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Showing posts from August, 2021

HIS: This Day in History: 2016 – Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff is impeached and removed from office.

HIS: This Day in History: 2016 – Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff is impeached and removed from office. Dilma Vana Rousseff (Brazilian Portuguese: born 14 December 1947) is a Brazilian economist and politician who served as the 36th president of Brazil, holding the position from 2011 until her impeachment and removal from office on 31 August 2016. She is the first woman to have held the Brazilian presidency and had previously served as chief of staff to former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from 2005 to 2010.  The daughter of a Bulgarian immigrant, Rousseff was raised in an upper middle class household in Belo Horizonte. She became a socialist in her youth and after the 1964 coup d'état joined left-wing and Marxist urban guerrilla groups that fought against the military dictatorship. Rousseff was captured, tortured, and jailed from 1970 to 1972. After her release, Rousseff rebuilt her life in Porto Alegre with Carlos Araújo, who was her husband for 30 years. They both hel

HIS: This Day in History: 1918 – Fanni Kaplan shoots and seriously injures Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, which along with the assassination of Bolshevik senior official Moisei Uritsky days earlier, prompts the decree for Red Terror.

 HIS: This Day in History: 1918 – Fanni Kaplan shoots and seriously injures Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, which along with the assassination of Bolshevik senior official Moisei Uritsky days earlier, prompts the decree for Red Terror. Fanny Efimovna Kaplan (February 10, 1890 – September 3, 1918) was a Russian Jewish woman, Socialist-Revolutionary, and early Soviet dissident. She was convicted of attempting to assassinate Vladimir Lenin and was executed by the Cheka in 1918. As a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, Kaplan viewed Lenin as a "traitor to the revolution" when the Bolsheviks enacted one-party rule and banned her party. On August 30, 1918, she approached Lenin, who was leaving a Moscow factory, and fired three shots, which badly injured him. Interrogated by the Cheka, she refused to name any accomplices and was executed. The Kaplan attempt and the Moisei Uritsky assassination was used by the government of Soviet Russia for the reinstatement of the death

HIS: This Day in History: 1963 – March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom: Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gives his I Have a Dream speech.

 HIS: This Day in History: 1963 – March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom: Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gives his I Have a Dream speech. "I Have a Dream" is a public speech that was delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in which he called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States. Delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the speech was a defining moment of the civil rights movement and among the most iconic speeches in American history. Beginning with a reference to the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared millions of slaves free in 1863, King said "one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free". Toward the end of the speech, King departed from his prepared text for a partly improvised peroration on the theme "I have a dream", prompted by Maha

HIS: This Day in History: 1986 – Usain Bolt, Jamaican sprinter is born in Sherwood Content, Jamaica.

HIS: This Day in History: 1986 – Usain Bolt, Jamaican sprinter is born in Sherwood Content, Jamaica. Usain St. Leo Bolt , OJ, CD, OLY (born 21 August 1986) is a Jamaican retired sprinter, widely considered to be the greatest sprinter of all time. He is the world record holder of 100 metres, 200 metres and 4 × 100 metres relay. An eight-time Olympic gold medallist, Bolt is the only sprinter to win Olympic 100 m and 200 m titles at three consecutive Olympics (2008, 2012 and 2016). He also won two 4 × 100 relay gold medals. He gained worldwide fame for his double sprint victory in world record times at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which made him the first person to hold both records since fully automatic time became mandatory. An eleven-time World Champion, he won consecutive World Championship 100 m, 200 m and 4 × 100 metres relay gold medals from 2009 to 2015, with the exception of a 100 m false start in 2011. He is the most successful male athlete of the World Championships. Bolt is the

HIS: This Day in History: 1940 – Leon Trotsky, Russian theorist, politician and founder of the Red Army was assassinated in Mexico City by Ramon Mercader, a Soviet NKVD agent.

 HIS: This Day in History: 1940 – Leon Trotsky, Russian theorist, politician and founder of the Red Army was assassinated in Mexico City by Ramon Mercader, a Soviet NKVD agent. Lev Davidovich Bronstein (7 November 1879 – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky was a Ukrainian-Russian Marxist revolutionary, political theorist and politician. Ideologically a communist, he developed a variant of Marxism which has become known as Trotskyism. Born to a wealthy Ukrainian-Jewish family in Yanovka (present-day Bereslavka in Ukraine), Trotsky embraced Marxism after moving to Nikolayev in 1896. In 1898 Tsarist authorities arrested him for revolutionary activities and subsequently exiled him to Siberia. He escaped from Siberia in 1902 and moved to London, where he befriended Vladimir Lenin. In 1903, he sided with Julius Martov's Mensheviks against Lenin's Bolsheviks during the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party's initial organisational split. Trotsky helped organize the fa

HIS: This Day in History: 1944 – Dumbarton Oaks Conference, prelude to the United Nations, begins.

HIS: This Day in History: 1944 – Dumbarton Oaks Conference, prelude to the United Nations, begins. The Dumbarton Oaks Conference or, more formally, the Washington Conversations on International Peace and Security Organization was an international conference at which proposals for the establishment of a "general international organization", which was to become the United Nations, were formulated and negotiated. The conference was led by the Big Four – the United States, the United Kingdom, the USSR and the Republic of China – with delegates from other nations participating in the consideration and formulation of these principles. It was held at Dumbarton Oaks, in Washington, D.C., U.S., from August 21, 1944, to October 7, 1944.  The Dumbarton Oaks Conference constituted the first important step taken to carry out paragraph 4 of the Moscow Declaration of 1943, which recognized the need for a postwar international organization to succeed the League of Nations. At the conferenc

HIS: This Day in History: 1960 – Senegal breaks from the Mali Federation, declaring its independence.

HIS: This Day in History: 1960 – Senegal breaks from the Mali Federation, declaring its independence. Senegal, officially the Republic of Senegal is a country in West Africa. Senegal is bordered by Mauritania in the north, Mali to the east, Guinea to the southeast, and Guinea-Bissau to the southwest. Senegal nearly surrounds The Gambia, a country occupying a narrow sliver of land along the banks of the Gambia River, which separates Senegal's southern region of Casamance from the rest of the country. Senegal also shares a maritime border with Cape Verde. Senegal's economic and political capital is Dakar.   It is a unitary presidential republic and is the westernmost country in the mainland of the Old World, or Afro-Eurasia. It owes its name to the Senegal River, which borders it to the east and north. Senegal covers a land area of almost 197,000 square kilometres (76,000 sq mi) and has a population of around 16 million. The state was formed as part of the independence of French

HIS: This Day in History: 1977 – Steve Biko is arrested at a police roadblock under the Terrorism Act No. 83 of 1967 in King William's Town, South Africa.

HIS: This Day in History: 1977 – Steve Biko is arrested at a police roadblock under the Terrorism Act No. 83 of 1967 in King William's Town, South Africa. He later dies from injuries sustained during this arrest bringing attention to South Africa's apartheid policies. Bantu Stephen Biko (18 December 1946 – 12 September 1977) was a South African anti-apartheid activist. Ideologically an African nationalist and African socialist, he was at the forefront of a grassroots anti-apartheid campaign known as the Black Consciousness Movement during the late 1960s and 1970s. His ideas were articulated in a series of articles published under the pseudonym Frank Talk. Raised in a poor Xhosa family, Biko grew up in Ginsberg township in the Eastern Cape. In 1966, he began studying medicine at the University of Natal, where he joined the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). Strongly opposed to the apartheid system of racial segregation and white-minority rule in South Africa, Biko

HIS: This Day in History: 1945 – Sukarno takes office as the first president of Indonesia, following the country's declaration of independence the previous day.

HIS: This Day in History: 1945 – Sukarno takes office as the first president of Indonesia, following the country's declaration of independence the previous day. Sukarno , born Kusno Sosrodihardjo, Javanese: (6 June 1901 – 21 June 1970) was an Indonesian statesman, politician, nationalist and revolutionary who was the first president of Indonesia, serving from 1945 to 1967.   Sukarno was the leader of the Indonesian struggle for independence from the Dutch colonialists. He was a prominent leader of Indonesia's nationalist movement during the colonial period and spent over a decade under Dutch detention until released by the invading Japanese forces in World War II. Sukarno and his fellow nationalists collaborated to garner support for the Japanese war effort from the population, in exchange for Japanese aid in spreading nationalist ideas. Upon Japanese surrender, Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta declared Indonesian independence on 17 August 1945, and Sukarno was appointed as its presi

HIS: This Day in History: 1947 – Pakistan gains Independence from the British Empire.

HIS: This Day in History: 1947 – Pakistan gains Independence from the British Empire. Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population exceeding 225.2 million, and has the world's second-largest Muslim population. Pakistan is the 33rd-largest country by area, spanning 881,913 square kilometres (340,509 square miles). It has a 1,046-kilometre (650-mile) coastline along the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman in the south, and is bordered by India to the east, Afghanistan to the west, Iran to the southwest, and China to the northeast. It is separated narrowly from Tajikistan by Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor in the north, and also shares a maritime border with Oman.   Pakistan is the site of several ancient cultures, including the 8,500-year-old Neolithic site of Mehrgarh in Balochistan, and the Indus Valley Civilisation of the Bronze Age, the most extensive of the civilisations of the

HIS: This Day in History: 1941 – Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt sign the Atlantic Charter of war stating post-world war II aims.

HIS: This Day in History: 1941 – Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt sign the Atlantic Charter of war stating post-world war II aims. The Atlantic Charter was a statement issued on 14 August 1941 that set out American and British goals for the world after the end of World War II. The joint statement, later dubbed the Atlantic Charter, outlined the aims of the United States and the United Kingdom for the postwar world as follows: no territorial aggrandizement, no territorial changes made against the wishes of the people (self-determination), restoration of self-government to those deprived of it, reduction of trade restrictions, global co-operation to secure better economic and social conditions for all, freedom from fear and want, freedom of the seas, and abandonment of the use of force, and disarmament of aggressor nations. The charter's adherents signed the Declaration by United Nations on 1 January 1942, which was the basis for the modern United Nations. The charter ins