April 3
*Calvin Graham, the youngest United States serviceman to serve and fight during World War II, was born in Canton, Texas.
Calvin Leon Graham (b. April 3, 1930, Canton, Texas – d. November 6, 1992, Fort Worth, Texas) was the youngest United States serviceman to serve and fight during World War II. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the United States Navy from Houston, Texas, on August 15, 1942, at the age of 12. His case was similar to that of Jack W. Hill, who was granted significant media attention due to holding service number one million during World War II, but later was discovered to have lied about his age and subsequently discharged.
Graham was born in Canton, Texas and was attending elementary school in Houston before he decided to join the Navy, after his father had died and his mother had remarried.
He enlisted in the Navy on August 15, 1942 and was sent to boot camp in San Diego, California for six weeks, and afterwards was sent to Pearl Harbor at Oahu, Hawaii, where he was assigned to USS South Dakota in September.
The South Dakota left Pearl Harbor on October 16. On October 26, 1942, Graham participated in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. The South Dakota and her crew received a Navy Unit Commendation for the action. On the night of November 14–15, 1942, Graham was wounded during the Naval Battle Guadalcanal. During this battle, Graham served as a loader for a 40mm anti-aircraft gun and was hit by shrapnel while taking a hand message to an officer. Though he received fragmentation wounds, he helped in rescue duty by aiding and pulling the wounded aboard ship to safety. He was awarded the Bronze Star Medal and the Purple Heart Medal, and he and his crewmates were awarded another Navy Unit Commendation.
The South Dakota returned to the east coast on December 18, 1942 for an overhaul and battle damage repairs (she had taken 42 hits from at least 3 enemy ships) in New York City, and since then, was named "Battleship X" in order to make the Japanese think she had been sunk. Graham's mother revealed his age after he attended his grandmother's funeral (he arrived the day after the funeral) in Texas without permission from the Navy, for which afterwards he spent three months in a brig in Texas (he was not released until after his sister threatened to contact the newspapers). Although he had tried to return to his ship, he was released from the Navy on April 1, 1943, without any awards or benefits. The South Dakota's gunnery officer, who was involved in handling his case, was Sargent Shriver.
Graham then worked in a defense plant as a welder instead of going back to school.
Graham joined the United States Marine Corps in 1948 at age 17, but his enlistment in the Marines also ended early when he fell from a pier and broke his back in 1951. Although serving in the Marine Corps qualified him as a veteran, he would spend the rest of his life fighting for full medical benefits and clearing his military service record.
In 1978, Graham was finally given an honorable discharge for his service in the Navy, and after writing to Congress and with the approval of President Jimmy Carter, all medals except his Purple Heart Medal were reinstated. His story came to public attention in 1988, when his story was told in the television movie, Too Young the Hero. He was played by Rick Schroder.
In 1988, Graham received disability benefits and back pay for his service in the Navy after President Ronald Reagan signed legislation that granted Graham full disability benefits, increased his back pay to $4917 and allowed him $18,000 for past medical bills, contingent on receipts for the medical services. By this time, some of the doctors who treated him had died and many medical bills were lost. He received only $2,100 of the possible $18,000. While the money for the rights to his story for the movie, Too Young The Hero amounted to $50,000, 50% went to two agents and 20% went to a writer of an unpublished book about Graham. He and his wife received just $15,000 before taxes.
Graham's Purple Heart Medal was finally reinstated, and presented to his widow, Mary, on June 21, 1994, by Secretary of the Navy John Dalton in Arlington, Texas, nearly two years after Graham's death from heart failure.
April 4
*The Communist Party of Panama was founded.
April 5
*In an act of civil disobedience, Mahatma Gandhi broke the Salt laws of British India by making salt by the sea at the end of the Salt March.
April 6
*Chris Folk, the Associate Superintendent of Communications who was responsible for educating the public regarding Swann v. Mecklenburg County Supreme Court case, was born in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Chris Evans Folk (b. April 6, 1930, Charlotte, North Carolina – d. September 23, 2010) served in the office of School Community Relations for the Charlotte Mecklenburg County Schools during desegregation.
Chris Folk was born on April 6, 1930 in Charlotte, North Carolina. He attended Central High school and Duke University where he graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in English and Education in 1952. He earned his master's degree from the University of Texas in 1953 and went to work as an English teacher in Corpus Christi, Texas. During the Korean War, Folk served in the United States Army in the Medical Field Service School. After he was released from the Army, Folk returned to Charlotte and began his 37-year career with the Charlotte Mecklenburg School district. In 1962, Folk earned a Doctor of Education degree from Columbia University Teachers College.
From 1960 to 1976 Folk held a number of positions with the county. He served in the office of School Community Relations, Principle of Windsor Park Elementary, and Assistant Superintendent of Communications. In 1976, he was promoted to Associate Superintendent of Communications and help that position until his retirement in 1992. Folk helped merge Charlotte City schools with Mecklenburg county schools that created the Charlotte Mecklenburg School System in 1959.
Folk was responsible for educating the public regarding the Swann v. Mecklenburg County Supreme Court case. He worked with the school board to implement desegregation policies, provided workshops for school personnel to learn how to handle problems related to desegregation and set up a hotline as a way to respond to parents' questions. In 1970, a bomb threat was called into Folk's home in response to his work with the schools. No bomb was ever found and his family remained safe. He was awarded the Charlotte Public Relations Society's Infinity Award, and the Phi Delta Kappa's Continuous Outstanding Service to Education Award.
Folk died on September 23, 2010 at the age of 80.
*****
*The International Left Opposition (ILO) was founded in Paris, France.
*Hostess Twinkies were invented.
April 10
*Dolores Huerta, one of the founders of the United Farm Workers of America, was born in Dawson, New Mexico.
Dolores Huerta, née Dolores Fernández, (b. April 10, 1930, Dawson, New Mexico), was an American labor leader and activist whose work on behalf of migrant farmworkers led to the establishment of the United Farm Workers of America.
When Huerta was a child she moved to Stockton, California, with her mother and siblings after her parents’ divorce. She remained in touch with her father, Juan Fernandez, and took pride in his personal and professional development from coal miner to migrant laborer to union activist to an elected representative in the New Mexico state legislature to college graduate. Unlike many women of her era, Dolores went on to college, after graduating from Stockton High School. Although a brief marriage, motherhood, and divorce interrupted her studies, she eventually received an A.A. degree from Stockton College. A series of unsatisfying jobs led her to seek a teaching credential, but her teaching career lasted only a few months. Huerta decided that she could do more for the hungry and barefoot farmworkers’ children in her class by helping their parents win more equitable working conditions. As an employee of a Mexican-American self-help association called the Community Service Organization (CSO), Huerta lobbied California state legislators to enact such progressive legislation as old-age pensions for non-citizens.
In the late 1950s, Huerta became interested in the conditions of farmworkers and met Cesar Chavez, a CSO official who shared that interest. Their attempts to focus the CSO’s attention on the inequities plaguing rural workers failed, and both eventually left that organization. By 1962 they had co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, forerunner of the United Farm Workers (UFW), an influential union whose grape boycott in the late 1960s forced grape producers to improve working conditions for migrant farmworkers. As coordinator of nationwide lettuce, grape, and Gallo wine boycotts in the 1970s, Huerta helped create the national climate that led to the passage in 1975 of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, the first law recognizing the rights of California farmworkers to bargain collectively.
In the 1980s, Huerta co-founded the UFW’s radio station and continued to speak and raise funds on behalf of a variety of causes, including immigration policy and farm laborers’ health. From 1988 to 1993, Huerta served on the United States Commission on Agricultural Workers, established by Congress to evaluate special worker provisions and labor markets in the agriculture industry. In 2002 she founded the Dolores Huerta Foundation, which was involved in community organizing. Her numerous honors include induction (1993) into the National Women's Hall of Fame. She also was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. Huerta was the subject of the documentary Dolores (2017).
April 17
*Neoprene was invented by DuPont.
April 18
*The Chittagong Rebellion began in India with the Chittagong armory raid.
*BBC Radio from London reported on this day that "There is no news".
April 19
*Warner Bros. in the United States released their first cartoon series called Looney Tunes which ran until 1969.
April 21
*A fire in the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio, killed 320 people.
*The Turkestan-Siberia Railway was completed.
*Hilda Hilst, a Brazilian poet, playwright and novelist, was born in Jau, Sao Paulo State, Brazil.
Hilda de Almeida Prado Hilst (b. April 21, 1930, Jau, Sao Paulo State, Brazil – d. February 4, 2004, Campinas, Brazil), more widely known as Hilda Hilst, was a Brazilian poet, playwright, and novelist, whose fiction and poetry often drew upon themes of delicate intimacy, whilst also addressing the topic of insanity and incorporating supernatural events. Several of her late works include elements of magic realism.
April 22
*The United Kingdom, Japan and the United States signed the London Naval Treaty to regulate submarine warfare and limit naval shipbuilding.
April 28
*The first night game in organized baseball history took place in Independence, Kansas.
April 29
*Derek Humphry, a British-born American journalist, author and principal founder in 1980 of the Hemlock Society USA and past president of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies, both of which support the notion of decriminalization of voluntary euthanasia, was born in Bath, England. He is the author of Jean's Way and the best-seller Final Exit. He was also the president of the Euthanasia Research & Guidance Organization and advisor to the Final Exit Network.
April 30
*France enacted a workmen's insurance law.
April 29
April 30
*Leo Jansen, a Dutch artist known for his portraits, was born in The Hague, the Netherlands.
Leo Jansen (b. April 30, 1930, The Hague, the Netherlands - d. December 20, 1980) was born
in the Netherlands, but moved to the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) when he was ten. There in the tropics, he began his craft by sketching bronze-skinned Indonesian girls for leisure. He returned to the Netherlands to study at the Academy of Art, to refine his growing mastery of the female figures. Like most continental artists, he gravitated first to Paris and quickly established himself as a portraitist of considerable talent. In 1962, he arrived in New York. Because of the softness and light he infused his portraits, he was chosen by several companies to do commemorative plates. Jansen is, perhaps, best known throughout the United States and Europe for his mother's day plates and puppies plate series.
Many of the rich and famous (such as Raquel Welch, William Holden, Donald Sutherland, Stephanie Powers, and the Los Angeles Times Hearst family) sought out Jansen for his portraiture skills. Jansen's sitting fee in 1960 was US$20,000. In addition, he also gained fame for his portraiture of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. His Beatles portraits are among the more collectible memorabilia by fans. He was in great demand in the Los Angeles galleries, but sold primarily through Aaron Brothers.
Despite his national reputation as a portrait artist, Jansen refused many of those demands and resumed his childhood love affair of painting nudes. He moved to Southern California. For eighteen years, he was commissioned by Playboy Magazine to paint the playmate of the month. In his first six years, he was the artist chosen to paint 58 of the 72 portraits. Ranked among the nation's best interpretive artist of nudes, Jansen's canvases hang in collection of a wide range of notables from Jean-Claude Pascal to the late Judy Garland.
Leo Jansen died from an apparent heart attack in 1980 at 50 years of age.
May 4
*Colin Hughes, a Bahamian-born British-Australian academic specializing in electoral politics and government, was born in the Bahamas (May 4).
Colin Anfield Hughes (b May 4, 1930, The Bahamas – d. June 30, 2017, Peregian Springs, Queensland, Australia) was born in the Bahamas, where his Welsh father, John Anfield Hughes, was a school administrator, and later district commissioner of several Bahamian islands. During World War II, he moved to the United States where he received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from Columbia University and his Ph.D from the London School of Economics. In 1966, along with John S. Western, Hughes published a study of Australia's first ever televised policy speech on November 12, 1963, by then prime minister Sir Robert Menzies. At this time, Hughes was a Fellow in Political Science at the Australian National University. At the time of the 1966 publication, Hughes was a Professor of Political Science and Western Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Queensland.
The Hughes-Western study comprised 250 voters who viewed the policy speech, examined the effect of this form of political communication, and traced its impact on the knowledge, attitudes, and opinions of this group. This was the first such detailed study undertaken in Australia, providing a testing of theories of cognitive equilibrium in relation to voting behavior, and an examination of television's use in political communication.
Hughes was the first Australian Electoral Commissioner at the Australian Electoral Commission from 1984–1989 (in 1984 the AEC replaced the Australian Electoral Office, which had existed since 1902).
May 5
*Mahatma Gandhi was re-arrested.
*Will Hutchins, an American actor most noted for playing the lead role of the young lawyer from the Oklahoma Territory, Tom Brewster, in the Western television series, Sugarfoot, and who played Frederick Russell Burnham, an American scout in the movie Shangani Patrol, was born in Los Angeles, California (May 5).
Will Hutchins (b. May 5, 1930, Los Angeles, California) is an American actor most noted for playing the lead role of the young lawyer from the Oklahoma Territory. Tom Brewster, in sixty-nine episodes of the Warner Bros. Western television series Sugarfoot, which aired on ABC from 1957 to 1961. Only five episodes aired in 1961, including the series finale on April 17.
Hutchins was born Marshall Lowell Hutchason in the Atwater Village neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. As a child, he visited the location filming of Never Give a Sucker an Even Break and made his first appearance as an extra in a crowd.
Hutchins was born Marshall Lowell Hutchason in the Atwater Village neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. As a child, he visited the location filming of Never Give a Sucker an Even Break and made his first appearance as an extra in a crowd.
He attended Pomona College in Claremont, California, where he majored in Greek drama. He also studied at the University of California at Los Angeles, where he enrolled in cinema classes.
During the Korean War, he served for two years in the United States Army as a cryptographer in Paris, serving with SHAPE.
Hutchins began acting and got a role on Matinee Theatre.
Hutchins was discovered by a talent scout for Warner Bros., who changed his name from Marshall Lowell Hutchason to Will Hutchins. The young actor's easygoing manner was compared to Will Rogers, the Oklahoma humorist.
His contract led him to guest appearances in Warner Bros. Television programs, such as Confilict, in which he appeared in three hour-long episodes, including his screen debut as Ed Masters in "The Magic Brew" on October 16, 1956.
Hutchins was also cast as a guest star on several television series including Cheyenne, Bronco, Mavericki, and 77 Sunset Strip. He had small roles in the Warners movies Bombers b-52 (1957), Lafayette Escadrille (1958), and No Time Sergeants (1958).
Hutchins leapt to national fame in the lead of Sugarfoot. During the series' run, he guest starred on other Warner Bros shows such as The Roaring 20's, Bronco and Surfside 6.
Warners tried Hutchins in the lead of a feature, Young and Eager (1961) aka Claudelle Inglish with Diane McBain.
He tried another pilot for a series, Howe, that was not picked up and in the Warners war film with Jeff Chandler, Merrill's Marauders (1962), a picture filmed in the Philippine Islands and Chandler's last acting role.
After this Hutchins left Warners. He subsequently guest starred on Gunsmoke and The Alfred Hitchcok Hour.
While appearing in a play in Chicago in late 1963, he was flown to Los Angeles to shoot a television pilot for MGM, Bert I. Gordon's Take Me to Your Leader, in which Hutchins played a Martian salesman who came to Earth. Though the pilot was not picked up, it led MGM to sign Hutchins for Spinout, in which he co-starred as Lt. Tracy Richards ("Dick Tracy" backwards) alongside Elvis Presley. .
In 1965, Hutchins co-starred with Jack Nicholson and Warren Oates in Monte Hellman's The Shooting.
In 1966, he made a guest appearance on the CBS courtroom drama series Perry Mason as murderer Don Hobart in "The Case of the Scarlet Scandal". (He later also appeared as Dan Haynes in The New Perry Mason in 1973 in the episode, "The Case of the Deadly Deeds". (A young Jodie Foster was in this same episode.)
In 1966-1967, Hutchins co-starred with Sandy Baron in Hey, Landlord set in a New York City apartment building. The program followed Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, but it failed to attract a sustaining audience against CBS's The Ed Sullivan Show and ABC's The F.B.I. with Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. his former Warner Bros. colleague.
Hutchins was reunited with Presley in Clambake (1967).
In 1968-69, Hutchins starred as Dagwood Bumstead in a CBS television version of the comic strip Blondie.
Hutchins travelled to South Africa to appear in the movie Shangani Patrol (1970) playing Frederick Russell Burnham.
***
***
Shangani Patrol is a war film based upon the non-fiction book A Time to Die by Robert Cary (1968), and the historical accounts of the Shangani Patrol, with Brian O'Shaughnessy as Major Allan Wilson and Will Hutchins as the lead Scout Frederick Russell Burnham. The film also includes the song "Shangani Patrol" by Nick Taylor (1966 recording).
Under the command of Major Wilson, the patrol tracks the fleeing Ndebele King Lobengula across the Shangani River. Cut off from the main force, they are ambushed by the Ndebele impi (regiment) and, except for the few men sent as reinforcements, all are killed. Depending on one's viewpoint, this event was one of the great mistakes and military blunders of this time in history, or the last heroic stand of a gallant few. The incident had lasting significance in England, South Africa, and Rhodesia as the equivalent of "Custer's Last Stand" in the United States.
***
***
The Shangani Patrol (or Wilson's Patrol) was a 34-soldier unit of the British South Africa Company that in 1893 was ambushed and annihilated by more than 3,000 Matabele warriors in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), during the First Matabele War. Headed by Major Allan Wilson, the patrol was attacked just north of the Shangani River in Matabeleland, Rhodesia. Its dramatic last stand, sometimes called "Wilson's Last Stand", achieved a prominent place in the British public imagination and, subsequently, in Rhodesian history, similarly to events such as the Battle of Shiroyama in Japan, the Alamo massacre in Texas and the ancient Greeks' last stand at Thermopylae.
The patrol comprised elements of the Mashonaland Mounted Police and the Bechuanaland Border Police. Scouting ahead of Major Patrick Forbes' column attempting the capture of the Matabele King Lobengula (following his flight from his capital Bulawayo a month before), it crossed the Shangani late on December 3, 1893. The patrol moved on Lobengula the next morning, but was ambushed by a host of Matabele riflemen and warriors near the king's wagon. Surrounded and outnumbered about a hundred-fold, the patrol made a last stand as three of its number broke out and rode back to the river to muster reinforcements from Forbes. However, the Shangani had risen significantly in flood, and Forbes was himself involved in a skirmish near the southern bank; Wilson and his men therefore remained isolated to the north. After fighting to the last cartridge, and killing over ten times their own number, they were annihilated.
The patrol's members, particularly Wilson and Captain Henry Borrow, were elevated in death to the status of national heroes, representing endeavor in the face of insurmountable odds. The anniversary of the battle on December 4, 1893 became an annual public holiday in Rhodesia two years later, and was an official non-work day until 1920. A historical war film depicting the episode, Shangani Patrol, was produced and released in 1970.
Controversy surrounds the breakout before the last stand — which various writers have posited might have actually been desertion — and a box of gold sovereigns, which a Matabele inDuna (leader) later claimed had been given to two unidentified men from Forbes's rear guard on December 2, along with a message that Lobengula admitted defeat and wanted the column to stop pursuing him. Two batmen were initially found guilty of accepting the gold, keeping it for themselves and not passing on the message, but the evidence against them was inconclusive and largely circumstantial. The convictions were ultimately overturned.
Amid the Scramble for Africa during the 1880s, the South African-based businessman and politician Cecil Rhodes envisioned the annexation to the British Empire of a swathe of territory connecting the Cape of Good Hope and Cairo — respectively at the southern and northern tips of Africa — and the concurrent construction of a line of rail linking the two. On geopolitical maps, British territories were generally marked in red or pink, so this concept became known as the "Cape to Cairo red line". In the immediate vicinity of the Cape, this ambition was challenged by the presence of independent states to the north-east of Britain's Cape Colony: the Boer republics, and, to the north of these, the Kingdom of Matabeleland under Lobengula. Having secured the Rudd Concession on mining rights from King Lobengula on 30 October 30, 1888, Rhodes and his British South Africa Company were granted a Royal Charter by Queen Victoria in October 1889. The Company was empowered under this charter to trade with local rulers, form banks, own and manage land, and raise and run a police force: the British South Africa Company's Police, renamed the Mashonaland Mounted Police in 1892.
In return for these rights, the Company would govern and develop any territory it acquired, while respecting laws enacted by extant African rulers, and upholding free trade within its borders. The first settlers referred to their new home as "Rhodesia", after Rhodes. Though the Company made good on most of its pledges, the assent of Lobengula and other native leaders, particularly regarding mining rights, was often evaded, misrepresented or simply ignored. It also offended Lobengula by demanding that he stop the customary Matabele raids on the Mashona people who inhabited the white-governed areas. Angered by the Company's attitude towards his authority, Lobengula made war on the new arrivals and the Mashonas in 1893. Matabele warriors began the wholesale slaughter of Mashonas in the vicinity of Fort Victoria in July that year, and an indaba (tribal conference) organized by Company official Leander Starr Jameson to end the conflict ended with violence, and dispersion by force. The First Matabele War had started.
Company columns rode from Fort Salisbury and Fort Victoria, and combined at Iron Mine Hill, around the center point of the country, on October 16, 1893. Together the force totalled about 700 men, commanded by Major Patrick Forbes, and equipped with five Maxim machine guns. Forbes' combined column moved on the Matabele king's capital at Bulawayo, to the south-west. The Matabele army mobilised to prevent Forbes from reaching the city, and twice engaged the column as it approached: on 25 October, 3,500 warriors assaulted the column near the Shangani River. Lobengula's troops were well-drilled and formidable by pre-colonial African standards, but the Company's Maxim guns, which had never before been used in battle, far exceeded expectations, mowing them down literally like grass. By the time the Matabele withdrew, they had suffered around 1,500 fatalities. The Company, on the other hand, had lost only four men. A week later, on November 1, 1893, 2,000 Matabele riflemen and 4,000 warriors attacked Forbes at Bembezi, about 30 miles (48 km) north-east of Bulawayo, but again they were no match for the crushing firepower of the major's Maxims: about 2,500 more Matabele were killed.
Lobengula fled Bulawayo as soon as he heard the news from Bembezi. On November 3, 1893, with the column on the outskirts of the city, he and his subjects left, torching the royal town as they went. In the resultant conflagration, the city's large store of ivory, gold and other treasure was destroyed, as was its ammunition magazine, which exploded. The flames were still rising when the whites entered the settlement the next day; basing themselves in the "White Man's Camp" already present, they set about extinguishing the fire which engulfed the town. Using a tree to improvise a flagstaff, they hoisted first the Company flag, then the Union Jack. The reconstruction of Bulawayo began almost as soon as the blaze was out, with a new white-run city rising atop the ruins of Lobengula's former residence. Jameson, who now based himself in Bulawayo, wrote the following letter to the Matabele king on November 7, 1893, in English, Dutch and Zulu:
I send this message in order, if possible, to prevent the necessity of any further killing of your people or burning of their kraals. To stop this useless slaughter you must at once come and see me at Bulawayo, where I will guarantee that your life will be safe and that you will be kindly treated. I will allow sufficient time for these messengers to reach you and two days more to allow you to reach me in your wagon. Should you not then arrive I shall at once send out troops to follow you, as I am determined as soon as possible to put the country in a condition where whites and blacks can live in peace and friendliness.
Leander Starr Jameson
I send this message in order, if possible, to prevent the necessity of any further killing of your people or burning of their kraals. To stop this useless slaughter you must at once come and see me at Bulawayo, where I will guarantee that your life will be safe and that you will be kindly treated. I will allow sufficient time for these messengers to reach you and two days more to allow you to reach me in your wagon. Should you not then arrive I shall at once send out troops to follow you, as I am determined as soon as possible to put the country in a condition where whites and blacks can live in peace and friendliness.
Leander Starr Jameson
This letter, carried by John Grootboom, a coloured man from the Cape, reached Lobengula near Shiloh Mission, about 30 miles (48 km) north of Bulawayo. The king replied in English:
I have heard all that you have said, so I will come, but let me to ask you where are all my men which I have sent to the Cape, such as Maffett and Jonny and James, and after that the three men—Gobogobo, Mantose and Goebo—whom I sent. If I do come where will I get a house for me as all my houses is burn down, and also as soon as my men come which I have sent then I will come.
Jameson did not regard this ambiguity as a proper answer, and impatiently waited for further word from the king. After standing by for the specified two days and receiving nothing, he correctly concluded that Lobengula was stalling him, and using the extra time to distance himself from his former capital Jameson therefore made good on his pledge, and called for volunteers; he assembled a host of about 470 men, mixed together from the Mashonaland Mounted Police, the Bechuanaland Border Police, and Raaff's Rangers, an independent unit led by the eponymous Commandant Piet Raaff. This force was placed under Forbes's command, with three Maxim guns attached. Jameson told the major to scout the area between Shiloh and Inyati for spoor, with the ultimate objective of capturing Lobengula, and sent him out just before sunset on November 14, 1893.
The column left Bulawayo heading north, and, in an attempt to expedite its progress, reorganised itself into a more compact 290-man force at Shiloh. Lobengula, meanwhile, rode north towards the Shangani in his wagon, which left obvious tracks in its wake. Following the wagon tracks, Forbes's men were soon hot on the trail, routinely finding recently abandoned Matabele camps, provisions and stragglers. Heavy rain slowed both the king and his pursuers, and led Forbes to split his force again; moving on with a flying column of 160 men, he sent the rest back with the wagons. He pushed on, and on December 3, 1893 reached the southern bank of the Shangani, from where he could clearly see Matabele hastily driving cattle behind an impi (regiment) of warriors. The presence of smoldering fires beside the native column betrayed the fact that they had just crossed. Wishing to know whether the king had crossed here or at another point on the river, Forbes sent Major Allan Wilson across to scout ahead with 12 men and eight officers, and told him to return by nightfall.
Meanwhile, Forbes formed a laager (improvised fort) about 200 yards (180 m) from the southern bank. There, he interrogated a captive Matabele, the son of an inDuna (tribal leader), who said that the king was indeed where Wilson had gone, and was ill (the exact ailment was not known for sure, the prisoner said, but was suspected to be gout.). The inDuna's son said that Lobengula had with him a force of about 3,000 warriors, about half of whom were armed with Martini-Henry rifles. They were mixed together from various regiments of the previously routed Matabele army, and largely demoralized, but still fiercely determined to prevent Lobengula's capture. Most prominent were the Imbezu, Ingubo and Insukameni Regiments; the Imbezu, Lobengula's favorite, was generally considered the strongest. After three weeks in pursuit of the king, Forbes' rations were running perilously short. He therefore resolved to attack the next day (December 4), hoping to be able to turn back for Bulawayo with Lobengula in custody before nightfall.
Wilson's men remained north of the river far longer than expected, and had still not returned when darkness fell. Forbes, meanwhile, received a report that most of Lobengula's force, commanded by inDuna Mjaan, had separated from the king and was moving to attack the laager the same night (this was actually an exaggeration; only about 300 riflemen had split from the main Matabele force, though they were indeed south of the river, undetected by Forbes). Visibility was poor by now, and rain periodically fell.
The laager received no word from Wilson until about 21:00, when Sergeant-Major Judge and Corporal Ebbage arrived from across the river to tell Forbes that Wilson had found Lobengula's tracks, and followed him for 5 miles (8.0 km). Wilson regarded the chances of taking the king alive as so good that he was going to remain north of the river overnight. He asked Forbes to send more men and a Maxim gun in the morning, but did not explain what he planned to do with them.
The laager received no word from Wilson until about 21:00, when Sergeant-Major Judge and Corporal Ebbage arrived from across the river to tell Forbes that Wilson had found Lobengula's tracks, and followed him for 5 miles (8.0 km). Wilson regarded the chances of taking the king alive as so good that he was going to remain north of the river overnight. He asked Forbes to send more men and a Maxim gun in the morning, but did not explain what he planned to do with them.
The Shangani Patrol continued its approach during the late evening, and scouted close to the bush enclosure housing Lobengula. Captain William Napier repeatedly called to the king in the Matabele language, Sindebele, but received no reply from the Matabele leaders, who remained silent and hid themselves. The patrol's actions confused the Matabele, who could not understand why there appeared to be so few Company soldiers, nor why they would reveal their position like this. They concluded that it must be a trap, and were only satisfied that it was not when Wilson's men had stopped during their approach to call to Lobengula five times. Following the fifth call from Napier, Mjaan ordered his riflemen to gather around the patrol, intending to pocket it. Noticing this, Wilson ordered a retreat, and took up a well-covered position in the bush where he could hide until daybreak. When Lieutenant Hofmeyer and Troopers Bradburn and Colquhoun were lost amid the increasingly stormy night, Wilson briefly backtracked to recover them.
On returning to his bush camp, Wilson sent a further message to the laager, which reached its destination at around 23:00. Napier, Scout Bain and Trooper Robertson were the men acting as runners. Wilson repeated that he was going to stay north of the river overnight, close to the king, and asked Forbes to bring the whole column across by 04:00 in the morning. Forbes thought it unwise to attempt a full river crossing at night, which he reasoned might lead to his force being surrounded in the darkness and massacred, but also felt he could not recall Wilson, as to do so would be to lose Lobengula for sure.
As a compromise, Forbes sent Captain Henry Borrow across with 21 men at 01:00 on December 4, and told Borrow to relay to Wilson that the laager was surrounded, and "expected to be attacked any moment". Forbes apparently intended for Borrow's reinforcements to secure Wilson's position, but this was a serious tactical error on Forbes's part: the addition of Borrow's men made Wilson's patrol too large to be a mere reconnoitering force, but still too small to overpower the Matabele and capture the king. Indeed, Wilson and his officers looked on gloomily when Borrow's men arrived soon after dawn, fewer in number than expected and without the requested Maxim gun. Only 20 of the reinforcements (including Borrow himself) reached Wilson — Troopers Landsberg and Nesbitt became separated from the main group along the way, and eventually rejoined Forbes during the morning. Trooper Robertson returned to Wilson with Borrow, giving the patrol a total of 37 men, including its officers.
Wilson conferred with his officers, none of whom was particularly optimistic about their prospects: "This is the end" said one. The patrol might still have been safe had it not now pursued the king, but Wilson decided to proceed: "Let's ride on Lobengula," he said. This was perhaps excessively rash. Wilson's actions had a flavor of doomed resignation about them, and suggest that the major believed no other path was open. He was, therefore, going for broke. The Matabele hovered around the vicinity, waiting to see what Wilson would do next. On the southern side of the river, the 300 Matabele riflemen took up a well-covered position near the riverbank, about 300 yards (270 m) to the left of Forbes's position. Hidden by a patch of scrub, they remained undetected by the Company troops.
Wilson, Borrow and the 35 others made for Lobengula's enclosure. The king's wagon was still there, but when Wilson called to him, there was no answer. The king had moved on during the night. At that moment, the troopers heard the sound of rifles being cocked in the wood surrounding them. A Matabele inDuna stepped out from behind a tree and announced that the enclosure was surrounded by thousands of Matabele who wanted to "see if the white men were afraid to die." He then fired his rifle to signal the start of the attack to his men. A volley from the Matabele riflemen followed, but most of the shots went too high; no Company trooper was hit. The only casualties of this opening volley were two of the patrol's horses. Wilson immediately ordered his men to fall back, first to an antheap, then to a thick wood. Three of them were wounded during this retreat, but none fatally.
Hearing the shots from the northern side of the river, Forbes uneasily moved towards the southern bank, intending to cross and help Wilson. However, Forbes' fears of an ambush proved to be well-founded; at an opportune moment, the Matabele in the scrub opened fire, catching the column in the open. The ambushers' shots were initially wild and inaccurate, but they soon began to focus their fire on the exposed Maxim guns and horses, forcing the troopers to retreat to cover. Five Company soldiers were injured. The resulting skirmish lasted about an hour, by which time the Shangani had been severely swollen by heavy rains upstream, causing it to flood.
Meanwhile, Wilson marched his officers and men back towards the river, hoping to reunite with Forbes. They moved on for about 1 mile (1.6 km), but soon noticed that a line of Matabele warriors was blocking their way to the river. Wilson refused to sacrifice his wounded by attempting to break through. In an act of desperation, he instead sent three of his men—American scouts Frederick Russell Burnham and Pearl "Pete" Ingram, and Australian Trooper William Gooding—to charge through the Matabele line, cross the river and bring reinforcements back to help, while he, Borrow and the rest made a last stand. Burnham, Ingram and Gooding broke through while the Matabele closed in on the surrounded patrol from a distance, and began to fire on it from cover, killing several of its men. After a while, Mjaan ordered his men to charge forward and finish them off, but the Matabele soon fell back, having taken about 40 fatalities.
Burnham, Ingram and Gooding reached the Shangani about 08:00, but quickly saw that the water had risen far too high for Forbes to provide any assistance. Realizing the futility of turning back to Wilson without help, they decided to rejoin Forbes anyway, and to that end traversed the swollen river with considerable difficulty. They then rode to where the battle on the southern side was still going on. On reaching the main column shaken and out of breath, Burnham leapt from his horse and ran to Forbes: "I think I may say that we are the sole survivors of that party," he quietly confided, before loading his rifle and joining the skirmish.
What happened to the Shangani Patrol after this point is known only from Matabele sources. According to these accounts, the warriors offered the remaining whites their lives if they surrendered, but Wilson's men refused to give up. They used their dead horses for cover, and killed more than ten times their own number (about 500, Mjaan estimated), but were steadily whittled down as the overwhelming Matabele force closed in from all sides. The Company soldiers continued fighting even when grievously wounded, to the astonishment of the Matabele, who thought the whites must be bewitched: "These are not men but magicians," said one Matabele inDuna.
Late in the afternoon, after hours of fighting, Wilson's men ran out of ammunition, and reacted to this by rising to their feet, shaking each other's hands and singing a song, possibly "God Save the Queen". The Matabele downed their own rifles and ended the battle charging with assegai spears. Some of the whites allegedly used their last bullets to commit suicide. According to an eyewitness, "the white inDuna" (Wilson) was the last to die, standing motionless before the Matabele with blood streaming from wounds all over his body. After a few moments of hesitation, a young warrior ran forward and killed him with his assegai. The Matabele usually mutilated the bodies of their foes after a victory, but on this occasion they did not: "The white men died so bravely we would not treat them as we do the cowardly Mashonas and others," an inDuna explained. At Mjaan's orders, the bodies of the patrol were left untouched, though the whites' clothes and two of their facial skins were collected the next morning to serve as proof to Lobengula of the battle's outcome. "I had two sons killed that day," Ingubo warrior M'Kotchwana later said, "and my brother was shot in the stomach. The amakiwa [whites] were brave men; they were warriors."
Of the 43 men involved in Wilson's patrol (including the major himself), 37 were present when the battle began. This was reduced to 34 when Wilson ordered Burnham, Ingram and Gooding to break out. Those left behind were all killed in action. Though the men of the patrol came from several parts of the British Empire as well as other countries, most were born in Britain itself. Of these, over a dozen were English Public School and University men. Wilson himself was originally Scottish, while Borrow was born in Cornwall. Also represented in the patrol were South Africa (several members, most prominently Captain William Judd), the United States (Burnham and Ingram), India (Troopers Dillon and Money), Canada (Scout Robert Bain), Australia (Gooding) and New Zealand (Trooper Frank Vogel). No member of the patrol was born in Rhodesia.
After the battle on the southern side of the Shangani was over, Forbes and his column conducted a cursory search for survivors from Wilson's party, but, unable to cross the river, could see nothing to tell them what had happened. Guessing (correctly) that all Company men beyond the river had been killed, they turned and trekked back to Bulawayo in miserable fashion, their supplies all but gone and the Matabele impeding their progress at every turn.
Matabele raiding parties attacked the retreating column six times during its two-week journey back to Bulawayo. In pouring rain, the dishevelled men were soon mostly on foot, existing off horse meat and wearing makeshift shoes made from ammunition wallets. Forbes felt so humiliated by the events that he retreated from command in all but name, surrendering de facto control to Commandant Raaff. In leading the column back to Bulawayo, Raaff repeatedly drew on his experience from the Anglo-Zulu War to ensure the survival of the haggard men. He avoided several Matabele ambushes, and at one point set up a convincing decoy camp that the Matabele fired on for half a day, wasting much of their ammunition.
Matabele raiding parties attacked the retreating column six times during its two-week journey back to Bulawayo. In pouring rain, the dishevelled men were soon mostly on foot, existing off horse meat and wearing makeshift shoes made from ammunition wallets. Forbes felt so humiliated by the events that he retreated from command in all but name, surrendering de facto control to Commandant Raaff. In leading the column back to Bulawayo, Raaff repeatedly drew on his experience from the Anglo-Zulu War to ensure the survival of the haggard men. He avoided several Matabele ambushes, and at one point set up a convincing decoy camp that the Matabele fired on for half a day, wasting much of their ammunition.
On the column's inglorious return to Bulawayo on December 18, 1893, Forbes was received in muted disgrace. The officers and men stood on parade for Cecil Rhodes, and the Company chief passed the major without a word. Raaff, on the other hand, was publicly commended by Rhodes, and thanked for ensuring the column's safe return.
Meanwhile, Lobengula moved to the north-east, now well out of the Company's reach for the foreseeable future. However, his sickness, which turned out to be smallpox, sharply intensified and eventually killed him on January 22 or 23, 1894. With the king dead, Mjaan, the most senior of the izinDuna, took command of the Matabele. Mjaan was an old man, and his only son had been killed in the war. He wished to make peace. In late February 1894, he convened an indaba at which he and his contemporaries met with James Dawson, a trader known to them for many years, who offered the olive branch on behalf of the Company.
The izinDuna unanimously accepted. They also told the trader what had happened to the Shangani Patrol, and led him to the battle site to survey it, as well as to examine and identify the largely skeletonized bodies of the soldiers, which still lay where they had fallen. Dawson was the first non-Matabele to learn of the last stand.
The izinDuna unanimously accepted. They also told the trader what had happened to the Shangani Patrol, and led him to the battle site to survey it, as well as to examine and identify the largely skeletonized bodies of the soldiers, which still lay where they had fallen. Dawson was the first non-Matabele to learn of the last stand.
News of the patrol's fate was quickly relayed from Rhodesia to South Africa, and then on to the rest of the British Empire and the world. In England, a patriotic play overtly influenced by the incident, Cheer, Boys, Cheer!, was written by Augustus Harris, Cecil Raleigh and Henry Hamilton, and staged at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, starting in September 1895. The show tells the story of a young colonial army officer in South Africa and Rhodesia, culminating in the third act with a fictionalized account of the First Matabele War. This itself climaxes with a scene strongly reminiscent of Wilson's last stand. The production ran for nearly six months in London, and then toured the British provinces for more than two years, reportedly drawing large crowds. The production contributed to the patrol fast gaining mythological status.
In historical terms, the Shangani Patrol subsequently became an integral part of Rhodesian identity, with Wilson and Borrow in particular woven into the national tapestry as heroic figures symbolizing duty in the face of insuperable odds. Their last stand together became a kind of national myth, a glorious memory, Rhodesia's own equivalent of the bloody Alamo massacre and Custer's Last Stand in the American West. In 1895, December 4 was declared "Shangani Day", an annual Rhodesian public holiday which endured until 1920, when it was folded into Occupation Day, a national non-work day which commemorated several early colonial events together. Shangani Day remained part of the national calendar, however, and was still marked each year.
The remains of the patrol's members were buried on August 14, 1894, in the ruined city of Great Zimbabwe. Rhodes later wrote into his will that he wished to have the patrol re-interred alongside him at World's View, in the Matopos Hills, when he died; this was done in 1904, two years after Rhodes's death. Also according to Rhodes's wishes, a memorial to the Shangani Patrol was erected at World's View in July 1904, and dedicated by Bishop William Gaul of Mashonaland. The monument, called the Shangani Memorial, is an oblong, flat-topped structure, about 33 feet (10 m) tall and made from granite from a nearby kopje. It was designed by Herbert Baker, and based on the Pedestal of Agrippa at the Athens Acropolis. Each of the memorial's four sides bears a bronze panel by John Tweed, depicting members of the patrol in relief. The main inscription reads, "To Brave Men", with a smaller dedication given beneath: "Erected to the enduring memory of Allan Wilson and his Men who fell in fight against the Matabele on the Shangani River December 4th, 1893. There was no survivor".
The last stand of the patrol was re-enacted once more at the 1899 Greater Britain Exhibition in London, during which scenes from the Matabele wars were re-created as part of a play called Savage South Africa: A Vivid, Realistic and Picturesque Representation of Life in the Wilds of Africa, culminating in "Major Wilson's Last Stand". The show featured Lobengula's son, Peter Lobengula—described as "Prince Lobengula, the redoubtable warrior chieftain". A short war film based the show's version of the final engagement, Major Wilson's Last Stand, was released by Levi, Jones & Company studios in 1899. A song about the events, "Shangani Patrol", was written by the Rhodesian singer-songwriter John Edmond, and first recorded by the South African singer Nick Taylor in 1966 as the B-side for another Edmond composition, "The U.D.I. Song", about Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965. The patriotic record topped the Rhodesian hit parade for four weeks. A historical war film, also called Shangani Patrol, was filmed on location and released in 1970. The author Alexander Fullerton wrote a novel about the patrol's last stand, entitled The White Men Sang (1958).
Though much of the mythology surrounding the patrol and the site has dissipated in the national consciousness since the country's reconstitution as Zimbabwe in 1980, World's View endures as a tourist attraction to this day. A campaign in the 1990s to dismantle the monument and remove the graves met with strong opposition from both local residents and the Department of National Museums and Monuments, partly because of the income it brings from visitors, and partly out of respect for the site and the history surrounding it.
May 6
*The 1930 Salmas earthquake in Iran killed up to 3,000 people.
*****
*Mordechai Gur, the commander of the division that penetrated the Old City of Jerusalem and who broadcast the famous words, "The Temple Mount is in our hands!", was born in Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine.
Mordechai "Motta" Gur (Hebrew: מרדכי "מוטה" גור, b. May 6, 1930, Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine – d. July 16, 1995, Tel Aviv, Israel) was an Israeli politician and the 10th Chief of Staff of the IDF. During the Six-Day War (1967), he commanded the division that penetrated the Old City of Jerusalem and broadcast the famous words, "The Temple Mount is in our hands!" (Hebrew: הר הבית בידינו, Har HaBayit BeYadeinu). As Chief of Staff, he had responsibility for planning and executing Operation Entebbe (1976) to free Jewish hostages in Uganda. He later entered the Knesset and held various ministerial portfolios. He contracted terminal cancer and committed suicide at the age of 65.
*William Jecelin, a soldier in the United States Army who posthumously received the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Korean War, was born in Baltimore, Maryland.
*****
*Japan capitulated to Chinese boycotts of Japanese goods by signing a tariff agreement with China.
*Mordechai Gur, the commander of the division that penetrated the Old City of Jerusalem and who broadcast the famous words, "The Temple Mount is in our hands!", was born in Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine.
Mordechai "Motta" Gur (Hebrew: מרדכי "מוטה" גור, b. May 6, 1930, Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine – d. July 16, 1995, Tel Aviv, Israel) was an Israeli politician and the 10th Chief of Staff of the IDF. During the Six-Day War (1967), he commanded the division that penetrated the Old City of Jerusalem and broadcast the famous words, "The Temple Mount is in our hands!" (Hebrew: הר הבית בידינו, Har HaBayit BeYadeinu). As Chief of Staff, he had responsibility for planning and executing Operation Entebbe (1976) to free Jewish hostages in Uganda. He later entered the Knesset and held various ministerial portfolios. He contracted terminal cancer and committed suicide at the age of 65.
Gur was born in Jerusalem and later joined the Palmach Haganah (the underground armed group of the Jews in the British Mandate of Palestine). He continued serving in a military capacity with the founding of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during the Israeli War of Independence in 1948.
In the IDF, Gur served in the Paratroopers Brigade most of his career and became one of the symbols of the "red beret" brigade. During the 1950s, he was a company commander under the command of Ariel Sharon. He was wounded during a counter-terror raid in Khan Yunis in 1955 (Operation Elkayam) and received a recommendation of honor from Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan. In 1957 he was appointed as adjutant to the brigade commander. After serving in this position Gur went to study at the Ecole Militaire in Paris.
After he returned, Gur was appointed as the commander of the Golani Brigade (1961–1963) and commanded the counter-terror raid in Nukiev. He brought over the traditions and attitude of the Paratroopers, raised morale, and helped instill an espirit de corps in Golani for which the brigade is still famous. In 1965, he was appointed as the head of the operations branch in the general staff of the IDF. He later also served as a commander of the IDF commanders' school.
In 1966, Gur was appointed as the commander of the 55th Paratroopers Brigade (Reserve), which he led during the Six-Day War. Gur and his troops were part of the assault force which wrested Jerusalem from the Jordanians, and which were the first to visit the Western Wall and the Temple Mount. The pictures of paratroopers crying at the Wall and Gur's audio recording in the communication networks, "The Temple Mount is in our hands!" (Hebrew:!הר הבית בידינו, Har HaBayit BeYadeinu!), became one of the most touching symbols of the war both to the Israeli public and those abroad.
After the war, Gur was promoted to Brigadier General's rank and was appointed as the IDF commander in the Gaza Strip and northern Sinai Peninsula. In 1969, he was promoted to Major General and was appointed as the commander of the northern front, where Palestinian terrorists from the PLO, backed by Syria, attacked Israel's northern settlements. Gur led several counter-attacks to reign in the terror attacks, conquering the Shebaa farms from Syria in order to establish a defensive position to prevent border attacks.
From August 1972 to December 1973 he served as the IDF military attache at Israel's Washington D.C. embassy. In January 1974 he was reappointed as the commander of the northern front.
Following the retirement of General David Elazar due to the criticism of the Agranat Commission he was appointed in April 1974 as the 10th IDF Chief of Staff. He served in that position until 1978. As Chief of Staff, Gur had responsibility for planning and executing Operation Entebbe (1976) to free Jewish hostages in Uganda.
Operation Entebbe was a successful counter-terrorist hostage-rescue mission carried out by commandos of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) at Entebbe Airport in Uganda on July 4, 1976. A week earlier, on June 27, 1976, an Air France plane with 248 passengers had been hijacked by two members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - External Operations (PFLP-EO) under orders of Wadie Haddad (who had earlier broken away from the PFLP of George Habash), and two members of the German Revolutionary Cells. The hijackers had the stated objective to free 40 Palestinian and affiliated militants imprisoned in Israel and 13 prisoners in four other countries in exchange for the hostages. The flight, which had originated in Tel Aviv with the destination of Paris, was diverted after a stopover in Athens via Benghazi to Entebbe, the main airport of Uganda. The Ugandan government supported the hijackers, and dictator Idi Amin personally welcomed them. After moving all hostages from the aircraft to a disused airport building, the hijackers separated all Israelis and several non-Israeli Jews from the larger group and forced them into a separate room. Over the following two days, 148 non-Israeli hostages were released and flown out to Paris. Ninety-four, mainly Israeli, passengers along with the 12-member Air France crew, remained as hostages and were threatened with death.
The IDF acted on information provided by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. The hijackers threatened to kill the hostages if their prisoner release demands were not met. This threat led to the planning of the rescue operation. These plans included preparation for armed resistance from Ugandan troops.
The operation took place at night. Israeli transport planes carried 100 commandos over 2,500 miles (4,000 km) to Uganda for the rescue operation. The operation, which took a week of planning, lasted 90 minutes. Of the remaining hostages, 102 were rescued. Five Israeli commandos were wounded and one, unit commander Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan Netanyahu, was killed. All the hijackers, three hostages, and forty-five Ugandan soldiers were killed, and thirty Soviet-built MiG-17s and MiG-21s of Uganda's air force were destroyed. Kenyan sources supported Israel, and in the aftermath of the operation, Idi Amin issued orders to retaliate and slaughter several hundred Kenyans then present in Uganda.
Operation Entebbe, which had the military codename Operation Thunderbolt, is sometimes referred to retroactively as Operation Jonathan in memory of the unit's leader, Yonatan Netanyahu. Netanyahu was the older brother of Benjamin Netanyahu, the man who would later become the Prime Minister of Israel.
Following his retirement from the IDF, Gur was appointed as the general manager of Kur Mechanica company. In 1981, he was elected to the Knesset as a member of the Labor Party within the Alignment. Re-elected in 1984, he served as Minister of Health and was also a member of the Knesset's Security and Foreign Affairs Committee. Between 1986 and 1988 he served on the board of Solel Boneh, a construction company. In April 1988, Gur was appointed Minister withou Portfolio, a position he retained following the 1988 elections until March 1990, when Labor pulled out of the coalition.
After the Labor Party won the 1992, Gur was appointed Deputy Minister of Defense, responsible for preparing the Israeli economy for times of war and crisis and interacting with the Jewish settlers in West Bank and Gaza Strip.
In 1995, Gur became seriously ill with terminal cancer. He committed suicide with a handgun on July 16, 1995 at the age of 65.
Area 21, a military base in the Sharon plain, was renamed in his honor (Camp Motta Gur).
In Modiin, a street and a school was named after Gur.
******William Jecelin, a soldier in the United States Army who posthumously received the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Korean War, was born in Baltimore, Maryland.
William R. Jecelin (b. May 6, 1930, Baltimore, Maryland – d. September 19, 1950, Korea) joined the United States Army in Baltimore, Maryland. After attending training he was sent to fight in Korea as a Sergeant in Company C, 35th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division.
On September 19, 1950, his company was ordered to secure a ridge that was occupied by Korean forces they attacked as ordered but the first attempt to take the hill failed. They tried a second time and this time Jecelin led his platoon through heavy enemy fire advancing to the base of the cliff where the attack was stopped again due to enemy fire. He determined that a direct assault was the only way to gain control of the hill so he began firing his rifle and throwing grenades at the enemy position, calling to his men to follow him. The American troops were able to make it to the crest of the hill before being forced to take cover from enemy fire, before attempting another assault. They attached bayonets for hand-to-hand combat and were able to defeat a portion of the enemy before being forced to take cover after receiving fire from another group of enemy forces in the area. When they began attacking this new group, one of the enemy soldiers threw a grenade at the incoming Americans and Sergeant Jecelin dived on the grenade, smothering the blast with his body, saving the lives of the other American soldiers but was killed in the blast. For this action he posthumously received the United States military's highest decoration for bravery, the Medal of Honor.
His body was returned to the United States after his death and buried in Bohemian National Cemetery.
Citation
*****
*Japan capitulated to Chinese boycotts of Japanese goods by signing a tariff agreement with China.
May 10
*The National Pan-Hellenic Council was founded in Washington, D. C.
May 14
*Chris de Broglio, a Mauritian-born South African weightlifter and anti-Apartheid activist, was born in Mauritius.
Chris de Broglio (b. Marie Christian Dubruel de Broglio, May 14, 1930, Mauritius – d. July 12, 2014, Corsica) advocated for an end to racism in sports and played a key role within the movement to expel South Africa from the in 1970, during the height of that country's Apartheid era. He joined with Dennis Brutus to co-found the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee (San-Roc). According to Nelson Mandela, the expulsion of South Africa in the 1970s revitalized the anti-Apartheid movement at the time and ultimately led to the end of Apartheid twenty years later.
De Broglio was born Marie Christian Dubruel de Broglio in Mauritius on May 14, 1930, to Maurice and Suzanne de Broglio. He took up weightlifting after a longterm, mysterious illness originally left him smaller than other kids his age. De Broglio later moved to South Africa to study accounting.
De Broglio was a South African weightlifting champion from 1950 until 1962. He competed at the World Championships in Sweden in 1958 and Vienna, Austria, in 1961. However, he was disturbed that white and black weightlifters were forbidden from competing or training together in South Africa. During his tenure as the chairman and secretary of both the Natal and Transvaal Weightlifting Associations, De Broglio organized multi-racial weightlifting competitions, which were illegal under Apartheid.
In the early 1960s, De Broglio, who was employed by Air France at the time, arranged for the chairman of the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee (San-Roc), John Harris, to secretly leave South Africa. Harris testified against the Apartheid system before the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which resulted in the exclusion of South Africa from participation in the 1964 Summer Olympics. (Harris would later be executed for his role in the bombing of a white-only section of the Johannesburg Park Station.) In 1963, De Broglio's organization, San-Roc, successfully lobbied for the suspension of South Africa from international football. De Broglio was placed under state surveillance and forced into exile in London, settling in Twickenham. There, De Broglio and others re-established San-Roc in the basement of the Portman Court Hotel in Marble Arch. De Broglio organized a San-Roc boycott of the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City by a number of African and Asian nations.
In 1997, De Broglio was awarded the Olympic Order for his work against racism in athletics and his defense of the Olympic Charter.
De Broglio lived in Corsica during his later life. He frequented the gym until he was 80 years old. He died on July 12, 2014, at the age of 84.
May 15
*Nurse Ellen Church became the world's first flight attendant, working on a Boeing Air Transport tri-motor.
May 17
*French Prime Minister Andre Tardieu decided to withdraw the remaining French troops from the Rhineland (they departed by June 30).
May 19
*South Africa's white women received the vote. However, blacks of both sexes remained disenfranchised.
*Eugene Genovese, an American historian of the American South and American slavery, was born in Brooklyn, New York.
Eugene Dominic Genovese (b. May 19, 1930, Brooklyn, New York – d. September 26, 2012, Atlanta, Georgia) was noted for bringing a Marxist perspective to the study of power, class and relations between planters and slaves in the South. His book Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made won the Bancroft Prize. He later abandoned the left and Marxism and embraced traditionalist conservatism.
Raised in a working-class Italian American family in Brooklyn, Eugene Genovese was active in the Communist youth movement until he was expelled. He earned his Bachelor of Arts from Brooklyn College in 1953 and his Master of Arts in 1955 and a Ph.D. in history in 1959, both from Columbia University.
May 24
*Italy's Mussolini argued that the Treaty of Versailles should be reviewed and revised.
*Eugene Genovese, an American historian of the American South and American slavery, was born in Brooklyn, New York.
Eugene Dominic Genovese (b. May 19, 1930, Brooklyn, New York – d. September 26, 2012, Atlanta, Georgia) was noted for bringing a Marxist perspective to the study of power, class and relations between planters and slaves in the South. His book Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made won the Bancroft Prize. He later abandoned the left and Marxism and embraced traditionalist conservatism.
Raised in a working-class Italian American family in Brooklyn, Eugene Genovese was active in the Communist youth movement until he was expelled. He earned his Bachelor of Arts from Brooklyn College in 1953 and his Master of Arts in 1955 and a Ph.D. in history in 1959, both from Columbia University.
Genovese first taught at Brooklyn's Polytechnic Institute from 1958 to 1963. During the early years of the Vietnam War, when there were a growing range of opinions about the war and the Civil Rights Movement, he was a controversial figure as a history professor at Rutgers University (1963–67), and at the University of Rochester (1969–86), where he was elected chairman of the Department of History.
From 1986, Genovese taught part-time at the College of William and Mary, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Georgia, Emory University and Georgia State University. He was an editor of Studies on the Left and Marxist Perspectives. He was famous for his disputes with colleagues left, right and center. Defeating Oscar Handlin in 1978, he was elected as the first Marxist president of the Organization of American Historians.
In 1998, after moving to the right in his thinking, Genovese founded The Historical Society, with the goal of bringing together historians united by a traditional methodology.
At an April 23, 1965 teach-in at Rutgers University where he was teaching, Genovese stated, "Those of you who know me know that I am a Marxist and a Socialist. Therefore, unlike most of my distinguished colleagues here this morning, I do not fear or regret the impending Viet Cong victory in Vietnam. I welcome it." This comment was widely reported and generated a backlash of criticism. Politicians questioned Genovese's judgment and sensitivity to the responsibility inherent in being a Rutgers professor. Richard M. Nixon, then out of office and living in New York, denounced him, and the Republican candidate for governor of New Jersey, Wayne Dumont, challenging Governor Richard J. Hughes, used Genovese's statement as a campaign issue, demanding that Hughes dismiss Genovese from the state university. Bumper stickers saying “Rid Rutgers of Reds” popped up on cars across the state. Genovese insisted that he did not mean to say that he hoped American servicemen would be killed. No state laws or university regulations had been broken, and Genovese was supported by fellow faculty members on grounds of academic freedom. He was not dismissed from his teaching position.
Rutgers President Mason Gross refused to re-examine the university's position, and Dumont lost to Governor Hughes. President Gross' defense of academic freedom was honored by the American Association of University Professors, who presented him and Rutgers with its Alexander Meiklejohn Award in 1966. Genovese moved to Canada and taught at Sir George Williams University in Montreal (1967–69). In 1968, Genovese signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.
At the 1969 convention of the American Historical Association, radical historians Staughton Lynd and Arthur Waskow, speaking on behalf of the Radical Caucus, introduced and later withdrew a resolution demanding an end to not only he war in Vietnam but also the "repression" of the Black Panther party. A substitute resolution introduced by the radical scholar Blanche W. Cook "deplored and condemned" the war and urged withdrawal of all American troops. It was Cook’s resolution that eventually came to a vote.
During the discussion on the resolution, Genovese gave a speech, saying that although he opposed the Vietnam war, if the radicals' resolution passed, the bulk of historians in the AHA, who favored the war, would be forced to resign from the group. Noting that the majority of Americans also supported the war, Genovese said that those citizens were as moral and deserving of being heard as the war’s opponents. The Radical Caucus, he said, were a bunch of "totalitarians." Genovese ended his speech by saying that the time had come for historians to isolate and defeat the New Left and "put them down, put them down hard, once and for all." When the vote was finally taken, the resolution lost, 647 to 611.
In 1968, Genovese wrote a critical historiography of the major studies of slavery in the Americas from a hemispheric perspective. He considered the demand by Marxist anthropologist Marvin Harris in The Nature of Cultural Things (1964) for a materialist alternative to the idealistic framework of Frank Tannenbaum, Stanley Elkins, Gilberto Freyre, and others. Tannenbaum had first introduced the hemispheric perspective by showing that the current status of blacks in various societies of the Western Hemisphere had roots in the attitude toward the black as a slave, which reflected the total religious, legal, and moral history of the enslaving whites.
Tannenbaum ignored the material foundations of slave society, most particularly class relations. Later students have qualified his perspectives but have worked within the framework of an "idealistic" interpretation. Harris, on the other hand, insisted that material conditions determined social relations and necessarily prevailed over counter-tendencies in the historical tradition. Harris' work revealed him to be an economic determinist and, as such, ahistorical. By attempting to construct a materialism that bypassed ideological and psychological elements in the formation of social classes, he passed into a "variant of vulgar Marxism" and offered only soulless mechanism.
In the 1960s, Genovese in his Marxist stage depicted the masters of the slaves as part of a "seigneurial" society that was anti-modern, pre-bourgeois and pre-capitalist. In 1970, Stampp reviewing Genovese's The World the Slaveholders Made (1969) found fault with the quantity and quality of the evidence used to support the book's arguments. He took issue with the attempt to apply a Marxian interpretation to the Southern slave system.
In his best-known book, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (1974), Genovese examined the society of the slaves. This book won the national Bancroft Prize in History. Genovese viewed the antebellum South as a closed and organically united paternalist society that exploited and attempted to dehumanize the slaves. Genovese paid close attention to the role of religion as a form of resistance in the daily life of the slaves, because slaves used it to claim a sense of humanity. He redefined resistance to slavery as all efforts by which slaves rejected their status as slaves, including their religion, music, and the culture they built, as well as work slowdowns, periodic disappearances, and escapes and open rebellions.
Genovese placed paternalism at the center of the master-slave relationship. Both masters and slaves embraced paternalism but for different reasons and with varying notions of what paternalism meant. For the slaveowners, paternalism allowed them to think of themselves as benevolent and to justify their appropriation of their slaves' labor. Paternalist ideology, they believed, also gave the institution of slavery a more benign face and helped deflate the increasingly strong abolitionist critique of the institution. Slaves, on the other hand, recognized that paternalist ideology could be twisted to suit their own ends by providing them with improved living and working conditions. Slaves struggled mightily to convert the benevolent "gifts" or "privileges" bestowed upon them by their masters into customary rights that masters would not violate. The reciprocity of paternalism could work to the slaves' advantage by allowing them to demand more humane treatment from their masters. Religion was an important theme in Roll, Jordan, Roll and other studies. Genovese noted that Evangelicals recognized slavery as the root of Southern ills and sought some reforms, but from the early decades of the early nineteenth century, they abandoned arguing for abolition or substantial change of the system. Genovese's contention was that after 1830, southern Christianity became part of social control of the slaves. He also argued that the slaves' religion was not conducive to millenarianism or a revolutionary political tradition. Rather, it helped them survive and resist.
In his 1979 book From Rebellion to Revolution, Genovese depicted a change in slave rebellions from attempts to win freedom to an effort to overthrow slavery as a social system. In the 1983 book that he co-wrote with his wife, The Fruits of Merchant Capital, Genovese underscored what he regarded as tensions between bourgeois property and slavery. In the view of the Genoveses, slavery was a "hybrid system" that was both pre-capitalist and capitalist.
Starting in the 1990s, Genovese turned his attention to the history of conservatism in the South, a tradition which he came to adopt and celebrate. In his study, The Southern Tradition: the Achievements and Limitations of an American Conservatism, he examined the Southern Agrarians. In the 1930s, these critics and poets collectively wrote I'll Take My Stand, their critique of Enlightenment humanism. He concluded that by recognizing human sinfulness and limitation, the critics more accurately described human nature than did other thinkers. The Southern Agrarians, he noted, also posed a challenge to modern American conservatives who have a mistaken belief in market capitalism's compatibility with traditional social values and family structures. Genovese agreed with the Agrarians in concluding that capitalism destroyed those institutions.
Later in life, in his personal views, Genovese moved to the right. While he once denounced liberalism from a radical left perspective, he now did so as a traditionalist conservative. His change in thinking included re-embracing Catholicism, the faith in which he had been raised, in December 1996. His wife, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, had also shifted her thinking and converted to Catholicism.
In 1969, Genovese married Elizabeth Fox, a historian. She died in 2007. In 2008, Genovese published a tribute to her, Miss Betsey: A Memoir of Marriage. Genovese died in 2012 from a worsening cardiac ailment in Atlanta, Georgia.
*Amy Johnson landed in Darwin, Australia, becoming the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia (she left on May 5 for the 11,000 mile flight).
May 30
*Sergei Eisenstein arrived in Hollywood to work for Paramount Pictures. They would part ways by October.
*Canadian adventurer William "Red" Hill, Sr., made a five-hour journey down the Niagara Gorge rapids.
June
June 7
*Carl Gustaf Ekman became the Prime Minister of Sweden for the second and final time.
*****
*Bob Boyd, an American collegiate men's basketball coach who was head coach at Seattle University, the University of Southern California (USC), and Mississippi State University, was born.
William Robert "Bob" Boyd (b. June 7, 1930 – d. January 14, 2015) had a long association with the University of Southern California's men's basketball, first as a player and then as its head coach. The 3-year letterman (1950–52) was USC's most valuable player as a senior in 1952. Boyd then began his coaching career, first for five years in the high school ranks (at El Segundo, California and Alhambra, California), then for six years at the junior college level at Santa Ana College (his 1959 team finished second at the state tournament) and then collegiately, first at Seattle University, where Boyd went 41-13 in 2 seasons (1964–65).
After a year out of coaching while working for Converse athletic shoes, Boyd embarked on a 13-year career (1967–79) as head coach of the USC basketball team. Boyd's teams went 216-131 overall and played in the post-season four times (the 1979 NCAA, the 1973 NIT, and the 1974 and 1975 Commissioner's Conference tourney). Boyd's 1971 team, which went 24-2 and was ranked fifth in the nation (USC was ranked first at midseason), is regarded among USC's best (Boyd also won 24 games in 1974). Boyd's wins over UCLA in 1969 and 1970 were UCLA's first losses in Pauley Pavilion, UCLA's home court built in 1966. Boyd was twice named the conference Coach of the Year and he sent ten players into the NBA, including Paul Westphal and Gus Williams.
After USC, Boyd went on to be the head coach at Mississippi State University (1982-1986) , Riverside Community College (1989) and Chapman University (1990-92), and then was an assistant at LSU and Utah State University.
Boyd is a member of the University of Southern California's Athletic Hall of Fame and the Pac-12 Conference Men's Basketball Hall of Honor. Boyd died of natural causes in Palm Desert, California, on January 14, 2015.
June 8
*Romania's boy king Michael was removed after a three year reign and was succeeded by his father, now 37, who returned from exile on June 6 and who would reign until 1940 as Carol II. The new king electrified the country by arriving from Paris by airplane and was soon joined by his mistress Magda Lupeseu, 26, who would have great influence.
June 9
*Chicago Tribune journalist Jake Lingle was shot in Chicago, Illinois. Newspapers promised a $55,000 reward for information. Lingle was later found to have had contacts with organized crime.
*****
*Roberto Fernandez Retamar, a Cuban poet, essayist, literary critic and President of Casa de las Americas, was born in Havana, Cuba.
Roberto Fernández Retamar (b. June 9, 1930, Havana, Cuba) is a Cuban poet, essayist, literary critic and President of the Casa de las Americas, an organization that was founded by the Cuban Government in April 1959, four months after the Cuban Revolution, for the purpose of developing and extending the socio-cultural relations with the countries of Latin America, the Caribbean and the rest of the world. In his role as President of the organization, Fernández also served on the Council of State of Cuba. An early close confidant of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, Retamar remained a central figure in Cuba after the 1959 Revolution. Fernández also wrote over a dozen major collections of verse and founded the Casa de las Americas cultural magazine.
In 1989, Retamar was award the National Prize for Literature, Cuba's national literary award.
June 14
*The Bureau of Narcotics was established under the United States Department of the Treasury, replacing the Narcotics Division of the Prohibition Unit.
June 15
*Ikuo Hirayama, a Japanese Nihonga painter, was born in Setoda-cho, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan.
Ikuo Hirayama (Hirayama Ikuo 平山 郁夫; b. June 15, 1930, Setoda-cho, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan – d. December 2, 2009) was famous in Japan for Silk Road paintings of dreamy desert landscapes in Iran, Iraq, and China.
In 1952, he graduated from the Tokyo School of Art, or what is today's Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music (popularly known as "Geidai"), and became a disciple of Maeda Seiaon. Hirayama also served as President of his alma mater twice (1989–95 and 2001–05).
Hirayama produced a series of paintings depicting the introduction of Buddhism to Japan. A hibakusha (a survivor of the atomic bomb attack) Hirayama portrayed the A-bomb attack on Hiroshima. He was also active in the preservation of the cultural heritage of the world (e.g., the Bamiyan Buddhas) and was internationally appreciated for his efforts in this sphere. Hirayama was awarded the French Legion d'honneur Order in 1996 and Japan's Order of Cultural Merit in 1998 amongst others.
Hirayama was sometimes criticized for his profit making activities at the time when he held the position of President of a national university. Some (would-be) connoisseurs even cast doubts upon the authenticity of his highly profitable artworks, claiming that his wife and others made them under his name. He was a patron of historical institutions and gave £500,000 pounds to the British Museum for the creation of The Hirayama Studio, a conservation studio specializing in Eastern pictorial art, which was opened in 1994 and named after him. Hirayama had a studio in Kamakura, Kanagawa. He also established the Hirayama Trainee Curator in Silk Road Coins at the British Museum. There is also a museum dedicated to the artist in Setoda.
Ikuo Hirayama actively collected material relating to the historical silk road. His collections included Chinese and Gandhara sculpture, Sasanian and Central Asian silver ware, toilet trays and coins, in total at least 222 pieces. His collection is particularly notable for its collection of Gandharan art from Pakistan and Afghanistan. His collection of Central Asian coins was small, containing only 101 items, though these included one of the best preserved of Kanishka I's Buddha coins as well as other important examples.
June 17
*President of the United States Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act into law.
*James Gathers (b. June 17, 1930 – d. June 1, 2002) was a track and field athlete who competed mainly in the 200 meters. He competed for the United States in the 1952 Summer Olympics held in Helsinki, Finland, in the 200 meters where he won the bronze medal.
June 20
*Thomas Blanton, one of the bombers who was responsible for the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that killed four young African-American girls, was born. .
Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr. (b. June 20, 1930) was convicted in 2001 of murder for his role as conspirator in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963. The bombing killed four young African-American girls (Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae Collins, and Denise McNair). Blanton was thirty-three years old at the time of the bombing.
Blanton is the son of Thomas Edwin "Pops" Blanton Sr., who was a notorious racist in the Birmingham, Alabama area. Blanton was born on the same day as Bobby Frank Cherry, one of his co-conspirators.
Blanton was convicted of murder in 2001 and sentenced to life in prison, with the eventual possibility of parole.
*****
*Bobby Frank Cherry, a white supremacist and Klansman who was convicted of murder in 2002 for his role in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963, was born in Mineral Springs, a neighborhood of Clanton, Alabama.
Bobby Frank Cherry (b. June 20, 1930, Mineral Springs, Clanton, Alabama – d. November 18, 2004, Kilby Correctional Facility, Montgomery, Alabama) was born on the same day as Thomas Edwin Blanton, Jr. He joined the United States Marine Corps as a youth, where he gained expertise in demolitions and working with explosives. After his time with the Marines, Cherry worked a series of low-paying jobs, including a long stint as a truck driver.
Cherry had a wife, Virginia, at the time of the bombing. He and Virginia Cherry had seven children together. Their marriage was tumultuous and, at times, violent. Bobby Cherry expected deference from his wife and children, using beatings to enforce his authority. Virginia Cherry died of cancer in 1968. After her death, Bobby Cherry placed the children in the Gateway Mercy Home Orphanage and with relatives. He eventually remarried four times, including to third wife Willadean Brogdon. Brogdon would later testify at Cherry's trial that he had bragged about his role in the church bombing.
Cherry left Birmingham in the early 1970s and moved to the suburbs of Dallas, Texas. He found work as a welder and owned a carpet cleaner business in Grand Prairie. In 1988, Cherry suffered a heart attack and moved again, this time to small-town Henderson County, Texas, with fifth wife Myrtle.
During his trial, the prosecution presented evidence that Cherry had assaulted the African American minister Fred Shuttlesworth in 1957 using a set of brass knuckles. The minister had been working to integrate a school in Birmingham, Alabama. The prosecution also discussed an incident in which Cherry had allegedly pistol-whipped an African American man in a restaurant after the man insulted Cherry. On the morning of the bombing, Cherry was with his son Tom at the Modern Sign Company a few blocks away from the church. The two were silkscreening Confederate rebel flags. Tom Cherry later said that he could clearly hear the sound of an explosion happening nearby and knew that something bad had happened.
The bombing killed four young African American girls (Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae Collins, and Denise McNair) and injured more than 20 other people.
Cherry was originally supposed to be tried at the same time as (though not jointly with) fellow defendant Thomas Blanton, Jr. Cherry was able to successfully delay his trial by claiming that vascular dementia had impaired his mind and that his health would prevent him from assisting in his own defense. Blanton was convicted and Cherry was eventually found mentally competent to stand trial. At his trial, he denied his involvement in the bombing as well as his affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan, but he was ultimately found guilty.
Cherry's son Thomas Frank Cherry testified that Bobby Cherry was a member of the United Klans of America, a Ku Klux Klan group, and relatives and friends testified that he "bragged" about having played a role in the bombing. Ex-wife Willadean Brogdon testified, "He said he lit the fuse." Michael Wayne Goings, a house painter who worked with Mr. Cherry in Dallas in 1982, said he also heard him boast about the crime, even saying "You know, I bombed that church."
A third man, Mitchell Burns, had been an associate of Thomas Blanton, Jr. and Bobby Cherry at the time of the bombing and was recruited by Federal Bureau of Investigation investigators to act as an informant. Burns testified on the stand at Cherry's trial that Burns' involvement with the Ku Klux Klan was more socially than politically based, something that was plausible during the era of the crime, and that the agents approached him and asked for his help. He initially declined, but was shown postmortem photos photos of the young girls killed by the bomb. Deeply disturbed by what he had seen, he vomited. He agreed to work with the FBI.
Burns testified that he was primarily a friend of Blanton, but that Blanton was a good friend of Cherry, so Cherry would sometimes join them when they went out. Burns' assistance came in the form of going to numerous honky tonks with the two men with a very large reel-to-reel tape recorder in the car trunk recording the group's conversations. Burns took thorough notes after these meetings, and additionally when the three met and spoke outside of his car.
The tapes were collected by the FBI during its immediate investigation. They were subsequently misplaced or archived and were rediscovered in 1997. The rediscovery of the tapes ultimately led to the prosecution of Blanton and Cherry.
The recordings primarily contained racist sentiment. Most significantly, one recording from the car raised the subject of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. In the recording, the men spoke of it with approval. Blanton began to say something that sounded as if he were about to implicate himself and Cherry by bragging, but Cherry, who was less acquainted with the informant, sharply cut him off by saying, "Now, this good ol' boy doesn't need to know about that!" and laughed. Burns also reported unrecorded references made by Blanton and Cherry to their involvement in the bombing.
Also presented at Bobby Cherry's trial were videos showing explosives in the same quantity as had been used in the bombing being used to destroy a car in a field. The violent force of the explosion evident in the video was designed to counter the defense's suggestion that, though they claimed that Cherry was not involved, the purpose of the bomb may have been to scare the church congregants, not to kill or injure them.
Prosecutors also showed the jury a videotape of a white mob beating local civil rights leader Fred Shuttlesworth when he showed up to register his children at the all white Phillips High School. At one point, the prosecutors froze the film as a grinning, slender white man with a bulbous nose, wavy hair and a cigarette dangling from his mouth — unmistakably a grinning young Bobby Frank Cherry — was seen slamming his fist into the minister's head after pulling what appeared to be a set of brass knuckles from his back pocket.
During the trial, Cherry smiled and looked amused. He could be seen joking with his lawyers and several supporters, not appearing to believe that the legal system which had protected him up to that point would ultimately send him to jail. He was convicted on four counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Cherry attempted to appeal, but in October 2004 the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals unanimously upheld his conviction. The court rejected Cherry's claim that a delay of 37 years between his commission of the crime and his indictment in 2000 had resulted in an inherently unfair trial.
During his prison sentence, Cherry repeatedly claimed to be the victim of a malicious false campaign against him and he said that he was a "political prisoner" who was denied proper treatment.
Cherry was originally taken to the Kilby Correctional Facility in Montgomery County, Alabama for intake. He was later moved to Holman Correctional Facility in Escambia County, Alabama.
On Wednesday October 13, 2004, Cherry was transferred from Holman Prison to Atmore Community Hospital in Atmore. During the same day an ambulance transported him from the Atmore hospital to a hospital in Montgomery.
Cherry died in the Kilby prison's hospital unit, on November 18, 2004 at the age of 74.
Blanton was convicted of murder in 2001 and sentenced to life in prison, with the eventual possibility of parole.
*Bobby Frank Cherry, a white supremacist and Klansman who was convicted of murder in 2002 for his role in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963, was born in Mineral Springs, a neighborhood of Clanton, Alabama.
Bobby Frank Cherry (b. June 20, 1930, Mineral Springs, Clanton, Alabama – d. November 18, 2004, Kilby Correctional Facility, Montgomery, Alabama) was born on the same day as Thomas Edwin Blanton, Jr. He joined the United States Marine Corps as a youth, where he gained expertise in demolitions and working with explosives. After his time with the Marines, Cherry worked a series of low-paying jobs, including a long stint as a truck driver.
Cherry had a wife, Virginia, at the time of the bombing. He and Virginia Cherry had seven children together. Their marriage was tumultuous and, at times, violent. Bobby Cherry expected deference from his wife and children, using beatings to enforce his authority. Virginia Cherry died of cancer in 1968. After her death, Bobby Cherry placed the children in the Gateway Mercy Home Orphanage and with relatives. He eventually remarried four times, including to third wife Willadean Brogdon. Brogdon would later testify at Cherry's trial that he had bragged about his role in the church bombing.
Cherry left Birmingham in the early 1970s and moved to the suburbs of Dallas, Texas. He found work as a welder and owned a carpet cleaner business in Grand Prairie. In 1988, Cherry suffered a heart attack and moved again, this time to small-town Henderson County, Texas, with fifth wife Myrtle.
During his trial, the prosecution presented evidence that Cherry had assaulted the African American minister Fred Shuttlesworth in 1957 using a set of brass knuckles. The minister had been working to integrate a school in Birmingham, Alabama. The prosecution also discussed an incident in which Cherry had allegedly pistol-whipped an African American man in a restaurant after the man insulted Cherry. On the morning of the bombing, Cherry was with his son Tom at the Modern Sign Company a few blocks away from the church. The two were silkscreening Confederate rebel flags. Tom Cherry later said that he could clearly hear the sound of an explosion happening nearby and knew that something bad had happened.
The bombing killed four young African American girls (Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae Collins, and Denise McNair) and injured more than 20 other people.
Cherry's son Thomas Frank Cherry testified that Bobby Cherry was a member of the United Klans of America, a Ku Klux Klan group, and relatives and friends testified that he "bragged" about having played a role in the bombing. Ex-wife Willadean Brogdon testified, "He said he lit the fuse." Michael Wayne Goings, a house painter who worked with Mr. Cherry in Dallas in 1982, said he also heard him boast about the crime, even saying "You know, I bombed that church."
A third man, Mitchell Burns, had been an associate of Thomas Blanton, Jr. and Bobby Cherry at the time of the bombing and was recruited by Federal Bureau of Investigation investigators to act as an informant. Burns testified on the stand at Cherry's trial that Burns' involvement with the Ku Klux Klan was more socially than politically based, something that was plausible during the era of the crime, and that the agents approached him and asked for his help. He initially declined, but was shown postmortem photos photos of the young girls killed by the bomb. Deeply disturbed by what he had seen, he vomited. He agreed to work with the FBI.
Burns testified that he was primarily a friend of Blanton, but that Blanton was a good friend of Cherry, so Cherry would sometimes join them when they went out. Burns' assistance came in the form of going to numerous honky tonks with the two men with a very large reel-to-reel tape recorder in the car trunk recording the group's conversations. Burns took thorough notes after these meetings, and additionally when the three met and spoke outside of his car.
The tapes were collected by the FBI during its immediate investigation. They were subsequently misplaced or archived and were rediscovered in 1997. The rediscovery of the tapes ultimately led to the prosecution of Blanton and Cherry.
The recordings primarily contained racist sentiment. Most significantly, one recording from the car raised the subject of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. In the recording, the men spoke of it with approval. Blanton began to say something that sounded as if he were about to implicate himself and Cherry by bragging, but Cherry, who was less acquainted with the informant, sharply cut him off by saying, "Now, this good ol' boy doesn't need to know about that!" and laughed. Burns also reported unrecorded references made by Blanton and Cherry to their involvement in the bombing.
Also presented at Bobby Cherry's trial were videos showing explosives in the same quantity as had been used in the bombing being used to destroy a car in a field. The violent force of the explosion evident in the video was designed to counter the defense's suggestion that, though they claimed that Cherry was not involved, the purpose of the bomb may have been to scare the church congregants, not to kill or injure them.
Prosecutors also showed the jury a videotape of a white mob beating local civil rights leader Fred Shuttlesworth when he showed up to register his children at the all white Phillips High School. At one point, the prosecutors froze the film as a grinning, slender white man with a bulbous nose, wavy hair and a cigarette dangling from his mouth — unmistakably a grinning young Bobby Frank Cherry — was seen slamming his fist into the minister's head after pulling what appeared to be a set of brass knuckles from his back pocket.
During the trial, Cherry smiled and looked amused. He could be seen joking with his lawyers and several supporters, not appearing to believe that the legal system which had protected him up to that point would ultimately send him to jail. He was convicted on four counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Cherry attempted to appeal, but in October 2004 the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals unanimously upheld his conviction. The court rejected Cherry's claim that a delay of 37 years between his commission of the crime and his indictment in 2000 had resulted in an inherently unfair trial.
During his prison sentence, Cherry repeatedly claimed to be the victim of a malicious false campaign against him and he said that he was a "political prisoner" who was denied proper treatment.
Cherry was originally taken to the Kilby Correctional Facility in Montgomery County, Alabama for intake. He was later moved to Holman Correctional Facility in Escambia County, Alabama.
On Wednesday October 13, 2004, Cherry was transferred from Holman Prison to Atmore Community Hospital in Atmore. During the same day an ambulance transported him from the Atmore hospital to a hospital in Montgomery.
Cherry died in the Kilby prison's hospital unit, on November 18, 2004 at the age of 74.
June 21
*The one-year conscription came into force in France.
June 24
*Donald Gordon, a South African businessman and philanthropist, was born.
Donald Gordon (b. June 24, 1930) was educated at King Edward VII School in Johannesburg before doing his articles to be a Chartered Accountant at the firm Kessel Feinstein (now Grant Thornton).
He founded the Liberty Life Association of Africa in 1957 out of which he formed Transatlantic Insurance Holdings plc, now Liberty International in 1980.
He was behind the development of Sandton City, one of the most successful shopping centers in the world.
Gordon was a director of the Guardian Royal Exchange Group for 24 years and chaired their South African subsidiary, Guardian National Insurance Company.
The Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) in Johannesburg, South Africa, was established in January 2000 following a substantial contribution by Donald Gordon and a major investment by the University of Pretoria.
In 2004, Gordon gave the Royal Opera House and Wales Millennium Centre a collective donation of £20 million payable over five years. This is believed to be one of the largest single private donations ever made to the arts in the United Kingdom. Gordon had the Grand Tier at the Royal Opera House as well as the main auditorium of the Wales Millennium Centre named after him.
At the 2000 Entrepreneur of the Year Awards in London, Gordon received the Entrepreneur of the Year Special Award for Lifetime Achievement. He received an honorary doctorate of economic science from the University of the Witwatersrand and an honorary doctorate in commerce from the University of Pretoria. In 1968, he was named 'Business Man of the Year' by the South African Sunday Times. In 1999, he was named as 'The Achiever of the Century in South African Financial Services' by South African Financial Mail.
In June 2005, he was awarded a knighthood in recognition of his services to arts and business.
*****
June 25
*James Vardaman, a Governor and Senator of the State of Mississippi, died in Birmingham, Alabama.
James Kimble Vardaman (b. July 26, 1861, Jackson County, Texas – d. June 25, 1930, Birmingham, Alabama) was an American politician from the United States state of Mississippi and was the Governor of Mississippi from 1904 to 1908. A Democrat, Vardaman was elected in 1912 to the United States Senate in the first popular vote for the office, following adoption of the 17th Amendment which mandated the popular election of Senators. He defeated incumbent LeRoy Percy, a member of the planter elite. Vardaman served from 1913 to 1919.
Known as "The Great White Chief", Vardaman had gained electoral support for his advocacy of populism and white supremacy, saying: "If it is necessary every Negro in the state will be lynched; it will be done to maintain white supremacy." He appealed to the poorer whites, yeomen farmers and factory workers.
Vardaman was born in Jackson County, Texas, in July 1861. He moved to Mississippi, where he studied law and passed the bar. He settled in Greenwood, Mississippi, becoming editor of The Greenwood Commonwealth.
Mississippi election campaigns were frequently marked by violence and fraud after Reconstruction. A biracial coalition of Republicans and Populists had briefly controlled the governorship and Mississippi House in the late 1880s.
As a Democrat, Vardaman served in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1890 to 1896 and was elected as speaker of that body in 1894. He was known for his populist appeal to the common man. The Democrats took action to ensure they did not lose power again in the state. After having gained control of the legislature by suppressing the black vote, they passed a new constitution in 1890 with provisions, such as a poll tax and literacy test, that raised barriers to voter registration and in practice disenfranchised most blacks.
Referring to the 1890 Mississippi state constitution, Vardaman said:
Vardaman was commissioned as a major in the United States Army during the Spanish-American War. He served in Puerto Rico.
Vardaman ran twice in Democratic primaries for governor, in 1895 and 1899, but was not successful. The state was virtually one-party, and winning the Democratic primary established a candidate as the winning candidate for office. In 1903 Vardaman won the primary and the governorship, serving one four-year term (1904–1908).
In late December 1906, he went to Scooba, Mississippi, in rural Kemper County with state militia, to ensure control was established. Whites had rioted against blacks there, and in Wahalak, and they feared retaliation. In total, two white men were killed and 13 blacks.
By 1910, Vardaman's political coalition, comprising chiefly poor white farmers and industrial workers, began to identify proudly as "rednecks". They began to wear red neckerchiefs to political rallies and picnics.
Vardaman advocated a policy of state-sponsored racism against African Americans, saying that he supported lynching in order to maintain his vision of white supremacy. From 1877 to 1950, Mississippi had the highest number of lynchings in the nation. He was known as the "Great White Chief".
Vardaman was elected to the United States Senate in 1912 in the first popular election of senators, defeating the incumbent LeRoy Percy, a member of the planter elite. Vardaman served one term, from 1913 until 1919. He was defeated in his primary re-election bid in 1918. The main factor in Vardaman's defeat was his vote against the United States' Declaration of War on Germany and entry into World War I. Only five other Senators voted with him.
Vardaman ran in the Democratic primary for the United States Senate in 1922, but was defeated in the primary runoff by Congressman Hubert Stephens by 9,000 votes.
Vardaman was known for his provocative speeches and quotes, once calling Theodore Roosevelt a "little, mean, coon-flavored miscegenationist." In reference to the education of black children, he remarked, "The only effect of Negro education is to spoil a good field hand and make an insolent cook."
After Tuskegee University president Booker T. Washington had dined with Roosevelt, Vardaman said the White House was "so saturated with the odor of the nigger that the rats have taken refuge in the stable."
Referring to Washington's role in politics, Vardaman said: "I am just as much opposed to Booker T. Washington as a voter as I am to the coconut-headed, chocolate-colored typical little coon who blacks my shoes every morning."
Vardaman married Anna Burleson Robinson. Their son, James K. Vardaman, Jr., later was appointed as Governor of the Federal Reserve System, serving from 1946 to 1958.
Vardaman died on June 25, 1930 at the age of 68 at Birmingham Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama.
*****
June 24
*Donald Gordon, a South African businessman and philanthropist, was born.
Donald Gordon (b. June 24, 1930) was educated at King Edward VII School in Johannesburg before doing his articles to be a Chartered Accountant at the firm Kessel Feinstein (now Grant Thornton).
He founded the Liberty Life Association of Africa in 1957 out of which he formed Transatlantic Insurance Holdings plc, now Liberty International in 1980.
He was behind the development of Sandton City, one of the most successful shopping centers in the world.
Gordon was a director of the Guardian Royal Exchange Group for 24 years and chaired their South African subsidiary, Guardian National Insurance Company.
The Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) in Johannesburg, South Africa, was established in January 2000 following a substantial contribution by Donald Gordon and a major investment by the University of Pretoria.
In 2004, Gordon gave the Royal Opera House and Wales Millennium Centre a collective donation of £20 million payable over five years. This is believed to be one of the largest single private donations ever made to the arts in the United Kingdom. Gordon had the Grand Tier at the Royal Opera House as well as the main auditorium of the Wales Millennium Centre named after him.
At the 2000 Entrepreneur of the Year Awards in London, Gordon received the Entrepreneur of the Year Special Award for Lifetime Achievement. He received an honorary doctorate of economic science from the University of the Witwatersrand and an honorary doctorate in commerce from the University of Pretoria. In 1968, he was named 'Business Man of the Year' by the South African Sunday Times. In 1999, he was named as 'The Achiever of the Century in South African Financial Services' by South African Financial Mail.
In June 2005, he was awarded a knighthood in recognition of his services to arts and business.
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June 25
*James Vardaman, a Governor and Senator of the State of Mississippi, died in Birmingham, Alabama.
James Kimble Vardaman (b. July 26, 1861, Jackson County, Texas – d. June 25, 1930, Birmingham, Alabama) was an American politician from the United States state of Mississippi and was the Governor of Mississippi from 1904 to 1908. A Democrat, Vardaman was elected in 1912 to the United States Senate in the first popular vote for the office, following adoption of the 17th Amendment which mandated the popular election of Senators. He defeated incumbent LeRoy Percy, a member of the planter elite. Vardaman served from 1913 to 1919.
Known as "The Great White Chief", Vardaman had gained electoral support for his advocacy of populism and white supremacy, saying: "If it is necessary every Negro in the state will be lynched; it will be done to maintain white supremacy." He appealed to the poorer whites, yeomen farmers and factory workers.
Vardaman was born in Jackson County, Texas, in July 1861. He moved to Mississippi, where he studied law and passed the bar. He settled in Greenwood, Mississippi, becoming editor of The Greenwood Commonwealth.
Mississippi election campaigns were frequently marked by violence and fraud after Reconstruction. A biracial coalition of Republicans and Populists had briefly controlled the governorship and Mississippi House in the late 1880s.
As a Democrat, Vardaman served in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1890 to 1896 and was elected as speaker of that body in 1894. He was known for his populist appeal to the common man. The Democrats took action to ensure they did not lose power again in the state. After having gained control of the legislature by suppressing the black vote, they passed a new constitution in 1890 with provisions, such as a poll tax and literacy test, that raised barriers to voter registration and in practice disenfranchised most blacks.
Referring to the 1890 Mississippi state constitution, Vardaman said:
Vardaman was commissioned as a major in the United States Army during the Spanish-American War. He served in Puerto Rico.
Vardaman ran twice in Democratic primaries for governor, in 1895 and 1899, but was not successful. The state was virtually one-party, and winning the Democratic primary established a candidate as the winning candidate for office. In 1903 Vardaman won the primary and the governorship, serving one four-year term (1904–1908).
In late December 1906, he went to Scooba, Mississippi, in rural Kemper County with state militia, to ensure control was established. Whites had rioted against blacks there, and in Wahalak, and they feared retaliation. In total, two white men were killed and 13 blacks.
By 1910, Vardaman's political coalition, comprising chiefly poor white farmers and industrial workers, began to identify proudly as "rednecks". They began to wear red neckerchiefs to political rallies and picnics.
Vardaman advocated a policy of state-sponsored racism against African Americans, saying that he supported lynching in order to maintain his vision of white supremacy. From 1877 to 1950, Mississippi had the highest number of lynchings in the nation. He was known as the "Great White Chief".
Vardaman was elected to the United States Senate in 1912 in the first popular election of senators, defeating the incumbent LeRoy Percy, a member of the planter elite. Vardaman served one term, from 1913 until 1919. He was defeated in his primary re-election bid in 1918. The main factor in Vardaman's defeat was his vote against the United States' Declaration of War on Germany and entry into World War I. Only five other Senators voted with him.
Vardaman ran in the Democratic primary for the United States Senate in 1922, but was defeated in the primary runoff by Congressman Hubert Stephens by 9,000 votes.
Vardaman was known for his provocative speeches and quotes, once calling Theodore Roosevelt a "little, mean, coon-flavored miscegenationist." In reference to the education of black children, he remarked, "The only effect of Negro education is to spoil a good field hand and make an insolent cook."
After Tuskegee University president Booker T. Washington had dined with Roosevelt, Vardaman said the White House was "so saturated with the odor of the nigger that the rats have taken refuge in the stable."
Referring to Washington's role in politics, Vardaman said: "I am just as much opposed to Booker T. Washington as a voter as I am to the coconut-headed, chocolate-colored typical little coon who blacks my shoes every morning."
Vardaman married Anna Burleson Robinson. Their son, James K. Vardaman, Jr., later was appointed as Governor of the Federal Reserve System, serving from 1946 to 1958.
Vardaman died on June 25, 1930 at the age of 68 at Birmingham Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama.
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June 28
June 28
*Amina Cachalia, a South African anti-Apartheid activist, women's rights activist, and politician was born in Vereeniging, South Africa. In 1995, while President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela proposed to Cachalia.
Amina Cachalia, (b. Amina Asvat; June 28, 1930 Vereeniging, South Africa – d. January 31, 2013, Johannesburg, South Africa) was a longtime friend and ally of Nelson Mandela. Her late husband was political activist Yusuf Cachalia.
Cachalia was born Amina Asvat, the ninth of eleven children in Vereeniging, South Africa, on June 28, 1930. Her parents were political activists Ebrahim and Fatima Asvat. She began campaigning against Apartheid and racial discrimination as a teenager. She became a women's rights activist, often focusing on economic issues, such as financial independence for women.
Amina and Yusuf Cachalia were friends of Nelson Mandela before his imprisonment at Robben Island in 1962. She became a staunch anti-apartheid activist. She spent fifteen years under house arrest throughout the 1960s and 1970s. She was the treasurer of the Federation of South African Women (Fedsaw), a leading supporter of the Federation of Transvaal Women, and a member of both the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress and Transvaal Indian Congress during the Apartheid era.
In 1995, Mandela asked Cachalia to marry him. At the time, he had been separated from his wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Cachalia turned down Mandela's proposal because she said that "I'm my own person and that I had just recently lost my husband whom I had enormous regard for". Mandela divorced Madikizela-Mandela a year later and married Graca Machel in 1998.
Cachalia was elected to the National Assembly of South Africa in the 1994 South African general election, the country's first with universal adult suffrage. In 2004, she was awarded the Order of Luthuli in Bronze for her contributions to gender and racial equality and democracy.
After her death, in March 2013, her autobiography When Hope and History Rhyme was published.
Cachalia died at Milpark Hospital in Parktown West, Johannesburg, January 31, 2013, aged 82. The cause of death was complications following an emergency operation due to a perforated ulcer.
Her funeral was held in her home in Parkview, Johannesburg, according to traditional Muslim customs. It was attended by South African President Jacob Zuma, former Presidents Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe, ANC Deputy Cyril Ramaphosa, former First Lady Graca Machel, former Finance Minister Trevor Manuel and fellow activisti Ahmed Kathrada, among others.
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*Itamar Augusto Cautiero Franco (b. June 28, 1930, Brazilian territorial waters, Atlantic Ocean – d. July 2, 2011, Sao Paulo, Brazil) was a Brazilian politician who served as the 33rd President of Brazil from December 29, 1992 to December 31, 1994. Previously he was Vice President of Brazil from 1990 until the resignation of President Fernando Collor de Mello. During his long political career Franco also served as Senator, Mayor, Ambassador and Governor. At the time of his death, he was a Senator from Minas Gerais, having won the seat in the 2010 election.
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June 30
*The last remaining Allied troops of occupation departed from the Rhineland five years ahead of the date set by the Treaty of Versailles and, as history would soon show, prematurely.
June 30
*The last remaining Allied troops of occupation departed from the Rhineland five years ahead of the date set by the Treaty of Versailles and, as history would soon show, prematurely.
*Wilfred Edun, a cricketer from British Guiana who toured New Zealand with the West Indies team in 1955-56, was born in Georgetown, British Guiana.
Wilfred Khalil "Sonny" Edun (b. June 30, 1930, Georgetown, British Guiana – d. June 17, 1990, Georgetown, Guyana) was a middle and lower order batsman and opening bowler.
"Sonny", as he was known to everyone, attended Bourda Roman Catholic Primary School where he participated in soccer, boxing and cricket. From there he went to Modern High School, during which time he represented Bookers Sports Club in cricket. He later played for Everest Cricket Club for almost sixteen years, and was club captain for some time.
"Sonny", as he was known to everyone, attended Bourda Roman Catholic Primary School where he participated in soccer, boxing and cricket. From there he went to Modern High School, during which time he represented Bookers Sports Club in cricket. He later played for Everest Cricket Club for almost sixteen years, and was club captain for some time.
A middle and lower-order batsman and opening bowler, Sonny represented the Guyana Indians in the Kawall Cup in 1954, before making his first class debut for Guyana in 1955.
Edun made his first-class debut for British Guiana in the 1954-55 season. He made his two highest first-class scores, 36 and 33, in his first game, against Barbados. After three games that season in which he scored 125 runs and took 3 wickets he was selected to tour New Zealand.
He played only two first-class matches in New Zealand, taking 2 for 21 and 3 for 28 in an innings victory over Wellington. He played in most of the minor matches, with moderate success.
After the tour, he played one game for British Guiana in 1956-57 and once more in 1959-60, with little success.
After his playing days were over, Edun was the manager for the 1976 Benson & Hedges Guyana Youth Team, the 1973 Guyana Shell Shield Team and the 1973 West Indies Cricket Team against New Zealand.
Edun was also a member of the Georgetown Cricket Club. In 1970, he was made an Honorary Life Member of the Everest Cricket Club and, in 1983, he received the club's Certificate of Distinction.
Edun also played table tennis for a Guyana B team and tennis for Everest. He captained the Guyana golf team against Trinidad & Tobago in 1985 and was named Golfer of the Year in the same year.
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