KWSN Orbiting Fortress

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

335 – Flavius Dalmatius is raised to the rank of Caesar by his uncle Constantine I.
1356 – Battle of Poitiers: an English army under the command of Edward, the Black Prince defeats a French army and captures the French king, John II.
1676 – Jamestown is burned to the ground by the forces of Nathaniel Bacon during Bacon's Rebellion.
1692 – Giles Corey is pressed to death after refusing to plead in the Salem witch trials.
1777 – American Revolutionary War: British forces win a tactically expensive victory over the Continental Army in the First Battle of Saratoga.
1778 – The Continental Congress passes the first budget of the United States.
1796 – George Washington's farewell address is printed across America as an open letter to the public.
1799 – French Revolutionary Wars: French-Dutch victory against the Russians and British in the Battle of Bergen.
1846 – Two French shepherd children, Mélanie Calvat and Maximin Giraud, experience a Marian apparition on a mountaintop near La Salette, France, now known as Our Lady of La Salette.
1862 – American Civil War: Battle of Iuka – Union troops under General William Rosecrans defeat a Confederate force commanded by General Sterling Price.
1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Chickamauga.
1870 – Franco-Prussian War: the Siege of Paris begins, which will result on January 28, 1871 in the surrender of Paris and a decisive Prussian victory.
1870 – Having invaded the Papal States a week earlier, the Italian Army lays siege to Rome, entering the city the next day, after which the Pope described himself as a Prisoner in the Vatican.
1881 – U.S. President James A. Garfield dies of wounds suffered in a July 2 shooting.
1893 – Women's suffrage: in New Zealand, the Electoral Act of 1893 is consented to by the governor giving all women in New Zealand the right to vote.
1934 – Bruno Hauptmann is arrested for the kidnap and murder of Charles Lindbergh Jr..
1939 – World War II: The Battle of Kępa Oksywska concludes, with Polish losses reaching roughly 14% of all the forces engaged.
1940 – Witold Pilecki is voluntarily captured and sent to Auschwitz in order to smuggle out information and start a resistance.
1944 – Armistice between Finland and Soviet Union is signed. (End of the Continuation War).
1944 – Battle of Hürtgen Forest between United States and Nazi Germany begins.
1945 – Lord Haw Haw (William Joyce) is sentenced to death in London.
1946 – The Council of Europe is founded following a speech by Winston Churchill at the University of Zurich.
1946 – The first Cannes Film Festival is held, having been delayed seven years due to World War II.
1952 – The United States bars Charlie Chaplin from re-entering the country after a trip to England.
1957 – First American underground nuclear bomb test (part of Operation Plumbbob).
1959 – Nikita Khrushchev is barred from visiting Disneyland.
1961 – Betty and Barney Hill claim that they saw a mysterious craft in the sky and that it tried to abduct them.
1970 – The first Glastonbury Festival is held at Michael Eavis's farm in Glastonbury, United Kingdom.
1970 – Kostas Georgakis, a Greek student of Geology, sets himself ablaze in Matteotti Square in Genoa, Italy as a protest against the dictatorial regime of Georgios Papadopoulos.
1971 – Montagnard troops of South Vietnam revolt against the rule of Nguyen Khanh, killing 70 ethnic Vietnamese soldiers.
1972 – A parcel bomb sent to Israeli Embassy in London kills one diplomat.
1973 – King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden has his investiture.
1976 – Turkish Airlines Boeing 727 hits the Taurus Mountains, outskirt of Karatepe, Osmaniye, Turkey, killing all 155 passengers and crew.
1976 – Two Imperial Iranian Air Force F-4 Phantom II jets fly out to investigate an unidentified flying object when both independently lose instrumentation and communications as they approach, only to have them restored upon withdrawal.
1978 – The Solomon Islands join the United Nations.
1981 – Simon & Garfunkel reunite for a free concert in New York's Central Park.
1982 – Scott Fahlman posts the first documented emoticons and on the Carnegie Mellon University Bulletin Board System.
1983 – Saint Kitts and Nevis gains its independence.
1985 – A strong earthquake kills thousands and destroys about 400 buildings in Mexico City.
1985 – Tipper Gore and other political wives form the Parents Music Resource Center as Frank Zappa and other musicians testify at U.S. Congressional hearings on obscenity in rock music.
1989 – A terrorist bomb explodes UTA Flight 772 in mid-air above the Tùnùrù Desert, Niger, killing 171.
1990 – Delhi University student Rajiv Goswami attempts Self Immolation during Anti-Reservation agitation in India. Though he survived, his Self Immolation inspired nearly 150 self immolation bids and indirectly led to the Resignation of V P Singh Govt.
1991 – Ötzi the Iceman is discovered by German tourists.
1995 – The Washington Post and The New York Times publish the Unabomber's manifesto.
1997 – Guelb El-Kebir massacre in Algeria; 53 killed.
2006 – The Thai military stages a coup in Bangkok. The Constitution is revoked and martial law is declared.
2010 – The leaking oil well in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is sealed.
[center]------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

The Battle of Hürtgen Forest (German: Schlacht im Hürtgenwald) is the name given to the series of fierce battles fought between U.S. and German forces during World War II in the Hürtgen Forest, which became the longest battle on German ground during World War II, and the longest single battle the U.S. Army has ever fought in its history. The battles took place from 14 September 1944-10 February 1945, over barely 50 sq mi (130 km2), east of the Belgian–German border.

The U.S. commanders′ initial goal was to pin down German forces in the area to keep them from reinforcing the front lines further north in the Battle of Aachen, where the Allies were fighting a trench war between a network of fortified towns and villages connected with field fortifications, tank traps, and minefields. A secondary objective may have been to outflank the front line. The Americans′ initial objectives were to take Schmidt, clear Monschau, and advance to the Rur River. Generalfeldmarshall Walter Model intended to bring the Allied thrust to a standstill. While he interfered less in the day-to-day movements of units than at Arnhem, he still kept himself fully informed on the situation, slowing the Allies′ progress, inflicting heavy casualties and taking full advantage of the fortifications of the Germans called the Westwall, better known to the Allies as the Siegfried Line.

The Hürtgen Forest cost the U.S. 1st Army at least 33,000 killed and incapacitated, including both combat and noncombat losses; Germans casualties were 28,000. Aachen eventually fell on 22 October, again at high cost to the U.S. 9th Army. The 9th Army′s push to the Rur fared no better, and did not manage to cross the river or wrest control of its dams from the Germans. Hürtgen was so costly that it has been called an Allied "defeat of the first magnitude", with specific credit being assigned to Model.

The Germans fiercely defended the area for two reasons: it served as a staging area for the Ardennes Offensive (what became the Battle of the Bulge) that was already in preparation, and the mountains commanded access to the Schwammenauel Damat the head of the Rur Lake (Rurstausee) which, if opened, would flood low-lying areas downstream and deny any crossing of the river. The Allies only recognized this after several heavy setbacks, and the Germans were able to hold the region until they launched their final major, last-ditch offensive on the Western Front, into the Ardennes.
[center]-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

The earthquake occurred in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of the Mexican state of Michoacán, a distance of more than 350 km from the city, in the Cocos Plate subduction zone, specifically in a section of the fault line known as the Michoacán seismic gap at coordinates 18.190 N 102.533 W. The Cocos Plate pushes against and slides under the North American Plate, primarily along the coasts of the states of Michoacán and Guerrero in Mexico. Volatile trenches along the Cocos plate generally have had seismic events 30 to 70 years before 1985. This subduction zone outside the Michoacán gap was the source of 42 earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or stronger in the 20th century prior to the 1985 event. However, this particular section of the subduction zone had not had an event for a much longer time. Shockwaves from the earthquake hit the mouth of the Río Balsas on the coast at 7:17 am and hit Mexico City, 350 km away, two minutes later at 7:19 am. The 19 September quake was a multiple event with two epicenters and the second movement occurring 26 seconds after the first. Because of multiple breaks in the fault line, the event was of long duration. Ground shaking lasted more than five minutes in places along the coast and parts of Mexico City shook for three minutes, with an average shaking time of 3–4 minutes. It is estimated the movement along the fault was about three meters. The main tremor was foreshadowed by a quake of magnitude 5.2 on 28 May 1985, and was followed by two significant aftershocks: one on 20 September 1985 of magnitude 7.5 lasting thirteen seconds and the third occurring seven months later on 30 April 1986 with magnitude 7.0 lasting ten seconds. However, at least twelve other minor aftershocks were associated with the seismic event.

The energy released during the main event was equivalent to approximately 1,114 nuclear weapons exploding. The earthquake was felt over 825,000 square kilometers, as far away as Los Angeles and Houston in the United States.

In the port of Lázaro Cárdenas, near the epicenter, the 19 September event registered as IX on the Modified Mercalli Intensity scale; in parts of Mexico City, it registered the same, even at a distance of about 400 km away. There was no historic record of such a strong quake in Mexico.

While the fault line was located just off the Pacific coast of Mexico, there was relatively little effect on the sea itself. The earthquake did produce a number of tsunamis but they were small, ranging between one and three meters in height. Ecuador reported the highest waves of 60 centimeters
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[stooper101]

September 19th, 1995 the first Talk Like A Pirate Day!
_________________


>stats<

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

Thanks stooper101 on more to join on Today in history. We are so many joinning around a fire or Boinc Chats. Writting on small pieces of paper or big stones. Loving history and crunching it.

331 BC - Alexander the Great begins his journey to the Tigris River to confront the Persian Empire.
1058 – Agnes de Poitou and Andrew I of Hungary met to negotiate about the border-zone in present-day Burgenland.
1187 – Saladin begins the Siege of Jerusalem.
1260 – the Great Prussian Uprising among the old Prussians begins against the Teutonic Knights.
1276 - Election of Pope John XXI. Single Portuguese Pope in History.
1378 – Cardinal Robert of Geneva, called by some the Butcher of Cesena, is elected as Avignon Pope Clement VII, beginning the Papal schism.
1498 – The 1498 Meiō Nankaidō earthquake generates a tsunami that washes away the building housing the statue of the Great Buddha at Kōtoku-in in Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan; since then the Buddha has sat in the open air.
1519 – Ferdinand Magellan sets sail from Sanlúcar de Barrameda with about 270 men on his expedition to circumnavigate the globe.
1596 – Diego de Montemayor founds the city of Monterrey in New Spain.
1697 – The Treaty of Rijswijk is signed by France, England, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire and the Dutch Republic ending the Nine Years' War (1688–97).
1737 – The finish of the Walking Purchase which forces the cession of 1.2 million acres (4,860 km²) of Lenape-Delaware tribal land to the Pennsylvania Colony.
1792 – French troops stop allied invasion of France, during the War of the First Coalition at Valmy.
1835 – Ragamuffin rebels capture Porto Alegre, then capital of the Brazilian imperial province of Rio Grande do Sul, triggering the start of ten-year-long Farroupilha Revolution.
1848 – The American Association for the Advancement of Science is created.
1854 – Battle of Alma: British and French troops defeat Russians in the Crimea.
1857 – The Indian Rebellion of 1857 ends with the recapture of Delhi by troops loyal to the East India Company.
1860 – The Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII of the United Kingdom) visits the United States.
1863 – American Civil War: The Battle of Chickamauga ends.
1870 – Bersaglieri corps enter Rome through the Porta Pia and complete the unification of Italy.
1871 – Bishop John Coleridge Patteson is martyred on the island of Nukapu, a Polynesian outlier island now in the Temotu Province of the Solomon Islands. He is the first bishop of Melanesia.
1881 – Chester A. Arthur is inaugurated as the 21st President of the United States following the assassination of James Garfield.
1891 – The first gasoline-powered car debuts in Springfield, Massachusetts, United States.
1906 – Cunard Line's RMS Mauretania is launched at the Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson shipyard in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.
1909 – The Parliament of the United Kingdom passes the South Africa Act 1909, creating the Union of South Africa from the British Colonies of the Cape of Good Hope, Natal, Orange River Colony, and the Transvaal Colony.
1910 – The ocean liner SS France, later known as the "Versailles of the Atlantic", is launched.
1911 – White Star Line's RMS Olympic collides with british warship HMS Hawke.
1920 – Foundation of the Spanish Legion.
1930 – Syro-Malankara Catholic Church is formed by Archbishop Mar Ivanios.
1942 – Holocaust in Letychiv, Ukraine. In the course of two days the German SS murders at least 3,000 Jews.
1961 – Greek general Konstantinos Dovas becomes Prime Minister of Greece.
1962 – James Meredith, an African-American, is temporarily barred from entering the University of Mississippi.
1967 – RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 is launched at John Brown & Company, Clydebank, Scotland. It is operated by the Cunard Line.
1970 – Syrian tanks roll into Jordan in response to continued fighting between Jordan and the fedayeen.
1971 – Having weakened after making landfall in Nicaragua the previous day, Hurricane Irene regains enough strength to be rebranded Hurricane Olivia, making it the first known hurricane to successfully cross from the Atlantic Ocean into the Pacific.
1973 – Billie Jean King beats Bobby Riggs in The Battle of the Sexes tennis match at the Houston Astrodome in Houston, Texas.
1977 – The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is admitted to the United Nations.
1979 – A coup d'état in the Central African Empire overthrows Emperor Bokasa I.
1982 – The National Football League players begin a 57-day strike.
1984 – A suicide bomber in a car attacks the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing twenty-two people.
1990 – South Ossetia declares its independence from Georgia.
2000 – The British MI6 Secret Intelligence Service building is attacked by unapprehended forces using a Russian-built Mark 22 anti-tank missile.
2001 – In an address to a joint session of Congress and the American people, U.S. President George W. Bush declares a "war on terror".
2002 – The Kolka-Karmadon rock/ice slide.
2003 – Maldives civil unrest: the death of prisoner Hassan Evan Naseem sparks a day of rioting in Malé.
2007 – Between 15,000 and 20,000 protesters marched on Jena, Louisiana, in support of six black youths who had been convicted of assaulting a white classmate.
2008 – A dump truck full of explosives detonates in front of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, killing 54 people and injuring 266 others.
[center]-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

Alexander III of Macedon (20/21 July 356 – 10/11 June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great (Greek: Μέγας Ἀλέξανδρος, Mégas Aléxandros), was a king of Macedon, a state in northern Greece. By the age of thirty, he had created of one of the largest empires in ancient history, stretching from the Ionian Sea to the Himalayas. He was undefeated in battle and is considered one of the most successful commanders of all time. Born in Pella in 356 BC, Alexander was tutored by the famed philosopher Aristotle. In 336 BC he succeeded his father Philip II of Macedon to the throne after Philip was assassinated. Philip had brought most of the city-states of mainland Greece under Macedonian hegemony, using both military and diplomatic means.

Upon Philip's death, Alexander inherited a strong kingdom and an experienced army. He succeeded in being awarded the generalship of Greece and, with his authority firmly established, launched the military plans for expansion left by his father. In 334 BC he invaded Persian-ruled Asia Minor and began a series of campaigns lasting ten years. Alexander broke the power of Persia in a series of decisive battles, most notably the battles of Issus and Gaugamela. Subsequently he overthrew the Persian king Darius III and conquered the entirety of the Persian Empire.i[›] The Macedonian Empire now stretched from the Adriatic Sea to the Indus River.

Following his desire to reach the "ends of the world and the Great Outer Sea", he invaded India in 326 BC, but was eventually forced to turn back by the near-mutiny of his troops. Alexander died in Babylon in 323 BC, without realizing a series of planned campaigns that would have begun with an invasion of Arabia. In the years following Alexander's death a series of civil wars tore his empire apart which resulted in the formation of a number of states ruled by the Diadochi – Alexander's surviving generals. Although he is mostly remembered for his vast conquests, Alexander's lasting legacy was not his reign, but the cultural diffusion his conquests engendered.

Alexander founded some twenty cities that bore his name. His settlement of Greek colonists and the resulting spread of Greek culture in the east resulted in a new Hellenistic civilization, aspects of which were still evident in the traditions of the Byzantine Empire until the mid-15th century. Alexander became legendary as a classical hero in the mold of Achilles, and features prominently in the history and myth of Greek and non-Greek cultures. He became the measure against which generals, even to this day, compare themselves and military academies throughout the world still teach his tactical exploits
[center]--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

The War on Terror (also known as the Global War on Terror or the War on Terrorism) is an international military campaign led by the United States and the United Kingdom with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) as well as non-NATO countries. Originally, the campaign was waged against al-Qaeda and other militant organizations with the purpose of eliminating them.

The phrase War on Terror was first used by US President George W. Bush and other high-ranking US officials to denote a global military, political, legal and ideological struggle against organizations designated as terrorist and regimes that were accused of having a connection to them or providing them with support or were perceived, or presented as posing a threat to the US and its allies in general. It was typically used with a particular focus on militant Islamists and al-Qaeda.

Although the term is not officially used by the administration of US President Barack Obama (which instead uses the term Overseas Contingency Operation), it is still commonly used by politicians, in the media and officially by some aspects of government, such as the United States' Global War on Terrorism Service Medal.

The origins of al-Qaeda as a network inspiring terrorism around the world and training operatives can be traced to the Soviet War in Afghanistan (December 1979 – February 1989). In May 1996 the group World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders (WIFJAJC), sponsored by Osama bin Laden and later reformed as al-Qaeda, started forming a large base of operations in Afghanistan, where the Islamist extremist regime of the Taliban had seized power that same year. In February 1998, Osama bin Laden signed a fatwa, as the head of al-Qaeda, declaring war on the West and Israel, later in May of that same year al-Qaeda released a video declaring war on the United States and the West.

Following the bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, US President Bill Clinton launched Operation Infinite Reach, a bombing campaign in Sudan and Afghanistan against targets the US asserted were associated with WIFJAJC, although others have questioned whether a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan was used as a chemical warfare plant. The plant produced much of the region's antimalarial drugs and around 50% of Sudan's pharmaceutical needs. The strikes failed to kill any leaders of WIFJAJC or the Taliban.

Next came the 2000 millennium attack plots which included an attempted bombing of Los Angeles International Airport. In October 2000 the USS Cole bombing occurred, followed in 2001 by the September 11 attacks.
[center]---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

Pedro Julião, born between 1210 and 1220, was probably born in Lisbon. He started his studies at the episcopal school of Lisbon Cathedral, and later joined the University of Paris, although some historians claim that he was educated at Montpellier. Wherever he studied, he concentrated on medicine, theology, and Aristotle's dialectic, logic, physics and metaphysics.

There are some who believe he must be identified with Peter of Spain. On the basis of this premise, he is the person who from 1245 to 1250 became known as Pedro Hispano (because he came from Hispania, the Iberian Peninsula), and who taught medicine at the university of Siena, where he wrote the Summulae Logicales, a reference manual on Aristotelian logic that remained in use in European universities for more than 300 years (see Peter of Spain for some controversies). He became famous as a university teacher, then returned to Lisbon. In the courts of Guimarães he was the councilor and spokesman of the king Afonso III of Portugal (1248–79) in church matters; later, becoming prior of Guimarães. He tried to become Bishop of Lisbon, but he was defeated. Instead, he became the master of the school of Lisbon. A notable philosopher with works in logic, he was also the responsible for the creation of the Square of opposition.

Pedro became the physician of Pope Gregory X (1271–76). In March 1273 he was elected archbishop of Braga, but did not assume that post because on June 3, 1273 Gregory X created him Cardinal-Bishop of Frascati.

After the death of Pope Adrian V, on August 18, 1276, Pedro Hispano was elected Pope at the conclave of cardinals on September 13, and he was crowned a week later. One of John XXI's few acts during his brief rule was to reverse the decree recently passed at the Second Council of Lyon (1274), which not only confined cardinals in solitude until they elected a successor Pope, but also progressively restricted their supplies of food and wine if their deliberation took too long.

Though much of John XXI's brief papacy was dominated by the powerful Cardinal Giovanni Gaetano Orsini (who succeeded him as Pope Nicholas III), John attempted to launch a crusade for the Holy Land, pushed for a union with the Eastern church, and did what he could to maintain peace between the Christian nations. He also launched a drive to convert the Tatars, which came to nothing.

To secure the necessary quiet for his medicine studies, he had an apartment added to the papal palace at Viterbo, to which he could retire when he wished to work undisturbed. On 14 May 1277, while the pope was alone in this apartment, it collapsed; John was buried under the ruins, and died on 20 May in consequence of the serious injuries he had received. He was buried in the Duomo di Viterbo where his tomb can still be seen.
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

September 21: General Interest
1780: Benedict Arnold commits treason

On this day in 1780, during the American Revolution, American General Benedict Arnold meets with British Major John Andre to discuss handing over West Point to the British, in return for the promise of a large sum of money and a high position in the British army. The plot was foiled and Arnold, a former American hero, became synonymous with the word "traitor."

Arnold was born into a well-respected family in Norwich, Connecticut, on January 14, 1741. He apprenticed with an apothecary and was a member of the militia during the French and Indian War (1754-1763). He later became a successful trader and joined the Continental Army when the Revolutionary War broke out between Great Britain and its 13 American colonies in 1775. When the war ended in 1883, the colonies had won their independence from Britain and formed a new nation, the United States.

During the war, Benedict Arnold proved himself a brave and skillful leader, helping Ethan Allen's troops capture Fort Ticonderoga in 1775 and then participating in the unsuccessful attack on British Quebec later that year, which earned him a promotion to brigadier general. Arnold distinguished himself in campaigns at Lake Champlain, Ridgefield and Saratoga, and gained the support of George Washington. However, Arnold had enemies within the military and in 1777, five men of lesser rank were promoted over him. Over the course of the next few years, Arnold married for a second time and he and his new wife lived a lavish lifestyle in Philadelphia, accumulating substantial debt. The debt and the resentment Arnold felt over not being promoted faster were motivating factors in his choice to become a turncoat.

In 1780, Arnold was given command of West Point, an American fort on the Hudson River in New York (and future home of the U.S. military academy, established in 1802). Arnold contacted Sir Henry Clinton, head of the British forces, and proposed handing over West Point and his men. On September 21 of that year, Arnold met with Major John Andre and made his traitorous pact. However, the conspiracy was uncovered and Andre was captured and executed. Arnold, the former American patriot, fled to the enemy side and went on to lead British troops in Virginia and Connecticut. He later moved to England, though he never received all of what he'd been promised by the British. He died in London on June 14, 1801.
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

66 – Roman Emperor Nero creates the Legion I Italica.
1236 – The Lithuanians and Semigallians defeat the Livonian Brothers of the Sword in the Battle of Saule.
1499 – Treaty of Basel: Switzerland becomes an independent state.
1586 – Battle of Zutphen: Spanish victory over England and Dutch.
1598 – English playwright Ben Jonson kills an actor in a duel and is indicted for manslaughter.
1692 – Last people hanged for witchcraft in Britain's North American colonies.
1761 – George III and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz are crowned King and Queen, respectively, of the Kingdom of Great Britain.
1776 – Nathan Hale is hanged for spying during American Revolution.
1784 – Russia establishes a colony at Kodiak, Alaska.
1789 – The office of United States Postmaster General is established.
1789 – Battle of Rymnik establishes Alexander Suvorov as a pre-eminent Russian military commander after his allied army defeat superior Ottoman Empire forces.
1792 – Primidi Vendémiaire of year 1 of the French Republican Calendar as the French First Republic comes into being.
1823 – Joseph Smith, Jr. states he found the Golden plates on this date after being directed by God through the Angel Moroni to the place where they were buried.
1851 – The city of Des Moines, Iowa is incorporated as Fort Des Moines.
1862 – Slavery in the United States: a preliminary version of the Emancipation Proclamation is released.
1866 – Battle of Curupaity in the War of the Triple Alliance.
1869 – Richard Wagner's opera Das Rheingold premieres in Munich.
1885 – Lord Randolph Churchill makes a speech in Ulster in opposition to Home Rule.
1888 – The first issue of National Geographic Magazine is published.
1896 – Queen Victoria surpasses her grandfather King George III as the longest reigning monarch in British history.
1908 – The independence of Bulgaria is proclaimed.
1910 – The Duke of York's Picture House opens in Brighton, now the oldest continually operating cinema in Britain.
1919 – The steel strike of 1919, led by the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, begins in Pennsylvania before spreading across the United States.
1927 – Jack Dempsey loses the "Long Count" boxing match to Gene Tunney.
1934 – An explosion takes place at Gresford Colliery in Wales, leading to the deaths of 266 miners and rescuers.
1937 – Spanish Civil War: Peña Blanca is taken; the end of the Battle of El Mazuco.
1939 – Joint victory parade of Wehrmacht and Red Army in Brest-Litovsk at the end of the Invasion of Poland.
1941 – World War II: On Jewish New Year Day, the German SS murder 6,000 Jews in Vinnytsya, Ukraine. Those are the survivors of the previous killings that took place a few days earlier in which about 24,000 Jews were executed.
1944 – World War II: the Red Army enters Tallinn.
1955 – In the United Kingdom, the television channel ITV goes live for the first time.
1960 – The Sudanese Republic is renamed Mali after the withdrawal of Senegal from the Mali Federation.
1965 – The Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 (also known as the Second Kashmir War) between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, ends after the UN calls for a cease-fire.
1975 – Sara Jane Moore tries to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford, but is foiled by Oliver Sipple.
1979 – The Vela Incident (also known as the South Atlantic Flash) is observed near Bouvet Island, thought to be a nuclear weapons test.
1980 – Iraq invades Iran.
1991 – The Dead Sea Scrolls are made available to the public for the first time by the Huntington Library.
1993 – A barge strikes a railroad bridge near Mobile, Alabama, causing the deadliest train wreck in Amtrak history. 47 passengers are killed.
1993 – A Transair Georgian Airlines Tu-154 is shot down by a missile in Sukhumi, Georgia.
1994 – the Nordhordland Bridge was opened across the Salhusfjorden between Klauvaneset and Flatøy in Hordaland, Norway. It has no lateral anchorage because of the depth of Salhusfjorden.
1995 – An E-3B AWACS crashes outside Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska after multiple bird strikes to two of the four engines soon after takeoff; all 24 on board are killed.
1995 – Nagerkovil school bombing, is carried out by Sri Lankan Air Force in which at least 34 die, most of them ethnic Tamil school children.
2003 – David Hempleman-Adams becomes the first person to cross the Atlantic Ocean in an open-air, wicker-basket hot air balloon.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Emancipation Proclamation is an executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War under his war powers. It proclaimed the freedom of 3.1 million of the nation's 4 million slaves, and immediately freed 50,000 of them, with nearly all the rest freed as Union armies advanced. The Proclamation did not compensate the owners; it did not make the ex-slaves, called Freedmen, citizens.

On September 22, 1862, Lincoln announced that he would issue a formal emancipation of all slaves in any state of the Confederate States of America that did not return to Union control by January 1, 1863. None did return and the actual order, signed and issued January 1, 1863, took effect except in locations where the Union had already mostly regained control. The Proclamation made abolition a central goal of the war (in addition to reunion), outraged white Southerners who envisioned a race war, angered some Northern Democrats, energized anti-slavery forces, and weakened forces in Europe that wanted to intervene to help the Confederacy.

Total abolition of slavery was finalized by the Thirteenth Amendment which took effect in December 1865.

Lincoln issued the Proclamation under his authority as "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy" under Article II, section 2 of the United States Constitution. As such, he had the martial power to suspend civil law in those states which were in rebellion. He did not have Commander-in-Chief authority over the four slave-holding states that had not seceded: Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware. The Emancipation Proclamation was never challenged in court. To ensure the abolition of slavery everywhere in the U.S., Lincoln pushed for passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. Congress passed it by the necessary 2/3 vote in February 1865 and it was ratified by the states by December 1865.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign or 1939 Defensive War (Polish: Kampania wrześniowa or Wojna obronna 1939 roku) in Poland and the Poland Campaign (German: Polenfeldzug) in Germany, was an invasion of Poland by Germany, the Soviet Union, and a small Slovak contingent that marked the start of World War II in Europe. The invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, and ended on 6 October 1939 with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland.

The morning after the Gleiwitz incident, German forces invaded Poland from the north, south, and west. As the Germans advanced, Polish forces withdrew from their forward bases of operation close to the Polish-German border to more established lines of defence to the east. After the mid-September Polish defeat in the Battle of the Bzura, the Germans gained an undisputed advantage. Polish forces then withdrew to the southeast where they prepared for a long defence of the Romanian Bridgehead and awaited expected support and relief from France and the United Kingdom. The two countries had pacts with Poland and had declared war on Germany on 3 September, though in the end their aid to Poland in the September campaign was very limited.

The Soviet Red Army's invasion of Eastern Poland on 17 September, in accordance with a secret protocol of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, rendered the Polish plan of defence obsolete. Facing a second front, the Polish government concluded the defence of the Romanian Bridgehead was no longer feasible and ordered an emergency evacuation of all troops to neutral Romania. On 6 October, following the Polish defeat at the Battle of Kock, German and Soviet forces gained full control over Poland. The success of the invasion marked the end of the Second Polish Republic, though Poland never formally surrendered.

On 8 October, after an initial period of military administration, Germany directly annexed western Poland and the former Free City of Danzig and placed the remaining block of territory under the administration of the newly established General Government. The Soviet Union incorporated its newly acquired areas into its constituent Belarusian and Ukrainian republics, and immediately started a campaign of sovietization. This included staged elections, the results of which were used to legitimize the Soviet Union's annexation of eastern Poland. In the aftermath of the invasion, a collective of underground resistance organizations formed the Polish Underground State within the territory of the former Polish state. Many of the military exiles that managed to escape Poland subsequently joined the Polish Armed Forces in the West, an armed force loyal to the Polish government in exile.
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[klaatuborada]

I got better.
_________________
Confucious say, "Man who lay girl on hill, not on level"
sic eas ad astra

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

1122 – Pope Calixtus II and Holy Roman Emperor Henry V agree to the Concordat of Worms to put an end to the Investiture Controversy.
1409 – Battle of Kherlen, the second significant victory over Ming China by the Mongols since 1368.
1459 – Battle of Blore Heath, the first major battle of the English Wars of the Roses, is fought at Blore Heath in Staffordshire.
1641 – The Merchant Royal, carrying a treasure worth over a billion US dollars, is lost at sea off Land's End.
1642 – First commencement exercises occur at Harvard College.
1779 – American Revolution: a squadron commanded by John Paul Jones on board the USS Bonhomme Richard wins the Battle of Flamborough Head, off the coast of England, against two British warships.
1780 – American Revolution: British Major John André is arrested as a spy by American soldiers exposing Benedict Arnold's change of sides.
1803 – Second Anglo-Maratha War: Battle of Assaye between the British East India Company and the Maratha Empire in India.
1806 – Lewis and Clark return to St. Louis after exploring the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
1821 – Tripolitsa, Greece, falls and 30,000 Turks are massacred during the Greek War of Independence.
1845 – The Knickerbockers Baseball Club, the first baseball team to play under the modern rules, is founded in New York.
1846 – Neptune is discovered by French astronomer Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier and British astronomer John Couch Adams; the discovery is verified by German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle.
1857 – The Russian warship Lefort capsizes and sinks during a storm in the Gulf of Finland, killing all 826 aboard.
1868 – Grito de Lares ("Lares Revolt") occurs in Puerto Rico against Spanish rule.
1889 – Nintendo Koppai (Later Nintendo Company, Limited) is founded by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce and market the playing card game Hanafuda.
1905 – Norway and Sweden sign the "Karlstad treaty", peacefully dissolving the Union between the two countries.
1908 – University of Alberta in Alberta, Canada, is founded.
1909 – The Phantom of the Opera (original title: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra), a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux, is first published as a serialization in Le Gaulois.
1932 – The Kingdom of Hejaz and Nejd is renamed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
1936 – First ascent of Siniolchu by a German team.
1938 – Mobilization of the Czechoslovak army in response to the Munich Crisis.
1941 – World War II: The first gas chamber experiments are conducted at Auschwitz.
1942 – World War II: First day of the September Matanikau action on Guadalcanal as United States Marine Corps forces attack Imperial Japanese Army units along the Matanikau River.
1943 – World War II: The so-called Salò Republic is born.
1952 – Richard Nixon makes his "Checkers speech".
1959 – Iowa farmer and corn breeder Roswell Garst hosts Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev.
1959 – The MS Princess of Tasmania, Australia’s first passenger roll-on/roll-off diesel ferry, makes her maiden voyage across Bass Strait.
1962 – The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City opens with the completion of the first building, the Philharmonic Hall (now Avery Fisher Hall) home of the New York Philharmonic.
1969 – The Chicago Eight trial opens in Chicago.
1972 – Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos announces over television and radio the implementation of martial law.
1973 – Juan Perón returns to power in Argentina.
1983 – Saint Kitts and Nevis joins the United Nations.
1983 – Gerrie Coetzee of South Africa becomes the first African boxing world heavyweight champion.
1983 – Gulf Air Flight 771 is bombed, killing all 117 people on board.
1986 – Jim Deshaies of the Houston Astros sets the major-league record by striking out the first eight batters of the game against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
1988 – José Canseco of the Oakland Athletics becomes the first member of the 40-40 club.
1992 – A large Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb destroys forensic laboratories in Belfast.
1999 – Celebrate Bisexuality Day was first observed in the United States.
1999 – NASA announces that it has lost contact with the Mars Climate Orbiter.
1999 – Qantas Flight 1 overruns the runway in Bangkok during a storm. Although some passengers only receive minor injuries, it is still the worst crash in Qantas's history since 1960.
2002 – The first public version of the web browser Mozilla Firefox ("Phoenix 0.1") is released.
2004 – Hurricane Jeanne: At least 1,070 in Haiti are reported to have been killed by floods.
2008 – Kauhajoki school shooting: Matti Saari kills 10 people before committing suicide.
[center]-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

Neptune is the eighth and farthest planet from the Sun in the Solar System. Named for the Roman god of the sea, it is the fourth-largest planet by diameter and the third largest by mass. Neptune is 17 times the mass of Earth and is slightly more massive than its near-twin Uranus, which is 15 times the mass of Earth but not as dense. On average, Neptune orbits the Sun at a distance of 30.1 AU, approximately 30 times the Earth–Sun distance. Its astronomical symbol is ♆, a stylized version of the god Neptune's trident.

Discovered on September 23, 1846, Neptune was the first planet found by mathematical prediction rather than by empirical observation. Unexpected changes in the orbit of Uranus led Alexis Bouvard to deduce that its orbit was subject to gravitational perturbation by an unknown planet. Neptune was subsequently observed by Johann Galle within a degree of the position predicted by Urbain Le Verrier, and its largest moon, Triton, was discovered shortly thereafter, though none of the planet's remaining 12 moons were located telescopically until the 20th century. Neptune has been visited by only one spacecraft, Voyager 2, which flew by the planet on August 25, 1989.

Neptune is similar in composition to Uranus, and both have compositions which differ from those of the larger gas giants Jupiter and Saturn. Neptune's atmosphere, while similar to Jupiter's and Saturn's in that it is composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, along with traces of hydrocarbons and possibly nitrogen, contains a higher proportion of "ices" such as water, ammonia and methane. Astronomers sometimes categorize Uranus and Neptune as "ice giants" in order to emphasize these distinctions. The interior of Neptune, like that of Uranus, is primarily composed of ices and rock. Traces of methane in the outermost regions in part account for the planet's blue appearance.

In contrast to the relatively featureless atmosphere of Uranus, Neptune's atmosphere is notable for its active and visible weather patterns. For example, at the time of the 1989 Voyager 2 flyby, the planet's southern hemisphere possessed a Great Dark Spot comparable to the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. These weather patterns are driven by the strongest sustained winds of any planet in the Solar System, with recorded wind speeds as high as 2,100 km/h. Because of its great distance from the Sun, Neptune's outer atmosphere is one of the coldest places in the Solar System, with temperatures at its cloud tops approaching −218 °C (55 K). Temperatures at the planet's centre are approximately 5,400 K (5,000 °C). Neptune has a faint and fragmented ring system, which may have been detected during the 1960s but was only indisputably confirmed in 1989 by Voyager 2.
[center]--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. As of August 2011, Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 30% of worldwide usage share of web browsers. The browser has had particular success in Germany and Poland, where it is the most popular browser with 55% usage and 47% respectively.

To display web pages, Firefox uses the Gecko layout engine, which implements most current web standards in addition to several features that are intended to anticipate likely additions to the standards.

Features include tabbed browsing, spell checking, incremental find, live bookmarking, a download manager, private browsing, location-aware browsing (also known as "geolocation") based exclusively on a Google service and an integrated search system that uses Google by default in most localizations. Functions can be added through extensions, created by third-party developers, of which there is a wide selection, a feature that has attracted many of Firefox's users.

Firefox runs on various operating systems including Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, and many other platforms. Its current stable release is version 6.0.2, released on September 6, 2011. Firefox's source code is tri-licensed under the GNU GPL, GNU LGPL, or Mozilla Public License.

The Firefox project began as an experimental branch of the Mozilla project by Dave Hyatt, Joe Hewitt and Blake Ross. They believed the commercial requirements of Netscape's sponsorship and developer-driven feature creep compromised the utility of the Mozilla browser. To combat what they saw as the Mozilla Suite's software bloat, they created a stand-alone browser, with which they intended to replace the Mozilla Suite. On April 3, 2003, the Mozilla Organization announced that they planned to change their focus from the Mozilla Suite to Firefox and Thunderbird.
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

622 – Prophet Muhammad completes his hijra from Mecca to Medina.
1180 – Manuel I Komnenos, last Emperor of the Komnenian restoration dies. The Byzantine Empire slips into terminal decline.
1645 – Battle of Rowton Heath, Parliamentarian victory over a Royalist army commanded in person by King Charles
1664 – The Dutch Republic surrenders New Amsterdam to England.
1674 – Second Tantrik Coronation of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj.
1780 – Benedict Arnold flees to British Army lines when the arrest of British Major John André exposes Arnold's plot to surrender West Point.
1789 – The United States Congress passes the Judiciary Act which creates the office of the United States Attorney General and the federal judiciary system, and orders the composition of the Supreme Court of the United States.
1841 – The Sultan of Brunei cedes Sarawak to the United Kingdom.
1852 – The first airship powered by (a steam) engine, created by Henri Giffard, travels 17 miles (27 km) from Paris to Trappes.
1869 – "Black Friday": Gold prices plummet after Ulysses S. Grant orders the Treasury to sell large quantities of gold after Jay Gould and James Fisk plot to control the market.
1877 – Battle of Shiroyama, decisive victory of the Imperial Japanese Army over the Satsuma Rebellion
1890 – The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints officially renounces polygamy.
1906 – U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt proclaims Devils Tower in Wyoming as the nation's first National Monument.
1914 – World War I: The Siege of Przemyśl (present-day Poland) begins.
1932 – Gandhi and Dr. B. R. Ambedkar agree to the Poona Pact, which reserved seats in the Indian provincial legislatures for the "Depressed Classes" (Untouchables).
1935 – Earl Bascom and Weldon Bascom produce the first rodeo ever held outdoors under electric lights at Columbia, Mississippi
1937 – Second Sino-Japanese War: The Chinese Eighth Route Army gains a minor, but morale-boosting victory in the Battle of Pingxingguan.
1946 – Cathay Pacific Airways is founded in Hong Kong.
1946 – Clark Clifford and George Elsey, military advisers to U.S. President Harry S. Truman, present him with a top-secret report on the Soviet Union that first recommends the containment policy.
1948 – The Honda Motor Company is founded.
1950 – Forest fires black out the sun over portions of Canada and New England. A blue moon (in the astronomical sense) is seen as far away as Europe.
1957 – Camp Nou, the largest stadium in Europe, is opened in Barcelona.
1957 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends 101st Airborne Division troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce desegregation.
1960 – USS Enterprise (CVN-65), the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, is launched.
1962 – United States court of appeals orders the University of Mississippi to admit James Meredith.
1968 – 60 Minutes debuts on CBS.
1968 – Swaziland joins the United Nations.
1973 – Guinea-Bissau declares its independence from Portugal.
1979 – Compu-Serve launches the first consumer internet service, which features the first public electronic mail service.
1988 – National League for Democracy is formed by Aung San Suu Kyi and various others to help fight against dictatorship in Myanmar.
1990 – Periodic Great White Spot is observed on Saturn.
1996 – Representatives of 71 nations sign the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty at the United Nations.
2005 – Hurricane Rita makes landfall in the United States, devastating Beaumont, Texas and portions of southwestern Louisiana.
2007 – Between 30,000 and 100,000 people take part in anti-government protests in Yangon, Burma, the largest in 20 years.
2008 – The Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago is topped off at 1,389 feet (423 m), at the time becoming the world's highest residence above ground-level.
2009 – The G20 summit begins in Pittsburgh with 30 global leaders in attendance. It marks the first use of LRAD in U.S. history.
[center]----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

USS Enterprise (CVN-65), formerly CVA(N)-65, is the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and the eighth US naval vessel to bear the name. Like her predecessor of World War II fame, she is nicknamed the "Big E". At 1,123 ft (342 m), she is the longest naval vessel in the world. Her 93,284 long tons (94,781 t) displacement ranks her as the 11th-heaviest supercarrier, after the 10 carriers of the Nimitz class.

The only ship of her class, Enterprise is the second-oldest vessel in commission in the United States Navy, after the wooden-hulled, three-masted frigate USS Constitution. She was originally scheduled for decommissioning in 2014 or 2015, depending on the life of her reactors and completion of her replacement, USS Gerald R. Ford. But the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 slated the ship's retirement for 2013, when she will have served for 51 consecutive years, the most of any U.S. aircraft carrier.

As of September 2010, Enterprise's home port is at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia. She has one more deployment before her decommissioning.

Enterprise was meant to be the first of a class of six, but construction costs ballooned and the remaining vessels were never laid down.

Because of the huge cost of her construction, Enterprise was launched and commissioned without the planned Terrier missile launchers. These were never installed and the ship's self-defense suite instead consisted of three shorter-range RIM-7 Sea Sparrow, Basic Point Defense Missile System (BPDMS) launchers. Later upgrades added two NATO Sea Sparrow (NSSM) and three Mk 15 Phalanx CIWS gun mounts. One CIWS mount was later removed and two 21-cell RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile launchers were added.

Enterprise is also the only aircraft carrier to house more than two nuclear reactors."This was due to the ready availability of a field-proven production design developed for nuclear submarines.[citation needed] Her eight-reactor propulsion design also fit well with the supercarrier hull designs of the time,[citation needed] with each A2W reactor taking the place of one of the conventional boilers in earlier constructions. She is the only carrier with four rudders, two more than other classes, and features a more cruiser-like hull.

Enterprise also had a phased array radar system designed to be better at tracking multiple airborne targets than conventional rotating antenna radars. These early phased arrays, which were replaced around 1980, were responsible for the distinctive square-looking island.

In 1958, Enterprise's keel was laid at Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company. On 24 September 1960, the ship was launched, sponsored by Mrs. W. B. Franke, wife of the former Secretary of the Navy. On 25 November 1961, Enterprise was commissioned, with Captain Vincent P. De Poix, formerly of Fighting Squadron 6 on USS Enterprise (CV-6), in command. On 12 January 1962, the ship made her maiden voyage conducting a three-month shakedown cruise and a lengthy series of tests and training exercises designed to determine the full capabilities of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
[center]-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

The Great White Spot, also known as Great White Oval, on Saturn, named by analogy to Jupiter's Great Red Spot, is a name given to periodic storms that are large enough to be visible by telescope from Earth by their characteristic white appearance. The spots can be several thousands of kilometers wide.

Currently, a large band of white clouds called the Northern Electrostatic Disturbance (because of an increase in radio and plasma interference) is enveloping Saturn since 2010, and the Cassini orbiter is tracking the storm.

Cassini data has revealed a loss of acetylene in the white clouds, an increase of phosphine, and an unusual temperature drop in the center of the storm. As of April 2011, the storm underwent a second eruption.

A "classic" Great White Spot is a spectacular event, in which a brilliant white storm enlivens Saturn's usually-bland atmosphere; all the major ones have occurred in the planet's northern hemisphere. They typically begin as discrete, literal "spots", but then rapidly expand in longitude, as the 1933 and 1990 GWSs did; in fact, the latter eventually lengthened enough to encircle the planet. Current theory (partly based on computer climate modelling) suggests that GWSs are massive atmospheric upwellings, perhaps due to thermal instability.

Seasonal variation : The rough coincidence of the GWSs with the summer solstice in Saturn's atmosphere has been seized on as proof that insolation is the main cause, though their occurrence has been more closely linked with time elapsed since the northern winter solstice. Whether similar phenomena occur during the winter solstice as well is unknown, as the rings effectively "block" a terrestrial view of the hemisphere.
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

275 – In Rome, (after the assassination of Aurelian), the Senate proclaims Marcus Claudius Tacitus Emperor.
303 – On a voyage preaching the gospel, Saint Fermin of Pamplona is beheaded in Amiens, France.
1066 – The Battle of Stamford Bridge marks the end of the Viking invasions of England.
1396 – Ottoman Emperor Bayezid I defeats a Christian army at the Battle of Nicopolis.
1513 – Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa reaches what would become known as the Pacific Ocean.
1555 – The Peace of Augsburg is signed in Augsburg by Charles V and the princes of the Schmalkaldic League.
1690 – Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick, the first newspaper to appear in the Americas, is published for the first and only time.
1775 – Ethan Allen surrenders to British forces after attempting to capture Montreal during the Battle of Longue-Pointe. At the same time, Benedict Arnold and his expeditionary company set off from Fort Western, bound for Quebec City (Invasion of Canada (1775)).
1789 – The U.S. Congress passes twelve amendments to the United States Constitution: the Congressional Apportionment Amendment (which was never ratified), the Congressional Compensation Amendment, and the ten that are known as the Bill of Rights.
1804 – The Teton Sioux (a subdivision of the Lakota) demand one of the boats from the Lewis and Clark Expedition as a toll for moving further upriver.
1846 – U.S. forces led by Zachary Taylor capture the Mexican city of Monterrey.
1868 – The Imperial Russian steam frigate Alexander Neuski is shipwrecked off Jutland while carrying Grand Duke Alexei of Russia.
1890 – The U.S. Congress establishes Sequoia National Park.
1906 – In the presence of the king and before a great crowd, Leonardo Torres Quevedo successfully demonstrates the invention of the Telekino in the port of Bilbao, guiding a boat from the shore, in what is considered the birth of the remote control.
1911 – Ground is broken for Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts.
1912 – Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is founded in New York, New York.
1915 – World War I: The Second Battle of Champagne begins.
1929 – Jimmy Doolittle performs the first blind flight from Mitchel Field proving that full instrument flying from take off to landing is possible.
1942 – World War II: Swiss Police Instruction of September 25, 1942 – this instruction denied entry into Switzerland to Jewish refugees.
1944 – World War II: Surviving elements of the British 1st Airborne Division withdraw from Arnhem in the Netherlands, thus ending the Battle of Arnhem and Operation Market Garden.
1955 – The Royal Jordanian Air Force is founded.
1956 – TAT-1, the first submarine transatlantic telephone cable system, is inaugurated.
1957 – Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, is integrated by the use of United States Army troops.
1959 – Solomon Bandaranaike, Prime Minister of Sri Lanka is mortally wounded by a Buddhist monk, Talduwe Somarama, and dies the next day.
1962 – The People's Democratic Republic of Algeria is formally proclaimed. Ferhat Abbas is elected President of the provisional government.
1970 – Cease-fire between Jordan and the Fedayeen ends fighting triggered by four hijackings on September 6 and 9.
1972 – In a referendum, the people of Norway reject membership of the European Community.
1977 – About 4,200 people take part in the first running of the Chicago Marathon.
1978 – PSA Flight 182, a Boeing 727-214, collides in mid-air with a Cessna 172 and crashes in San Diego, California, resulting in the deaths of 144 people.
1981 – Sandra Day O'Connor becomes the 102nd person sworn in as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and the first woman to hold the office.
1981 – Belize joins the United Nations.
1983 – Maze Prison escape: 38 republican prisoners, armed with 6 handguns, hijack a prison meals lorry and smash their way out of the Maze prison. It is the largest prison escape since WWII and in British history.
1992 – NASA launched a $511 million probe to Mars in the first U.S. mission to the planet in 17 years. Eleven months later, the probe would fail.
1996 – The last of the Magdalene Asylums closes in Ireland.
2002 – The Vitim event, a possible bolide impact in Siberia, Russia.
2003 – A magnitude-8.0 earthquake strikes just offshore Hokkaidō, Japan.
2008 – China launches the spacecraft Shenzhou 7.
2009 – U.S. President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in a joint TV appearance for a G-20 summit, accused Iran of building a secret nuclear enrichment facility.
2010 – Mahmoud Abbas speaks at United Nations General Assembly to request that Israel end its policy of building settlements in the West Bank.
[center]------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

The Battle of Stamford Bridge took place at the village of Stamford Bridge, East Riding of Yorkshire in England on 25 September 1066, between an English army under King Harold Godwinson and an invading Norwegian force led by King Harald Hardrada of Norway (Old Norse: Haraldr harðráði) and the English king's brother Tostig Godwinson. After a horrific battle, both Hardrada and Tostig along with the majority of the Norwegians were killed. Although Harold repelled the Norwegian invaders, his victory was short-lived: he was defeated and killed at Hastings less than three weeks later. The battle has traditionally been presented as symbolising the end of the Viking Age, although in fact major Scandinavian campaigns in the British Isles occurred in the following decades, notably those of King Sweyn Estrithson of Denmark in 1069-70 and King Magnus Barefoot of Norway in 1098 and 1102-3.

The Vikings were at an enormous disadvantage. Their army was divided in two; with some of their troops on the west side of the River Derwent and the bulk of their army on the east side. They were not expecting English intervention, and it was an unseasonably warm day for late September, so they left their armour behind at their ships. The English army arrived and annihilated the Vikings who fought a futile defence on the west side of the river. By the time the bulk of the English army had arrived, the Vikings on the west side were either slain or fleeing across the bridge. The English advance was then delayed by the need to pass through the choke-point presented by the bridge. A later folk story has it that a giant Norse axeman (possibly armed with a Dane Axe) blocked the narrow crossing, and single-handedly held up the entire Saxon army. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that this axeman cut down up to 40 Englishmen. He was only defeated when an English soldier floated under the bridge in a half-barrel and thrust his spear through the laths in the bridge.[6]

Whatever the delay, this had allowed the bulk of the Norse army to form a shieldwall to face the English attack. Harold's army poured across the bridge, forming a line just short of the Norse army, locked shields and charged. The battle went far beyond the bridge itself. Though the battle raged for hours, the Norse army's decision to leave their armour behind left them at a distinct disadvantage. Eventually, the Norse army began to fragment and fracture, allowing the English troops to force their way in and break up the Scandinavian's shield wall. Completely outflanked, Hardrada at this point was killed with an arrow to his wind pipe and Tostig slain, the Norwegian army disintegrated and was virtually annihilated.

In the later stages of the battle, the Norwegians were reinforced by troops who had been left behind to guard the ships at Ricall, led by Eystein Orri, Hardrada's daughter's fiancé. Some of his men were said to have collapsed and died due to exhaustion upon reaching the battlefield. These men, unlike their comrades, were fully armed for battle. Their counter-attack, described in the Norwegian tradition as "Orri's Storm", briefly checked the English advance, but was soon overwhelmed and Orri was slain by a Saxon warrior. The Norwegian army routed, pursued by the English army, some of the fleeing Norsemen drowned in the rivers.

So many died in such a small area that the field was said to have been still whitened with bleached bones 50 years after the battle.
[center]-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

The first successful fly-by of Mars was on July 14–15, 1965, by NASA's Mariner 4. On November 14, 1971 Mariner 9 became the first space probe to orbit another planet when it entered into orbit around Mars. The first objects to successfully land on the surface were two Soviet probes: Mars 2 on November 27 and Mars 3 on December 2, 1971, but both ceased communicating within seconds of landing. The 1975 NASA launches of the Viking program consisted of two orbiters, each having a lander; both landers successfully touched down in 1976. Viking 1 remained operational for six years, Viking 2 for three. The Viking landers relayed color panoramas of Mars and the orbiters mapped the surface so well that the images remain in use.

The Soviet probes Phobos 1 and 2 were sent to Mars in 1988 to study Mars and its two moons. Phobos 1 lost contact on the way to Mars. Phobos 2, while successfully photographing Mars and Phobos, failed just before it was set to release two landers to the surface of Phobos.

Following the 1992 failure of the Mars Observer orbiter, the NASA Mars Global Surveyor achieved Mars orbit in 1997. This mission was a complete success, having finished its primary mapping mission in early 2001. Contact was lost with the probe in November 2006 during its third extended program, spending exactly 10 operational years in space. The NASA Mars Pathfinder, carrying a robotic exploration vehicle Sojourner, landed in the Ares Vallis on Mars in the summer of 1997, returning many images.
Spirit's lander on Mars, 2004
View from the Phoenix lander, 2008

The NASA Phoenix Mars lander arrived on the north polar region of Mars on May 25, 2008. Its robotic arm was used to dig into the Martian soil and the presence of water ice was confirmed on June 20. The mission concluded on November 10, 2008 after contact was lost.

The NASA Mars Odyssey orbiter entered Mars orbit in 2001. Odyssey's Gamma Ray Spectrometer detected significant amounts of hydrogen in the upper metre or so of regolith on Mars. This hydrogen is thought to be contained in large deposits of water ice.

The Mars Express mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) reached Mars in 2003. It carried the Beagle 2 lander, which failed during descent and was declared lost in February, 2004. In early 2004 the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer team announced the orbiter had detected methane in the Martian atmosphere. ESA announced in June 2006 the discovery of aurorae on Mars.

In January 2004, the NASA twin Mars Exploration Rovers named Spirit (MER-A) and Opportunity (MER-B) landed on the surface of Mars. Both have met or exceeded all their targets. Among the most significant scientific returns has been conclusive evidence that liquid water existed at some time in the past at both landing sites. Martian dust devils and windstorms have occasionally cleaned both rovers' solar panels, and thus increased their lifespan.

On March 10, 2006, the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) probe arrived in orbit to conduct a two-year science survey. The orbiter will map the Martian terrain and weather to find suitable landing sites for upcoming lander missions. The MRO snapped the first image of a series of active avalanches near the planet's north pole, scientists said March 3, 2008.

The Dawn spacecraft flew by Mars in February 2009 for a gravity assist on its way to investigate Vesta and then Ceres.
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov (Russian: Станислав Евграфович Петров; born c. 1939) is a retired lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces who deviated from standard Soviet protocol by correctly identifying a missile attack warning as a false alarm on September 26, 1983. This decision may have prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its Western allies. Investigation of the satellite warning system later confirmed that the system had malfunctioned.

There are varying reports whether Petrov actually reported the alert to his superiors and questions over the part his decision played in preventing nuclear war, because, according to the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation, nuclear retaliation is based on multiple sources that confirm an actual attack. The incident, however, exposed a flaw in the Soviet early warning system. Petrov asserts that he was neither rewarded nor punished for his actions.

Had Petrov reported incoming American missiles, his superiors might have launched an assault against the United States, precipitating a corresponding nuclear response from the United States. Petrov declared the system's indications a false alarm. Later, it was apparent that he was right: no missiles were approaching and the computer detection system was malfunctioning. It was subsequently determined that the false alarms had been created by a rare alignment of sunlight on high-altitude clouds and the satellites' Molniya orbits, an error later corrected by cross-referencing a geostationary satellite.

Petrov later indicated the influences in this decision included: that he was informed a U.S. strike would be all-out, so five missiles seemed an illogical start, that the launch detection system was new and, in his view, not yet wholly trustworthy, and that ground radars failed to pick up corroborative evidence, even after minutes of delay.

Petrov underwent intense questioning by his superiors about his actions. Initially, he was praised for his decision. Gen. Yury Votintsev, then commander of the Soviet Air Defense's Missile Defense Units, who was the first to hear Petrov's report of the incident (and the first to reveal it to the public in the 1990s), states that Petrov's "correct actions" were "duly noted." Petrov himself states he was initially praised by Votintsev and was promised a reward, but recalls that he was also reprimanded for improper filing of paperwork with the pretext he had not described the incident in the military diary.

He received no reward. According to Petrov, this was because the incident and other bugs that were found in the missile detection system embarrassed his superiors and the influential scientists who were responsible for the system, so that if he had been officially rewarded, they would have had to be punished. He was reassigned to a less sensitive post, took early retirement (although he emphasizes that he was not "forced out" of the army, as the case is presented by some Western sources), and suffered a nervous breakdown.

The incident involving Petrov became known publicly in the 1990s following the publication of Gen. Votintsev's memoirs. Widespread media reports since then have increased public awareness of Petrov's actions.

There is some confusion as to precisely what Petrov's military role was in this incident. Petrov, as an individual, was not in a position where he could have single-handedly launched any of the Soviet missile arsenal. Instead Petrov's sole duty was to monitor satellite surveillance equipment and report missile attack warnings up the chain of command where, ultimately, the top Soviet leadership would have decided whether to launch a "retaliatory" attack against the West. Whether to launch an attack was not Petrov's decision to make. His role, however, was crucial in the process of making that decision. According to Bruce Blair, a Cold War nuclear strategies expert and nuclear disarmament advocate, formerly with the Center for Defense Information, "The top leadership, given only a couple of minutes to decide, told that an attack had been launched, would make a decision to retaliate."

Petrov is now a pensioner, spending his retirement in the town of Fryazino, Russia. On 21 May 2004, the San Francisco-based Association of World Citizens gave Petrov its World Citizen Award along with a trophy and $1000 "in recognition of the part he played in averting a catastrophe."

In January 2006, Petrov traveled to the United States where he was honored in a meeting at the United Nations in New York City. There the Association of World Citizens presented Petrov with a second special World Citizen Award. The following day, Petrov met with American journalist Walter Cronkite at his CBS office in New York City. That interview, in addition to other highlights of Petrov's trip to the United States, are expected to be included in the documentary film The Man Who Saved the World.

On the same day that Petrov was honored at the United Nations in New York City, the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations issued a press release contending that a single individual would be incapable of starting or preventing a nuclear war, stating in part: "Under no circumstances a decision to use nuclear weapons could be made or even considered in the Soviet Union (Russia) or in the United States on the basis of data from a single source or a system. For this to happen, a confirmation is necessary from several systems: ground-based radars, early warning satellites, intelligence reports, etc."

Petrov has said he does not regard himself as a hero for what he did that day. In an interview for the documentary film The Red Button and the Man Who Saved the World, Petrov says, "All that happened didn't matter to me— it was my job. I was simply doing my job, and I was the right person at the right time, that's all. My late wife for 10 years knew nothing about it. 'So what did you do?' she asked me. I did nothing."
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

489 – Odoacer attacks Theodoric at the Battle of Verona, and is defeated again.
1066 – William the Conqueror and his army set sail from the mouth of the Somme River, beginning the Norman Conquest of England.
1331 – The Battle of Płowce between the Kingdom of Poland and the Teutonic Order is fought.
1422 – after the brief Gollub War the Teutonic Knights sign the Treaty of Melno with the Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania
1529 – The Siege of Vienna begins when Suleiman I attacks the city.
1540 – The Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) receives its charter from Pope Paul III.
1590 – Pope Urban VII dies 13 days after being chosen as the Pope, making his reign the shortest papacy in history.
1605 – The armies of Sweden are defeated by the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Battle of Kircholm.
1669 – The Venetians surrender the fortress of Candia to the Ottomans, thus ending the 21-year long Siege of Candia.
1777 – Lancaster, Pennsylvania is the capital of the United States, for one day.
1821 – Mexico gains its independence from Spain.
1822 – Jean-François Champollion announces that he has deciphered the Rosetta stone.
1825 – The Stockton and Darlington Railway opens, and begins operation of the world's first service of locomotive-hauled passenger trains.
1854 – The steamship SS Arctic sinks with 300 people on board. This marks the first great disaster in the Atlantic Ocean.
1903 – Wreck of the Old 97, a train crash made famous by the song of the same name.
1905 – The physics journal Annalen der Physik published Albert Einstein's paper "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?", introducing the equation E=mc².
1908 – The first production of the Ford Model T automobile was built at the Piquette Plant in Detroit, Michigan.
1916 – Iyasu is proclaimed deposed as ruler of Ethiopia in a palace coup in favor of his aunt Zauditu.
1922 – King Constantine I of Greece abdicates his throne in favor of his eldest son, King George II.
1928 – The Republic of China is recognised by the United States.
1930 – Bobby Jones wins the U.S. Amateur Championship to complete the Grand Slam of golf. The old structure of the grand slam was the U.S. Open, British Open, U.S. Amateur, and British Amateur.
1937 – Balinese Tiger declared extinct.
1938 – Ocean liner Queen Elizabeth launched in Glasgow.
1940 – World War II: The Tripartite Pact is signed in Berlin by Germany, Japan and Italy.
1941 – The SS Patrick Henry is launched becoming the first of more than 2,700 Liberty ships.
1942 – Last day of the September Matanikau action on Guadalcanal as United States Marine Corps troops barely escape after being surrounded by Japanese forces near the Matanikau River.
1944 – The Kassel Mission results in the largest loss by a USAAF group on any mission in World War II.
1949 – The first Plenary Session of the National People's Congress approves the design of the Flag of the People's Republic of China.
1954 – The nationwide debut of Tonight! (The Tonight Show) hosted by Steve Allen on NBC.
1956 – USAF Captain Milburn G. Apt becomes the first man to exceed Mach 3 while flying the Bell X-2. Shortly thereafter, the craft goes out of control and Captain Apt is killed.
1959 – Nearly 5000 people die on the main Japanese island of Honshū as the result of a typhoon.
1961 – Sierra Leone joins the United Nations.
1962 – The Yemen Arab Republic is established.
1964 – The British TSR-2 aircraft XR219 makes its maiden flight from Boscombe Down in Wiltshire.
1968 – The stage musical Hair opens at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London, where it played 1,998 performances until its closure was forced by the roof collapsing in July 1973.
1979 – The United States Department of Education receives final approval from the U.S. Congress to become the 13th US Cabinet agency.
1983 – Richard Stallman announces the GNU project to develop a free Unix-like operating system.
1993 – The Sukhumi massacre takes place in Abkhazia.
1995 – The Government of the United States unveils the first of its redesigned bank notes with the $100 bill featuring a larger portrait of Benjamin Franklin slightly off-center.
1996 – In Afghanistan, the Taliban capture the capital city Kabul after driving out President Burhanuddin Rabbani and executing former leader Mohammad Najibullah.
1996 – The Julie N. tanker ship crashes into the Million Dollar Bridge in Portland, Maine spilling thousands of gallons of oil.
1997 – Communications are suddenly lost with the Mars Pathfinder space probe.
1997 – The Google internet search engine retrospectively claims this as its birthday.
2001 – Zug massacre: In Zug, Switzerland, Friedrich Leibacher shoots 18 citizens, killing 14 and then kills himself.
2002 – Timor-Leste (East Timor) joins the United Nations.
2003 – Smart 1 satellite is launched.
2008 – CNSA astronaut Zhai Zhigang becomes the first Chinese person to perform a spacewalk while flying on Shenzhou 7.
[center]-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

Mars Pathfinder (MESUR Pathfinder) was an American spacecraft that landed a base station with roving probe on Mars in 1997. It consisted of a lander, renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station, and a lightweight (10.6 kilograms/23 pounds) wheeled robotic rover named Sojourner.

Launched on December 4, 1996 by NASA aboard a Delta II booster a month after the Mars Global Surveyor was launched, it landed on July 4, 1997 on Mars' Ares Vallis, in a region called Chryse Planitia in the Oxia Palus quadrangle. The lander then opened, exposing the rover which conducted many experiments on the Martian surface. The mission carried a series of scientific instruments to analyze the Martian atmosphere, climate, geology and the composition of its rocks and soil. It was the second project from NASA's Discovery Program, which promotes the use of low-cost spacecraft and frequent launches under the motto "cheaper, faster and better" promoted by the then administrator, Daniel Goldin. The mission was directed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a division of the California Institute of Technology, responsible for NASA's Mars Exploration Program. The project manager was JPL's Tony Spear.

This mission kicked off a series of missions to Mars that included rovers, and was the next successful lander since the two Vikings landed on the red planet in 1976. Although the Soviet Union successfully sent rovers to the Moon as part of the Lunokhod program in the 1970s, its attempts to use rovers in its Mars probe program failed.

In addition to scientific objectives, the Mars Pathfinder mission was also a "proof-of-concept" for various technologies, such as airbag-mediated touchdown and automated obstacle avoidance, both later exploited by the Mars Exploration Rovers. The Mars Pathfinder was also remarkable for its extremely low price relative to other unmanned space missions to Mars. Originally, the mission was conceived as the first of the Mars Environmental Survey (MESUR) program.

The Mars Pathfinder conducted different investigations on the Martian soil using three scientific instruments. The lander contained a stereoscopic camera with spatial filters on an expandable pole called Imager for Mars Pathfinder (IMP), and the Atmospheric Structure Instrument/Meteorology Package (ASI /MET) which acts as a Mars meteorological station, collecting data about pressure, temperature, and winds. The MET structure included three windsocks mounted at three heights on a pole, the topmost at about one meter (yard) and generally registered winds from the West. The IMP camera's spatial resolution depended on the distance of the imaged region.

The Sojourner rover had a Alpha Proton X-ray Spectrometer (APXS), which was used to analyze the components of the rocks and soil. The rover also had two black-and-white cameras and a color one. These instruments could investigate the geology of the Martian surface from just a few millimeters to many hundreds of meters, the geochemistry and evolutionary history of the rocks and surface, the magnetic and mechanical properties of the land, as well as the magnetic properties of the dust, atmosphere and the rotational and orbital dynamics of the planet. The rover had two black & white 0.3-megapixel cameras on the front (768 horizontal pixels × 484 vertical pixels configured in 4 × 4 pixel blocks), coupled with five laser stripe projectors, which enabled stereoscopic images to be taken along with measurements for hazard detection on the rover's path. On the back, near the APXS and rotated by 90°, there was a third camera of the same specifications which supported taking colour images. This back colour camera provided images of the APXS's target area and the rover's tracks on the ground, and had sensitivity to green (12 pixels out of the 16 total pixels in each 4 × 4 pixel block), red (2 pixels), and blue (2 pixels), with the blue-sensitive pixels being sensitive to infrared as well. However, all cameras had zinc-selenide lens which blocked blue light below 500 nm, thus only allowing infrared wavelengths to reach the blue pixels. All three cameras were CCDs manufactured by Eastman Kodak Company, and were controlled by the rover's CPU. They all had auto-exposure and bad pixel handling capabilities, and the image parameters (exposure time, compression used, etc.) were included in the transmitted images as part of the image header. The rover could compress the front cameras' images using the block truncation coding (BTC) algorithm, but it could only do the same for the back camera's images if the colour information was discarded. The cameras' optical resolution was sufficient for resolving 0.6 cm details across a 0.65 m range.
[center]-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, commonly known as East Timor Listeni/ˌiːst ˈtiːmɔr/ (Tetum: Timór Loro-sa'e), is a state in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the nearby islands of Atauro and Jaco, and Oecusse, an exclave on the northwestern side of the island, within Indonesian West Timor. The small country of 15,410 km² (5,400 sq mi) is located about 640 km (400 mi) northwest of Darwin, Australia.

East Timor was colonized by Portugal in the 16th century, and was known as Portuguese Timor until Portugal's decolonization of the country. In late 1975, East Timor declared its independence, but later that year was invaded and occupied by Indonesia and was declared Indonesia's 27th province the following year. In 1999, following the United Nations-sponsored act of self-determination, Indonesia relinquished control of the territory and East Timor became the first new sovereign state of the 21st century on May 20, 2002. East Timor is one of only two predominantly Roman Catholic countries in Asia, the other being the Philippines.

East Timor has a lower-middle-income economy. It continues to suffer the aftereffects of a decades-long independence struggle against Indonesia, which damaged infrastructure and displaced thousands of civilians. It is placed 120th by Human Development Index (HDI).

It is believed that descendants from at least three waves of migration still live in East Timor. The first were related to the principal Australoid indigenous groups of New Guinea and Australia, and arrived before 40,000 years ago. Around 3000 BC, Austronesians migrated to Timor, and are thought to be associated with the development of agriculture on the island.

Thirdly, proto-Malays arrived from south China and north Indochina. Before colonialism Timor was included in Chinese and Indian trading networks, being in the 14th century an exporter of aromatic sandalwood, slaves, honey and wax. Early European explorers report that the island had a number of small chiefdoms or princedoms in the early 16th century.

The Portuguese established outposts in Timor and Maluku. Effective European occupation of a small part of the territory began in 1769, when the city of Dili was founded and the colony of Portuguese Timor declared. A definitive border between the Dutch colonised western half of the island and the Portuguese colonised eastern half of the island was established by the Hague Treaty of 1916, and it remains the international boundary between the successor states East Timor and Indonesia. For the Portuguese, East Timor remained little more than a neglected trading post until the late nineteenth century, with minimal investment in infrastructure, health, and education. Sandalwood remained the main export crop with coffee exports becoming significant in the mid-nineteenth century. In places where Portuguese rule was asserted, it tended to be brutal and exploitative.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, a faltering home economy prompted the Portuguese to extract greater wealth from its colonies, which was met with Timorese resistance. During World War II, the Japanese occupied Dili, and the mountainous interior became the scene of a guerrilla campaign, known as the Battle of Timor. Waged by Allied forces and Timorese volunteers against the Japanese, the struggle resulted in the deaths of between 40,000 and 70,000 Timorese. Following the end of the war, Portuguese control was reinstated.

The decolonisation process instigated by the 1974 Portuguese revolution saw Portugal effectively abandon the colony of East Timor. A civil war between supporters of East Timorese political parties, Fretilin and the UDT, broke out in 1975 as UDT attempted a coup which Fretilin resisted with the help of local Portuguese military. Independence was unilaterally declared on November 28, 1975.[citation needed] The Indonesian government was fearful of an independent communist state within the Indonesian archipelago, and at the height of the Cold War, Western governments were supportive of Indonesia's position. The Indonesian military launched a full-scale invasion of East Timor in December 1975. Indonesia declared East Timor as its 27th province on July 17, 1976.[16] The UN Security Council opposed the invasion and the territory's nominal status in the UN remained "non-self-governing territory under Portuguese administration."

Indonesia's occupation of East Timor was marked by violence and brutality. A detailed statistical report prepared for the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor cited a minimum bound of 102,800 conflict-related deaths in the period 1974–1999, namely, approximately 18,600 killings and 84,200 'excess' deaths from hunger and illness. The East Timorese guerrilla force, Falintil, fought a campaign against the Indonesian forces from 1975–1999. The 1991 Dili Massacre was a turning point for the independence cause internationally, and an East Timor solidarity movement grew in Portugal, Australia, and the United States.

Following the resignation of Indonesian President Suharto, a UN-sponsored agreement between Indonesia and Portugal allowed for UN-supervised popular referendum in August 1999. The resulting clear vote for independence was met with a punitive campaign of violence by Timorese pro-integration militia with the support of elements of the Indonesian military (main article 1999 referendum). An Australian led international peacekeeping force, INTERFET, was sent with Indonesian permission to ensure order was restored. The administration of East Timor was taken over by the UN through the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) in October 1999. The INTERFET deployment ended in February 2000 with the transfer of military command to the UN. East Timorese independence was formalised on May 20, 2002 with Xanana Gusmão sworn in as the country's first President. East Timor became a member of the UN on September 27, 2002.

In June 2006, Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri resigned as Prime Minister, and José Ramos-Horta was appointed as his successor. The following year, Gusmão declined another presidential term and in the build-up to the April 2007 presidential elections there were renewed outbreaks of violence. José Ramos-Horta was elected President in the May 2007 election. Ramos-Horta was critically injured in an attempted assassination in February 2008. Prime Minister Gusmão also faced gunfire separately but escaped unharmed. Australian reinforcements were immediately sent to help keep order.

In 2006, the United Nations sent in security forces to restore order when unrest and factional fighting forced 15 percent of the population (155,000 people) to flee their homes. In March 2011, the UN handed-off operational control of the police force to the East Timor authorities, but more than 1,200 UN police officer still patrol on the street. After the 2012 presidential election, the missions are scheduled to end.
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

48 BC – Pompey the Great is assassinated on the orders of King Ptolemy of Egypt after landing in Egypt.
235 – Pope Pontian resigns. He and Hippolytus, church leader of Rome, are exiled to the mines of Sardinia.
351 – Battle of Mursa Major: the Roman Emperor Constantius II defeats the usurper Magnentius.
365 – Roman usurper Procopius bribes two legions passing by Constantinople, and proclaims himself Roman emperor.
935 – Saint Wenceslas is murdered by his brother, Boleslaus I of Bohemia.
1066 – William the Bastard (as he was known at the time) invades England beginning the Norman Conquest.
1106 – The Battle of Tinchebrai – Henry I of England defeats his brother, Robert Curthose.
1238 – Muslim Valencia surrenders to the besieging King James I of Aragon the Conqueror.
1322 – Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor defeats Frederick I of Austria in the Battle of Mühldorf.
1448 – Christian I is crowned king of Denmark.
1538 – Ottoman–Venetian War: The Ottoman Navy scores a decisive victory over a Holy League fleet in the Battle of Preveza.
1542 – Navigator João Rodrigues Cabrilho of Portugal arrives at what is now San Diego, California, United States.
1779 – American Revolution: Samuel Huntington is elected President of the Continental Congress, succeeding John Jay.
1781 – American forces backed by a French fleet begin the siege of Yorktown, Virginia, during the American Revolutionary War.
1787 – The newly completed United States Constitution is voted on by the U.S. Congress to be sent to the state legislatures for approval.
1791 – France becomes the first European country to emancipate its Jewish population.
1844 – Oscar I of Sweden-Norway is crowned king of Sweden.
1867 – Toronto becomes the capital of Ontario.
1867 – The United States takes control of Midway Island.
1868 – Battle of Alcolea causes Queen Isabella II of Spain to flee to France.
1889 – The first General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) defines the length of a meter as the distance between two lines on a standard bar of an alloy of platinum with ten percent iridium, measured at the melting point of ice.
1871 – Brazilian Parliament passes the Law of the Free Womb, granting freedom to all new children born to slaves, the first major step in the eradication of slavery in Brazil.
1901 – Philippine-American War: Filipino guerrillas kill more than forty American soldiers in a surprise attack in the town of Balangiga on Samar Island.
1905 - The Theory of Relativity of Einstein is published in Annalen der Physik.
1912 – The Ulster Covenant is signed by half a million Ultonians in opposition to the Third Irish Home Rule Bill.
1918 – World War I: The Fifth Battle of Ypres begins.
1919 – Race riots begin in Omaha, Nebraska, US.
1928 – The U.K. Parliament passes the Dangerous Drugs Act outlawing cannabis.
1928 – Sir Alexander Fleming notices a bacteria-killing mold growing in his laboratory, discovering what later became known as penicillin.
1939 – Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agree on a division of Poland after their invasion during World War II.
1939 – Warsaw surrenders to Nazi Germany during World War II.
1944 – Soviet Army troops liberate Klooga concentration camp in Klooga, Estonia.
1950 – Indonesia joins the United Nations.
1951 – CBS makes the first color televisions available for sale to the general public, but the product is discontinued less than month later.
1958 – France ratifies a new Constitution of France; the French Fifth Republic is then formed upon the formal adoption of the new constitution on October 4. Guinea rejects the new constitution, voting for independence instead.
1960 – Mali and Senegal join the United Nations.
1961 – A military coup in Damascus effectively ends the United Arab Republic, the union between Egypt and Syria.
1962 – The Paddington tram depot fire destroys 65 trams in Brisbane, Australia.
1971 – The Parliament of the United Kingdom passes the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 banning the medicinal use of cannabis.
1973 – The ITT Building in New York City is bombed in protest at ITT's alleged involvement in the September 11, 1973 coup d'état in Chile.
1975 – The Spaghetti House siege, in which nine people are taken hostage, takes place in London.
1994 – The car ferry MS Estonia sinks in Baltic Sea, killing 852 people.
1995 – Bob Denard and a group of mercenaries take the islands of Comoros in a coup.
1995 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat sign the Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
1996 – Former president of Afghanistan Mohammad Najibullah is tortured and brutally murdered by the Taliban.
2000 – Al-Aqsa Intifada: Ariel Sharon visits Al Aqsa Mosque known to Jews as the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
2008 – SpaceX launches the first ever private spacecraft, the Falcon 1 into orbit.
2009 – The military junta leading Guinea, headed by Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, raped, killed and wounded protesters during a protest rally in a stadium called Stade du 28 Septembre.
[center]--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

The theory of relativity, or simply relativity, encompasses two theories of Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity. However, the word relativity is sometimes used in reference to Galilean invariance.

The term "theory of relativity" was based on the expression "relative theory" (German: Relativtheorie) used by Max Planck in 1906, who emphasized how the theory uses the principle of relativity. In the discussion section of the same paper Alfred Bucherer used for the first time the expression "theory of relativity" (German: Relativitätstheorie).

In September 2011, CERN found possible evidence of the theory being violated by particles travelling faster than light -- these results are currently being analyzed for accuracy.

The theory of relativity enriched physics and astronomy during the 20th century. When first published, relativity superseded a 200-year-old theory of mechanics elucidated by Isaac Newton. It changed perceptions. However, Einstein denied that Newton could ever be superseded by his own work.

The theory of relativity overturned the concept of motion from Newton's day, into all motion is relative. Time was no longer uniform and absolute. Therefore, no longer could physics be understood as space by itself, and time by itself. Instead, an added dimension had to be taken into account with curved spacetime. Time now depended on velocity, and contraction became a fundamental consequence at appropriate speeds.

In the field of physics, relativity catalyzed and added an essential depth of knowledge to the science of elementary particles and their fundamental interactions, along with ushering in the nuclear age. With relativity, cosmology and astrophysics predicted extraordinary astronomical phenomena such as neutron stars, black holes, and gravitational waves.

The theory of relativity was representative of more than a single new physical theory. It affected the theories and methodologies across all the physical sciences. However, as stated above, this is more likely perceived as two separate theories. There are some explanations for this. First, special relativity was published in 1905, and the final form of general relativity was published in 1916.

Second, special relativity fits with and solves for elementary particles and their interactions, whereas general relativity solves for the cosmological and astrophysical realm (including astronomy).

Third, special relativity was widely accepted in the physics community by 1920. This theory rapidly became a significant and necessary tool for theorists and experimentalists in the new fields of atomic physics, nuclear physics, and quantum mechanics. Conversely, general relativity did not appear to be as useful. There appeared to be little applicability for experimentalists as most applications were for astronomical scales. It seemed limited to only making minor corrections to predictions of Newtonian gravitation theory. Its impact was not apparent until the 1930s.

Finally, the mathematics of general relativity appeared to be incomprehensibly dense. Consequently, only a small number of people in the world, at that time, could fully understand the theory in detail. This remained the case for the next 40 years. Then, at around 1960 a critical resurgence in interest occurred which has resulted in making general relativity central to physics and astronomy. New mathematical techniques applicable to the study of general relativity substantially streamlined calculations. From this physically discernible concepts were isolated from the mathematical complexity. Also, the discovery of exotic astronomical phenomena in which general relativity was crucially relevant, helped to catalyze this resurgence. The astronomical phenomena included quasars (1963), the 3-kelvin microwave background radiation (1965), pulsars (1967), and the discovery of the first black hole candidates (1971).
[center]--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

Sir Alexander Fleming (6 August 1881 – 11 March 1955) was a Scottish biologist and pharmacologist. He wrote many articles on bacteriology, immunology, and chemotherapy. His best-known discoveries are the discovery of the enzyme lysozyme in 1923 and the antibiotic substance penicillin from the mold Penicillium notatum in 1928, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain.

In 1999, Time magazine named Fleming one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century for his discovery of penicillin, and stated:

It was a discovery that would change the course of history. The active ingredient in that mould, which Fleming named penicillin, turned out to be an infection-fighting agent of enormous potency. When it was finally recognised for what it was, the most efficacious life-saving drug in the world, penicillin would alter forever the treatment of bacterial infections. By the middle of the century, Fleming's discovery had spawned a huge pharmaceutical industry, churning out synthetic penicillins that would conquer some of mankind's most ancient scourges, including syphilis, gangrene and tuberculosis.

After the war, Fleming actively searched for anti-bacterial agents, having witnessed the death of many soldiers from sepsis resulting from infected wounds. Antiseptics killed the patients' immunological defences more effectively than they killed the invading bacteria. In an article he submitted for the medical journal The Lancet during World War I, Fleming described an ingenious experiment, which he was able to conduct as a result of his own glass blowing skills, in which he explained why antiseptics were killing more soldiers than infection itself during World War I. Antiseptics worked well on the surface, but deep wounds tended to shelter anaerobic bacteria from the antiseptic agent, and antiseptics seemed to remove beneficial agents produced that protected the patients in these cases at least as well as they removed bacteria, and did nothing to remove the bacteria that were out of reach. Sir Almroth Wright strongly supported Fleming's findings, but despite this, most army physicians over the course of the war continued to use antiseptics even in cases where this worsened the condition of the patients.

"When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn't plan to revolutionise all medicine by discovering the world's first antibiotic, or bacteria killer," Fleming would later say, "But I suppose that was exactly what I did."

By 1928, Fleming was investigating the properties of staphylococci. He was already well-known from his earlier work, and had developed a reputation as a brilliant researcher, but his laboratory was often untidy. On 3 September 1928, Fleming returned to his laboratory having spent August on holiday with his family. Before leaving, he had stacked all his cultures of staphylococci on a bench in a corner of his laboratory. On returning, Fleming noticed that one culture was contaminated with a fungus, and that the colonies of staphylococci that had immediately surrounded it had been destroyed, whereas other colonies farther away were normal. Fleming showed the contaminated culture to his former assistant Merlin Price, who reminded him, "That's how you discovered lysozyme." Fleming grew the mould in a pure culture and found that it produced a substance that killed a number of disease-causing bacteria. He identified the mould as being from the Penicillium genus, and, after some months of calling it "mould juice" named the substance it released penicillin on 7 March 1929.

He investigated its positive anti-bacterial effect on many organisms, and noticed that it affected bacteria such as staphylococci and many other Gram-positive pathogens that cause scarlet fever, pneumonia, meningitis and diphtheria, but not typhoid fever or paratyphoid fever, which are caused by Gram-negative bacteria, for which he was seeking a cure at the time. It also affected Neisseria gonorrhoeae, which causes gonorrhoea although this bacterium is Gram-negative.

Fleming published his discovery in 1929, in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology, but little attention was paid to his article. Fleming continued his investigations, but found that cultivating penicillium was quite difficult, and that after having grown the mould, it was even more difficult to isolate the antibiotic agent. Fleming's impression was that because of the problem of producing it in quantity, and because its action appeared to be rather slow, penicillin would not be important in treating infection. Fleming also became convinced that penicillin would not last long enough in the human body (in vivo) to kill bacteria effectively. Many clinical tests were inconclusive, probably because it had been used as a surface antiseptic. In the 1930s, Fleming’s trials occasionally showed more promise, and he continued, until 1940, to try to interest a chemist skilled enough to further refine usable penicillin.

Fleming finally abandoned penicillin, and not long after he did, Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford took up researching and mass-producing it, with funds from the U.S. and British governments. They started mass production after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. When D-Day arrived, they had made enough penicillin to treat all the wounded Allied forces.
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

29th Setember

522 BC – Darius I of Persia kills the Magian usurper Gaumâta, securing his hold as king of the Persian Empire.
480 BC – Battle of Salamis: The Greek fleet under Themistocles defeats the Persian fleet under Xerxes I.
61 BC – Pompey the Great celebrates his third triumph for victories over the pirates and the end of the Mithridatic Wars on his 45th birthday.
1227 – Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, is excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX for his failure to participate in the Crusades.
1364 – Battle of Auray: English forces defeat the French in Brittany; end of the Breton War of Succession.
1567 – At a dinner, the Duke of Alba arrests the Count of Egmont and the Count of Hoorn for treason.
1650 – Henry Robinson opens his Office of Addresses and Encounters in Threadneedle Street, London.
1717 – An earthquake strikes Antigua Guatemala, destroying much of the city's architecture and making authorities consider moving the capital to a different city.
1789 – The United States Department of War first establishes a regular army with a strength of several hundred men.
1789 – The 1st United States Congress adjourns.
1829 – The Metropolitan Police of London, later also known as the Met, is founded.
1848 – Battle of Pákozd: Hungarian forces defeat Croats at Pákozd; the first battle of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848.
1850 – The Roman Catholic hierarchy is re-established in England and Wales by Pope Pius IX.
1864 – American Civil War: The Battle of Chaffin's Farm is fought.
1885 – The first practical public electric tramway in the world is opened in Blackpool, England.
1907 – The cornerstone is laid at Washington National Cathedral in the U.S. capital.
1911 – Italy declares war on the Ottoman Empire.
1916 – John D. Rockefeller becomes the second billionaire.
1918 – World War I, Battle of St. Quentin Canal: The Hindenburg Line is broken by Allied forces. Bulgaria signs an armistice.
1932 – Chaco War: Last day of the Battle of Boquerón between Paraguay and Bolivia.
1938 – Munich Agreement: Germany was given permission from France, Italy, and Great Britain to seize the territory of Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia. The meeting occurred in Munich, and leaders from neither the Soviet Union nor Czechoslovakia attended.
1941 – World War II: Holocaust in Kiev, Ukraine: German Einsatzgruppe C begins the Babi Yar massacre, according to the Einsatzgruppen operational situation report.
1943 – World War II: U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Italian Marshal Pietro Badoglio sign an armistice aboard the Royal Navy battleship HMS Nelson off Malta.
1949 – The Communist Party of China writes the Common Programme for the future People's Republic of China.
1951 – The first live sporting event seen coast-to-coast in the United States, a college football game between Duke and the University of Pittsburgh, is televised on NBC.
1954 – The convention establishing CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) is signed.
1957 – 20 MCi (740 petabecquerels) of radioactive material is released in an explosion at the Soviet Mayak nuclear plant at Chelyabinsk.
1960 – Nikita Khrushchev, leader of Soviet Union, disrupts a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly with a number of angry outbursts.
1962 – Alouette 1, the first Canadian satellite, is launched.
1963 – The second period of the Second Vatican Council opens.
1963 – The University of East Anglia is established in Norwich, England.
1964 – The Argentine comic strip Mafalda is published for the first time.
1966 – The Chevrolet Camaro, originally named Panther, is introduced.
1971 – Oman joins the Arab League.
1972 – Sino-Japanese relations: Japan establishes diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China after breaking official ties with the Republic of China.
1975 – WGPR in Detroit, Michigan, becomes the world's first black-owned-and-operated television station.
1979 – Pope John Paul II becomes the first pope to set foot on Irish soil with his pastoral visit to the Republic of Ireland.
1982 – The 1982 Chicago Tylenol murders begin when the first of seven individuals dies in metropolitan Chicago.
1988 – Space Shuttle: NASA launches STS-26, the return to flight mission, after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. The mission logo of STS-26, flown by OV-103.
1990 – Construction of the Washington National Cathedral is completed.
1990 – The YF-22, which would later become the F-22 Raptor, flies for the first time.
1991 – Military coup in Haiti (1991 Haitian coup d'état).
1992 – Brazilian President Fernando Collor de Mello resigns.
1995 – The United States Navy disbands Fighter Squadron 84 (VF-84), nicknamed the "Jolly Rogers".
1996 – The Nintendo 64 gaming console was released in North America.
2001 – The Syracuse Herald-Journal, a U.S. newspaper dating back to 1839, ceases publication.
2004 – The asteroid 4179 Toutatis passes within four lunar distances of Earth.
2004 – The Burt Rutan Ansari X Prize entry SpaceShipOne performs a successful spaceflight, the first of two required to win the prize.
2005 – United States Senate confirms John Roberts as Chief Justice of the United States.
2006 – US Representative Mark Foley resigns after allegations of inappropriate emails.
2006 – Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907 collides in mid-air with an Embraer Legacy business jet near Peixoto de Azevedo, Mato Grosso, Brazil, killing 154 total people, and triggering a Brazilian aviation crisis.
2007 – Calder Hall, the world's first commercial nuclear power station, is demolished in a controlled explosion.
2008 – Following the bankruptcies of Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual, The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls 777.68 points, the largest single-day point loss in its history.
2009 – An 8.0 magnitude earthquake near the Samoan Islands causes a tsunami.
[center]-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

The Battle of Salamis (Greek: Ναυμαχία τῆς Σαλαμῖνος, Naumachia tēs Salaminos) was fought between an Alliance of Greek city-states and the Persian Empire in September 480 BC in the straits between the mainland and Salamis, an island in the Saronic Gulf near Athens. It marked the high-point of the second Persian invasion of Greece which had begun in 480 BC.

To block the Persian advance, a small force of Greeks blocked the pass of Thermopylae, while an Athenian-dominated Allied navy engaged the Persian fleet in the nearby straits of Artemisium. In the resulting Battle of Thermopylae, the rearguard of the Greek force was annihilated, whilst in the Battle of Artemisium the Greeks had heavy losses and retreated after the loss at Thermopylae. This allowed the Persians to conquer Boeotia and Attica. The Allies prepared to defend the Isthmus of Corinth whilst the fleet was withdrawn to nearby Salamis Island.

Although heavily outnumbered, the Greek Allies were persuaded by the Athenian general Themistocles to bring the Persian fleet to battle again, in the hope that a victory would prevent naval operations against the Peloponessus. The Persian king Xerxes was also anxious for a decisive battle. As a result of subterfuge on the part of Themistocles, the Persian navy sailed into the Straits of Salamis and tried to block both entrances. In the cramped conditions of the Straits the great Persian numbers were an active hindrance, as ships struggled to maneuver and became disorganised. Seizing the opportunity, the Greek fleet formed in line and scored a decisive victory, sinking or capturing at least 300 Persian ships.

As a result Xerxes retreated to Asia with much of his army, leaving Mardonius to complete the conquest of Greece. However, the following year, the remainder of the Persian army was decisively beaten at the Battle of Plataea and the Persian navy at the Battle of Mycale. Afterwards the Persian made no more attempts to conquer the Greek mainland. These battles of Salamis and Plataea thus mark a turning point in the course of the Greco-Persian wars as a whole; from then onward, the Greek poleis would take the offensive. A number of historians believe that a Persian victory would have hamstrung the development of Ancient Greece, and by extension western civilization, and this has led them to claim that Salamis is one of the most significant battles in human history.

The main source for the Greco-Persian Wars is the Greek historian Herodotus. Herodotus, who has been called the 'Father of History', was born in 484 BC in Halicarnassus, Asia Minor (then under Persian overlordship). He wrote his 'Enquiries' (Greek—Historia; English—(The) Histories) around 440–430 BC, trying to trace the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars, which would still have been relatively recent history (the wars finally ending in 450 BC). Herodotus's approach was entirely novel, and at least in Western society, he does seem to have invented 'history' as we know it. As Holland has it: "For the first time, a chronicler set himself to trace the origins of a conflict not to a past so remote so as to be utterly fabulous, nor to the whims and wishes of some god, nor to a people's claim to manifest destiny, but rather explanations he could verify personally."

Some subsequent ancient historians, despite following in his footsteps, criticised Herodotus, starting with Thucydides. Nevertheless, Thucydides chose to begin his history where Herodotus left off (at the Siege of Sestos), and therefore evidently felt that Herodotus's history was accurate enough not to need re-writing or correcting. Plutarch criticised Herodotus in his essay "On The Malignity of Herodotus", describing Herodotus as "Philobarbaros" (barbarian-lover), for not being pro-Greek enough, which suggests that Herodotus might actually have done a reasonable job of being even-handed. A negative view of Herodotus was passed on to Renaissance Europe, though he remained well read. However, since the 19th century his reputation has been dramatically rehabilitated by archaeological finds which have repeatedly confirmed his version of events. The prevailing modern view is that Herodotus generally did a remarkable job in his Historia, but that some of his specific details (particularly troop numbers and dates) should be viewed with skepticism.[9] Nevertheless, there are still some historians who believe Herodotus made up much of his story.

The Sicilian historian Diodorus Siculus, writing in the 1st century BC in his Bibliotheca Historica, also provides an account of the Greco-Persian wars, partially derived from the earlier Greek historian Ephorus. This account is fairly consistent with Herodotus's. The Greco-Persian wars are also described in less detail by a number of other ancient historians including Plutarch, Ctesias of Cnidus, and are alluded by other authors, such as the playwright Aeschylus. Archaeological evidence, such as the Serpent Column, also supports some of Herodotus's specific claims.
[center]-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

The 2009 Samoa earthquake was an 8.1 Mw submarine earthquake that took place in the Samoan Islands region at 06:48:11 local time on September 29, 2009 (17:48:11 UTC, September 29). At a magnitude of 8.1, it was the largest earthquake of 2009.

A tsunami was generated which caused substantial damage and loss of life in Samoa, American Samoa, and Tonga. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center recorded a 3-inch (76 mm) rise in sea levels near the epicenter, and New Zealand scientists determined that the waves measured 14 metres (46 ft) at their highest on the Samoan coast. The quake occurred on the outer rise of the Kermadec-Tonga Subduction Zone. This is part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, where tectonic plates in the Earth's lithosphere meet and earthquakes and volcanic activity are common.

Countries affected by the tsunami in the areas that were hit are American Samoa, Samoa and Tonga (Niuatoputapu) where more than 189 people were killed, especially children, most of them in Samoa. Large waves with no major damage were reported on the coasts of Fiji, the northern coast of New Zealand and Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. People took precautions in the low-lying atolls of Tokelau and moved to higher ground. Niue was reported as reasonably safe because it is high. There were no reports of high waves from Vanuatu, Kiribati, New Caledonia and the Solomon Islands.

A tsunami warning was initially issued for American Samoa, Samoa, Niue, Wallis and Futuna, Tokelau, the Cook Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Kermadec Islands, Fiji, Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, New Zealand, French Polynesia, Palmyra Island, Vanuatu, Nauru, Marshall Islands, and Solomon Islands. Most of the warnings were called off once it was clear that the tsunami threat had passed. Officials in the Cook Islands, which hosted the 2009 Pacific Mini Games, noted that the tsunami passed without any damage to the country.

A tsunami warning remained in effect for the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia, as five main waves were expected to strike that archipelago. Warnings also remained in Tuvalu, one of the lowest lying countries in the world.

Local radio stations in Tonga broadcast warnings that a tsunami was possible and that people should move away from coastal villages.

A tsunami watch was issued for islands farther from the epicenter, including Hawaii and Papua New Guinea, but not for California, USA. Officials were determining whether the tsunami could reach Hawaii, the center said. It was possible that a strongly decreased wave could reach Hawaii.

A tsunami advisory was issued for coastal California and the San Francisco Bay Area beginning at 9:00 PM local time as a precaution.
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

September 30

1399 – Henry IV is proclaimed King of England.
1744 – France and Spain defeat the Kingdom of Sardinia at the Battle of Madonna dell'Olmo.
1791 – The first performance of The Magic Flute, the last opera by Mozart to make its debut, took place at Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna, Austria.
1791 – The National Constituent Assembly in Paris is dissolved; Parisians hail Maximilien Robespierre and Jérôme Pétion as "incorruptible patriots".
1813 – Battle of Bárbula: Simón Bolívar defeats Santiago Bobadilla.
1860 – Britain's first tram service begins in Birkenhead, Merseyside.
1882 – Thomas Edison's first commercial hydroelectric power plant (later known as Appleton Edison Light Company) begins operation on the Fox River in Appleton, Wisconsin, United States.
1888 – Jack the Ripper kills his third and fourth victims, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes.
1895 – Madagascar becomes a French protectorate.
1903 – The new Gresham's School is officially opened by Field Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood.
1906 – The Real Academia Galega, Galician language's biggest linguistic authority, starts working in Havana.
1907 – McKinley National Memorial, final resting place of assassinated U.S. President William McKinley and his family, dedicated in Canton, Ohio.
1927 – Babe Ruth becomes the first baseball player to hit 60 home runs in a season.
1931 – Start of "Die Voortrekkers" youth movement for Afrikaners in Bloemfontein, South Africa.
1935 – The Hoover Dam, astride the border between the U.S. states of Arizona and Nevada, is dedicated.
1938 – At 2:00 am, Britain, France, Germany and Italy sign the Munich Agreement, allowing Germany to occupy the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.
1938 – The League of Nations unanimously outlaws "intentional bombings of civilian populations".
1939 – General Władysław Sikorski becomes commander-in-chief of the Polish Government in exile.
1941 – World War II: Holocaust in Kiev, Ukraine: German Einsatzgruppe C complete Babi Yar massacre.
1945 – The Bourne End rail crash, in Hertfordshire, England, kills 43
1947 – The Islamic Republic of Pakistan and Yemen join the United Nations.
1947 – The World Series, featuring the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers, is televised for the first time.
1949 – The Berlin Airlift ends.
1954 – The U.S. Navy submarine USS Nautilus is commissioned as the world's first nuclear reactor powered vessel.
1955 – Film star James Dean dies in a road accident aged 24.
1962 – Mexican-American labor leader César Chávez founds the National Farm Workers Association, which later becomes United Farm Workers.
1962 – James Meredith enters the University of Mississippi, defying segregation.
1965 – General Suharto rises to power after an alleged coup by the Communist Party of Indonesia. In response, Suharto and his army massacre over a million Indonesians suspected of being communists.
1965 – The Lockheed L-100, the civilian version of the C-130 Hercules, is introduced.
1966 – The British protectorate of Bechuanaland declares its independence, and becomes the Republic of Botswana. Seretse Khama takes office as the first President.
1967 – BBC Radio 1 is launched and Tony Blackburn presents its first show; the BBC's other national radio stations also adopt numeric names.
1968 – The Boeing 747 is rolled out and shown to the public for the first time at the Boeing Everett Factory.
1970 – Jordan makes a deal with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) for the release of the remaining hostages from the Dawson's Field hijackings.
1972 – Roberto Clemente records the 3,000th and final hit of his career.
1975 – The Hughes (later McDonnell-Douglas, now Boeing) AH-64 Apache makes its first flight.
1977 – Because of US budget cuts and dwindling power reserves, the Apollo program's ALSEP experiment packages left on the Moon are shut down.
1979 – The Hong Kong MTR commences service with the opening of its Modified Initial System (aka. Kwun Tong Line).
1980 – Ethernet specifications are published by Xerox working with Intel and Digital Equipment Corporation.
1982 – Cyanide-laced Tylenol kills six people in the Chicago area. Seven are killed in all.
1986 – Mordechai Vanunu, who revealed details of Israel's covert nuclear program to British media, is kidnapped in Rome, Italy by the Israeli Mossad.
1990 – The Dalai Lama unveils the Canadian Tribute to Human Rights in Canada's capital city of Ottawa.
1993 – An earthquake hits India's Latur and Osmanabad district of Marathwada (Aurangabad division) in Maharashtra state leaving tens of thousands of people dead and many more homeless.
1994 – Aldwych tube station (originally Strand Station) of the London Underground closes after eighty-eight years of service.
1999 – Japan's second worst nuclear accident at a uranium reprocessing facility in Tōkai-mura, northeast of Tokyo.
2004 – The first images of a live giant squid in its natural habitat are taken 600 miles south of Tokyo.
2004 – The AIM-54 Phoenix, the primary missile for the F-14 Tomcat, is retired from service. Almost two years later, the Tomcat is retired.
2005 – The controversial drawings of Muhammad are printed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.
2009 – The 2009 Sumatra earthquakes occur, killing over 1,115 people.
[center]---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

The Magic Flute (German: Die Zauberflöte, K. 620) is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue.

The opera was premiered in Vienna on 30 September 1791, at the suburban Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden. Mozart conducted the orchestra, Schikaneder himself played Papageno, while the role of the Queen of the Night was sung by Mozart's sister-in-law Josepha Hofer.

On the reception of the opera, Mozart scholar Maynard Solomon writes:

Although there were no reviews of the first performances, it was immediately evident that Mozart and Schikaneder had achieved a great success, the opera drawing immense crowds and reaching hundreds of performances during the 1790s.

The success of The Magic Flute lifted the spirits of its composer, who had fallen ill while in Prague a few weeks before. Solomon continues:

Mozart's delight is reflected in his last three letters, written to Constanze, who with her sister Sophie was spending the second week of October in Baden. "I have this moment returned from the opera, which was as full as ever", he wrote on 7 October, listing the numbers that had to be encored. "But what always gives me the most pleasure is the silent approval! You can see how this opera is becoming more and more esteemed." … He went to hear his opera almost every night, taking along [friends and] relatives.

The opera celebrated its 100th performance in November 1792. Mozart did not have the pleasure of witnessing this milestone, having died of his illness on 5 December 1791.

Since its premiere, The Magic Flute has always been one of the most beloved works in the operatic repertoire, and is presently the most frequently performed opera world wide.

The Magic Flute is noted for its prominent Masonic elements; Schikaneder and Mozart were Masons and lodge brothers (see: Mozart and Freemasonry). The opera is also influenced by Enlightenment philosophy, and can be regarded as an allegory advocating enlightened absolutism. The Queen of the Night represents a dangerous form of obscurantism or, according to some, the anti-Masonic Empress Maria Theresa. Her antagonist Sarastro symbolises the enlightened sovereign who rules according to principles based on reason, wisdom, and nature. The story itself portrays the education of mankind, progressing from chaos through religious superstition to rationalistic enlightenment, by means of trial (Tamino) and error (Papageno), ultimately to make "the Earth a heavenly kingdom, and mortals like the gods". ("Dann ist die Erd' ein Himmelreich, und Sterbliche den Göttern gleich." This couplet is sung in the finales to both acts.)

The opera was the culmination of a period of increasing involvement by Mozart with Schikaneder's theatrical troupe, which since 1789 had been the resident company at the Theater auf der Wieden. Mozart was a close friend of one of the singer-composers of the troupe, tenor Benedikt Schack (the first Tamino), and had contributed to the compositions of the troupe, which were often collaboratively written. Mozart's participation increased with his contributions to the 1790 collaborative opera Der Stein der Weisen (The Philosopher's Stone), including the duet ("Nun liebes Weibchen", K. 625/592a) and perhaps other passages. Like The Magic Flute, Der Stein der Weisen was a fairy-tale opera and can be considered a kind of precursor; it employed much the same cast in similar roles.

Mozart evidently wrote keeping in mind the skills of the singers intended for the premiere, which included both virtuosi and ordinary comic actors, asked to sing for the occasion.[8] Thus, the vocal lines for Papageno and Monostatos are often stated first in the strings so the singer can find his pitch, and are frequently doubled by instruments. In contrast, Mozart's sister-in-law Josepha Hofer, who premiered the role of the Queen of the Night, evidently needed little such help: this role is famous for its difficulty. In ensembles, Mozart skillfully combined voices of different ability levels.

A particularly demanding aria is the Queen of the Night's "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen" ("The vengeance of Hell boils in my heart"), which reaches a high F6 (see Scientific pitch notation), rare in opera. At the low end, the part of Sarastro includes a conspicuous F in a few locations.

On 28 December 1791, 3½ weeks after Mozart's death, his widow Constanze offered to send a manuscript score of The Magic Flute to the electoral court in Bonn. Nikolaus Simrock published this text in the first full-score edition (Bonn, 1814), claiming that it was "in accordance with Mozart's own wishes" (Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 13 September 1815).

[center]---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

The giant squid (genus: Architeuthis) is a deep-ocean dwelling squid in the family Architeuthidae, represented by as many as eight species. Giant squid can grow to a tremendous size: recent estimates put the maximum size at 13 metres (43 ft) for females and 10 metres (33 ft) for males from caudal fin to the tip of the two long tentacles (second only to the colossal squid at an estimated 14 metres (46 ft), one of the largest living organisms). The mantle is about 2 metres (6.6 ft) long (more for females, less for males), and the length of the squid excluding its tentacles is about 5 metres (16 ft). There have been claims of specimens measuring 20 metres (66 ft) or more, but no animals of such size have been scientifically documented.

On September 30, 2004, researchers from the National Science Museum of Japan and the Ogasawara Whale Watching Association took the first images of a live giant squid in its natural habitat. Several of the 556 photographs were released a year later. The same team successfully filmed a live adult giant squid for the first time on December 4, 2006.

Like all squid, a giant squid has a mantle (torso), eight arms, and two longer tentacles (the longest known tentacles of any cephalopod). The arms and tentacles account for much of the squid's great length, making giant squid much lighter than their chief predators, sperm whales. Scientifically documented specimens have masses of hundreds, rather than thousands, of kilograms.

The inside surfaces of the arms and tentacles are lined with hundreds of sub-spherical suction cups, 2 to 5 centimetres (0.79 to 2.0 in) in diameter, each mounted on a stalk. The circumference of these suckers is lined with sharp, finely serrated rings of chitin. The perforation of these teeth and the suction of the cups serve to attach the squid to its prey. It is common to find circular scars from the suckers on or close to the head of sperm whales that have attacked giant squid. Each arm and tentacle is divided into three regions — carpus ("wrist"), manus ("hand") and dactylus ("finger"). The carpus has a dense cluster of cups, in six or seven irregular, transverse rows. The manus is broader, close to the end of the arm, and has enlarged suckers in two medial rows. The dactylus is the tip. The bases of all the arms and tentacles are arranged in a circle surrounding the animal's single parrot-like beak, as in other cephalopods.

Giant squid have small fins at the rear of the mantle used for locomotion. Like other cephalopods, giant squid are propelled by jet — by pushing water through its mantle cavity through the funnel, in gentle, rhythmic pulses. They can also move quickly by expanding the cavity to fill it with water, then contracting muscles to jet water through the funnel. Giant squid breathe using two large gills inside the mantle cavity. The circulatory system is closed, which is a distinct characteristic of cephalopods. Like other squid, they contain dark ink used to deter predators.

Giant squid have a sophisticated nervous system and complex brain, attracting great interest from scientists. They also have the largest eyes of any living creature except perhaps colossal squid — over 30 centimetres (1 ft) in diameter. Large eyes can better detect light (including bioluminescent light), which is scarce in deep water. It is thought the giant squid cannot see colour, but they can probably discern small differences in tone, which is important in the low-light conditions of the deep ocean.

Giant squid and some other large squid species maintain neutral buoyancy in seawater through an ammonium chloride solution which flows throughout their body and is lighter than seawater. This differs from the method of flotation used by fish, which involves a gas-filled swim bladder. The solution tastes somewhat like salmiakki and makes giant squid unattractive for general human consumption.

Like all cephalopods, giant squid have organs called statocysts to sense their orientation and motion in water. The age of a giant squid can be determined by "growth rings" in the statocyst's "statolith", similar to determining the age of a tree by counting its rings. Much of what is known about giant squid age is based on estimates of the growth rings and from undigested beaks found in the stomachs of sperm whales.
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

October 1:
1890: Yosemite National Park established

On this day in 1890, an act of Congress creates Yosemite National Park, home of such natural wonders as Half Dome and the giant sequoia trees. Environmental trailblazer John Muir (1838-1914) and his colleagues campaigned for the congressional action, which was signed into law by President Benjamin Harrison and paved the way for generations of hikers, campers and nature lovers, along with countless "Don't Feed the Bears" signs.

Native Americans were the main residents of the Yosemite Valley, located in California's Sierra Nevada mountain range, until the 1849 gold rush brought thousands of non-Indian miners and settlers to the region. Tourists and damage to Yosemite Valley's ecosystem followed. In 1864, to ward off further commercial exploitation, conservationists convinced President Abraham Lincoln to declare Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias a public trust of California. This marked the first time the U.S. government protected land for public enjoyment and it laid the foundation for the establishment of the national and state park systems. Yellowstone became America's first national park in 1872.

In 1889, John Muir discovered that the vast meadows surrounding Yosemite Valley, which lacked government protection, were being overrun and destroyed by domestic sheep grazing. Muir and Robert Underwood Johnson, a fellow environmentalist and influential magazine editor, lobbied for national park status for the large wilderness area around Yosemite Valley. On October 1 of the following year, Congress set aside over 1,500 square miles of land (about the size of Rhode Island) for what would become Yosemite National Park, America's third national park. In 1906, the state-controlled Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove came under federal jurisdiction with the rest of the park.

Yosemite's natural beauty is immortalized in the black-and-white landscape photographs of Ansel Adams (1902-1984), who at one point lived in the park and spent years photographing it. Today, over 3 million people get back to nature annually at Yosemite and check out such stunning landmarks as the 2,425-foot-high Yosemite Falls, one of the world's tallest waterfalls; rock formations Half Dome and El Capitan, the largest granite monolith in the U.S.; and the three groves of giant sequoias, the world's biggest trees.
---------------------------------------------------------------

331 BC – Alexander the Great defeats Darius III of Persia in the Battle of Gaugamela.
959 – Edgar the Peaceable becomes king of all England.
1189 – Gerard de Ridefort, grandmaster of the Knights Templar since 1184, is killed in the Siege of Acre.
1553 – Coronation of Queen Mary I of England
1787 – Russians under Alexander Suvorov defeat the Turks at Kinburn.
1791 – First session of the French Legislative Assembly.
1795 – Belgium is conquered by France.
1800 – Spain cedes Louisiana to France via the Treaty of San Ildefonso.
1811 – The first steamboat to sail the Mississippi River arrives in New Orléans, Louisiana.
1814 – Opening of the Congress of Vienna, intended to redraw Europe's political map after the defeat of Napoléon the previous spring.
1827 – Russo-Persian War: The Russian army under Ivan Paskevich storms Yerevan, ending a millennium of Muslim domination in Armenia.
1829 – South African College is founded in Cape Town, South Africa; it will later separate into the University of Cape Town and the South African College Schools.
1843 – The News of the World tabloid begins publication in London.
1847 – German inventor and industrialist Werner von Siemens founds Siemens AG & Halske.
1854 – The watch company founded in 1850 in Roxbury by Aaron Lufkin Dennison relocates to Waltham, Massachusetts, to become the Waltham Watch Company, a pioneer in the American system of watch manufacturing.
1880 – John Philip Sousa becomes leader of the United States Marine Band.
1880 – First electric lamp factory is opened by Thomas Edison.
1887 – Balochistan is conquered by the British Empire.
1890 – Yosemite National Park is established by the U.S. Congress.
1891 – In the U.S. state of California, Stanford University opens its doors.
1898 – The Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration is founded under the name k.u.k. Exportakademie.
1903 – Baseball: The Boston Americans play the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first game of the modern World Series.
1905 – František Pavlík is killed in a demonstration in Prague, inspiring Leoš Janáček to the piano composition 1. X. 1905.
1908 – Ford puts the Model T car on the market at a price of US$825.
1910 – Los Angeles Times bombing: A large bomb destroys the Los Angeles Times building in downtown Los Angeles, California, killing 21.
1918 – World War I: Arab forces under T. E. Lawrence, also known as "Lawrence of Arabia" capture Damascus.
1920 – Sir Percy Cox lands in Basra to assume his responsibilities as high commissioner in Iraq.
1928 – The Soviet Union introduces its First Five-Year Plan.
1931 – The George Washington Bridge linking New Jersey and New York opens.
1936 – Francisco Franco is named head of the Nationalist government of Spain.
1937 – The Japanese city Handa is founded in Aichi Prefecture.
1938 – Germany annexes the Sudetenland.
1939 – After a one-month Siege of Warsaw, hostile forces enter the city.
1940 – The Pennsylvania Turnpike, often considered the first superhighway in the United States, opens to traffic.
1942 – USS Grouper torpedoes Lisbon Maru not knowing she is carrying British PoWs from Hong Kong
1942 – First flight of the Bell XP-59 "Aircomet".
1943 – World War II: Naples falls to Allied soldiers.
1946 – Nazi leaders are sentenced at Nuremberg Trials.
1946 – Mensa International is founded in the United Kingdom.
1947 – The F-86 Sabre flies for the first time.
1949 – The People's Republic of China is established and declared by Mao Zedong.
1957 – First appearance of In God We Trust on U.S. paper currency.
1958 – NASA is created to replace NACA.
1960 – Nigeria gains independence from the United Kingdom.
1961 – East and West Cameroon merge to form the Federal Republic of Cameroon.
1962 – First broadcast of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
1964 – The Free Speech Movement is launched on the campus of University of California, Berkeley.
1964 – Japanese Shinkansen ("bullet trains") begin high-speed rail service from Tokyo to Osaka.
1965 – General Suharto rises to power after a coup that alleged to the Communist Party of Indonesia. In response, Suharto and his army massacre over a million Indonesians suspected of being communists. The killings of 7 army officers happened in the early hours of 1 October 1965.
1966 – West Coast Airlines Flight 956 crashes with eighteen fatalities and no survivors 5.5 miles south of Wemme, Oregon. This accident marks the first loss of a DC-9.
1968 – The Guyanese government takes over the British Guiana Broadcasting Service (BGBS).
1969 – Concorde breaks the sound barrier for the first time.
1971 – Walt Disney World opens near Orlando, Florida, United States.
1971 – The first brain-scan using x-ray computed tomography (CT or CAT scan) is performed at Atkinson Morley Hospital in Wimbledon, London.
1975 – The Seychelles gain internal self-government. The Ellice Islands split from Gilbert Islands and take the name Tuvalu.
1975 – Thrilla in Manila: Muhammad Ali defeats Joe Frazier in a boxing match in Manila, Philippines.
1978 – Tuvalu gains independence from the United Kingdom.
1978 – The Voltaic Revolutionary Communist Party is founded.
1979 – The United States returns sovereignty of the Panama canal to Panama.
1982 – Helmut Kohl replaces Helmut Schmidt as Chancellor of Germany through a Constructive Vote of No Confidence.
1982 – EPCOT Center opens at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida, United States.
1982 – Sony launches the first consumer compact disc player (model CDP-101).
1985 – The Israeli air force bombs PLO Headquarters in Tunis.
1987 – The Whittier Narrows earthquake shakes the San Gabriel Valley, registering as magnitude 5.9.
1989 – Denmark introduces the world's first legal modern same-sex civil union called "registered partnership".
1991 – New Zealand's Resource Management Act 1991 comes into force.
1994 – Palau gains independence from the United Nations (trusteeship administered by the United States of America).
1998 – Vladimir Putin becomes a permanent member of the Security Council of the Russian Federation.
2009 – The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom takes over the judicial functions of the House of Lords.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, play /ˈnæsə/) is an executive branch agency of the United States government, responsible for the nation's civilian space program and aeronautics and aerospace research. Since February 2006, NASA's self-described mission statement is to "pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research." On September 14, 2011, NASA announced that it had selected the design of a new Space Launch System that it said would take the agency's astronauts farther into space than ever before and provide the cornerstone for future human space exploration efforts by the U.S.

NASA was established by the National Aeronautics and Space Act on July 29, 1958, replacing its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The agency became operational on October 1, 1958. U.S. space exploration efforts have since been led by NASA, including the Apollo moon-landing missions, the Skylab space station, and later the Space Shuttle. Currently, NASA is supporting the International Space Station and is developing the manned Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle. The agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program (LSP) which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches.

NASA science is focused on better understanding Earth through the Earth Observing System, advancing heliophysics through the efforts of the Science Mission Directorate's Heliophysics Research Program, exploring bodies throughout the Solar System with advanced robotic missions such as New Horizons, and researching astrophysics topics, such as the Big Bang, through the Great Observatories and associated programs. NASA shares data with various national and international organizations such as from the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite.

From 1946, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) had been experimenting with rocket planes such as the supersonic Bell X-1. In the early 1950s, there was challenge to launch an artificial satellite for the International Geophysical Year (1957-5. An effort for this was the American Project Vanguard. After the Soviet space program's launch of the world's first artificial satellite (Sputnik 1) on October 4, 1957, the attention of the United States turned toward its own fledgling space efforts. The U.S. Congress, alarmed by the perceived threat to national security and technological leadership (known as the "Sputnik crisis"), urged immediate and swift action; President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his advisers counseled more deliberate measures. Several months of debate produced an agreement that a new federal agency was needed to conduct all non-military activity in space. The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was also created at this time to develop space technology for military application.

On July 29, 1958, Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, establishing NASA. When it began operations on October 1, 1958, NASA absorbed the 46-year-old NACA intact; its 8,000 employees, an annual budget of US$100 million, three major research laboratories (Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, Ames Aeronautical Laboratory, and Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory) and two small test facilities. A NASA seal was approved by President Eisenhower in 1959.

Elements of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) and the Naval Research Laboratory were incorporated into NASA. A significant contributor to NASA's entry into the Space Race with the Soviet Union was the technology from the German rocket program (led by Werner von Braun, who was now working for ABMA) which in turn incorporated the technology of Robert Goddard's earlier works. Earlier research efforts within the U.S. Air Force and many of ARPA's early space programs were also transferred to NASA. In December 1958, NASA gained control of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a contractor facility operated by the California Institute of Technology.

NASA's ongoing investigations include in-depth surveys of Mars and Saturn and studies of the Earth and the Sun. Some other active spacecraft missions are MESSENGER for Mercury, New Horizons (for Jupiter, Pluto, and beyond), and Dawn for the asteroid belt. NASA continued to support in situ exploration beyond the asteroid belt, including Pioneer and Voyager traverses into the unexplored trans-Pluto region, and Gas Giant orbiters Galileo (1989-2003), Cassini, and Juno (2011-).

The New Horizons mission to Pluto was launched in 2006 and aiming for Pluto flyby in 2015. The probe received a gravity assist from Jupiter in February 2007, examining some of Jupiter's inner moons and testing on-board instruments during the fly-by. On the horizon of NASA's plans is the MAVEN spacecraft as part of the Mars Scout Program to study the atmosphere of Mars. An improved and larger planetary rover, Mars Science Laboratory, is under construction and slated to launch in 2011, after a slight delay caused by hardware challenges, which has bumped it back from the October 2009 scheduled launch.

On December 4, 2006, NASA announced it was planning a permanent moon base. NASA Associate Administrator Scott Horowitz said the goal was to start building the moonbase by 2020, and by 2024, have a fully functional base that would allow for crew rotations and in-situ resource utilization. By 2010, President Barack Obama worked with Congress to halt existing plans, including the Moon base, and directed a generic focus on manned missions to asteroids and Mars, as well as extending support for the International Space Station. The same year he announced changes to NASA space policy, in his space policy speech at Kennedy Space Center, from the Moon-first approach adopted previously under the Vision for Space Exploration and Constellation program to a variety of destinations.

In September 2011, the Space Launch System, a planned launch vehicle was announced. The goal is a manned variant launching the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, and a even larger version after that. The Orion MPCV is planned for a test launch on a Delta IV Heavy rocket around 2013.


A growing threat to space travel is space debris.
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

There is something about crunching that changed within me. There is something that changed and seems to be permanent. During this night we knew that Mike029 was banned for 2 days from posting in the shoutouts of Simap Team chalenge. After that I noticed one of my shoutouts disapeared. Colateral damage was the first thing that came to my mind.

This all things started when a shoutout from Dcushing was banned. In fact I dont know the reasons that lead to this catastrophic chain of events. Maybe I over reacted when I get up in my insonia and saw all this happening. I always over reacte when freedoom is at stake. I am not prepared to negotiate my freedoom for some crunching, for any crunching.

We all come from long lineage of history facts. Some descend from the victims some descend from the perpetrators. I dont want to be in any of this sides. I am to sensitive to be a perpetrator and to strong to be a victim. I have the strengh of my convictions to lead me.

This is a personal decision I am prepared to review. I am somehow waiting for a racional explanation about this all thing there must be one. I am not going to wait that someone takes me to death camp to start talking. I am very sorry for Mike029 and for Dcushing, in fact I am very sorry for all of you that believe in freedoom. Yesterday freedoom was staped in the back with no other consideration.

October the first was a bad day for freedoom.

I hope this facts can be discussed and known in all Foruns. But I always hope too much...
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

October 3

52 BC – Vercingetorix, leader of the Gauls, surrenders to the Romans under Julius Caesar, ending the siege and Battle of Alesia.
42 BC – First Battle of Philippi: Triumvirs Mark Antony and Octavian fight a decisive battle with Caesar's assassins Brutus and Cassius.
382 – Emperor Theodosius I concludes a peace treaty with the Goths and settles them in the Balkans in exchange for military service.
1283 – Dafydd ap Gruffydd, prince of Gwynedd in Wales, becomes the first nobleman executed by being hanged, drawn and quartered.
1574 – The Siege of Leiden is lifted by the Watergeuzen.
1683 – The Qing Dynasty naval commander Shi Lang reaches Taiwan (under the Kingdom of Tungning) to receive the formal surrender of Zheng Keshuang and Liu Guoxuan after the Battle of Penghu.
1712 – The Duke of Montrose issues a warrant for the arrest of Rob Roy MacGregor.
1739 – The Treaty of Nissa is signed by the Ottoman Empire and Russia at the finish of the Russian-Turkish War, 1736–1739.
1778 – British Captain James Cook anchors in Alaska.
1789 – George Washington made the first Thanksgiving Day designated by the national government of the United States of America.
1795 – General Napoleon Bonaparte first rises to national prominence being named to defend the French National Convention against armed counter-revolutionary rioters threatening the three year old revolutionary government.
1835 – The Staedtler Company is founded in Nuremberg, Germany.
1849 – American author Edgar Allan Poe is found delirious in a gutter in Baltimore, Maryland under mysterious circumstances; it is the last time he is seen in public before his death.
1863 – The last Thursday in November is declared as Thanksgiving Day by President Abraham Lincoln as are Thursdays, November 30, 1865 and November 29, 1866.
1872 – Bloomingdale brothers opened their first store at 938 Third Avenue, New York City.
1873 – Captain Jack and companions are hanged for their part in the Modoc War.
1908 – The Pravda newspaper is founded by Leon Trotsky, Adolph Joffe, Matvey Skobelev and other Russian exiles in Vienna.
1918 – King Boris III of Bulgaria accedes to the throne.
1919 – Cincinnati Reds pitcher Adolfo Luque becomes the 1st Latin player to appear in a World Series.
1929 – The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes is renamed to Kingdom of Yugoslavia, "Land of the South Slavs".
1932 – Iraq gains independence from the United Kingdom.
1935 – Second Italo-Abyssinian War: Italy invades Ethiopia under General de Bono.
1942 – Spaceflight: The first successful launch of a V-2 /A4-rocket from Test Stand VII at Peenemünde, Germany. It is the first man-made object to reach space.
1949 – WERD, the 1st black-owned radio station in the United States, opens in Atlanta, Georgia.
1950 – Korean War: The First Battle of Maryang San, primarily pitting Australian and British forces against communist China, begins.
1951 – The "Shot Heard 'Round the World", one of the greatest moments in Major League Baseball history, occurs when the New York Giants' Bobby Thomson hits a game winning home run in the bottom of the ninth inning off of the Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca, to win the National League pennant after being down 14 games.
1952 – The United Kingdom successfully tests a nuclear weapon to become the world's third nuclear power.
1955 – The Mickey Mouse Club debuts on ABC.
1957 – Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems is ruled not obscene.
1961 – The Dick Van Dyke Show premieres on CBS-TV in the United States.
1962 – Project Mercury: Sigma 7 is launched from Cape Canaveral, with Astronaut Wally Schirra aboard, for a six-orbit, nine-hour flight.
1964 – First Buffalo Wings are made at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York.
1981 – The Hunger Strike by Provisional Irish Republican Army and Irish National Liberation Army prisoners at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland ends after seven months and ten deaths.
1985 – The Space Shuttle Atlantis makes its maiden flight. (Mission STS-51-J)
1986 – TASCC, a superconducting cyclotron at the Chalk River Laboratories, is officially opened.
1990 – Re-unification of Germany. The German Democratic Republic ceases to exist and its territory becomes part of the Federal Republic of Germany. East German citizens became part of the European Community, which later became the European Union. Now celebrated as German Unity Day.
1993 – Battle of Mogadishu: In an attempt to capture officials of warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid's organisation in Mogadishu, Somalia, 18 US soldiers and about 1,000 Somalis are killed in heavy fighting.
1995 – O. J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
2003 – Roy Horn of Siegfried & Roy is attacked by one of the show's tigers, canceling the show until 2009, when they rejoined the tiger that mauled Roy just six years earlier.
2008 – The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 for the US financial system is signed by President Bush.
------------------------------------------------------

"Howl" is a poem written by Allen Ginsberg in 1955 and published as part of his 1956 collection of poetry titled Howl and Other Poems. The poem is considered to be one of the great works of the Beat Generation, along with Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957) and William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch (1959). "Howl" was written as a performance piece and later published by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books. Upon its release, Ferlinghetti and the bookstore's manager, Shigeyoshi Murao, were charged with disseminating obscene literature, and both were arrested. On October 3, 1957, Judge Clayton W. Horn ruled that the poem was not obscene, and "Howl" went on to become the most popular poem of the Beat Generation.

Allen Ginsberg wrote the poem "Howl" in mid-1955, purportedly at a coffeehouse known today as the Caffe Mediterraneum in Berkeley, California. Many factors went into the creation of the poem. A short time before the composition of "Howl," Ginsberg's therapist, Dr. Philip Hicks, encouraged him to quit his job and pursue poetry full time. He experimented with short simple sentences (parataxis) in the poem "Dream Record: June 8, 1955" about the death of Joan Vollmer, a technique that would become central in "Howl." He showed this poem to Kenneth Rexroth, who criticized it as too stilted and academic; Rexroth encouraged Ginsberg to free his voice and write from his heart. Ginsberg took this advice and attempted to write a poem with no restrictions. He was under the immense influence of William Carlos Williams and Jack Kerouac and attempted to speak with his own voice spontaneously. Ginsberg began the poem in the stepped triadic form he took from Williams but, in the middle of typing the poem, his style altered such that his own unique form (a long line based on breath organized by a fixed base) began to emerge. Ginsberg would experiment with this breath-length form in many later poems. The first draft contained what would later become Part I and Part III. It is noted for relating stories and experiences of Ginsberg's friends and contemporaries, its tumbling, hallucinatory style, and the frank address of sexuality, specifically homosexuality, which subsequently provoked an obscenity trial. Although Ginsberg referred to many of his friends and acquaintances (including Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Peter Orlovsky, Lucien Carr, and Herbert Huncke) the primary emotional drive was his sympathy for Carl Solomon, to whom it was dedicated; he met Solomon in a mental institution and became friends with him. Ginsberg admitted later this sympathy for Solomon was connected to bottled-up guilt and sympathy for his mother's schizophrenia (she had been lobotomized), an issue he was not yet ready to address directly. In 2008, Peter Orlovsky told the co-directors of the 2010 film Howl that a short moonlit walk--during which Orlovsky sang a rendition of the Hank William’s song "Howlin’ At the Moon"--may have been the encouragement for the title of Ginsberg’s poem. "I never asked him, and he never offered," Orlovsky told them, "but there were things he would pick up on and use in his verse form some way or another. Poets do it all the time." The Dedication by Ginsberg states he took the title from Kerouac.

The poem was first performed at the Six Gallery in San Francisco on October 7, 1955. The reading was conceived by Wally Hedrick — a painter and co-founder of the Six — who approached Ginsberg in mid-1955 and asked him to organize a poetry reading at the Six Gallery. "At first, Ginsberg refused. But once he'd written a rough draft of Howl, he changed his 'fucking mind,' as he put it."[9] Ginsberg was ultimately responsible for inviting the readers (Gary Snyder, Philip Lamantia, and Philip Whalen, Michael McClure and Kenneth Rexroth) and writing the invitation. "Howl" was the second to the last reading (before "A Berry Feast" by Snyder) and was considered by most in attendance the highlight of the reading. Many considered it the beginning of a new movement, and the reputation of Ginsberg and those associated with the Six Gallery reading spread throughout San Francisco. In response to Ginsberg's reading, McClure wrote: "Ginsberg read on to the end of the poem, which left us standing in wonder, or cheering and wondering, but knowing at the deepest level that a barrier had been broken, that a human voice and body had been hurled against the harsh wall of America..." Soon afterwards, it was published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who ran City Lights Bookstore and the City Lights Press. Ginsberg completed Part II and the "Footnote" after Ferlinghetti had promised to publish the poem. "Howl" was too short to make an entire book, so Ferlinghetti requested some other poems. Thus the final collection contained several other poems written at that time; with these poems, Ginsberg continued the experimentation with long lines and a fixed base he'd discovered with the composition of "Howl" and these poems have likewise become some of Ginsberg's most famous: "America", "Sunflower Sutra," "A Supermarket in California", etc.

The earliest extant recording of "Howl" dates from March 18, 1956. Ginsberg and Snyder, after hitch-hiking from San Francisco, read from their poems in the Anna Mann dormitory at Reed College, Snyder's alma mater. This recording, discovered in mid-2007 on a reel-to-reel tape in the Reed College archives, contains only Part I of "Howl." After beginning to read Part II, Ginsberg said to the audience, "I don't really feel like reading anymore. I just sorta haven't got any kind of steam."

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
Angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection
to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
--------------------------------------------------------

German reunification (German: Deutsche Wiedervereinigung) was the process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic (GDR/East Germany) joined the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG/West Germany), and when Berlin reunited into a single city, as provided by its then Grundgesetz constitution Article 23. The start of this process is commonly referred by Germans as die Wende (The Turning Point). The end of the unification process is officially referred to as German unity (German: Deutsche Einheit), celebrated on 3 October (German Unity Day).[1]

The East German regime started to falter in May 1989, when the removal of Hungary's border fence opened a hole in the Iron Curtain. It caused an exodus of thousands of East Germans fleeing to West Germany and Austria via Hungary. The Peaceful Revolution, a series of protests by East Germans, led to the GDR's first free elections on 18 March 1990, and to the negotiations between the GDR and FRG that culminated in a Unification Treaty, whilst negotiations between the GDR and FRG and the four occupying powers produced the so-called "Two Plus Four Treaty" (Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany) granting full sovereignty to a unified German state, whose two halves had previously still been bound by a number of limitations stemming from their post-WWII status as occupied regions. The united Germany remained a member of the European Community (later the European Union) and of NATO.

There is debate as to whether the events of 1990 should be properly referred to as a "reunification" or a "unification". Proponents[specify] of the former use the term in contrast with the initial unification of Germany in 1871. Also when the Saarland joined the West German Federal Republic of Germany on 1 January 1957, this was termed the Small Reunification. Popular parlance, which uses "reunification", is deeply affected by the 1989 opening of the Berlin Wall (and the rest of the inner German border) and the physical reunification of the city of Berlin (itself divided only since 1945). Others,[who?] however, argue that 1990 represented a "unification" of two German states into a larger entity which, in its resulting form, had never before existed (see History of Germany).

For political and diplomatic reasons, West German politicians carefully avoided the term "reunification" during the run-up to what Germans frequently refer to as die Wende. The official and most common term in German is "Deutsche Einheit" (in English "German unity"). German unity is the term that Hans-Dietrich Genscher used in front of international journalists to correct them when they asked him about "reunification" in 1990.

On 28 November 1989--two weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall--West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl announced a 10-point program calling for the two Germanies to expand their cooperation with the view toward eventual reunification.

Initially, no timetable was proposed. However, events rapidly came to a head in early 1990. First, in March, the Party of Democratic Socialism--the former Socialist Unity Party of Germany--was heavily defeated in East Germany's first honest elections. A grand coalition was formed under Lothar de Maizière, leader of the East German wing of Kohl's Christian Democratic Union, on a platform of speedy reunification. Second, East Germany's economy and infrastructure underwent a swift and near-total collapse. While East Germany had long been reckoned as having the most robust economy in the Soviet bloc, the removal of Communist discipline revealed the ramshackle foundations of that system. The East German mark had been practically worthless outside of East Germany for some time before the events of 1989-90, further magnifying the problem.

Discussions immediately began for an emergency merger of the Germanies' economies. On 18 May 1990, the two German states signed a treaty agreeing on monetary, economic and social union. This came into force on 1 July 1990, with the Deutsche Mark replacing the East German mark as the official currency of East Germany. The Deutsche Mark had a very high reputation among the East Germans and was considered stable. While the GDR transferred its financial policy sovereignty to West Germany, the West started granting subsidies for the GDR budget and social security system. At the same time many West German laws came into force in the GDR. This created a suitable framework for a political union by diminishing the huge gap between the two existing political, social and economic systems.

A reunification treaty between West Germany and the GDR was negotiated in mid-1990, signed on 31 August of that year and finally approved by large majorities in the legislative chambers of both countries on 20 September 1990.[6] After that last step Germany was officially united at 00:00 CET on 3 October 1990. East Germany joined the Federal Republic as the five states of Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. These states had been the five original states of East Germany, but had been abolished in 1952 in favour of a centralised system. As part of the 18 May treaty, the five East German states had been reconstituted on 23 August. At the same time, East and West Berlin reunited into one city, which became a city-state along the lines of the existing city-states of Bremen and Hamburg.

The process chosen was one of two options implemented in the West German constitution (Basic Law) of 1949. Via that document's (then-existing) Article 23, any new Länder (German federative states), could adhere to the Basic Law by a simple majority vote. Thus the states' parliaments would vote in for their adhesion. The initial eleven joining states of 1949 comprised the Trizone and West Berlin. However the latter was legally inhibited by Allied objection due to the status of the city as a quadripartite allied occupation area. In 1957 the Saar Protectorate joined West Germany under the Article 23 procedure as Saarland. As the five refounded eastern German states formally joined the Federal Republic using the Article 23 procedure, the area in which the Basic Law was in force simply extended to include them. The alternative would have been for East Germany to join as a whole along the lines of a formal union between two German states that then would have had to, amongst other things, create a new constitution for the newly established country.

Under the model that was chosen, however, the territory of the former German Democratic Republic was simply incorporated into the Federal Republic of Germany, and accordingly the Federal Republic of Germany, now enlarged to include the Eastern States, continued legally to exist under the same legal personality that was founded in May 1949.

Thus, the reunification was not a merger that created a third state out of the two, but an incorporation, by which West Germany absorbed East Germany. Thus, on Unification Day, October 3, 1990, the German Democratic Republic ceased to exist, giving way to five new Federal States, and East and West Berlin were also unified as a single city-state, forming a sixth new Federal State. The new Federal States immediately became parts of the Federal Republic of Germany, so that it was enlarged to include the whole territory of the former East Germany and Berlin.

The practical result of that model is that the now expanded Federal Republic of Germany continued to be a party to all the treaties it had signed prior to the moment of reunification, and thus continued the same membership of the U.N., NATO, the European Communities, etc.; also, the same Basic Law and the same laws that were in force in the Federal Republic continued automatically in force, but now applied to the expanded territory.

While the Basic Law was modified rather than replaced by a constitution as such, it still permits the adoption of a formal constitution by the German people at some time in the future.

To commemorate the day that marks the official unification of the former East and West Germany in 1990, 3 October has since then been the official German national holiday, the Day of German Unity (Tag der deutschen Einheit). It replaced the previous national holiday held in West Germany on 17 June commemorating the Uprising of 1953 in East Germany and the national holiday on 7 October in the GDR.

And Stop Lurking
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Gemjunkie]

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

October 4

610 – Heraclius arrives by ship from Africa at Constantinople, overthrows Byzantine Emperor Phocas and becomes Emperor.
1227 – Assassination of Caliph al-Adil.
1363 – End of the Battle of Lake Poyang; the Chinese rebel forces of Zhu Yuanzhang defeat that of his rival, Chen Youliang, in one of the largest naval battles in history.
1511 – Formation of the Holy League of Ferdinand II of Aragon, the Papal States and the Republic of Venice against France.
1535 – The first complete English-language Bible (the Coverdale Bible) is printed, with translations by William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale.
1582 – Pope Gregory XIII implements the Gregorian Calendar. In Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain, October 4 of this year is followed directly by October 15.
1636 – The Swedish Army defeats the armies of Saxony and the Holy Roman Empire at the Battle of Wittstock.
1693 – Battle of Marsaglia: Piedmontese troops are defeated by the French.
1725 – Foundation of Rosario in Argentina.
1777 – Battle of Germantown: Troops under George Washington are repelled by British troops under Sir William Howe.
1779 – The Fort Wilson Riot takes place.
1795 – Napoleon Bonaparte first rises to national prominence with a "Whiff of Grapeshot", using cannon to suppress armed counter-revolutionary rioters threatening the French Legislature (National Convention).
1824 – Mexico adopts a new constitution and becomes a federal republic.
1830 – Creation of the state of Belgium after separation from The Netherlands.
1853 – Crimean War: The Ottoman Empire declares war on Russia.
1876 – Texas A&M University opens as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, becoming the first public institution of higher education in Texas.
1883 – First run of the Orient Express.
1883 – First meeting of the Boys' Brigade in Glasgow, Scotland.
1895 – The first U.S. Open Men's Golf Championship administered by the United States Golf Association is played at the Newport Country Club in Newport, Rhode Island.
1918 – An explosion kills more than 100 and destroys the T.A. Gillespie Company Shell Loading Plant in Sayreville, New Jersey. Fires and explosions continue for three days forcing massive evacuations and spreading ordnance over a wide area, pieces of which were still being found as of 2007.
1927 – Gutzon Borglum begins sculpting Mount Rushmore.
1940 – Meeting between Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini at the Brenner Pass.
1941 – Norman Rockwell's Willie Gillis character debuts on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post.
1943 – World War II: U.S. captures Solomon Islands.
1957 – Space Race: Launch of Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth.
1957 – Avro Arrow roll-out ceremony at Avro Canada plant in Malton, Ontario.
1958 – Fifth Republic of France is established.
1960 – Eastern Air Lines Flight 375, a Lockheed L-188 Electra, crashes after a bird strike on takeoff from Boston's Logan International Airport, killing 62 of 72 on board.
1963 – Hurricane Flora, kills 6,000 in Cuba and Haiti.
1965 – Becoming the first Pope to ever visit the United States of America and the Western hemisphere, Pope Paul VI arrives in New York.
1966 – Basutoland becomes independent from the United Kingdom and is renamed Lesotho.
1967 – Omar Ali Saifuddin III of Brunei abdicates in favour of his son, His Majesty Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah.
1974 – Founding of the New Democracy party in Greece.
1976 – Official launch of the Intercity 125 High Speed Train (HST).
1983 – Richard Noble sets a new land speed record of 633.468 mph (1,019 km/h), driving Thrust 2 at the Black Rock Desert of Nevada.
1985 – Free Software Foundation is founded in Massachusetts, United States.
1988 – U.S. televangelist Jim Bakker is indicted for fraud.
1991 – The Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty is opened for signature.
1992 – The Rome General Peace Accords ends a 16 year civil war in Mozambique.
1992 – El Al Flight 1862: an El Al Boeing 747-258F crashes into two apartment buildings in Amsterdam, killing 43 including 39 on the ground.
1993 – Russian Constitutional Crisis: In Moscow, tanks bombard the White House, a government building that housed the Russian parliament, while demonstrators against President Boris Yeltsin rally outside.
1997 – The second largest cash robbery in U.S. history occurs at the Charlotte, North Carolina office of Loomis, Fargo and Company. An FBI investigation eventually results in 24 convictions and the recovery of approximately 95% of the $17.3 million in cash which had been taken.
2001 – NATO confirms invocation of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.
2001 – Siberia Airlines Flight 1812: a Sibir Airlines Tupolev TU-154 crashes into the Black Sea after being struck by an errant Ukrainian S-200 missile. 78 people are killed.
2003 – Maxim restaurant suicide bombing in Haifa, Israel: 21 Israelis, Jews and Arabs, are killed, and 51 others wounded.
2004 – SpaceShipOne wins Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight, by being the first private craft to fly into space.
[center]------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

Sputnik 1 (Russian: "Cпутник-1" Russian pronunciation: [ˈsputʲnʲək], "Satellite-1", ПС-1 (PS-1, i.e. "Простейший Спутник-1", or Elementary Satellite-1) was the first artificial satellite to be put into Earth's orbit. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957. The unanticipated announcement of Sputnik 1's success precipitated the Sputnik crisis in the United States and ignited the Space Race within the Cold War. The launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments. While the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the Space Age.

Apart from its value as a technological first, Sputnik also helped to identify the upper atmospheric layer's density, through measuring the satellite's orbital changes. It also provided data on radio-signal distribution in the ionosphere. Pressurized nitrogen in the satellite's body provided the first opportunity for meteoroid detection. If a meteoroid penetrated the satellite's outer hull, it would be detected by the temperature data sent back to Earth.

Sputnik 1 was launched during the International Geophysical Year from Site No.1/5, at the 5th Tyuratam range, in Kazakh SSR (now at the Baikonur Cosmodrome). The satellite travelled at 29,000 kilometers (18,000 mi) per hour, taking 96.2 minutes to complete an orbit, and emitted radio signals at 20.005 and 40.002 MHz which were monitored by amateur radio operators throughout the world. The signals continued for 22 days until the transmitter batteries ran out on 26 October 1957. Sputnik 1 burned up on 4 January 1958, as it fell from orbit upon reentering Earth's atmosphere, after travelling about 60 million km (37 million miles) and spending 3 months in orbit.
[center]-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

The Loomis Fargo Bank Robbery of 1997 was the $17.3 million cash robbery of the Charlotte, North Carolina regional office vault of Loomis Fargo & Company on the evening of October 4, 1997 by armored car driver and vault supervisor David Scott Ghantt. An FBI criminal investigation (which became international in scope) ultimately resulted in the arrest and conviction of eight people directly involved in the heist, as well as 16 others who had indirectly helped them, and the recovery of approximately 95% of the stolen money.

Although the history of the predecessor Wells Fargo & Company dated back to 1852, Loomis Fargo & Company was a recent creation. It was formed in 1997 by the consolidation of Wells Fargo Armored Service and Loomis Armored Inc.; the resulting corporation employed 8,500 people and provided armored transportation, cash handling services and automatic teller machine maintenance. Its Charlotte office would be the victim of Ghantt and his confederates later that year.

Ghantt had struck up a relationship with a fellow Loomis Fargo employee, Kelly Campbell; they continued to maintain contact even after Campbell left the company. It was common at the Charlotte office for employees to joke about "robbing this place" (most earned close to minimum wage), but everyone was certain nothing would ever come of that.

In August 1997, Campbell informed Ghantt about an old high school friend of hers named Steve Chambers, who could assist Ghantt to execute a massive cash robbery of the Loomis Fargo vault in one night. Chambers had broached the possibility of a robbery to Campbell earlier in the summer.

The plan was for Ghantt to commit the actual robbery and then quickly leave the country for Mexico - but to leave the bulk of the cash with Chambers. Chambers would then occasionally wire Ghantt money and see to his basic financial needs; when "the heat was off," Ghantt was to re-enter the U.S. and the money would be split up among all of the co-conspirators.

In truth, however, Chambers had no intention of wiring any money to Ghantt and intended to have him killed to keep him from implicating the others. He'd told Campbell to do whatever she needed to do to get Ghantt to go along. Campbell made Ghantt think she loved him and wanted to flee to Mexico with him, but actually wanted to make a better life for herself in the States.

With the plan in place, Ghantt sent a newly hired employee he had been assigned to train home early (reportedly, at 6 p.m.) and then proceeded to load a little more than $17.3 million in cash (approximately $11 million of which was in $20 bills) into the back of a company van. Outside of the building, Ghantt met up with Campbell, Chambers and others who were involved in the plot, and drove off to a printing business called Reynolds & Reynolds in northwest Charlotte. From there, the money was moved from the armored car to private vehicles. Then, keeping with the plan, Ghantt took $50,000.(the maximum that could be taken across the border by law without further authorization) with him and left for Mexico, winding up at the popular Yucatan Peninsula resort of Cozumel.

After successfully tracing Ghantt's phone call, on March 1, 1998, Ghantt was arrested at Playa del Carmen, a resort near Cozumel, by FBI agents and Mexican police; the next day, Steve and Michele Chambers, Kelly Campbell and four other gang members were arrested. On March 12, a Charlotte grand jury indicted the eight gang members for bank larceny and money laundering; the latter offense was thrown in because of how they spent the stolen money. In addition, nine relatives and friends of the gang were charged with money laundering. They had co-signed for safe deposit boxes used to store some of the money. Prosecutors opted to charge them with money laundering since they felt the relatives and friends knew or should have known the money was obtained illegally. Using this logic, four other people were charged with money laundering.

All but one of the defendants pleaded guilty. The defendants received sentences ranging from probation for several relatives to 11 years and three months in federal prison for Steve Chambers. The one who didn't plead guilty was Chambers' attorney, Jeff Guller, who was found guilty of money laundering and sentenced to eight years in prison. By comparison, David Ghantt, the person who actually stole the money, was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison. Michele Chambers got a harsher sentence than Ghantt - seven years and eight months - because she had violated several bond conditions.

The defendants became the targets of many barbed jokes in Charlotte and across the country, in part because of their extravagant spending. For a time, it was nicknamed "the hillbilly heist" because nearly all of the major players in the case came from small towns around Charlotte.

In a related case, Jennifer and Jody Calloway, two relatives of a gang member's fiancée, stole some of the money and used it to start a fairly luxurious life in the Denver area. They, and Jody's mother, were charged with money laundering and possession of stolen property. At their 2001 trial, it emerged that Jody Calloway threatened to kill a business partner if he said anything about where his new wealth came from, and they had asked Jennifer's sister to lie on the witness stand. They were found guilty.

It was later confirmed by the FBI that more than 95 percent of the stolen cash had been located or otherwise accounted for.
_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.

[Duke of Buckingham [TeaM]]

If someone knows about the 5% that are missing you can send them to my place that I will take good care of it.

Gem there is a lot guys that are imitating us at Boinc. Believe me there is someone that claims to be Duke of Buckingham.


_________________
Friends are like diamonds and diamonds are forever.

Together we stand - Divided we fall.