This site will chronicle human activity including reflections of history that have lead to current activity. Hence, not to perpetuate where it demises Earth. There will be comments later after the 'theme' and definition of this blog takes shape.
This is doing some 'catch-up' which will include a volume of other information and opinion before it settles down to JUST a daily entry.
Today in History - December 20, 2004
In 1803, the Louisiana Purchase was completed as ownership of the territory was formally transferred from France to the United States during ceremonies in New Orleans.
In 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union.
In 1864, Confederate forces evacuated Savannah, Ga., as Union Gen. William T. Sherman continued his "March to the Sea."
In 1868 Samuel Harvey was born Firestone, an American industrialist, born in Columbiana County, Ohio. At the age of 27, he became president of the Firestone Rubber Company in Chicago, with which he remained associated for four years. Then in 1900, with 17 workers, he formed the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company in Akron, Ohio. He was company president, 1903-32, and board chairman, 1932-35. At the instigation of Firestone the rubber-growing potential of the Philippines and of South America was assessed, and much American capital was invested to develop the rubber industry in those countries. In 1926 Firestone leased 404,686 ha (1 million acres) in Liberia. In the next decade, he established rubber plants on 24,281 hectares (60,000 acres) there. As president (1916-18) of the Rubber Association of America, he directed the conversion of the rubber industry for wartime production during World War I.
The Firestone Library
http://firestone.princeton.edu/
That is where the Map Room is.
In 1879, Thomas A. Edison privately demonstrated his incandescent light at Menlo Park, N.J.
In 1922, The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is formed. It remained such until the refusal of the USSR to intervene in Eastern Europe when popular pressure for political transformations there gained steam in 1989. Largely for this reason, reform movements were able to oust Communist governments all across the Soviet bloc. In the most dramatic change, the Berlin Wall was torn down and Communist East Germany merged with West Germany, forming a united Federal Republic of Germany. Unwilling to expend resources on sustaining old structures in the area, and increasingly distracted by domestic developments, the Soviet Union agreed to withdraw its troops from Eastern Europe and to dissolve COMECON and the Warsaw Pact, two cornerstones of its postwar foreign policy.
These revolutionary changes were soon echoed inside the USSR. Events might conceivably have taken a different turn in the short term had Gorbachev been willing either to use military force to contain the swelling discontent or, alternatively, to resign from the CPSU and attempt to take charge of the democratic movement. Doing neither, he was caught in a pincer between conservative and liberal factions and points of view.
The beneficiaries of the growing disarray in Gorbachev’s administration were the union republics, hollow shells for much of their existence but now suddenly able to challenge Moscow. Their governments newly elected in 1990, the republics profited from long-suppressed nationalism,...
...the republics profited from long-suppressed nationalism,...
...the republics profited from long-suppressed nationalism,..
from hopes they would be more adept than the center in reforming the economy, and from a belief that only they stood in the way of complete chaos. One by one, the republic parliaments adopted resolutions affirming their sovereignty and the primacy of their laws over Soviet legislation. In several cases, notably in Lithuania and Georgia, the republic went so far as to assert its complete independence from the Soviet Union.
In 1925, and still kicking, Mahathir bin Mohamad was born, prime minister of Malaysia from 1981 to 2003. Mahathir was born in Alur Setar, capital of the northwestern state of Kedah. He was educated in Alur Setar, and in 1947 entered the King Edward VII College of Medicine in Singapore.
Active in politics since 1945, Mahathir was a member of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) from its creation in 1946. After graduating from medical school, Mahathir entered government medical service as a practitioner on Langkaw Island (Pulau Langkawi). He was first elected to parliament in 1965 but lost his seat in the 1969 elections. Following the 1969 elections, riots took place in Kuala Lumpur, leading to the discrediting of the leadership of Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman. Mahathir became one of Tunku's few publicly outspoken critics within the ranks of the UMNO. Mahathir's book The Malay Dilemma (1969) was soon banned inside Malaysia.
In 1945, the Office of Price Administration announced the end of tire rationing, effective Jan. 1, 1946.
In 1963, the Berlin Wall was opened for the first time to West Berliners, who were allowed one-day visits to relatives in the Eastern sector for the holidays.
In 1968, author John Steinbeck died in New York at age 66.
In 1989, the United States launched Operation "Just Cause," sending troops into Panama to topple the government of General Manuel Noriega.
Today in History - December 21, 2004
In 1620, The first group of colonists disembark from the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts where they established Plymouth Colony. The official Web site of Plimoth Plantation offers resources related to Pilgrims, Plymouth Colony, and the Wampanoag Native American people.
http://www.plimoth.org/
In 1804, Benjamine Disraeli was born, a british writer and prime minister.
In 1879, Joseph Stalin a Soviet Leader was born.
In 1898, scientists Pierre and Marie Curie discovered the radioactive element radium.
In 1913, The New York World newspaper prints the first modern crossword puzzle in the United States.
In 1937, Jane Fonda was born, an American motion-picture actor, political activist, and writer and producer of exercise books and videos. Daughter of motion-picture actor Henry Fonda, she was born in New York City. She attended Vassar College but did not graduate. After studying with acting teacher Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in the late 1950s, Fonda was named most promising actress of the season by the New York Drama Critics' Circle for her Broadway debut in There Was a Little Girl (1960) and was praised by critics for her early motion-picture work in A Walk on the Wild Side (1962) and Sunday in New York (1964). After moving to France in the mid-1960s, she met and married French film director Roger Vadim. Later she starred in Vadim's erotic motion picture Barbarella (1968).
In 1940, Frank Zappa was born, American composer and rock musician, recognized as a master of a wide variety of musical styles. Zappa was born in Baltimore, Maryland. His family moved often throughout his childhood. During his teenage years, his musical development was shaped by two divergent musical influences: 20th-century classical music (especially the works of French composer Edgard Varèse) and 1950s rhythm and blues. At the age of 14, Zappa joined a band as a drummer. When he was 18 years old, he began playing the guitar instead. In 1959 he moved to Los Angeles, where he worked at a variety of jobs while writing music and playing in bands.
In 1954, Chris Evert, an American Tennis Star was born.
In 1956, The U.S. Supreme Court rules that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional.
In 1968, Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, is successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell, Jr., and William Anders aboard.
In 1978, police in Des Plaines, Ill., arrested John W. Gacy Jr. and began unearthing the remains of 33 men and boys that Gacy was later convicted of murdering.
In 1988, 270 people were killed when a terrorist bomb exploded aboard a Pam Am Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, sending wreckage crashing to the ground.
