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1848 – Camila O’Gorman and Ladislao Gutierrez are executed on the orders of Argentine dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas.
Maria Camila O’Gorman Ximénez (1827/1828 – 18 August 1848) was a 19th century Argentine socialite executed over a scandal involving her relationship with a Roman Catholic priest. She was 20 years old and eight months pregnant when she and Father Ladislao Gutiérrez faced a firing squad.[1]
Biography
Camila was born in Merced, Buenos Aires, the youngest daughter of Adolfo O’Gorman y Perichón Vandeuil, and his wife, Joaquina Ximénez Pinto. She was the second-to-last of six children in an upper-class family of mixed Irish, French and Spanish descent. Typical of powerful families in Argentina’s post-colonial era, two of her brothers went on to pursue reputable careers. One as an ordained priest of the Jesuit Order, and the other as a police officer and the eventual founder of the Buenos Aires Police Academy.[2]
She was also the granddaughter of Ana Perichon de O’Gorman (1776-1847), renowned lover of the Viceroy of the La Plata Santiago de Liniers, First Count of Buenos Aires. As the first British invasion occurred, Liniers was part of the defence of Buenos Aires. For heroic actions in defence of the city, Santiago de Liniers was appointed Military Governor of Buenos Aires, and Perichon de O’Gorman became the unofficial first lady. Her importance and power led to accusations intended to discredit her, including allegations that she was a spy for the French or the English. After Liniers died in 1810 she retired to a quieter life with her sons and died peacefully in 1847, at the age of 72.[citation needed]
In 1847 Argentina was governed by Juan Manuel de Rosas, a General of the Argentine Army and a politician. Rosas governed the Argentine Confederation by decree from 1829-52. Camila was considered a pillar of polite society, a close friend and confidante of Rosas’ daughter, Manuelita, and a frequent guest at the Governors Residence. In her late teens, Camila was introduced to Father Ladislao Gutiérrez, a Jesuit priest who had attended seminary with her brother.
At the time, the Society of Jesus was the only institution within Argentina’s Catholic Church which continued to speak out against Rosas’ police state tactics. This led Rosas to later banish the Jesuits from Argentina. Father Gutiérrez came from a similar background; his uncle was the Provincial Governor of Tucumán, Celedonio Gutiérrez. Father Gutiérrez had been assigned as the parish priest of Nuestra Señora del Socorro (Our Lady of Relief) and was frequently invited to the O’Gorman family’s estate. They soon began a clandestine affair.
They escaped in December 1847 and settled in Goya, Corrientes Province, where they set up the town’s first school and posed as a married couple under false names. Corrientes was at the time under the control of Benjamín Virasoro, a warlord hostile to Rosas. As the scandal broke, Adolfo O’Gorman sent a letter to Rosas accusing Gutierrez of having seduced Camila, “under the guise of religion”. Adolfo described himself and his family as heartbroken and pleaded that his daughter be rescued from the man he accused of having kidnapped her.[3]
Rosas’ exiled political opponents, and future President Domingo Faustino Sarmiento declared that Rosas was responsible for the moral corruption of Argentine womanhood. Camila and Ladislao were recognised by an Irish priest, Fr. Michael Gannon. Among others, Father Anthony Fahy and lawyer Dalmacio Vélez Sarsfield “demanded an exemplary punishment of the wayward daughter that was also giving the industrious and well-regarded [Irish] community a bad name”.[4]
The couple was abducted from Corrientes Province and returned to Buenos Aires. Camila claimed she had initiated her relationship with Gutierrez and insisted on their elopement, angrily denying rumors that she had been raped. From Buenos Aires, Rosas had given strict orders – the fugitives were to be sent to the prison of Santos Lugares (today San Andrés, General San Martín, Buenos Aires Province) in separate carriages – as indicated by Foreign Relations Minister Felipe Arana in his warrant of arrest.[4]
Before reaching their final destination, Camila wrote to Manuelita Rosas, with the hope that she might persuade her father into granting clemency. Manuelita replied to her friend’s letter, promising to help. Manuelita optimistically furnished a cell in a nearby Convent with a piano and books. However, Rosas denied his daughter’s pleas and replied that this case, “needs a show of my undisputed power, as the moral values and sacred religious norms of a whole society are at stake”. At the time, Rosas had removed the administration of justice from the courts and taken it upon himself. As per protocol, he signed a decree ordering the executions.[citation needed]
Immediately after arriving to the prison, according to Canon Law, Father Castellanos, the prison chaplain, visited Camila’s cell and baptised her unborn baby. This consisted of Camila drinking holy water and placing consecrated ashes on her forehead. The next morning, 18 August 1848, O’Gorman and Gutiérrez were taken to the courtyard, tied to chairs, and blindfolded. Rosas accepted full responsibility for the execution, and said nobody had made any plea on behalf of the couple, overlooking the pleas of his own daughter, Manuelita. Many documents have survived, including a letter from Adolfo O’Gorman to Rosas, demanding “exemplary punishment for the most atrocious and unheard of event in this country”.[5]
A book published in 1883, many years after the event, by Antonino Reyes, who had served Rosas for 14 years and was his aide-de-camp, secretary, Sergeant Major, and Chief of Police at Santos Lugares Prison. Reyes was so moved that he decided not to witness the executions and out of compassion ordered both bodies to be placed in the same coffin. Only then did he write to Rosas and inform him that his orders had been carried out. In the aftermath of their deaths, both friends and enemies of Rosas claimed to be appalled by the cruel and senseless execution, including Sarmiento and his fellow Unitarios, and wrote about it using terms such as “the beautiful girl”, “the doomed couple” and “the repression of love”. Camila was 20 years old and eight months pregnant with an illegitimate child. Father Gutiérrez was 24 years old.[1][4]
1911 – Klara Dan von Neumann, Hungarian computer scientist and programmer (d. 1963)
Klára (Klari) Dán von Neumann (18 August 1911 – 10 November 1963) was a scientist, and a pioneer computer programmer.
Life
Klara was born in Budapest, Hungary on August 18, 1911 to Károly – Karl Dán and Camila Stadler, a wealthy Jewish family[2][3][4]. Her father had previously served in the Austro-Hungarian Army as an officer during World War I, and the family moved to Vienna to escape Bela Kun. Once the regime was overthrown, the family moved back to Budapest. Her family was wealthy, and often held parties where Klara would meet many different people from various stations in life. At 14, Klara became a national champion in figure skating.[3] She attended Veres Pálné Gimnázium in Budapest and graduated in 1929.[5] She married Ferenc Engel in 1931 and Andor Rapoch in 1936.[6] Klara had previously met John von Neumann during one of his return trips to Budapest prior to the outbreak of World War II.[7] When von Neumann’s first marriage ended in a divorce, Klara divorced Rapoch and married von Neumann in 1938 and emigrated to the United States. She became head of the Statistical Computing Group at Princeton University in 1963, and moved to Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1946 to work on the MANIAC I as a computer programmer.[5] After von Neumann’s death, Klara married Carl Eckart in 1958 and moved to La Jolla, California. She died in 1963 when she drove from her home in La Jolla to the beach and walked into the surf and drowned. The San Diego coroner’s office listed her death as a suicide.[3][8]
Career
Klara was one of the world’s first computer programmers and coders. She helped solve mathematical problems using computer code.[9] Klara wrote the code used on the MANIAC machine developed by John von Neumann and Julian Bigelow at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory.[10] She was also involved in the design of new controls for ENIAC and was one of its primary programmers.[11][12] She taught early weather scientists how to program.[13] Klára wrote the preface to John von Neumann’s posthumously published, influential Silliman Lectures,[14] later edited and published by Yale University Press as “The Computer and the Brain”.[15] She features significantly in computing historian George Dyson’s book, Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe.
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