Today is Tuesday, Sept. 29, the 272nd day of 2009. There are 93 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History
On Sept. 29, 1978, Pope John Paul I was found dead in his Vatican apartment just over a month after becoming head of the Roman Catholic Church.
On this date
In 642, Arab General ‘Amr ibn al-’ marched into Alexandria, and the Arab conquest of Egypt, which had begun with an invasion three years earlier, ended in peaceful capitulation.
In 1758, English Adm. Horatio Nelson was born in Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk.
In 1789, the U.S. War Department established a regular army with a strength of several hundred men.
In 1829, London’s reorganized police force, which became known as Scotland Yard, went on duty.
In 1833, King Ferdinand VII of Spain died, and his two-year-old daughter, Isabella II, was proclaimed queen.
In 1862, Otto von Bismarck, the newly appointed premier of Prussia who will lead its wars of unification in the next decade, declares that “the great questions of the day” will be settled “by blood and iron.”
In 1902, Broadway impresario David Belasco reopened the Republic Theatre under his own name.
In 1906, the United States occupied Cuba after the rebellion surrounding the reelection of Tomás Estrada Palma.
In 1918, Allied forces began their decisive breakthrough of the Hindenburg Line during World War I.
In 1918, German Chancellor Georg von Hertling tendered his resignation on the day of the Bulgarian armistice and the British attack of the Western Front during World War I.
In 1923, set in motion by the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the British mandate for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine was finally approved by the Council of the League of Nations and came into force.
In 1938, Poland demanded the cession of Teschen, a rich region that had been contested and then divided between Poland and Czechoslovakia following World War I.
In 1938, British, French, German and Italian leaders concluded the Munich Agreement, which was aimed at appeasing Adolf Hitler by allowing Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland.
In 1941, Nazis kill thousands of Jews at Babi Yar ravine near Kiev.
In 1959, the 29th Sultan of Brunei, Hassanal Bolkiah, proclaimed his country’s new constitution.
In 1960, Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschchev thumps his desk and interrupts UN speeches to show disapproval.
In 1979, Pope John Paul II began the first papal visit to Ireland as he arrived for a three-day tour.
In 1982, Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules laced with cyanide claimed the first of seven victims in the Chicago area. (To date, the case remains unsolved.)
In 1988, the space shuttle Discovery blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., marking America’s return to manned space flight following the Challenger disaster.
In 1999, ten years ago, Vice President Al Gore abruptly moved his presidential campaign headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Nashville, Tenn., to get “out of the Beltway and into the heartland.”
In 1999, the Associated Press reported on the killing of South Korean refugees by U.S. soldiers in the early days of the Korean War, beneath a bridge at a hamlet called No Gun Ri; The Associated Press quoted ex-GIs as saying “hundreds” were shot dead in late July 1950. (In 2001, after its own investigation, the U.S. Army affirmed that killings had occurred, but said they were not deliberate.)
In 2004, five years ago, a video surfaced showing Kenneth Bigley, a British hostage held by Iraqi militants, pleading for help between the bars of a makeshift cage. (Bigley was later killed.)
In 2004, the privately built SpaceShipOne rocket plane hurtled past the edge of earth’s atmosphere, completing the first stage of a quest to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize.
In 2008, one year ago, on Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 777 points after the House defeated, 228-205, a $700 billion emergency rescue for the nation’s financial system, leaving both parties and the Bush administration scrambling to pick up the pieces.
Today’s Birthdays
Actress Lizabeth Scott is 87. Actor Steve Forrest is 85. Musical conductor Richard Bonynge is 79. Actress Anita Ekberg is 78. Actor Eddie Barth is 78. Writer-director Robert Benton is 77. Singer Jerry Lee Lewis is 74. Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi is 73. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) is 67. Actor Ian McShane is 67. Jazz musician Jean-Luc Ponty is 67. Lech Walesa, the former president of Poland, is 66. Television-film composer Mike Post is 65. Actress Patricia Hodge is 63. TV personality Bryant Gumbel is 61. Rock singer-musician Mark Farner is 61. Rock singer-musician Mike Pinera is 61. Country singer Alvin Crow is 59. Actor Drake Hogestyn is 56. Broadcast journalist Gwen Ifill is 54. Former child actor Ken Weatherwax (TV: “The Addams Family”) is 54. Olympic gold medal runner Sebastian Coe is 53. Singer Suzzy Roche (The Roches) is 53. Comedian-actor Andrew “Dice” Clay is 52. Rock singer John Payne (Asia) is 51. Actor Roger Bart is 47. Singer-musician Les Claypool is 46. Actress Jill Whelan is 43. Actor Luke Goss is 41. Rock musician Brad Smith (Blind Melon) is 41. Actress Erika Eleniak is 40. Rhythm-and-blues singer Devante Swing (Jodeci) is 40. Country singer Brad Cotter (“Nashville Star”) is 39. Actress Emily Lloyd is 39. Actress Natasha Gregson Wagner is 39. Actress Rachel Cronin is 38. Country musician Danick Dupelle (Emerson Drive) is 36. Actor Alexis Cruz is 35. Actor Zachary Levi is 29. Country singer Katie McNeill (3 of Hearts) is 27. Rock musician Josh Farro (Paramore) is 22.
Today’s Historic Birthdays
Pompey The Great
9/29/106 BC – 9/28/48 BC
Roman statesman and general of the Roman Republic
John Leslie
9/29/1527 – 5/31/1596
Scottish bishop; advisor to Queen Mary
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616), Spanish writer, considered by many to be the greatest Spanish author, whose novel Don Quixote (Part I, 1605; Part II, 1615) is regarded as one of the masterpieces of world literature. Because of his eloquent style and remarkable insight, Cervantes has achieved acclaim comparable to that given to such literary greats as Greek poet Homer, Italian poet Dante Alighieri, and English playwright William Shakespeare.
Cervantes was born in Alcalá de Henares. In 1568, when he was a student, a number of his poems appeared in a volume published in Madrid, Spain, to commemorate the death of the Spanish queen Elizabeth of Valois. In 1569 Cervantes went to Rome, where in the following year he began working for Giulio Cardinal Acquaviva. Soon afterward Cervantes joined a Spanish military regiment in Naples, Italy. He fought in 1571 against the Ottoman Empire in the Battle of Lepanto, in which he lost the use of his left hand. While returning to Spain in 1575, Cervantes was captured by Barbary pirates. He was taken to Algeria as a slave and held there for ransom. During the next five years he made several heroic but unsuccessful attempts to escape before he was finally ransomed in 1580 by his family and friends.
Returning to Spain at the age of 33, Cervantes, despite his wartime service and misfortunes in Algeria, was unable to obtain employment with a noble family, the usual reward for veterans who had distinguished themselves. Deciding to become a writer, he produced poems and plays at a prodigious rate between 1582 and 1585, but few of these works have survived. His pastoral novel La Galatea (1585) gained him a reputation, but the proceeds from its sale were insufficient to support him. Cervantes then took government jobs, first furnishing goods to the fleet of the Spanish Armada and later collecting taxes. The government imprisoned him several times because he failed to give a satisfactory explanation of his tax-collecting activities.
Probably during his time in prison Cervantes conceived the idea for a story about a man who imagines himself a knight-errant (a knight who seeks out adventure) performing the splendid feats described in medieval tales of chivalry. In 1605 the first part of his tale was issued under the title El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha (The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha). It became such an immediate success that within two weeks after publication three unauthorized editions appeared in Madrid. Partly because of these unauthorized editions and partly because of his lack of financial management skills, Cervantes never gained substantial wealth from the enormous success of the work. Don Quixote was first translated into English in 1612.
Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares (Exemplary Novels, 1613), a collection of 12 short stories, includes romances in the Italian style; descriptions of criminal life in Seville, Spain; and sketches of unusual events and characters. One of these stories, “El coloquio de los perros” (The Talking Dogs), is particularly renowned for its satirical prose style. The second part of Don Quixote was published in 1615 and translated into English in 1620. In 1616 Cervantes completed the allegorical novel Persiles y Sigismunda (1617), four days before his death. The book was published the next year.
Don Quixote, Cervantes’s most important work, describes the adventures of an idealistic Spanish nobleman who, as a result of reading many tales of chivalry, comes to believe that he is a knight who must combat the world’s injustices. He travels with his squire, Sancho Panza, an uneducated but practical peasant. Don Quixote’s mount is an old, bedraggled horse named Rocinante. Don Quixote travels in search of adventure, dedicating his actions of valor to a simple country girl whom he calls Dulcinea, seeing her as his lady. He sets himself the task of defending orphans, protecting maidens and widows, befriending the helpless, and serving the causes of truth and beauty. His imagination often runs away with him, so that he sees windmills as giants, flocks of sheep as enemy armies, and country inns as castles. Don Quixote’s romantic view of the world, however, is often balanced by Sancho Panza’s more realistic outlook.
Don Quixote was originally intended as a satire on medieval tales of chivalry. The completed work, however, presents a rich picture of Spanish life and contains many philosophical insights. Don Quixote’s quest has been seen as an allegory of the eternal human quest for goodness and truth in the face of insurmountable obstacles. His idealism seems to be madness in a world that sometimes views heroism and love as forms of insanity, and this has led many readers to consider Don Quixote a tragedy despite its satirical style and many comical episodes.
Don Quixote has had a tremendous influence on the development of prose fiction. It has been translated into all modern languages and has appeared in several hundred editions. It has also been the subject of a variety of works in other fields of art, including operas by Italian composer Giovanni Paisiello and French composer Jules Massenet; a symphonic poem (a musical piece meant to evoke images of other artistic, but nonmusical, pieces) by German composer Richard Strauss; motion pictures by German director G. W. Pabst and Russian director Grigori Kozintzev; a ballet by American choreographer George Balanchine; and a musical, Man of La Mancha (1965), with music by American Mitch Leigh. The theme also inspired works by 19th-century French artists Honoré Daumier and Gustave Doré.
Francois Boucher
9/29/1703 – 5/30/1770
French painter, engraver and designer
Horatio Nelson
9/29/1758 – 10/21/1805
English naval commander
Caroline Yale
9/29/1848 – 7/2/1933
American educator of the deaf
Walther Rathenau
9/29/1867 – 6/24/1922
German statesman, industrialist and philosopher
Enrico Fermi
9/29/1901 – 11/28/1954
Italian-born American Nobel Prize-winning physicist (1938)
Miguel Aleman
9/29/1902 – 5/14/1983
Mexican president (1946-52)
Greer Garson
9/29/1904 – 4/6/1996
English-born motion-picture actress
Trevor Howard
9/29/1913 – 1/7/1988
English stage and screen actor
Thought for Today
“If you want work well done, select a busy man – the other kind has not time.” – Elbert Hubbard, American author and publisher (1856-1915).
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Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/29/AR2009092900003.html
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20090929.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/default.stm
