Sept 1: Day that changed the world in many ways
The day of Hitler, Tarzan and Louis
A war that killed 55 million
Adolf Hitler loved power and land. He envisioned a vast, new empire of “living space” (Lebensraum) in eastern Europe. The realization of German dominance in Europe, its leaders calculated, would require war. And thus began World War II when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939.
World War II resulted in an estimated 55 million deaths worldwide. It was the largest and most destructive conflict in history.
World War II also saw the use of atomic bombs over Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing 120,000 civilians. Japan formally surrendered on September 2.
Brief landmarks in WWII: Sept 3: Britain and France declare war on Germany on September 3. Within a month, Poland was defeated by a combination of German and Soviet forces and was partitioned between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
April 9, 1940: German forces invade Norway and Denmark. On May 10, 1940, Germany begins its assault on western Europe by invading the Low Countries (Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg). June 22, 1940, France signed an armistice with Germany, which provided for the German occupation of the northern half of the country and permitted the establishment of a collaborationist regime in the south with its seat in the city of Vichy.
June 1940: Soviet Union occupies the Baltic states and formally annexes them in August 1940. June 10, 1940: Italy, a member of the Axis (countries allied with Germany), joins the war. From July 10 to October 31, 1940, the Nazis waged, and ultimately lost, an air war over England, known as the Battle of Britain.
June 22, 1941: Germans and their allies invade the Soviet Union in direct violation of the German-Soviet Pact.
Soviet leader Joseph Stalin becomes a major wartime Allied leader, in opposition to Nazi Germany and its Axis allies.
December 7, 1941: Japan (one of the Axis powers) bombs Pearl Harbour, Hawaii. The United States immediately declares war on Japan.
December 11: Germany and Italy declare war on the United States as the military conflict widened.
May 1942: British Royal Air Force carries out a raid on the German city of Cologne with a thousand bombers, for the first time bringing war home to Germany.
July 1943: Germans mount one more offensive at Kursk in July 1943, the biggest tank battle in history, but Soviet troops blunts the attack and assumes a military predominance that they would not again relinquish during the course of the war.
July 1943: Allies land in Sicily and in September goes ashore on the Italian mainland. After the Italian Fascist Party’s Grand Council deposed Italian premier Benito Mussolini (an ally of Hitler), the Italian military takes over and negotiates a surrender to Anglo-American forces on September 8.
June 6, 1944 (D-Day), as part of a massive military operation, over 150,000 Allied soldiers land in France, which was liberated by the end of August. On September 11, 1944, the first U.S. troops crossed into Germany, one month after Soviet troops crossed the eastern border.
In mid-December the Germans launch an unsuccessful counterattack in Belgium and northern France, known as the Battle of the Bulge. Allied air forces attack Nazi industrial plants, such as the one at the Auschwitz camp (though the gas chambers were never targeted).
January 12, 1945: Soviet Union liberates western Poland forcing Hungary (an Axis ally) to surrender. In mid-February 1945, the Allies bomb the German city of Dresden, killing approximately 35,000 civilians.
March 7, 1947: American troops cross the Rhine River. A final Soviet offensive on April 16, 1945, enabled Soviet forces to encircle the German capital, Berlin.
April 30, 1945: Hitler commits suicide.
May 7, 1945: Germany surrenders unconditionally to the Western Allies at Reims and on May 9 to the Soviets in Berlin.
August: The war in the Pacific ends after the U.S. drops atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing 120,000 civilians. Japan formally surrendered on September 2.
The creator of Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs was born on Sept 1, 1875 in Chicago. His father, George Tyler Burroughs, was a Civil War veteran and a successful businessman. Major Burroughs and his wife Mary had five other boys besides Edgar, but two of the children died in infancy, leaving Edgar the youngest of the family.
“Eddie” attended several schools during his formative years and his early exposure to Classical literature and mythology served Burroughs well in his future writing career.
Edgar had an adventurous life in ranches where he herded cattle, busted a bucking broncho, and got to know a few thieves, murderers and bad men.
During the first half of the twentieth century the American reading public had access to a source of entertainment now long gone: “pulp” magazines. These magazines were printed on cheap paper with a high pulp content (hence the name), wrapped in garishly illustrated covers, and were brimming with every type of fiction imaginable: westerns, romances, science fiction, tales of courtly intrigue, stories of historical adventure, the exploits of hardy explorers in foreign climes. Every issue brought you a handful of short stories and the latest instalment of two or three different serials, so you had to buy the next issue (and the next) to find out how the tales ended. And then another serial would begin …
But in October 1912, Eddie changed all that with an All-Story magazine called “Tarzan of the Apes — A Romance of the Jungle” for just 15 cents. The cover caught the attention of everyone: a barbarously clad man sits astride a rampaging lion, his knife raised for the kill, as another man (probably the lion’s intended dinner) looks on in horror.
Instead of serializing this lengthy novel, the All-Story’s editor had decided to run it complete in this single issue. From this one novel sprang two dozen more, over 40 movies, hundreds of comic books, radio shows, television programs, Tarzan toys, Tarzan gasoline, Tarzan underwear, Tarzan ice cream, Tarzan running shoes — the list is virtually endless. Edgar Rice Burroughs became one of the twentieth century’s most popular authors, and Tarzan one of the world’s best-known literary characters. And all this from one story that came close to never being written at all.
France today owes much to Louis XIV (1638-1715). He was the king of France from 1643 to 1715 and brought the French monarchy to its peak of absolute power. He was also responsible for making France the dominant power in Europe and was called the Sun King. He died on Sept 1, 1715.
His reign is associated with the greatest age of French culture and art. He became King when he was just four years old, but France was effectively ruled by his mother and Cardinal Mazarin with whom his mother was in love. After Mazarin’s death, Louis governed France for 54 years.
Louis was known for his appetite for food, hunting, and sex. Though not tall, he was extremely impressive in appearance due to his great dignity and royal presence. His passion for personal glory led him to drag France into a series of wars, ultimately at appalling cost to his people. On his deathbed he confessed to having loved war too much, but there are no signs that he really understood what his passion had cost his country.
Louis was married to Maria Theresa, daughter of Philip IV of Spain, as part of the settlement by which Mazarin ended the Spanish war. He married her reluctantly (he was in love with Mazarin’s own niece at the time) and made no pretense of being faithful to her.
Overcharged with sexual energy practically all his life, he had a number of mistresses, whose jealousy of each other was a principal topic of court gossip. But the two best known, Louise de La Vallière and Athénaïs de Montespan, he had a number of illegitimate children, of whom he was very fond. His attention was finally caught by Françoise Scarron, who had become the governess of these children; he made her Marquise de Maintenon and settled down in domestic respectability with her. In later life he became very puritanical, and Madame de Maintenon has sometimes been blamed for this, but it seems likely that the change was inherent in Louis’s own nature.
The King’s last years were darkened not only by the successive disasters of the war and the desperate condition of his people but by a series of personal tragedies. In quick succession his son, the two grandsons still with him, and one of his two infant great-grandsons died. With them died his grandson’s wife, the young Duchess of Burgundy, whom Louis adored. Only his other greatgrandson survived, to succeed him at the age of 5 as Louis XV. When Louis died, France had long been sick of him, and his funeral procession was insulted in the streets.
(Excerpted from Net)
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