Nguyen Ngoc Tho was the first Prime Minister of South Vietnam, serving
from November 1963 to late January 1964. Tho was appointed to head a
civilian cabinet by General Duong Van Minh's military junta, which
came to power after overthrowing and assassinating Ngo Dinh Diem, the
nation's first president. Tho's rule was marked by a period of
confusion and weak government, as the Military Revolutionary Council
and the civilian cabinet vied for power. Tho oversaw South Vietnam's
failed land reform policy, and was accused of lacking vigour in
implementing the program because he was a large landowner. He was
noted for his faithful support of Diem during the Buddhist crisis that
ended the rule of the Ngo family. Despite being a Buddhist, Tho
staunchly defended the regime's pro-Catholic policies and its violent
actions against the Buddhist majority. Tho lost his job and retired
from politics when Minh's junta was deposed in a January 1964 coup by
General Nguyen Khanh.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguyen_Ngoc_Tho
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1828:
Kaspar Hauser, a foundling with suspected ties to the Royal House of
Baden, first appeared in the streets of Nuremberg, Germany.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaspar_Hauser)
1896:
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, representing twelve stocks from
various American industries, was first published by journalist Charles
Dow as a stock market index.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dow_Jones_Industrial_Average)
1918:
The Democratic Republic of Georgia was proclaimed following the
breakup of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_Georgia)
1972:
U.S. President Richard Nixon and Soviet Leader Leonid Brezhnev
signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in Moscow, concluding the
first round of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Arms_Limitation_Talks)
1986:
The European Community adopted the Flag of Europe, a flag previously
adopted by the Council of Europe in 1955.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Europe)
_____________________
Wiktionary's Word of the day:
subsequently: Following, afterwards in either time or place.
(http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/subsequently)
_____________________
Wikiquote of the day:
Thunder only happens when it's raining. Players only love you when
they're playing. Say... Women... they will come and they will go. When
the rain washes you clean... you'll know.
-- Stevie Nicks
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stevie_Nicks)
Edward Low was a notorious pirate during the latter days of the Golden
Age of Piracy, in the early 18th century. He was born around 1690 into
poverty in Westminster, London, and was a thief and a scoundrel from a
young age. Low moved to Boston, Massachusetts as a young man.
Following the death of his wife during childbirth in late 1719, he
became a pirate two years later, operating off the coasts of New
England, the Azores, and in the Caribbean. He captained a number of
ships, usually maintaining a small fleet of three or four. Low and his
pirate crews captured at least a hundred ships during his short
career, burning most of them. Although he was only active for three
years, Low remains notorious as one of the most vicious pirates of the
age, with a reputation for violently torturing his victims before
killing them. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle described Low as "savage and
desperate", and a man of "amazing and grotesque brutality". The New
York Times called him a torturer, whose methods would have "done
credit to the ingenuity of the Spanish Inquisition in its darkest
days". The circumstances of Low's death, which took place around 1724,
have been the subject of much speculation.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Low
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1455:
Forces led by Richard, Duke of York and Richard, Earl of Warwick
captured Lancastrian King Henry VI of England, beginning the Wars of
the Roses with a Yorkist victory in the First Battle of St Albans.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_St_Albans)
1809:
War of the Fifth Coalition: Austrian forces under Archduke Charles
prevented Napoleon I and his French troops from crossing the Danube
near Vienna at the Battle of Aspern-Essling.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aspern-Essling)
1915:
Five trains were involved in a crash near Gretna Green, Scotland,
killing 227 people and injuring 246 in the Quintinshill rail crash.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintinshill_rail_crash)
1964:
During a speech at the University of Michigan, U.S. President Lyndon
B. Johnson presented the goals of his Great Society domestic social
reforms to eliminate poverty and racial injustice.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society)
1990:
The Yemen Arab Republic and the People's Democratic Republic of
Yemen merged to become the Republic of Yemen.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemen)
_____________________
Wiktionary's Word of the day:
nuptial: Of or pertaining to wedding and marriage.
(http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nuptial)
_____________________
Wikiquote of the day:
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly
recognizes genius.
-- [[Arthur Conan Doyle]]
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Arthur_Conan_Doyle)
Pearl Jam is an American rock band that formed in Seattle, Washington
in 1990. Since its inception, the band's line-up has consisted of
Eddie Vedder (lead vocals, guitar), Jeff Ament (bass guitar), Stone
Gossard (rhythm guitar), and Mike McCready (lead guitar). The band's
current drummer is Matt Cameron, formerly of Soundgarden, who has been
with the band since 1998. Formed after the demise of Ament and
Gossard's previous band Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam broke into the
mainstream with its debut album Ten. One of the key bands of the
grunge movement in the early 1990s, Pearl Jam was nevertheless
criticized early on as being a corporate cash-in on the alternative
rock explosion. However, its members became noted for their refusal to
adhere to traditional music industry practices as their career
progressed, including refusing to make music videos and engaging in a
much-publicized boycott of Ticketmaster. Rolling Stone described the
band as having "spent much of the past decade deliberately tearing
apart their own fame." Since its inception, the band has sold 30
million records in the U.S., and an estimated 60 million albums
worldwide. Pearl Jam has outlasted many of its contemporaries from the
alternative rock breakthrough of the early 1990s, and is considered
one of the most influential bands of the decade, and "the most popular
American rock band of the 1990s".
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Jam
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1500:
Portuguese explorer Pedro ??lvares Cabral and his crew became the
first Europeans to sight Brazil when they spotted Monte Pascoal.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BDlvares_Cabral)
1889:
Over 50,000 people rushed to claim a piece of the available two
million acres (8,000 km??) in the Unassigned Lands, the present-day
U.S. state of Oklahoma. Within hours, both Oklahoma City and Guthrie
had established cities of around 10,000 people.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Run_of_1889)
1915:
The Germans released chlorine gas as a chemical weapon in the Second
Battle of Ypres, killing over 5,000 soldiers within ten minutes by
asphyxiation in the first large-scale successful use of poison gas in
World War I.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_gas_in_World_War_I)
1930:
France, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States
signed the London Naval Treaty, regulating submarine warfare and
limiting military ship building.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Naval_Treaty)
1945:
About 600 prisoners of the Jasenovac concentration camp in the
Independent State of Croatia revolted, but only 80 of the managed to
escape while the other 520 were killed by the Croatian Usta??e regime.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasenovac_concentration_camp)
1993:
The first version of Mosaic, created by computer programmers Marc
Andreessen and Eric Bina at the National Center for Supercomputing
Applications of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was
released, becoming the first popular World Wide Web browser and Gopher
client.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_%28web_browser%29)
_____________________
Wiktionary's Word of the day:
johnnycake: (US) A dense baked or fried flatbread made of cornmeal.
(http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/johnnycake)
_____________________
Wikiquote of the day:
There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.
-- Marshall McLuhan
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan)
Reactive attachment disorder (RAD) is the diagnostic term for severe
and relatively uncommon disorders of attachment that can affect
children. RAD is characterized by markedly disturbed and
developmentally inappropriate ways of relating socially in most
contexts. It can take the form of a persistent failure to initiate or
respond to most social interactions in a developmentally appropriate
way—known as the "inhibited" form—or can present itself as
indiscriminate sociability, such as excessive familiarity with
relative strangers—known as the "disinhibited form". RAD arises from
a failure to form normal attachments to primary caregivers in early
childhood. Such a failure could result from severe early experiences
of neglect, abuse, abrupt separation from caregivers between the ages
of six months and three years, frequent change of caregivers, or a
lack of caregiver responsiveness to a child's communicative efforts.
The criteria for a diagnosis of a reactive attachment disorder are
very different from the criteria used in assessment or categorization
of attachment styles such as insecure or disorganized attachment.
Children with RAD are presumed to have grossly disturbed internal
working models of relationships which may lead to interpersonal and
behavioral difficulties in later life. There are few studies of long
term effects, and there is a lack of clarity about the presentation of
the disorder beyond the age of five years.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactive_attachment_disorder
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1653:
Oliver Cromwell dissolved the Rump Parliament of the Commonwealth of
England by force, eventually replacing it with the Barebone's
Parliament.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rump_Parliament)
1862:
French physiologist Louis Pasteur and physiologist Claude Bernard
completed the first test on pasteurization.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/pasteurization)
1884:
Pope Leo XIII published the encyclical Humanum Genus, denouncing
Freemasonry, the doctrine of a separation of church and state, and
many other principles, some of which are today equated by most people
with the founding ones of the United States.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanum_Genus)
1968:
British Member of Parliament Enoch Powell made his controversial
"Rivers of Blood" speech in opposition to immigration and
anti-discrimination legislation, resulting in him being removed from
the Shadow Cabinet.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivers_of_Blood_speech)
1978:
Soviet fighters shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 902 after it
violated Soviet airspace and failed to respond to Soviet interceptors.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_902)
_____________________
Wiktionary's Word of the day:
quidnunc: Someone who attempts to know all that happens, but who is
not careful of the facts.
(http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/quidnunc)
_____________________
Wikiquote of the day:
The true secret in being a hero lies in knowing the order of things.
... Things must happen when it is time for them to happen. Quests may
not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like
unpicked fruit; unicorns may go unrescued for a very long time, but
not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story.
-- Peter S. Beagle
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Peter_S._Beagle)
Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism,
writing, and speeches. She was lionized as a free-thinking "rebel
woman" by admirers, and derided as an advocate of
politically-motivated murder and violent revolution by her critics.
Born in the province of Kaunas, Lithuania she moved with her sister
Helena to Rochester, New York in the United States at the age of
sixteen. Attracted to anarchism after the Haymarket Riot, Goldman was
trained by Johann Most in public speaking and became a renowned
lecturer, attracting crowds of thousands. The writer and anarchist
Alexander Berkman became her lover, lifelong intimate friend and
comrade. Together they planned to assassinate Henry Clay Frick as an
act of propaganda of the deed. Though Frick survived, Berkman was
sentenced to twenty-two years in prison. In 1917 Goldman and Berkman
were sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to "induce persons
not to register" for the newly instated draft. After their release
from prison, they were arrested - with hundreds of others - and
deported to Russia. Initially supportive of that country's Bolshevik
revolution, Goldman quickly voiced her opposition to the Soviet use of
violence and the repression of independent voices. Eventually she
traveled to Spain to participate in that nation's civil war. She died
in Toronto on 14 May 1940.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Goldman
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1713:
With no living male heirs, Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI issued the
Pragmatic Sanction to ensure one of his daughters would inherit the
Habsburg monarchy.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_VI%2C_Holy_Roman_Emperor)
1775:
The American Revolutionary War began with the Battles of Lexington
and Concord in Middlesex County, Massachusetts.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Lexington_and_Concord)
1943:
Nazi German troops entered the Warsaw Ghetto to round up the
remaining Jews, sparking the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the first mass
uprising in Poland against the Nazi occupation during the Holocaust.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising)
1971:
The first space station, Salyut 1, was launched from the Baikonur
Cosmodrome near Tyuratam, Kazakh SSR, USSR.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut_1)
1984:
Scottish-born composer Peter Dodds McCormick's "Advance Australia
Fair", a patriotic song that was first performed in 1878, officially
replaced "God Save the Queen" as Australia's national anthem.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_Australia_Fair)
1995:
A car bomb was detonated in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal
Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA, killing 168 people and
injuring over 800 others.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing)
_____________________
Wiktionary's Word of the day:
espalier: A horticultural technique using pruning and shaping to train
the branches of a tree or shrub into a two-dimensional ornamental
design, as along a wall or fence.
(http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/espalier)
_____________________
Wikiquote of the day:
When you study natural science and the miracles of creation, if you
don't turn into a mystic you are not a natural scientist.
-- Albert Hofmann
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Hofmann)
Cannibal Holocaust is a controversial exploitation film directed by
Ruggero Deodato and based on a screenplay written by Gianfranco
Clerici. Filmed in the Amazon Rainforest, it focuses on a team of four
documentarians who head deep into the jungle to make a documentary on
the primitive native tribes that live there. After two months and no
word from the team, a famous anthropologist is sent on a rescue
mission in hopes of finding the team alive. Cannibal Holocaust is one
of the best known exploitation films due to the controversy it caused
upon its release. After premiering in Italy, the film was seized by
the local Magistrate and Deodato was arrested for obscenity. He was
later accused of making a snuff film based on circulating rumors that
the film's actors were slain for the camera. Though Deodato would be
cleared of these charges, the film was banned in Italy, the UK,
Australia, and several other countries for graphic gore, sexual
violence, and for the genuine slayings of six animals featured in the
film. Despite this notoriety, Cannibal Holocaust is seen by some
critics as a social commentary on civilized society.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannibal_Holocaust
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1506:
Construction of the current St. Peter's Basilica (interior pictured)
in Vatican City, to replace the old St. Peter's Basilica built in the
4th century, began.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Peter%27s_Basilica)
1942:
World War II: Sixteen B-25 Mitchell bombers from the aircraft
carrier USS Hornet carried out the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, the first
Allied attack on the Japanese home islands.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doolittle_Raid)
1983:
A suicide bomber destroyed the United States Embassy in Beirut with
a car bomb, killing over 60 people.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_United_States_Embassy_bombing)
1988:
Iran-Iraq War: U.S. naval forces launched Operation Praying Mantis
in retaliation for the Iranian mining of the Persian Gulf and the
subsequent damage to the American frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Praying_Mantis)
1996:
Israeli forces shelled Qana, Lebanon during Operation Grapes of
Wrath, killing over 100 civilians and injuring over 110 others at a UN
compound.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_shelling_of_Qana)
_____________________
Wiktionary's Word of the day:
tantamount: Equivalent in meaning or effect.
(http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tantamount)
_____________________
Wikiquote of the day:
You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the
other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free.
-- Clarence Darrow
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Clarence_Darrow)