Discover the jewel of the East Indies with Ferdinand Magellan P5
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7 A p r i l
INSIDE TODAY
The magic of Wordsworth
April 7 is the 97th day of the year (98th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 268 days remaining until the end of the year.
THE SINGLE DAY CHRONICLE
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It happened on this day
WWW.
GO! P6
TECHNOLOGY
On this day - April 7th many significant global events have accumulated over the past centuries. The single day chronicle documents some of these events which have changed the world in one way or another covering a wide range of fields from technology to natural disasters. Looking at one specific day in depth causes us to look deeper at the events which have occurred and effectively realise the impact they have had on us. On this day for example; Portuguese explores stepped foot land in the exotic East Indies for the first time on the hunt for luxurious spices in 1521. The first space walk was conducted by the American space shuttle program in 1983. Other technological advancements included the sale of the first friction match by an English chemist in 1827 and the first distance television broadcast from Washington DC to New York City. Also NASA launched on this day in 2001 its Mars Odessey project but something much bigger and relevant to our life as we know it today would be the symbolic birth date of the internet on April 7th 1969. Darker and more disturbing events of course also landed on this day, in particular it marks the start of the tragic Rwandan genocide which left over 800,000 people dead. This day also marks the killing of over 1,000 jews in a small Ukrainian city conducted by Nazi Germany soliders. Other significant occasions included in this publication are the creation of the World Health Organisation in 1948 and the establishment of the Charles University in Prague on this day 600 years earlier. During World War Two Italy invaded Albania and the largest battleship - belonging to the Japanese - was sunk by American forces. In more recent conflicts, today is the day that American troops rolled into Baghdad, Iraq as Saddam Hussein lost control and his government crumbled two days later. Famous deaths on the 7th of April include legendary highway man Dick Turpin, American automotive pioneer Henry Ford as well as the 2 time world champion racing driver Jim Clark. Famous births include one of the most recognisable jazz singers, Billie Holiday along with one of the most well known literary figures of all time in 1770 - British romantic poet William Wordsworth.
Vesuvius awakens once more P3
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Rwandan genocide begins
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1994
Baghdad falls to US forces
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2003
April 7th is the day that the government of Saddam Hussein has lost control over Baghdad, with the advance of US forces into the centre of the capital. US tanks drove unhindered into public squares on the eastern bank of the Tigris for the first time, including the area surrounding the Palestine hotel, where the international media are based. In a symbolic moment, an American armoured vehicle helped a crowd of cheering Iraqis to pull down a huge statue of Saddam Hussein in the al-Fardus square in front of the hotel. Dozens of exultant people leapt on the deposed figure and stamped on it, shouting “Death to Saddam!”. People have attached the old Iraqi flag to the pedestal. US President George W Bush has said he thinks this is a historic moment. However, his spokesman, Ari Fleischer said: “As much as the president is pleased to see the progress of the military campaign ... he remains very cautious because he knows there is great danger that can still lie ahead”. US Central Command has “added Baghdad to the list of places the regime does not have control”, spokesman Vincent Brooks told reporters at the daily Central Command briefing. Among the buildings seized by US marines were the headquarters of the security police, Reuters news agency reports. The tearing down of his ubiquitous statue in Baghdad Wednesday symbolized the collapse of his regime as U.S. troops took control the capital’s streets to a jubilant welcome. Iraqis cheered and waved, denouncing
Saddam and, in many cases, praising President George Bush. When a group of Iraqis took a sledgehammer to the giant plinth beneath a Saddam statue opposite the international press headquarters at the Palestine Hotel, journalists and TV anchors everywhere couldn’t resist making the comparison with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989. While the statue’s toppling may become the signature video clip signifying the event, images from elsewhere in the city served as a reminder that this was nothing like Berlin in 1989. For one thing, there’s still a war going on. Fierce firefights raged around the city’s university, and thousands of guerrilla fighters loyal to Saddam remained at large all over Baghdad. Coalition commanders and U.S. political leaders stress that the fighting is far from over. Baghdad’s hospitals, stretched beyond breaking point in treating the wounded are a reminder that what was for the U.S. a relatively easy military campaign had nonetheless left thousands of civilian casualties. The mass looting of government offices and private businesses in different parts of the city also underscores the threat of chaos breaking out in the power vacuum left by the regime’s collapse. Although statues and portraits of the dictator have been torn down and dragged through the streets, the man himself has yet to be found. U.S. intelligence reportedly believes Saddam may well have been killed by bunkerbuster bombs dropped on a restaurant in the al-Mansour neighborhood Tuesday where he was sighted meeting with aides. British intelligence, however, says the Iraqi leader was seen escaping the site moments before the bombing. Iraqi opposition sources say he slipped out of the capital with at least one of his sons. Some speculated he may try to retreat to his hometown of Tikrit, to make a final stand among his kith and kin. But a persistent rumor in the Arab world suggested Saddam may have taken refuge in the Russian embassy, also in al-Mansour. Still, whatever Saddam’s whereabouts and condition, his regime is no more. Despite the collapse of Saddam’s control, the situation in Baghdad and beyond remains fluid. There are clearly still thousands, or even tens of thousands of armed Saddam loyalists inside the capital, and it’s not clear whether or how they plan to fight on once it becomes clear that the regime is finished.
The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass murder of an estimated 800,000 people in the small East African nation of Rwanda which began on the April 7th. Over the course of approximately 100 days (from the assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira on April 6) through midJuly, over 500,000 people were killed, according to a Human Rights Watch estimate. Estimates of the death toll have ranged between 500,000 and 1,000,000, or as much as 20% of the country’s total population. It was the culmination of longstanding ethnic competition and tensions between the minority Tutsi, who had controlled power for
centuries, and the majority Hutu peoples, who had come to power in the rebellion of 1959–62 and overthrown the Tutsi monarchy. In 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel group composed mostly of Tutsi refugees, invaded northern Rwanda from Uganda in an attempt to defeat the Hutu-led government. They began the Rwandan Civil War, fought between the Hutu regime, with support from Francophone Africa and France, and the RPF, with support from Uganda. This exacerbated ethnic tensions in the country. In response, many Hutu gravitated toward the Hutu Power ideology, with the prompting of state-controlled and independent Rwandan media. As an ideology, Hutu Power asserted that the Tutsi intended to enslave the Hutu and must be resisted at all costs. Continuing ethnic strife resulted in the rebels’ displacing large numbers of Hutu in the north, plus periodic localized Hutu killings of Tutsi in the south.
Washington calling: The first long distance TV broadcast
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1927
Bell Laboratories dramatically demonstrated the possibilities of television in 1927, when it transmitted pictures of U.S. Secretary ofCommerce Herbert Hoover giving a speech from Washington, D.C., to New York. Bell’s experiment was the first longdistance television transmission. That same year, the Columbia Phonographic Broadcasting System (later the Columbia Broadcasting System, or CBS) was founded. One year later, its first television station, W2XBS, was established in New York City, creating television’s first star, Felix the Cat. In July, 1931, CBS station W2XAB in New York City first began broadcasting regular scheduled programming seven days a week. Don Lee Broadcasting’s station W6XAO in Los Angeles went on the air in December, 1931, with a regular schedule of filmed images every day except Sundays and holidays.
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The eruption of 1906 killed over 100 people and ejected the most lava ever recorded from a Vesuvian eruption. It destroyed the villages of San Sebastiano al Vesuvio, Massa di Somma, Ottaviano, and part of San Giorgio a Cremano. From 18 March to 23 March 1944, lava flows appeared within the rim. There were outflows. Small explosions then occurred until the major explosion took place on 18 March 1944. This was undoubtedly the most violent eruption on Vesuvius in the 1900’s. It started on 4th April 1906 with emission of lava from a fracture in the SE area at 1,200 m. above sea level. This fracture then spread downwards ending in the opening of a vent at a height of 800 metres. On April 6th another vent opened up in Cognoli di Bosco, with emission of lava flows towards SE. During the night of 7th, an eruptive fracture occurred at 770 m. in the ravine of Cupaccia, and a very fluid lava flow, heading towards Terzigno, reached a height of 200 m. The following night the greatest intensity of explosions was recorded, and a strong earthquake was felt, linked to the collapse of the upper part of the cone. The eruption ended in the next few days with the emission of very fine ash. After this eruption the height of the volcano had gone down from 1,335 m to 1,100 m. The fallout deposits were mainly distributed on the E-NE side, affecting predominantly the towns of Ottaviano and S. Giuseppe Vesuviano. The accumulation of pyroclastic deposits caused building collapse and destruction in S. Giuseppe Vesuviano and Ottaviano, with 216 dead and 112 injured. In Naples city itself, there were 11 dead and 30 injured. The last phases of the 1906 were extremely violent. The following period of quiescence was one of the longest in the recent cycle of activity, lasting until July 1913. The eruption could be seen from Naples. Different perspectives and the damage caused to the local villages were recorded by USAAF photographers and other personnel based nearer to the volcano.
WHO Will look after us
7 A p r i l
1948
The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on 7 April 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health Organization, which was an agency of the League of Nations. It is a member of the United Nations Development Group. Apart from coordinating international efforts to control outbreaks of infectious disease, such as SARS, malaria, tuberculosis, influenza, and HIV/AIDS, the WHO also sponsors programs to prevent and treat such diseases. The WHO supports the development and distribution of safe and effective vaccines, pharmaceutical diagnostics, and drugs, such as through the Expanded Program on Immunization. After over two decades of fighting smallpox, the WHO declared in 1980 that the disease had been eradicated – the first disease in history to be eliminated by human effort. The WHO aims to eradicate polio within the next few years.
The day of the first shuttle space walk The first space shuttlebased spacewalk came in April 1983 on April 7th during space shuttle Challenger’s STS-6 mission. Astronauts Story Musgrave and Don Peterson spent 3 hours and 54 minutes during that first shuttle EVA. In the 28 years since, space shuttle crew members have performed 162 spacewalks to rescue and repair satellites, service the famous Hubble Telescope and help to build the International Space Station. Four hours and 47 minutes into today’s EVA, Fincke and Chamitoff will log the 1,000th hour of spacewalking for the assembly and
maintenance of the International Space Station. The 1,000 hours were spread over 159 shuttleand station - based spacewalks since 1998. Later on Friday after he is back inside the station, Fincke will set his own endurance record, surpassing chief astronaut Peggy Whitson’s 376 days in space to become the U.S. astronaut with the most time on-orbit. The shuttle and station crews began their day at 6:58 p.m. Wednesday to a parody of The Beach Boys song “Fun, Fun, Fun” with shuttle-themed lyrics, played for all six STS-134 astronauts. The same song, written by
Mike Cahill for the local Houston band Mach 25, was previously played for the STS-64 crew in 2001. Story Musgrave is one of NASA’s most experienced astronauts. With a 30 year career spanning the Apollo era of the 1960s right through to the Space Shuttle program of the 1990s, he is the only astronaut to have flown on all five Space Shuttles. He is also a pilot, surgeon, mechanic, poet and philosopher. The experiences of a small child growing up on a 1000 acre dairy farm in Massachusetts provided a foundation for Story’s fascination with machinery as well as his extraordinary love of nature. Born 19 August
Charles University established in Prague
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1348
Charles University in Prague (also simply Charles University; Czech: Univerzita Karlova v Praze; Latin: Universitas Carolina Pragensis; German: Karls-Universität zu Prag) is the oldest and largest university in the Czech Republic. Founded in 1348, it was the first university in Central Europe and is also
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1983
For Story, nature was a place of beauty and order. From the lakes and rivers teeming with life, the coolness of freshly ploughed fields, to the wooded magic of the Berkshire Hills, Story immersed himself in the wonders of nature and thrived on the spiritual experiences which that brought him. 1935 during the Great Depression, by the age of 10, Story was already operating and repairing tractors .
considered the earliest German university. The Charles University is one of the oldest universities in Europe in continuous operation. Its seal shows its protector, Emperor Charles IV, with his coats of arms as King of the Romans and King of Bohemia kneeling in front of St. Wenceslas, the patron saint of Bohemia. It is surrounded by the inscription, Sigillum Universitatis Scolarium Studii Pragensis (English: Seal of the Prague academia.
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1827
Strike a light : The first friction match sold
WWW. GO! The symbolic birthdate of the internet April 7 is often cited as the symbolic birth date of the internet because the RFC memoranda contain research, proposals and methodologies applicable to internet technology. RFC documents provide a way for engineers and others to kick around new ideas in a public forum; sometimes, these ideas are adopted as new standards by the Internet Engineering Task Force. One interesting aspect of the RFC is that each document is issued a unique serial number. An individual paper cannot be overwritten; rather, updates or corrections are submitted on a separate RFC. The result is an ongoing historical record of the evolution of internet standards. When it comes to the birth of the net, Jan. 1, 1983, also has its supporters. On that date, the National Science Foundation’s university network backbone, a precursor to the World Wide Web, became operational. The inception of the RFC format occurred in 1969 as part of the seminal ARPANET project. [1] Today, it is the official publication channel for the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), and—to some extent—the global community of computer network researchers in general. The authors of the first RFCs typewrote their work and circulated hard copies among the ARPA researchers. Unlike the modern RFCs, many of the early RFCs were requests for comments. The RFC leaves questions open and is written in a less formal style. This less formal style is now typical of
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1969
Internet Draft documents, the precursor step before being approved as an RFC. In December 1969, researchers began distributing new RFCs via the newly operational ARPANET. RFC 1, entitled “Host Software”, was written by Steve Crocker of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and published on April 7, 1969. Although written by Steve Crocker, the RFC emerged from an early working group discussion between Steve Crocker, Steve Carr and Jeff Rulifson. In RFC 3, which first defined the RFC series, Crocker started attributing the RFC series to the “Network Working Group”. This wasn’t so much a formal committee as a loose association of researchers interested in the ARPANET project. In effect, it was anyone who wanted to join in on meetings and discussions about the project. Many of the subsequent RFCs of the 1970s also came from UCLA, because UCLA was one of the first Interface Message Processors (IMPs) on ARPANET. The Augmentation Research Center (ARC) at Stanford Research Institute, directed by Douglas Engelbart, was another of the four first ARPANET nodes and the source of early RFCs. The ARC became the first Network Information Center, which was managed by Elizabeth J. Feinler to distribute them along with other network information. From 1969 until 1998, Jon Postel served as the RFC editor. (On his death in 1998, his obituary was published as RFC 2468CIT.)
John Walker was born in Stocktonon-Tees in 1781. He studied chemistry at Durham and York, and then set up a small business as a chemist and druggist at 59 High Street, Stockton, around 1818. He developed a keen interest in trying to find a means of obtaining fire easily. Several chemical mixtures were already known which would ignite by a sudden explosion, but it had not been found possible to transmit the flame to a slow-burning substance like wood. While Walker was preparing a lighting mixture on one occasion, a match which had been dipped in it took fire by an accidental friction upon the hearth. He at once appreciated the practical value of the discovery, and started making friction matches. They consisted of wooden splints or sticks of cardboard coated with sulphur and tipped with a mixture of sulphide of antimony, chlorate of potash, and gum, the sulphur serving to
communicate the flame to the wood. The price of a box of 50 matches was one shilling. With each box was supplied a piece of sandpaper, folded double, through which the match had to be drawn to ignite it. He did not divulge the exact composition of his matches. Two and a half years after Walker’s invention was made public, Isaac Holden arrived, independently, at the same idea of coating wooden splinters with sulphur. The exact date of his discovery, according to his own statement, was October 1829. Previously to this date, Walker’s sales-book contains an account of no fewer than 250 sales of friction matches, the first entry bearing the date 7 April 1827. He refused to patent his invention, despite being encouraged to considering it too trivial. However, he was still able to mass a sufficient fortune from his invention to enable him to retire from business. Walker died in Stockton on 1 May 1859.
NASA’s Mars Odessey
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2001
2001 Mars Odyssey is a robotic spacecraft orbiting the planet Mars. The project was developed by NASA, and contracted out to Lockheed Martin, with an expected cost for the entire mission of US$297 million. Its mission is to use spectrometers and electronic imagers to hunt for evidence of past or present water and volcanic activity on Mars. It is hoped that the data Odyssey obtains will help answer the question of whether life has ever existed on Mars. It also acts as a relay for communications between the Mars Exploration Rovers and the Phoenix lander to Earth. The mission was named as a tribute to Arthur C. Clarke, evoking the name of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Odyssey was launched April 7, 2001 on a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, and reached Mars orbit on October 24, 2001, at 2:30 a.m. UTC (October 23, 7:30 p.m. PDT, 10:30 p.m. EDT). The spacecraft’s main engine fired in order to brake the spacecraft’s speed, which allowed it to be captured into orbit around Mars. Odyssey used a technique called “aerobraking” .
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1521 Global scramble for the exotic East At the time of the global scramble for exotic spices in the East, Portuguese navigator sailing for Spain, Ferdinand Magellan, came upon Zubu (Cebu) on April 7, 1521. The island then already had a flourishing village with “many sailing vessels from Siam (Thailand), China and Arabia docked at the port, surrounded by turquioise waters” as described
by Antonio Pigafetta, Magellan’s chronicler. Then began the Spanish era in the Philippines. However, it deteriorated upon the death of Magellan in the hands of the local warrior, LapuLapu, only to resurrect with the arrival 44 years later, in 1565, of Miguel López de Legazpi. That year, the first Spanish settlement was built in Cebu by Mexico’s
Spanish government to colonize the country. Its rich and colorful metamorphosis can be traced from 1521 as Zubu, the fishing village and busy trading port, to Villa San Miguel, later to Villa del Santissimo Nombre de Jesus in 1575, then as the municipality of Cebu in 1905 up to its being a chartered city on February 24, 1937. In the 19th century, Cebu started to exercise a dominant role in Southern Philippines’ economic limelight. Agriculture, especially sugar cane cultivation and sugar
manufacturing, pushed Cebu into playing an important role in this part of the country. But even more crucial than the agricultural products was her participation in trade and commerce. Cebu City has seen many ‘firsts’ in the nation’s history. Established by Legazpi in 1571, it became the first city in the Philippines, ante-dating Manila by seven (7) years. In point of fact, it is the oldest city in the country, having the oldest and smallest fort (Fort San Pedro), with the oldest church known as the (Basilica of Santo Niño).
Mussolini orders the invasion of Albania in WW2
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1939
The Italian invasion of Albania (April 7 – April 12, 1939) was a brief military campaign by the Kingdom of Italy against the Albanian Kingdom. The conflict was a result of the imperialist policies of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Albania was rapidly overrun, its ruler, King Zog I, forced into exile, and the country made part of Greater Italy and the Italian Empire as a separate kingdom in personal union with the Italian crown. Albania had long had considerable strategic importance for the Kingdom of Italy. Italian naval strategists eyed the port of Vlorë and the island of Sazan at the entrance to the Bay of Vlorë, as it would give Italy control of the entrance to the Adriatic Sea. In addition, Albania could provide Italy with a beachhead in the Balkans. Before World War I Italy and Austria-Hungary had been instrumental in the creation of an independent Albanian
state. At the outbreak of war, Italy had seized the chance to occupy the southern half of Albania, to avoid it being captured by the AustroHungarians. That success did not last long, as postwar domestic problems and Albanian resistance through the Battle of Vlora, forced Italy to pull out in 1920. The desire to compensate for this failure would be one of Mussolini’s major motives in invading Albania. When Mussolini took power in Italy he turned with renewed interest to Albania. Italy began penetration of Albania’s economy in 1925, when Albania agreed to allow Italy to exploit its mineral resources. That was followed by the First Treaty of Tirana in 1926 and the Second Treaty of Tirana in 1927, whereby Italy and Albania entered into a defensive alliance. The Albanian economy was subsidised by Italian loans, the Albanian army was trained by Italian military instructors.
Japanese battleship Yamamoto is sunk
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1945
Yamato, named after the ancient Japanese Yamato Province, was the lead ship of the Yamato class of battleships that served with the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. She and her sister ship, Musashi, were the heaviest and most powerfully
armed battleships ever constructed,[8] displacing 72,800 tonnes at full load and armed with nine 46 cm (18.1 inch) main guns. Neither, however, survived the war. In April 1945, in a desperate attempt to slow the Allied advance, Yamato was dispatched on a one way voyage to Okinawa, where it was intended that she should protect the island from invasion and fight until destroyed. Her task force was spotted south of Kyushu by US submarines and aircraft, and on 7 April she was sunk by American carrier based bombers and torpedo bombers with the loss of most of her crew.
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The first lady of Jazz was born today
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1915
Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed “Lady Day” by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. Critic John Bush wrote that Holiday “changed the art of American pop vocals forever.”
“When Billie Holiday sings a song, I hear the song, but I always hear her and her truth.” She co-wrote only a few songs, but several of them have become jazz standards, notably “God Bless the Child”, “Don’t Explain”, “Fine and Mellow”, and “Lady Sings the Blues”. She also became famous for singing “Easy Living”, “Good Morning Heartache”, and “Strange Fruit”, a protest song which became one of her standards and was made famous with her 1939 recording. Holiday was recording for Columbia in the late 1930s when she was introduced to “Strange Fruit”, a song based on a poem about lynching from the Bronx.Holiday later said that the imagery in “Strange Fruit” reminded her of her father’s death and that this played a role in her resistance to performing it.
Wordsworth’s poetry will be written into history
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1770
The second of five children born to John Wordsworth and Ann Cookson, William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Wordsworth House in Cockermouth, Cumberland —part of the scenic region in northwest England, the Lake District. His sister, the poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth, to whom he was close all his life, was born the following year, and the two were baptised together. They had three other siblings: Richard, the eldest, who became a lawyer; John, born after Dorothy, who went to sea and died in 1805 when the ship of which he was Master, Earl of Abergavenny was wrecked off the south coast of England; and Christopher, the youngest, who entered the Church and rose to be Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Their father was a legal representative of James Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale and, through his connections, lived in a large mansion in the small
town. In his “Preface to Lyrical Ballads”, which is called the “manifesto” of English Romantic criticism, Wordsworth calls his poems “experimental.” The year 1793 saw Wordsworth’s first published poetry with the collections An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches. He received a legacy of £900 from Raisley Calvert in 1795 so that he could pursue writing poetry. That year, he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Somerset. The two poets quickly developed a close friendship. In 1797, Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy moved to Alfoxton House, Somerset, just a few miles away from Coleridge’s home in Nether Stowey. Together, Wordsworth and Coleridge produced Lyrical Ballads (1798), an important work in the English Romantic movement. The volume gave neither Wordsworth’s nor Coleridge’s name as author. One of Wordsworth’s most famous poems, “Tintern Abbey”, was published in the work, along with Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. The second edition, published in 1800, had only Wordsworth listed as the author, and included a preface to the poems, which was augmented significantly in the 1802 edition. This Preface to Lyrical Ballads is considered a central work of Romantic literary theory. In it, Wordsworth discusses
what he sees as the elements of a new type of poetry, one based on the “real language of men” and which avoids the poetic diction of much 18th-century poetry. Here, Wordsworth gives his famous definition of poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” From 1795 to 1797, he wrote his only play, The Borderers, a verse tragedy during the reign of King Henry III of England when Englishmen of the north country were in conflict with Scottish rovers. Wordsworth attempted to get the play staged in November 1797, but it was rejected by Thomas Harris, theatre manager of Covent Garden, who proclaimed it “impossible that the play should succeed in the representation”. The rebuff was not received lightly by Wordsworth, and the play was not published until 1842, after substantial revision. William Wordsworth died by re-aggravating a case of pleurisy on 23 April 1850, and was buried at St. Oswald’s church in Grasmere. His widow Mary published his lengthy autobiographical “poem to Coleridge” as The Prelude several months after his death. Though this failed to arouse great interest in 1850, it has since come to be recognised as his masterpiece.
Daffodils (also known as - I wandered lonely as a cloud) is regularly referred to as Wordsworth’s most famous work,
He became Britains poet laureate in 1843 and remained in that title until his death in 1850.
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1739
End of the road for legendary highway man Dick Turpin
Richard “Dick” Turpin (bap. 1705 – 7 April 1739) was an English highwayman whose exploits were romanticised following his execution in York for horse theft. Turpin may have followed his father’s profession as a butcher early in life, but by the early 1730s he had joined a gang of deer thieves, and
later became a poacher, burglar, horse thief and murderer. He is also known for a fictional 200-mile overnight ride from London to York on his steed Black Bess, a story that was made famous by the Victorian novelist William Harrison Ainsworth almost 100 years after Turpin’s death. Turpin’s involvement in the crime for which he is most closely associated—highway robbery—followed the arrest of the other members of his gang in 1735. He then disappeared from public view towards the end of that year, only to resurface in 1737 with two new accomplices, one of whom he may have accidentally shot and killed. Turpin fled
from the scene and shortly afterwards killed a man who attempted his capture. Later that year he moved to Yorkshire and assumed the alias of John Palmer. While he was staying at an inn, local magistrates became suspicious of “Palmer”, and made enquiries as to how he funded his lifestyle. Suspected of being a horse thief, “Palmer” was imprisoned in York Castle. Turpin’s true identity was revealed by a letter he wrote to his brother-in-law from his prison cell, which fell into the hands of the authorities. On 22 March 1739 Turpin was found guilty on two charges of horse theft and sentenced to death; he was executed on 7 April 1739.
Crash anniversary of double world champion
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Death of an American automotive pioneer
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1739
Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. As owner of the Ford Motor Company, he became one of the richest and best-known people in the world. He is credited with “Fordism”: mass production of inexpensive goods coupled with high wages for workers. Ford had a global vision, with consumerism as the key to peace. His intense commitment to systematically lowering costs resulted in many technical and business innovations, including a franchise system that put dealerships throughout most of North America and in major cities on six continents. Ford left most of his vast wealth to the Ford Foundation but arranged for his family to control the company permanently. He was known worldwide especially in the 1920s as promoter of pacifism and antisemitism. In 1891, Ford became an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company. After his promotion to Chief Engineer in 1893, he had enough time and money to devote attention to his personal experiments on gasoline engines. These experiments culminated in 1896 with the completion of a self-propelled vehicle which he named the Ford Quadricycle. He test-drove it on June 4. Thomas Edison approved of Ford’s automobile experimentation; encouraged by him, Ford designed and built a second vehicle, completing it in 1898.In response, Malcomson brought in another group of investors and convinced the Dodge Brothers to accept a portion of the new company. Ford & Malcomson was reincorporated as the Ford Motor Company on June 16, 1903, with $28,000 capital. . In a newly designed car, Ford gave an exhibition on the ice of Lake St. Clair, driving 1 mile (1.6 km) in 39.4 seconds, setting a new land speed record at 91.3 miles per hour (147.0 km/h). Convinced by this success, they took the car around the country, making the Ford brand known throughout the United States.
1968
James “Jim” Clark, Jr OBE was a British Formula One racing driver from Scotland, who won two World Championships, in 1963 and 1965. Clark was a versatile driver who competed in sports cars, touring cars and in the Indianapolis 500, which he won in 1965. He was particularly associated with the Lotus marque. He was killed in a Formula Two motor racing accident in Hockenheim, Germany in 1968. At the time of his death, he had won more Grand Prix races (25) and
achieved more Grand Prix pole positions (33) than any other driver. The Times recently placed Clark at the top of a list of the greatest Formula One drivers. On 7 April 1968, Clark died in a racing accident at the Hockenheimring, in Germany. He was originally slated to drive in the BOAC 1000 km sportscar race at Brands Hatch, but instead chose to drive in the Deutschland Trophäe, a Formula Two race, for Lotus at the Hockenheimring, primarily due to contractual obligations with Firestone. Although the race has sometimes been characterized as a “minor race meeting” the entry list was impressive with top-running Matras for the French drivers Jean-Pierre Beltoise and Henri Pescarolo, Tecnos for Carlo Faceitti and Clay Regazoni, Team Brabhams for Derek Bell and Piers Courage, a Ferrari for Chris Amon and McLarens for Graeme Lawrence and Robin Widdows. Team Lotus drivers Graham Hill and
Clark were in Gold Leaf Team Lotuses. The event was run in two heats. On the fifth lap of the first heat, Clark’s Lotus 48 veered off the track and crashed into the trees. He suffered a broken neck and skull fracture, and died before reaching the hospital. The cause of the crash was never definitively identified, but investigators concluded it was most likely due to a deflating rear tyre. Clark’s death affected the racing community terribly, with fellow Formula One drivers and close friends Graham Hill, Jackie Stewart, Dan Gurney, John Surtees, Chris Amon and Jack Brabham all being personally affected by the tragedy.
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