Today in History...

[PatrickMcHorn 376]

I imagine you get a lot of pussy if you're the Duke of the Riviera.

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

8 minutes ago, Walden Ponderer said:

April 8, 1820, a peasant named Yorgos Kentrotas uncovered a buried niche within the ancient ruins in the village of Tripiti on the island of Milos.  Inside, he found one of the most famous statues in the ancient Greek pantheon, the Aphrodite of Milos (better known by the Roman name Venus de Milo).  At the time, Milos was part of the Ottoman Empire, and the small Aegean island was far out of the beaten path, but a French naval officer, Olivier Voutier, was exploring the island, and with Kentrotas' help, he was able to extract the statue, which was then purchased by the French ambassador to Turkey, Charles-François de Riffardeau, marquis, later duc de Rivière.
 
Apocryphal tales give various reasons why the arms are broken off, but the fact is, they were missing when the statue was discovered.  Fragmentary evidence suggests that her left hand held an apple (presumably the gift of discord, inscribed kallistēi -- "to the fairest one" -- which set off the Trojan War).
 
One of the most iconic images in Western culture, the statue is now on permanent display at the Louvre.

Pretty magnificent piece of statuary to see in person.  It and Michelangelo's David are both the best I've ever personally seen. David is the best ever IMO.

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, contralto Marian Anderson performed an open-air concert before a crowd of more than 75,000 and a radio audience of millions.  Her performance on the steps of the Lincoln memorial in Washington, D.C. was highly symbolic and marked a cultural turning point for our country that took the better part of the rest of the 20th century to complete.... she had been denied permission by the Daughters of the American Revolution, you see, to have her performance that day at Constitution Hall (the DAR concert hall in D.C.) because she was African-American.
 
From 1925 thru 1965, throughout the U.S. and Europe, Anderson performed to great critical acclaim in conjunction with the finest orchestras and conductors around.  In 1939, however, it was not her talent, but her race that made her famous.  When the DAR denied her the right to perform, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (with a little help from her husband Franklin D. Roosevelt) cut through every red-tape barrier the city of Washington could muster and made sure that the concert went off without a hitch.  This was not to be her last time to break race barriers, either -- on January 7, 1955, she became the first black person (American or otherwise) to perform at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. 
 
Active in the Civil Rights movement in the 60s, she sang at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.  Her honors and awards are too numerous to count; her humility, however, must be noted -- she did eventually sing at the DAR Constitution Hall, just four years later.  She reported "no sense of triumph; it was just another lovely concert venue."

[El Diablo 4232]

April 9th, 1965, the newly built Astrodome in Houston featured its first baseball game, an exhibition between the Astros and the New York Yankees, with President Lyndon B. Johnson in attendance. (The Astros won, 2-1, in 12 innings.)

[Llano Estacado 1257]

Piss on the Yankees.

[HouTex 1850]

1768 John Hancock refuses to allow two British customs agents to go below deck of his ship, considered by some to be the first act of physical resistance to British authority in the colonies

1829 Danzig (Gdańsk) dike break flood kills 1,200

1865 Confederate General Robert E. Lee and 26,765 troops surrender at Appomattox Court House to US Lieutenant General Ulysses S Grant (US Civil War)

1942 Battle of Bataan; US-Filipino forces overwhelmed by Japanese at Bataan

1947 Tornadoes striking West Texas & Oklahoma kill 169, injuring 1,300

1959 NASA names 1st 7 astronauts for Project Mercury

1963 Winston Churchill becomes 1st honorary US citizen

1967 1st Boeing 737 (a 100 series) makes its maiden flight

1968 Martin Luther King Jr., buried in Atlanta

2003 Baghdad falls to U.S. forces, ending the invasion of Iraq

 

[HouTex 1850]

1815 Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies experiences a cataclysmic eruption, one of the most powerful in history, killing around 71,000 people, causes global volcanic winter

1865 At Appomattox, General Robert E. Lee issues General Order #9, his last

1869 Congress increases number of Supreme Court judges from 7 to 9

1912 RMS Titanic sets sail from Southampton for her maiden (and final) voyage

1925 Scribners publishes "The Great Gatsby" by F Scott Fitzgerald

1932 Paul von Hindenburg is re-elected President of Germany in a runoff election against Adolf Hitler

1938 Austria becomes a state of Germany

1979 Red River Valley Tornado Outbreak: A tornado lands in Wichita Falls, Texas killing 42 people.

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

April 10, 428 C.E. Nestorius (Greek: Νεστόριος) was installed as the Archbishop of Constantinople (yes, we know, it's "Istanbul not Constan-tee-nople"...) and thus began a three year reign that ended with one of the more arcane bits of theological hairsplitting imaginable. Humans are strange, is the only conclusion I draw from it.

Anyway, Nestorius' reign was cut short when he was condemned for heresy by a majority vote of the clerics at the First Council of Ephesus in 431 C.E. His crime was rejection of the use of the term Theotokos, "Mother of God", when referring to Mary, mother of Jesus of Nazareth. The theological implication was that this meant Nestorius was rejecting Jesus' divinity, a rather touchy subject at the time, but Nestorius' interpretation was somewhat different -- essentially, he argued that adulation of Mary was essentially an idolatrous act, a claim rife with irony when one considers that Nestorius lent his very name to the Eastern Orthodox Church, the branch of the Catholic church which uses, you know... icons... as a fundamental part of worship.

But the first four centuries of the new Christian religion were chock full of ironic little hair-splitting debates like that. The only real impact the decision of whether or not to use one particular Greek word when describing one character from the New Testament was the eventual split between East and West; Nestorius himself retired shortly after his condemnation, exiled into Upper Egypt (alongside the Coptic Christians, who are there to this day).

He is recognized as one of the three "Greek Teachers of the Church" amongst the Orthodox denominations, but his condemnation in the West was confirmed by the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 C.E.

In the 21st century, scholars pretty much agree that his ideas were not far from those which eventually emerged as orthodox (in the sense of 'conforming'), even if his formulation of the doctrine of Christ might still be considered controversial. Because, you know, angels dancing on the head of a pin and whatnot.

Edited April 10, 2019 by Walden Ponderer
20th century? Really Walden? Do you still write '1984' on checks?

[El Diablo 4232]

April 11th, 1951, President Harry S. Truman relieved Gen. Douglas MacArthur of his commands in the Far East.

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

April 11, 1512 C.E., French and Ferrarese forces drove the Spanish-Papal army from the field of battle near Ravenna in present day Italy. The Battle of Ravenna was indecisive, however, and by August of 1512, the French were driven completely out of Italy.

The French, under Gaston de Foix, Duc de Nemours, had started the year with victories in the Romagna and the Veneto, highly important strategic strongholds in the north of Italy, in an attempt to keep the anti-French "Holy League" from barricading entrance into the center of the Italian boot. While ordinarily, the French (having numerical superiority in the field) would have been confident of waging a successful siege against any Spanish encampment in the north of Italy, the imminent invasion of France by Henry VIII of England forced Nemour's hand.

The French had an opportunity at Ravenna to sweep the field with the Spanish, but the battle was much more hotly contested than they anticipated (losses were roughly 4,000 dead on the French side, with 4,500 wounded, to 9,000 casualties on the Spanish side), and even though the French won the battlefield, their leader, Gaston de Foix, died in the effort.

Dutch-French Romantic painter Ary Scheffer in the 19th century made the "Death of Gaston de Foix" the subject of an epic painting, notable in its use of blurry and suggestive lighting and imagery which evoke a far more religious and sentimental air to the scene than what one might find in either his classically themed or religiously oriented works. This would be fitting, since the whole air of the War of the League of Cambrai was chock full of ambiguous justifications, and flimsy pretense of morality. Worse still for Scheffer's French audiences, the Battle of Ravenna set the high water mark for French imperial aspirations that would not be surpassed until Napoleon's ill-fated reign of terror.

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

On 13 April 1919, a crowd of nonviolent protesters gathered in the Jallianwala Bagh garden in Amritsar, Punjab, in India, in protest of the arrest of two Indian Independence movement leaders. On the orders of Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, the British army blocked off all exits to the garden (which is best thought of as being a kind of interior courtyard -- high walls surrounded it on all four sides, with only four visible exits) and then fired on the crowd for ten minutes, not allowing anyone to simply surrender. The number dead was well over 1000, though the official British report claimed only around 300 dead and another 1,000 wounded.

This horrific scene is portrayed fairly accurately in Richard Attenborough's film "Gandhi" -- up to and including the outrageous British whitewashing of the incident afterwards.  In fact, Dyer's actions were praised in the House of Lords in the weeks following the atrocities.  To make matters worse, the official inquiry noted that Dyer had been unable to drive two armored vehicles into the square owing to the narrowness of the entrances; the horrifying butchery could actually have been much, much worse.

And, while we would like to think that these events are a part of the distant past, and that our species has evolved since then... these events were only 100 years ago.  There are still a handful of people alive in England today, regular churchgoers their whole lives, who were alive at the time, and who approved of the massacre in their youth.

[El Diablo 4232]

April 13th, 1958, Van Cliburn of the United States won the first International Tchaikovsky Competition for piano in Moscow. A native of Louisiana his family got him to Texas as quickly as possible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Cliburn

 

[Gil Bang 25897]

 

[El Diablo 4232]

April 14, 1935—84 years ago today—the “Black Sunday” dust storm descended on the Central Plains, covering Pampa in the Texas Panhandle, which was home to Depression-era songwriter Woodie Guthrie. In the depths of the storm, some Pampa residents thought the end of the world had come. The fear inspired Guthrie to write “So Long, It’s Been Good To Know You.” Guthrie left Pampa for Los Angeles in 1937.

 

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

April 14, 1775, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the "Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage" was founded. This was the first officially chartered organization in the United States (then still the 13 American Colonies) dedicated to the goal of ending slavery on these shores. Seventeen of the 24 founders of the Society were members of "The Religious Society of Friends" also known as Quakers. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine were two of the more prominent names among the group, though in their day all were considered political elites.

The group later became known as the "Pennsylvania Abolition Society"; in the late 1780s Benjamin Franklin was elected as the organization's president, and in that capacity he raised the matter of slavery to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and three years later petitioned the U.S Congress to ban slavery.

In later years, as Southern intransigence made the issue linger well into the 19th century, the Pennsylvania group continued to lead the way. Often, other abolitionist groups were slow to integrate; Philadelphia, however, hosted fully integrated abolitionist committees; prominent African-American members included Robert Purvis, whose personal records suggest that in addition to his more than considerable financial contributions to the Underground Railroad, his personal involvement for over 30 years had averaged right at one person per day being assisted in escaping slavery and moving north -- his estimate is that more than 9,000 slaves gained freedom through his personal efforts.

The Pennsylvania Abolition Society still exists, dedicated to the cause of racial justice. The oldest abolitionist organization in the United States, since the late twentieth century, it has worked to improve issues of criminal justice and the over-representation of African Americans in prison, reduction in harsh sentencing laws, and improving economic and environmental justice.

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

April 15th in ancient Rome was... um... hee-whack-a-doodle. Crazy. Even by Roman standards. Officially known as the Fordicidia, on this date each year, several pregnant cows were officially and publicly sacrificed in the curiae; the festival was called the Fordicidia from "fordae caedendae" which was Latin for 'the pregnant cows which were to be slaughtered.' 

Though archaeological evidence suggests that animal sacrifices predate written history, the Fordicidia is the earliest extant version of this kind of ritual about which we have detailed written knowledge. 

Yay.

In Rome, the entire month of April was dedicated to agriculturally oriented festivals, beginning on the Kalends with a festival for Venus which emphasized her fertility aspects, and followed up with several crop-and-critter fertility festivals, of which the Fordicidia was simply the most repugnant to modern ears. The 2nd Sabine King of Rome (Numa) was told by the God Faunus to sacrifice pregnant cows in order to stave off drought and famine; who was he to argue? 

The Vestal Virgins got in on the act, being responsible for burning the sacrifices once the unborn calves were removed and dedicated, and making sure that each of the official Gods involved were properly appeased, most notably the God Tellus (alt. name "Terra Mater", aka "Mother Earth") who, by this sacrifice, was supposed to care for any wheat which had already been planted. 

There is logic there, I suppose, even if it's of a fairly twisted kind. But hey, these are Romans we're talking about; it may have been animal cruelty, but at least it didn't involve conquering a new country every April 15th, because, seriously, how many new territories do you need?

[El Diablo 4232]

April 15th, 2013, two bombs made from pressure cookers exploded at the Boston Marathon finish line, killing two women and an 8-year-old boy and injuring more than 260. Suspected bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in a shootout with police; his brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was tried, convicted and sentenced to death.

[El Diablo 4232]

April 16, 1947—72 years ago today--the French ship Grandcamp blew up at the harbor in Texas City; another ship, the High Flyer, exploded the following day (the blasts and fires killed nearly 600. Another 5,000 people were injured and 1,000 buildings were destroyed. The explosion produced a 15-foot tidal wave and blew two small planes out of the sky.

[DaysOff 7851]

Never knew that was a French ship.

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

April 16, 1941, Bob Feller (also known as "The Heater from Van Meter", "Bullet Bob", and "Rapid Robert") gave the Cleveland Indians one of the few things in their long and not-so-storied history to crow about, by tossing the only Opening Day no-hitter in the history of Major League Baseball, blanking the Chicago White Sox 1–0.

It is a subjective statement, of course, but to my mind, Feller was second only to Satchel Paige among pitchers in the 20th century -- Paige, of course, having his greatness unnoticed in his day by virtue of being relegated to the Negro Leagues (where most of the better players of the time toiled in anonymity).

Feller threw no-hitters in 1940, 1946, and 1951, in addition to 12 career one-hitters. When he retired, no one had anywhere near as many no-hitters and one-hitters as "Bullet Bob" and there were numerous Hall of Fame players (Ted Williams among them) who listed Feller as the one pitcher they would least like to be facing if they needed a critical hit.

Feller led the Indians to a World Series title in 1948 and an American League-record 111 wins and the pennant in 1954. He led the American League in wins six times and in strikeouts seven times. In 1946, he recorded 348 strikeouts, an American League record that lasted until 1973 when Nolan Ryan finally managed to catch up to him... needing the extra 12 games added to the season in the interim in order to do so.

As if his greatness as a pitcher were not enough, Feller was only 17 when he started his major league career, and had a four year break with a stint in the military which interrupted his career trajectory with only a blip. Further, he was one of only a handful of prominent white players who agitated for desegregation of baseball, and never passed up an opportunity to play integrated exhibition games in the days leading up to full integration.

[gecko 1104]

One of the coolest places I’ve ever been...

[El Diablo 4232]

April 17th, 1964 - Ford Motor Co. unveiled the Mustang at the New York World's Fair.

[El Diablo 4232]

17 hours ago, gecko said:

 

 

One of the coolest places I’ve ever been...

 

We drove by but didn't stop, place was dead.

[HouTex 1850]

1492 Christopher Columbus signs a contract with the Spanish monarchs to find the "Indies" with the stated goal of converting people to Catholicism. This promises him 10% of all riches found, and the governorship of any lands encountered.

1534 Sir Thomas More confined in the Tower of London

1939 Stalin signs British-France-Russian anti-Nazi pact

1945 8th Air Force bombs Dresden

1961 1,400 Cuban exiles land in Bay of Pigs in a doomed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro

1964 Ford Mustang formally introduced ($2,368 base)

1969 Sirhan Sirhan is convicted of assassinating US Senator Robert F. Kennedy

1969 The Band (formerly The Hawks), perform their 1st concert

1986 Pulitzer prize awarded to Larry McMurtry for "Lonesome Dove"

1991 Dow Jones closes above 3,000 for 1st time (3,004.46)

2013 15 people are killed and 100 are injured after a fertilizer plant explodes in West, Texas

 

 

[El Diablo 4232]

April 18, 1934—85 years ago today-- the first Laundromat, which was then called a Washateria, opened in Fort Worth, TX. Today, according to the Coin Laundry Association, there are about 35,000 coin laundries in the U.S. that generate nearly $5 billion in gross annual revenue. The first facilities weren’t coin-operated, however, and attendants were always on duty. Not until the late 1940s were the first unattended Laundromats opened.

[HouTex 1850]

1506 The cornerstone of the current St. Peter's Basilica is laid in the Vatican

1775 Paul Revere and William Dawes ride from Charlestown to Lexington warning the "regulars are coming!"

1783 Fighting ceases in the American Revolution, eight years to the day when it began

1861 Colonel Robert E. Lee turns down offer to command Union armies (US Civil War)

1880 An F4 tornado strikes Marshfield, Missouri, killing 99 people and injuring 100.

1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire kills nearly 4,000 while destroying 75% of the city

1923 74,000 (62,281 paid) on hand for opening of Yankee Stadium

1934 Adolf Hitler names Joachim von Ribbentrop ambassador for disarmament

1935 Gen Sarazen's double eagle on 15th, wins him his 2nd Masters

1942 James Doolittle bombs Tokyo & other Japanese cities

1964 Sandy Koufax is 1st to strike out the side on 9 pitches

 

[Asithappens 974]

Yeah, today (imo) is all Paul Revere and his Raiders.

 

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

April 18th is the Feast Day for Saint Molaise of Leighlin, a 7th century Irish saint who was the abbot of Leithglenn in County Carlow, credited with a host of uniquely Irish miracles, saving humanity from a series of uniquely Irish maladies.

One story, in particular, catches the eye of skeptics and believers alike in its (ahem!) oh-so-Irish uniqueness. "The Vision of Laisrén" is one of the earliest extant Irish prose epics, and in this tale, the story is told of St. Molaise receiving a vision in which he descends to Hell, tours the facilities, gets a general idea of the layout of the place, and returns to the World, putatively armed to properly warn us poor sinners about the fate which awaits us if we do not abaondon our Pagan ways and accept Christ.

The kicker, though, is that (in true Irish fashion) there is a wizard amongst us with a grey eyebrow hair, and if anyone sees it, they will perish within a day, regardless of whether they have made their peace with God or not. St. Molaise, being the good guy in this story, plucks out this eyebrow, saving anyone else who meets the fiend, though condemning himself to death.

Don't you love happy endings? I guess the moral of the story is, don't trust anybody with stray eyebrow hairs...?

[NeverMarryAStripper 21781]

April 18, 1934—85 years ago today-- the first Laundromat, which was then called a Washateria, opened in Fort Worth, TX. Today, according to the Coin Laundry Association, there are about 35,000 coin laundries in the U.S. that generate nearly $5 billion in gross annual revenue. The first facilities weren’t coin-operated, however, and attendants were always on duty. Not until the late 1940s were the first unattended Laundromats opened.

This hits close to home because I have my two kids because their egg and spermatozoon donors murdered their biological grandfather to gain possession of his two laundromats.

[PatrickMcHorn 376]

This hits close to home because I have my two kids because their egg and spermatozoon donors murdered their biological grandfather to gain possession of his two laundromats.

Your kids' biological parents share a grandparent?

[NeverMarryAStripper 21781]

It was my kid’s biological grandfather on the sperm donor side

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

April 19, 1927, Mae West was sentenced to 10 days in jail on obscenity charges related to her stage play "Sex". Under the pen name 'Jane Mast' West wrote and starred in the comedy-drama which premiered on April 26, 1926 at Daly's 63rd Street Theatre in New York. 

After 375 performances, the New York City Police Department finally decided that a raid was in order -- presumably they had to wait until every city official who wanted to see it had the opportunity before finally enforcing their ridiculous ordinance.

At the time of the raid, the play had been seen by 325,000 people, including members of the police department and their wives, judges of the criminal courts, and seven members of the district attorney's staff. 

Ms. West was sentenced to 10 days in a workhouse on Roosevelt Island (known then as "Welfare Island") and fined $500. Her character ""Margy LaMont" was described in the playbill as "A Prostitute". The plot is a little thin by modern standards, basically "Pretty Woman" with a little more deceit and better acting (Julia Roberts? Blech. Gimme Mae West any day. And that's before we even get to Richard Gere's wooden unbelievability...)

The "obscenity" mostly consisted of the job title, as there was nothing remotely vulgar in the dialogue, and nobody's clothes came off at any point. A movie made out of the manuscript might not even merit PG-13, honestly, but, hey, 'murica. West herself never objected to the sentence in any serious way, since it served as the best kind of publicity stunt she could have imagined -- in the history of pop culture, only a Kardashian could have gotten more return from less investment.

[El Diablo 4232]

April 19th, 1989, 47 sailors were killed when a gun turret exploded aboard the USS Iowa in the Caribbean. (The Navy initially suspected that a dead crew member had deliberately sparked the blast, but later said there was no proof of that mostly because it was hard to believe that a dead person could do such a thing.)

More here... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Iowa_turret_explosion

[HouTex 1850]

1862 First pasteurization test completed by Frenchmen Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard

1912 Fenway Park officially opens, Red Sox beat NY Highlanders 7-6 in 11

1916 Weeghman Park (Wrigley Field) in Chicago opens, Cubs beat Cincinnati Reds 7-6

1918 Manfred von Richthofen, aka The Red Baron, shoots down his 79th and 80th victims marking his final victories before his death the following day

1920 Tornadoes kill 219 in Alabama & Mississippi

1945 Soviet artillery begins shelling Berlin

1945 US 7th army captured German city of Nuremberg

1999 Columbine High School massacre: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold kill 13 people and injure 24 others before committing suicide at Columbine High School, Colorado

2010 The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explodes, killing 11 and causing the rig to sink, causing a massive oil discharge into the Gulf of Mexico

2013 5 snowboarders are killed by an avalanche in Loveland Pass, Colorado
 

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

April 20, 1818, a medieval legal maneuver had its final day in the courts of Great Britain, as the case of Ashford v Thornton ended, with Abraham Thornton allowed to go free rather than face a retrial for the murder of Mary Ashford. This particular kind of "retrial" was a very English way of doing things, of course -- Abraham Thornton had already been tried once, and acquitted, and the American Bill of Rights expressly prohibits placing a defendant in double jeopardy for the same crime, but the British had a unique method of private appeal in the case of acquittal of a defendant, and Ashford's brother William requested Thornton's re-arrest and re-trial.

At this point, things took a turn for the quirky -- rather than taking his chances with a 2nd jury reviewing the same evidence (particularly since "evidence" in the early 19th century -- even physical evidence -- was mostly a question of whether people wanted to believe, rather than whether it was true), Thornton chose to claim an ancient right, which had never been taken off the books. He chose trial by battle. After much legal wrangling, back-and-forth pro forma veiled insulting of fellow wig-wearers, and uniquely British bureaucratic folderol, Ashford finally formally refused to accept the term of battle, and Thornton was freed to go.

In 1819, Parliament abolished private appeals following acquittals, and also abolished trial by battle. Small consolation for the Ashford family, of course, since (while still dependent on testimony of people who could easily have been wrong) all of the evidence in Thornton's trial tended to suggest pretty strongly he was probably guilty. Only a modern crime lab could have come up with proof, however, and on balance, one would have to think freedom from double jeopardy, in addition to an end to legalized dueling, would have to be considered advancements toward civilization.

[Hagbard Celine 10752]

columbine deserves it's own thread, but might be too cloaky for DT, and i don't go over there, so, welp.

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

April 21st is "Kartini Day" in Indonesia, in commemoration of the birth of Raden Ajeng Kartini on this date in 1879. Kartini was a prominent Javanese and Indonesian national heroine who was the first nationally recognizable agitator for the rights of women. Kartini was born into an aristocratic Javanese family, and her father was a notable indigenous government official; polygamy was a common practice at the time, and in fact was expected of the wealthy and particularly for members of the nobility, so Kartini was part of an exceptionally large "extended nuclear" family by modern/Western standards.

Her mother was her father's first wife, but not his most important one. And Kartini herself was the fifth child of that union, and, moreover (to give you some idea of her socially expected "level") the culturally accepted role she ought to have played was as a bargaining chip as a potential bride for the family to improve their social standing -- nothing else was expected of her, outside of course of total devotion first to her father and then to whomever her father married her off to.

Sosroningrat was not a typical Javanese father, however. Girls were typically "secluded" at age 12, kept home to prepare for marriage. Kartini was no exception; however, her father permitted several lax exceptions to the general rule -- bringing her along for numerous government functions with the Dutch colonial government, for example, and encouraging her to speak Dutch (something very few Javanese, and at the time *no* Javanese women, were encouraged to do), and even writing to Dutch pen pals, one of whom was a girl named Rosa Abendanon, who funneled European feminist literature her way... Gaston from "Beauty and the Beast" could have predicted the result. Let a girl start reading, soon she gets ideas, thinking... It just ain't natural!

She spent most of the rest of her life promoting in letters to influential friends the idea that Indonesian women should be allowed to receive education and be considered full members of society.

[HenryJames 65887]

 

[HenryJames 65887]

 

[HouTex 1850]

753 BC Romulus and Remus found Rome (traditional date)

1836 Battle of San Jacinto, Texas wins independence from Mexico [deserves it's own thread]

1898 Spanish-American War: The U.S. Congress, on April 25, recognizes that a state of war exists between the United States and Spain

1918 World War I: German fighter ace Baron Manfred von Richthofen "The Red Baron", shot down and killed over Vaux sur Somme in France, Canadian pilot Arthur Roy Brown credited with the kill

1956 Elvis Presley's 1st hit record, "Heartbreak Hotel", becomes #1

1967 Svetlana Alliluyeva, Josef Stalin's daughter defects to the US in NYC

1986 Geraldo Rivera opens Al Capone's vault on TV & finds nothing

1995 FBI arrests Timothy McVeigh and charge him with the Oklahoma City bombing

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

April 22, 1998 (Earth Day), Michael D. Eisner dedicated the largest of Disney's theme parks, the "Animal Kingdom" park in Disney World near Orlando, Florida, with the following words:
"Welcome to a kingdom of animals... real, ancient and imagined: a kingdom ruled by lions, dinosaurs and dragons; a kingdom of balance, harmony and survival; a kingdom we enter to share in the wonder, gaze at the beauty, thrill at the drama, and learn."

The fourth of the Walt Disney World resorts, it is the second largest theme park in the world, behind only Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey. Disney's Animal Kingdom is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums, meaning they have met or exceeded the standards in education, conservation, and research. In 2013, the park hosted approximately 10.19 million guests, ranking it the fourth-most visited amusement park in the United States and seventh-most visited in the world.

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

April 23, 1014,the Battle of Clontarf (Irish Gaelic "Cath Chluain Tarbh") took place, forming one of the few high points in Irish history vis-a-vis foreign invasion. High King of Ireland, Brian Boru, led his forces against a Viking-Irish alliance -- Sigtrygg Silkbeard, king of Dublin, and Máel Mórda mac Murchada, king of Leinster, basically sold out their right to self-determination in the hopes that a Viking contingent led by Sigurd of Orkney and Brodir of Mann could place them on the high throne as rulers of all Ireland.

As any epic battle should, this one lasted from sunrise to sunset, and ended in a rout of the Viking and Leinster forces. Casualties came in somewhere between 7,000 and 10,000 (though, to be fair, getting a realistic count from survivors on either side of any battle is hard enough, but these particular forces were more... flexible... regarding facts than even your average drunken militant braggarts).

We know for sure, though, that the dead included Brian Boru (whose forces were victorious, but thenceforth leaderless, as there was no undisputed king of Ireland for another two centuries). Also killed were Brian's son Murchad and grandson Toirdelbach; additionally, Leinster king Máel Mórda and Viking leaders Sigurd and Brodir snuffed it in their insolence, and Viking efforts at Irish hegemony were effectively ended, making the Irish more-or-less independent, a condition that would last all the way up until the point at which the English realized they could make money by oppressing the Irish.

[El Diablo 4232]

April 23rd, 1943, U.S. Navy Lt. (jg) John F. Kennedy assumed command of PT-109, a motor torpedo boat, in the Solomon Islands during World War II. On Aug. 2, 1943, PT-109 was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer, killing two crew members; Kennedy and 10 others survived.

[El Diablo 4232]

April 24th has been an eventful date is space:

1967, Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was killed when his Soyuz 1 spacecraft smashed into the Earth after his parachutes failed to deploy properly during re-entry; he was the first human spaceflight fatality.

1970, the People's Republic of China launched its first satellite, which kept transmitting a song, "The East Is Red."

1990, the space shuttle Discovery blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying the $1.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope.

[BillyGoatHill 4276]

April 24, 1980.

Operation Eagle Claw (the rescue of the American Embassy hostages in Iran) fails after a Marine helicopter collides with an Air Force C130 while refueling on the ground on a remote desert airstrip In Iran. Eight Airmen and three Marines are killed in the mishap.

Later that year (October), the foundation is layed for the development of JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) and it's operations that are conducted from then and to today between the four services.

Edited April 24, 2019 by BillyGoatHill

[LongestHorn 759]

39 years ago.  Damn, I feel old.  Delta was two and a half years old at the time.    

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

April 26, 1937, the Spanish city of Guernica (Basque "Gernika"), at the behest of the Spanish government, was bombed by the German air force's Condor Legion and the Italian Aviazione Legionaria, under the code name: Operation Rügen. 

This was one of the first raids on a defenseless civilian population by a modern air force and represented what at the time was thought to be the height of wartime atrocity in the Spanish Civil War (though, homo sapiens being such a resourceful species, you just know armed forces worldwide were gearing up to beat that record).

Guernica had been problematic for every Spanish government since its founding in 1366, of course, as it sits in the heart of Basque Country, where the people speak their own language, have their own cultural heritage, and are insular and disinterested in the aims of the central government.

In addition to being the seat of Basque identity, however, Guernica was also home to a munitions plant which both the Loyalists and the Republicans wanted to control; historians frequently simplify the Spanish Civil War into "Socialists versus Fascists" but the labels are misleading. 

It was everyone against everyone else, and Guernica had the great misfortune of being at a crossroads desired by all parties. The number of casualties is to this day in great dispute -- somewhere between 153 and 1,654 people died in the bombing, depending on whose numbers you believe.

Pablo Picasso's masterpiece "Guernica" is known as one of the most moving and powerful anti-war paintings in history. Standing at 11 feet tall and 25.6 feet wide, the large mural shows the suffering of people, animals, and buildings wrenched by violence and chaos.

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

April 27th is Freedom Day in South Africa, commemorating the 1994 general elections which were the first post-apartheid free elections wherein South Africa could truly be considered a democratic nation. Ironically, it is also the anniversary of the April 27, 1950 Group Areas Act, which assigned racial groups to different residential and business sections in urban areas. 

Essentially, apartheid was the official sanctioning of "post-slavery slavery" -- any non-white persons living in areas designated "white" were forcibly removed and never compensated for their confiscated property; once removed, a person without proper documentation found in the "wrong area" was subject to arrest, though all too often they were also subject to summary execution. 

There has never been an accurate total of the number of South Africans who died in police custody during the apartheid era, but some of the more famous are permanently etched in our consciousness -- Steve Biko, for example, was essentially killed by the police for the crime of being black.

When apartheid finally ended, and elections were held, the African National Congress (ANC), whose slate incorporated the labor confederation COSATU and the South African Communist Party, won a sweeping victory, taking 62 percent of the vote, just short of the two-thirds majority required to unilaterally amend the Interim Constitution. 

As required by that document, the ANC formed a Government of National Unity with the National Party and the Inkatha Freedom Party, the two other parties that won more than 20 seats in the National Assembly. The new National Assembly's first act was to elect Nelson Mandela as President, making him the country's first black chief executive.

[El Diablo 4232]

April 28, 1894—125 years ago today--the first edition of “Rolling Stone” was published in Central Texas by writer William Sydney Porter, better known as O. Henry, who had purchased the press of the irreverent “Iconoclast’ from Waco’s William Cowper Brann. A subscription to the first “Rolling Stone” was $1.50 a year, and for the price, readers got O. Henry’s take on politicians, the social customs of the era, performing arts and business. The enterprise didn’t last for long, however. The final edition was published a year later. (The current “Rolling Stone” arrived in 1967, created by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J. Gleason in San Francisco.)

[HornsOverIthaca 2333]

On 4/15/2019 at 1:57 AM, Walden Ponderer said:

April 15th in ancient Rome was... um... hee-whack-a-doodle. Crazy. Even by Roman standards. Officially known as the FLORDIAidia, on this date each year, several pregnant cows were officially and publicly sacrificed in the curiae; the festival was called the FLORDIAidia from "fordae caedendae" which was Latin for 'the pregnant cows which were to be slaughtered.' 

This seems more logical to me.