er >]
      Born on 01 January 1895, educated as a lawyer and a librarian, Hoover joined the Department of Justice in 1917, and within two years had become special assistant to Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Deeply anti-radical in his ideology, Hoover came to the forefront of federal law enforcement during the so-called "Red Scare" of 1919 to 1920. The former librarian set up a card index system listing every radical leader, organization, and publication in the United States, and by 1921 had amassed some 450'000 files.
      More than ten thousand suspected Communists were also arrested during this period, although the vast majority of these people were briefly questioned and then released. Although the attorney general was criticized for abusing his authority during the so-called "Palmer Raids," Hoover emerged unscathed, and on 10 May 1924, was appointed acting director of the Bureau of Investigation, a branch of the Justice Department. During the 1920s, with Congress’ approval, Director Hoover drastically restructured and expanded the Bureau of Investigation. He built the corruption-ridden agency into an efficient crime-fighting machine, establishing a centralized fingerprint file, a crime laboratory, and a training school for agents.
      In the 1930s, the Bureau of Investigation launched a dramatic battle against the epidemic of organized crime brought on by Prohibition. Notorious gangsters such as George "Machine Gun" Kelly and John Dillinger met their ends looking down the barrels of Bureau-issued guns, while others, like Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, the elusive head of Murder, Incorporated, were successfully investigated and prosecuted by Hoover’s "G-men." Hoover, who had a keen eye for public relations, participated himself in a number of these widely publicized arrests, and the Federal Bureau of Investigations, as it was known after 1935, was highly regarded by Congress and the American public.
      With the outbreak of World War II, Hoover revived his anti-espionage techniques developed during the first Red Scare, and domestic wiretaps and other electronic surveillance expanded dramatically. After World War II, Hoover focused on the threat of radical, especially Communist, subversion. The FBI compiled files on millions of US citizens suspected of dissident activity, and Hoover worked closely with the House Un-American Activities Committee and Senator Joseph McCarthy, the infamous architect of the US’s second Red Scare.
      In 1956, Hoover initiated COINTELPRO, a secret counter-intelligence program that initially targeted the US Communist Party but later was expanded to infiltrate and disrupt any radical organization in America. During the 1960s, the immense resources of COINTELPRO were used against dangerous groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, but also against African-American civil rights organizations and liberal anti-war organizations.
      One figure especially targeted was civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., who endured systematic harassment from the FBI, including the leaking of sensitive information gathered by the FBI to his enemies in Memphis, Tennessee, and elsewhere.
      By the time Hoover entered service under his eighth president in 1969, the media, the public, and Congress had uncovered evidence of the FBI’s abuses of authority. For the first time in his bureaucratic career, Hoover endured widespread criticism and Congress responded by passing laws requiring Senate confirmation of future FBI directors and limiting their tenure to ten years.
      On 02 May 1972, with the Watergate affair about to explode on to the national stage, J. Edgar Hoover dies of heart disease. The Watergate affair revealed that the FBI had illegally protected President Richard Nixon from investigation, and the agency was thoroughly investigated by Congress. Revelations of the FBI’s abuses of power and unconstitutional surveillance motivated Congress and the media to become more vigilant in future monitoring the FBI. One of the books exposing abuses by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI is The F.B.I. Nobody Knows (1964) by Fred

J. Cook [1911 – 04 Apr 2003] 1960 Caryl Chessman, after 12 years of appeals, convicted sex offender and best-selling author, executed at San Quentin Prison in California.

1957 Joseph McCarthy, 48, of alcoholism, Red Scare demagogue US senator. ^top^
      At Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland, Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) succumbs to illness exacerbated by alcoholism. McCarthy had been a key figure in the anticommunist hysteria popularly known as the "Red Scare" that engulfed the United States in the years following World War II. McCarthy was born in a small town in Wisconsin on 14 November 1908. In 1942, he joined the Marines and served in the Pacific during World War II. He returned home in 1944 and decided to start a career in politics. In that year, he unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the US Senate. Undaunted, in 1946 McCarthy challenged the popular Senator Robert LaFollette in the Republican primary. Utilizing the aggressive attacking style that would later make him famous, McCarthy upset the over-confident LaFollette and won the general election to become. on 03 January 1947, the junior senator from Wisconsin.
      McCarthy's early career in the Senate was unremarkable, to say the least. In 1950, desperate for an issue he could use to bolster his chances for re-election, McCarthy took some of his advisors' suggestion and turned to the issue of Communists in the United States. Although he knew few details about the subject, McCarthy quickly embraced the issue. He used his position as chairman of the Committee on Government Operations and its Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to launch investigations charging of that the US government was infiltrated by Communists.
      In February 1950 he stunned an audience with the declaration that there were over 200 "known Communists" in the Department of State. Over the next four years, McCarthy became the most famous (and feared) "Red-hunter" in the United States. Combining a flair for the dramatic with a penchant for wild and reckless charges, McCarthy was soon ruining careers, cowing opponents into silence, and titillating the US public with his accusations of Communism.
      In all of the hysteria, however, few noticed that McCarthy never uncovered a single Communist, in or out of the US government. In 1954, with his political fortunes beginning to ebb, McCarthy seriously overreached himself when he charged that the US Army was "soft on Communists." In the famous televised Army-McCarthy hearings of that year, the US public got a first-hand view of McCarthy's bullying and recklessness. The hearings destroyed McCarthy's credibility and he was censured by the Senate on 02 December 1954, for behavior that was “contrary to senatorial traditions”.
Though he continued to hold office, this effectively ended his power in the Senate. During the next few years, the senator turned increasingly to alcohol to relieve his frustrations. In 1957, he was hospitalized, suffering from numerous ailments all exacerbated by cirrhosis of the liver. He died in Bethesda, Maryland, and was buried in his home state of Wisconsin.
      After the statutory 50 years of secrecy, the US Senate releases, on 05 May 2003, the 5000 pages of executive session transcripts of the 161 hearings, with over 500 witnesses, during the 83rd Congress (1953-1954), chaired by Senator McCarthy, posting them as S. Prt. 107-84 -- Executive Sessions of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations (McCarthy Hearings 1953-54): Volume 1   TEXT 5.1M   PDF 2.4M —Volume 2   TEXT 2.3M   PDF 2.2M — Volume 3   TEXT 2.4M   PDF 2.2M — Volume 4   TEXT 2.3M   PDF 2.2M — Volume 5   TEXT 1.5M   PDF 1.5M
     During his two years as chairman, Senator McCarthy conducted headline-grabbing inquiries into allegations of Communist subversion and espionage in the U.S. government and defense industries. He held hearings on possible Communist infiltration of the Department of State, the Voice of America, the U.S. Information Libraries, the Government Printing Office, and the Army Signal Corps. His clash with the army culminated in the nationally televised Army-McCarthy hearings. Senator McCarthy’s repeated badgering of witnesses, exaggerated claims, and disregard of due process eventually led to his December 1954 censure for conduct unbecoming a senator.
      Executive sessions were held prior to the public hearings. Although many of the witnesses later testified in public sessions, some appeared only in the closed sessions. The set contains testimony by such prominent witnesses as Aaron Copeland, novelist Howard Fast, Dashiell Hammett, Langston Hughes, artist Rockwell Kent, and journalist James Reston. Other witnesses were government employees, labor organizers, and army officers.
      As the transcripts reveal, Senator McCarthy was often the only senator present at the executive session hearings. Interrogations were largely conducted by McCarthy’s chief counsel, Roy Cohn, and by the subcommittee’s unpaid “chief consultant,” G. David Schine. Interrogators probed the witnesses on their beliefs, families, and past associations. Some witnesses cooperated and some refused to testify, generally citing the Fifth Amendment. Senator McCarthy frequently threatened witnesses with prosecution for contempt, but all cases were either thrown out of court or overturned on appeal. No one who appeared before McCarthy’s subcommittee was imprisoned for anything related to their testimony. However, many lost their jobs for declining to answer the subcommittee’s questions.
      Following these hearings, the Supreme Court considerably strengthened protection for the rights of witnesses appearing before congressional committees. The Senate and the Permanent Subcommittee also revised the rules of inquiry to prevent a continuation of the abuses evident during Senator McCarthy’s tenure.

1936 Manuscript of Conversations at Midnight burns. ^top^
Edna St. Vincent Millay's work in progress, Conversations at Midnight, is burned in a hotel fire on Sanibel Island, Florida,. She recreated the work, which was published in 1937. Millay had been a successful poet for more than a decade when the manuscript burned. One of three daughters of a divorced nurse, Millay learned independence and self-reliance early and infused those qualities into her poetry. She began publishing poetry in high school. In 1912, the year she turned 20, her poem "Renascance" appeared in a literary review and drew the attention of a benefactor who made it possible for Millay to attend Vassar. The year she graduated, in 1917, her first volume of poetry, Renascence and Other Poems, appeared. Millay moved to New York City, where she lived a hectic, glamorous life as a writer and actress in Greenwich Village. One of the first women to write openly and without shame about her lovers, Millay had numerous affairs. In 1920, her famous poem "First Fig" set the tone for the 1920s, with its resounding lines, "My candle burns at both ends, it will not last the night." Millay's fast-paced life took a toll. Exhausted, she traveled to Europe and from 1921 to 1923 took a long rest. Meanwhile, she married Dutch importer Jan Boissevan, who gave up his business to devote himself to Millay. The couple moved to a farm in upstate New York, where Millay continued to write verse and plays. That year, she published The Harp Weaver and Other Poems, for which she became the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize. A passionate proponent of civil liberties, she was arrested and jailed for supporting Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, anarchists condemned to death for robbery and murder. In the 1930s, she wrote anti-totalitarian poetry for newspapers, as well as radio plays and speeches. She suffered a nervous breakdown in 1944 and endured two years of writer's block afterward. She broke down again after her husband's death, in 1949, and she died of a heart attack a year later.

1919 Evelyn Pickering De Morgan, English Pre-Raphaelite painter born on 30 August 1855 — MORE ON DE MORGAN AT ART “4” MAY with links to images.
1894 Stanislaw Polian Wolski, Polish artist born on 08 April 1859.
1887 Anton Doll, German artist born on 03 Mar 1826.
1886 Jérome Thompson, US artist born on 30 January 1814.

^ 1821 Hester Lynch Pozzi, also called (1763-1784) Harriet Lynch Thrale, British writer and friend of Samuel Johnson.
She was born Hester Lynch Salusbury on 16 January 1741 (she mistakenly celebrated her birthday on 27 January) into a Welsh land-owning family. In 1758 she posed for The Lady's Last Stake (625x732pix, 47kb) by Hogarth [10 Nov 1697 – 26 oct 1764]. [< click on image]
Hester Thrale by Reynolds

      She married on 11 October 1763 a wealthy brewer and politician named Henry Thrale (Member of Parliament 23 Dec 1765 – 13 Sep 1780) and bore him 12 children. In January 1765 Samuel Johnson [18 Sep 1709 – 13 Dec 1784] was brought to dinner, and the next year, following a severe illness, Johnson spent most of the summer in the country with the Thrales. Gradually, he became part of the family circle, living about half the time in their homes. A succession of distinguished visitors came there to see Johnson and socialize with the Thrales. Sir Joshua Reynolds painted the portraits of both Mr. and Mrs. Thrale.
      On 04 April 1781 Henry Thrale died, and his wife was left a wealthy widow. To everyone's dismay, she fell in love with her daughter's music master, Gabriel Mario Piozzi, an Italian singer and composer, married him in 1784, and set off for Italy on a honeymoon. Dr. Johnson openly disapproved. The resulting estrangement saddened his last months of life.
      When news reached her of Johnson's death, she hastily compiled and sent back to England copy for Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D., during the last Twenty Years of his Life (1786), which thrust her into open rivalry with James Boswell [29 Oct 1740 – 19 May 1795]. The breach was further widened when, after her return to England in 1787, she brought out a two-volume edition of Letters to and from the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1788). Although less accurate in some details than Boswell's, her accounts show other aspects of Johnson's character, especially the more human and affectionate side of his nature.
      When many old friends remained aloof, Mrs. Piozzi drew around her a new artistic circle, including the actress Sarah Siddons. Her pen remained active, and thousands of her entertaining, gossipy letters have survived. She retained to the end her unflagging vivacity and zest for life.
— Hester Thrale Piozzi writings.

1819 Mrs. Mary Lloyd Moser, British painter born on 27 October 1744.

1794 (13 floréal an II) Condamnés à mort par la Révolution: ^top^
Par le tribunal révolutionnaire de Paris:
PETRA Laurent, 55 ans, ex curé de la commune de Levemont (Loire), y demeurant, natif de Fère en Tardenois (Aisne), comme convaincu d'avoir excité des troubles dans la commune de Levemont, en prêchant le fanatisme.
CARBILLET Denys, 41 ans, né à Langres, menuisier du ci-devant comte d'Artois, lieutenant du ci-devant bataillon dit St Lazare, domicilié à Paris.
A Arras:
BOULONGNE Alexis, 67 ans, né à Wagnonlieu, cultivateur, guillotiné.
LALLEMAND Joseph, 39 ans, né et domicilié à Arras, écrivain, guillotiné.
DEFOSSE Pierre Joseph, 39 ans, né à Audenarde, demeurant à Bapaume.
OLIVIER Antoine François, 30 ans, né à Fleury, demeurant à Duisans.
PICHON Charles, 31 ans, né à Lens.
PILLAIN Louis Antoine Florent, 60 ans, né à Arras, rentier.
PRINCE Etienne (dit Bourguignon, 59 ans, confiseur, né à Bar sur Seine.
VAILLANT Charles Guislain, 29 ans, déserteur, né à Boiry St Martin.
Ailleurs:
HIVON Joseph, domicilié à Latour-Landry (Mayenne et Loire), par la commission militaire séante à Nantes, comme brigand de la Vendée.
BESLAER François Maximilien, ex marquis de la Wastine, environ 75 ans, par le tribunal révolutionnaire séant à Cambray.
CAUDY Joseph, (dit Joli), domicilié au Boulon (Pyrénées Occidentales), par le tribunal militaire du 1er arrondissement de l’Armée des Pyrénées Occidentales.

1759 Christophe Huet, French painter born on 22 June 1700 (or in 1694?). — more
1714 Gennaro Mascacotta Greco, Napolitan painter born in 1663. — more
1519 Leonardo da Vinci, Italian sculptor / scientist / visionary / mathematician / painter, born on 15 April 1452. — Writings by LEONARDO DA VINCI ONLINE: Aforismi, novelle e profezie (zipped) — MORE ON DA VINCI AT ART “4” MAY with links to images.
1430 (buried) Giovanni Francesco Toscani (or Tossicani), Italian painter born in 1372. — more with links to images.

Births which occurred on a May 02:
1949 James Byrd Jr., born with what would cause him, on 7 June 1998, to be chained to a pickup truck and dragged to his death in Jasper, Texas: his "black" skin.
1945 Bianca Jagger, human rights activist.
1936 Peter and the Wolf, a symphonic tale for children by Sergei Prokofiev, has its world premiere in Moscow.
1935 Faisal II King of Iraq.
1921 Satyajit Ray, Bengali motion-picture director, writer, and illustrator, who died on 23 April 1992.
1912 Axel Springer, of Alex Springer Verlag AG publishing house in Germany. He died on 22 September 1985.
1904 Maurice Estève, French painter, draftsman and lithographer. — more
1903 Benjamin Spock, pediatrician / activist / author ( The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care). He died on 15 March 1998.
1902 Kazimierz Zarankiewicz, Polish mathematician who died on 05 September 1959. He made contributions to topology, graph theory, complex functions, and number theory
1892 Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen [the Red Baron], German WW I ace. He died shot down on 21 April 1918.
1879 James F. Byrnes, born on 02 May 1879, US politician, US representative (1911-1925) and senator (1931-1941) from South Carolina, Supreme Court justice, Director of Economic Stabilization, Director of the Office of War Mobilization, Secretary of State (1945-1947), Governor of South Carolina (1951-1955). He died on 09 April 1972.
1860 Theodor Herzl, Hungarian journalist; first president of the World Zionist Organization. He died on 03 July 1904.
1860 D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, Scotttish scholar of Greek, naturalist, and mathematician (the first biomathematician), who died on 21 June 1948.
1853 Antonio Maura, Spanish statesman; prime minister five times between 1903 and 1922 He died on 13 December 1925.
1840 Theodor Herzl founded Zionist movement
1837 Henry Martyn Robert (US Army General; author: Robert's Rules of Order, the standard for parliamentary procedure). He was adjourned sine die on 11 May 1923, but his Rules live on.
1810 Leo XIII, 257th pope (1878-1903)
1806 (1808?): Marc-Charles-Gabriel Gleyre, Swiss-born French Academic painter specialized in portraits, who died in 1874. — MORE ON GLEYRE ART “4” MAY with links to images.

1729 (21 Apr Julian) Sophie Friederike Auguste prinzessin von Anhalt-Zerbst, future Catherine II (the Great). ^top^
      German-born empress of Russia (1762-96). She took the name Yekaterina Alekseevna (nothing to do with her father's name) upon marrying on 21 August 1745 the heir to the throne of Russia, a German grandson (born 21 Feb 1728, 10 Feb Julian) of Peter the Great, German-loving, Russian-hating and Russian-hated, who became emperor Peter III upon the 05 Jan 1762 (25 Dec 1761 Julian) death of his aunt empress Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great.
      Catherine, who loved Russia and was loved in return, on 09 July (28 June Julian) 1762 led a coup (with the support of her lover at the time, Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov [17 Oct 1734 – 24 Apr 1783, Gregorian dates], and all sectors of Russian society) against her despised husband, who abdicated the next day, was arrested, and was murdered on 18 July (07 July Julian) 1762 while in the custody of Aleksey Grigoryevich Orlov [Grigory's brother, 05 Oct 1737 – 05 Jan 1808, Gregorian dates].
      Catherine II would continue what Peter the Great started in leading Russia into a full participation in the political and cultural life of Europe. With her ministers (especially Grigory Alexandrovich Potemkin [24 Sep 1739 – 16 Oct 1791 Gregorian dates] who got his start in 1774 by being her lover for a couple of years, in which role his was followed by a succession of at least a dozen insignificant young gigolos — the current one at her death being Platon Zubov, while Potemkin continued as Catherine's partner in matters of state, famous for the caricatural story of the “Potemkin villages”.) she would reorganize the administration and law of the Russian Empire and extend it into Crimea and much of Poland. Yekaterina Velikaya died unexpectedly of a stroke on 17 November (06 Nov Julian) 1796.
— La future tsarine de Russie, Catherine II la Grande, nait à Stettin, dans la famille d'un prince allemand. Elle sera baptisée avec le prénom de Sophia Augusta.
— Portraits of Catherine the Great by: Antropov (before she became empress) — Antropov — Levitzky — Johann Baptist Lampi the Elder

1670 Hudson’s Bay Company is chartered. ^top^
      King Charles II of England grants a permanent charter to the Hudson’s Bay Company, a group of French explorers who opened the lucrative North American fur trade to London merchants. The charter conferred on them not only a trading monopoly but also effective control over the vast region surrounding Hudson Bay. Although contested by other English traders and the French in the region, the Hudson’s Bay Company was highly successful in exploiting what would become eastern Canada.
      During the nineteenth century, the company gained an advantage over the French in the area, but was also strongly criticized in Britain for its repeated failures to find a northwest passage out of Hudson Bay.
      After France’s loss of Canada at the end of the French and Indian Wars, new competition developed with the establishment of the North West Company by Montreal merchants and Scottish traders. As both companies attempted to dominate fur potentials in central and western Canada, violence sometimes erupted, and in 1821, the two companies were amalgamated under the name of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The united company ruled a vast territory extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and under the governorship of Sir George Simpson from 1821 to 1856, reached the peak of its fortunes.
      After Canada was granted dominion status in 1867, the company lost its monopoly on the fur trade, but, because it had diversified its business ventures, it remained Canada’s largest corporation through the 1920s.

limaçon
1660 Alessandro Scarlatti, Palermo, Italy, composer (Tigrane). He died on 24 October 1725.

1601 Athanasius Kircher, in Thuringia, German Jesuit who died on 27 November 1680 in Rome, “the last Renaissance man” and/or “the first Postmodernist”. Amazing. — MORE ON KIRCHER.

1588 Étienne Pascal, French lawyer, government official, mathematician, who died on 24 September 1651. He discovered the curve Limaçon de Pascal, which can be used to trisect an angle; its Cartesian equation is (x² + y² - 2ax)² = b²(x² + y²), and its polar equation is r = b + 2a cos(q) [diagram >]. He was the father of Blaise Pascal [19 Jun 1623 – 19 Aug 1662].

Holidays:: Bhutan : 3rd King's Birthday / Burma : Peasants' Day / Lesotho : King's Birthday

Religious Observances RC, Luth, Ang : St Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria/doctor / Saint Boris, saint patron de Moscou. Fils du seigneur moscovite Wladimir, Boris est assassiné le 24 juillet 1015 par son frère aîné qui refuse de partager l'héritage paternel. Avant de mourir, il demande à Dieu le pardon de son meurtrier.

Thoughts for the day: “Deprive a mirror of its silver and even the Czar won`t see his face.”
(1949 US missionary and martyr Jim Elliot wrote in his journal:) “The man who will not act until he knows all will never act at all.”
“You can't make nothing out of something, but you can make it go somewhere else.”
"Even a liar tells a hundred truths to one lie; he has to, to make the lie good for anything." — Henry Ward Beecher, US clergyman (1813-1887). [so much for logic puzzles about truth-tellers who never tell a lie, and liars who always do]

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bsp;    Executive sessions were held prior to the public hearings. Although many of the witnesses later testified in public sessions, some appeared only in the closed sessions. The set contains testimony by such prominent witnesses as Aaron Copeland, novelist Howard Fast, Dashiell Hammett, Langston Hughes, artist Rockwell Kent, and journalist James Reston. Other witnesses were government employees, labor organizers, and army officers.
      As the transcripts reveal, Senator McCarthy was often the only senator present at the executive session hearings. Interrogations were largely conducted by McCarthy’s chief counsel, Roy Cohn, and by the subcommittee’s unpaid “chief consultant,” G. David Schine. Interrogators probed the witnesses on their beliefs, families, and past associations. Some witnesses cooperated and some refused to testify, generally citing the Fifth Amendment. Senator McCarthy frequently threatened witnesses with prosecution for contempt, but all cases were either thrown out of court or overturned on appeal. No one who appeared before McCarthy’s subcommittee was imprisoned for anything related to their testimony. However, many lost their jobs for declining to answer the subcommittee’s questions.
      Following these hearings, the Supreme Court considerably strengthened protection for the rights of witnesses appearing before congressional committees. The Senate and the Permanent Subcommittee also revised the rules of inquiry to prevent a continuation of the abuses evident during Senator McCarthy’s tenure.

1819 Mrs. Mary Lloyd Moser, British painter born on 27 October 1744.