Mickeys

Today is Friday, October 2, the 275th day of 2009. There are 90 days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

• 1187 – Besieged Crusader forces in Jerusalem capitulate to Muslim commander Saladin. The Christians retake the holy city in 1229.
• 1518 – Cardinal Wolsey devises the “Peace of London” among England, France, Emperor Maximilian I, Spain and the Papacy.
• 1780 – British spy John Andre is hung in Tappan, New York.
• 1804 – England’s populace is mobilized to resist possible invasion by France.
• 1823 – Spain’s King Ferdinand VII, restored by France which also crushed a Spanish rebellion, issues decree for execution of his enemies.
• 1835 – The first battle of the Texas Revolution takes place as American settlers defeat Mexican cavalry near the Guadalupe River.
• 1836 – Charles Darwin returns to England from a trip to South America where he documented animal and plant life for his book, “On the Origin of Species”.
• 1870 – Rome becomes the capital of Italy.
• 1889 – First Pan American Conference is held in Washington.
• 1918 – King Faisal I enters Damascus to set up an independent Arab state.
• 1919 – US President Woodrow Wilson suffers a stroke; leaving him partially paralysed.
• 1924 – League of Nations adopts Geneva Protocol for peaceful settlement of international disputes.
• 1934 – Royal Indian Navy is formed.
• 1940 – HMS Empress of Britain, carrying child war refugees to Canada, is sunk during World War II.
• 1941 – German army launches all-out drive against Moscow in World War II.
• 1944 – Nazi troops crush the two-month-old Warsaw Uprising, during which 250 000 people are killed.
• 1950 – The comic strip Peanuts, created by Charles M Schulz, is first published in nine US newspapers.
• 1958 – The former French colony of Guinea in West Africa proclaims its independence.
• 1962 – Egypt sends troops to Yemen to support republicans against Saudi-backed royalists.
• 1967 – Thurgood Marshall is sworn in as an associate justice of the US Supreme Court; becoming the first African-American appointed to the highest US court.
• 1972 – Denmark’s entrance into the European Economic Community is approved by almost two-thirds of voters in a referendum.
• 1977 – Israel rejects joint US-Soviet declaration on aims of proposed Middle East peace conference.
• 1988 – Pakistan’s Supreme Court orders that planned elections in November be open to all political parties.
• 1991 – Haiti’s military chief advises ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to remain in exile.
• 1992 – The UN Security Council passes a resolution to seize Iraqi oil assets currently frozen abroad. The impounded assets, valued between $500m to $1bn, are to help pay for UN disarmament, relief efforts and compensation for victims of Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
• 1993 – Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Jordan’s Crown Prince Hassan meet in Washington, DC with US President Bill Clinton to normalise economic relations between their countries.
• 1994 – US troops in Haiti raid weapons caches in Port-au-Prince, cracking down on violence initiated in previous days by paramilitary units linked to Haiti’s military-led de facto government.
• 1995 – Director of Russia’s famed Kirov Ballet, Anatoly Malkov, is arrested for corruption and bribery running into millions of dollars. He later resigns.
• 1996 – A Peruvian plane slams into the Pacific after its navigation system fails. All 70 passengers and crew are killed.
• 1997 – Canada recalls ambassador to Israel to protest use of forged Canadian passports by suspected Israel agents.
• 1998 – A popular Mongolian government minister, Sanjaasuregiin Zorig, is slain. He was seen as a compromise candidate to end a protracted political crisis in Mongolia.
• 1999 – Rebels release some 40 diplomats and foreigners after taking them hostage at the Myanmar Embassy in Bangkok. The 14 Myanmar dissidents demand the release of all political prisoners in their homeland and the convening of an elected parliament.
• 2000 – Truck and taxi drivers blockade roads and bridges throughout Yugoslavia to open a protest designed to drive President Slobodan Milosevic from office.
• 2001 – Seeking the full backing of its 18 Nato allies, the United States provides “clear and compelling” evidence of Osama bin Laden’s involvement in September 11 attacks.
• 2002 – US President George W Bush reaches an agreement with the leaders of the US House of Representatives on a resolution authorising military action against Iraq.
• 2003 – A US District Court judge declines to dismiss all charges against September 11 terrorist suspect Zacarias Moussaoui, and instead bars government prosecutors from seeking the death penalty in his case.
• 2004 – Afghan intelligence agents backed by international peacekeepers arrest 25 people with alleged links to the Taliban and al-Qaeda in an early morning raid in eastern Kabul as the presidential election draws near.
• 2006 – A gunman storms an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania, killing five girls before committing suicide. It is the third deadly US school shooting in less than a week.
• 2007 – North Korean leader Kim Jong Il welcomes South Korea’s president to Pyongyang for the start of the second-ever summit between the divided Koreas since World War II.
• 2008 -After extensive repairs and improvements, the World War II aircraft carrier Intrepid returns to the Manhattan pier where it has served for 24 years as a military and space museum.

Thought For Today:
It wasn’t until quite late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say “I don’t know” – W Somerset Maugham, English writer (1874-1965).

info from News24

Police have named a man suspected of the murder and rape of a woman in 1979 following the exhumation of his body.

Detectives have revealed the DNA of David Lace, 26, whose remains were dug up last month, matched that of the suspected killer of Teresa De Simone.

Teresa De Simone's mother said she was a "happy girl, but shy"

The 22-year-old victim was found in her car at the pub in Southampton where she worked part-time, in December 1979.

Sean Hodgson, 58, of County Durham, spent 27 years in jail for the murder before his conviction was quashed.

Mr Lace was originally from Portsmouth and, at the time of the murder, he was 17 and living in the city.

He took his own life in December 1988 when he was living in Brixham, Devon. He did not feature in the original police investigation and was not thought to have had prior links to Miss De Simone.

He made admissions to the murder in 1983 following Mr Hodgson’s conviction at Winchester Crown Court some 18 months earlier.

The Ministry of Justice gave permission for Mr Lace’s body to be exhumed from Kingston Cemetery, Portsmouth, after new DNA samples indicated he was the prime suspect in the case.
(continue reading…)

Here are some facts about actor Patrick Swayze, who died on Monday at the age of 57.

* Dance always played a big role in Swayze’s life. His mother owned a Houston dance studio, where he met his future wife, Lisa Niemi, when they were teenagers. He studied ballet in New York before appearing as Danny Zuko in Grease on Broadway. He achieved stardom playing dance instructor Johnny Castle in Dirty Dancing in 1987.

* Dirty Dancing was a low-budget film that was expected to have a short run. Instead, it became a surprise hit that generated some $64m at the US box office and $214m worldwide and became a cult favorite. Swayze turned down an offer to star in a sequel.

* Ghost, the 1990 beyond-the-grave love story starring Swayze, Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg, was an even bigger hit with a domestic box office take of more than $217m and $505m around the world.

* Swayze’s first movie was Skatetown, USA in 1979. Other notable films included The Outsiders, Red Dawn, the TV miniseries North and South, Road House and To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar.

* Swayze announced in March2008 that he had pancreatic cancer but still went ahead with filming of a new cable television series, playing an FBI agent on The Beast. He also shot a small role in the movie Powder Blue while undergoing cancer treatment.

* Swayze told an interviewer for the Daily Mail that he started drinking heavily after his father’s 1982 death. He went through a rehabilitation program more than 10 years later.

* Swayze’s movie characters had some lines that became cultural catch phrases, such as, “Pain don’t hurt” from his role in “Road House.” Author Marcus Eder compiled Swayze’s movie lines and compared them to the words of Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu in “Nobody Puts Swayze in a Corner: The Tao of Swayze.” The title refers to his often-cited line “Nobody puts Baby in a corner!” from Dirty Dancing. Proceeds from the book went to the American Cancer Society.

taken from News24

New York – A camera in Brooklyn points through a chain-link fence at black smoke pouring from one skyscraper, while a plane pierces another. Papers fly through the sky; some of them end up in the filmmakers’ hands.

That evening – September 11 2001 – another camera finds firefighters trudging through dust-caked streets, carrying their helmets or a spare pair of shoes. The spindly facade of the World Trade Centre is before them.

The new views of the terrorist attacks – one of the most recorded events of all time – are among hundreds of hours of amateur videos, images and stories gathered by the foundation building the memorial. The National September 11 Memorial & Museum is launching a website on Thursday with its collection of citizen journalism of the tragedy and is appealing for more 9/11 stories from all over the world.

“They say that 9/11 was the most digitally documented event of all time,” said Alice Greenwald, director of the planned museum. “We’re asking people everywhere to help us tell the story.”

The foundation planned to announce its “Make History” campaign later on Thursday. Its website includes a collection of dramatic, chaotically shot footage of the attacks.

The site has photographs, video and audio recollections by professional photographers, fleeing workers and witnesses who recorded what they saw with cell phone and digital cameras.

Each photo is juxtaposed against current Google “Street View” photos of various locations. Users can click on locations, themes or time of day to view the footage or images.

The graphic images of hijacked jetliners crashing into the towers are among the accounts that will become an exhibit in the 9/11 museum when it opens in three years.

One victim’s family member said the images wouldn’t keep him away, saying the story of September 11 must be as realistic and complete as possible.

Charles Wolf was in his Greenwich Village apartment in lower Manhattan when he saw an American Airlines jetliner pass overhead, then crash into the World Tarde Centre – and his wife’s office.

“I and many family members don’t want revisionist history, and we don’t want this sanitised,” Wolf said. “It is very important that people remember what happened that day: This was civilisation, people merely at work, caught up in religious fanaticism.”

The foundation has acquired 500 hours of video archives assembled by Camera Planet, a private team of filmmakers who collected professional and amateur videos from the day and its aftermath.

They include a five-minute video shot in the streets of lower Manhattan around the site on the evening of the attacks, with office stairwells filled with reams of paper and half-open offices with family pictures still inside.

A dust-covered Brooks Brothers logo is in one frame under shattered windows. What appears to be an airliner seat is strewn in the street. “God Bless America! Unity!” is scrawled in the dust of one window.

“Got that?” one videographer asks on the video showing the explosion of the second tower when it was hit by the jetliner.

“What kind of crazy person would… kill themselves?” another asks as the camera points at the two towers.

Some of the submissions already are on display at the 9/11 Memorial Preview Site, opened last month near ground zero as a temporary exhibit until the memorial and museum are completed.

There, visitors can see a film of the attacks, with a live webcam showing the ongoing construction on the former World Trade Centre’s 16 acres.

The memorial is expected to open on the 10th anniversary of the attacks in 2011, and the museum a year later. The names of nearly 3 000 victims of the attacks in New York, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania, as well as those from the 1993 trade centre truck bombing, will be around two waterfall-filled pools.

The 9 290-square-metre museum will reach 21 metres underground, tracing the towers’ original footprints. Photographs of thousands of terrorism victims will be flashed on a mammoth wall, with each remembered in movies, photos and narration.

“There are negatives lying in drawers around the world” that have never been seen, said Michael Shulan, the foundation’s creative director. “We’re inviting the world to really respond.”

taken from News24

Dis spesiaal vir die van ons wat met Afrikaans groot geword het, waar daar Volksrympies heeldag en aldag voorgele was!

Ek het een van my gunsteling boeke her ontdek, genoem: Die Skatkis – Rympies en Stories!

Hier is n paar Volksrympies wat jou sal laat terug dink aan die goue ou dae.

Dayton – It was a reunion of reunions.

Twelve Apollo astronauts reminisced, traded stories and poked fun at each other on Friday night as the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing and moonwalk approached.

The astronauts, including first ‘moonmen’ Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, attended the ceremony in which the National Aviation Hall of Fame presented the Apollo crews with the “Spirit of Flight” award for their courage and dedication.

The crowd of hundreds at the National Museum of the United States Air Force erupted in cheers when a video chronicling the space program replayed Armstrong’s famous first words after stepping on the moon July 20, 1969: “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

In this July 20, 1969 file photo, Astronauts Neil Armstrong, left, and Edwin E Aldrin, Jr, place an American flag on the surface of the moon, near the lunar lander that brought them to the lunar surface.

“It was spectacular,” Armstrong recalled of gazing at the moon’s surface as he took those first steps. “Any time you go to a place where everything you see is different than anything you’ve ever seen before in your life, it’s unique and it’s memorable. And that certainly was.”

However, Armstrong said he and Aldrin had little time to savour the experience.

“We didn’t rest hardly five seconds when we got a message from Mission Control, saying get on with the next item,” Armstrong said.

Armstrong said he had been a backup on Apollo 8 and that when he wasn’t needed was asked if he wanted to be on the third mission down the line – what turned out to be the fateful Apollo 11 mission. He said it was difficult to predict the exact mission of succeeding flights.

“We knew we had a chance at landing, but it was by no means certain,” he said. (continue reading…)

Freedom Day is a South African public holiday celebrated on April 27.

It celebrates freedom and commemorates the first post-apartheid elections held on that day in 1994.

The elections were the first non-racial national elections where everyone of voting age of over 18 from any race group was allowed to vote.

Previously, under the apartheid regime, non-whites had only limited rights to vote.

Some groups and social movements celebrate a version of Freedom Day called UnFreedom Day in which they mourn the unfreedom still experienced by the poor.

get more information on this topic at Wikipedia

Washington – US President Barack Obama was briefly “relocated” by the Secret Service on Friday after a single-engine plane entered restricted airspace over the US capitol, his spokesperson said.

“The president was briefly relocated out of an abundance of caution, as was the vice president,” said White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs, adding it was the first time in the Obama presidency he had heard of such precautions being taken.

Two Air Force F-16 fighters and two Coast Guard helicopters intercepted the small aircraft at about 12:30 local time (16:30 GMT), a spokesperson for the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) told AFP.

The pilot of the Piper Cub plane was contacted by radio and was immediately “compliant”, Lieutenant Commander Gary Ross said.

The plane was escorted to a local airport about 24km south of the capitol, where the pilot was “met by local law enforcement”, Ross said.

During the incident, the White House was temporarily on a “lockdown” security alert and the Secret Service shut down Lafayette Square adjacent to the presidential mansion.

The alert was lifted after about 10 minutes.

In the US Congress, a security alert lasted about 15 minutes and senators were asked to leave the chamber at one point, police said.

Security around the US capital was dramatically stepped up and restricted airspace expanded after September 11, 2001, when al-Qaeda agents flew hijacked airliners into the Pentagon and the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York.

A fourth hijacked plane was believed headed toward Congress or the White House when it crashed in Pennsylvania following a revolt by the passengers.

taken from News24

• 1689 – France’s King Louis XIV declares war on Spain.
• 1817 – The first American school for the deaf opens in Hartford, Connecticut.
• 1861 – Three days after the attack on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, President Abraham Lincoln declares a state of insurrection and calls out Union troops.
• 1862 – A bill ending slavery in the US District of Columbia becomes law.
• 1912 – The passenger luxury liner SS Titanic sinks and more than 1 500 lives are lost; Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman to fly across the English Channel.
• 1923 – Insulin, discovered by Canadian Dr Frederick Banting, is made available for general use by diabetics.
• 1942 – Japanese artillery blasts US positions on Corregidor Island in Philippines in World War II.
• 1945 – British and Canadian troops liberate the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen.
• 1968 – Two unmanned Soviet satellites link up while in orbit around Earth.
• 1992 – Sanctions go into effect against Libya for refusing to surrender two suspects in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.
• 1993 – A car bomb explodes at a shopping mall in Bogota, Colombia, killing at least five people, injuring about 100 and demolishing two dozen vehicles.
• 1994 – More than 100 nations adopt a 26 000-page agreement reforming international trade.
• 1997 – A fire sweeps across a pilgrims’ encampment outside Mecca as two million Muslims gather for one of Islam’s most sacred rituals, killing at least 343 people.
• 2002 – An Air China passenger jet crashes, killing at least 122 people. The jet flew into a hillside amid heavy rain and fog.
• 2003 – US President George W Bush declares an end to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime, less than a week after US forces seized Baghdad and US and Kurdish forces entered Kirkuk and Mosul in northern Iraq.
• 2005 – Flames and smoke send people jumping from windows of a budget hotel in Paris housing many African immigrants in an overnight fire that leaves 20 dead – half of them children.
• 2007 – The remains of a World War II navigator, Air Force 1st Lieutenant Archibald Kelly, listed as missing in action for almost 63 years are identified two years after they were found in Croatia. His B-24 bomber crashed on July 22 1944.

information taken from News24

Today is Tuesday, March 31, the 90th day of 2009. There are 275 days left in the year.

• 1492 – King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain issue an edict expelling Jews unwilling to convert to Christianity.
• 1889 – French engineer Alexandre Gustave Eiffel unfurls the French tricolor from atop the Eiffel Tower, officially marking its completion.
• 1936 – Britain and France pledge to support Poland if it is invaded.
• 1966 – Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd’s Nationalist Party wins election in South Africa.
• 1976 – New Jersey Supreme Court rules that coma patient Karen Anne Quinlan could be disconnected from her respirator. Quinlan remained comatose and dies in 1985.
• 1994 – South African President FW de Klerk declares a state of emergency and orders army into the Zulu stronghold of Natal.
• 2000 – Japan’s Mount Usu volcano erupts forcing 16 000 people to evacuate the country’s northernmost island.
• 2001 – Four gay couples exchange rings and vows, the first of hundreds planning to wed under a new Dutch law allowing same-sex marriages.

for more interesting facts visit News24

Pretoria – Chris Hani’s killer, Clive Derby-Lewis, is not entitled to parole although he is eligible for it, the North Gauteng High Court heard on Tuesday.

Technical legal arguments began in the court with 73-year-old Derby-Lewis listening attentively and taking notes.

His legal team argued that Derby-Lewis was eligible for parole as he was over 65 and had served 15 years of his life sentence.

The court also heard that it had the right to decide whether he be granted parole and that Hani’s wife Limpho did not have the right to make recommendations to the Parole Board. This was because the law under which he was sentenced did not grant the victim’s family the right to make submissions, they argued.

However the prosecution contended that Limpho Hani had a common-law right to have a say.

At the heart of the debate was whether a prisoner could be considered for parole after having spent 20 years behind bars, according to the old law, or after 15 years, according to new legislation.

Derby-Lewis and his accomplice Janusz Wallus were sentenced to death for the murder of the SA Communist Party leader in 1993. The sentence was reduced to life imprisonment after the death penalty was abolished.

taken from News24

From Popular Science Magazine, April 1964