100px|Rutherford B. Hayes

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) was the 19th President of the United States (1877–1881). Taking office as president on March 4, 1877, he oversaw the end of Reconstruction and the United States' entry into the Second Industrial Revolution. Hayes was a reformer who began the efforts that would lead to civil service reform and attempted, unsuccessfully, to reconcile the divisions that had led to the American Civil War fifteen years earlier. When the Civil War began, Hayes left a successful political career to join the Union Army. Wounded five times, most seriously at the Battle of South Mountain, he earned a reputation for bravery in combat and was promoted to the rank of major general. After the war, he served in the U.S. Congress from 1865 to 1867 as a Republican. Hayes left Congress to run for Governor of Ohio and was elected to three terms, serving from 1867 to 1871 and 1876 to 1877. In 1876, Hayes was elected president in one of the most contentious elections in American history. Losing the popular vote to Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, Hayes narrowly won the presidency after the Compromise of 1877, in which a Congressional commission awarded him twenty disputed electoral votes. (more...)

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_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1386:

Grand Duke of Lithuania Jogaila was crowned Władysław II Jagiełło, King of Poland, beginning the Jagiellon dynasty. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jogaila

1769:

French astronomer Charles Messier first noted the Orion Nebula , a bright nebula visible to the naked eye in the night sky situated south of Orion's Belt, later cataloguing it as Messier 42 in his list of Messier objects. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_Nebula

1877:

Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake debuted at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_Lake

1987:

U.S. President Ronald Reagan made a nationally televised address in which he accepted full responsibility for illegal actions in the Iran–Contra affair. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

philtrum (n): The shallow groove running down the center of the outer surface of the upper lip http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/philtrum

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

The idea of "crime" in existing criminology is artificial, for what is called crime is really an infringement of "existing laws", whereas "laws" are very often a manifestation of barbarism and violence. Such are the prohibiting laws of different kinds which abound in modern life. The number of these laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm. On the other hand, unquestionable crimes escape the field of vision of criminology, either because they have not recognized the form of crime or because they surpass a certain scale. In existing criminology there are concepts: a criminal man, a criminal profession, a criminal society, a criminal sect, and a criminal tribe, but there is no concept of a criminal state, or a criminal government, or criminal legislation. Consequently what is often regarded as "political" activity is in fact a criminal activity. --P. D. Ouspensky http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/P._D._Ouspensky