bonaventure

Feast day of St Guy of Anderlecht (The Poor Man of Anderlecht), confessor
"Born to poverty in Brussels, Belgium, he embraced his poverty as God's will. At one point he was given a chance to invest in a sea expedition that could have made him rich; when the ship sank he took it as a sign and walked all the way to Rome as penance for his greediness. He then walked to Jerusalem and worked as a guide to pilgrims, then returned to Brussels where he died of natural causes. Though he never joined any order or house, he vowed chastity and devoted most of his time to prayer and work as a sacristan. Patron of bachelors and sacristans."  
Source: Earth, Moon and Sky

Feast day of St Hieronides

Feast day of Blessed Juvenal Ancina

Feast day of St Macedonius

Feast day of the Most Holy Name of Mary

Feast day of St Peter Paul of Saint Claire

Feast day of Ss Peter, Paul and Mary

Feast day of Blessed Sacerdos

Feast day of Blessed Thomas Zumarraga and Mancius of Saint Thomas

Feast day of St Victoria Strata

Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days    Shop saints

Ginger Festival, at Daijin Shrine, Tokyo, Japan (Sep 11 - 21)

Celebration day for Oshùn, Voudon (Voodoo)   Source

Feast of San Gennaro, New York, USA (c. Sep 11 - 22)

Celebration of Gahambar Paitishahem, for Paitishahem the Corn-giver, Zoroastrian (Sep 12 - 16)
Celebrating the creation of the earth and the harvesting of the summer crops.

See also September 12 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)

National Revolution Day (1974), Ethiopia

Defenders Day, Maryland (United States)

Eleven Days of Global Unity (Sep 11 - 21 annually)

On which day of the week were you born? Find out here

1449 Lorenzo de Medici (d. 1492), Italian politician

1570 Henry Hudson (likely birth date; presumed to have died in 1611 somewhere in Hudson Bay, Canada), English sea explorer and navigator

The life and times of Henry Hudson, explorer and adventurer

Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements

1812 Richard March Hoe (d. 1886), inventor, industrialist

1818 Richard Gatling (d. 1903), inventor of the Gatling gun

1852 Herbert Henry Asquith, British Liberal Prime Minister

1880 HL Mencken (d. January 29, 1956), American journalist, satirist, and social critic, a cynic and a freethinker, known as the 'Sage of Baltimore' and the 'American Nietzsche'

1888 Maurice Chevalier (d. 1972), French actor

1891 Don Pedro Albizu Campos (d. 1965), advocate for Puerto Rican independence

1892 Alfred A Knopf (d. 1984), American publisher

1897 Irene Joliot-Curie (d. 1956), scientist

1901 Ben Blue (d. 1975), vaudeville star

1902 Margaret Hamilton (d. 1985), actress

1907 Louis MacNeice, Irish poet and playwright

1913 Jesse Owens (d. March 31, 1980), African-American athlete, winner of four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany.

The myth of Hitler's pique

"The Olympic victories had particular savor because Adolf Hitler had intended to use the games to promote 'Aryan superiority'. A persistent myth has grown up that Hitler, who had criticized African-American athletes as 'black auxiliaries' and 'non-humans', was in the stadium for some of Owens' events but had refused to acknowledge him after his remarkable performances. In fact Hitler was absent on the days in question and the German athletes and German public welcomed and praised Owens, just like everyone else."

Source: Wikipedia

1914 Desmond Llewelyn (d. 1999), actor

1915 Frank McGee (d. 1974), journalist

1921 Stanislaw Lem, science fiction writer

1931 Sir Ian Holm, actor

1931 George Jones, country music singer

1943 Maria Muldaur, singer

1943 Michael Ondaatje, author and poet

1944 Leonard Peltier, Native American activist and member of the American Indian Movement. In 1977 he was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment for the murders of two FBI agents who died during a 1975 shoot-out on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. There has been considerable debate over Peltier's guilt and the fairness of his trial. Peltier has been in prison since February 6, 1976, which is now known as International Day in Solidarity with Leonard Peltier.

Peltier is considered by many to be a political prisoner and has received support from individuals and groups including Nelson Mandela, Rigoberta Menchú, Amnesty International, the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, Tenzin Gyatso (the 14^th Dalai Lama), the European Parliament, the Belgian Parliament, the Italian Parliament, the Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Michael Apted, Kris Kristofferson, Peter Matthiessen, Madonna, Bono, Sting, Vivienne Westwood, Giorgio Armani, Cher, Kylie Minogue, Elton John, Oliver Stone, Danielle Mitterrand, Mikhail Gorbachev, Raquel Welch, Joan Collins, Ozzy Osbourne, Bianca Jagger and Kate Moss.

Leonard Peltier case chronology    No Parole Peltier Association    More    And more

In the Scriptorium: Activism & action page    Protest pictures (current)

1944 Barry White (d. 2003), American singer

1951 Joe Pantoliano, actor (The Matrix, The Sopranos)

1952 Neil Peart, musician

1954 Peter Scolari, actor

1957 Rachel Ward, actress

1966 Ben Folds, musician

Phew!! Have a rest before the big This day in history section

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Zodiac birthday Free astrology e-cards Flower Of The Month [ September ] Birthdays Onam [ Varies ] Positive Thinking Day [ Sep 13 ]

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Varies Onam
1st Sunday in Sep Fathers' Day (Australia)
1st Monday in Sep Labor Day (USA and Canada)

 

September

12 Chocolate Milkshake Day
13 Programmers' Day
13 Peanut Day
13 Helicopter Day
14 Cream-filled Donut Day
14 Triumph Of The Holy Cross
14 Cream-filled Donut Day
15 Central American Independence Day
16 Independence Day (Mexico)
16 Collect Rocks Day
16 Mayflower Day
16 Spud Day (Idaho, USA)
16 Wife Appreciation Day
16 Working Parents Day
17 Women's Friendship Day
17 God Bless America Day
17 Citizenship Day (USA)
y (USA)
17 Constitution Day (USA)
18 Thank You Day
18 Women's Friendship Day
19 Thank You Day
19 Laundry Day
20 Student Day
21 International Day Of Peace
22 Ice Cream Cone Day
22 Autumnal Equinox / Spring Equinox
22 American Business Women's Day
22 Native American Day
23 Chocolate Day
23 Fishing Day
23 Autumnal Equinox (Japan)
23 Neptune Day
23 Apple Harvest Festival (Wisconsin)
24 Kiss Day
24 Good Neighbor Day
24 Innergize Day
24 World Heart Day
25 Family Day
25 New Horizons Day
25 One Hit Wonder Day
26 International Tool Day
28 Strawberry Cream Pie Day
28 St Wenceslas Feast Day
29 All Angels Day
29 Pumpkin Day
29 Coffee Day
29 Goose Day
29 Michaelmas Day
29 Pumpkin Day
29 All Angels Day
29 Coffee Day
30 Ask A Stupid Question Day

October

1 World Vegetarian Day
1 Independence Day (Nigeria)
1 Pumpkin Day
1 International Day Of Older Persons
1 National Day (China)
2 Name Your Car Day
2 Mahatma Gandhi's Birthday
2 World Farm Animals Day
4 Taco Day
4 World Animal Day

  ... More Events

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490 BCE Athens defeated Persia at the Battle of Marathon.

1213 Peter II of Aragon, the king of Aragon, died at the Battle of Muret.

1271 A UFO was seen at at Tatsunokuchi, Kamakura, Japan. Nichiren (1222 - '82), a Buddhist monk and founder (see April 28, 1253) of Nichiren Buddhism, was about to be executed by beheading at Tatsunokuchi when there appeared in the sky an object like a full moon. The officials panicked and abandoned the execution and the famous monk survived another eleven years.

Nichiren later wrote in Kaimoku Shō (On the Opening of the Eyes) that "... this person named Nichiren was beheaded", meaning that this near-execution (or another, for he escaped the sword on other occasions) helped deliver him in a spiritual rebirth.

After Nichiren's death, Nichiren Buddhism split into the Nichiren Shu and Nichiren Shoshu sects. Nichiren Shoshu asserts that Nichiren was a Buddha, a claim rejected by Nichiren Shu.

1275 England: St Michael's Church, Glastonbury (thought by many to be King Arthur's 'sacred isle of Avalon'), was destroyed by an earthquake.

1362 Death of Pope Innocent VI.

1609 Henry Hudson discovered the Hudson River.

1683 Great Turkish war: Polish troops led by Jan III Sobieski joined forces with a Habsburg army to defeat the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Vienna.

1764 Death of Jean-Philippe Rameau, composer.

1803 Lt John Bowen established the first European settlement in Van Diemen's Land.

1826 Captain William Morgan, American anti-Freemasonry activist, was abducted and apparently murdered, at around the time of the publication of his book, Illustrations of Masonry, By One Of The Fraternity Who Has Devoted Thirty Years to the Subject.

Captain Morgan's Exposition of Freemasonry    Illustrations of Masonry at Amazon    More

1835 Johann Moritz of Prussia patented the tuba – perhaps the only symphonic musical instrument that we can put an earliest date to.

1846 Elizabeth Barrett eloped with Robert Browning.

1847 Mexican-American War: Battle of Chapultepec. During the battle, a small group of young Mexican military cadets refused to fall back when General Bravo finally ordered retreat, and fought to the death against superior United States forces. They are eulogized in Mexican history as the Los Niños Héroes, the 'Boy Heroes'.

1854 Australia's first steam train ran, Melbourne.

1860 William Walker, American physician, lawyer, journalist, adventurer, and soldier of fortune who attempted to conquer several Latin American countries in the mid-19th Century, and former president of Nicaragua, was shot by a firing squad in Honduras after being captured while on a military adventure in that country.

Walker's expeditions

1878 Cleopatra's Needle erected in London

Cleopatra's Needle, the obelisk of Djehutymes III (most usually called in English Thutmose III, but also Thotmes, Thutmoses, Tuthmose, Tuthmosis, or Thothimes III), was erected on London's Thames Embankment. Originally appropriated from Egypt many decades before during the Napoleonic Wars, by Scottish General Sir Ralph Abercromby, the obelisk had departed Alexandria, Egypt aboard a specially constructed barge (the Cleopatra) on September 21, 1877.

Nearly lost at sea

The obelisk's voyage from its rightful home was not without incident and it was nearly lost at sea. As the Cleopatra passed through the Bay of Biscay, a gale struck and the barge became separated from its mother ship, the Olga. While attempting to secure the barge to the Olga, a number of seamen died, and the barge went adrift. A Scottish steamer, the Fitzmaurice, discovered the drifting Cleopatra, and towed it into the port of El Ferrol, in Northwestern Spain.

The obelisk was actually constructed not for Cleopatra the Queen of the Nile, but for Thutmose III and is carved with hieroglyphics praising Tuthmose and commemorating his third sed festival. Later inscriptions were added by Ramesses II to commemorate his victories. On each side of the pyramidion (top triangle of the obelisk), the pharaoh is depicted as the Egyptian/Greek goddess Sphinx making offerings to the Gods of Heliopolis.

'Cleopatra's Needles' is the name applied to two Egyptian obelisks, formerly at Alexandria. One of these obelisks now lies in New York, the other in London.

The great obelisks were hewn from the rose red granite of Syene, and originally erected before the great temple of Heliopolis, sacred 'City of the Sun', the place where Moses was born. Thutmose III, it is believed, ruled Egypt from 1504 BCE until his death in 1450 BCE (dates vary according to sources). He was an active expansionist ruler, sometimes referred to as the 'Napoleon of Egypt', because he was recorded to have conquered 350 cities during his rule, conquering much of the Near East. Thutmose III was buried in tomb KV 34 in Egypt's Valley of the Kings.

 

Plaques mounted round the base of the Obelisk give a brief history of the needle, and commemorated the men who died in the removal and transportation of the stone. There are four plaques and they have the following texts on them.
THIS OBELISK QUARRIED AT SYENE WAS ERECTED AT ON (HELIOPOLIS) BY THE PHARAOH THOTHMES III IN ABOUT 1500 B.C. LATERAL INSCRIPTIONS WERE ADDED NEARLY TWO CENTURIES LATER BY RAMESES THE GREAT REMOVED DURING THE GREEK DYNASTY TO ALEXANDRIA THE ROYAL CITY OF CLEOPATRA IT WAS THERE ERECTED IN THE 18th YEAR OF AUGUSTUS CAESAR B.C. 12	THROUGH THE PATRIOTIC ZEAL OF ERASMUS WILSON F.R.S. WAS BROUGHT FROM ALEXANDRIA ENCASED IN AN IRON CYLINDER IT WAS ABANDONED DURING A STORM IN THE BAY OF BISCAY RECOVERED AND ERECTED ON THIS SPOT BY JOHN DIXON C.E. IN THE 42nd YEAR OF THE REIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA 1879
THIS OBELISK PROSTRATE FOR CENTURIES WAS PRESENTED TO THE BRITISH NATION A.D. 1819 BY MAHOMMED ALI VICEROY OF EGYPT A WORTHY MEMORIAL OF OUR DISTINGUISHED COUNTRYMEN NELSON AND ABERCROMBY	WILLIAM ASKIN - MICHAEL BURNS JAMES GARDINER - WILLIAM DONALD JOSEPH BENTON - WILLIAM PATAN PERISHED IN A BOLD ATTEMPT TO SUCCOUR THE CREW OF THE OBELISK SHIP CLEOPATRA DURING THE STORM OCTOBER 14th 1877

 

1890 Salisbury, Rhodesia was founded

1910 The Los Angeles Police Department appointed the world's first policewoman, Alice Wells.

1918 Eugene V Debs (1855 - 1926) was sentenced to 10 years for protesting WWI, based on a speech he delivered a Socialist Party convention in Canton, Ohio, USA on June 16, 1918.

Eugene V Debs's ideas on Socialism    Eugene V Debs Foundation

1933 Leó Szilárd (Leo Szilard; 1898 - 1964), waiting for a red traffic light on Southampton Row in Bloomsbury, UK, conceived the idea of the nuclear chain reaction.

1938 Adolf Hitler demanded autonomy for the Germans of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.

1940 Cave paintings were discovered in Lascaux, France.

Lascaux website

1940 The Hercules Munitions Plant in Kenvil, New Jersey, USA, exploded, killing 55 people.

1942 Laconia incident: RMS Laconia, carrying some 80 civilians and 268 British soldiers, and about 1800 Italian POWs with 160 Polish soldiers on guard, was hit by a torpedo from a U-boat off the coast of West Africa and sank.

1943 Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy, was rescued from house arrest by German commando Otto Skorzeny.

1947 America's Screen Actors Guild implemented an anti-Communist loyalty oath.

1953 Nikita Khrushchev was elected first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

1953 Senator John F Kennedy, 36,  married the Washington Times-Herald photo-journalist Jacqueline Lee Bouvier, 24, in Newport, Rhode Island, USA.

1957 NORAD began operations.

1959 Bonanza premiered, the first regularly-scheduled TV program presented in colour.

1962 President John F Kennedy declared the USA would get a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

1970 American psychonaut, Dr Timothy Leary, escaped from prison with the help of his wife Rosemary, and Weatherman, a radical offshoot organization of the Students For Democratic Society (SDS). 

Targeted by the Richard Nixon administration as a dangerous subversive, the former Harvard professor had been imprisoned in February of that year for possessing a single marijuana joint (he was convicted of possession under the Marijuana Tax Act and sentenced to a preposterous 30 years in jail). Curiously, when he entered prison, he had been required to submit to the Leary psychological evaluation test which he himself had designed while working in academia.

Leary made his way to Algeria where he met up with exiled American Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver and was given asylum in the Black Panther 'embassy'. The pro-violence Maoist Panthers thought he was the crazy one, so the welcome wore out fairly quickly. He sought asylum in Switzerland, but was recaptured by US DEA agents in Afghanistan in 1973, extradited back to America, and sent back to prison.

"Rosemary Leary stayed underground, living in Afghanistan, Sicily and Central and South America. She sneaked back into the United States in 1980 and lived under the name Sarah Woodruff. 

"In 1993, she had her record cleared of fugitive charges. 

"She wrote free-lance articles and managed the trust that administered her ex-husband's copyrights and archives. She also lectured college students about the psychedelic era. 

"Timothy Leary died in 1996. Rosemary Leary was working on a final draft of her memoirs when she died. 

"... he was busted for drugs by an assistant DA named G. Gordon Liddy. Apparently they became 'friendly' and toured together for a while having debates about drugs and politics. Also, one of Leary's drug cases was where the Supreme Court declared the Marijuana Tax law unconstitutional.

"Leary's case was a Federal beef because he was busted for failing to pay the $100 an ounce tax on weed. This tax was enacted in the 1930s; before that dope was largely ignored and generally legal. Legend has it Abraham Lincoln smoked hash for headaches, which may have prompted his (apocryphal) comment "I freed the WHAT?" the day after he signed the Emancipation Proclamation."   Source

Remembering Timothy Leary    Wilson's Almanac Book of Days hip list    CounterCulture Wiki

 

Timothy Leary prepares for his last trip Erowid Timothy Leary Vault LSD Timeline 1938 - 1973 Lots of Leary links

A Who's Who of Acid Dreams More about Leary 8-Circuit Model of Consciousness Shop Timothy Leary

 

Read 'The Declaration of Evolution', Timothy Leary, in the Scriptorium

1974 Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, the Rastafarian 'Messiah', was deposed following a military coup by the Derg.

1977 South African black activist Steve Biko died in police custody.

"Police records show that Biko was thrown manacled and naked into the back of a police van when his torturers noticed signs of brain damage. He was driven 1,200 km (746 miles) through a winter night from Port Elizabeth to Pretoria, where he died.

"An apartheid court said after an inquest that Biko was injured in a scuffle with police and that no one was to blame.

"The state doctors who declared him fit to face more torture without physically examining him were cleared at the time and allowed to continue practicing."   Source

1980 Military coup in Turkey.

1983 A Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Connecticut, USA, was robbed of approximately US$7 million by Los Macheteros.

1990 The two German states and the Four Powers signed the Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany in Moscow, paving the way for German re-unification.

1992 Mae Carol Jemison became the first African-American woman in space.

1992 Abimael Guzmán, leader of the Shining Path, was captured by Peruvian special forces; shortly thereafter the rest of Shining Path's leadership fell as well.

1994 The Netscape browser was released

2001 NATO Article V of the NATO agreement was invoked for the first time in response to the September 11 Terrorist Attack against the United States of America.

2003 During the Ontario general election, 2003, the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party issued a press release that called the leader of the Ontario Liberal Party, Dalton McGuinty, an "Evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet". It proved to be an embarrassment that helped the Tories lose the election. Don't try this at home, even though it's probably true.

2003 The United Nations lifted sanctions against Libya after Libya agreed to accept responsibility and make payment of US $2.7 billion to the families of victims in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

2005 Hong Kong Disneyland was scheduled to open to the public in Hong Kong. The park became the fifth Disneyland in the world.

2005 Norwegian parliamentary election.

 

 

Tomorrow: Lighting the Fire, ancient Egypt

 

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