September 27

Samuel Adams (the person, not the beer) born (1722); Rosetta Stone is first deciphered (1822); Production of Ford Model T begins (1908); HBD Gwyneth Paltrow (1972); HBD rapper Lil Wayne (1982); RIP Playboy founder Hugh Hefner (2017).

September 26

Thomas Jefferson is appointed the first US Secretary of State (1789); Albert Einstein publishes paper on the special theory of relativity (1905); Last recorded album by The Beatles, Abbey Road, is released (1969); HBD Serena Williams (1981); RIP Paul Newman (2008).

September 25

US Congress passes the Bill of Rights (1789); Superman actor Christopher Reeve born (1952); The Little Rock Nine integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas (1957); HBD Will Smith (1968); HBD Catherine Zeta-Jones (1969).

September 24

Author F. Scott Fitzgerald born (1896); Devils Tower is proclaimed the first American national monument (1906); Muppets creator Jim Henson born (1936); Honda Motor company founded (1948); RIP Dr. Seuss (1991).

Victoria Claflin Woodhull

later Victoria Woodhull Martin (September 23, 1838 – June 9, 1927), was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement. In 1872, she ran for President of the United States. While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for President of the United States, some have questioned that priority given issues with the legality of her run. They disagree with classifying it as a true candidacy because she was younger than the constitutionally mandated age of 35. (Woodhull's 35th birthday was in September 1873, seven months after the March inauguration). However, election coverage by contemporary newspapers does not suggest age was a significant issue; this may, however, be due to the fact that no one took the candidacy seriously.

An activist for women's rights and labor reforms, Woodhull was also an advocate of "free love", by which she meant the freedom to marry, divorce and bear children without social restriction or government interference.[2] "They cannot roll back the rising tide of reform," she often said. "The world moves."[3]
Woodhull twice went from rags to riches, her first fortune being made on the road as a magnetic healer[4] before she joined the spiritualist movement in the 1870s.[5] Authorship of many of her articles is disputed (many of her speeches on these topics were collaborations between Woodhull, her backers, and her second husband, Colonel James Blood[6]). However, despite her ethical problems, her role as a representative of these movements was powerful. Together with her sister, Tennessee Claflin, she was the first woman to operate a brokerage firm on Wall Street, making a second, and more reputable fortune.[7] They were among the first women to found a newspaper in the United States, Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly, which began publication in 1870.[8]
Woodhull was politically active in the early 1870s, when she was nominated as the first woman candidate for the United States presidency. Woodhull was the candidate in 1872 from the Equal Rights Party, supporting women's suffrage and equal rights; her running mate was black abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass. A check on her activities occurred when she was arrested on obscenity charges a few days before the election. Her paper had published an account of the alleged adulterous affair between the prominent minister Henry Ward Beecher and Elizabeth Tilton which had rather more detail than was considered proper at the time. However, it all added to the sensational coverage of her candidacy.[9]

She was born Victoria California Claflin, the seventh of ten children (six of whom survived to maturity),[10] in the rural frontier town of Homer, Licking County, Ohio. Her mother, Roxanna "Roxy"[10] Hummel Claflin, was illegitimate and illiterate.[11] She had become a follower of the Austrian mystic Franz Mesmer and the new spiritualist movement.[12] Her father, Reuben "Old Buck"[10] Buckman Claflin,[13][14] was a con man and snake oil salesman.[10] He came from an impoverished branch of the Massachusetts-based Scots-American Claflin family, semi-distant cousins to Massachusetts Governor William Claflin.[14]
Woodhull was whipped by her father, according to biographer Theodore Tilton.[15] Biographer Barbara Goldsmith claimed she was also starved and sexually abused by her father when still very young.[16] She based her incest claim on a statement in Theodore Tilton's biography: "But the parents, as if not unwilling to be rid of a daughter whose sorrow was ripening her into a woman before her time, were delighted at the unexpected offer."[17][18] Biographer Myra MacPherson disputes Goldsmith's claim that "Vickie often intimated that he sexually abused her" as well as the accuracy of Goldsmith's saying that "Years later, Vickie would say that Buck made her 'a woman before my time.'"[16] Macpherson wrote, "Not only did Victoria not say this, there was no 'often' involved, nor was it about incest."[19]
Woodhull believed in spiritualism – she referred to "Banquo's Ghost" from Shakespeare's Macbeth – because it gave her belief in a better life. She said that she was guided in 1868 by Demosthenes to what symbolism to use supporting her theories of Free Love.[20]
As they grew older, Victoria became close to her sister Tennessee Celeste Claflin (called Tennie), seven years her junior and the last child born to the family. As adults, they collaborated in founding a stock brokerage and newspaper in New York City.[10]
By age 11, Woodhull had only three years of formal education, but her teachers found her to be extremely intelligent. She was forced to leave school and home with her family when her father, after having "insured it heavily,"[4] burned the family's rotting gristmill. When he tried to get compensated by insurance, his arson and fraud were discovered; he was run off by a group of town vigilantes.[4] The town held a "benefit" to raise funds to pay for the rest of the family's departure from Ohio.[4]

September 23

American civil rights activist Victoria Woodhull born (1838); Nintendo is founded (1889); Musician Ray Charles is born (1930); RIP psychiatrist Sigmund Freud (1939); 3000+ people die in Haiti due to Hurricane Jeanne (2004).

September 20

American author Upton Sinclair born (1878); Legendary basketball coach Red Auerbach born (1917); HBD actress Sophia Loren (1934); Billie Jean King beats Bobby Riggs in Battle of the Sexes tennis match (1973); Hurricane Maria makes landfall in Puerto Rico, resulting in 3,000 deaths and $90B in damage (2017).

Dame Lesley Lawson

 (née Hornby; born 19 September 1949) is an English model, actress, and singer widely known by the nickname Twiggy. She was a British cultural icon and a prominent teenage model in swinging sixties London.

Twiggy was initially known for her thin build (thus her nickname) and the androgynous appearance considered to result from her big eyes, long eyelashes, and short hair.[1][2] She was named "The Face of 1966" by the Daily Express[3] and voted British Woman of the Year.[4] By 1967, she had modelled in France, Japan, and the US, and had landed on the covers of Vogue and The Tatler. Her fame had spread worldwide.[4] After modelling, Twiggy enjoyed a successful career as a screen, stage, and television actress. Her role in The Boy Friend (1971) brought her two Golden Globe Awards. In 1983 she made her Broadway debut in the musical, My One and Only, for which she earned a Tony nomination for Best Actress in a Musical. She later hosted her own series Twiggy's People, in which she interviewed celebrities; she also appeared as a judge on the reality show America's Next Top Model. Her 1998 autobiography Twiggy in Black and White entered the best-seller lists.[3] Since 2005, she has modelled for Marks and Spencer, most recently to promote their recent rebranding, appearing in television advertisements and print media, alongside Myleene Klass, Erin O'Connor, Lily Cole, and others.[5] In 2012, she worked alongside Marks & Spencer's designers to launch an exclusive clothing collection for the M&S Woman range.[6]

Lesley Hornby was born on 19 September 1949 and raised in Neasden (then in Middlesex, now a suburb of north-west London). She was the third daughter of Nellie Lydia (née Reeman), a factory worker for a printing firm, and William Norman Hornby, a master carpenter and joiner from Lancashire:[7] Their first daughter, Shirley, had been born fifteen years earlier; their second, Vivien, had been born seven years earlier.[5] According to Twiggy, her maternal grandfather was Jewish.[8] However, her mother's genealogy, which was examined on the series Who Do You Think You Are? in 2014, does not contain Jewish ancestry.[9]
Twiggy's mother taught her to sew from an early age. She used this skill to make her own clothing.[10] She attended the Brondesbury and Kilburn High School. Twiggy's great-great-grandmother, Grace Meadows, died in a stampede of excitable shoppers at a bargain sale at Messrs McIllroys store on Mare Street, in Hackney, in 1897. This event made the news at the time.[11]

Twiggy married American actor Michael Witney in 1977. Their daughter, Carly, was born in 1978.[12] They remained married until his death in 1983 from a heart attack.[13]
She met Leigh Lawson in 1984.[3] In 1988, they worked on the film Madame Sousatzka and married that year in Sag Harbor, New York (on Long Island). Lawson adopted Twiggy's daughter, who took his surname. The couple resides in London[14] and owns a home in Southwold, Suffolk.[15]
On Twiggy's official website, she states she is a supporter of breast cancer research, animal welfare, and anti-fur campaigns.[3] She was one of the celebrities, including Tom Hiddleston, Jo Brand, E. L. James, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Rachel Riley, to design and sign her own card for the UK-based charity Thomas Coram Foundation for Children. The campaign was launched by crafting company Stampin' Up! UK, and the cards were auctioned off on eBay during May 2014.[16]

1965–1967Edit

Twiggy is best remembered as one of the first international supermodels and a fashion icon of the 1960s.[17] Her greatest influence is Jean Shrimpton,[18][19][20] whom Twiggy considers to be the world's first supermodel.[19] She has said she based her "look" on Pattie Boyd.[21] Twiggy herself has been described as the successor to Shrimpton.[1][22][23][24]
In January 1966, aged 16, she had her hair coloured and cut short in London at Leonard of Mayfair,[25] owned by celebrity hairdresser Leonard.[26] The hair stylist was looking for models on whom to try out his new crop haircut and he styled her hair in preparation for a few test head shots.[27] A professional photographer Barry Lategan took several photos for Leonard, which the hairdresser hung in his salon. Deirdre McSharry, a fashion journalist from the Daily Express, saw the images and asked to meet the young girl.[28]
McSharry arranged to have more photos taken. A few weeks later the publication featured an article and images of Hornby, declaring her "The Face of '66".[17][29] In it, the copy read: "The Cockney kid with a face to launch a thousand shapes... and she's only 16".[30]
Hornby's career quickly took off.[29] She was short for a model at 5'6" (167 cm), weighed eight stone (51 kg; 112 lbs) and had a 31-23-32 figure, "with a new kind of streamlined, androgynous sex appeal"[31] Her hairdresser boyfriend, Nigel Davies, became her manager, changed his name to Justin de Villeneuve, and persuaded her to change her name to Twiggy (from "Twigs", her childhood nickname).[32] De Villeneuve credits himself for Twiggy's discovery and her modelling success, and his version of events is often quoted in other biographies. In her 1998 book Twiggy In Black and White, she says that she met Justin through his brother, when she worked as a Saturday girl at a hairdressers in London. This is where she began to see the models in the magazines, but never thought she could do something like that. Jean Shrimpton was her idol so she grew her hair long to look like her, before having to have it cut off for her headshots by Barry Lategan.[27][33] Ten years her senior, De Villeneuve managed her lucrative career for seven years, overseeing her finances and enterprises during her heyday as a model.
Twiggy was soon seen in all the leading fashion magazines, commanding fees of £80 an hour, bringing out her own line of clothes called "Twiggy Dresses" in 1967,[34] and taking the fashion world by storm.[35] "I hated what I looked like," she said once, "so I thought everyone had gone stark raving mad."[29] Twiggy's look centred on three qualities: her stick-thin figure, a boyishly short haircut[5] and strikingly dark eyelashes.[36] Describing how she obtained her prominent eyelashes, now known as Twiggy's, she said, "Back then I was layering three pairs of false eyelashes over my own and would paint extra 'twigs' on my skin underneath."[37]

One month after the Daily Express article, Twiggy posed for her first shoot for Vogue. A year later, she had appeared in 13 separate fashion shoots in international Vogue editions.[citation needed]

1967–1970

Twiggy arrived in New York in March 1967 at Kennedy Airport, an event covered by the press.[38] The New Yorker,  Life and Newsweek reported on the Twiggy "phenomenon" in 1967, with the New Yorker devoting nearly 100 pages to the subject."[27][39] That year she became an international sensation, modelling in France, Japan and America,[4] and landing the cover of Paris Vogue in May,[40] the cover of US Vogue three times, in April, July and November, and the cover of British Vogue in October.[36] In 1967, an editorial on page 63 of the edition of 15 March of Vogue described her as an "extravaganza that makes the look of the sixties" Twiggy was, according to feminist critic Linda Delibero, "the most visible commodity Britain produced that year, and [America] generously complied with the hype, scarfing up skinny little Twiggy pens, Twiggy lunch boxes, Twiggy lashes, an assortment of Twiggy-endorsed cosmetics".[41]
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's 2009 catalogue for its exhibition The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion stated:

Twiggy's adolescent physique was the perfect frame for the androgynous styles that began to emerge in the 1960s. The trend was manifested in a number of templates: sweet A-line dresses with collars and neckties, suits and dresses that took their details from military uniforms, or, in the case of Yves Saint Laurent, an explicit transposition of the male tuxedo to women. Simultaneously, under the rubric of "unisex", designs that were minimalistic, including Nehru suits and space-agey jumpsuits, were proposed by designers such as Pierre Cardin and Andre Courreges, and, most famously in the United States, by Rudi Gernreich.[42]

Twiggy has been photographed by such noted photographers as Cecil Beaton, Richard Avedon, Melvin Sokolsky, Ronald Traeger, Bert Stern, Norman Parkinson, Annie Leibovitz and Steven Meisel.[35]

Twiggy and the magazines featuring her image polarised critics from the start. Her boyishly thin image was, and still is, criticised promoting an "unhealthy" body ideal for women.[43][44] "Twiggy came along at a time when teen-age spending power was never greater," said Su Dalgleish, fashion correspondent for the Daily Mail. "With that underdeveloped, boyish figure, she is an idol to the 14- and 15-year-old kids. She makes virtue of all the terrible things of gawky, miserable adolescence."[45] At the height of her fame, Mark Cohen, president of Leeds Women's shop, had an even harsher view: "Her legs remind me of two painted worms." Yet Twiggy had her supporters. Diana Vreeland of Vogue stated, "She's no flash in the pan. She is the mini-girl in the mini-era. She's delicious looking."[45] In recent years, Twiggy has spoken out against the trend of waif-thin models, explaining that her own thin weight as a teenager was natural: "I was very skinny, but that was just my natural build. I always ate sensibly – being thin was in my genes."[46]
On 10 December 1969, despite being 20 years old, she was selected as the subject for one of the first editions produced by Thames Television of the television series This Is Your Life.[47]

September 19

President James Garfield dies from gunshot wounds (1881); HBD British cultural icon and model Twiggy (1949); First-ever underground nuclear test takes place in Nevada (1957); HBD Jimmy Fallon (1974); Deepwater Horizon oil spill is sealed after 5-month oil leak (2010).

September 18

Royal Opera House opens in London (1809); HBD New York Times (1851); Margaret Chase Smith becomes first woman elected to US Senate (1948); RIP Jimi Hendrix (1970); Cyclist Lance Armstrong born (1971).

Christian Louis Langepacifist (1869)

William Carlos Williamspoet and physician (1883)

Warren Earl Burgerfifteenth Chief Justice of the United States (1907)

Hank Williamscountry singer (1923)

Anne Bancroftactress (1931)

David H. Souter

1939—, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1990—2009), born in Melrose, Mass.

A graduate of the Harvard Law School, he served as New Hampshire's attorney general (1976–78), and on the state's superior court (1978–83) before being named to the New Hampshire Supreme Court (1983–90). After serving only a short time as a judge on the federal First Circuit Court of Appeals (1990), he was named by President George H. W. Bush in July, 1990, to the U.S. Supreme Court, replacing William Brennan. Although regarded initially as a conservative, Souter emerged by the mid-1990s as key to a moderate bloc that resisted pressures from the political right to undo Court precedents of the 1960s and 70s.

September 17

US Constitution is signed (1787); Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery (1849); Actress Anne Bancroft born (1931); Camp David Accords signed providing framework for Egypt-Israel peace treaty (1978); Vanessa Williams is first African-American to be crowned Miss America (1983).

Christian Louis Lange pacifist (1869)

William Carlos Williams poet and physician (1883)

Warren Earl Burger fifteenth Chief Justice of the United States (1907)

Hank Williams country singer (1923)

Anne Bancroft actress (1931)

Nadia Boulanger

Pronunciation: [nädyä´ bOOläNzhA´]
1887–1979, French conductor and musician, born in Paris.

Boulanger was considered an outstanding teacher of composition. She studied at the Paris Conservatory, where in 1945 she became professor. Boulanger taught at the École normale de Musique, Paris, and (from 1921) at the American Conservatory, Fontainebleau, becoming its director in 1950. As the teacher of such American composers as Walter Piston, Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Roy Harris, and Marc Blitzstein, she has profoundly influenced American music. She often visited the United States, as teacher, lecturer, organist, and guest conductor of the Boston Symphony (1938) and the New York Philharmonic (1939). She was noted for her conducting of choral works. Boulanger's sister Lily (1893–1918) was a distinguished composer.

September 16

Pilgrims depart from England on the Mayflower (1620); Actress Lauren Bacall born (1924); American musician BB King born (1925); Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega sentenced in US to 40 years for drug trafficking (1992).

James Jerome Hill railroad builder (1838)

Albrecht Kossel physiologist (1853)

Jean Arp sculptor, painter (1887)

Allen Funt radio and television producer (1914)

Lauren Bacall actress (1924)

Charlie Byrd jazz guitarist (1925)

James Fenimore Cooper

1789–1851, American novelist, born in Burlington, N.J.

He was the first important American writer to draw on the subjects and landscape of his native land in order to create a vivid myth of frontier life.

In 1790 Cooper's family moved to Cooperstown, N.Y., a frontier settlement founded by his father near Otsego Lake. The landscape and history of the area was to greatly influence many of his most famous works. Sent to Yale at 13, Cooper was dismissed for a disciplinary reason in his third year. Soon after he went to sea; commissioned as a U.S. midshipman, he served until 1811, at which time he married and settled into life as a gentleman farmer.

September 14

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov physiologist (1849)

Alice Stone Blackwell feminist (1857)

Charles Dana Gibson illustrator (1867)

Margaret Sanger feminist (1879)

Constance Baker Motley lawyer and jurist (1921)

Amy Winehouse singer, songwriter (1983)

September 13

Francis Scott Key writes America’s national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner (1814); Author Roald Dahl born (1916); Israel and Palestine sign peace accord (1993); RIP rapper Tupac Shakur (1996); RIP Ann Richards, educator and former governor of Texas (2006).

Milton Hershey chocolatier, philanthropist (1857)

John J. Pershing army officer (1860)

Arnold Schoenberg composer (1874)

Sherwood Anderson novelist (1876)

J. B. Priestley author (1894)

Claudette Colbert movie actress (1903)

Bill Monroe bluegrass musician (1911)

Roald Dahl writer (1916)

Walter Reed

1851–1902, American army surgeon, born in Gloucester co., Va.

In 1900 he was sent to Havana as head of an army commission to investigate an outbreak of yellow fever among American soldiers. Following the earlier suggestion by C. J. Finlay that the disease was transmitted by a mosquito vector rather than by direct contact, Reed and his companions used human volunteers under controlled experimental conditions to prove this conclusively. In 1901 they published their findings that yellow fever was caused by a virus borne by the Stegomyia fasciata mosquito (later designated as Aëdes aegypti).

Bibliography:

See studies by H. A. Kelly (3d ed. 1923), A. E. Truby (1943), and L. N. Wood (1943).
Who2. Copyright © 1998-2006 by Who2?, LLC. All rights reserved.

September 12

Henry Hudson begins exploration of what will become known as the Hudson River (1609); Iconic track and field athlete Jesse Owens born (1913); Singer Barry White born (1944); Mae Jemison becomes first African-American woman in space (1992); RIP Johnny Cash (2003).

Ferdinand Marcos

1917–1989 , Philippine political leader.

A lawyer and aide to Manuel Roxas (1946–47), he was elected to congress in 1949, serving in the House of Representatives (1949–59) and Senate (1959–65). Formerly a Liberal, he broke with the party in 1965 and won the presidential election the same year as a nominee of the Nationalist party, defeating (1965) Diosdado Macapagal.

As president, Marcos maintained close ties with the United States. He launched (Aug., 1969) major military campaigns against Communist insurgents (see Hukbalahap) and in Mindanao against Moro rebels (Muslims). He was reelected in 1969, and his second term was marked by increasing civil strife. In 1972, following a series of bombings in Manila, Marcos warned of imminent Communist takeover and declared martial law. In 1973, he assumed virtual dictatorial control with a new constitution.

His regime's increasing isolation, fed by widespread corruption and the extravagance of his wife, Imelda, culminated with the assassination of Benigno Aquino (1983) on his return to the country. The opposition united behind Aquino's widow, Corazon Aquino, who ran against Marcos in the 1986 election. Marcos was declared the winner but was widely suspected of electoral fraud. Protests drove Marcos into exile, and Aquino became president. After substantial evidence of Marcos's corruption emerged, he and his wife were indicted for embezzlement in the United States. Marcos died in Hawaii.
After her husband's death Imelda Marcos was found innocent (1990) of embezzlement by a U.S. court, but she was convicted of graft in a trial in the Philippines in 1993.
Bibliography:
See R. P. Guzman and M. A. Reforma, Government and Politics in the Philippines (1988); R. L. Youngblood, Marcos against the Church (1990).
Who2. Copyright © 1998-2006 by Who2?, LLC. All rights reserved.

September 11

Legendary college football coach Bear Bryant born (1913); Chilean President Salvador Allende commits suicide in midst of coup d'état (1973); Pete Rose breaks baseball’s all-time hits record (1985); Coordinated terrorist attacks in US kill 2,996, injure over 6,000 others (2001); US Embassy in Benghazi, Libya attacked resulting in death of 4 Americans (2012).

O. Henry short-story writer (1862)

D. H. Lawrence author (1885)

Paul (Bear) Bryant football coach (1913)

Tom Landry Football (1924)

Brian De Palma director (1940)

Sir John Soane

1753–1837, English architect.

After study with George Dance, the younger, he won a fellowship to Rome. He toured Italy and returned in 1780 to begin his practice in England. In 1788 he was chosen to succeed Sir Robert Taylor as architect for the Bank of England, his largest and most important work. Among other works are the Dulwich Picture Gallery, Pitzhanger Manor at Ealing, and his own residence at Lincoln's Inn Fields, now known as the Soane Museum, which he bequeathed as a museum for his collections. He devoted his later years to teaching architecture and delivering lectures. Although one of the leaders of the classic revival in England, he went beyond the mere imitation of classical models generally prevalent and evolved a highly individual style through an imaginative and flexible use of Greek and Roman motifs. He became a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1802 and was knighted in 1831.

See studies by John Summerson (1952), Pierre Du Prey (2 vol., 1977-82), and Dorothy Stroud (1984).
Who2. Copyright © 1998-2006 by Who2?, LLC. All rights reserved.

September 10

Sewing machine is invented (1846); Golfing legend Arnold Palmer born (1929); RIP Jane Wyman, actress and first wife of President Reagan (2007); Large Hadron Collider is tested for 1st time (2008); Hurricane Irma makes landfall in Florida, is responsible for 134 deaths and $65B in damage (2017).

William Torrey Harris educator and philosopher (1835)

Elsa Schiaparelli fashion designer (1890)

Arnold Palmer golfer (1929)

Roger Maris baseball player (1934)

Stephen Jay Gould paleontologist and science writer (1941)

Amy Irving actress (1953)

Colin Firth actor (1960)

Randy Johnson baseball player (1963)

September 9

United States of America officially gets its name (1776); HBD actor Hugh Grant (1960); HBD actor Adam Sandler (1966); China founding father Mao Zedong dies (1976); Queen Elizabeth II becomes longest reigning monarch of the UK at 63+ years with crown (2015).

Luigi Galvani physician (1737)

Joseph Leidy scientist (1823)

Leo Tolstoy Russian novelist and philosopher (1828)

Otis Redding singer, songwriter (1941)

Michael Keaton actor (1951)

Hugh Grant actor (1960)

Adam Sandler comedian, musician, actor (1966)

September 6

Magellan’s ship Victoria completes circumnavigation of globe (1522); Social work pioneer Jane Addams born (1860); Munich massacre takes places at Munich Olympic Games; 11 Israeli athletes killed by terrorist group (1972); HBD Idris Elba (1972); RIP Three Tenors member Luciano Pavarotti (2007).

Louis XIV

1638–1715, king of France (1643–1715), son and successor of King Louis XIII.

Early Reign

After his father's death his mother, Anne of Austria, was regent for Louis, but the real power was wielded by Anne's adviser, Cardinal Mazarin. Louis did not take over the government until Mazarin's death (1661). By then France was economically exhausted by the Thirty Years War, by the Fronde, and by fiscal abuses. But the centralizing policies of Richelieu and Mazarin had prepared the ground for Louis, under whom absolute monarchy, based on the theory of divine right, reached its height.

Today's Birthdays

Early Reign

After his father's death his mother, Anne of Austria, was regent for Louis, but the real power was wielded by Anne's adviser, Cardinal Mazarin. Louis did not take over the government until Mazarin's death (1661). By then France was economically exhausted by the Thirty Years War, by the Fronde, and by fiscal abuses. But the centralizing policies of Richelieu and Mazarin had prepared the ground for Louis, under whom absolute monarchy, based on the theory of divine right, reached its height.

Domestic Policy
Louis's reign can be characterized by the remark attributed to him, "L'état, c'est moi" [I am the state]. Louis continued the nobility's exemption from taxes but forced its members into financial dependence on the crown, thus creating a court nobility occupied with ceremonial etiquette and petty intrigues. The provincial nobles also lost political power. Louis used the bourgeoisie to build his centralized bureaucracy. He curtailed local authorities and created specialized ministries, filled by professionals responsible to him. Under his minister Jean Baptiste Colbert industry and commerce expanded on mercantilist principles and a navy was developed. The war minister, the marquis de Louvois, established the foundations of French military greatness.
Religious Affairs
Louis increasingly imposed religious uniformity. His persecution of the Huguenots in the 1680s culminated (1685) in the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (see Nantes, Edict of). The resultant exodus of Protestants, many of whom were merchants and skilled artisans, intensified the kingdom's economic decline and further alienated the Protestant powers. Louis also suppressed Jansenism (see under Jansen, Cornelis). Despite this concern with religious orthodoxy, he favored Gallicanism, and controversy with the popes approached schism (1673-93) before Louis abandoned this position.
Foreign Policy
Louis strove vigorously for supremacy in foreign affairs. His marriage (1660) to the Spanish princess Marie Thérèse served as a pretext for the War of Devolution (1667-68), which netted him part of Flanders, although the Dutch then moved against him with the Triple Alliance of 1668. Relations with the Dutch were exacerbated by commercial rivalry and in 1672 Louis, determined to crush Holland, began the third of the Dutch Wars, which depleted his treasury.
For the next ten years the king limited his policies to diplomacy. He set up "chambers of reunion" to unearth legal grounds for claims on a number of cities, which Louis promptly annexed. Fear of Louis's rapacity resulted in a European coalition (see Augsburg, League of; Grand Alliance, War of the), which confronted him when he attacked the Holy Roman Empire in 1688. This war ended with the Treaty of Ryswick (1697), through which Louis lost minor territories. Louis's last war, the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14), left France in debt and greatly weakened militarily; nevertheless, Louis's grandson retained the Spanish throne.
The Court
Although he had a series of mistresses, Louis XIV finally came under the influence of Mme de Maintenon, whom he married morganatically (1684) after the queen's death. A great supporter of the arts, Louis patronized the foremost writers and artists of his time, including Molière, Jean Racine, Jean de La Fontaine, and Charles Le Brun. The architect Jules Mansart supervised the building of the lavish palace of Versailles. Because of the brilliance of his court, Louis was called "Le Roi Soleil" [the Sun King] and "Le Grand Monarque." He was succeeded by his great-grandson, Louis XV.
Bibliography:
For contemporary sources see the incisive memoirs of the Cardinal de Retz; the extremely prejudiced but indispensable memoirs of the duc de Saint-Simon; and the letters of Mme de Sévigné, which brilliantly portray the social life of the time. See also biographies by J. B. Wolf (1968) and Philippe Erlanger (tr. 1970); studies by Pierre Goubert (1972), Olivier Bernier (1987), and Paul Sonnino, ed. (1990).
Who2. Copyright © 1998-2006 by Who2?, LLC. All rights reserved.

September 5

Jesse James outlaw (1847)

Mrs. H. H. A. Beach composer and pianist (1867)

Darryl F. Zanuck producer (1902)

Arthur Koestler writer (1905)

John Cage composer (1912)

Bob Newhart comedian (1929)

First Continental Congress convenes in Philadelphia (1774); HBD actress Raquel Welch (1940); Freddie Mercury born (1946); Voyager 1 is launched, is currently most distant man-made object from Earth (1977);  RIP Mother Teresa (1997).

Chateaubriand, François René, vicomte de

Chateaubriand, François René, vicomte de fräNswä´ rənā´ vēkôNt´ də shätōbrēäN´ [key], 1768–1848, French writer. Chateaubriand was a founder ofromanticism in French literature. Of noble birth, he grew up in his family's isolated castle of Combourg. In 1791 he visited the United States, supposedly to search for the Northwest Passage, although he apparently did not go beyond Niagara Falls. He returned to France but became an émigré and lived in England until 1800. There he published his first book, Essai historique, politique, et moral sur les révolutions(1797). The Genius of Christianity(1802, tr. 1856) made Chateaubriand the most important author of his time in France. Two tragic love stories included in this volume,  Atala  (1801) and René  (1802), exemplify the melancholy, exotic description of nature and the evocative language that became a trademark of romantic fiction. His other works include The Martyrs (1809, tr. 1812, 1859), which celebrated the victory of Christianity over paganism, and Les Aventures du dernier Abencérage (1826), a narrative of romance set in Spain. In 1803, Napoleon appointed Chateaubriand secretary of the legation to Rome and then minister to Valaise, but in 1804, upon the execution of the duc d' Enghien, he resigned and became a bitter anti-Bonapartist. Later he supported the Bourbons and became a peer (1815), ambassador to London (1822), and minister of foreign affairs (1823–24). In 1830 he abandoned political affairs and spent his final years with Mme Récamier composing his Memoires d'outre-tombe[memoirs from beyond the tomb] (1849–50). Chateaubriand's musical prose enriched the French language. Although his accounts of travel were plagiaristic and partly imaginary, they were rich and moving.
See his Travels in America (tr. by R. Switzer, 1968); his memoirs (ed. by R. Baldick, 1961).

Richard Wright

1908–60, American author.

A black born on a Mississippi plantation, Wright struggled through a difficult childhood and worked to educate himself. In the 1930s he joined the Federal Writers' Project in Chicago and wrote Uncle Tom's Children (1938), a collection of four novellas that deal with Southern racial problems. His novel Native Son (1940), which many consider Wright's most important work, concerns the life of Bigger Thomas, a victimized black struggling against the complicated political and social conditions of Chicago in the 1930s. In 1932, Wright joined the Communist party but later left it in disillusionment. After World War II, Wright moved to Paris. His other works include Twelve Million Black Voices (1941), a folk history of African-Americans; Black Boy (1945) and American Hunger (1977), two autobiographies; The Outsider (1953) and The Long Dream (1958), two novels; Black Power (1954), an account of his trip to the African Gold Coast; and Eight Men (1961), a collection of stories published posthumously.

See biographies by Constance Webb (1968) and Michel Fabre (tr. 1973); studies by Dan McCall (1969), Kenneth Kinnamon (1973), and David Ray and R. M. Farnsworth, ed. (1973).
Who2. Copyright © 1998-2006 by Who2?, LLC. All rights reserved.

September 4

Francois Rene Chateaubriand writer (1768)

Donald McKay shipbuilder (1810)

Anton Bruckner composer (1824)

Mary Renault novelist (1905)

Mitzi Gaynor actress, dancer (1931)

Ray Floyd golfer (1942)

Tom Watson golfer (1949)

Beyonce Knowles singer, dancer, actor (1981)

September 4

Edmond Halley observes Halley’s Comet for first time (1682); HBD Beyonce (1981); Google is founded (1998); Crocodile Hunter host Steve Irwin killed by stingray (2006); RIP comedian Joan Rivers (2014).

September 3

Mark Hopkins merchant, railroad developer (1814)

Sarah Orne Jewett novelist/writer (1849)

Edward Albert Filene merchant (1860)

Charles Hamilton Houston lawyer (1895)

Loren Eiseley anthropologist (1907)

Alan Ladd actor (1913)

Louis Sullivan

1856–1924, American architect, b. Boston.

studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. He was of great importance in the evolution of modern architecture in the United States. His dominating principle, demonstrated in his writings and in his executed buildings, was that outward form should faithfully express the function beneath. This doctrine, the accepted and guiding one of modern architecture throughout the world, gained for Sullivan, however, few contemporary adherents. In the face of the powerful revival of traditional classicism in the final years of the 19th cent., little interest was focused on Sullivan's plea for the establishment of an architecture that should be functional and also truly American.

Sullivan was employed in the Chicago office of William Le Baron Jenney, designer of the first steel-skeleton skyscraper, and later entered the office of Dankmar Adler, where he became chief draftsman and in 1880 was made a member of the firm. Adler and Sullivan rapidly became prominent. In Sullivan's Wainwright Building in St. Louis (1890) a tall steel-frame building was so designed as not to belie the structural skeleton. His Transportation Building at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago (1893), now demolished, shared nothing of the traditional classicism dominating the rest of the fair, and has become renowned for its originality and for heralding a new viewpoint.

Sullivan in 1901 began to advocate a more imaginative as well as functional expression of architecture in his essays, collected as Kindergarten Chats (1918; ed. by Isabella Athey, 1947). Sullivan's works all bore his stamp in the highly individual ornament that he had built up into a complete style, now identified with his name. The Autobiography of an Idea(1924), which he wrote in his last years, contains the philosophy of his life and work. His executed designs include the Auditorium Building, the Gage Building, the Stock Exchange Building, and the structure that now houses the Carson Pirie Scott department store, all in Chicago; the Guaranty Building, Buffalo, N.Y.; a series of brilliantly designed small banks, above all the National Farmers Bank in Owatonna, Minn. (1906–8); and a number of memorials, including the Getty Tomb in Chicago. Sullivan's pupils and followers include Claude Bragdon and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Bibliography:
See the posthumously published Democracy: A Man Search (1961); biographies by H. Morrison (1935, repr. 1971); W. Connely, Louis Sullivan as He Lived (1960); R. Twombly, Louis Sullivan: His Life & Work (1986); studies by A. Bush-Brown (1960), M. D. Kaufman (1969), and L. S. Weingarden (1987); F. L. Wright, Genius and the Mobocracy (1949, repr. 1972).
Who2. Copyright © 1998-2006 by Who2?, LLC. All rights reserved.

Marguerite Higgins Hall

(September 3, 1920 – January 3, 1966) was an American reporter and war correspondent. Higgins covered World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, and in the process advanced the cause of equal access for female war correspondents.[1] She had a long career with the New York Herald Tribune (1942–1963), and later, as a syndicated columnist for Newsday (1963–1965). She was the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for Foreign Correspondence awarded in 1951 for her coverage of the Korean War.

Higgins was born in Hong Kong, where her father, Lawrence Higgins, was working at a shipping company. The family moved back to the United States three years later. She worked for The Daily Californian, the University of California, Berkeley newspaper, serving as an editor in 1940. While at Berkeley, she was a member of the Gamma Phi Beta sorority. After graduating from Berkeley in 1941 with a B.A. in French, she earned a masters degreefrom the Columbia University School of Journalism.

Eager to become a war correspondent, Higgins persuaded the management of the New York Herald Tribune to send her to Europe, after working for them for two years, in 1944. After being stationed in London and Paris, she was reassigned to Germany in March 1945. She witnessed the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp in April 1945 and received a U.S. Army campaign ribbon for her assistance during the surrender by its S.S. guards. She later covered the Nuremberg war trials and the Soviet Union's blockade of Berlin.[2]
In 1950, Higgins was named chief of the Tribune's Tokyo bureau. Shortly after her arrival in Japan, war broke out in Korea, she came to the country as one of the first reporters on the spot. On 28 June, Higgins and three of her colleagues witnessed the Hangang Bridge bombing, and were trapped on the north bank of Han River as a result. After crossing the river by raft and coming to the U.S. military HQ in Suwon on the next day, she was quickly ordered out of the country by General Walton Walker, who argued that women did not belong at the front and the military had no time to worry about making separate accommodations for them. Higgins made a personal appeal to Walker's superior officer, General Douglas MacArthur, who subsequently sent a telegram to the Herald Tribune stating: "Ban on women correspondents in Korea has been lifted. Marguerite Higgins is held in highest professional esteem by everyone."[3]
This was a major breakthrough for all female war correspondents. As a result of her reporting from Korea, Higgins received the 1950 George Polk Memorial Award from the Overseas Press Club[4] and shared with five male war correspondents the 1951 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.[5] She contributed along with other major journalistic and political figures to the Collier's magazine collaborative special issue Preview of the War We Do Not Want, with an article entitled "Women of Russia".[6]
Higgins continued to cover foreign affairs throughout the rest of her life, interviewing world leaders such as Francisco Franco, Nikita Khrushchev, and Jawaharlal Nehru. In 1955, she established and was chief of the Tribune's Moscow bureau. In 1963, she joined Newsdayand was assigned to cover Vietnam, "visited hundreds of villages", interviewed most of the major figures, and wrote a book entitled Our Vietnam Nightmare.[7]

In 1942, she married Stanley Moore, a philosophy professor at Harvard but they divorced.
In 1952, she married William Evans Hall, a U.S. Air Force Major General, whom she met while Bureau Chief in Berlin. Their first daughter, born in 1953, died five days after a premature birth. In 1958, she gave birth to a son and in 1959, a daughter.[2]

While on assignment in late 1965, Higgins contracted leishmaniasis, a disease that led to her death on January 3, 1966, aged 45, in Washington, D.C.[8] She is interred at Arlington National Cemetery with her husband Lieutenant General William Evans Hall.

September 3

Treaty of Paris signed, ending American Revolutionary War (1783); Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Marguerite Higgins born (1920); HBD author Malcolm Gladwell (1963); RIP football coaching legend Vince Lombardi (1970).