On This Day

The basic information about events on this day was taken from
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/index.html. All of the added information was from various other places. I just thought it was all rather interesting.

On this date in: 1653 Oliver Cromwell became lord protector of England, Scotland and Ireland.  Not the prettiest of men. Also, he was part of a group who tried to abolish Christmas, obviously unsuccessfully. 1770 Composer Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany. 1773 The Boston Tea Party took place as American colonists boarded a British ship and dumped more than 300 chests of tea overboard to protest tea taxes. (Please see earlier blog posting discussing this event: http://nomadicinklings.blogspot.com/2010/10/late-night-history.html) 1809 Napoleon Bonaparte was divorced from the Empress Josephine by an act of the French Senate. (I was curious, so I looked it up: It seems that Napoleon initiated the divorce for political reasons, and they were both quite sad about it.)  1901 Margaret Mead, the American anthropologist who authored 44 books and over 1000 articles, was born. (She's the one that the Christian anthropologists throw fits about because of her very first major work "Coming of Age in Samoa.") 1916 Gregory Rasputin, the monk who had wielded powerful influence over the Russian court, was murdered by a group of noblemen.  (I've always thought he was particularly creepy, and read this, taken from SignaVeritae, a Catholic website: A certain Khionia Guseva thrust a knife into Rasputins abdomen, and (graphic content warning) seeing his entrails hanging out of himself, convinced that he was dead, walked out onto the street, yelling out that Rasputin was dead.  After intense surgery, however, Rasputin recovered.  Later he was properly killed because of his influence over the Tsaritsa, among other reasons.) 1917 Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke was born in Minehead, England. 1944 The Battle of the Bulge during World War II began as German forces launched a surprise counterattack against Allied forces in Belgium. (This was an absurd plan of Adolf Hitler's that seemed somewhat successful at first, but failed.) 1950 President Truman proclaimed a national state of emergency in order to fight "Communist imperialism." 1985 Reputed organized-crime chief Paul Castellano was shot to death outside a New York City restaurant. 1990 Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected president of Haiti in the country's first democratic elections. 1991 The U.N. General Assembly rescinded its 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism. (I never knew there was a UN resolution that said that Zionism=racism.) 1998 President Bill Clinton ordered a sustained series of airstrikes against Iraq by American and British forces in response to Saddam Hussein's continued defiance of U.N. weapons inspectors. 2000 President-elect George W. Bush selected Colin Powell to become the first African-American secretary of state. 2007 British forces formally handed over to Iraq responsibility for Basra, the last Iraqi region under their control. 2009 Iran test-fired a missile capable of hitting Israel and parts of Europe. Quite an interesting day in history, I must say.