August 2, 2014

425 years ago
1589

Died on this date
Henry III, 37. King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, 1573-1575; King of France, 1574-1589. Henry III, the last French monarch of the Valois dynasty, died the day after being stabbed by Jacques Clément, who was immediately executed by the king's bodyguards. King Henry was succeeded on the French throne by Henry IV.

125 years ago
1889

Born on this date
Margaret Lawrence. U.S. actress. Miss Lawrence was a stage actress who began her career in Chicago before moving to New York and appearing on Broadway. She was 39 when she died on June 9, 1929. Miss Lawrence and Mr. Bennison were performing together in a vaudeville sketch in New York, and he was visiting her home when they got into an argument. Mr. Bennison fatally shot Miss Lawrence and then fatally shot himself.

Died on this date
Eduardo Gutiérrez, 38. Argentinian author. Mr. Gutiérrez wrote more than two dozen novels, mainly about gauchos. His best-known work was Juan Moreiera (1879). Mr. Gutiérrez died 18 days after his 38th birthday.

Politics and government
John Robson was sworn in as Premier of British Columbia, succeeding the late A.E.B. Davie, who had died the day before. Mr. Robson had already been carrying on much of the day-to-day business of the government while Mr. Davie was battling a long illness.

100 years ago
1914

Born on this date
Beatrice Straight. U.S. actress. Miss Straight won a Tony Award for her starring performance in The Crucible (1953) and an Academy Award for her brief supporting performance in Network (1976). She died on April 7, 2001 at the age of 86.

Big Walter Price. U.S. musician. Mr. Price was a blues pianist, singer, and songwriter who was a popular performer in San Antonio, and later Houston, in the 1950s and '60s. He died on March 7, 2012 at the age of 97.

80 years ago
1934

Died on this date
Paul von Hindenburg, 86. 2nd President of Germany, 1925-1934. Field Marshal Hindenburg was a career soldier in the Prussian army, and became a national hero as Chief of the German General Staff from 1916-1919. As President, he opposed the rise of Adolf Hitler, but finally appointed Mr. Hitler Chancellor on January 30, 1933. Following Mr. Hindenburg's death, Mr. Hitler merged the positions of President and Chancellor into that of Leader and Chancellor ((Führer und Reichskanzler).

75 years ago
1939

Died on this date
Harvey Spencer Lewis, 55. U.S. mystic. Mr. Lewis was initially interested in exposing fraudulent psychic phenomena, and was elected president of the New York Institute for Psychical Research at the age of 20. He was initiated into a Rosicrucian order during a trip to France, and became the U.S.A.'s first Imperator of the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC), holding the position from 1915 until his death. Mr. Lewis was succeeded as Imperator by his son Ralph Maxwell Lewis.

Defense
Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd wrote a letter to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging him to begin the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon.

70 years ago
1944

War
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in an address to the House of Commons, predicted that "victory may perhaps come soon," with no great lapse between the defeat of Germany and that of Japan. U.S. forces in France continued their drive into Brittany, with one column moving toward St. Malo and Brest, and another toward Rennes. U.S. forces in Guam made gains averaging 2 miles. Japanese troops failed in four attempts to break out of the Allied encirclement at Aitape, Dutch New Guinea.

World events
The state of Democratic Macedonia was set up in the Bulgarian occupation zone in Yugoslavia.

Diplomacy
Turkey severed diplomatic relations with Germany.

Octavio Vejar Vasquez, head of the Mexican Committee for Postwar Problems, said that Pan-American Union had failed to cement hemispheric relations, and proposed replacing it with an Inter-American Union.

Economics and finance
Convoy HX-300, the largest trade convoy of World War II, arrived in Liverpool, 16 days after leaving Halifax. The convoy consisted of 159 merchant ships and 32 escorts, all of which arrived safely.

Protest
11 people were injured and 300--mostly Negroes--were arrested in Philadelphia in rioting during a strike of 6,000 Philadelphia Transportation Company workers, which had followed a move by the company to upgrade the status of eight Negro workers by order of the U.S. Committee on Fair Employment Practices. The National War Labor Board referred the strike to President Franklin D. Roosevelt for "appropriate action," and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People asked Mr. Roosevelt to order the United States Army to take over the Philadelphia transit system.

60 years ago
1954

Boxing
Floyd Patterson (15-1) scored a technical knockout of Tommy Harrison (22-10-2) just 1:29 into the 1st round of their heavyweight bout at Eastern Parkway Arena in Brooklyn, New York.

50 years ago
1964

War
In what became known as the Gulf of Tonkin incident, North Vietnamese gunboats allegedly fired on the U.S. destroyer USS Maddox.

40 years ago
1974

Hit parade
#1 single in West Germany (Media Control): Sugar Baby Love--The Rubettes (3rd week at #1)

Scandal
U.S. District Court Judge John Sirica sentenced former White House counsel John Dean from 1-3 years in prison for his confessed role in the cover-up of the June 1972 break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. At the sentencing, Mr. Dean asked for "compassion" and "understanding," saying he had tried to "right the wrong" he had committed. He had pleaded guilty to one charge of conspiracy to obstruct justice in a special arrangement with the prosecution whereby, in return for his cooperation, the prosecution would not press additional charges. Mr. Dean had originally sought total immunity, but the prosecution had found evidence against him not covered by previous grants of immunity, and had succeeded in persuading him to plead guilty.

30 years ago
1984

Hit parade
Edmonton's top 19 (CHED)
1 When Doves Cry--Prince
2 Legs--ZZ Top
3 Ghostbusters--Ray Parker, Jr.
4 Sad Songs (Say So Much)--Elton John
5 Stuck On You--Lionel Richie
6 She's Mine--Steve Perry
7 Run Runaway--Slade
8 She Bop--Cyndi Lauper
9 Missing You--John Waite
10 I Can Dream About You--Dan Hartman
11 State of Shock--Michael Jackson and Mick Jagger
12 What's Love Got to Do With It--Tina Turner
13 Jump (For My Love)--Pointer Sisters
14 I'm Free--Kenny Loggins
15 Deeper and Deeper--The Fixx
16 Doctor! Doctor!--Thompson Twins
17 Infatuation--Rod Stewart
18 Lovers in a Dangerous Time--Bruce Cockburn
19 Lights Out--Peter Wolf

Terrorism
Iranian authorities worked out a settlement with three Iranians who had hijacked a jet to Tehran the previous day that had originally been bound from Paris to Frankfurt. The hijackers released their hostages, but damaged the plane with a bomb. Some diplomats thought the settlement reflected a compromise between hard-liners and moderates seeking to preserve Iran’s ties to the outside world.

Law
An 18-judge panel of the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Metropolitan Police had violated the European Convention by tapping the phone and intercepting the mail of English antique dealer James Malone in 1977.

Politics and government
Bert Lance resigned as the chairman of Democratic Party candidate Walter Mondale’s U.S. presidential campaign as a result of concern within the party over old charges--of which he had been acquitted--that he had violated banking laws.

Economics and finance
The United States Census Bureau reported that the nation’s poverty rate had edged upward to 15.2% in 1983, the highest level since 1965, and that the number of poor people totalled 35.3 million.

Baseball
The Chicago Cubs defeated the Montreal Expos 3-2 before 22,485 fans at Wrigley Field in Chicago to take a 1½-game lead over the New York Mets in the National League East Division.

25 years ago
1989

Hit parade
#1 single in Finland (Musiikkituottajat – IFPI Finland): Sealed with a Kiss--Jason Donovan (2nd week at #1)

#1 single in Sweden (Topplistan): Licence to Kill--Gladys Knight (2nd week at #1)

Diplomacy
Pakistan was re-admitted to the Commonwealth of Nations after having restoring democracy for the first time since 1972.

Abominations
A massacre was carried out by an Indian peacekeeping force in Sri Lanka, killing 64 ethnic Tamil civilians.

Politics and government
General Czeslaw Kiszczak, the chief enforcer of the 1981 martial law decree, was confirmed as Premier of Poland, receiving the support of 237 of 420 deputies in the Sejm, the lower house of parliament. Gen. Kiszczak proposed that the United Workers (Communist) Party and the trade union movement Solidarity form a "grand coalition" government; the latter declined.

Scandal
The United States Justice Department announced that 46 futures traders at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade had been indicted on a variety of counts including mail fraud, wire fraud, tax fraud, and filing false tax returns. 21 were charged with racketeering under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act, and faced the loss of their assets. The Federal Bureau of Investigation had been conducting an investigation in Chicago for more than two years.

Paul Adams, inspector general of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, told a Senate subcommittee that 20 consultants had received $5.7 million in fees for lobbying the department. He said that a disproportionate share of HUD money had gone to states that had relatively little need for it, but where highly paid consultants, often with influence in the administration of President Ronald Reagan, had landed contracts for developers.

Football
CFL
Saskatchewan (3-1) 29 @ Winnipeg (2-2) 27



20 years ago
1994

World events
Rwanda's new coalition government said that it would prosecute those responsible for the massacres in that country in recent months.

Diplomacy
Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic threatened to break off relations with Bosnian Serbs if they rejected a peace plan put forward by the U.S.A. and European nations.

Economics and finance
The Canadian government of Prime Minister Jean Chretien announced a one-year truce in the wheat war with the United States. U.S. tariffs would be imposed on Canadian exports over 1.5 million tons in the 1994-1995 crop year. In the 1993-1994 crop year, 2.5 million tons of durum wheat had gone from Canada to the U.S., mostly to satisfy the demand for high-quality wheat for pasta.

10 years ago
2004

Died on this date
Heinrich Mark, 92. Prime Minister-in-Exile of Estonia, 1971-1990; Prime Minister of Estonia in duties of the President, 1990-1992. After the Soviet occupation of Estonia in 1940, Mr. Mark escaped to Finland before settling in Sweden. Estonian independence was restored in 1991, making Mr. Mark the country's last head of state-in-exile.

Defense
U.S. President George W. Bush called for the creation of the position of National Intelligence Director. He supported the overall recommendation of the commission that investigated the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, but indicated that the power and influence of the National Intelligence Director would be limited.

Terrorism
U.S. officials said that much of the information that prompted the previous day's alert that financial institutions in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Newark, New Jersey were vulnerable to attack was years old.