1895

Today in History 10/03 (Germany Reunited)

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Young people light flares in front of Berlin's Reichstag early October 3, 1990, to celebrate German unification (© Diether Endlicher/AP)(1990) A nation carved up by the Cold War is made whole
In what will later be celebrated as ‘Unity Day,’ a country torn in two after the Second World War is reunited as the once Soviet-controlled East Germany is dissolved and its territory and citizens merged with the Federal Republic of Germany, formerly known as West Germany.
The Day of German Unity is the national day of Germany, celebrated on 3 October as a public holiday. It commemorates the anniversary of German reunification in 1990, when the goal of a united Germany that originated in the middle of the 19th century, was fulfilled again. Therefore, the name addresses neither the re-union nor the union, but the unity of Germany. The Day of German Unity on 3 October has been the German national holiday since 1990, when the reunification was formally completed.
Observed by: Germany
Significance: Commemorates the German reunification in 1990
Frequency: annual
Date: 3 October

Berlin, deutsche Vereinigung, vor dem Reichstag
For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. ADN-ZB-Grimm-3.10.90-Berlin: Vereinigung/Hunderttausende waren dabei, als vor dem Reichstag die schwarz-rot-goldene Bundesfahne gehißt wurde.
wiki/German_Unity_Day
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(1990) A nation carved up by the Cold War is made whole.
Also on this day,

52 BCE | Caesar conquers the Gauls at Battle of Alesia
The Gallic Wars have raged for eight years, with Julius Caesar leading much of the Roman Republic’s charge against the tribes of Gaul in Western Europe. An inability to band together against their common enemy dooms the Gallic tribes, and the struggle ends at the Battle of Alesia.
1895 | Crane sees the Civil War through a young soldier’s eyes in ‘The Red Badge of Courage’
Stephen Crane’s novel ‘The Red Badge of Courage’ is released in book form for the first time. Not yet born when the Civil War ended, the young author weaves a narrative of America’s great cataclysm, now 30 years gone, with such verisimilitude that critics will call him a master of Realism.
1942 | V-2 rocket crosses a cosmic threshold
A new Nazi ‘Wunderwaffen,’ or ‘weapon of wonder,’ is fired in a test flight, and the missile’s top 52.5-mile altitude is so high it becomes the first manmade object to enter outer space. In less than two years Germany will begin launching thousands of V-2 rockets, mainly against Belgium and the UK.

Today in History 10/03/17

Launching site for V2 rockets in Germany during WWII (© Roger Viollet/Getty Images)(1942) Missile crosses a cosmic threshold
A new Nazi 'Wunderwaffen,' or 'weapon of wonder,' is fired in a test flight, and the missile's top 52.5-mile altitude is so high it becomes the first manmade object to enter outer space. In less than two years Germany will begin launching thousands of V-2 rockets, mainly against Belgium and the UK.
The V-2, technical name Aggregat 4, was the world's first long-range guided ballistic missile. The missile with a liquid-propellant rocket engine was developed during the Second World War in Germany as a "vengeance weapon", assigned to attack Allied cities as retaliation for the Allied bombings against German cities. The V-2 rocket also became the first artificial object to travel into outer space by crossing the Kármán line with the vertical launch of MW 18014 on 20 June 1944.
Sectional view of the missile Aggregat 2 / V 2
Layout of a V-2 rocket

wiki/V-2_rocket
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Today in History 07/24 (New France Founded)

Painting of French navigator Jacques Cartier (© Stock Montage/Getty Images)(1534) Cartier begins colonizing a continent for France
Explorer extraordinaire Jacques Cartier establishes the first province of New France on the Gaspé Peninsula in present-day Quebec, Canada. Cartier’s planting of a cross will lead to a French territorial reach in North America stretching for more than 3 million square miles by 1712.
New France was the area colonized by France in North America during a period beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Great Britain and Spain in 1763. Under the Treaty of Paris, France’s claims to New France were transferred to Great Britain and Spain.
Founded: Jul 24, 1534
Dissolved: 1763
Capitals: Quebec City · Montreal
Official language: French
Currency: New France livre

Map of the New-France about 1750
Location of New France
wiki/New_France
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(1534) Cartier begins colonizing a continent for France.
Also on this day,

1895 | An Austrian neurologist, Freud’s dream leads to revelation
An Austrian neurologist puzzles over his previous night’s dream. After an exhaustive analysis, Sigmund Freud concludes it was his mind’s way of purging unexpressed guilt over a medical mistake, and this revelation will lead to his groundbreaking work, ‘The Interpretation of Dreams.’
1911 | Peruvian mountaintop’s ancient city, Machu Picchu, is rediscovered
Explorer Hiram Bingham III has organized the Yale Peruvian Expedition to search for lost Incan cities, and with the help of Melchor Arteaga, Bingham finds a biggie: a citadel abandoned for more than three centuries perched 7,970 feet above the South American jungle floor, Machu Picchu.
1983 | ‘Black July’ riots cause bloodshed and spur civil war
A conflict that will last more than 25 years and claim upwards of 100,000 lives escalates, as riots break out in Sri Lanka between Tamil Tiger separatists and the Sri Lankan military. The island nation, formerly known as Ceylon, will be rocked with strife for decades to come.

Today in History 07/24/17

Sigmund Freud, circa 1906 (© Imagno/Getty Images)(1895) An Austrian neurologist's dream leads to revelation
An Austrian neurologist puzzles over his previous night's dream. After an exhaustive analysis, Sigmund Freud concludes it was his mind's way of purging unexpressed guilt over a medical mistake, and this revelation will lead to his groundbreaking work, 'The Interpretation of Dreams.'

Sigmund Freud; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst. Freud was born to Galician Jewish parents in the Moravian town of Freiberg, in the Austrian Empire. He qualified as a doctor of medicine in 1881 at the University of Vienna. Upon completing his habilitation in 1885, he was appointed a docent in neuropathology and became an affiliated professor in 1902. Freud lived and worked in Vienna, having set up his clinical practice there in 1886. In 1938 Freud left Austria to escape the Nazis. He died in exile in the United Kingdom in 1939.

In creating psychoanalysis, Freud developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association and discovered transference, establishing its central role in the analytic process. Freud's redefinition of sexuality to include its infantile forms led him to formulate the Oedipus complex as the central tenet of psychoanalytical theory. His analysis of dreams as wish-fulfillments provided him with models for the clinical analysis of symptom formation and the underlying mechanisms of repression. On this basis Freud elaborated his theory of the unconscious and went on to develop a model of psychic structure comprising id, ego and super-ego. Freud postulated the existence of libido, an energy with which mental processes and structures are invested and which generates erotic attachments, and a death drive, the source of compulsive repetition, hate, aggression and neurotic guilt. In his later work Freud developed a wide-ranging interpretation and critique of religion and culture.

Though in overall decline as a diagnostic and clinical practice, psychoanalysis remains influential within psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy, and across the humanities. As such, it continues to generate extensive and highly contested debate with regard to its therapeutic efficacy, its scientific status, and whether it advances or is detrimental to the feminist cause. Nonetheless, Freud's work has suffused contemporary Western thought and popular culture. In the words of W. H. Auden's 1940 poetic tribute, by the time of Freud's death, he had become "a whole climate of opinion / under whom we conduct our different lives."


wiki/Sigmund_Freud
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Today in History 07/24/17

Sigmund Freud, circa 1906 (© Imagno/Getty Images)(1895) An Austrian neurologist’s dream leads to revelation
An Austrian neurologist puzzles over his previous night’s dream. After an exhaustive analysis, Sigmund Freud concludes it was his mind’s way of purging unexpressed guilt over a medical mistake, and this revelation will lead to his groundbreaking work, ‘The Interpretation of Dreams.’

Sigmund Freud; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst. Freud was born to Galician Jewish parents in the Moravian town of Freiberg, in the Austrian Empire. He qualified as a doctor of medicine in 1881 at the University of Vienna. Upon completing his habilitation in 1885, he was appointed a docent in neuropathology and became an affiliated professor in 1902. Freud lived and worked in Vienna, having set up his clinical practice there in 1886. In 1938 Freud left Austria to escape the Nazis. He died in exile in the United Kingdom in 1939.

In creating psychoanalysis, Freud developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association and discovered transference, establishing its central role in the analytic process. Freud’s redefinition of sexuality to include its infantile forms led him to formulate the Oedipus complex as the central tenet of psychoanalytical theory. His analysis of dreams as wish-fulfillments provided him with models for the clinical analysis of symptom formation and the underlying mechanisms of repression. On this basis Freud elaborated his theory of the unconscious and went on to develop a model of psychic structure comprising id, ego and super-ego. Freud postulated the existence of libido, an energy with which mental processes and structures are invested and which generates erotic attachments, and a death drive, the source of compulsive repetition, hate, aggression and neurotic guilt. In his later work Freud developed a wide-ranging interpretation and critique of religion and culture.

Though in overall decline as a diagnostic and clinical practice, psychoanalysis remains influential within psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy, and across the humanities. As such, it continues to generate extensive and highly contested debate with regard to its therapeutic efficacy, its scientific status, and whether it advances or is detrimental to the feminist cause. Nonetheless, Freud’s work has suffused contemporary Western thought and popular culture. In the words of W. H. Auden’s 1940 poetic tribute, by the time of Freud’s death, he had become “a whole climate of opinion / under whom we conduct our different lives.”


wiki/Sigmund_Freud
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Today in History 04/03/17

Portrait of assassin Robert 'Bob' Ford (1861 - 1892) showing off the revolver he used to kill outlaw Jesse James in 1882, mid 1880s (© Authenticated News/Getty Images)(1882) Robert Ford shoots and kills Jesse James
Outlaw Jesse James is brought down by a member of his own gang, 20-year-old Robert Ford. Although James had been a notorious criminal, public sentiment will turn against Ford for shooting an unarmed man in the back of the head.
Robert Newton “Bob” Ford was an American outlaw best known for killing his gang leader Jesse James in April 1882, to collect a reward. For about a year, Ford and his older brother Charles performed paid re-enactments of the killing at publicity events. Later he drifted around the West, operating saloons and dance halls.
Born: Jan 31, 1862 · Ray County, MO
Died: Jun 08, 1892 · Creede, CO
Siblings: Charles Ford (Brother)
Related movies: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Children: Maude Mae Powell (Daughter) · Odie Watson (Daughter)
Parents: James Thomas · Mary Bruin Ford
Highlights
  • 1881: Ford’s brother Charles is believed to have taken part in the James gang’s Blue Cut train robbery in Jackson County, west of Glendale, Missouri (renamed Selsa and now part of Independence), on September 7, 1881.

  • 1881: In November 1881, after the train robbery, James moved his family to St. Joseph, Missouri and intended to give up crime.

  • 1889: On December 26, 1889, Ford survived an assassination attempt in Kansas City, Kansas when an assailant tried to slit his throat.

  • 1892: Ford purchased a lot and on May 29, 1892 opened Ford’s Exchange, said to have been a dance hall.

  • 1892: Three days after the fire, on June 8, 1892, Edward O’Kelley entered Ford’s tent saloon with a shotgun.

  • 1892: Robert Ford died on June 08, 1892 in Creede, United States.

wiki/Robert_Ford_(outlaw)
Oscar WiIde circa 1890 (© Print Collector/Getty Images)(1895) Trial of Oscar Wilde begins
Brilliantly witty and notoriously unconventional, writer Oscar Wilde has brought libel charges against the father of a friend, who had publicly accused Wilde of committing the crime of sodomy. The trial will be Wilde’s undoing, exposing his scandalous private life, and ending in a prison term.
Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London’s most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, as well as the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death.
Lived: Oct 16, 1854 – Nov 30, 1900 (age 46)
Height: 6′ 3″ (1.91 m)
Partner: Lord Alfred Douglas (1897 – 1898)
Spouse: Constance Lloyd (m. 1884 – 1898)
Children: Vyvyan Holland (Son) · Cyril Holland (Son)
Awards: Retro Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation (1946)
Highlights
  • 1884: He proposed to her, and they married on 29 May 1884 at the Anglican St James’s Church, Paddington in London.

  • 1889: In January 1889, The Decay of Lying: A Dialogue appeared in The Nineteenth Century, and Pen, Pencil and Poison, a satirical biography of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, in The Fortnightly Review, edited by Wilde’s friend Frank Harris.

  • 1891: In mid-1891 Lionel Johnson introduced Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas, an undergraduate at Oxford at the time.

  • 1895: Wilde’s friends had advised him against the prosecution at a Saturday Review meeting at the Café Royal on 24 March 1895; Frank Harris warned him that “they are going to prove sodomy against you” and advised him to flee to France.

  • 1895: On 25 May 1895 Wilde and Alfred Taylor were convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years’ hard labour.

  • 1900: Wilde died of cerebral meningitis on 30 November 1900.

wiki/Oscar_Wilde
President Harry Truman signs the history-making foreign aid bill known as the Marshall Plan into law at a White House ceremony in Washington on April 3, 1948 (©AP)(1948) Marshall Plan is approved for a post-WWII Europe
President Harry Truman pledges billions of dollars in US aid to a Europe reeling from the massive destruction of World War II. The Marshall Plan is both a humanitarian effort and a shrewd political move against Soviet expansion.

The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $12 billion (approximately $120 billion in current dollar value as of June 2016) in economic support to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. The plan was in operation for four years beginning April 8, 1948. The goals of the United States were to rebuild war-devastated regions, remove trade barriers, modernize industry, make Europe prosperous once more, and prevent the spread of communism. The Marshall Plan required a lessening of interstate barriers, a dropping of many regulations, and encouraged an increase in productivity, labour union membership, as well as the adoption of modern business procedures.

The Marshall Plan aid was divided amongst the participant states roughly on a per capita basis. A larger amount was given to the major industrial powers, as the prevailing opinion was that their resuscitation was essential for general European revival. Somewhat more aid per capita was also directed towards the Allied nations, with less for those that had been part of the Axis or remained neutral. The largest recipient of Marshall Plan money was the United Kingdom (receiving about 26% of the total), followed by France (18%) and West Germany (11%). Some 18 European countries received Plan benefits. Although offered participation, the Soviet Union refused Plan benefits, and also blocked benefits to Eastern Bloc countries, such as East Germany and Poland. The United States provided similar aid programs in Asia, but they were not called “Marshall Plan”.

The initiative is named after Secretary of State George Marshall, who also served as the United States Army Chief of staff during WWII. The plan had bipartisan support in Washington, where the Republicans controlled Congress and the Democrats controlled the White House with Harry S. Truman as president. The Plan was largely the creation of State Department officials, especially William L. Clayton and George F. Kennan, with help from the Brookings Institution, as requested by Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Marshall spoke of an urgent need to help the European recovery in his address at Harvard University in June 1947. The purpose of the Marshall Plan was to aid in the economic recovery of nations after WWII as well as to antagonize the Soviet Union. In order to combat the effects of the Marshall Plan, the USSR developed its own economic plan, known as the Molotov Plan. It was not as effective as the Marshall Plan, and in some ways contradictory to eastern block countries that served alongside the axis powers in WWII.

The phrase “equivalent of the Marshall Plan” is often used to describe a proposed large-scale economic rescue program.


US Marshal Plan Aid Logo

wiki/Marshall_Plan
John F. Mitchell (left) and Martin Cooper with prototype Motorola DynaTAC cellular phone, 1973 (© Motorola Mobility LLC, Legacy Archives Collection, Schaumburg, Ill.)(1973) First public mobile phone call is made
Motorola engineer Martin Cooper stands on a sidewalk in midtown Manhattan and uses a prototype handheld mobile phone to call his team’s main competitor in the field, Bell Labs’ Joel Engel. The first handheld cell phone is nicknamed ‘the brick.’
Martin “Marty” Cooper is an American engineer. He is a pioneer and visionary in the wireless communications industry. With eleven patents in the field, he is recognized as an innovator in radio spectrum management.
Website: www.dynallc.com
Born: Dec 26, 1928 (age 88) · Chicago, IL
Net worth: $100 million USD (2016)
Spouse: Arlene Harris (m. 1991)
Inventions: Mobile phone
Founded: ArrayComm
Education: Illinois Institute of Technology
Highlights
  • 1967: He developed many products including the first cellular-like portable handheld police radio system, produced for the Chicago police department in 1967.

  • 1973: Here he conceived of the first portable cellular phone in 1973 and led the 10-year process of bringing it to market.

  • 1986: In 1986, Cooper sold CBSI to Cincinnati Bell (now Convergys) for $23 million.

  • 1986: Cooper and his wife Arlene Harris founded Dyna LLC in 1986 as a home base for their various developmental and support activities surrounding the incubation of new ideas and new companies.

  • 1986: In 1986 Cooper co-founded Cellular Payphone Inc. (CPPI), the parent company of GreatCall, Inc. – Innovator of the Jitterbug cell phone (in partnership with Samsung).

  • 1991: Martin Cooper married Arlene Harris in 1991.

wiki/Martin_Cooper_(inventor)
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Today in History 03/22/17

Miniature painting from an 18th century manuscript depicting Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan on the Peacock Throne (© British Library/Robana/REX)(1739) India’s ‘Peacock Throne’ stolen from Delhi
Said to cost more than the Taj Mahal, the Mughal emperor’s Peacock Throne is stolen by invading Persian forces. Incalculably valuable and made of solid gold, precious gemstones, and rare pearls, it will be lost ever since.
The Peacock Throne was a famous jeweled throne that was the seat of the Mughal emperors of India. It was commissioned in the early 17th century by emperor Shah Jahan and was located in the Diwan-i-Khas (Hall of Private Audiences) in the Red Fort of Delhi. The original throne was subsequently captured and taken as a war trophy in 1739 by the Persian king Nadir Shah, and has been lost ever since. A replacement throne based on the original was commissioned afterwards and existed until the Indian war of Independence in 1857.
wiki/Peacock_Throne
Still from the movie 'Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory,' made by the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumiere in 1895 (© Hulton Archive/Getty Images)(1895) First screening of a projected movie
Cinema is born in Paris, as 200 invited guests watch ‘Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory,’ a one-minute film made by Auguste and Louis Lumière with their new creation, the cinematograph film camera. The film, probably the first real motion picture ever made, is shown together with several short clips, one of which startles the audience with the image of an oncoming train.
A man opens the big gates to the Lumière factory. Through the gateway and a smaller doorway beside it, workers are streaming out, turning either left or right. Most of them are women in long dresses and big hats, but some are men. Suddenly a man with a long apron rushes out through the crowd, followed by a big dog. At last some men on bikes leave the gateway. When all workers have left the factory, the doorkeeper starts closing the gates again.
Release date: Mar 22, 1895 (France)
Director: Louis Lumière

wiki/Workers_Leaving_the_Lumière_Factory
Charles Townes with his invention the maser, forerunner of the laser, during a news conference in 1955 (© AP)(1960) The laser is patented
Physicists Arthur Schawlow and Charles Townes of Bell Labs are awarded a patent for the laser, or “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.” Some experts will contend that physicist grad student Gordon Gould should’ve received the patent.
A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The term “laser” originated as an acronym for “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation”. The first laser was built in 1960 by Theodore H. Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories, based on theoretical work by Charles Hard Townes and Arthur Leonard Schawlow. A laser differs from other sources of light in that it emits light coherently. Spatial coherence allows a laser to be focused to a tight spot, enabling applications such as laser cutting and lithography. Spatial coherence also allows a laser beam to stay narrow over great distances, enabling applications such as laser pointers. Lasers can also have high temporal coherence, which allows them to emit light with a very narrow spectrum, i.e., they can emit a single color of light. Temporal coherence can be used to produce pulses of light as short as a femtosecond.
Inventors: Charles H. Townes · Theodore Maiman · Gordon Gould · Alexander Prokhorov · Nikolay Basov
May treat: Acne · Sebaceous cyst

wiki/Laser
Men and women march together holding signs in support of the Equal Rights Amendment in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1976 (© Barbara Freeman/Getty Images)(1972) US Congress passes the Equal Rights Amendment
Introduced to Congress in 1923, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), a proposed constitutional guarantee of women’s rights, passes and is sent to the states for ratification. Final ratification will fall short of the threshold needed by three states and the amendment will eventually die.

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution designed to guarantee equal rights for women. The ERA was originally written by Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman. In 1923, it was introduced in the Congress for the first time. The ERA has always been highly controversial regarding the meaning of equality for women. It was “feminist against feminist”, said historian Judith Sealander; the result was the eventual defeat of the ERA. Middle-class women generally were supportive. Those speaking for the working class were strongly opposed, arguing that employed women needed special protections regarding working conditions and hours. In 1972, it passed both houses of Congress and was submitted to the state legislatures for ratification. It seemed headed for quick approval until Phyllis Schlafly mobilized conservative women in opposition, arguing that the ERA would disadvantage housewives.

Congress had set a ratification deadline of March 22, 1979. Through 1977, the amendment received 35 of the necessary 38 state ratifications. Five states rescinded their ratifications before the 1979 deadline. In 1978, a joint resolution of Congress extended the ratification deadline to June 30, 1982, but no further states ratified the amendment and so it did not become part of the Constitution. Several organizations continue to work for the adoption of the ERA.


wiki/Equal_Rights_Amendment
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