Today in history: Lincoln proclaims official Thanksgiving holiday On this day in 1863, expressing gratitude for a pivotal Union Army victory at Gettysburg, President Abraham Lincoln announces that the nation will celebrate an official Thanksgiving holiday on November 26, 1863. The speech, which was actually written by Secretary of State William Seward, declared that the fourth Thursday of every November thereafter would be considered an official U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving. This announcement harkened back to when George Washington was in his first term as the first president in 1789 and the young American nation had only a few years earlier emerged from the American Revolution. At that time, George Washington called for an official celebratory day of public thanksgiving and prayer. While Congress overwhelmingly agreed to Washingtons suggestion, the holiday did not yet become an annual event. Thomas Jefferson, the third president, felt that public demonstrations of piety to a higher power, like that celebrated at Thanksgiving, were inappropriate in a nation based in part on the separation of church and state. Subsequent presidents agreed with him. In fact, no official Thanksgiving proclamation was issued by any president between 1815 and the day Lincoln took the opportunity to thank the Union Army and God for a shift in the countrys fortunes on this day in 1863. The fourth Thursday of November remained the annual day of Thanksgiving from 1863 until 1939. Then, at the tail-end of the Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, hoping to boost the economy by providing shoppers and merchants a few extra days to conduct business between the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, moved Thanksgiving to Novembers third Thursday. In 1941, however, Roosevelt bowed to Congress insistence that the fourth Thursday of November be re-set permanently, without alteration, as the official Thanksgiving holiday. The Red Badge of Courage is published On this day in 1895, The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane, is published in book form. The story of a young mans experience of battle was the first American novel to portray the Civil War from the ordinary soldiers point of view. The tale originally appeared as a serial published by a newspaper syndicate. Crane, the youngest of 14 children, was born in 1871 and grew up in New York and New Jersey. His father died when Crane was 9, and the family settled in Asbury Park, New Jersey. He attended Syracuse University, where he played baseball for a year, but then left. He became a journalist in New York, taking short stints for various newspapers and living in near-poverty. Immersed in the hand-to-mouth life of lower-class New York, Crane closely observed the characters around him, and in 1893, at age 23, he published Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, about a poor girls decline into prostitution and suicide. Finding a publisher was difficult given the books scandalous content, so Crane ultimately published it himself. The book was a critical success but failed to sell well. He turned his attention to more popular topics and began writing The Red Badge of Courage, which made him into an international celebrity at age 24. The newspaper syndicate that serialized the novel sent him on assignment to cover the West and Mexico. In 1897, he went to Cuba to write about the insurrection against Spain. On the way there, he stayed at a dingy hotel where he met Cora Howard Taylor, who became his lifelong companion. In 1897, his boat to Cuba sank, and he barely survived. His short story The Open Boat is based on his experiences in a lifeboat with the captain and the cook. Crane later covered the war between Greece and Turkey, and finally settled in England, where he made friends with Joseph Conrad, H.G. Wells, and Henry James. Crane contracted tuberculosis in his late 20s. Cora Howard Taylor nursed him while he wrote furiously in an attempt to pay off his debts. He exhausted himself and exacerbated his condition. He died in June 1900, at the age of 28. Iraq wins independence With the admission of Iraq into the League of Nations, Britain terminates its mandate over the Arab nation, making Iraq independent after 17 years of British rule and centuries of Ottoman rule. Britain seized Iraq from Ottoman Turkey during World War I and was granted a mandate by the League of Nations to govern the nation in 1920. A Hashemite monarchy was organized under British protection in 1921, and on October 3, 1932, the kingdom of Iraq was granted independence. The Iraqi government maintained close economic and military ties with Britain, leading to several anti-British revolts. A pro-Axis revolt in 1941 led to a British military intervention, and the Iraqi government agreed to support the Allied war effort. In 1958, the monarchy was overthrown, and for the next two decades Iraq was ruled by a series of military and civilian governments. In 1979, General Saddam Hussein became Iraqi dictator; he held onto power with an iron fist, until disappearing in the face of an American-led coaliations invasion of Iraq in 2003 1990: East and West Germany reunite after 45 years Less than one year after the destruction of the Berlin Wall, East and West Germany come together on what is known as Unity Day. Since 1945, when Soviet forces occupied eastern Germany, and the United States and other Allied forces occupied the western half of the nation at the close of World War II, divided Germany had come to serve as one of the most enduring symbols of the Cold War. Some of the most dramatic episodes of the Cold War took place there. The Berlin Blockade (June 1948--May 1949), during which the Soviet Union blocked all ground travel into West Berlin, and the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 were perhaps the most famous. With the gradual waning of Soviet power in the late 1980s, the Communist Party in East Germany began to lose its grip on power. Tens of thousands of East Germans began to flee the nation, and by late 1989 the Berlin Wall started to come down. Shortly thereafter, talks between East and West German officials, joined by officials from the United States, Great Britain, France, and the USSR, began to explore the possibility of reunification. Two months following reunification, all-German elections took place and Helmut Kohl became the first chancellor of the reunified Germany. Although this action came more than a year before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, for many observers the reunification of Germany effectively marked the end of the Cold War. Happy ◦National Techies Day and World Smile Day!
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 07:36:46 +0000
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