1649

Today in History 10/11 (Anita Hill)

University of Oklahoma Law Professor Anita Hill testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington on October 11, 1991 (© AP)(1991) Supreme Court confirmation hearing rivets a nation
The US Senate Judiciary Committee calls a former assistant to Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas to testify regarding her time working for him. What Anita Hill tells the panel will cause a firestorm of controversy and open up a national debate around workplace sexual harassment.
Anita Hill Anita Faye Hill is an American attorney and academic. She is a university professor of social policy, law, and women’s studies at Brandeis University and a faculty member of Brandeis’ Heller School for Social Policy and Management. She became a national figure in 1991 when she accused U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, her supervisor at the United States Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, of sexual harassment.
Born: Jul 30, 1956 (age 62) · Lone Tree, OK
Nationality: American
Movies: Anita
Education: Yale Law School · Oklahoma State University · Yale University
Parents: Erma Hill (Mother) · Albert Hill (Father)
Highlights
  • 1991: She became a national figure in 1991 when she accused U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, her supervisor at the United States Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, of sexual harassment.

  • 1994: In 1994, she wrote a tribute to Thurgood Marshall, the first African American Supreme Court Justice who preceded Clarence Thomas, titled A Tribute to Thurgood Marshall: A Man Who Broke with Tradition on Issues of Race and Gender.

  • 1999: In 1999, Ernest Dickerson directed Strange Justice, a film based on the Anita Hill–Clarence Thomas controversy.

  • 2008: In 2008 she was awarded the Louis P. and Evelyn Smith First Amendment Award by the Ford Hall Forum.

  • 2011: In 2011 Hill published her second book, Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race, and Finding Home, which focuses on the sub-prime lending crisis that resulted in the foreclosure of many homes owned by African-Americans.

  • 2017: On December 16, 2017, the Commission on Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality in the Workplace was formed, selecting Hill to lead its charge against sexual harassment in the entertainment industry.

wiki/Anita_Hill
Clarence Thomas Clarence Thomas is an American judge, lawyer, and government official who currently serves as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He is currently the most senior associate justice on the Court following the retirement of Anthony Kennedy. Thomas succeeded Thurgood Marshall and is the second African American to serve on the Court. Among the current members of the Court he is the longest-serving justice, with a tenure of 9,850 days as of October 11, 2018.
Born: Jun 23, 1948 (age 70) · Pin Point, GA
Nationality: American
Spouse: Virginia Thomas (m. 1987) · Kathy Ambush (m. 1971 – 1984)
Children: Jamal Adeen Thomas (Son)
Education: College of the Holy Cross · Yale Law School · Yale University · Conception Abbey
Highlights
  • 1975: In 1975, when Thomas read Race and Economics by economist Thomas Sowell, he found an intellectual foundation for his philosophy.

  • 1982: In 1982, President Ronald Reagan appointed Thomas Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

  • 1987: In 1987, Thomas married Virginia Lamp, a lobbyist and aide to Republican Congressman Dick Armey.

  • 1991: Thomas’s formal confirmation hearings began on September 10, 1991.

  • 2009: In the 2009 Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder case, Thomas was the sole dissenter, voting in favor of throwing out Section Five of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

  • 2011: In his concurring opinion in the 2011 case Michigan v. Bryant, for example, Thomas explains that in deciding whether a statement is testimonial, one must consider the formality of the circumstances in which it was given.

Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
wiki/Clarence_Thomas
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(1991) Supreme Court confirmation hearing rivets a nation.
Also on this day,

1649 | Sack of Wexford where an Irish town is crushed under Cromwell’s command
Oliver Cromwell, having had King Charles I of England executed the previous year, now goes after Ireland and the Royalists who’ve fled there for sanctuary. His New Model Army sacks Wexford, destroying much of a town that was negotiating surrender, and killing many of its inhabitants.
1975 | Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night
A new late-night comedy-variety show, ‘NBC’s Saturday Night,’ premieres with guest host George Carlin. The scrappy 90-minute program is launched to replace re-runs of ‘The Tonight Show’ and proves to have more than a little staying power. Two years later it’ll be renamed ‘Saturday Night Live.’
1986 | Superpower leaders meet in Iceland’s capital of Reykjavik for summit
Nothing less than the eradication of nuclear ballistic missiles is on the table during a negotiating summit between US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. Their talks will end in an apparent stalemate, but later lead to the groundbreaking INF Treaty.

Today in History 10/11/17

US President Ronald Reagan and Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the 1986 summit in Reykjavík, Iceland (© Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)(1986) Superpower leaders meet in Iceland's capital
Nothing less than the eradication of nuclear ballistic missiles is on the table during a negotiating summit between US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. Their talks will end in an apparent stalemate, but later lead to the groundbreaking INF Treaty.
The Reykjavík Summit was a summit meeting between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, held in Hofdi in Reykjavík, on 11–12 October 1986. The talks collapsed at the last minute, but the progress that had been achieved eventually resulted in the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Hofdi House Reykjavik
The former French consulate, called Hofdi, was the site of the Reykjavík Summit in 1986

wiki/Reykjavík_Summit
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Today in History 01/30/17

Illustration by Ernest Crofts of King Charles I (center) walking to his execution in 1649 (© The Print Collector/Getty Images)(1649) England’s King Charles I executed on charge of treason
Controversial from his reign’s start, King Charles clashed frequently with the English parliament, leading to two civil wars, Oliver Cromwell’s rise, and finally to his own beheading.
Charles I was monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles was the second son of King James VI of Scotland, but after his father inherited the English throne in 1603, he moved to England, where he spent much of the rest of his life. He became heir apparent to the English, Irish, and Scottish thrones on the death of his elder brother, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, in 1612. An unsuccessful and unpopular attempt to marry him to the Spanish Habsburg princess Maria Anna culminated in an eight-month visit to Spain in 1623 that demonstrated the futility of the marriage negotiations. Two years later, he married the Bourbon princess Henrietta Maria of France instead.
Lived: Nov 19, 1600 – Jan 30, 1649 (age 48)
Height: 5′ 4″ (1.63 m)
Spouse: Henrietta Maria of France (m. 1625)
Children: Charles II of England (Son) · James II of England (Son) · Elizabeth Stuart (Daughter) · Henrietta of England (Daughter) · Mary, Princess Royal and Princess of Orange (Daughter) · Henry Stuart, Duke of Gloucester
Parents: James VI and I (Father) · Anne of Denmark (Mother)
Siblings: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales (Brother) · Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia (Sister) · Robert Stuart, Duke of Kintyre and Lorne (Brother)
Highlights
  • 1617: In 1617, the Habsburg Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, a Catholic, was elected king of Bohemia.

  • 1619: In August 1619, the Bohemian diet chose as their monarch Frederick V, who was leader of the Protestant Union, while Ferdinand was elected Holy Roman Emperor in the imperial election.

  • 1623: Charles and the Duke of Buckingham, James’s favourite and a man who had great influence over the prince, travelled incognito to Spain in February 1623 to try to reach agreement on the long-pending Spanish match.

  • 1625: Charles I of England married Henrietta Maria of France on May 11, 1625.

  • 1637: In 1637, the king ordered the use of a new prayer book in Scotland that was almost identical to the English Book of Common Prayer, without consulting either the Scottish Parliament or the Kirk.

  • 1645: At the battle of Naseby on 14 June 1645, Rupert’s horsemen again mounted a successful charge, against the flank of Parliament’s New Model Army, but Charles’s troops elsewhere on the field were pushed back by the opposing forces.

wiki/Charles_I_of_England
Mahatma Gandhi on the day he was shot, Jan. 30, 1948 (© Toronto Star Archives/Getty Images)(1948) Mahatma Gandhi assassinated
Gandhi, India’s political and spiritual leader whose use of nonviolent civil disobedience led to his country’s independence from British colonial rule, is slain in New Delhi by a Hindu extremist.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, better known as Mahatma Gandhi, was assassinated at the Birla House in New Delhi on 30 January 1948. Gandhi was outside on the steps where a prayer meeting was going to take place, surrounded by a part of his family and some followers, when Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist and prominent member of Hindu Mahasabha, approached and shot him three times in the chest at close range. Gandhi was taken back inside the Birla House, where he died. Godse was arrested, convicted in court and later executed.
Date: Jan 30, 1948

wiki/Assassination_of_Mahatma_Gandhi
American soldiers run for cover as an incoming artillery round explodes nearby on January 30, 1968, in Khe Sanh, Vietnam, at the beginning of the Tet Offensive (© STF/AFP/Getty Image)(1968) The Tet Offensive begins with surprise attacks
Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces break the holiday truce, launching a widespread military campaign against US and South Vietnamese targets that is among the largest of the Vietnam War.
The Tet Offensive was one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War, launched on January 30, 1968, by forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese People’s Army of Vietnam against the forces of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the United States Armed Forces, and their allies. It was a campaign of surprise attacks against military and civilian command and control centers throughout South Vietnam. The name of the offensive comes from the Tết holiday, the Vietnamese New Year, when the first major attacks took place.
Start date: Jan 30, 1968
End date: Sep 23, 1968

wiki/Tet_Offensive
Demonstrators throw objects at British soldiers during a civil rights gathering in Derry, Northern Ireland, on 'Bloody Sunday,' Jan. 30, 1972 (© Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images)(1972) Northern Ireland suffers ‘Bloody Sunday’
British soldiers fire on unarmed Catholic civil rights protestors during a Derry, Northern Ireland, march, killing 14 and wounding 17. The incident ratchets up tension and strife during The Troubles.
Bloody Sunday – sometimes called the Bogside Massacre – was an incident on 30 January 1972 in the Bogside area of Derry, Northern Ireland, when British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians during a peaceful protest march against internment. Fourteen people died: thirteen were killed outright, while the death of another man four months later was attributed to his injuries. Many of the victims were shot while fleeing from the soldiers and some were shot while trying to help the wounded. Other protesters were injured by rubber bullets or batons, and two were run down by army vehicles. The march had been organised by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association. The soldiers involved were members of the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment, also known as “1 Para”.
Date: Jan 30, 1972

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